Not Quite Scaramouche

by Joel Rosenberg

  Whether out of fear, hospitality, or a desire to ingratiate themselves with the ruling family, Kelleran and his wife had laid out a midday luncheon spread that would have done U'len proud: ramekins of potted meat and preserved fruit, along with fist-sized loaves of bread, still warm from the big stone oven that filled the baking-house behind the main house, although some of the loaves were burned on the bottom, Bekana having left them in the oven too long, what with the excitement of earlier in the morning.

  "Then that's where we get help," Ahira said.

  "Help?" Toryn's voice dripped sarcasm. "If you're going to scour the woods for some unknown number of assassins, you're going to need more than a troop of soldiers. How about, oh, the entire Home Guard, and maybe a baronial army or three? Just for a start?"

  "We don't have to go looking for them." Ahira's voice was endlessly patient, entirely dwarvish.

  "You think they'll come looking for us?"

  "That," Jason Cullinane said, "would be very nice. I'd like to find out who sent them."

  That was all well and good – yes, it would be nice to know – but it wasn't all that important. The world was filled with people who wanted the Cullinanes dead, for reasons good and bad, and finding out who had sent this particular bunch of assassins was, in the long run, probably as unimportant as figuring out what farrier had shod the assassins' horses.

  "No," Ahira said, "they're minor players. It's who sent them that's important, and we don't have the need to track them down, or the resources to track them down."

  And even if they had, Pirojil thought, it might not matter. If the killers had been hired in Enkiar or Pandathaway, it was entirely possible that they'd been put under a geas that would prevent them from speaking the name of the one who hired them, even under torture.

  It could even be simpler. There were enough former soldiers around, tired of working as day laborers in the cities or on the farm, feeling that they deserved something better than a croft, a bag of seed, and a scythe as a final bonus, men who had gotten used to the taste and smell of blood during the war. All it would take would be one of them, and he could probably raise others.

  They wouldn't be local here. But they could easily be imperials, Holt or Biemish.

  But the dwarf was right. They weren't important, except as an obstacle to Jason Cullinane getting to Biemestren on time.

  Loyalty to the Cullinane family didn't make Pirojil feel one whit guilty for thinking that the boy had been an utter idiot to wait until the last minute to leave for the capital. He understood it – when you were trying to make a place your home, you needed to spend time there, to walk the halls in your own bare feet, to ride the paths and hunt the woods – but it was still a mistake.

  He shook his head. But it wasn't his problem. Pirojil was – what was it that Ahira had called the assassin? Ah, yes: a minor player; a nice term, that – a minor player, merely an ordinary soldier, and grand strategy and imperial politics were not his responsibility.

  "Some other time," Andrea Cullinane said. "It's politically important that you get to Parliament – Thomen didn't just ask all his barons to show up. You – all of you – appear by imperial command."

  She had a point, a good one. Jason Cullinane had abdicated the throne in favor of Thomen Furnael. There were those around the new emperor – his mother, in particular – who were sure that Jason was waiting for an opportunity to take it back. Showing too much independence was sure to get tongues wagging and minds working.

  "Let's not make more of that than it is." Jason Cullinane snorted. "Thomen isn't going to do anything if I'm late a few days, or even if I miss Parliament altogether."

  "That," she said, with some heat, "isn't the point. The point is that if he puts up with it from you, he has to put up with it from the other Biemish barons, and probably most of the Holtish ones, too, and Parliament isn't just about spreading responsibility – it's about joint responsibility, about making the barons responsible and responsive to each other, as well as ... are you listening to me?"

  "Of course I am, Mother. It's just that, well, I thought I'd gotten out of politics when I gave up the crown."

  She snickered. "You should have thought of that before you took on the barony."

  It had been a glorious gesture, Pirojil thought, the boy giving up the silver crown to Thomen Furnael, and truth to tell, Thomen Furnael was probably a better emperor than Jason Cullinane ever could have been, if only because the Cullinanes seemed to have the knack of making glorious gestures born into their very bones.

