The Inquisitor spent five days asking Harrowfield questions, and Harrowfield lied to her every single one of them.
Adrian did not see most of it. He was in bed. But in a village of forty houses, nothing happens that is not told, and everything that happened in those five days came up the western lane to the Vale kitchen, one way or another - in Hollis's mouth, or Elsie's, or Old Hatty's, or on the lips of neighbors who had not come to the Vale door since the Sounding and now came with a jar of honey or a loaf or a bundle of kindling, and stood in the kitchen talking to Mara in low voices, and left without being asked to sit.
Adrian lay behind the bedroom curtain and listened to all of it, and did not understand it, and then, slowly, did.
❖ ❖ ❖
She questioned Jory Keel first.
She did it at the sheep pit, in the open, where anyone could see. Oswin Tull saw. Oswin had been sent to the Dunns' with a message and had taken the long way round, the way the Tull twins took the long way round to everything, and had lain flat in the hedge for an hour with his [Keen Nose] full of wet leaves.
"She asked him to show her his arrows," Oswin said, in the Vale kitchen, with his mouth full of Mara's bread. "The ones he shot at it. And he did. He had four of them in his quiver, all black and crusty at the ends. And she looked at them for ages, and then she said, 'Where are the other four?' And Jory said, 'What other four?' And she said, 'You put four in it the night it took your neighbor's sheep. Goodman Vale says so, and the High Examiner says so. And you said you put another in its heart when it came back. Iron doesn't burn, Goodman Keel. There are no arrowheads in that pit.'"
Mara's hands had stopped moving on the bread knife.
"What did Jory say?" said Adrian, from behind the curtain.
Oswin grinned. "He said, 'I dug them out. Good iron. I'm not made of money.'"
"Did she believe him?"
Oswin's grin faded a little.
"She said, 'You dug them out of a burning Hollowbeast with your hands, and then you shoveled its ash back in the hole.' And Jory said, 'Aye.' And she looked at him for a really long time. And then she said, 'All right,' and wrote it down."
❖ ❖ ❖
She questioned Hollis second, and Hollis was terrible.
Hollis told Adrian about it himself, red to the ears, sitting on the end of the bed.
"I practiced," he said miserably. "I practiced all night. What I'd say. Jory shot it, it ran, it fell down, he burned it, Vale got knocked over. I said it to my da about fifty times. And then she sat me down in the Plough, with the High Examiner in the corner writing, and she said, 'Tell me about the wolf, Hollis,' and I said 'Vale didn't do anything,' before she'd even asked anything about you."
Adrian put his bandaged hand over his face.
"I know," said Hollis. "I know. And then I said it again. I said, 'He just got knocked over. That's all. He didn't do anything to it.' And she just sat there. And then she said, 'You're a good friend.'" He looked at the floor. "Not like she was being mean. Like she meant it. Like she was sorry about it."
"Did she ask you anything else?"
"She asked what I saw." Hollis's voice dropped. "And I said I didn't see much, I was carrying Elsie, I had my back to it. Which is true, mostly. I had my back to it most of the time." He swallowed. "Only I turned round once. At the end. When I got to your yard."
Adrian lowered his hand.
"You saw," he said.
Hollis Brandt, who was not afraid of anything, looked at him with something in his broad, freckled face that Adrian had never seen there before and did not want to see there again.
"I saw it fall down like snow," Hollis whispered. "Like a snowman when you kick it. All at once." He took a breath. "And I didn't tell her. And I'm not going to. And I don't want you to tell me what it was." He got up, suddenly, and went to the door, and stopped there. "You hit a Hollowbeast in the face with a lantern. For your da. And then you went after it with a scythe for your sister. I don't care what else you did." He did not turn around. "That's what I'm telling people, Vale. If they ask."
❖ ❖ ❖
She questioned Elsie on the third day, and Elsie was magnificent.
Mara was allowed to sit in. The Inquisitor did it in the Vale kitchen, at the table, with a cup of mint tea that she did not drink. Adrian listened through the curtain with his heart in his throat.
"I went to give the sheep flowers," said Elsie. "Because nobody gave them any. Michaelmas daisies. From the hedge. The purple ones and the yellow ones, but mostly purple, because Nan eats the yellow ones. And I was putting them on the pit, and I heard a noise like when Da's pipe goes out, sort of a hiss. And I looked up and it was there. And it had half a face."
"Half a face," said the Inquisitor.
"The other half was all black stitchy stuff. Like a sock when you darn it wrong." Elsie's voice was perfectly steady. "And I fell over. And then Adrian came running with Da's scythe, even though he's not allowed to touch it. And he got in the way of it. And it knocked him over. And then Hollis came and picked me up and ran. And I was facing backward over his shoulder, so I saw Jory come out of the hedge and shoot it. Right in the chest. Twang. And it fell down."
