Prince of Dogs

But the other woman only smiled, her expression almost like pity. “I have a retinue.” Lifting a hand, she indicated the darkened valley beyond them where uncanny lights winked into existence, burning without flame, and stray breezes wove their unsteady way through trees and flowers blooming in unseasonable splendor. “And my retinue is more powerful than any that exists in this world. Let us go, Sisters and Brothers. Let us bend our backs to this task.”

They rose together, clasped hands in a brief prayer, and left the hearth.

Irritated, Antonia had to acknowledge the truth of what their caput draconis had said. No human servants lived in this valley: only beasts, goats and cows for milk, sheep for wool, chickens and geese for eggs and quills. No, indeed, their little community was not attended by human servants.

She left the small chapel behind Brother Marcus and crossed to the site of the new long hall. Though it was growing dark quickly, Heribert was still out measuring and hammering, aided by certain of the more robust of the servants. Strangely, he had gotten used to the servants more quickly than she had, perhaps because he worked beside them every day as he designed and constructed his projects. She still was not used to them. At times, she could barely bring herself to look at them.

It was one thing to use the abominations nurtured in the bosom of the Enemy to punish the wicked. It was one thing to harness the power of ancient creatures which had crawled out of the pit in the days before the advent of the blessed Daisan to frighten the weak into obedience.

It was quite another to treat them as honorable servants, to use them as allies, no matter how fair some of them appeared.

At her appearance beside the construction site, they fluttered away, or sank like tar into the ground, or folded in that odd way some had into themselves, vanishing from her sight. One, the most loyal of Heribert’s helpers, simply wound itself into the planks which were set tongue to groove along the north wall of the long hall. It now appeared as a knotlike growth along the wood.

“Heribert,” she said disapprovingly. “Your work finishes with sunset.”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, but he was not paying attention. He was setting a tongued plank into a grooved plank, clucking with displeasure at the poor fit, and planing the narrow edge carefully down.

“Heribert! How many times have I told you that it is not right that you dirty your hands in this way. That is the laborer’s job, not that of an educated and noble cleric.”

He set down board and plane, looked up at her, but said nothing. No longer as thin and delicate as he had once been—an ornament to wisdom, as the saying went, rather than to gross bodily vigor—he had grown thicker through the shoulders in the past months. His hands were work-roughened, callused, and scarred with small cuts and healed blisters. He got splinters aplenty now, every day, and could pull them out himself without whimpering.

She did not like the way he was looking at her. In a young child, she would have called it defiance.

“You will come in now and eat,” she added.

“When I am finished, Mother,” he said, and then he smiled, because he knew it irritated her when he called her by that title. As a good churchwoman, she should not have succumbed to the baser temptations, and in time she would have her revenge on the man who had tempted her.

“You would never have spoken to me so disrespectfully before we came here!”

A whispering came on the breeze, and he cocked his head, listening. Was he hearing something? Did the abominations speak to him? And if so, why could she not hear or understand their speech?

He bowed his head. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace.” But she no longer trusted his docility.

Had the caput draconis lied to her? Misled her? Did they mean to take Heribert from her—not by any rough and violent means but simply by allowing certain dishonorable thoughts to fester in his mind, such as the idea that he could turn his back on his duty to his elders, his kin, his own mother who had borne him in much pain and blood and who had bent her considerable power to protecting him against anything that might harm him? Would he disobey her wishes simply to indulge himself in the selfish and earthly desire to partake of such menial tasks as building and architecture? Was this the price she would have to pay: the loss of her son? Not his physical loss, but the loss of his obedience to her wishes? Would she have to stand by and watch his transformation into a mere artisan—a builder, for God’s sake! She would not stand by idly while they worked their magics on him, even if they were the trivial magics of flattery and false interest in his unworthy obsessions. They were using him for their own gain, of course, since certainly the buildings they lived in were not fit for persons of their consequence. It was infuriating to watch as those who were supposed to be her companions in work and learning encouraged the young man in these inappropriate labors as if he were a mere artisan’s child.