Fool’s Quest

Once our path met with a packed trail, I nudged her to a trot, and then as we came to a road, I pushed her up to a gallop. When I felt her begin to labor beneath me, I pulled her in, and again we walked. I had never had a deep faith in either Eda or El, but that night I prayed to Eda that I would find my child hidden but safe. I tormented myself with a thousand theories as to what might have happened. She had been trapped in the walls without food or water. She had been in the stables when they burned. Smoke had overcome her. Shun had done something dreadful to her and then fled after setting the house afire.

But none of my wild theories would explain why my household staff would claim to know nothing of Lady Bee or Lady Shun. I chewed my information a dozen different ways but made a meal from none of it. The night was cold and weariness welled in me. The closer I came to Withywoods, the less inclination I felt to be there. I should have stopped at Oaksbywater for the night. The thought surprised me and I shook my head to clear it from my mind. I pushed the mare back to a gallop, but I felt more heavyhearted than ever when I saw the lights of Withywoods through the trees.

Steam was rising from the roan’s withers when I pulled her in before the manor house. Even in the cold night, I could smell the stench of the burnt stables and the animals that had been in it. The loss of the building and the horses was a separate stabbing blow that made real the possibility that I had lost my little daughter as well. But as I swung down from the saddle, shouting for servants and stable boys, my heart lifted that I could see no damage to the house. The fire had not spread. I suddenly felt incredibly weary and woolly-witted. Bee, I said to myself, and pushed the haze of sleepiness away.

Chade. I’m here. Stables burned.

My Skill-message went nowhere. It was a terrible sensation, as if for one moment I was smothered and fighting for breath. Chade! Nettle! Dutiful! Thick! With each effort, the sense of suffocation increased. The Skill-current was there, I could almost touch it, but something shredded my sending into scattered threads. Exhaustion rose like a tide, stifling my terror. My fear became despair and I abandoned the effort. I shouted again and was relieved to hear my own voice.

A houseman pulled the door open for me and I heard it drag across the threshold. In the light from the lamp he lifted, I saw the damage that had been done. Someone had beaten the doors of my home in. That stung me to full alertness again. “What’s happened here?” I demanded breathlessly. “Where’s Revel? Where’s FitzVigilant? And Bee and Shun?”

The man goggled at me. “Who?” he demanded, and then, “The scribe is long abed, sir. Since his accident, he has been poorly. The whole household is abed, except for me. I can fetch Steward Dixon, but Holder Badgerlock, you look exhausted. Mayn’t I build up the fire in your chamber and see you there? And in the morning—”

“How did the stable burn down? Where is my daughter? Where is Lord Chade’s messenger Sildwell?”

“Lady Nettle?” the man queried me earnestly, and I gave him up for an idiot. Don’t ask questions of idiots: Find the likeliest person to have an answer. “Wake the steward and have him meet me in my private study immediately. Not the estate study, my private study! Have him bring FitzVigilant!”

I strode past the man, snatching the lamp from his hands and shouting over my shoulder, “And find someone to see to that horse!” before I broke into a run. Bee would be there. I knew she would be there. It was the one place she always felt safe, the secret that only she and I shared. I tried to ignore other damage to the house as I raced through corridors and up stairs. I passed a door that had been forced and still hung off its hinges. A tapestry had sustained a slash and hung crookedly, one corner puddled on the floor. My mind could not encompass it. My stables had been burned, someone had attacked Withywoods and marauded through its corridors, my daughter was missing, and the door servant seemed completely at ease with whatever had happened. “Bee!” I shouted as I ran, and I continued to shout her name until I reached the door of the study. Throughout the house, I heard doors opening and querying voices raised. I didn’t care who I roused. Why should anyone be sleeping when the daughter of the house was missing?

The doors of my study had been forced, the fine wood splintered. Two of my scroll racks leaned drunkenly against each other, their contents spilled to the floor. My desk had been ransacked, my chair overturned. I cared nothing for that destruction, nor for any stolen secrets. Where was my little girl? I was panting as I strove to align the doors so that I could close them and work the catch to the hidden labyrinth. “Bee,” I told her, my voice cracking with hope. “Papa’s home, I’m coming. Oh, Bee, please be there.”