The Bone Cave
Page 15
As the guard approached the bailey Mal let loose a shrill whistle. More Kingsmen appeared in a clatter from beneath the edge of the enormous tent shading Wilhaiim’s Fair. They each awarded the magus a slight bow before ranging in a careful circle around his prisoner while the cavalrymen set spear to shoulder and backed off. The horses danced with eagerness to be away; white froth ran in a fearful sweat between their legs.
“A pretty display,” Baldebert stated, voice pitched to bounce clearly along deserted cobblestone. “Will they kill it now, do you think, or will Lord Malachi prefer to do the bloodletting in the privacy of his laboratory?”
Liam went still and small as a mouse caught out of hole beneath a passing shadow. But although one of the mounted Kingsmen wheeled his nervous horse their way, Mal didn’t turn. The magus drew his long sword and pressed the point to pale flesh where neck met bony shoulders. The barrowman flinched, hissing. Liam, all unwittingly, did the same. The bite of metal against the sidhe’s spine was encouragement enough to urge the creature on. Shielded by watchful soldiers, Mal walked the barrowman the rest of the way across the bailey and up wide gray stone stairs. There the first of many looming archways swallowed them all and Liam could move again.
“Do you suppose Renault had the castle halls emptied?” Baldebert wondered, idly. “Or will Mal resort to sorcerous disguises? Mayhap he’ll make it appear he’s found himself a new page, one more willing to put up with his ravenous habits.”
Liam struck out with both fists. Baldebert laughed and dodged sideways, then ducked a second angry blow. Countless years at sea and at war had made Roue’s prince fleet, but Liam was preternaturally agile. His third blow caught Baldebert on the chin, and his fourth sent the pirate sprawling on the street, blood running from his nose.
A spear point pricked the back of Liam’s neck, just as Mal’s sword had kissed the barrowman’s spine.
“Enough.” The Kingsman scowled at Liam across his horse’s neck, noting first the squire’s badge on his sleeve and then the scars on his face. One of his brothers pinned Baldebert point to breastbone. “Brawling’s a fining offense and today over any other day may land you in the stocks. I’ll turn the cheek for your master’s sake, but get gone before I forget kindness.”
“Yes, sir.” Liam wouldn’t look at Baldebert.
“Lad’s very good at fisticuffs,” the prince told the guard without any irony at all. “Even better with a knife. Sooner rather than later, I wager, he’ll come and work for me.”
“Never,” retorted Liam as the Kingsmen smiled, not knowing it was Wilhaiim’s least-loved man with whom they shared a joke. He wished not for the first time that he’d been man enough to kill Baldebert when they’d first woken as prisoners on The Cutlass Wind.
“You’re lucky,” Lane said as she watched Liam bind his split knuckles. “If he’d revealed hisself then you’d be in a predicament. The guards would have had no choice but to lock you up for assaulting your better, and a foreign prince at that.”
The dormitory was empty but for the two of them; rows of empty beds stood silent witness. Morgan and Parsnip were off tilting an ear at the mad priest who had lately taken to preaching in the back bailey beneath the throne room. According to Lane the man’s frenetic display was worth a walk in the heat just for the show of fire and brimstone.
“Admiral didn’t dare say a word.” The liniment-soaked linen strips stuck where Liam’s knuckles still bled and stung like fire where flesh was broken but it was well worth the pain when he remembered Baldebert’s bloodied nose. “He’s not supposed to be out and about on his own, is he, without a guard to keep him out of mischief?”
Lane tucked a roll of bandages under her arm. She picked the shallow bowl of liniment from Liam’s mattress, awarding him an arch stare.
“He isn’t,” she agreed. “For good reason. One misstep, one mistake, and he’ll find himself on the wrong end of an angry mob. The guard is meant to keep him safe, no matter we’d all prefer his head on a pike. Who do you think will be blamed if something goes awry? Not his royal self, that’s for certain.”
“The guards.” Liam shucked off his bloodstained tunic, wincing when his ribs pulled. Baldebert had landed at least one good kick before he’d gone down. There would be bruises in the morning. He reached beneath the mattress for his spare shirt, pulled it carefully over his head. “Wilhaiim. His Majesty.”
