by Dave Duncan
His glare grew ever more fearsome as she described von Fader’s death and the various attacks made upon her since she left Brikov. It softened only slightly when she mentioned the King of Chivial’s hospitality and his grant of expert swordsmen—he looked over the expert swordsmen with undisguised scorn. The three woodchoppers in the background were wide-eyed. Probably they had never been outside Krupina in their lives.
János made only one comment. When Johanna mentioned that Harald had turned out to be a traitor, he grunted and said, “Not surprising!”
Ringwood found that surprising. The Baron had trusted Harald and had taken him on right here in Brikov. If János had considered the man unreliable then, why had he not said so?
Of course, Johanna had one paramount question to ask, but it was a tricky one when the meaty sons were unaware that their father was hiding the missing Marquis.
“And my darling…sister? And her family?”
“I assume she is well. But I do have disturbing tidings to pass along.” János turned his oversized head. “Enough of these games. Off with you all. Go and be useful. See to the skinning.”
“Father—” one began.
“Go!” the Count roared. “And send in a bench for our guests. And wine.”
The three bears trooped out like banished children, scowling. János hunched his great shoulders and looked over True and the swordsmen. It did not take a White Sister to know that he was seriously worried.
“These boys are in your confidence, Highness?”
“Absolutely. What is wrong?”
“Many things, frankly. Many, many things. First, your husband reigns in Krupina and is about to marry the Margrave’s daughter.”
“I heard that.”
“But he is not your husband. He is an imposter, just as you told me. Frankly, I did not believe you. Even Ernst I did not really believe. I thought that locket of yours was a mountebank trick. Well, there must be another like it. I was wrong.”
That changed matters!
Johanna’s voice jumped half an octave. “You know this for a fact?”
“Almost a fact.” János sounded evasive and looked shifty. “I have an independent witness, although I do not believe everything he says. You can talk with him if you like, but it is fortunate you arrived today. I’m going to hang him in the morning.”
“How is my son?” the Duchess demanded.
The Count was saved from having to answer by two men bringing in a long bench, which they placed alongside the chairs. The others sat down gratefully, with Ringwood claiming the place next his ward.
Meanwhile, their host could talk of safer things. “You are aware that our beloved Grand Duchess disappeared in tragic circumstances last spring? It became a considerable scandal after a wrecked carriage was discovered not far from Fadrenschloss. The driver was identified as a palace coachman and one of the passengers as the Marquis’s nurse. Both of them dead. Much of the wreckage had fallen—”
Servants brought in wine and goblets and a table to put them on. Ringwood needed food, not drink.
“—witnesses agreed that she entered the carriage voluntarily, taking the child. Nobody was able to identify her male companion—”
The servants closed the door. Instantly Johanna was on her feet, level with the little man on his elevated chair.
“Where is my son?”
He screwed up his ugly face. “I warned you he should be left here, right here in the valley, under my eye.” His great voice boomed even louder, drowning her out. “But no! You insisted on hiding him away in the woods with no one to protect him.”
“Where is he?”
János pouted. He did not admit failure easily. “I don’t know. About a month after you left, a troop of brethren came and got him. They took—”
Johanna leaped at him and might have clawed his eyes out, had she not run into Ranter’s arm. Ringwood was annoyed to be a tiny fraction slower.
“Easy, Your Grace!” he said. “That won’t help.” The two Blades pushed her back down on her chair.
“Give her some wine!” János growled and took a long draft himself. “They took your sister and her man as well. I didn’t hear about it until it was all over and they’d gone. They were taken to Vamky.”
Johanna accepted a sip of wine. Her face was so pale it seemed to glow in the gathering gloom.
“If it helps,” the Count added, “I have the man who did it. Tomorrow you can watch him dancing ten feet up on a three-foot rope.”
“So officially Frederik and I are dead?” she muttered, not looking at him.
Frederik more than just officially, Ringwood suspected.
