“And mine,” said the Countess. “Pity the girl’s mad.”
“Mad or not,” said Keril, “Noreth claims that her father is the One himself. As her mother died when Noreth was born, there’s no one to contradict her, and this claim gives her a huge following among the ordinary people. She makes no secret that she thinks she’s born to become Queen of all Dalemark—North and South.”
“And that fool in Dropwater backs her,” said the Countess.
So that’s it! Mitt thought. They’re scared for their earldoms. So they get me to stop her and then blame it on the poor South! “Just a minute,” he said. “If she’s who she says she is, no one can do a thing about it. And someone who’s from the Undying on both sides isn’t going to be easy to kill either.”
“Quite possibly,” Keril said. “That’s why we were so interested in what we heard about you from the Holy Islands. Reports from there suggested that you could well ask the Undying to help you.” Mitt stared at him, shocked at how much Keril knew and how coldly he was prepared to use that knowledge. Keril leaned forward. “We don’t want yet another false king and yet another ruinous uprising,” he said. Mitt saw he really meant it. “We don’t want another war with the South. We want Noreth quietly stopped before she can lay her hands on the crown.”
“The crown?” said Mitt. “But nobody knows where that is. They tell stories here about how Manaliabrid hid it.”
“She did,” said Keril.
“Noreth,” said the Countess, “says that the One will show her where it is.” Mitt looked from one face to the other and suspected both of them had a fair idea where the crown was hidden. “The girl claims the One talks to her,” the Countess added disgustedly. “I told you she was mad. She says the One has promised her a sign to prove her claim and that this year at Midsummer she will become Queen. Silly nonsense.”
“She’s in Dropwater at the moment,” Keril said, “acting as law-woman for her cousin, but our information is that she’ll be going to her aunt in Adenmouth for Midsummer to drum up support there. We’re sending you to Adenmouth, too.”
“And,” said the Countess, “you’re to go there and stop her. But don’t do it there. We want this quiet.”
“We advise you to join her as a follower—you shouldn’t be noticed among all the others—and then look for a suitable opportunity,” Keril said. As Mitt opened his mouth, he added, “If you want to see Hildrida and Ynen again, you will.”
“But Midsummer’s the day after tomorrow!” Mitt protested. A stupid thing to say, but he had been looking forward to the feasting in Aberath.
“It’s an easy day’s ride,” said the Countess, who rarely went anywhere except by carriage. “I shall give out that you have my leave to go and visit Navis Haddsson in Adenmouth. You will go first thing tomorrow. You may go away and pack now.”
Mitt had been taught that you bowed on leaving the presence of an earl, but he was too disgusted to remember. He turned and blundered his way across the dimness of the library, past the books and the glass cases that held the Countess’s collection: the necklace that was supposed to have been worn by Enblith the Fair, the ring that once belonged to the Adon, a flute of Osfameron’s, and the withered piece of parchment that went back to the days of King Hern. Behind him he sensed the two earls drawing themselves up in indignation.
“Mitt Alhamittsson,” said Keril. Mitt stopped and turned round. “I remind you,” Keril said, “that a man can be hanged when he is fifteen. They tell me your birthday is the Autumn Festival. Noreth had better be dead before then, hadn’t she?”
“Or we may not be able to avert the course of justice,” added the Countess. “You have nearly three months, but don’t cut it too fine.”
So there was no possibility of putting things off. “Yes,” said Mitt. “I get you.” He looked past them to the harrowed, ill-looking face of the Adon. He could see the portrait better from here. He pointed his thumb to it. “Miserable-looking blighter, isn’t he?” he said. “It must be giving him a right bellyache having you two as descendants!” Then he turned round and walked to the door, rather hoping he had been rude enough to be thrown into prison on the spot. But there was no sound behind him while he opened the door, and no sound but the groan of the hinges as the door shut on his heels. The man on guard outside straightened up guiltily and then relaxed when he saw it was only Mitt. Mitt marched away down the steps without speaking to him. They really meant him to kill this girl. Even the Countess had not told him off for his rudeness.