“Aye,” Lane agreed. “The man’s a fool for running about on his own. You’ll be telling Lord Malachi about it right away.” When she caught Liam’s scowl she matched it with her own. “Or I will.”
Liam groaned. “He’s busy,” he protested, seeing in his mind’s eye the barrowman at the end of Mal’s blade.
“Not too busy for this,” the armswoman snapped. “Tell me; what’s that man doing sniffing around our streets to begin with? Nothing good, and you should know it better than any.”
She grumbled as she left him, boot heels striking the hall in angry rhythm. Liam sat on the end of his cot, head bowed. He let his bandaged hands dangle between his knees. The armswoman’s show of temper didn’t alarm him. She didn’t believe in guarding her tongue or wasting time on gentle speech. She hadn’t a sentimental bone in her body but she’d started many a callow page on their way to Kingsman, soothed bruises, and wrapped wounds in between tongue-lashings. She was no man’s mother, but she was every soldier’s conscience.
Liam looked past his knees at the empty beds. He wondered if Lane dreaded the day Arthur, Morgan, and Parsnip made rank, or if she looked forward to peace and quiet.
He rose and washed his face in the basin set out for morning ablutions. Its contents were long gone warm. Dust from the street ran off his face, turning the water brown. He blotted his cheeks dry with a worn flannel, checked his knife on his belt out of habit, then took the back stairs out of the dormitory, cut through the kitchen middens, and backtracked to the soldiers’ dining hall. The hall and kitchen both were cut into the ground beneath the barracks, which made for pleasant temperatures all year round, but also close quarters. The air always smelled of grease and the gray stone walls were stained black with ash, but the boards and rushes were clean and there was always something tasty simmering on the hearth even between meals.
The dining hall was empty but for Liam and a group of soldiers in livery talking quietly at a corner table. One of the women glanced up as Liam grabbed up spoon and bowl from a shelf alongside the hearth. With a start of surprise he recognized Morgan’s tilted nose and stubborn jaw in her narrow face: Countess Wythe, the king’s constable.
She acknowledged him with a nod before returning to conversation. Liam ladled thick stew into his bowl. Above the hearth a massive chimney breathed like a living thing. A sigil was etched into stone at the base of the flue, still glittering beneath a layer of old grease, kept the air flowing. Liam was glad of the magic—no man wanted to die of suffocation over his supper—but the low gasp of the chimney always made him uneasy. Once he thought it sounded too much like a living thing; now, it reminded him of the sea.
He took his bowl to a table and ate. The stew was bland but hearty enough to fill his stomach. He hadn’t wanted for a meal since he’d fled Stonehill, not even as prisoner aboard Baldebert’s ship, but he recalled clearly what it felt like to have a hollow belly, and the uncertainty of daily survival.
He thought the trapper’s barrowman must know that same uncertainty. Hardly more than skin and sinew, it had appeared desperate enough to eat the stolen turkey carcasses raw even as it fled Holder’s dog. Liam couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to force the creature into such dire circumstance. The aes si Faolan had once implied the greater sidhe looked after their less powerful brothers. But Liam knew better than any how quickly that loyalty could turn.
Had the barrowman been exiled, turned out from beneath the earth for some crime, real or imagined? Or had it somehow gotten lost aboveground, confused by heat and light and unfamiliar landmarks? Avani and Russel had sealed the sidhe gates under W
ilhaiim. Mayhap the barrowman had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now couldn’t get back to the cool earth.
He wouldn’t feel sorry for it. As he cleaned the bottom of his bowl with his spoon, scars stretching across the back of his hand as flesh moved over muscle, he hoped it was terrified.
Benches scraped as the Kingsmen finished their meal and stood. Liam admired the way they moved in their uniforms as if born to the heavy livery. Their buckles and pommels shone. The leather armor peaking from beneath red velvet wore the dark patina of use. The constable wore a silver-and-onyx starburst on her breast; her dark hair was clipped short as a lad’s. She laughed as they dumped bowls into a barrel of wash water, grinning with honest affection at her companions. But the look she awarded Liam as she passed his table on the way out of the dining hall was full of undisguised contempt.
