by J B Lucas
“So?”
“So what?” retorted Loreticus.
“Oh, for goodness’ sakes,” Selban spat out. “So how did Claisan know that we were coming here? We didn’t know ourselves until a few days ago.”
“That, dear Selban, is a very good question. Found out whether it has anything to do with the scandal in Claisan’s ranks which has him running around with his skirt clenched high.”
“What’s the scandal?” asked Selban, his chewing slowing down as he listened.
“Don’t know. But it’s just another thing which has enflamed the irritation between him and Ferran.”
“Why would a scandal in the capital be made better by putting the culprit under our noses?”
“Get one or two of their staff on our pay then. We need to find out what he’s doing, and to stop him from fulfilling his mission,” said Loreticus.
“Already thought of that,” moaned Selban. “I asked a couple of friendly faces who would be the right person to offer coins to in the Old Manor. They said that the major had stocked it with all of his own staff from his military unit.”
“Damn,” muttered Loreticus. He folded his arms and thought to himself in rhythm with Selban’s mastication. “Full frontal approach then. I’ll go to see him in the morning.”
As was custom in Lores, the lord would visit the temple before all other business on his first day back in the village. The only remaining family who attended the building, the Egnatius household, received him warmly. Two decades ago, they had led a boisterous community of families in the chapel, and it had been the old man Egnatius who had introduced the teenage Loreticus to his future mentor from the capital. Without this family, Loreticus would be living a different life.
They sat and ate breakfast in silence. There was a comfort at this table, one born of many years as a child and an adolescent playing side-by-side with the children. Bread was baked, warm wine served, and very little conversation made after the initial hugs. They sat in a room as old as the village, the beams of the roof low and dusty with insects, the windows smaller than desirable.
“You seem tired, Loreticus,” commented Sten, the eldest son and now the man of the house.
“I’m always tired, thanks,” he replied playfully. “They give me too much to do, I think too much about what I’m doing, and I never get around to doing what I should have done. It’s not a productive set of habits.”
“Most walls are made of bricks,” commented Ana, Sten’s mother. She was quoting from a proverb in which their god taught his prophets to reason. It was a cornerstone of what separated man from beast.
“Dear Ana, it’s not a wall that makes me stumble but a bloody big pile of bricks,” said Loreticus.
“I’m guessing that the new settler in Lores is one of those bricks?” she asked.
“Yes, Major Gholan’s choice of home is raising a few questions.”
“Not Major Gholan anymore,” corrected Sten with a dramatic twirl of his finger. “Lord Gholan is his preferred title.”
“Really?” asked Loreticus, surprised at the audacity of the major. Of no less concern was his emotional reaction to the adopted title. “And do people respond?”
“I think most adopt this affectation to his household, but they are just concerned about why he’s here in the first place.”
“I am worried about both,” added Ana. “By my judgment, there is something unhealthy about his home and how he projects himself amongst our community. He’s a poor spy, or he’s a guilty man. Either way, I’m afraid that it falls to you to sort him out.”
Loreticus rode for the Old Town Manor once breakfast was finished. It had been the residence of his family before the villa was built by his great-grandfather. The estate had passed to a younger brother, then to his daughter and eventually rented to outside the family.
The spymaster approached the main doors, which had once long ago been a customary stop for his friends and he when they were collecting sweetmeats at festivals. He knocked, feeling the familiarity of the old wood on his knuckles, and seeing the familiar shapes in the stones of the wall. The elaborate birdsong coming from the garden behind the walls sounded the same as he remembered, as if it were the same birds waiting for his return.
A slender youth answered the door. He had the looks of a southern boy – blue eyes, black hair, barely a hair on his chin. He was a few years out of his teens, Loreticus estimated, around ten years younger than himself. But his deportment was that of an equal, his genderless presence that of an older soul. His face seemed familiar, and as Loreticus considered him, he saw palace fashion in the cut of his hair down to the shape of his shoes.
Loreticus said, “I would like to see Major Gholan.”
The man smiled sadly and replied, “I’m afraid Lord Gholan is not available until the evening when he will be done with his meditation.”
“Ahh… we can’t interrupt his meditation,” Loreticus said with a smirk. “I will return after supper and I shall expect him to talk to me then. Just make sure to tell him that Loreticus stopped by.”
The young man nodded and slowly closed the door as Loreticus turned back towards the square. As he approached the communal part of the village, he saw Selban sitting in the sun, chewing an apple.
“Did you find him?” Selban asked, having patiently watched Loreticus meander down the path.
“No,” Loreticus said. “I was told he was meditating.”
“Meditating?”
“Exactly that.”
“Do military men meditate?”
Loreticus shrugged. He looked back up the path. “I don’t know if this is significant yet but the man I met at the door was not from Lores.”
“Oh?” Selban asked.
“He’s a southern kid. Surranid perhaps, but he has palace shoes on. Did you ever ask whether Gholan is married? Perhaps he’s not the type. That would certainly explain the presence of such a pretty young man talking to me with so much confidence.”