His knees were trembling as he came out into the courtyard. He almost wanted to cry with shame. It was the way Keril had muttered “Oh, yes, I’m sure he is!” that seemed to have got to him most—sure Mitt was a guttersnipe, a Southerner with no feelings, the first person earls turned to when they wanted dirty work done. Mitt had known such a person and vowed never to be like that, but fat lot those two cared!
Someone shouted to him across the courtyard.
A knot of people stood there, all about his own age. Earl Keril’s son, Kialan, was one of them, and the others were waving to Mitt to come over. Mitt had been rather anxious to meet Kialan. Now he found he could not bear to. He ducked sideways and turned along the wall.
“Mitt!” shouted Alla, the Countess’s bronze-haired daughter. “Kialan wants to meet you!”
“He’s heard all about you!” shouted Doreth, the copper-haired daughter.
“Can’t stop! Message! Sorry!” Mitt shouted back. He did not want to meet the daughters either. Alla had jeered at him for being so miserable when Hildy was sent away, until Mitt got mad and pulled her bronze hair. Then Doreth had told the Countess on him. Mitt had been quite surprised not to be sent away then, too. But that must have given them proof that Mitt did care what became of Hildy. Flaming Ammet! The Countess and Keril must have had this planned for months!
Kialan was now shouting himself. “See you later, then!” Mitt had a glimpse of him waving, tawny and thickset and quite unlike his father—but quite certainly not really unlike, not deep down where it counted. Mitt put his head down and sped along by the wall, wondering if Kialan saw him as a dirty Southern guttersnipe, too. Kialan would certainly see a lot of lank hair and two spindly legs and shoulders that were too wide for the rest. Mitt kept his face turned to the wall because that was the real giveaway, a guttersnipe face that still looked starved even after ten months of good food in Aberath. He told himself Kialan wasn’t missing much.
He plunged through the nearest door and kept running, through rooms and along corridors, and out again on the other side of the mansion, to the long shed on the cliffs above the harbor. That was the best place to be alone. The people who were usually there would all be rushing about after Keril’s followers or getting the Midsummer feast ready. And he was having to miss that feast. Hildy had once said that misery was like this: Silly little things always got mixed up with the important ones. How right she was.
Mitt rolled the shed door open a crack and slipped inside. Sure enough, the place was empty. Mitt breathed deep of the fishy smell of coal and of fish oil and wet metal. It was not unlike the smell on the waterfront of Holand, where he had been brought up. And I might just as well have stayed there for all the good it did me! he thought, staring along a vista of iron rails in the floor, where tarry puddles reflected red sun or rainbows of oil. He felt caught and trapped and surrounded in a plot he had not even noticed till they thrust it at him this afternoon. Everyone had told him that the Countess was treating him almost like a son. Mitt had been pretty sarcastic about that, but all the same he had thought this was the way people in the North did treat refugees from the South.
“Fool I was!” he muttered.
He walked along the rails to the huge machines that stood at quiet intervals along them. Alk’s Irons, everyone called them. To Mitt, and to most people in town, they were the most fascinating things in Aberath. Mitt trailed his fingers across the cargo hoist and then across the steam plow and the thing that Alk hoped might one day drive a ship. None of them worked very well, but Alk kept trying. Alk was married to the Countess. It was the only other thing Mitt liked about the Countess, that instead of marrying the son of a lord or another earl who might add to her importance, she had chosen to marry her lawman, Alk. Alk had given up law years ago in order to invent machines. Mitt dragged his fingertips across the wet and greasy bolts of the newest machine and shuddered as he imagined himself pushing a knife into a young woman. Even if she laughed at him or looked like Doreth or Alla, even if her eyes showed she was mad—No! But what about Ynen if he didn’t? The worst of this trap was that it pushed him back into a part of himself he thought he had got out of. He could have screamed.
He went round the machine and found himself face-to-face with Alk. Both of them jumped. Alk recovered first. He sighed, put his oil can down on a ledge in the machine, and asked rather guiltily, “Message for me?”
“I—No. I thought nobody was here,” Mitt said.