She came on the fourth day, at noon, in the rain.
Adrian heard it from the bed. Everyone in Harrowfield heard it. It was not the sound of carriage wheels, which the village had learned to dread. It was the sound of three horses coming very fast up the eastern road, hard iron shoes on wet stone, and no bells on the harness, and no one shouting to clear the way. Three horses that did not need to ask anyone to move.
The black carriage with the gold circle came after them, a long way behind, lurching through the mud.
By the time it reached the square, the three riders had already dismounted at the Crooked Plough, and one of them had already walked into the middle of the square and was standing in the rain, alone, turning slowly in a circle, looking at every house.
Hollis told Adrian about it that afternoon, sitting on the end of the bed with his wet hair dripping onto the blanket. Hollis had been at the mill. He had seen all of it.
"She's not tall," Hollis said. "I thought she'd be tall. She's shorter than your mother. But she's-" He searched for the word. "Solid. Like a gatepost. And she's got a scar." He drew a line with his finger from his left temple, across his cheek, down to the corner of his jaw. "All the way. White. Like someone tried to open her face like a letter."
"What's she wearing?"
"Black. All black. A long black coat, with the Temple circle on the chest in white, the wrong way round from the Watch. And a sword. A plain one. No gold on it or anything." Hollis's voice dropped. "And she's got a thing on a chain. Round her neck. Black iron. It looks like a compass, only the needle's black too. And when she stood in the square turning round, she held it out in front of her like Brother Odo with his bell."
Adrian's bandaged hands were very still on the blanket.
"Which way did it point?" he asked.
Hollis looked at him.
"It spun," he said. "Round and round. Then it stopped." He did not look away. "It stopped pointing west, Vale."
❖ ❖ ❖
Inquisitor Maelis Dorne walked up the western lane an hour later, alone, and did not stop at the Vale house.
Adrian watched her pass from the bedroom window, half hidden behind the curtain. Hollis had been right. She was not tall. She walked like a gatepost would walk, if a gatepost had somewhere to be: straight, heavy, without hurrying and without stopping. The rain ran off the shoulders of her black coat. The white scar on her face showed even at a distance.
She went straight past the Vale gate without turning her head. She went on down to the end of the lane, and over the stile into the Vale barley field, and across the stubble in a dead straight line - not following the path, not following anything, simply walking - to the far edge by the hedge. To the sheep pit.
Jory Keel was already there. Adrian had not seen him arrive. The old hunter was standing at the edge of the pit with his longbow over his shoulder and his dogs pressed against his legs, and he did not move when the Inquisitor came up.
They spoke. Adrian could not hear it. He saw Jory's head move once: a nod.
Then the Inquisitor took off her black coat, folded it, laid it over the hedge, rolled up her sleeves, and picked up the shovel that Jory had left leaning there, and began to dig.
"What's she doing?" Elsie whispered beside him. She had climbed onto the bed to see.
"Digging up the wolf," said Adrian.
"But it's burned. Jory burned it."
"I know."
Inquisitor Dorne dug for a long time in the rain. Jory did not help her. After a while, the High Examiner's black carriage came lurching up the western lane and stopped at the stile, and Crane got out, with Brother Odo holding a canvas over his head, and walked down across the field. He stood at the edge of the pit, and talked. The Inquisitor did not stop digging. She did not appear to answer.
Then she stopped, and bent, and picked something up out of the mud, and held it up to the grey light.
From the house, Adrian could not see what it was. It was small. It was grey. It crumbled in her fingers and fell away like wet flour.
She held her black iron compass out over the pit.
Adrian saw Crane lean close to look at it. He saw Jory Keel shift his feet.
Then the Inquisitor turned around, very slowly, with the compass held out in front of her. She turned until she was facing east. Facing back across the barley field. Facing the house.
And even from the bedroom window, even through the rain, Adrian saw her go still.
"Get down, Elsie," he said.
❖ ❖ ❖
Mara met her at the door.
Adrian lay in the bed with the curtain drawn across the bedroom doorway and his bandaged hands under the blanket, and listened. His mother had put a wet cloth on his forehead, and a basin by the bed, and a smell of silverleaf and vinegar in the air. He did not have to pretend to be ill. The grey window said [Dissonance: 31], and his hands were cold, and his back throbbed under its bandages.
