by A. C. Cobble
“Kill them?” whispered Isisandra.
“Is that a problem?” asked Redmask.
“No, I…”
“If you send others with us, we will have a better chance,” stated the elder. “If Thotham is a true knife, we could use the help.”
“You are a master, are you not?” barked Redmask. “If you cannot handle a single old priest and two untrained children, then I am not sure you still deserve the rank. Besides, it appeared the old man started acting on his plan in Middlebury before we interrupted him. I suspect he’s already lost much of himself. If that is the case, he will only be a shadow of the knife he once was, and you do know how to deal with shadows, yes?”
“I do,” murmured the elder.
“Thotham carries a spear,” added Redmask. “Based on what we surmised before our associate was killed and what we learned from the shades, I believe he’s bound himself to it, and it is with that weapon he was going to kill himself. He is no longer what he once was, but the spear will be more. Do not get killed by it.”
“Understood,” claimed the elder.
“You have four turns of the clock until nightfall,” instructed Redmask. “Be gone from here in two. I will slow them down.”
The Cartographer XVIII
“Derbycross!” he exclaimed. “Why would she go to Derbycross? She just left today, you say?”
“Ah, yes, m’lord,” mumbled a nervous-looking servant. “I helped carry her luggage out just two turns of the clock ago, m’lord. I… Did something happen last night between you two, m’lord?”
“Happen last night? What do you… Oh, the Winter Gala.” Oliver scowled and the man cringed. “No, nothing happened last night that would cause the girl to flee. I, well, I am surprised she left is all. Perhaps she had urgent business to attend to at her family’s estate.”
“Perhaps,” said the man, though he didn’t look like he agreed.
“When you carried her luggage out,” asked Oliver, “where did you put it? How did she leave?”
“In a carriage, m’lord.”
Without further word, Oliver stormed out of the suite of rooms to find Sam and Thotham standing in the hallway. The older man was leaning against an ancient tapestry which threatened to collapse under the pressure of his shoulder.
“You found the one thing around here older than you,” complained Oliver, pointing at the hanging.
“What?” asked the priest, looking up.
“There you are!” called a new voice from the end of the hallway.
Oliver turned and saw Director Randolph Raffles striding toward them.
Mutton-chop whiskers bristled as the man threw his arms wide. “Where have you been, Oliver? I’ve been looking for you for days.”
“Days?” asked Oliver.
“You haven’t been in your rooms in the palace, and don’t tell me you have been!” laughed the man, shaking a finger at the duke. “I saw you at Philip’s Winter Gala, of course, but with the young Dalyrimple girl on your arm, I was loathe to interfere. I am still loathe to get involved, but I can’t help myself. Oliver, you and she would make a grand match. Good looking, adventurous, and combining two substantial shares in the Company… I confess, I am a bit of a romantic, and when that comes together with my duties to the Company, well, you have my backing.”
Oliver stared at the man speechless. Finally, he shook himself, and asked, “You’ve been looking for me to ask about… about the Dalyrimple girl?”
“No, of course not. I only mention it because you looked quite the pair last night. I’ve been looking for you because we need to know about the Westlands, Oliver,” charged on Director Raffles. “I and the other directors will understand, of course, if you view Isisandra as a more worthy pursuit, but if we’re to make the expedition to the Westlands, we have to prepare. Captain Ainsley has been granted the official appointment as captain of the Cloud Serpent, and she’ll be ready to sail in days. We need to know where to send her. Time is a factor, Oliver. Our resources are tied up in that ship, and it’s been unproductive for too long. The directors are getting anxious.”
“I…”
“Can you come with me to Company House?” inquired Raffles. “We can get a schedule settled that meets the needs of both, ah, both of your quests. You’ll have time to make your courtship and time to earn her a fat income from the Westlands — if we do a little planning. What do you say, Oliver?”
Shaking his head, Oliver mumbled, “I have to be honest. I haven’t even been thinking about the Westlands these last few days.”