Selban nodded his head and touched his face absent-mindedly. He had once been a ladies’ favourite until an illness had taken his looks. Where his face had once been smooth and supple, it was now dry and inelastic, like an old man’s. His eyes, once expressive and capable of sending out knowing glances, were now shot with red and had ugly carved bags underneath.
Loreticus watched Selban’s self-pity in his friend’s gestures but felt little sympathy. The two of them played in dangerous waters and he couldn’t have Selban fussing over things that couldn’t be changed. Selban had a wit and a logic which would have threatened his rivals had they not dismissed him for his misfortune. If anything, his ugliness and their shallow vanity formed a necessary protection for his friend.
The young man at the door had annoyed him, not by his lack of respect but for his refusal of entry. In Lores, he expected to be received everywhere warmly, and this jarred. Of course, the boy’s confidence was merely reflecting his own lord’s approach to the world, and if he had been in the army with Gholan this arrogance would have served him well. But it was his palace presence which triggered Loreticus’s suspicions. It occurred to the spymaster that perhaps the boy had been given instructions on exactly how to deal with him, should he come calling.
Selban was talking, and Loreticus slowly emerged from his reverie.
“Do you think that Claisan has done something so stupid as to offer Lores to Gholan?”
“You mean he gave away my home?” Loreticus mused. “No. Claisan isn’t that blunt. That would suit one of the other two apes.”
“Then why the title Lord Gholan?” Selban asked incredulously.
“Perhaps he is a lord. Perhaps he just didn’t use the title whilst he was in the army.”
Selban spat a couple of seeds out, then held up his hand in apology to the passers-by danced out of the way.
“If he adopted that title for attention, then it’s working perfectly; he has the whole community in a fuss,” Selban said
Loreticus stood, and Selban followed suit. The pair hovered for a moment, a shared nervous energy spiralling from new information.
“What is it that we know?” he asked his friend. This was a ritual – making sure that they had shared all of their knowledge, all of their assumptions, and that they were on the same page.
“That Gholan is settling here, that he’s rich, that he wants to keep us out of his house,” stated Selban in his gravelly tones. “That he’s Claisan’s man. That he didn’t contact you first, and that he hasn’t made an effort to since.”
“We also know that he wasn’t anyone we had heard of before he came here,” added Loreticus.
He was quiet for a moment, then they started the walk towards the villa. These events had brought a stress to his town, an imbalance in the simple life here. As Loreticus walked, something amorphous swam inside his mind, out of reach and with only its shadow in view. Loreticus had his enemies, and certainly not just those in the capital. The ones he knew about did not worry him. It was the ones he did not see which worried him.
He ignored the unease, leaning forward into the steep slope up to the villa.
Selban was talking again.
“What do you think it means,” Selban asked. “that we haven’t heard of him?”
“It means that he’s a no one. He is a second-tier military man. Why would Claisan send someone like that up here to challenge me? It doesn’t fit.”
“You mean that Claisan doesn’t care that you’re insulted?” said Selban, his question laced with sarcasm.
“No, I mean Claisan doesn’t care whether the man succeeds,” stated Loreticus. “So let’s work out what it is, and let’s make sure that he fails.”
*
The mist from the forest caused early evenings in Lores. The air cooled, the birds quieted, and the village settled. Selban and Loreticus had dined early, and both now wore heavier tunics with thick leg wraps to keep out the damp cold. Selban was dressed in dark greys and blacks, pilfered from the funeral garb in the villa’s chests. Loreticus wore his best white cloths, cleaned and chalked to perfection.
Loreticus walked out of the front gates of the villa, between the tall gate torches, in full view of the few people returning home or descending on the tavern. He moved slowly, letting everyone notice him, saying hello, gesturing with his hands so that people would remember that they were empty when they talked the next day.
He was always so at ease in these streets, but Claisan’s presence had changed everything. He counted his steps on the cobbles, following old patterns from decades before. The sound of the night birds and the hubbub of the town going to sleep seemed louder here, outside of the capital, as each utterance or clatter becoming its own individual memory. He was in the empty marketplace when he slowed his pace, then drew to a stop. Loreticus wasn’t sure why he was standing in the middle of the space, and his ears ached as he searched for an answer. Shouting. Intermittent. Broken, but there, carrying on the night breeze. Then nothing. An uneasy sensation crawled across his mind, that elusive thought again. He turned around, nervously exploring shadowy corners.
“You should get going, m’lord,” said a market trader as he walked by on bandied legs towards the smaller houses. “A city boy like you will catch his death of cold.” Loreticus offered a half-smile. Whatever curse had haunted him was now broken.
The man was right – Loreticus had spent enough time outside now to be recognised, and the night air had won its battle to get inside his collar, so he moved forward towards the Old Manor.
Selban left the villa by the garden gate, a sack strapped across his back. He stalked along the edge of the forest, one hand touching the ground in his stooped pose, the other ready on his knife. He tried to rush, frozen by the mountain air and petrified by the rustling from the trees, but the dusk and the mud slowed him down and he suffered their drags sulkily. Something heavy moved in the woods, and Selban jumped, swearing silently to himself and mopped loose spittle from his lip. He crouched lower still, craving for the task to be over. With a glance over his shoulder, he gave into his cowardice and left his planned route along the tree line to fall under the shadows of the houses instead.