"You saw Goodman Keel shoot it."
"Twang," said Elsie firmly. "Right in the chest."
"And then?"
"And then Hollis ran round the barn and I couldn't see anymore."
The Inquisitor was quiet for a moment.
"Elsie," she said. "That's a very good story. You've told it to me exactly the same way you told it to Brother Fennick yesterday. And to Goodwife Marsh at the well. Word for word. Twang, right in the chest." A pause. "Most people don't remember things word for word. Most people remember it a little differently every time."
Adrian's heart stopped.
"I've got a good memory," said Elsie.
"Have you?"
"Brother Fennick says so. I know all of the Seven Lights. Do you want me to say them?"
"No, thank you," said the Inquisitor. And then - Adrian could hardly believe it - there was a sound from the other side of the curtain that might, in anyone else, have been the beginning of a laugh. It was stopped very quickly. "Thank you, Elsie. That's all."
❖ ❖ ❖
She questioned the village on the fourth day.
And that was the part Adrian did not understand, at first. Because it should have been the part that ended everything.
Goodwife Marsh had seen Adrian's face at the chapel. Goodwife Marsh had said the Abyss is in this valley, and we all know who, and had turned her eyes to the space beside him. Goodwife Marsh's cottage was the last on the western lane before the Vales', and its back window looked out over the barley field.
The Inquisitor went to Goodwife Marsh's cottage and asked her what she had seen from that window.
"Jory Keel shooting it," said Bet Marsh, according to Old Hatty, who had heard it from Bettany's grandmother, who had been in the next room. "Right in the chest. Clear as day. I was at the window washing pots."
"You were washing pots at your back window, at sunset, and saw a man with a longbow shoot a wolf at four hundred yards, through a hedge."
"I've got very good eyes."
"Your Trait is [Gentle Hands], Goodwife. Not [Hawk's Eye]."
"I've still got very good eyes," said Bet Marsh, and shut the door.
The Tulls said Jory shot it. The Brandts said Jory shot it. The Dunns, who had lost a ewe to that wolf and had been the first to look at Adrian on the hillside, said Jory shot it, and that he was a hero, and that the baron ought to give him a medal. Old Hatty said nothing at all. Old Hatty looked at the Inquisitor across her counter at the Crooked Plough, and folded her arms, and said, "I'm eighty and Null and I've buried everyone who ever asked me a question I didn't like, and I'll bury you too, lass," and poured her a cup of ale, which the Inquisitor drank.
"Why?" Adrian asked his mother that night. "Why are they doing it? Goodwife Marsh hates me. She thinks I'm-"
"She doesn't hate you." His mother was changing his bandages. "She's frightened. She was frightened of you after the Sounding. But she's been frightened of that." She jerked her chin toward the north, toward the hills. "Her whole life. Everyone here has. And then a twelve-year-old boy with no Trait hit it in the face with a lantern, and went after it with a scythe for his sister, and it's gone." She tied off the bandage. "And the next day, the Temple rides in, with iron on its wheels. Asking questions. The same Temple that took Lise Fenwick." She looked at him. "People in villages aren't stupid, Adrian. They're only quiet. They remember who helped with the harvest."
❖ ❖ ❖
On the fifth day, Adrian was well enough to be questioned, and they did it in the chapel.
His mother had spent the night before soaking his hands.
She had got the walnut hulls from Old Hatty, who had a barrel of them for dyeing wool. She boiled them into a black, bitter-smelling mess, and let it cool, and made Adrian sit with both hands in the bowl up to the elbows for two hours. When she took them out, his skin was stained a deep, blotchy, ugly brown from fingertip to elbow, as though he had been shelling walnuts barehanded for a week.
The grey did not show at all. Neither did the lines. Not that there was much left to show. The window said [Dissonance: 17], and the fine pale branches up his arms had faded to something he could barely see himself, in good light, if he knew where to look.
"You've been helping Hatty with her walnuts," his mother said. "To pay for the honey she sent. You didn't wear gloves. You're a fool."
"I'm a fool," Adrian agreed.
"Say nothing you don't have to. Answer what she asks. Don't answer what she doesn't." Mara took his brown-stained face in her hands. "And don't look at the air."
❖ ❖ ❖
The chapel was cold and grey. Brother Fennick's vigil lamp burned pale and clear on the altar. Adrian did not look at it.
The Inquisitor sat at the little table under the round window, where Crane had taught him his letters. Crane sat in the front pew beside Brother Fennick, with his hands folded. Brother Odo sat behind him, with a pen. Two squires of the Grey Watch stood at the door. One was a tall, fair young man Adrian did not know, with a long face and a watchful mouth. The other was Rowan.
Rowan did not look at him. His eyes were on the far wall, and his face was perfectly empty.
"Sit," said Maelis Dorne.
