The White Rose

Chapter Fifty: GNOMEN?

Darling has a self-discipline that amazes me. All that time she was over there at Blue Willy and not once did she surrender to her desire to see Raven. You could see the ache in her whenever his name came up, but she held off for a month.

But she came, as inevitably we knew she must, with the Lady's permission. I tried to ignore her visit entirely. And I made Silent, Goblin, and One-Eye stay away too, though with Silent it was a tight thing. Eventually he did agree; it was a private thing, for her alone, and his interests would not be served by sticking his nose in.

If I would not go to her, she would come to me. For a while, while everyone else was busy elsewhere. For a hug, to remind her there were those of us who cared. To have some moral support there while she worked out something in her mind.

She signed, "I cannot deny it now, can I?" And a few minutes later: "I still have the soft place for him. But he will have to earn his way back in." Which was her equivalent of our thinking aloud.

I felt more for Silent at that moment than for Raven. Raven I'd always respected for his toughness and fearlessness, but I'd never really grown to like him. Silent I did like, and did wish well.

I signed, "Do not be brokenhearted if you find he is too old to change."

Wan smile. "My heart was broken a long time ago. No. I have no expectations. This is not a fairy-tale world."

That was all she had to say. I did not take it to heart till it began to illuminate later events.

She came and she went, in sorrow for the death of dreams, and she came no more.

In moments when his needs called him away, we copied everything the Limper left behind and compared it with our own charts. "Oh, hey," I breathed once. "Oh, hey."

Here was a lord from a far western kingdom. A Baron Senjak who had four daughters said to vie with one another in their loveliness. One wore the name Ardath.

"She lied," Goblin whispered.

"Maybe," I admitted. "More likely, she didn't know. In fact, she couldn't have known. Nor could anyone else have, really. I still don't see how Soulcatcher could have been convinced that the Dominator's true name was in here."

"Wishful thinking, maybe," One-Eye guessed.

"No," I said. "You could tell she knew what she had. She just didn't know how to dig it out."

"Just like us."

"Ardath is dead," I said. "That leaves three possibilities. But if push comes to shove, we only get one shot."

"Catalog what else we know."

"Soulcatcher was one sister. Name not yet known. Ardath may have been the Lady's twin. I think she was older than Catcher, though they were children together and not separated by many years. Of the fourth sister we know nothing."

Silent signed, "You have four names, given and family. Consult the genealogies. Find who married whom."

I groaned. The genealogies were over at Blue Willy. Darling had had them loaded onto the cargo whale with everything else.

Time was short. The work daunted me. You do not go into those genealogies with a woman's name and find anything easily. You have to look for a man who married the woman you are seeking and hope the recorder thought enough of her to mention her name.

"How are we going to manage all this?" I wondered. "With me the only one who can decipher these chicken tracks?" Then a brilliant idea. If I say so myself. "Tracker. We'll put Tracker on it. He don't have nothing to do but watch that sapling. He can do that over at Blue Willy and read old books at the same time."

Easier said than done. Tracker was far from his new master. Getting the message into his pea brain was a major undertaking. But once that had been accomplished there was no stopping him.

One night, as I snuggled down under the covers, she appeared in my quarters. "Up, Croaker."

"Huh?"

"We're going flying."

"Uh? No disrespect, but it's the middle of the night. I had a hard day."

"Up."

So you don't argue when the Lady commands.