“Of course not!” boomed Raffles, reaching forward to slap Oliver on the shoulder. He nodded knowingly at the door to Isisandra’s suite. “I know you’ve been busy. The Company waits but not forever, even for you. Let’s get some plans on paper and send a glae worm transmission to the directors in Southundon. That will free your mind to, well, do what you do best.”
Oliver shook his head. “Later, Director. I’ll get it sorted, but I have something urgent I need to attend to.”
“Urgent?” wondered the director.
Oliver nodded toward Isisandra’s door. “You understand?”
“I do,” replied the man, sighing. “You’re going with her to Derbycross, then?”
“How do you know she’s going to Derbycross?” questioned Oliver.
“I saw her down in the south carriage court when I arrived,” explained Raffles. “I asked her man where they were off to, and he told me Derbycross. I thought she must be checking up on things. I don’t believe she’s been back there since she returned to Enhover. I didn’t know it was a planned escape with you, or I would have kept my mouth shut.”
“She’s still in the carriage court?” pressed Oliver.
“Well… I-I don’t know,” stammered Director Raffles. “Are you or are you not planning to leave with her? If you are, you’d better hurry. You don’t keep a pretty thing like that waiting.”
“Let’s go,” said Oliver to Sam and Thotham.
Then, he darted down the hall, Sam on his heels, Thotham following slower, looking like he’d just awoken from a nap.
“I still cannot believe it is her,” declared Sam. “Why would she kill her parents? It just does not make sense to me.”
“She’s running, isn’t she?” replied Oliver. “I wasn’t sure, but that is all the proof I need.”
He glanced over his shoulder and saw the old priest Thotham one hundred paces back, struggling to keep up.
“What are we going to do if we catch her?” questioned Sam. “Ask her if she killed her parents, if she’s secretly a sorcerer? Sorceress… you know what I mean.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” admitted Oliver, taking a turn and bounding down a flight of stone stairs. “I suppose we should take her into custody and question her.”
“That may not be possible,” mentioned Sam. “If she’s what we think she is, I believe she’ll fight.”
“She’s just a little—”
“A little girl who killed her parents,” snapped Sam. “She’s dangerous.”
“We’ll see,” said Oliver. Then, he paused. “This door leads out to the carriage court. There may be footmen, drivers, laborers—”
“We have to take her quickly,” stated Sam. “If we get distracted and rush to try and protect every bystander, we’ll give her time to unleash something worse. With surprise on our side, she’ll be unprepared. Whatever she throws at us, let me cut through. And, Duke, we have to stop her. Alive or dead.”
“Where is Thotham?” he asked, glancing behind Sam.
She turned, looking at the empty hallway.
“Do you think he got lost?”
They heard a pop as a carriage’s drive train engaged, and Sam said, “I don’t think we have time to find out. If they get out the gates…”
Oliver nodded, drew his broadsword, and burst out the door.
A carriage, one designated for the royal post, was rumbling toward the gate. A pair of laborers were dragging a cart fil
led with packages toward a loading ramp, and a handful of footmen looked up in surprise at the duke charging into the court. Otherwise, the gravel-covered yard was empty.
“She’s not here,” muttered Sam.
“You!” called Oliver to the footmen. “Did a carriage just depart with Isisandra Dalyrimple inside? Isisandra Dalyrimple, the Countess of Derbycross. Damnit, man, answer me!”
Walking stiffly, the trio of footmen began to cross the yard, boots crunching on gravel, hands drifting to truncheons that hung on their belts.
“Isisandra Dalyrimple,” barked Oliver. “Have you seen her?”
“Duke, I-I don’t think…” stammered Sam.
At the same time, Oliver worried, “Something is wrong with those—”
“They’ve been invested,” warned Sam, stepping beside Oliver, her kris daggers held ready in her hands.
“What does that mean?” he asked, eyeing the footmen.
They were halfway across the yard, they still had not spoken, and as they drew closer, he swore he detected a menacing red glow where their pupils should have been.