"Goodwife Vale." A new voice. Low and flat and a little hoarse, as though its owner had spent a great deal of time shouting over wind. "Maelis Dorne. Inquisition of the Temple. I'm here about the Hollowbeast."
"It's dead," said Mara. "Goodman Keel killed it."
"So I'm told." A pause. "May I come in? I'm wet."
There was nothing to say to that. Adrian heard the door open wider, and heavy boots on the packed earth floor, and the creak of the bench with the short leg. Then lighter footsteps, and the soft voice he knew too well.
"Goodwife. Forgive us." Crane. "Inquisitor, you'll take tea? Goodwife Vale's mint tea is the best in the valley."
"No." The bench creaked again. "Goodwife. I've just dug up your barley field. I'm sorry for the mess. I'll have my men fill it in." The flat voice did not sound very sorry. It did not sound unkind either. It sounded like a person reading out the weather. "I found ash. A great deal of ash. Fine as flour. And no bones."
"It was burned," said Mara. "Jory used pitch."
"Pitch burns hot. Not that hot. I've burned Hollowbeasts, Goodwife. Dozens of them. Wolves and bears and once a thing that had been a bull. Pitch leaves bones. Fire leaves bones. Everything leaves bones." A pause. "Except one thing."
Nobody asked what.
"And there's this."
Something was set down on the kitchen table with a soft thump. Adrian did not need to see it. He knew the sound of the old ash handle.
"Your husband's scythe, Goodwife. I found it in the barn. Hung up on its pegs, very neatly, and wiped clean. Somebody wiped it very carefully. They missed a little on the heel of the blade, by the tang." The flat voice did not change at all. "High Examiner. Would you?"
A small sound. The unstoppering of a glass vial.
Adrian waited for the hiss. The sound of fat on a griddle. The sound of consecrated water on Abyssal residue, which he had heard poured into his father's arm.
It did not come.
"Nothing," said Crane, after a moment. His voice was thoughtful. "No reaction at all."
"No," said the Inquisitor. "No reaction. There's ash on the blade of this scythe - the same ash that's in that pit, I'd put money on it - and consecrated water does nothing to it. Because there's nothing Abyssal left in it. Not a drop." A pause. "Touch the blade, Goodwife."
"I'd rather not."
"Touch it."
A long silence.
"It's cold," said Mara.
"It's cold," the Inquisitor agreed. "It's been hanging in your barn for four days and it's colder than the rain. I've felt cold like that exactly once before." The bench creaked. "That wolf wasn't killed. It wasn't shot through the heart and burned. Somebody took it apart. And they did it with this."
❖ ❖ ❖
Adrian lay very still.
The grey window was open in front of his eyes, flickering faintly. It was not dark. Crane was in the next room, a few feet away, and the grey window was not dark.
Why aren't you hiding? he thought. He's right there.
[I am hiding.]
[From him.]
[But she has an instrument too.]
[If I vanish when she comes close, and appear when she goes, that is also a sound.]
Adrian's breath caught. The compass.
[Yes.]
[Hers does not listen for me. It listens for what you did.]
[It listens for the weight.]
The Dissonance. It points at the Dissonance.
[It cannot tell the difference between the weight and the Abyss.]
[Almost no one can.]
❖ ❖ ❖
"Where's your son, Goodwife?" said the Inquisitor.
"In bed. He has a fever."
"A fever." A pause, heavy as a stone. "How long?"
"Since he chased the wolf with that scythe. It knocked him down. He's got claw marks across his back and a knock on the head." Mara's voice did not waver. "Brother Fennick's seen him. So has the High Examiner. Four days."
"Inquisitor," said Crane gently. "The boy is a Sounding subject. He's under my examination. I've been seeing to his health myself."
"Your Sounding recorded him Null."
"It did."
"And his water went black."
"Before the mirror failed. Yes."
"I've read your report, High Examiner." The flat voice was very quiet now. "I've read all of them. I read them in my saddle, all the way from the Westmarch ford, while you told me about the harvest and the round window and this village's excellent mint tea." Something rustled - paper. "Water went black, then clear, then the mirror broke. A Hollowbeast walked past a dozen flocks to reach this one farm. The father bitten. The boy with a fever. And a wolf turned to flour with a farm blade, with no bones left over and no Abyss left in the ash." A pause. "And Brother Fennick's vigil lamp burns perfectly clear. I checked it before I came up the lane. He was very eager to show me."