“You are. Officially. Rubin held a public inquiry. The evidence was very convincing. Some of your effects were found a league downstream. The only thing not known for certain is the identity of your presumed lover. The Grand Duke himself was at a birthweek party in Zolensa that night, a very respectable affair with lots of witnesses.”
Silence.
Bellman said, “My lord? Who ordered the coaches made ready in the middle of the night?”
János scowled at the upstart flunky. “I don’t know. I have better things to do than attend inquiries packed with tattling scandalmongers. I imagine there was a forged note, or something. If you want to conclude, as the inquiry did, that the Grand Duchess and her son perished in a tragic accident, there was plenty of evidence that way. If you prefer to believe that she was running off with a man not her husband, that’s all right, too. All loose ends are well tied. Only the identity of the hooded man remains a mystery.”
“Who,” Bellman persisted in the quiet, deadly voice he used when he was in this mood, “do the scandalmongers say it was? I’m sure they put a name on him.”
János snorted. “Guess?”
“Prince Karl?”
The Count nodded and took another drink.
Johanna looked up in surprise. “Why do you think so? Who told you that?”
Ringwood had never considered the possibility. If Rubin and Volpe had both had sons in that coach, then who had forced it over the cliff ?
“You did, Your Grace,” Bellman said. “Or your son did. From what I remember of my sisters, the last thing you do to calm a screaming baby is hand it to a stranger, especially a man. Yet you told us the imposter took Frederik and he stopped crying. I assume Karl has not been seen since?”
“Obviously,” János said. “Hints were dropped at the inquiry that he had been observed making advances to Her Highness, that she had been leading him on, and so on. Those remarks were struck from the record, of course.”
“Of course.” Bellman glanced at Johanna, but she did not look up or speak. “You said earlier, my lord, that you believed that the man posing as the Grand Duke is an imposter. Why do you believe that, and when do you think the switch was made?”
“You ask a lot of questions, sonny.”
“He’s asking them for me,” Johanna told her hands. “Bellman will ask them faster and more clearly than I can. You owe me answers.”
“Do I?” the Count growled, reaching for the wine bottle. “As to when the switch happened, I don’t know. If it happened. You told me you thought the Rubin who turned up at Fadrenschloss was actually Lord Volpe wearing one of those lockets. I didn’t put much stock in that then. I’m not sure I do now, but a week ago one of the brethren walked in here looking for sanctuary. Said he was never going back to Vamky. Offered to swear fealty to me—which takes nerve when you’ve just confessed to breaking one oath of allegiance. The reason he gave was that he’d seen Grand Duke Rubin locked up in a dungeon there.”
Nobody commented. Probably everyone was too busy trying to make sense of this. Ringwood couldn’t even start. Only Bellman had enough brains for such conundrums. Why should Volpe lock up the Duke and take his place? There would never be a safe time to release him, so why not just kill him right away? And why go through a marriage ceremony pretending to be the rightful duke? Someone was being either incredibly devi
ous or incredibly stupid.
The Count chuckled, a sound like bouncing rocks. “And it’s pretty hard to explain how he can be rotting in chains in Vamky at the same time as he’s dancing around Krupa organizing his wedding, now, isn’t it?”
“Tell us about the wedding!” Bellman used a tone gentry rarely heard from the lowborn, but János was now enjoying himself too much to notice.
“The day after tomorrow, at sunset. In Krupa. Lady Margarita, the Margrave’s daughter.”
Marrying Volpe. Believing he was Rubin. Ringwood felt a thumping headache coming on. If the Marquis and Karl had both disappeared, then the only heir left was Lord Volpe and he, if their theories were correct, was masquerading as the Grand Duke. No matter. Whoever’s butt was on the throne needed an heir, and the Margrave’s daughter would inherit all Trenko. A child of theirs could rule both states. Wearing a conjured locket in bed would be kinky but not impossible. (Which father would the baby favor?)
“Has Lord Volpe also disappeared?” Bellman asked.
