Not Quite Scaramouche

by Joel Rosenberg

  "Sounds to me," she said, "like Erenor's shot was a little high, don't you think?"

  Jason nodded soberly. "I think Kethol went wide. But it sounds like Pirojil hit the target fair squarely, as usual."

  She shook her head. "Low and to the left, it sounded like to me."

  Except for U'len's sniff as she stalked back from the morning room toward the kitchen, nobody rose to the bait, although Jason could see that Toryn was tempted to point out that you could no more hear a shot go low and wide than you could smell it, and knew without looking that Mother, still standing next to her pistols, was working hard at not saying anything.

  He watched Janie watching Mother controlling herself. She was fun to watch.

  From the smile you could tell that Janie Slovotsky was her father's daughter, although there was much more of Kirah in the slim build, high cheekbones, wide eyes, and full lips. She was starting to let her hair grow long – which he liked – and it was almost down to her shoulders. He made a mental note not to compliment her too often on it, or she would probably just cut it again, to show her independence. Janie would share his bed every now and then – she didn't like to sleep alone, either – but she was as independent in her way as her father was in his, and would show that independence in ways that were sometimes predictable.

  Sometimes.

  "Oh. Target practice this morning?" Andrea Cullinane sat back down at the table. "The guard decurion didn't mention it to me."

  "Probably because he didn't know about it," Jason said, "until a little while ago. On my way down, I ducked out and told him that the three of them were going to be shooting this morning. Doria was pointing out to me just the other night that they missed the qualification shoot, and I thought that they ought to catch up."

  "Never for a moment thinking that Doria likes to sleep in on Marketday, I take it."

  He tried to look innocent. Doria had been nagging him, too. "Oh. I'm sorry – I forgot." He made as though to rise. "I should go up and apologize for them waking her, I guess."

  "Sit down," his mother ordered. "It's bad enough to wake her once; worse to do it twice. She's been working hard while somebody has been off hunting."

  His mother wasn't the only person who could decline to rise to the bait. Jason bit into the sausage. Too much pepper, and far too much garlic, but after a few swallows of milk, still warm from the cow, it settled nicely in his midsection.

  Still, he was right and Mother was wrong, even if he didn't feel like arguing about it.

  There was an ore infestation up north, and while it wasn't strictly necessary for the baron to go handle it himself – the baronial troops could handle it, under the direction of some wardens and woodsmen – he felt better about being involved in it himself.

  Ruling wasn't just about setting taxes and settling disputes. It was, or at least his father had taught him that it should be, about protecting the people. Hunting down marauding ores was, well, one of the more rewarding ways of doing that.

  And, besides, the longer he could delay before leaving for Biemestren, the better the chances that Ellegon would drop in, and make it possible for him to fly over, rather than ride. It wasn't just that he liked to make an entrance – although there was something rather pleasant about the wide eyes and wide mouths that you saw when you arrived anywhere on dragonback – but it always felt strange to be going back to Biemestren, and the longer he put it off, the better.

  Biemestren wasn't his, not anymore.

  Visiting a place that had been your home was disconcerting. He was always tempted to run up the back stairs to what had been his bedroom suite – but it wasn't his, not anymore. It wasn't even a bedroom suite anymore – Thomen had turned it into single rooms, office and sleeping space for some of his clerks, to keep them nearby.

  Hmpf. Thomen didn't visit here, either, and it wasn't just because the emperor did little traveling. This had been the Furnael ancestral home for something like eight generations, and while Jason didn't doubt for a moment that Thomen preferred being an emperor to being a simple country baron, it probably would have bothered him to see Jason at ease in the game room here.

  People said that he looked a lot like his mother, but Jason didn't see it, except for the slightly aquiline nose – his had a more pronounced bend than hers did, from a recent break gotten in hand-to-hand practice, and he was trying to decide whether he wanted to keep the slight bump instead of having the Spider smooth it.

  You didn't have to look like Pirojil, after all, just because you were going to let honestly won scars show a bit of character in your face.

