He looked around the bedchamber. Whoever’d ruined Eyvind Torfinn’s books had also slashed the featherbed Eyvind and Gudrid once shared. Feathers floated in the air as Raumsdalians and Bizogots stirred them up. Hamnet didn’t think Gudrid would have secreted anything inside the mattress—too easy, too obvious. The bedframe, on the other hand . . .

Which side would she have slept on? The right, if she’d kept the same arrangement she’d had with him. He poked and prodded at the bedposts on that side, and rapped them with his knuckles.

“By God, that’s as hollow as Sigvat’s head!” Ulric exclaimed when the sound suddenly changed. Per Anders let out an irate cough.

Both Ulric and Hamnet ignored him. “It is, isn’t it?” Hamnet said. Per coughed again. Hamnet went right on ignoring him.

Gudrid doubtless had some tricky spring or catch set into the post. Hamnet felt for it, but couldn’t find it. “Here, let me try,” Ulric said. “I’ve had practice getting into places where I don’t belong.”

His hands were smaller and slimmer than Hamnet Thyssen’s. By the way they prodded the bedpost, they were also much more knowledgeable. Well, he’d said he was practiced at the burglar’s trade.

Something clicked. “Ha!” Ulric said. He reached for the top of the bedpost again. This time, the top three inches or so came off in his hand. “Ha!” he said again. He reached into the hollow and pulled out a rolled sheet of parchment. “Well, well. What have we here?”

“Open it,” Per Anders said.

Ulric did. He read a little of it, then grimaced and shook his head. “Letter from an old lover,” he said.

Hamnet only shrugged. “Why am I not surprised?” He went over to the other side of the bed, stirring up more feathers as he did, and started rapping at the bedposts there. One sneeze later, he found another hollow. “Come here, Ulric. Does this one work the same way?”

“If it doesn’t, she had to pay extra—you can count on that.” Ulric felt the bedpost. He nodded. “Uh-huh. Now we do this, and. . . .” A click rewarded him. “There you go.”

“What’s in it?” Per Anders sounded intrigued in spite of himself.

“Don’t know yet.” Ulric turned to Hamnet. “Want to do the honors this time?”

Plainly, he expected Hamnet to say no. Because that was so plain, Hamnet nodded and said, “All right.” Ulric had already started to reach into the concealed hollow. He drew back and bowed to Hamnet, as if to say it was all his.

Now that Hamnet had the honor, he wondered if he wanted it. It would be just like Gudrid to put something sharp and perhaps poisoned in a hole like this, to surprise any stranger who chanced on it. But, having asked for the privilege, he couldn’t very well change his mind.

He’d already noticed that his hand was bigger than Ulric’s. He had to squeeze it painfully tight to reach down into the hollowed-out bedpost. Gudrid wouldn’t have had any trouble here—he was sure of that.

Just when he started to think this hollowed-out space was empty, his fingertips grazed something at the bottom. He did some more twisting, and managed to get it between his index and middle fingers. It wasn’t a parchment; it felt hard and cool and metallic.

Count Hamnet drew it up. “What have you got?” Ulric asked.

“I don’t know yet. . . . It’s jewelry.” Hamnet could hardly hide his disappointment. He held the thing in the palm of his hand: a small gold replica of a building with a domed roof. “Do you recognize it?”

“Not me,” Ulric Skakki replied. “It’s not modeled after any place in Nidaros—I’d lay money on that. What about you, Per? Every seen any real building like it?”

“No,” the courier said. “If I had to guess, I’d say it came straight out of a jeweler’s imagination.”

“Seems likely,” Hamnet agreed. The piece included a loop through which a chain might go. He imagined it nestling between Gudrid’s breasts. He’d never seen it there; he was sure he would have remembered it if he had. But how much did that mean? Anything?

“Shall we look for more of these hiding places?” Per asked. “Or do we see they have nothing important in them?”

Ulric looked at Hamnet Thyssen. Hamnet shrugged. He wanted to throw the little gold model away. Instead, he dropped it back into the hidey-hole. “Let’s get out of here.” He waited till all the Bizogots tramped out of the bedchamber before leaving himself. He made it plain he was waiting, too, so none of them could steal the bauble. That earned him a few hard looks. Had the piece been bigger, he might have had a fight on his hands—or he might have chosen differently.

“You’re a dangerous fellow,” Ulric remarked as they left Eyvind Torfinn’s house. “Gold doesn’t tempt you.”

“Gold that had anything to do with Gudrid doesn’t,” Hamnet answered. “Let it go. Let’s get out of Nidaros in one piece. Anything besides that is a bonus.”

The adventurer grunted. “Well, you’re bound to be right. We’ll have to slide around that barricade again, and we’d better pick a new way to do it, too, or those lovely fellows we ran into before will try to make us pay.”

“Pick your route,” Hamnet said. “I won’t quarrel with you, whatever it is. I want to get away from here—that’s all.”

“I know what you mean,” Ulric said. “I can fell the goose’s footsteps on my grave, too.”

As a matter of fact, that wasn’t what Hamnet Thyssen meant. He kept rubbing the palm of his hand against his trouser leg as he followed Ulric through the maze of alleys that zigzagged between the main streets. Ulric never seemed to have any doubts about where he was going. Hamnet did, more than once, but Ulric proved right in the end.

No one troubled them while they made their getaway. “Maybe God watches over us,” Per Anders said in glad surprise as they trotted out through the open gates.

“Maybe,” Hamnet and Ulric said together. Neither man sounded as if he believed it.

“Well?” Trasamund asked when they got back to the Bizogots’ encampment.

“Wasted trip, I’m afraid,” Ulric said. Count Hamnet nodded.

Marcovefa looked sharply at Hamnet. “You had something,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“A trinket of Gudrid’s,” he said. “Nothing important.”

“You think not?”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked irritably. “Go back and get it for you?”

For a moment, he thought she would say yes. He thought, in fact, she would insist on coming with him. But then she hesitated, and finally shook her head. “No, no point,” she said at last. “The bone comes from the beast, but the bone is not the beast.”

“What does that mean?” Hamnet asked. She didn’t answer.

X

THE RULERS RODE along as if they hadn’t a care in the world. There were two or three dozen of them—most on the deer that must have come down from beyond the Glacier, a few riding horses. They didn’t disdain what they found the Bizogots and Raumsdalians using. A war mammoth led the troop.

“Let’s go get ’em,” Trasamund said. Nobody told him no. His force far outnumbered the invaders. By the way the Rulers paraded along south of Nidaros, they expected no enemies in this part of the Empire.

As in so much of life, what they expected and what they got were two different things. Their heads twisted toward the oncoming foes in what couldn’t be anything but horror. Despite that, none of them made as if to flee. Maybe they knew it would do them no good, since riding deer couldn’t outrun horses. Or maybe running never crossed their minds. As Hamnet Thyssen had seen more often than he cared to remember, the Rulers were formidable.

They formed a battle line: riding deer on the wings, horses near the center, and the war mammoth anchoring the whole thing. And then one man on a deer rode out in front of the line. The fringes and animal tails and sparkling crystals adorning his costume declared what he was: a shaman.