No Surprise

Something that lies down in that mind below the mind would not let me be. I tossed and turned, wakened, fell asleep, and finally, in the wee hours, it surfaced. I got up and shuffled through papers.

I found that piece that made the Lady gasp once, ploughed through that interminable guest list till I found a Lord Senjak and his daughters Ardath, Credence, and Sylith. The youngest, one Dorotea, the scribbler noted, could not attend.

“Ha!” I crowed. “The search narrows.”

There was no more information, but that was a triumph. Assuming the Lady was indeed a twin and Dorotea was the youngest and Ardath dead, the odds were now fifty-fifty. A woman named Sylith or a woman named Credence. Credence? That is how it translated.

I was so excited I got no more sleep. Even that damned off-schedule comet fled my thoughts.

But excitement perished between the grinding stones of time. Nothing came from those Taken tracing Bomanz’s wife and papers. I suggested the Lady go to the source himself. She was not prepared for the risk. Not yet.

Our old and stupid friend Tracker produced another gem four days after I eliminated sister Dorotea. The big goof had been reading genealogies day and night.

Silent came back from Blue Willy wearing such a look I knew something good had happened. He dragged me outside, toward town, into the null. He gave me a slip of damp paper. In Tracker’s simple style, it said:

Three sisters were married. Ardath married twice, first a Baron Kaden of Dartstone, who died in battle. Six years later she married Erin No Father, an un-landed priest of the god Vancer, from a town called Slinger, in the kingdom ofVye. Credence married Barthelme of Jaunt, a renowned sorcerer. It is in my memory that Barthelme of Jaunt became one of the Taken, but my memory is not trustworthy.

No lie.

Dorotea married Raft, Prince-in-Waiting, of Start. Sylith never married.

Tracker then proved that, slow though he might be, an occasional idea did perk through his murk of a mind.

The death rolls reveal that Ardath and her husband, Erin NoFather, an un-landed priest of the god Vancer, from a town called Slinger, in the kingdom ofVye, were slain by bandits while traveling between Lathe and Ova. My untrustworthy memory recalls that this took place just months before the Dominator proclaimed himself.

Sylith drowned in a flood of the River Dream some years earlier, swept away before countless witnesses. But no body was found.

We had an eyewitness. It never occurred to me to think of Tracker that way, though the knowledge had been there for the recognition. Maybe we could figure some way to get at his memories.

Credence perished in the fighting when the Dominator and Lady took Jaunt in the early days of their conquests. There is no record of Dorotea’s death.

“Damn,” I said. “Old Tracker is worth something after all.”

Silent signed, “It sounds confused, but reason should provide something.”

More than something. Without drawing charts, connecting all those women, I felt confident enough to say, “We knew Dorotea as Soulcatcher. We know Ardath wasn’t the Lady. Odds are, the sister who engineered the ambush that killed her. …” There was something missing still. If I just knew which were twins. …

In response to my question, Silent signed, “Tracker is looking for birth records.” But he was unlikely to score again. Lord Senjak was not TelleKurre.

“One of the purported dead didn’t die. I’d put my money on Sylith. Assuming Credence was killed because she recognized a sister who was supposed to be dead when the Dominator and Lady took Jaunt.”

“Bomanz mentions a legend about the Lady killing her twin. Is that this ambush? Or something more public?”

“Who knows?” I said. It really did get confusing. For a moment I wondered if it mattered.

* * *

The Lady called an assembly. Our original estimate of time available now appeared overly optimistic. She told us, “We appear to have been misled. There is nothing in Catcher’s documents to betray my husband’s name. How she reached that assumption is beyond us now. If documents are missing, we cannot be sure. Unless news comes from Lords or Oar soon, we can forget that avenue. It’s time to consider alternatives.”

I scribbled a note, asked Whisper to pass it to the Lady. The Lady read it, then looked at me with narrowed, thoughtful eyes. “Erin NoFather,” she read aloud. “An unlanded priest of the god Vancer, from Slinger, in the kingdom of Vye. This, from our amateur historian. What you found is less interesting than the fact that you found it, Croaker. That news is five hundred years old. It was worthless then. Whoever Erin NoFather was before he left Vye, he did an absolute job of eliminating traces. By the time he became interesting enough to have his antecedents investigated, he had obliterated not only Slinger but every person to have lived in that village during his lifetime. In later years he went even farther, wasting all Vye. Which is why the notion that those papers might contain his true name constituted such a surprise.”

I felt about half-size, and stupid. I should have known they would have tried to unmask the Dominator before. I had surrendered some small advantage for nothing. So much for the spirit of cooperation.

One of the new Taken—I cannot keep them straight, for they all dress the same—arrived soon afterward. He or she gave the Lady a small carved chest. The Lady smiled when she opened it. “There were no papers that survived. But there were these.” She dumped some odd bracelets. “Tomorrow we go after Bomanz.”

Everyone else knew. I had to ask. “What are they?”

“The amulets made for the Eternal Guard in the time of the White Rose. So they could enter the Barrowland without hazard.”

The resulting excitement surpassed my understanding.

“The wife must have carried them away. Though how she laid hands on them is a mystery. Break this up now. I need time to think.” She shooed us like a farm wife shooes chickens.

I returned to my room. The Limper floated in behind me. He said nary a word, but ducked into the documents again. Puzzled, I looked over his shoulder. He had lists of all the names we had unearthed, written in the alphabets of the languages whence they sprang. He seemed to be playing with both substitution codes and numerology. Baffled, I went to my bed, turned my back on him, faked sleep.

As long as he was there, I knew, sleep would evade me.