Selban watched Loreticus walk down the public path, along the flame-lit main street, up towards the path to the manor house. Something made Loreticus stop, and he turned as if he had heard something. The spymaster seemed tense, looking around at the shadows, his hands loose and ready. Then a drunk burgher passed and Selban saw his patron relax.
Loreticus moved with purpose towards the Old Manor, and Selban timed his arrival at the back of the building to match Loreticus’s arrival at the front.
He drew a cloth over his mouth, pulled the hood over his head a little further and got to work. Out came four small amphorae from his packing. Biting the cork through the mask, he started to pour the pungent liquid along the base of the house, under the windows at the back. One spark and this would heave into tall flames, creating billows of black smoke but not truly burning anything of value underneath. He paused, checking the windows again, and saw that most were still wide open despite the cool air. Three more were emptied, and he tidied the empty vessels up.
Selban stopped to listen for any conversation that he might catch from Loreticus’s entrance, delicately holding the sparking flint in his fingers. Instead of hearing cordial conversation, he heard sudden, unmistakable sounds of violence.
*
Loreticus hammered at the doort with more purpose and urgency than on his earlier journey. After all, this was his family’s house but with a new, temporary, tenant. As the door opened, he looked up, expecting to see Gholan for the first time. But the diffident fop appeared in front of him instead.
Loreticus clenched his jaw and let his head hang. The youth’s expression registered the impending conflict, but as he opened his mouth, a scream burst out from inside the manor.
Loreticus stared at the boy for a moment, then rushed past, ramming him into the heavy door, galloping up the stairs and towards the origin of the noise.
Chapter 2
Loreticus stood on the landing of the main foyer. Below him, the stairs arched down, and torches lit a table laid for two through an open door. He took in everything, his eyes saving all the details.
The spymaster ran towards his presumed origin of the scream, which was roughly in the direction of the main bed chamber. Loreticus grabbed the doorknob, rattling and cursing. Footsteps came up behind him and he spun to see the young man arriving, white and panting.
“Why the hell is it locked?” Loreticus called out to him.
“I don’t know, my lord,” the youth replied, his voice trembling. “I’ll get the keys from downstairs.”
Loreticus watched the boy escape the scene, and something in the way that he glanced back towards the bedroom signalled that he wouldn’t be returning. Loreticus turned to the door, and peered through the lock. It was old, which meant that he could guess at how it worked. Quickly he reached into a bag on his belt and withdrew some thick pins. He inserted them, managed them with remarkable familiarity and listened to the plug turn. Then he stepped back and booted the edge of the door, popping off the catch on the other side.
Perhaps he hadn’t considered what he would see when the doors opened, but the scene still stunned him. A muscular man in a veteran’s robe lay spread-eagled on the floor, an arrow sticking out from the left side of his chest, casting a sharp lined shadow in a thin wedge of moonlight. Blood was leaking from a pool inside his clothes. The room was dark, the shutters only slightly ajar to the cool dark evening outside. A freshly lit candle shuddered at the violence in the air.
Loreticus checked the fallen man, straining for a breath from the veteran’s mouth or warmth from his skin. If this was who Loreticus thought it was, Major Gholan was defunct.
“Bugger,” said Loreticus.
Selban raced through the door, sweating desp
ite the cold. He stopped clumsily as he saw the body, grabbing one side of the entrance to steady himself.
“Bugger,” he said. “We’re dead.”
Close behind him arrived a maid, who turned pale at the sight of her master. Loreticus glanced at Selban. He needed to get the girl out of the room.
“Is this Major Gholan?” Loreticus asked.
“Yes lord,” she answered. “That is Lord Gholan.”
Loreticus nodded grimly. “Where is the boy who attends the door?”
“I don’t know, my lord.”
“If you see him, send him here immediately.” He paused. “Can you ride?”
“My lord?” the girl asked, confused.
“Do you know how to ride?” Loreticus snapped.
“Y-yes, my lord.”
“Then ride across town as fast as you can. Go to the town hall or the tavern or wherever, and tell the marshal that Loreticus needs him.” The girl stood, transfixed by the corpse, then suddenly started looking around the room. Loreticus interrupted her thoughts. “Run, girl, run!”
Loreticus followed her out of the room, leaned over the balustrade and shouted at one of the servants, who had started to mingle at the bottom of the stairs.
“You,” he called, indicating an older woman. “Get all of the servants into the dining room. Anyone who leaves will be considered guilty and hunted by my men. Do not talk to anyone, and do not leave the room until I say so!”
He then spun to Selban.
“What the hell did you do?” he growled.
“Nothing, Loreticus,” replied Selban with a desperate shrug of his shoulders. “I presumed it was you.”
“Of course not.”
“Look,” said Selban, gesturing to the other side of the room. “The shutters are closed. There’s no way that I could have hit him from outside.”