Why did we not think to do this sooner?
It was a foolish thought. Until his escape, no one in Queen’s Grave had opportunity to speak freely to those outside.
“You have until nightfall,” Tammus growled at last.
Hugo hesitated, as if to argue, but did not. He snapped his fingers, and his men mounted and rode briskly to the gates, which were opened at Tammus’ order. After they rode through, the gates were shoved shut behind them.
“Something’s wrong,” said Ivar.
He dismounted. The bare ground, covered with a sheen of ice, crackled beneath his boots as he walked forward. He knew this landscape well enough. He had had many months to learn its contours. He had lost track of the time since he had escaped, but it had been nine or ten months, early summer then and the end of winter now. In that time the tidy gardens, fields, and orchards had gone untended, so it appeared. Worst, a dozen new graves marked the cemetery plot north of the infirmary. He recognized them because of the heaps of earth, yet not one bore a wooden Circle staked into the ground or a crude headstone.
It was deadly quiet. Not a soul stirred, not even come to see what the noise was or to investigate the whickering of horses and the sound of armed men.
He dropped his reins and ran for the compound, past the abandoned sheep pasture and the wildly overgrown bramble where once goats had feasted. The front door was stuck, canted sideways because of broken hinges. He yanked it open, grunting and swearing and crying, and tumbled into the vacant entry hall, sprinted, shouting, into the biscop’s audience chamber, but it, too, lay empty. Even her writing desk was gone. He bolted out into the courtyard. Sister Bona’s grave lay bare, untended except for a dandelion.
Abandoned.
Were they all dead? But if so, wouldn’t Captain Tammus have known? Or had he simply ceased to care?
“Ivar?”
He spun, hearing that gentle voice but seeing no one. “Hathumod? Ai, God!” He was weeping with frustration and fear. “Where are you? Where is everyone?”
Forever ago, or so it seemed because it was a moment he preferred not to recall, pretty young Sister Bona had crawled out of the courtyard past a loose board. It jiggled now, and he grabbed it and wrenched it to one side, then cursed, because he’d gotten a splinter deep in his palm.
Hathumod’s face blinked at him out of the shadows.
“What are you doing in there?” he demanded.
“Ivar! Oh, Ivar.” She was weeping. “I thought you were dead.”