Whether it was whatever secret preparations that the priest had added to the water, or just the blessedly hot water itself, colour, which was good, and feeling, a mixed blessing, had quickly returned to Kethol’s feet, which were now encased in an absurd-looking pair of rabbit-fur slippers that had been supplied by the housecarl while his boots dried.
The priest was doing a brisk business in cold-related injuries, although Kethol hadn’t been able to stop himself from laughing at the way that Father Riley had had to be summoned to the tower when one fool of a servitor had taken another’s dare to try to lick the ice off a stone on the east wall, and had got his tongue stuck in place.
The noble whose name Kethol didn’t know gave a derisive sniff. ‘The lot of you,’ he said, ‘deserve far worse than you seem to have got. Why would anybody go outside in this if he didn’t have to?’
He was a short, slim man, with a carefully trimmed fringe of black beard that suggested that he didn’t have much of a chin and had had to carve it out of hair, and a seemingly permanent sneer that suggested it would be unwise to comment upon that – not that Kethol would have.
Lady Mondegreen arched an eyebrow. ‘Sergeant Kethol, have you met Baron Edwin of Viztria?’
Once again, Kethol didn’t correct her on the nonexistent promotion; he just shook his head. ‘No, I haven’t had the honour,’ he said.
‘You were one of the freebooters who went out in the storm after Baron Morray, I take it?’ Edwin Viztria said, shaking his head. ‘Well, there’s a fool born every minute, I’ve always said to my manservant – the laziest son of a turnip in all of Triagia – and now I can add, truthfully, that there are three other fools born the next minute, who will follow that fool out into a storm that can freeze the bollocks off a bastard!’
Langahan shook his head and gestured toward Lady Mondegreen. ‘Please.’
‘Ah, I’m sorry.’ Viztria quickly ducked his head toward the lady ‘Begging your pardon, my lady, for my… colourful turn of phrase.’
She laughed. She had a nice laugh, one that reminded Kethol of distant bells. ‘Oh, I’ve always found your … ah … colourful turns of phrase quite charming, Edwin,’ she said. ‘And I do hope you’ll not restrain yourself on my account.’
Baron Viztria turned back toward Kethol. ‘I assume that the three of you have had a few words among yourselves about that Morray’s folly,’ he said, his permanent scowl intensifying for a moment.
‘We’re not the sort of men to criticize our betters, my lord.’
‘Hah! Not while there’s noble ears around, I’ll warrant, but I don’t doubt for a misbegotten moment that you speak more frankly when you’re by yourselves, even though you’d be even more of a fool to admit it in polite company than you proved yourself by following Morray out into that,’ he said, gesturing toward the outside. He shoved his hands into the pockets of the knee-length jacket, and glared at Kethol, as though daring him to disagree.
Kethol didn’t say anything.
‘You look as if you have something to say, man, so out with it,’ Langahan said.
Folson nodded. ‘I’m curious myself – you don’t seem to be joining in the general condemnation of Ernest Morray’s folly of this morning, and I’m curious as to why. Besides not wanting to criticize a nobleman.’
Well, there was a time for speaking your mind, even in front of nobility, and if this wasn’t it, Kethol didn’t know what could be.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘the Baron was alerted early this morning that a roof had caved in on one of the outbuildings at his residence –’
‘The stables?’ Folson nodded. I told him, the last time I guested there, that I thought they needed a new roof. Not that anybody ever listens to me.’
‘No, my lord, it was the servants’ quarters. He felt obliged to go out and see the situation for himself, despite the discomfort of travelling in the –’
‘Discomfort?’ Viztria raised an eyebrow. ‘That seems to me to be a rather weak word for having pounded your way through a blizzard.’
Kethol shrugged. ‘It was uncomfortable, and if complaining about it would have warmed me even a little, I promise that I would have cursed my way up Black Swan Road and then sworn my way back down. But my point was that Baron Morray wasn’t just haring off out into the cold for no reason. He felt, he said, that he must see to his servants.’ It felt strange to be defending Morray.
‘And were they well?’ Lady Mondegreen asked.
