Miles blinked. He had expected this to be a simple business, though he didn’t know why. Just a few straightforward words: would the drought continue, or not? But this was prophecy; of course it would not be straightforward. For a moment he wondered whether the old woman were milking it, building suspense as a good carnival palmist would . . . and then he dismissed the thought as that lifeless voice spoke again.
“Seventeen ships went over the horizon, all of them bound for the better world. One ship sank; innumerable sorrows arose. Sixteen ships landed, and the Tearling was born.”
“The Crossing,” someone muttered behind Miles. “Who gives a toss? Just tell us about the weather.”
“William Tear fell,” the old woman continued. For a moment her milky eyes seemed to look right at Miles, and he froze, unable even to breathe until her gaze had moved on.
“William Tear fell,” the old woman repeated.
“We know!” someone shouted from the back. “Just get on with it!”
“Shut up!” Lord Williams snapped again. But he looked uncomfortable, and Miles realized uneasily that the process was not going the way it was supposed to. Something was wrong.
“William Tear was the True King,” the old woman intoned. “The one who saved them all. He fell, and the kingdom fell with him.”
The entire room was muttering now; even Williams could ignore it no longer. He grabbed the old woman’s shoulders, giving her a gentle shake.
“Orra! The harvest! The drought! What of the drought?”
In a single fluid movement the old woman whipped around, jerked the dagger upward, and sliced Williams across the face, jaw to forehead. Williams screamed, clasping his hand to the cut, and even before he fell backward the woman was up and out of the chair, leaping, almost springing, like a frog. Miles too jumped backward, knocking several men over behind him. The old woman’s milky eyes seemed not blind now, but malevolent. Her mouth was lifted in a hideous grin. She jumped again, three quick springs to the far end of the room.
“Stop her!” Williams shouted, one hand clasped to his bleeding cheek. “Don’t let her get away!”
“The harvest,” the old woman croaked happily, her white eyes gleaming in the dark. “Yes, you will reap. The moon falls, the stars rise. They shift and change!” Her voice was rising now, almost into a scream; Miles clapped his hands over his ears, but it was no good. He could still hear her, even over the blood that thudded in his ears.
“The True Queen comes!” the harridan shrieked. “I see her! The queen who will be! The one who saves us all!”
“Shut her up!” Williams howled.
But no one in the room seemed to dare. The dagger had fallen from the old woman’s hand, but now she began to twitch madly, almost to dance, her body rolling wildly against the wall, her white eyes disappearing and reappearing in the shadows, and that was so horrible that Miles shut his eyes, praying silently. But her screams went on.
“The queen of spades! The victory of ships! She comes! I see her! I see—”
Her voice cut off abruptly, leaving a silence so loud that at first Miles thought someone was still screaming. He drew his hands down from his eyes, but for a long moment he didn’t dare open them, not wanting to see. Someone put a hand on his shoulder, and Miles almost screamed himself, but when he looked up it was only Lord Gelland, using him as a support to get to his feet. He thought of saying something, but then a gagging sound from the corner brought him back to where he was.
The old woman lay on the floor, bleeding to death; her throat had been cut. Lord Carvel stood over her, wiping his blade with a red cloth. Of course it would be Carvel. The old lord was well past sixty, but he was former Caden, an assassin who had attained his unlikely lordship by helping old Queen Elaine net a ring of Mort spies. Carvel wasn’t one to be frightened by an old woman, even one who spoke in the voice of the dead. For a long moment, no one said anything, and Miles had time to feel relief that—with the exception of Carvel, of course—they had all been as frightened as he was.
“What the fuck was that?” Lady Andrews demanded, pushing her way through the crowd. She was the only woman among them, but the group of nobles parted before her like the Red Sea. Rumor said that Lord Andrews lived in mortal fear of his wife, but he was hardly alone in that; no man in the Tearling wanted Lady Andrews’s notice, let alone her enmity. She stalked toward Lord Williams and planted herself before him: a pretty woman, if no longer young, with her hands on her hips.
“I paid good money for a read on the harvest, Williams. Is that what I paid for?”
“I will reimburse you,” Williams said, almost humbly. Lady Andrews continued to stare at him for a long moment, and Williams added, “Plus twenty pounds for your trouble.”
She nodded coldly and then turned to her two retainers.
“Let’s get out of here. This place stinks.”
They went off through the crowd. Several more nobles left in their wake, but most of the group simply stood there, staring blankly at the dead crone who lay beside the wall. Williams bent to examine the corpse, then turned to Lord Carvel, his eyes blazing.
“I told you to grab her, not kill her! Why in God’s name did you do that?”
“These tunnels echo. She was making too much noise.”
“But where am I going to find another seer? She was worth her weight in gold!”
Carvel shrugged, unmoved.
“Perhaps all is not lost.” Lord Gosselin had moved up now, putting a soothing hand on Williams’s arm. That was not surprising, either; Gosselin was always the placator, the peacemaker.
“It’s well known that the sight runs in families,” Gosselin continued. “Did your seer have any children? You might—”
“She did,” Williams muttered. “But I sold the baby, years ago, long before I knew what Orra was. They were looking for girls, paying well—”
“She’s gone!”
Miles spun around with the rest. The stone slab stood empty, a bright circle of light in the middle of the room.
“The whore!” Williams shouted. “Christ, she saw it all! Find her! Check the tunnels! Go!”
Nobles scattered in all directions, drawing swords as they went, and Williams followed them, one hand holding a sword and the other still clasped to his bleeding face. Miles, who had no intention of charging off into that lightless labyrinth, was left behind. He thought he was the only one, but after a moment he realized that Lord Gayel had stayed as well. Gayel was a neighbor in the central Almont, owner of vast tracts of wheat. He was by no means a friend, but not an enemy either. They stared at each other across the stone slab.
“What a cock-up,” Gayel remarked, fastening his cloak. “I should have never gotten involved with this business.”