  Maybe with a few more breaks and scars, U'len and Mother would start treating him like something resembling an adult rather than a child.

  Sure. And perhaps U'len would turn into an elven princess, and grant him a wish.

  "You might have mentioned that they were going to be shooting this morning," Mother said. "So that poor Toryn and I didn't almost jump out of our skins."

  "I was going to," he said, reaching his eating prong past the cabbage for another sausage. "But somebody decided to nag me about leaving for Parliament instead." He speared the sausage and returned it to his plate, then grabbed a couple of the hot rolls, tossing one across the table to Toryn, who wolfed it down in three quick bites.

  He ate a lot for such a lath-slim man.

  "Thank you much, Jason," Toryn said. He was quiet in the morning, typically, getting more talkative as the day went by. Probably out of caution that had become habit – an ex-slaver could too easily remind people of his former profession, which was none too popular, this side of Pandathaway.

  There were a lot of people to thank for that. One of them was Jason's father.

  Mother rose and went to the kitchen, calling out something about travel provisions, and Jason took the opportunity to give Janie a quick kiss – he felt awkward doing so in front of his mother – and made a patting signal to Toryn, telling him to finish his breakfast, before he grabbed up his own weapons belt and headed for the front entrance.

  * * *

  The watchmen were in their perches, high in the guard-towers at the corners of the squarish curtain wall, but Jason had given standing orders that they were to do nothing more formal than wave a hello to him. He had had his fill of ceremony while being heir to the empire, and, besides, any attention being drawn to him would make it easier for Mother and Doria to keep track of him.

  Which wasn't what he wanted.

  The gate was up, as usual, and he belted his sword around his waist as he walked through, waving a friendly good morning to the guard whose job it would have been, under the right set of circumstances, to either lower the outer, metal gate slowly and carefully or chop through the rope with one quick swipe of an always ready ax. He forced himself not to look up at the dagger points at the bottom of the gate – they just made him nervous.

  Kethol, Pirojil, and Erenor were still reloading at the weathered shooting bench down the road at the range. An earthen berm had been built up in a semicircle, a good bowshot away, and a dozen thick posts, each more than a manheight, driven into the ground in front of it.

  Years of shooting had chewed the posts to the point where the decurions' standing threat about them being used for firing squads was less believable all the time, but they worked just fine for the large plasterboard targets that were cheaper than paper.

  "Good morning, Baron," Kethol said, not stopping for a moment in his reloading routine.

  "Good morning," Jason said.

  He was the tallest of the three, and the one Jason was most comfortable around. Redheaded and rawboned, with long fingers and knuckles that bulged like a dwarf's, he stood half a head taller than Pirojil.

  Looks could be deceiving, but there was no deceiving that Pirojil was an ugly man. The massive, misshapen brow hung heavy with eyebrows that needed a trim, over sunken, piggish eyes and a nose that had been broken enough times to flatten in against the face. The receding jaw was barely covered by a spotty beard that never di
d quite seem to fill in, which was a pity. The more of the face it covered, the better it would be for all concerned.

  But his thick hands had a certain delicate grace to them as he carefully tipped a measure of powder down the barrel of his rifle, then with no apparent effort or discomfort pushed a patched conical bullet into the muzzle with his thumb, not bothering with the short-starter that most everybody else, Jason included, used to save wear and tear on their fingers.

  A few strokes from his ram, and Pirojil had his rifle loaded and primed, with hammer back, and raised to his shoulder, as Kethol was still priming his pan, and Erenor – who surely couldn't be as clumsy as he appeared to be – was still spilling gunpowder on the shooting table in an attempt to get a rounded measure.

  Jason put his hands over his ears – there was no point in suffering loud sounds unnecessarily, and he nodded at Kethol and Erenor to do the same – as Pirojil raised the rifle to his shoulder. He barely seemed to set the stock of the gun against his shoulder before he pulled the trigger, and after a brief but infuriating hangfire, the rifle went off with a teeth-rattling bang and a cloud of smoke that smelled of sulfur and worse.