The Count shrugged and drained his goblet. “Not my job to keep track of the Provost. If he has a conjured locket like Her Highness’s, he can come and go as he wants. You planning to take in the wedding, Your Grace? I must attend. I have no choice, but it’ll be a lot more interesting if you show up.”
“If the Duke is locked up in Vamky,” Bellman said, “is his son there also?”
The room was almost completely dark now, which Ringwood considered a fitting symbol of his own mental state, but not good for ward protection. He waited for a break in the talk so he could ask for lights.
“Told you, sonny,” János said. “Brethren took him there, and that was the last anyone heard of him. His arrival in Krupa was never announced. Sounds bad, mm?”
“But they also took his aunt and her husband, you said,” Bellman countered. “That doesn’t sound as if they intended to kill him.”
The Count scoffed again. “If I wanted to terminate a cute little curly-haired brat like that, sonny, I wouldn’t tell the men I sent to fetch him. I’d attend to it personally—later, when no one was watching. There’s such a thing as morale, you know. Not the same as morals, but one affects the other. Auntie may be dead in the woods or at the bottom of the Asch.
“And don’t assume that the knight-brethren work only for Volpe. Their oath is to the Abbot, who takes orders from the Grand Duke, so it says in the book. Abbot Minhea always struck me as a slimy fish. Not as cold-blooded as Volpe, though.”
“But this—” Bellman began. He glanced over to the Duchess. “Sorry, Your Highness…Frederik’s disappearance is one more reason to believe that the present Grand Duke is an imposter. If he is the real Rubin and did get his son back, surely he would have announced it? He wouldn’t have to explain where the boy had been found. ‘Wandering in the woods,’ would do. It would be more evidence that Her Highness was dead and he was free to remarry.”
“I think he’s Volpe,” the Count agreed, and emptied his goblet.
“Yet you’re going to hang the man who told you so?”
János glared. “That’s not why I’m hanging him. He betrayed the boy.”
“Who did?” the Duchess asked.
“Radu.”
“Radu Priboi?”
“That one. The old man died here about ten days ago—never really recovered from the burning of Fadrenschloss. A few dozen sons turned up for his funeral and one of them was Radu, knight-brother in the Vamky Brotherhood, family hero. When everyone else went home he stayed behind and asked me to take him on. But he confessed that he’d hunted the boy down right after you left. He knew what he looked like, he said. Not many of the brethren did.”
“It’s possible,” Johanna said hoarsely. “Volpe came to the palace often enough and he always had a retinue.”
“He knew your sister, too, Radu said. So he found the boy and fetched a squad of brethren. How many knights in armor does it take to arrest one two-year-old, I asked him? Now he knows what we think of sneaks and thieves. He stole a boy who was under my protection. His brother Harald was a killer, you tell me, and he’s a spy and a turncoat. That’s why he’s going to hang tomorrow. You come and watch.”
“No!” Johanna struggled to her feet. “I want to talk with him.”
Let’s leave it until after supper, Ringwood thought. How hungry could a man get and still live?
“Talk to him in the morning,” János said, “when we put the collar on him. Cheer him up.”
“No!” Her Highness was wearing her stubborn look. “I knew Radu before he went to Vamky.”
“Doesn’t mean a thing once they’ve taken their oath,” János said. “Look how Harald lied!”
“I still wish to question Radu.”
The Count shook his big head like an angry bull. “He’s been well questioned, very well. He can’t stand much more. Don’t want him to die before we get the rope on him.”
Belying her exhaustion and distress, Johanna unleashed her Grand Duchess voice. “Sister Gertrude! Has the Count spoken the truth?”
“Mostly, Your Highness,” True said calmly. “He did go to the inquiry.”
“You call me a liar?” János roared.
“Sister Gertrude has the power to detect falsehood. Try her. How many sons do you have?”
“Six.”
“Not true,” True said. “Do you even know how many sons you have?
“Certainly!”
True sighed. “Wrong again. When you went to the inquiry, did you speak with the Duke, or whoever was pretending to be the Duke?”