‘Everybody was fine, as far as I can tell.’ Kethol nodded. ‘Some were a bit shaken, I think –’
‘Having a roof fall in on me would probably disturb me more than a trifle,’ Viztria put in, ‘and I’m renowned for my unflappability.’
Langahan snorted derisively. Viztria threw him a black look. Kethol wondered if that was just to convince the locals the two court barons were there to keep an eye on each other or if they honestly disliked each other. Either way, it didn’t look like the Viceroy had sent them along to spy on the LaMutian barons. Or did it? Kethol had long been trying to learn to think like Pirojil, even though the effort usually only made his head hurt. His head was starting to hurt.
‘Go on, please, Kethol,’ Lady Mondegreen said.
‘Well, there was probably some frostbite, but when we left the Baron’s residence, the servants were well settled in his hall, probably until after the thaw. In fact, I think that it might even be a little warmer in the Baron’s hall than it is here.’
‘Yes, this LaMutian thaw we keep hearing about but never seem to see,’ Viztria said, shivering theatrically. ‘I’d rather be back in Krondor, myself, where a man can take a leak in a garderobe without having to worry about a urine icicle spearing some poor sod trying to clean out the dung heap below – again begging your pardon, my lady.’
‘Carla, please,’ she said. ‘I think that I may have asked you as many as a dozen times, just today, to call me by my first name, Edward.’
‘Edwin.’
‘Well, if you’re not going to use my given name, you can hardly expect me to correctly remember yours.’ Her smile was playful.
Folson was eyeing Kethol closely. ‘So, Baron Morray braves the storm just to be sure that his servants weren’t injured? Interesting.’
‘Interesting, yes, but what does it tell you?’ Viztria said, his sneer still firmly in place. ‘If you asked Luke Verheyen, I’ll bet my six silver reals to your one bent copper he’d tell you that the only reason that Baron Morray went out into the storm was so that all assembled would hear that he was the sort of man who would go out into the storm to see to the welfare of his servants.’
Langahan cocked his bald head over to one side. ‘You believe it’s all just an act?’ he said, his voice almost dripping with scorn.
Viztria snorted. ‘I don’t believe one thing or the other, and I’ll not be drawn into that feud, as I’ve enough problems of my own without looking for new ones. But I don’t take a story told by a hireling as being graven in stone, either.’ He looked over at Kethol. ‘You’re still here?’ he asked. ‘Shouldn’t you be standing guard, or running some poor sod through, or some other soldierly thing?’
‘Please excuse me, my lords and lady.’ Kethol bowed, and walked away.
Pirojil made his way carefully down the ice-slickened stone stairs, sometimes squatting to set his lantern down on the step below so that he could use both hands and feet to negotiate a particularly slippery spot. Going back up would be easier, he hoped.
The flickering light from the lantern he carried showed that the barred cells were empty. Pirojil didn’t have the slightest idea what the cells’ normal state was, or why a noble would ever throw somebody into a dungeon rather than just have that somebody’s throat cut. Still, there was something that seemed more than passing strange about the prison and the strongroom sharing the same part of the castle.
The oil lamps hung from the naked beams were all lit, and their smoke hovered in a cloudy haze near the ceiling as Pirojil made his way past racks of bar
rels, towards the rear of the dungeon. He started at a scurrying sound, but decided that it was just a rat, and if the Swordmaster or Tom Garnett wanted the rats here killed, they could order somebody else to do it.
The only thing Pirojil planned on killing today was a bottle of wine he would retrieve from a bin on his way up when Kethol came down to relieve him, as he was now relieving Durine down in the dungeon. Not one of the good bottles on the racks that stretched from one wall to the other – those were likely fully accounted for – and he had no intention of finding himself caught carrying a rare bottle of some fine red that the Earl would want on his table when he returned from Yabon, but he didn’t think that anybody would object to him hooking himself a bottle of ordinary plonk from one of the bins, and drinking himself to sleep with it.