When the Kingsmen were gone Liam rose slowly and dumped his own dishes. A kitchen lass hovering near the hearth beamed and curtsied through the flames when he ripped a hunk of griddle bread from the coals. Liam smiled back, but the expression felt stiff on his face.
“You mean to say you punched him in the face?” Arthur inquired through a mouthful of shared bread. “The feckin’ prince of Roue?”
“Arthur!” The practice yard was quiet, the flagstones emptied out by the midday heat. Only Holder’s straw men were witness to Arthur’s expletive, their newly painted gourd faces wide-eyed and gash-mouthed. Secretly Liam thought the new lot of mannequins seemed more bloodthirsty than the last.
While Arthur snorted amusement Liam finished the last of his bread. He plucked a cudgel from the stand of dummy weapons.
“My mum used to say a man’s got nothing’s worth saying without a cussword or two for added salt.” Arthur cocked his head to one side, merry. “You keep forgetting I’m to be a soldier, not a houseman. If you punched the prince of Roue in the feckin’ face, why ain’t you hanging from the Maiden Bridge gibbet?”
Using both hands, Liam swung the cudgel left to right and back again. The stick cut the air beautifully, whistling as he pivoted from side to side. Every page started with a staff before moving on to the wooden sword, and Liam had spent his share of hours with the cudgel. He’d thought smash and dodge dull compared to the allure of Mal’s sword but now, dark humor nipping at his heels, he thought he might understand the appeal. Sword work required finesse. Smash and dodge required only strength and desperation.
“The Maiden gibbet hasn’t been used since before His Majesty was crowned. You’d know that, if you paid attention to your lessons.” Liam approached the nearest straw man, sized the misshapen fellow up. The straw man leered back, burlap torso bulging. Its stick limbs were wrapped many times in grass and fabric, made muscular by Holder’s careful attention.
Standing square, Liam extended the cudgel in both hands until its free end rested atop the mannequin’s head, just above and between its wickedly arched brows.
“Better not break another one,” Arthur warned. “These just went up last night and they’re for aim and accuracy. There’s a nice old sandbag there if you want to trounce something. Armswoman Lane hung it up special just for me.”
The sandbag, lumpy and suspended on old rope over a nearby tree limb, was sadly lacking in painted features. Liam lifted his cudgel and set it down gently again on the straw man’s head.
“Why are you out here alone?” he asked, belatedly remembering his duty. “It’s too hot for drilling until after supper. You’re supposed to be cleaning tack.”
“Riggins let Parsnip and Morgan take a break in the cleaning to go into town,” replied Arthur. “I’m not likely to sit there scrubbing harnesses by myself.”
“You didn’t want to visit the mad priest?”
Arthur scoffed. “Nay. One madman’s the same as the next.” He crossed the practice yard to Liam’s side. Together they regarded the leering mannequin and the point of Liam’s cudgel set between its brows. “Doesn’t look very much like a person, does it, what with them big black painted eyes? I’ve been pretending that one’s a barrowman. All’s he needs is a fur cap.”
Liam’s fingers clenched around wood. Then he pivoted, tossing the cudgel to the side where it clattered harmlessly on flagstone. He set his back to the straw men so as not to see their staring faces.
“Get out of the heat,” he ordered, ignoring Arthur’s open mouth. “Back here after supper, all three of you. Don’t dawdle.”
Liam hurried off without waiting for a reply, eager to put the barracks behind him. What had seemed like a refuge at first now seemed less so. He’d counted on Lane’s warm welcome, and hadn’t stopped to consider others might not approve of his presence amongst the king’s soldiers. The constable’s quiet reproof made him uneasy; what chance had he of finding his place as a Kingsman if Wilhaiim’s best believed him distasteful?
Was it his face she’d objected to, his history, or the fact that he’d run from his first position without so much as a by-your-leave? Or was it possible he was making too much of a small thing and she’d not known him at all? Mayhap it was the bland stew in his bowl she scorned, or his cack-handed method of eating, and not his uncommon semblance.
But that, Liam thought, berating himself for a fool, was wishful thinking. Because he’d always stood out as peculiar, solemn and fey, even before the sidhe had marked him. Once Mal had taken him on he’d managed to forget, because every other oddity paled before the king’s vocent, and because—Liam was beginning to realize—whether for Avani’s sake or his own Mal had taken pains to make him feel accepted, even loved.