“A spirit was bound to them and has taken control of their bodies. They’re not themselves. Duke, this is extremely powerful sorcery.”
“Good to know,” he growled. The three footmen were twenty yards away and moving quicker. “Any suggestions?”
“Their hearts are still beating, but these men are already dead,” said Sam, her voice like bent iron. “You can’t kill them. You can only break the binding.”
Oliver dropped into a fighting stance, his body angled to the footmen, his sword held steady at waist-level. “How do we do that?”
“They’ll have tattoos or markings somewhere on their bodies. Destroy those, and the spirits will flee back to the underworld.”
Sam began to side-step, splitting apart from Oliver, forcing the spirit-bound footmen to choose who they would face.
“I don’t see any tattoos!” cried Oliver.
“I didn’t say it would be easy,” replied Sam through gritted teeth. Then, she charged.
One of the footmen turned to face her, and Oliver was left with two opponents.
“Destroy the tattoos,” he grumbled, sizing up the two men. “What am I supposed to do, strip them?”
The footmen, their movements jerky as if they were marionettes animated by strings, unhooked and raised their truncheons. Wooden bats likely plugged with lead. The things were used by watchmen, inspectors, and the footmen who rode behind noblemen’s carriages because they were less lethal than a blade. That didn’t mean they couldn’t shatter bone or smash in a skull if the wielder was serious about it.
One of the men was a huge red-haired brute. His shoulder was at a level with the top of Oliver’s head. The other was dark-haired and slight, like the first one ate all the food.
Oliver rushed the little one.
He feinted high with his broadsword, drawing the footman’s truncheon up to parry. Then, Oliver lunged, taking advantage of the extended reach with his sword and plunging the tip of the blade into the man’s thigh.
Silently, the footman brought his truncheon down, smacking Oliver’s broadsword away and tearing a hunk of flesh with it. Cursing, Oliver backed up, and the two meat puppets continued after him. Blood pumped down the injured man’s leg, but his face showed no evidence of pain, and only a slight limp told of the physical damage.
An enraged yell drew his attention and Oliver glanced over his shoulder at where Sam was kicking her footman in the face, knocking the thing over then pouncing on it, stabbing her kris daggers into its arms, legs, and chest. She was trying to destroy the tattoos, Oliver knew, but like him, she had no idea where they were.
A blur of motion flashed into the corner of his vision and Oliver ducked, barely dodging a heavy truncheon as it whistled over his head.
The second footman, the one with the wounded leg, crashed into him, tripping Oliver and sending them both sprawling on the gravel. One arm wrapped around his chest from behind, and the footman groped at Oliver’s head with his other arm.
Oliver, lying on his side, snapped his head back, smashing his skull into the footman’s nose. It shattered with a satisfying crunch but did nothing to slow the man’s attempts to grapple.
The red-haired brute approached, raising his weapon to bring it down on Oliver’s head.
He kicked and scrambled, unable to break the grasp of the smaller one who was clinging to him like a barnacle, fouling his legs, trying to grip his head and hold it still so the red-haired footman could crush it.
With his free arm, Oliver stabbed up with his broadsword, impaling the big footman with the blade, trying to keep him out of range.
The truncheon swept down, and Oliver turned, fighting the man behind him and rolling his shoulder to where it absorbed the blow from the bat.
“Frozen hell,” gasped Oliver as the club smacked hard into his flesh, instantly numbing his arm.
Oliver rolled, grasping the basket hilt of his broadsword with his off-hand, shoving it, trying to push the footman back. Instead, the man lurched forward, the steel blade sinking into his flesh and then punching out his back. No pain on the creature’s face, no alarm that a yard of steel was sliding through its body. The footman raised his truncheon, and Oliver felt the smaller man wrap an arm around his neck, pinning him in a headlock, choking him, but more importantly, holding him still where the standing meat puppet could bring down his truncheon with a clean strike and end the fight.
Oliver twisted his broadsword, unleashing a geyser of blood from the torn open wound in the red-haired brute above him, but the footman’s face showed no sign he felt the wound.