Adrian sat. The Inquisitor's scar was even whiter up close. Her eyes were brown and very tired. The black iron compass lay on the table between them, on its chain. Its needle was pointing at him. Not hard. Not the way it had pointed through the bedroom curtain. It wavered, and drifted, and came back. Like a dog that has lost a scent and is not ready to give up on it.
"It points at you," said the Inquisitor, following his eyes. "It also pointed at your father's arm. And at the pit. And at the scythe."
"My father was bitten, Inquisitor," said Crane mildly, from the pew. "And the boy was clawed."
"I know." Dorne did not look away from Adrian. "Tell me about the wolf."
Adrian told her about the wolf.
He told it as close to the truth as he could, because the truth was easier to keep straight. The goats going quiet. Elsie gone. The daisies. Grabbing the scythe. Running. The wolf with half its face. Swinging at it and missing, and being knocked down, and getting up, and being knocked down again. The claws across his back.
"And then?"
"And then I swung at it again," said Adrian. "And after that I don't remember."
Which was true. He did not remember the part where he could not remember his sister's name. He did not remember being carried home.
"You don't remember Goodman Keel shooting it."
"No, Inquisitor."
"Your sister does."
"Elsie was over Hollis's shoulder. She could see better than me." He swallowed. "I was on the ground."
The Inquisitor looked at him for a long, long time. The compass needle wavered.
"Take off your bandages," she said.
"His hands are-" Crane began.
"I know what his hands are, High Examiner. I'd like to see them." She did not raise her voice. "You won't object to that. He's not being searched. He's showing me his hurts."
Adrian unwound the bandages. He made himself do it slowly, the way he'd do it if they hurt. He laid his hands on the table, palm up, then palm down. Brown. Blotched and stained and ugly, from the tips of his fingers to his elbows.
The Inquisitor leaned forward. She did not touch them. She looked. Then - and this was the thing Adrian would remember - she bent her head, very close, and breathed in through her nose.
"Walnuts," she said.
"I was helping Old Hatty," said Adrian. "With her dye. I didn't wear gloves."
"When?"
"Yesterday."
"While you were in bed with a fever."
"I was better yesterday."
"You were better yesterday," the Inquisitor repeated, "and your mother, who kept me out of her bedroom with her bare voice, let you walk to the Crooked Plough and put your arms in a barrel of walnut dye up to the elbows, two days after you'd been clawed by a Hollowbeast."
Adrian said nothing.
At the door, Rowan's eyes flickered - once - toward the table, and back to the wall.
The Inquisitor sat back in her chair. For a long moment she did not say anything at all. She looked at Adrian's brown hands, and at his face, and then - slowly - she turned her head and looked at the front pew. At Brother Fennick, who was very carefully looking at his prayer book. At Brother Odo's pen, which had stopped. At the High Examiner.
"You can wrap them up," she said.
Adrian wrapped them up.
"I'm writing to the Inquisition house in Solmere," said Maelis Dorne, standing. She picked up the compass and put its chain over her head. "For a Truthbearer. Do you know what that is, Adrian?"
"No, Inquisitor."
"An Inquisitor with the Trait [Truthsight]. Heroic grade. There are four in the kingdom. When they ask you a question, they see the answer in your face, whether you say it or not." Her flat, hoarse voice did not change. "It'll take a fortnight for one to get here. Perhaps three weeks. I'm going to wait. And when she comes, I'm going to ask every person in this village the same questions again, one at a time, with her sitting beside me." She looked down at him. "Starting with your sister. Who is seven."
Adrian's whole body went cold.
"Until then, I'm recording the Hollowbeast as killed by Jory Keel, hunter, of Harrowfield. Because I cannot prove otherwise." She turned toward the door. "The Crown pays a bounty on Hollowbeasts. Fifteen silver. He'll have it by the end of the month." She paused beside Rowan, and did not look at him. "Squire. The boy can go home."
❖ ❖ ❖
Rowan did not come through the window that night. He could not; the tall, fair squire from the chapel door - Dace, Adrian understood - was on watch with him until dawn.
But at midday, Hollis came up the western lane with a sack of turnips from his mother, and while Mara was unpacking them, he slipped Adrian a scrap of paper folded very small.
"From your brother," Hollis whispered. "He gave it to Oren, who gave it to Oswin, who gave it to me. Nobody read it." He paused. "Well. Oswin tried. But he can't read."
It was a scrap torn from the edge of a Watch duty roster. On it, in Rowan's big, careful, blocky hand, were five lines.
Dorne and Crane argued after. In the vestry. I was at the door. She said: you wrote for me before the wolf ever came down. Why? He said: Because I needed someone honest to see it. She said: See what? He said: What happens when the boy is frightened enough.
Adrian read it three times. Then he fed it into the kitchen fire and watched it burn, and the grey window opened at the edge of his sight.
[Dissonance: 15]
[Now you know why the wolf was allowed to live.]