I laughed at Woolfardisworthy’s audacity. “And your husband told you about Woolfardisworthy when you met him, did he not?”
“Ay, he did.”
Woolfardisworthy must have heard the leather gun firing, I thought, and assumed it was the sound of the dragon annihilating us. He had felt free to return to Howel and spin his tale of heroism and survival.
Lady Westley’s blue eyes darkened. “I came back to the palace to slap his face, but I couldn’t find him.”
“Leave the slapping to me,” I said. “I’ll howster him out.”
“My husband also seeks him.” She looked at me, her red-rimmed eyes searching. “Do you think Edelmir knows that we are lovers, Heliodor?”
“I said nothing that might give him any misgivings. Nor was his behavior in any way suspicious.”
“He told me I may not buy more gems from you. He said that we could not afford it, but that is nonsense, for though we have borrowed, it is against my inheritance, which will clear our debts once it is paid.”
I thought about how those cavaliers so casually wagered great sums in absurd games of chance, and how gracefully Sir Edelmir had lost, so gracefully that one might think he’d had a deal of practice at losing. I also thought that I would like to know the details of Lady Westley’s inheritance, and how and when and under what circumstance it would be paid.
“He lost at cards on the journey,” I said. “I do not know how much, but the sums wagered were not small.”
She was troubled. “He must have lost a great amount.”
“Perhaps it is nothing, and he was so angry at Woolfardisworthy’s malicho that he diverted some of that anger on you. But you should ask him for an accounting of how much the two of you owe. It was he who brought up the matter, after all.”
Her fine, level brows drew together. “I see that I must,” she said.
I took her hand. “I hope to see you soon, Girasol. But I should find this Woolfardisworthy before he can work more mischief, and before your husband murders him in front of witnesses.”
As I departed, I cast my eyes over the revelers on the lawn. The sun was far in the west, and the warmth of the day was fading. Many of the courtiers had gone indoors or gone home. I hadn’t seen Woolfardisworthy on the lawn that day, so if he were still here, I reasoned he was indoors, and I thought I might know where I could find him.
I entered the palace and went up the grand marble stair with its gilded mirrors, and found myself in the midst of a series of parlors, all filled with gamesters. I passed through a door and found myself at a table where courtiers were playing at dice. At the far end, the Count of Wenlock laughed behind a pile of crowns, a leather die-cup in his hands. He looked up at me and scowled.
“There are only gentlemen here, Quillifer,” he said. “You are not wanted.”
I gave him a cold bow. “If my gold is so tainted by my person that you would not have it in your purse, I shall withdraw.”
I went in the other direction and passed through two parlors before I found Woolfardisworthy in a scene of merriment, playing at fox and geese with a stack of silver crowns in front of him. I watched him for a while as he basked in his glory, and then his eyes turned to me and grew wide. I smiled and donned my hearty-lad face, and walked around the table to give him a hearty thwack on the shoulder.
“I find you thriving, sir! After such a submersion, I would have thought to find you suffering a quinsy, wrapped in blankets and with your feet in a bath of hot water.”
He gave me a calculating glance. “I am tolerably well.”
“We had feared you strayed in the foothills and lost, but now I find you here, amid a host of admirers, all enthralled by your tales of martial glory. Your friends will be delighted to know you thrive so—in fact I know of six brave knights even now searching the palace, who desire nothing so much as to meet you.” And on the word “meet” I punched him with my big fist between the shoulder blades—not such a blow as to be considered battery, but hard enough to rattle his ribs.
He took my meaning, for “meeting” was a term for a private encounter, an affair of honor with bright, sharp steel. He rose from his seat. “Perhaps I shall go find them, then.” He made a gesture toward the crowns on the table. I put a hand around his wrist.
“Nay, sir. The game is not over. I will finish it for you.” I guided him toward the door. “Perhaps the back stair,” I suggested, “would best suit your purpose.”
I took him through the crowd to the stairway door. His expression was wondering, and he puffed air through his overhanging russet mustache, but things were moving too quickly for him, and he never regained his bravado while I rushed him through a series of drawing rooms. “This will take you to the water gardens,” I said, “and from there you may find a boat to take you home.” I pushed him through the door onto the landing. He looked at me, poised on the verge of thanking me—but something stopped him, for I had no reason to help Woolfardisworthy, and he knew it.
I looked about and listened, and no one was on the stair, or near us; so I took hold of his collar and his belt and hurled him head-first down the stair. He landed with such a great crack that I thought his skull had shattered a sandstone block. I left him a motionless, huddled figure on the landing and returned to the game, where I took his place and won eighty crowns.
“His luck was in,” I said, as I pocketed the money.
I understand he did not die, but broke his crown and some other bones, and was found the next morning by a footman. The staff of the palace is experienced at removing such embarrassments as drunken courtiers who fall and suffer injury, and a surgeon was called and accompanied him home in a litter. Anything after that is rumor, for I never saw him from that day to this.
You are amused. “Your ruthlessness is exemplary,” you say, “but why did you soil your hands with him? The others would have ended him for you.”
