Once the room was paid for, Caewen and Fleat retreated behind a closed door and stayed there.
But someone needed to scout the town and gather news.
The boy slipped quietly out through a side door of the inn. He started off at a directionless walk, listening quietly to everyone and everything. All the while he did his best to remain unobtrusive. As the day wore on, as the sun crossed the sky in its own grudging crawl, he padded about the streets. He idled. He spoke occasionally. He eavesdropped. All of this was with the purpose of finding out where the Prince Athairdrost was at this very moment.
Their most urgent purpose was the prince and his fragment of the old great spell.
If he could catch news of other things: kings in winter, and the suchlike, then that was for the good too. If not, then not.
But as the minutes whiled away, the boy ran across little that was of interest.
There was surprisingly little rumour of the prince. What hushed gossip he did catch claimed that Athairdrost never went far from his shadowed gardens and princely towers, except on a secret business of his own. He always went alone and never spoke of what he did. It soon became evident that the little group of travellers would need to seek out the royal residence.
It was that simple.
And that difficult.
The problem was a straightforward one: it was beyond impossible to discover exact directions to the prince’s house in casual conversation. It would obviously make a stranger suspicious if the boy just out-and-out asked after the princeling’s place of residence. It might well make a passerby suspect that the boy was up to something nefarious. Which–of course–he was. This was precisely why he had to avoid asking anything too close to the point.
But, it also seemed that everyone in the the town already knew perfectly well where each of the four prince’s kept their households. It was the sort of common knowledge that no one ever bothers to state clearly. It would have been like talking about the exact location of the Dragon Gates, or where town’s larger markets might be found. It would have been just plain strange to mention without prompting.
So, the boy soon decided that his best tactic for getting information was simply to casually let drop that he was in the service of one prince, or another, and just allow the conversation to flow. This worked, more or less. People did mention places and roads that gave some hint of directions. He certainly learned a lot. How much of it was useful… he wasn’t sure.
All he could do was make a mental note of things.
He’d need to bring the information back to the others and check with them. Dapplegrim, hopefully, might recognise the place names at least.
All this aside, he did slowly learn an ear’s full worth of gossip and rumours. A few of the things he heard: Athairdrost had some glimmering of foresight through his dabbling in the shadowy arts, and he had seen in visions that there were assassins from the south hunting him. He had sent out his White Ghaists to hunt the assassins to head them off. Everyone was terrified of the White Ghaists. But no one knew precisely what necromancy had been used to conjure them. None of the other princes had such servants. Athairdrost’s father had not mastered such servants. No one knew how Athairdrost had done so. The prince was, by all account, a rather feeble and nervous young man. The other princes hated Athairdrost (although, to be fair, they seemed to hate each other just as much). Nonetheless, the princes all wanted Athairdrost dead, and they wanted his White Writhen bound, or dispelled, or otherwise removed. According to more than one rumour-spinner, Athairdrost held midnight revels with Faer-Folk. Young women frequently went missing when he visited a town. He had been born with a tail. A friendly spirit-of-darkness had allied itself to him, and given him wonderful secret powers. Or, he had sold his eternal soul to some minor and nameless god of death. Or, he had just one testicle. Or, that his teeth were made of iron, and they rusted, so his mouth always looked full of blood–which is why he never smiled. Or, that he could take out his eyes, and leave them on tables or above doors as spies.
After a couple hours of this, the boy didn’t know what to believe any longer.
And he was getting tired of all the walking around and remembering stuff. It would have been useful to have a bit of parchment and something to write with. Ink and quill, or even just a stick of hard charcoal.
In the back of his mind, he started to think about how he was going to have to tell Caewen and the others about his newfound knowledge. Sooner or later. The secret still seemed important to him. A thing for him to treasure, quietly.
He sighed to himself as he scuffed his heels along one cobbled street.
More than half of what people said about Athairdrost struck the boy as fanciful stories… though, then again, a month ago he’d have said a talking, flesh-eating horse was a fanciful story. And a boy who could turn into an owl was a fanciful fable. And he’d have said that a brave young woman, full of sorcery and sword-wits was definitely a fancy spun out of bogey-tales. Such things didn’t exist in the dull, earthy world of Wurmsgloath.
As he wandered up crooked street and down alleyway, looking for opportunities to gossip, he found himself increasingly distracted by the stranger sights of the twilit town. He chanced across a puppet-show using painted wooden creatures, grotesque and monstrous. He watched for a short while with other children, but it wasn’t in a language he understood, so he left. He found one laneway full of blacksmiths, all their hammers going madly at once: weapons, armour and shields of black and grey steel were heaped on racks outside each shop. The noise was deafening and painful. He hurried on. Not long after he walked into a small square where people cooked chestnuts in honey and played a game of black and white pebbles on small boards that were carved into the flagstones. It was pleasant and homely and calm. In another square he found an old dead tree that had all its branches painted different colours–dusty reds and blues, chipped white, off greens and ochres. There were rags and clumsily made dolls carrying little wooden musical instruments hanging from the tree too. No one was in the square. He grew curious. He wanted to see if people came into the square, and what they did with the dead tree. But the longer he waited the more uncomfortable he became, until his skin prickled and he started to suspect that there was some watchful intelligence at the heart of the old painted tree. He soon grew certain that the watching thing did not like him. So, with his neck prickling at the nape, he left, then picked his way through more and more streets, crissing and crossing, jagging and jigging, on their crazy paths around the old blocks of houses. Wherever he could, he talked to people. But time and again, he mostly ran aground on the same familiar rumours.
Then, rather worryingly, the boy ran across a fishmonger who claimed that assassins were tracking Athairdrost, and then provided a frighteningly accurate description of Caewen and Dapplegrim. “There’s a reward, you see. Gold. A bag of real gold. Best, keep your eyes open, eh?” Then he lowered his voice. “Shouldn’t tell you this, but my cousin–he’s in the prince’s soldiery–well, he told me that the prince even knows her name. Cayhen. How he found it out, I don’t know. Probably sorcery. It’s an awful, nasty sounding name, isn’t it? Sounds terrible southern-ish to me.”
“Yes. Well, if I see them I’ll let you know,” said the boy, before taking the strip of dried fish he’d just bought, and hurrying off.
He immediately spent a little while lingering around at a street corner and chewing on strips of hard fish flesh. As he chewed, he thought. Perhaps he ought to head back to the inn? Warn Caewen and the others. They were well hidden though.
Just a little longer, then back, he decided.
He milled around some more market stalls, chatting. Buying the odd, small object, just to have a reason to be there. eventually, one old man selling dyed yarn did mention that he had recently been to Athairdrost’s palace to sell wool. It turned out that the prince was not there… although that hadn’t mattered much to the wool-trader, because he sold to the chief maid-of-all-service anyway. He got a good sale. And so on, and so on. Finally, the man lowered his voice and said, “The prince was apparently away on one of his secret wanderings”.
“I’ve heard about that,” said the boy. “Sounds mysterious. I wonder what he gets up to?”
But the prod didn’t work. The old man seemed reluctant and perhaps even a little afraid. “Oh, nothing much I expect. Princely sorcerous stuff, probably.”
So, at last the boy had some idea about Athairdrost’s whereabouts. He was off somewhere secret doing something alone… It wasn’t much to go on. What was he doing? And where was he? And when would he return?
Everything just seemed to lead to questions and more questions.