At the height of his swing, suddenly, the red flickered, and then vanished from his eyes. The footman collapsed. His strings had been cut.
Through vision speckled with black dots, Oliver saw Sam standing behind the fallen footman. The smaller man grappling him from behind tightened his grip around Oliver’s neck, his forearm sealing the duke’s windpipe, and the black specks in his vision began a frantic dance.
Sam fell to her knees beside them and stabbed down with her sinuous dagger, working the blade quickly.
Suddenly, the grip around his throat loosened, and Oliver drew a ragged gasp of air. He rolled to the side, dragging his broadsword free of the dead man. He saw Sam had buried her weapon in the smaller footman’s elbow and jerked it around until it severed the tendons there, making the man’s arm useless. She scrambled back as the footman rose.
“The tattoos are on the backs of their necks,” she advised, “a hand below the skull.”
“Got it,” muttered Oliver.
Then, he lunged off his knee, swinging his sword and cleaving into the footman’s back as the thing followed Sam. The sharp steel bit flesh, shearing a hunk of it away, and the footman fell face first on the gravel, motionless.
“Well, that was crazy,” said Sam, her bloody daggers still gripped in her fists. “Are you all right?”
Oliver could only shake his head in affirmation, rubbing at his numb shoulder where the truncheon had struck him, looking between the three mauled bodies of the footmen.
“What happened?” asked Thotham from the doorway to the courtyard. He was leaning against the doorframe, staring in confusion at the three dead men. “I couldn’t keep up and got lost for a moment.”
“Nothing is broken,” confirmed the physician, stepping back from where he’d been examining Oliver’s shoulder. “It’s going to bruise something awful, though, and by tonight, it’s going to be as stiff as saddle leather.”
“Great,” muttered Oliver.
“You, ah, you should probably be a bit more careful, m’lord,” suggested the physician. “The shoulder, the arm last week…”
Oliver glared at the man.
Muttering under his breath something that sounded like a rant about the foolishness of royals, the physician began packing his bag.
“Nothing is broken. That is good news,” remarked Sam.
<
br /> “I still don’t understand what happened,” said Prince Philip, peering curiously at his brother’s purpling shoulder. “You say somehow these men were taken over by a sorcerer? Can you prove it? Because — I’ll be honest, Oliver — it looks like you just brutally murdered three footmen in my courtyard.”
“Isisandra Dalyrimple murdered them,” declared the duke. “I’m certain she knew we’d come after her, and she set them in our path to delay or kill us.”
Prince Philip scratched his head and looked between the physician, Sam, and the old priest Thotham — who appeared to have fallen asleep in the corner.
“That is going to be difficult to explain to the Congress of Lords,” mentioned Philip.
“If they ask,” muttered Oliver.
“Of course they’ll ask, brother!” exclaimed Philip. “Those footmen worked for someone, you know, and you killed them. How am I supposed to explain Isisandra Dalyrimple is a sorceress who used dark magic to control their men when everyone knows there is no sorcery in Enhover?”
“Tell them it was an assassin sent by the Coldlands,” said a new voice, and they all turned to see Director Raffles standing in the doorway. “Sorry I didn’t knock. I heard there was an attack and came running to make sure you were all right. How are you feeling, Oliver?”
“An assassin from the Coldlands?” wondered Philip.
“No one believes there is sorcery anymore in Enhover, as you said, m’lord, but they do believe it still exists in the Coldlands,” explained the director. “It’s not difficult to imagine that place holds a special grudge against your family. The assassination could have been directed toward either you or Oliver. We don’t have to specify, but if you give the peers a convenient excuse, that sorcerers corrupted their men, then they’ll buy it. Otherwise, they’d have to accept suspicion that the assassins were men in their employ. Frankly, Philip, as unpleasant as you’d find explaining why your brother killed these footmen, imagine one of those lords trying to explain why their footman attacked your brother. An easier tale for everyone to swallow is that some sorcerer from the Coldlands caused this mess.”