The Tracker Read Online Free Page A

she was old; she kicked and farted and ran all about as Arden walked around. Her much younger companions just grazed. Hav horses were wiser than Hav dragons but dumber than the monkeys from Isle Zayre, and Arden had had trouble controlling them when he was thirteen and fourteen. His penchant had grown enough that they no longer fought him when he was doing something deeply unpopular like putting medication in their eyes or squeezing the pus from an abscess.
    No princess was sketching the horses from under the deep shade of the trees, or sunbathing down at the stream. The unicorn followed after him to the gate and made a whuffling sound for assistance. He paused his search to take out a towel and wipe down her horn. It needed to be dusted regularly or the sparkling grit fell into her eyes, a task that Mavic hadn’t done in a while judging from how much dust came off into the towel. Delighted to have it gone, the unicorn farted again and ran away gleefully with her tail flying. The boy hadn’t clipped the wings of the pegasus either. It was soon going to lead to the beast’s second escape when he took off to fly around Lighmoon and raid farms of their crops. Arden didn’t fetch the clippers. He couldn’t do all of his work and Mavic’s, too.
    Then he searched the rest of the middle branches of the perindens, and finished up at the snake house. The doctor’s children had gone off somewhere else. Looking in all of the small exhibits through the glass, he went behind them to search the hallways. No one was there.
    Then he just stood in the quiet, lining up the tasks that he had left to do for the day. None happened to be of too much importance and it was almost time to start the nightly feeding. If Retel and Izac were done with their search as well, they would be in the perindens kitchen preparing everything for Arden and Mavic to deliver.
    When he returned to the main passageway, Tolaman was coming down it. “Anything to report?” he demanded of Arden.
    “She is not in the middle branches,” Arden said respectfully.
    “Then search the higher, you fool!” Tolaman burst at him, slashing his arm through the air to those branches. “I have to do the huts!”
    You were to do the higher , Arden thought. He said nothing, his head down and gaze submissive, but Tolaman’s lips tightened until they were smaller than his wife’s, and then disappeared from his face completely. The first lead strode on and Arden turned back to hunt.
     
    ****
     
    The search carried on through the evening and into the night. He could hear it in his hut, voices calling out, Princess Briala, Princess Briala, do you hear me, Princess Briala? These were queer circumstances. The curtain lit up from the torches going by outside. Then the voices faded as the search moved on.
    Tolaman had searched Arden’s hut and made a mess of his meager belongings. The clothes from his closet were tossed on his bed, and all of the furniture was askew. The cupboards in the tiny kitchen had their doors left wide open, and the lid was off the teakettle. As the princess could not have concealed herself within it, Tolaman had searched it only to be nosy, and to remind Arden that the first lead could do whatever he wanted. Fortunately, he hadn’t found Arden’s stash of money, a small but noble amount in a leather pouch that was hidden beneath a floorboard in his bedroom. Arden wasn’t saving for anything in particular. He just liked to have that heavy pouch of money. It made him feel like a rich man even if most of it was copper and silver, not gold.
    Cleaning up did not take long, and he shifted his chair back the way he liked it. Then he picked the grit from his boots over his waste towel, which he would flap out his window later so the hut didn’t smell overly much like shuffle. He thought about his problem with Leefa, stitching together elegant speeches that were sure to dissuade her. Each one fell apart in his fingers. Every avenue led back to screaming in her