The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [66]
“Your only option is to get away tonight, but I tell you quite simply that you have no hope unless you put yourself in my hands and do as I say.”
“Who are you? Why would you help me?” I asked.
He gave me a guarded look. “It is enough for you to know that I am no enemy to you. Or to your suspicious friends, though you have jeopardized my own plans with your endless questions and curiosity. Rest assured I do not share the ambitions of Vega and Alexi to dig up the past. It is better dead and buried.”
“Plans?” I asked, and unexpectedly he smiled.
“Even now you are curious,” he said, his tone half amused and half exasperated. “I wonder if you really understand how much danger you face. Louis was right. You are curious to the point of foolishness.” All at once, a sad sort of tenderness softened his eyes. “Selmar was curious, too, when she first came. Always asking questions and poking her nose into everything. She near drove Louis mad in the beginning. So hungry for answers, whatever the cost—and it proved dear.”
“I can’t help what life has made of me,” I said defensively.
He stood abruptly. “Come. There is no more time for talk.”
“What am I to do, then?” I asked.
Rushton handed me a thick gray cloak from a wall peg. “You’ll need a heavier coat. It is impossible for you to leave the grounds tonight. The weather will get worse before it gets better and even an arrowcase would not help you, for the storms that run from the Blacklands affect the bearings. Nor can you go through the pass if you managed to find your way there, for it is white with snow, and though not yet completely blocked, it will be impossible to see where the ground is too badly tainted to cross on foot.” He spoke calmly and deliberately. “I cannot let you stay here, either, because the house will be searched from top to bottom, and I am not exempt.”
“Then there is nowhere for me to go,” I said despairingly.
“You must remain on the farms until the weather clears. They will not be able to search there until the storm ends, and since the maze is snowed in, they are unlikely even to think of the farms to begin with. As soon as the moment is right, I will return for you, and I will tell you of a place where there are supplies enough to last you until the wintertime ends.”
“But if the maze is impassable, how are we going to get to the farms?”
Rushton crossed restlessly to the window and peered through the shutter. “We will go outside the grounds and around. They won’t imagine you would escape only to come back inside the walls.” He frowned. “I thought I heard something.…” He shook his head and came back to the fire, pulling on his own coat.
“The wolves?” I asked, thinking of poor Selmar.
Rushton only smiled. “They are locked up.” He looked at me searchingly. “You are pale. I hope you are properly recovered. You took the medicine I gave you?”
I nodded. “It was herb lore, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “One of my friends has great skill in the art of healing, as did my mother. I know there is no evil in those old ways. The Council and Herder Faction are fools, frightened of everything. Now they have decided you are a danger because they don’t understand you.” He shook his head again and glanced out the window. “We must go now.”
“Yes, I …,” I began, but Rushton waved his hand urgently. We both listened, and this time I heard something, too—the sound of running footsteps.
“Lud take it! I think they have discovered that you are missing. That was surely a coach I heard some while back. The Councilmen must have changed their minds about waiting in Guanette until morning. We have to get you out of the house now, or you will be trapped.”
There was a loud knock on the door, and we both froze in horror. Rushton tore his coat off and gestured me toward the shuttered window, behind which lay a balcony. It was snowing hard outside. I pulled the door nearly shut and pressed my ear up against it.
“All right, all right,” Ruston called grumpily after a second knock. “What is