  Erenor shielded his eyes with his palm and looked downrange. "Low and right," he said. "By less than a palm's width."

  Not bad at all. Jason could do little better with a careful rest.

  Kethol was ready, but simply set the butt of his rifle on the table, resting, until Erenor finished loading. "You think you can better that?" Kethol asked.

  "Oh, of a certainty," Erenor said. "Unless, of course, you'd rather I didn't." He touched a knuckle to his brow. "Master Kethol."

  Kethol smiled. "Would you care to put a little coin on that? Just a few silver marks, perhaps?" He seemed to smell easy money, and perhaps he was right – that was an awfully good shot.

  Erenor smiled as he sighted down the barrel. "Very well. Three silver quarters, shall it be?"

  "Done." Kethol produced three silver quartermarks and slapped them down on the table.

  Erenor raised his rifle –

  "Not quite so fast, if you please," Pirojil said. He pushed the muzzle of the rifle up. "Kethol's coins look so lonely there, lying on the table, all by themselves. I think you'll want to produce some of your own, just to keep them company." He made a beckoning, come-on gesture.

  Erenor didn't seem concerned. He produced an old silver mark – Jason could tell that it was old, although he couldn't tell where Erenor had produced it from; the coin had Father's face on it, rather than Thomen's – and set it down next to the quarters. Jason didn't quite see how he did it, but when Erenor resumed his grip on the rifle there were only two quarters on the table instead of three.

  Erenor fidgeted as he wedged the butt of the rifle against his shoulder, and pressed his cheek firmly against the stock. He pulled back the hammer with a clumsy, two-fingered grip, then wiggled his fingers and took a shooting grip, his index finger stretched out straight, away from the trigger.

  "Let this be a lesson to you, Master Kethol," Erenor said. He took a deep breath, let it out, then set his finger on the trigger, and slowly squeezed.

  Wham. There had been a barely detectable hangfire, and when the smoke cleared, Erenor had set his rifle down on the battered surface of the rough-hewn shooting table and scooped up all three coins.

  "Just one moment," Pirojil said. "Your target is unmarked – you missed."

  "Ah. That, Master Pirojil, turns out not to be the case. I was not aiming at my target, but at Kethol's." He stretched his palm out, horizontally, toward the target.

  "And as you can plainly see, I got what I was aiming at: Kethol's mark. My bullet went right through the same hole as his."

  Jason Cullinane cocked his head to one side. Did Erenor really expect anybody to believe this?

  Pirojil made the same come-on gesture he had before. "That isn't even vaguely humorous, and I'm in no mood for a joke in any case." He shook his head. "If you had intended to shoot through the same hole that Kethol did – not that I believe it for a moment – you should have announced that in advance, and we could have plugged the hole. But as it is – "

  "But as it is, when you examine the hole, you'll see that my bullet does not – quite – overlap with Kethol's. I invite you to look." He started to walk around the table. "Follow me, and I will show you."

  "Stop right there." Pirojil vaulted the table and squared off in front of Kethol. "I'll go look – you might be tempted to ... improve the hole."

  "Master Pirojil, you wound me deeply." He started to edge around the ugly man, his smile disarming.

  But not disarming enough. "Not as deeply as I will if you don't stop moving."

  "We will all go look," Jason Cullinane said. He walked across the hard-packed dirt toward the targets, the three soldiers half a pace behind.

  Jason's mouth hung open, so he shut it. The hole should have been round, and about the size of the tip of his finger. But it was ovoid, as though two bullets had gone through.

  Pirojil shook his head. "That happens every now and then, when a bullet tumbles, and hits the target side-on. I've seen it before."

  Erenor crossed his arms over his chest. "So now you're claiming that I have good enough eyesight to see such a thing, and then the immediate foresight not only to accept a friendly wager, but to carefully miss the targets entirely, hoping to trap you into the false accusation that I would enlarge the hole, so that I could make you look foolish when you tried to change your story rather than simply permit Kethol to lose the bet with the good grace that you and I both know he has." He shook his head. "You seem to expect much complexity from a simple soldier such as myself," he said.