  But that was the trouble with a glorious gesture, whether it was a noble one of abandoning the throne to a more worthy ruler or of, oh, barring the doors and windows of the man who had denied that he was your father and cast you out for your ugliness, and then touching fire to the wonderfully thatched roof.

  Just as an example.

  Pirojil forced the image from his mind. He was just an ordinary soldier, and the work of an ordinary soldier was to see what was in front of him, not to strike a pose, gazing off heroically into the distant future or longingly, regretfully, into the long-dead past.

  And for here and now, it was entirely possible that –

  “– It could be," Ahira said, "that making him late for Parliament is the whole purpose of this. Or, at least, the second choice, assuming that the killer doesn't get him."

  "And who, would you think, would want to drive a wedge between my son and Thomen?" Andrea Cullinane's voice was even; she had self-control, that one. That was one of the things that Pirojil liked about her. Women were usually impulsive and notional.

  "Oh," Ahira said, "perhaps all the barons, both Holtish and Biemish, plus Beralyn, and the Kiarians, and maybe Nyphien, too, for that matter."

  "Your point is well-taken," the dowager empress said. "You are quite right."

  It didn't bother Pirojil at all that the other dowager empress, Beralyn, was every bit as self-controlled as Andrea Cullinane. Beralyn was an enemy, not somebody on their side – in her, self-control was a flaw, not a virtue, just as her increasing physical weakness over the years was a virtue, rather than a flaw.

  The difference between virtue and flaw, between strength and weakness, between good and bad, well, it all depended, as usual, on which side you were on.

  Pirojil didn't have much use for political maneuvering – an ordinary soldier could only lose in the games that nobles played – but he did know which side he was on. That kept things simple.

  And, for now, things were, indeed, simple enough.

  The question was how to get the baron out of here with reasonable safety, assuming that there were a few more assassins waiting on the road. Eight soldiers acting as guards would have been enough, under ordinary conditions – but not now, not with somebody that close. Pirojil would have pointed all that out, but nobody had asked his opinion. Denial's Ford, eh? He had been through there, some years ago, with the Old Emperor, he thought, but he couldn't remember anything about it. Just another town on a river, the smell of horse piss filling the air after a quick rain. You didn't have a lot of time to take in the sights when you were keeping your eyes on every window, every doorway, every alley. He heard Erenor's footsteps, and waited deliberately for a long moment before opening his eyes when Erenor squatted down next to him. "I have a question for you," Erenor said, quietly. "Although I'm sure you know what it is." Not only didn't Pirojil know, it would have taken a serious effort to care less. Admitting that, well, that was another matter. "Well," he said, "of course I do. You may be able to put something over on me, Erenor. But..." he shrugged. "Some day, perhaps. But not today."

  "Well? What do you think?"

  "That should be obvious. Even to you." Pirojil was in too deep now. He would have to either keep bluffing or admit that he had been. "Say it right out and be done with it."

  "I... well, I don't see the point, but you're in charge, after all."

  "Don't you forget it. Not for a moment." Unspoken: not if you want to see your spell books, which I
have very carefully hidden. And: in the field, not if you want to keep your tender skin unpierced. "So say it. Now."

  "I'm ... fairly good at seemings, you know. It wouldn't take much to disguise him as just an ordinary soldier, and put one of the troops on his horse, looking like him." He seemed to consider the matter for a moment. "Although to do a good job on it, I would need at least one of my books back. Erendel's dominatives aren't easy to reconstruct, and – "

  He should have known it would come to that, and quickly. Pirojil rolled his eyes. "You'll get the spell books back when I think you should, and not before."

  "As to this, do you think a Cullinane would agree to that?"

  Silly question. The Cullinanes were, if anything, far too stupidly courageous. Was it contagious? Or were they born with it? The whole family was as bad as Kethol at taking chances, most of the time, and substituting somebody else as target for him was not something that Karl Cullinane's son would agree to.