He made a mental note to put on his thickest socks – perhaps two pairs of them – and then his boots, before he drank himself asleep. His boots would take at least a full day to dry properly, and if he didn’t make sure that they stretched as they dried, they would shrink, and it was a certainty that a pair of aching feet were far cheaper than a new pair of boots would have been.
He made his way to the far end of the dark basement, where the door to the room outside the strongroom was closed, and when he pounded on it, it took a few moments before the barred view port slid quickly open, although no face appeared in it.
‘Greetings, Durine,’ he said. ‘It’s just me.’
Durine’s broad face appeared in the window, and he gave a quick glance before the door swung open and Pirojil was admitted inside.
Morray didn’t seem to notice them; he was bent over some papers on his desk on the far side of the room, right next to the iron door that led to the strongroom proper. An intricately-embossed brass oil lantern flickered on the lefthand side of the desk, too close, in Pirojil’s opinion, to the stacked leatherbound books, and a handful of quills stood in a very plain wooden box next to the mottled green inkjar on the right. Near Morray’s right hand rested a steaming mug of what smelled like tea, rather than the ubiquitous coffee.
The hearth in the wall next to the Baron had a good fire built up in it. Durine stooped to throw another log on, then poked at it with the poker.
‘Pirojil is here, my lord,’ he said, when Morray didn’t look up.
‘Who? Oh – fine.’ Morray looked up with a frown. ‘Well, be off with you, then.’ His voice dropped to a barely audible mutter. ‘As though some assassin is going to sneak down the chimney and knife me while I’m working on the books.’ Then he bent back over his work.
Pirojil handed his lantern to Durine. ‘Watch out for the stairs.’
Durine nodded, and left; Pirojil bolted the door behind him. Pirojil pulled on the thick leather glove by the hearth to pour himself a mug of hot tea from the cast-iron teapot that lay on the stones in front of it.
The Baron ignored him as his eyes glanced from one large, leatherbound book that he seemed to be reading out of, to the long piece of carefully ruled parchment on which he was completing a column of figures, and then back again. Look, think, write, again and again – it seemed to be awfully boring work, but at least it wasn’t Pirojil’s work.
Exactly what was involved in ‘working on the books’, Pirojil didn’t know. The other part of taxes seemed simple enough to him – the barons collected taxes, sent some to the Earl, who kept some and conveyed the rest to the Duke, who probably did the same thing and passed along a bit to King Rodric or Prince Erland.
The Baron glanced up in irritation. ‘Well, is there some reason that you’re just standing there?’ He gestured toward the large chair next to the hearth. ‘If you’ll just sit down, I won’t keep seeing you out of the corner of my eye, and you won’t distract me. I’d like to finish this before dinner, so that I can spend at least a little time dispelling some of Verheyen’s lies about me.’ His tone was less irritated than his words suggested. ‘Just sit, and drink your tea, and I’ll be done shortly.’
There wasn’t anything else to do, so Pirojil just sat and drank his tea: it might be an unusual situation to be sitting drinking tea while standing guard, but it wasn’t bad. He probably should make an effort to learn about all this bookkeeping stuff, even if his needs would never be as complicated as an earldom’s Wartime Bursar’s. Pirojil could add a column of figures, albeit slowly and with some errors – though if he tried enough times, it finally added up – but there had to be more to it than that, if he wanted to do it right. If the three of them ever did save up enough to buy that tavern, it would be Pirojil who would be counted upon to handle the money, after all.
It was something they talked about, from time to time. Pirojil would run the business side of the tavern. He had negotiated with military paymasters from Salador to Crydee; he should be able to out-negotiate winemakers and brewmasters, shepherds and cattle ranchers, and never mind getting the whores upstairs – and they would want to be sure to have whores upstairs; it was always good to be able to sell one thing that never ran out.
There would, undoubtedly, be some new tricks to learn, but Pirojil could manage that part of it.
Durine could keep the peace, as long as he had a little bit of help when needed. Anybody drunk enough to want to face off against the big man would be more than drunk enough not to notice him or Kethol coming up behind him with a truncheon. It would probably be best to have Durine fight the first few by himself, by way of letting him establish a reputation, and letting it be known that the Three Swords Tavern – that did have a nice ring to it, didn’t it? – was the sort of place a man could have a few beers, a hot meal and a quick poke, without being bothered, as long as he behaved himself.