  Pirojil didn't say anything.

  Jason laughed. He wasn't sure what had really happened, but... "If you're really that good a shot, Erenor, let's make a point to make a trip to Home sooner than later. There's been some noise from the Therranji elves, and it would be a lot of fun to show them what an average marksman from the barony can do."

  He didn't know what he expected as a response, but it wasn't for Pirojil to jerk back as though he had been struck. His hands were at his side, formed into fists, the knuckles white, and there was blood at the corner of his mouth.

  "What is it?"

  It took a visible effort for Pirojil to calm himself. His fingers straightened themselves stiffly. "Your pardon, Baron," he said, his voice tight, his face pale. "But... I find myself angry at having been gulled so easily," he said.

  "But – "

  "Please, Baron," Kethol held up a hand. "Erenor has been winning far too many wagers lately, and Pirojil and I both tend to get angry about it." His smile seemed forced. "Perhaps it's just that we were partnered with Durine for so long, and it's difficult to fit in with somebody new."

  That was a weak explanation, but maybe it was true. Not everything in life made sense to Jason Cullinane, after all. He could insist on a better explanation, but maybe all he would get would be a better lie. It wasn't as though he didn't trust Pirojil – Pirojil, Kethol, and Durine had been with Father on his Last Ride, and with the family both before and since, and ...

  "Jason." Mother's voice sounded from behind him.

  "Doria says that she wants to go over some of the accounts with you – she thinks that one of the village wardens may have sticky fingers, and – "

  "Sorry, Mother," he said. "Erenor, here, was just telling me that word has come in of some ore trouble over at Findal's Folly, and we were just on our way to the stables to draw some horses and look into it."

  Pirojil and Kethol stood silently, but Erenor spread his arms in a what-can-I-do apology. "Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it to the baron, my Lady," he said, "but it's my understanding that we are under orders to report all such things to him, and ..."

  Mother's mouth twitched. She looked from face to face. "I'm not sure I believe a word of this, but..."

  "We'd better be off before the trail gets cold," he said, and broke into a trot, Pirojil and Kethol catching
up with him while Erenor gathered the rifles together. "Would you ask Toryn to join us at the stables?" he called out to her.

  "But – very well, Jason," she said. "I will."

  "Thank you, Mother."

  Riding off to kill a few ores sounded like a much better way to spend a fine day than quizzing a loyal retainer about something he clearly didn't want to talk about, and a lot better than going over tax accounts.

  Chapter 6

  Dinner Party

  Maybe the Great Hall was just another battlefield in some sort of metaphorical sense, but Walter Slovotsky didn't mind that, not at all. He had been on a real battlefield or two in his time, and a real killing ground wasn't filled with the smells of roasting meat and garlic, the tinkle of fast-picked strings of a Holtish lute, and acres of firm cleavage to go along with miles of smooth leg, and at least yards of full lips. Walter Slovotsky had never had a breast fixation – he always tried to enjoy all the parts of a woman's body.

  Bren Adahan was quickly at his side.

  "Good evening, Proctor," he said.

  "And good evening to you, Baron Minister," Slovotsky answered, with equal formality.

  As usual, the baron was impeccably dressed, from head to toe. He had chosen a leather motif for the evening, from tunic to trousers to boots. His tunic was of a snowy white calfskin, split almost to the navel – probably as much to show off his well-muscled chest as to give him access to a hidden knife strapped to that chest, although Slovotsky had to admit that the baron was getting better at hiding his weapons, because Slovotsky couldn't see where it was.

  A short sword hung from the left side of his waist; the pommel was made of age-darkened bone inlaid with gold and jewels, but the hilt itself was of rough-textured leather, bound tightly with brass wires. That was Bren Adahan for you: always willing – hell, eager – to show off his perquisites of rank, but not at the risk of leaving himself less well armed for the sake of fashion, style, or elegance.

  "The women wait for us at table," the baron said. "But Tyrnael said that he wanted to have a word with you, and perhaps share a glass of wine before dinner. He's out on the veranda."