  Besides, it wasn't necessary.

  Pirojil shook his head. "As to that, if we just put him and his mother in green-and-gold cloaks, it would be close enough." Somebody might be persuaded to risk his life on a shot that would kill the real target, but a single bowman, or two or three, would hardly fire into a whole troop of cavalry just for the chance to kill a couple or three mounted soldiers; the rest of the troop would quickly be on them like a bunch of angry, deadly bees.

  Bees with lead and steel stings.

  Taking him in under a large enough guard would be a reasonably safe risk. The trick would be to convince the young baron that he would never be at peace, that he would always have to travel fully guarded, that regular movements – an afternoon ride, a regular tour of the barony, an autumn hunt – would always require precautions. It would probably be sensible to see if Ellegon could fit taking the baron to and from Parliament into his schedule – although there was some danger in letting anyone know where the dragon was going to be at any particular time. It wouldn't be difficult for an assassin – armed, say, with a half-dozen dragonbaned arrows – to rendezvous with him. Forget, for a moment, that Ellegon was, among other things, a symbol and source of imperial power – although he was that, and that was important – Ellegon had been Jason's friend and a constant one as long as he could remember. Longer really; Ellegon always said that he had first mindspoken with Jason when Jason was still in the womb.

  Pirojil sighed. Just when things looked like they were settling down for a while, at least, they weren't.

  So, the question was how to get the troops here, and with the nearest telegraph across the baronial border in Pirondael, that meant sending somebody out after them, and soon.

  It wasn't much of a mystery to Pirojil who would be sent. He and Kethol and Durine had had a well-deserved reputation for being just this side of unkillable, a reputation that had been only slightly marred by Durine's getting himself killed in Keranahan.

  And Erenor, for any number of reasons, was seen as a worthy replacement for Durine.

  Denial's Ford, eh? If they left just after sunset dark, they could probably be there before morning.

  Chapter 10

  A Matter of Succession

  It had been longer than she could remember since Beralyn Furnael had been without pain, but there were worse companions, just as there were better ones, equally faithful. Hate, for example.

  Her joints burned with a constant fire as she stalked the halls of the keep like an arthritic ghost, pure will forcing each foot to follow the other. If she stopped – if she permitted her traitor body to overrule her – she might never be able to start again. Her nightly walk around the parapet had, bit by bit, become insufficient to quiet the pain in her hips, and particularly in her left knee. Sleep – or a thin, restless, sweaty thing that was the closest she could come to the long-gone dark warmth that sleep had been, long, long ago – would not come easily, and was hardly worth the trouble.

  She paused for a moment at a hallway balcony, and stepped out into the night.

  The courtyard was filled with brightly colored canopies, lit by flickering torches set into the walls of the donjon, the residence tower, and the inner curtain wall. The guards seemed to spend most of their time walking from torch to torch, replacing the burned-out ones with freshly lit ones.

  She sniffed in disapproval. That was probably that accursed Walter Slovotsky's doing, once more. She had seen him pacing off the distance between the tents, as though reassuring himself that they were far enough apart, and it had been he who had supervised the laying-down of gravel paths between them, as though the noise of footsteps on gravel could dissuade a Biemish from taking revenge on a Holt sleeping in the nearby pavilion.

  Had it been up to her, all the visitors' entourages would have been housed, along with their guard detachments, down in the city in the barracks, but there was a point, she had to admit, to keeping them all within the walls of the castle, although at times that felt too much like clasping a poisonous snake to one's bosom.

  There were already enough of those.

  She ignored the rhythmic stomping of boots on the hard stone of the third-floor hallway behind her. Just a pair of guards, making the rounds.

  She nodded. There was no harm in conceding that not everything that Walter Slovotsky did was necessarily wrong, or stupid. Adding an internal watch to the castle, and keeping soldiers moving through the halls night and day, would tend to prevent any private arguments from becoming violent, and make it clear that the emperor would not tolerate his hospitality being used as an opportunity to settle old grudges.