It could happen.
They might even find themselves some women – regular women, not just an occasional whore. Particularly after the war. War had a way of shaking things up, and it might be that he could find a nice-enough looking, biddable-enough woman, who would decide that exchanging regular meals and a safe place to sleep was worth having to put up with him mounting her in the night or even the daytime – she could always close her eyes – or even of having to look at his ugly face every morning. He might even make a few concessions to her, like, say, having a regular bath.
That would be a good end, indeed, for the likes of the three of them, and it was a nice dream, and it gave them something to plan and save for.
Of course, they’d likely all be dead long before that dream came true.
He found himself looking at the heavy iron door to the strongroom beyond. There was, undoubtedly, more than enough gold behind that door to buy a hundred taverns, although probably not enough to buy off those who would be sent after them, if they somehow or other managed to get out of the city with that gold.
It would be worth considering, though.
He noticed that Morray was looking at him, smiling strangely.
‘You seem to be eyeing the door with some interest,’ the Baron said.
Pirojil kept his expression blank. ‘Just staring off and thinking, my lord. No offence was intended.’
Morray nodded. ‘Well, go ahead – just open the door, and take what you want, if you can.’
His tone of voice wasn’t threatening, and he made no move towards either the swordbelt hung on the back of his chair or toward any other weapon, at least as far as Pirojil could see.
Pirojil shook his head. ‘I’ve no intention of robbing the Earl,’ he said. ‘Bad for my business, and much worse for my health.’
Morray chuckled. ‘Don’t worry about your business, or your health – there’s more than enough in there for a legion of you to retire on, I assure you. Tell you what, if you can open the door, right here and now, you will be allowed to leave, healthy and alive, with all the gold that you can carry. You have my word on that. Go ahead; try to open the door.’ His expression grew stern. ‘I’m not much used to giving a command twice, man, and I’d like not to ever have to do so a third time.’
Pirojil didn’t know what the Baron’s
game was, but it was probably just as well to go along with it. He set down his teacup and walked across the soft carpet to the closed iron door.
It was a solid-looking piece of metal, rimmed along the edge with a riveted band of blued iron, thick as a finger. There was no lock on it that Pirojil could see; just a plain metal handle. He set his hand on it, but hesitated, until Morray’s nod and gesture made it clear that the Baron really did intend him to open it.
He pushed down, at first gently, but then harder.
It didn’t budge.
He set his whole weight on it, but the handle might as well have been welded in place. He pushed harder, and thought that the handle itself gave, just a trifle, perhaps, but it didn’t even begin to turn.
Perhaps there was some trick with the rivets? They looked solid, and as Pirojil ran his fingers up and down them, they all felt solid enough to the touch.
What was he missing?
‘It was an honest offer,’ Morray said, ‘but I had no doubt that you’d be unable to open the door.’ Morray rose to his feet and tucked the thick leatherbound book under his arm, then with his free hand gestured Pirojil to move out of the way.
‘Get the light, would you?’ he asked.
Pirojil lifted the lamp from the desk, as Morray set his hand on the door handle, closed his eyes for a moment, and gently pressed down on it, not touching the heads of the rivets, or anything else.
Morray muttered something, barely vocalizing the words.
The handle turned, silently and easily. Morray muttered something more under his breath as he swung the heavy door open on its hidden hinges.
He accepted the lantern from Pirojil, and stepped inside. Pirojil didn’t follow him in, but he could see that the small room beyond was filled with racks sagging beneath the weight of hundreds of muslin sacks. Morray ignored these and stepped to a bookcase, crowded with leatherbound volumes of various sizes, and replaced the one he held there.
He smiled at the way Pirojil was eyeing the sacks. ‘Pick one of the sacks,’ Morray said. ‘Let’s see what’s in it, shall we?’
The Complete Legends of the Riftwar Trilogy Page 48