I contemplate your question. “I think my loathing got the better of my reason. I simply could not abide him. And after all, I had just killed a dragon—one runagate knight was small by comparison.”
Your deep-voiced laughter rings like water pouring along a stream. “You drove him like a sheep to slaughter. I know you, Quillifer—you prefer to humiliate your enemies, not kill them. You leave them raging and impotent. It is by far the most superior form of revenge.”
“I am but a low-born knight,” I say. “Revenge is a luxury I cannot afford.”
Again that low laugh. “And yet you rise, and leave in your path the broken fortunes of lesser men. If you had not so fittingly degraded those who despised you, I could not love you.”
“Well,” I say, “I must then accept your admiration, and take pride in hurling wretches down stairs and dropping hams in the laps of arrogant cavaliers. But that seems poor enough in comparison with what we are about to attempt.”
“True.” There is a smile in your black eyes. “Your fortune is in the wind. You must seize it, or go down.”
“As always, my dearest.” With a kiss. “I will comply with your desire.”
* * *
I was going down the great mirror-walled stair in the palace when I encountered Sir Edelmir Westley coming up. He offered me his easy laugh.
“You might have waited, Sir Quillifer,” he said, “for us all to assemble before you presented your trophy to the queen.”
“I wanted to get rid of it,” said I. “It was beginning to stink.”
He waved a hand. “Perhaps it is best. The rest of us would have been mere auxiliaries.” He peered up the stair.
“If you are looking for Woolfardisworthy,” I said, “he is not in the rooms above.”
He gave a twist of his lips. “I’ll stick a knife in him, an I find him.”
“He has probably fled by now.”
He started up the stair. “Is there gaming? Perhaps—”
I restrained him with a hand on his arm. “I left your lady in some distress,” I said. “You should take her home.”
He consi
dered this. “Ay, you are right. Woolfardisworthy’s tales gave her a dreadful blow.”
I took his arm as we descended and left him on the lawn to find his lady. I rounded up my sailors, who had made free of the beer and cider, found Rufino Knott where he played with an impromptu orchestra, and took my party and myself across the lake. I found my featherbed as welcoming as I remembered it.
* * *
In the morning I was readying myself for exercising my boat’s crew on the lake when, to my vast surprise, the queen’s private secretary was announced. I told Master Stiver to bring Lord Edevane to the parlor and met him there in my buff jerkin and baggy sailors’ trousers.
“I apologize, my lord,” I said. “I’m not in a proper state to receive visitors.”
“That is quite all right,” he said in a dry, soft voice. “After all, I came unannounced.”
“May I offer refreshment?”
He offered a cold-eyed smile. “I bring an offer from Her Majesty. An you accept, we may raise a glass afterward.”
In the most congenial way Edevane relayed Berlauda’s offer. I accepted, and we pledged Her Majesty’s health.
So it was that later that day, in front of all the court, I knelt before Queen Berlauda in the Chamber of Audience and placed my hands between hers. I swore to be a true and loyal liegeman to herself and to her heirs and successors, that I would be faithful and bear true allegiance, that I would honestly and sincerely defend Her Majesty, her heirs, and successors, against all enemies, and that I would sincerely and to the best of my ability fulfill the duties of my new office. A courtier placed a chain about my neck, and I rose no longer a free man, but a royal officer.
* * *
Tomorrow I will shatter that oath, and shake the monarchy, I hope to death.
And I will do it for you, my love.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lord Warden in Ordinary Against Monsters,” said Princess Floria. “You would seem to be rat-catcher to the realm.”
“The rats may be somewhat larger than any you may have seen in the palace,” I said.
“Possibly,” Floria said, “but many of the rats in the palace are man-sized.”
I was still in the bustling Chamber of Audience, crowded with people come for the Estates General. The murmur of business echoed from the vaulted ceiling. I stood before a brilliant tapestry of a heroic Emelin II leading a storming party at the Siege of Avevic. My friends had been offering their congratulations until they were shuffled aside at the appearance of royalty.
Floria was accompanied by two of her ladies, Countess Marcella, the regal Aekoi, and the disdainful Elisa d’Altrey, whose upper lip curled in a way that suggested I might reek of offal. I looked at the princess, who wore a gown of royal scarlet and sleeves of a particularly vivid shade of blue, and I noticed the star sapphire that graced the helve of a lacy gold pomander that hung from her belt.
“I see you have found a use for that old doorknob I sold you.”
“I did,” said she, “but it put me to more inconvenience than I desired. Its color would not complement any of my clothing, so in order to wear it, I had to commission this gown, with its kirtle and virago sleeves of blue.”
“I’m flattered that the stone was able to justify such an exercise in taste and beauty.”
Floria fixed me with a narrow-eyed look. “It’s meant to flatter me, not you.”
“And it succeeds, Highness. Though,” I offered, “to save you such trouble in the future, when next you search for gems, let me see your gowns first, and I will try to find something more suitable.”
“I see,” said Floria. “You wish to add dressmaker to your baffling series of occupations.”
