She touched the horse to a gallop, and sped toward the only place she could think of where she might get news of him: the mines.
Someone scuttled off the road before her; she reined in, peered unsuccessfully into the darkness, and called softly, insistently, "If you're a rucker, please come out! Please come here!"
A rustle in dry brush was her answer. She tried a bolder tack. "It's the Lady of the Mink who commands it!"
After a moment a man stepped onto the road from a clump of bracken. Red were his hair and beard in the moon, and the white walleye stared blindly. Fate, chance, the gods—no, not the false, horrible globes, but whatever gods there might be elsewhere—had crossed her path with Rack, the giant whom she trusted more than any other rucker.
"Rack!" she called quietly. "Come here, man."
He was at her stirrup. "What are you doing, Lady?" His voice was anxious:
"I'm joining the rebels, big man. Where can I find the Mink?"
"I don't know. Lady, are you mad? The rebels are saying that the gods are overthrown and there will be gentry blood running all over Dolfya by noon tomorrow. They're out of their heads."
"No, Rack, they're honest men fighting a hideous corruption." She told him rapidly what she'd seen in her father's room. "I don't know exactly what it means, 'but it's bad—degrading, horrible! I don't want to be a gentrywoman any longer. I—I'm the Mink's girl. Listen," she said, leaning over to him, "he took me two days ago, and Revel is my man, hell or orbs notwithstanding. Now where is he?"
"I've heard he's alive," said Rack slowly. "I thought he would be; he's too tough to kill. Where he is, no one knows."