"Inquisitor-"
"I'm not accusing anyone of anything, High Examiner. I'm counting." The bench creaked, and the heavy boots crossed the floor. They stopped. Adrian could see their shadow now, under the curtain across the bedroom door. "I'd like to see the boy."
"He's sleeping," said Mara.
"Then I'll be very quiet."
"No," said Mara Vale.
The kitchen went silent.
Adrian had never heard his mother say that word to anyone in that voice. It was not a farm wife's voice. It was not flustered or frightened or polite. It was a voice like a door being barred.
"My son is twelve years old," said his mother. "He is sick. He has been clawed by a Hollowbeast, protecting his little sister, which is more than your Inquisition did for this valley in the three weeks it took you to cross a river. He is asleep in my bed. And you will not go into my bedroom, Inquisitor, and wake him up, and stand over him with that iron thing, and frighten him half to death, while his father lies in the loft with a Hollowbeast's teeth in his arm." A pause. "Not without an order. And not without the High Examiner, who has jurisdiction over his Sounding. And not in my house."
Adrian held his breath.
The shadow under the curtain did not move for a very long time.
"High Examiner?" said Inquisitor Dorne, at last. Very quietly.
A pause. Adrian could picture Crane's face - thoughtful, gentle, weighing something in his long fingers.
"The Goodwife is quite right," said Crane. "The boy is my subject. His examination is under Temple seal. I'd prefer he not be disturbed while he's ill." Another pause, and his voice turned warmer. "I'm sure, when he's well, he'll be glad to answer any questions you have, Inquisitor. With me present."
"I'm sure he will," said Maelis Dorne.
The shadow under the curtain moved. It did not move away. It came closer. The heavy boots stopped a hand's breadth from the edge of the curtain, so close that Adrian could see the mud on their toes and the rain dripping off the hem of a long black coat.
Something black and small on a chain swung into view beneath the curtain's edge. A needle of black iron, in a black iron case.
It was not spinning. It was pointing straight at the bed.
"Adrian Vale," said the Inquisitor, through the curtain, in her low, hoarse, flat voice. She did not raise it. She did not need to. "I know you're awake. Your breathing changed when I said the word bones."
Adrian did not move. He did not breathe.
"My name is Maelis Dorne," she said. "I'm not going to come in. Your mother's right. It's her house." A pause. "When I was eight years old, a Hollow opened in the hills above my village. It was very small. No bigger than a rabbit hole. Nobody noticed it. Nobody reported it. And in one night, everyone I had ever known was grey and cold and empty, like your neighbor's ewe. My mother. My brothers. My dog." The flat voice did not change at all. "I was in the root cellar. That's the only reason."
Rain drummed on the thatch.
"I don't hate the Hollowed," said Maelis Dorne. "I don't hate anyone. I've just learned that the Abyss doesn't care how old someone is, or how brave, or how much their mother loves them. It only cares if there's a door." The black needle swung gently on its chain. "So I'm going to find out who opened that wolf up like a stitched sack, boy. And how. And whether they left a door open when they did it."
The boots turned away.
"When I do," she said, from further off, "I hope for your sake it was the old man."
❖ ❖ ❖
The door closed behind her. The High Examiner stayed a little longer. He drank a cup of Mara's mint tea, which she made for him without a word, and talked softly about the weather, and did not come near the bedroom curtain. Then he left too.
Adrian lay in the bed and stared at the ceiling. He was shaking. He could not make it stop.
The grey window hung in front of him.
[Dissonance: 30]
She knows, he thought.
[She suspects.]
[She is honest. That makes her careful.]
[She will not act on a suspicion.]
[She will wait until she is sure.]
And Crane? He protected me. Again. In front of her.
[Yes.]
Why?
[Because if she takes you, he loses you.]
[He does not want you in the Inquisition's hands.]
[He wants you in his.]
Adrian closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, much later, the rain had stopped, and there was a strange light in the room. He turned his head toward the window.
On the stile at the end of the lane, a quarter mile away, a small solid figure in a long black coat was sitting, perfectly still, facing the house. Beside her on the stile, something small and black on a chain caught the last of the evening light.
She was still sitting there when the stars came out.