I waved a hand. “I cannot devote all my hours to monster hunting.” Mistress d’Altrey gave a sniff, as if she expected to soon find me crawling through Her Highness’s petticoats. I looked at her ladies. “Mistress Ransome is not among you. Is she in Kellhurst, building her observatory?”
“Ay,” Floria said, “the work is beginning.”
I looked at the two ladies. “Do either of you gentlewomen have such projects?” I asked.
Countess Marcella tilted her head at a graceful angle. “I will not be in Duisland long enough for any such project to conclude. Though if you wish to turn shipwright and build me a boat to take me home, you would have my thanks.”
“You are stranded, Countess?”
Floria grinned. “Surely you mean, ‘Are you naufrageous?’ ” she said.
The princess’s interruption failed to ruffle Marcella’s serenity. “I am not so much stranded,” she said, “as waiting for the right ship.”
I smiled. “But aren’t we all of us waiting for such a ship?”
The countess nodded. “That is apt.”
I turned to Elisa d’Altrey. “Do you wait for a ship as well, mistress?”
The disdainful lip curled. “If Her Highness is so minded as to build me a ship, I will sail in it.”
A page appeared and bowed first to the princess, and then to me. “Lord Edevane’s compliments, sir,” he said, “and he would see you in his cabinet, at your convenient.”
“Well.” Floria’s hazel eyes looked up at me. “I think you are about to be introduced to your first monster.”
“Hardly my first, Highness.”
“In any case, I hope you survive the encounter.” She nodded and turned from me, then turned back. “Though it pains me to acknowledge that as you have maintained your existence in this world, I must pay the hundred and ninety royals I owe you.”
I bowed. “I apologize for my continued existence, Highness.”
She swept on, like a sprightly little ship, with her two ladies in convoy. Friends closed about me again, to congratulate me, while others hovered about, calculating how much they would profit from a friendship with a lord warden in ordinary. I could have told them, but decided they should discover the answer for themselves.
* * *
I let the page conduct me to Baron Edevane, and on my way to his cabinet I passed through his outer office, where a number of men in velvet gowns and skullcaps worked in silence at their desks, surrounded by shelves piled with papers neatly wrapped in red or blue ribbon. No other color ribbon was visible.
Her Majesty’s pale principal secretary rose from his desk to greet me and told the page to pour me a goblet of moscato. “Lord Warden, I wish to give to you your first commission,” he said. “Please take a chair and read it.”
His voice was soft and measured, and I found myself leaning forward in order to hear him. He handed me a cardboard folder, with papers, tied in blue ribbon.
I sat, sipped the sweet wine, untied the ribbon, and read a letter from the lord lieutenant of Inchmaden, on the far coast of Fornland. His county had been afflicted with an infestation of iron birds, fierce raptors the size of eagles and made of metal—vicious, unnatural fowl that devoured crops, attacked sheep and calves, and perched in trees in such numbers that limbs were broken and the trees ruined. The birds were ravenous and repelled the missiles of expert hunters. Their beaks and talons were so sharp that they could cut their way out of nets in only a few minutes. The lord lieutenant had attacked the birds with his militia, but the birds had flown away. Occasionally a hackbut loaded with steel shot might injure one, but then came the trouble of hunting down and killing a wounded, vicious animal that came complete with its own armor. The lord lieutenant asked for aid from the crown.
I returned the document to the folder and turned to Edevane. His dead eyes looked at me through his thick spectacles.
“Your lordship, do you know if the iron birds have been seen before?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not, Lord Warden.”
I frowned down at the cardboard folder and its dangling ribbon.
“You said yesterday that my office had been vacant since before King Stilwell’s time,” said I.
“The wars of the time took up all the crown’s attention,” said Edevane. “The lords lieutenant were
left to handle the matter on their own. But—” He offered a thin, considered smile. “The request from Inchmaden came at the same time as news of your success with the fire-drake. It seemed a fortunate coincidence, and I persuaded Their Majesties to make your appointment.”
“I thank you for your consideration, my lord,” said I. “Perhaps you know if there is any archive of correspondence from any of the previous wardens?”
“I am unaware of any.”
“Because it occurs to me that we are sadly ignorant of the proper tactics to be used against these chimerae. If there were an archive of what contrivances had been employed against monsters in the past, and what success had been achieved against what threat, then we would be better armed against future events.”
Lord Edevane considered this idea, the finger-pads of his right hand tapping against those of his left. “It is my experience,” he said, “that while documents are often misplaced, they rarely go missing forever. I will instigate a search.”
“I thank your lordship. Should you find any, could you send them to Rackheath House?”
Again his lordship offered me his considered smile. “I cannot loan state papers on such terms,” he said, “but I can arrange for you to view them here.”
“May I bring a scrivener to copy them?”
“So long as the originals remain.”
“Thank you, your lordship.”
Edevane looked at his cup of moscato, then decided against drinking it. “May I write to the lord lieutenant that you will soon arrive?”
“I will take the business in hand immediately.”
As the interview seemed to be over, I finished my moscato and rose. Ever polite, Edevane also rose to his feet.
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