“No.”
“That’s true! Did you try not to be recognized?”
“Of course not.”
“Untrue. What—”
“All right, you’ve convinced me.” Unwilling to take more risks with his personal secrets, János slid down off his chair. “You can see the prisoner.”
Ringwood’s stomach rumbled disapproval.
Two of the lord’s sons led the way with lanterns; János and Johanna followed, with her Blades treading close behind; Bellman, Trudy, and two other men brought up the rear, carrying more lanterns. The Count’s house was a strange, rambling affair, some parts of which held delicious food odors that Ringwood dearly wanted to investigate but couldn’t. When their way began slanting downward, he realized that they were underground. No natural cave could be so regular, and the walls were clearly man-made. The air was cool and stale.
Johanna stopped. “Can’t you have him brought to us?”
“No,” the Count said. “You want to see him, you go to him.”
“Lead the way, then,” she said reluctantly, but she looked around for Bellman. He slipped past the Blades and took her hand.
If the house was a maze, the mine was a warren, branching and sloping, damp in places and dry in others. Some branches were closed off by solid timber doors, others were littered with ancient junk. The guides brought them to a waist-high wooden barricade, a few steps back from a rocky wall marking where excavation of that particular adit had been abandoned.
“Priboi!” János bellowed, and his great voice echoed eerily.
Squeezing in beside his ward, Ringwood almost tripped on a wooden ladder lying on the floor. When he peered over the barrier, he saw down into a pit, a shaft about ten feet deep and barely wide enough for a man to stretch out. The walls shone wetly in the lamplight, but the floor was shadowed.
Gaining no reaction, János bellowed again, and still nothing happened.
“Radu?” the Duchess said. “It’s Johanna Schale. I need you to tell me about my son.”
Ringwood could feel her shaking. He sympathized. He, too, disliked confined places. He added the light of another lantern.
Something down there twitched, slowly began to move. It gasped a few times, the sort of noise a man may make when he is suppressing cries of pain, but eventually he managed to look up and raise an arm to shadow his eyes from the light. Chain rattled. To Ringwood’s horror, the prisoner seemed to have
no clothes except a blanket and only straw for bedding. He could be Harald’s brother or anyone else’s brother, for that matter. His own mother would not have recognized a face so battered.
“Your Highness?” he croaked. “You are safe?”
“So far I am. I am sorry to hear about your father. He was a very kind man.”
There was a pause, then the prisoner mumbled, “Thank you.” The words seemed incongruous, almost illegal, in such a place of horror and pain.
“I am told that you were the one who took away Voica and my son.”
“I am sorry.”
“By whose orders?”
“My superiors’.”
“Tell me about it, please. I want my son back.”
“I was sworn to loyalty, Your Grace.” Radu had a memorably tuneful voice, a clear tenor at odds with his wretched appearance. He must be frozen in this dungeon.
“So you bear no guilt. I understand. But I beg you to tell me of my son.”
“I was told you had left Krupina, but had left the boy somewhere, probably in Brikov. I was asked if I knew where you might have taken him, and I thought of Voica…If I am to talk I must have water.”
Water was ordered. One of the servants hurried away, his light dwindling along the tunnel.
“Open this gate!” Bellman said. “I’m going down there.”
“More fool you,” János growled, but he opened a section of the barricade. Bellman and Ringwood lowered the ladder into the pit, being careful not to land it on the prisoner. Bellman went down, taking a lantern. He gagged a couple of times.
The light showed Radu’s arms and shoulders black with bruises and welts. His hair was cropped short and his beard little longer; both might have been originally golden like Harald’s but were too caked with blood and filth to be sure. An iron collar around his neck was chained to a staple in the wall. He tried to sit up, but even with Bellman’s help the effort was too much for him, and he sank back on the straw.
“Who ordered you to look for Frederik?” the Duchess said.
“The Provost, Lord Volpe.”
The water arrived and was handed down. Bellman held it to Radu’s damaged mouth.