“Hells.” Liam punched his thigh with a fist only to swear again when his bandaged knuckles throbbed. “Feckin’ hells!” He pulled his shoulders up around his ears, half expecting the Widow’s fist against his skull for mouthing off, but the Widow was more than a year dead and mayhap Arthur’s mum had the right of it because he felt immediately more like a man grown.
Expecting a crowd of nosy courtiers lingering near the throne room waiting upon news of Mal’s prisoner, Liam avoided the throng altogether by cutting through the Fair and up through an old palace door reserved for merchants and other tradesmen. The Fair was busy with folk more interested in the exchange of coin for bread and meat than the king’s captured barrowman. Men and women intent on commerce paid Liam no mind as he dodged between tables. The pretty lass selling jars of honey tossed him a wink and a smile as he hurried past.
The back stair had been Katherine Shean’s favorite way in and out of the castle; the servants had pretended not to recognize the king’s mistress as she passed up and down the crooked, curving steps. Now Katherine was dead, murdered by sidhe, and Liam—who didn’t believe in the one god she’d once served—sketched an awkward, respectful cross over his chest each time he used the tradesmen’s door.
The vocent’s chambers, mayhap by design, were not easily breached. Once inside the castle walls there were halls to cross and more stairs to climb. By the time Liam’s feet remember their way to the familiar wooden door, he was breathing hard and feeling the climb in his hamstrings. His body had already forgotten days filled with nothing but running Mal’s errands through palace and city both. He felt the sting of regret as he thumped wood with the toe of his boot to save his knuckles, but when he heard the necromancer’s familiar tread on the other side of the door he forgot remorse for revulsion.
When Mal saw Liam standing in the hall his expression of open curiosity smoothed to cool indifference.
“I couldn’t guess why Sanders would be leveling a kick at my poor door when I only sent the fellow for a fresh pot of ink,” Mal said. He swept Liam with a green glare before clicking his tongue in consternation. “What did you do to your hands? Brawling with the other squires so soon? I did warn you—barracks life is difficult.”
“My lord. There are no other squires but me, my lord.” That Mal didn’t care to know or worse, didn’t care to remember the damage the Red Worm had done Wilhaiim’s children only fueled Liam’s distaste
. “So I haven’t any to fight.” As he followed Mal into the spacious room he couldn’t resist a furtive glance around.
“If you’re expecting sulfur and brimstone, Liam, I’m sorry to disappoint.” Mal stalked across the room on bare feet, dropping into the great leather chair he kept always behind his desk, arranging soft dark robes around his slight form. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Sulfur, my lord?” But Liam could clearly see Mal spoke the truth; the chamber was as it had always been, from the raised bed, to the colorful lanterns and the gleam of Jacob’s stolen treasures on the mantle, to the page’s bedroll on the stone floor, now belonging to a new squire.
“The preferred effluvia of demons, or so I’m told.”
Liam met Mal’s glittering regard. “I don’t think you’re a demon, my lord.”
Mal let his brows climb toward his hairline in mocking disbelief. “As I recall you said otherwise our second day back shipboard.”
“That was Admiral Baldebert, and he’s called me the same many times,” replied Liam, boldly as he knew how. “Mayhap we should have found another way home from Roue—it’s not for me to say. But as soon as we were over deep water you succumbed again to madness and I think you meant to consume us all, steal the life from our bodies if you could. And you could! You set only a hand on my arm, smiling as you did, and drained me near to nothing. By the time they managed subdue you, my lord, I had no strength left to speak. If not for . . . what I am . . . I’d be worse than dead, and buried at sea and you can’t convince me otherwise. My lord.”
Mal picked up an empty inkpot from the top of his desk, turned the pot idly in his hands, then set it back down with a thump. “You’re right,” he said. “I would have taken all of you but for Baldebert’s quick thinking. But that was the deep water at work, Liam. I’m sorry it got so bad as it did, even with the bloody ivories ’round my wrists. We took a gamble and nearly lost you for it, and if you’d given me half a chance I would have begged your pardon a thousand times, lad. But you hied off with your tail between your legs before I was even out of sickbed.”