  She smiled. And not necessarily just the Holtish-Biemish grudges, either. Old Ferden Arondael had been looking daggers at Tyrnael all through dinner. Was that over that minor border dispute? Or was it that Arondael was angry that Tyrnael had chosen to marry off his middle daughter to a minor lord from Barony Adahan? It wasn't like Arondael wanted the girl for one of his own sons; Stevan, his heir, had been married off last year, to a remarkably bovine young woman from a family with links to an old Tynearean dynasty.

  She set her hands on the cold stone railing, and let it support her weight. There was a slim possibility that the railing could break loose, tumbling her two stories to the hard flagstones of the courtyard below, and that would be the end of pain, and of responsibility, and if Thomen chose to blame, say, Walter Slovotsky for that, let that be his problem.

  She heard quiet footsteps behind her. "Please, my Empress," sounded from behind her, "if you need something to lean on, may I proffer my arm?"

  She jerked upright, sending rivulets of pain through her back and her left shoulder. She had half been expecting it to be Derinald – he clearly had the servants alerting him to her movements – but the voice wasn't his.

  It was Willen Tyrnael, instead. He was dressed for sleep, at least mainly – he wore a light robe, belted tightly at his waist, over his trousers and boots, as though he had awakened suddenly and had decided to go out and use the garderobe at the end of the hall rather than the thundermug in his rooms.

  But that was just an illusion. His hair and beard were well-combed, and his face freshly washed, and if there was any trace of sleep in his eyes, her vision was too dim to see it, and she didn't believe that for a moment.

  No, it was no accident that he was here. He wanted to talk to her about something, although what he could possibly want with a useless and ignored old woman who wanted nothing more than the safety of her family and the death of its enemies wasn't at all clear.

  "Good evening, Willen," she said. "I hope my midnight pacings didn't wake you."

  He had the White Suite, down the hall, a triplet of rooms floored in white marble, their walls whitewashed rather than covered with tapestries. She found the rooms too spare and drafty, but the number of available rooms in the residence tower was limited, and some of the baronial parties were quartered in what had been – and what served as, most of the time, when Parliament was not in session – the barracks, as well as the tented pavilions. Bu
t as, at least arguably, the senior of the Biemish barons – in lineage, although not by any means in age – Tyrnael had to be given a suite in the donjon.

  "Not at all," he said. "I find it difficult to sleep in a strange bed. At home, I rarely tour the barony anymore." He sighed. "Which, I'm sure is said but has not reached my ears, is probably attributed to the ore problem." His mouth twitched. "Which means, I would guess, that I should make it a point to go along ore-hunting more often."

  "Oh?" she asked. "How often have you gone ore-hunting of late?" She was as little interested in it as he probably was, but let him come to his point, whatever that might be.

  "Well, never. I know that the hunt is a noble activity, building of character and connecting us with all the generations that have gone hunting before, but I've found it usually boring and sometimes dangerous, and never have much cared for it." He smiled shyly, and a chill went through her. He reminded her of Zherr when he smiled. She must be careful not to make him smile more often. Zherr Furnael could always get her to agree to anything when he smiled, even the time that he had apprenticed their older son, Rahff, off to Karl Cullinane, something that had so quickly gotten Rahff killed.

  It was probably no coincidence that he exactly mirrored her own feelings about hunting.

  She let the silence build for a moment, watching him.

  "May I?" He gestured a request for permission to join her on the balcony, at the rail; she nodded.

  "A pretty night," he said. Off in the distance, a trio of Faerie lights seemed to play a children's game of touched-you-last just at the lowest level of dark, looming clouds. The light pulsed quickly through a series of blues and reds, with an occasional flash of orange and green, as they whirled about each other, sometimes momentarily ducking into a cloudbank, and then emerging. "A light, cool breeze; the sky is clear to the west. Nature seems to smile on Parliament, wouldn't you say?"

  She grunted. "It's not Parliament, not yet. My son has not called it into session, and there's one baron missing."