Just then the Lieutenant lost his patience, “The Captain is not here.”
“No, and he will not be found on the road.” I murmured.
“What did you say?”
And then I remembered I was not talking to Miller, Godwin, Theo, or Jon. Gates as impenetrable as any in the kingdom slammed shut inside me and I exited the Captains apartment. “You are free to go, Lieutenant. Do stay out of trouble.”
Color flushed his cheeks as he realized he was chasing me like a lost puppy, begging for scraps of knowledge, “In the name of the Grand Duke, I order you to tell me what you know, peasant!”
“Try not to get on my bad side until I’ve had time to develop a proper hatred for you, Lieutenant.” I tossed the acid words over my shoulder, not bothering to turn but keeping a keen ear open for the rasp of a blade being drawn.
Instead, another soldier, slightly more senior than Palmer from the looks of him, came and grabbed my puppy by the elbow, “Lieutenant! I need you to lead a party here-.”
“But sir, the man from the roof-.”
But of course, I was already gone in the crowd. One of my more useful skills.
I made it back to the suite with Her Grace. With dark thoughts orbiting my head loudly enough for all to see, Aelia’s party all avoided any contact. It wasn’t hard. I returned the cleric’s cloak, slept until dawn, and then was up and about. I stayed out all day, trusting the boys to keep the princess safe as I plied my lies to every ear that would hear.
After all, it is not uncommon for an elder brother to inherit the father’s estate. And if that estate included a travelling business, the beloved older brother would need hardy travelling boots. As a devout younger brother, it would be an act of love to find out which cobbler was making said pair of boots and pay for them in secret. The shiny silver coins in the hand of the merchant would bring such trust that finding out where the boots were to be delivered was a detail too trivial to be remembered by anyone.
The boots were to be delivered tomorrow.
That’s why I was on a roof that night, freezing my ass off again. This place was not unlike the den of iniquity where I had stashed Aelia during our first day in Carolaughan. Of course it did not appear at all homey from up here. It is still cold, it is still dark what has changed is my shirt, my camouflaged rags, my location, and my whole perspective.
Soldiers do not change. Take a dozen and set them loose on a town with a pocket full of coin and they will be drinking anything that burns, bedding anything dazzled by coin, fighting anything that gets in their way and betting on any game they can lose. Reduce the number to one, and the roar of debauchery becomes a cat's cry- more annoying than dangerous. This one, Captain O’Loinsigh, sat in his room all day. He paid hard coins for the serving boy to bring him at first the finest spirits, moving on to the strongest, in the run down little hole. No company; Paid for or otherwise. No tips for the serving boy, either, which is why a few copper bits easily bought his habits and room location.
I crept across the slate roof, careful of a thousand things that could send me tumbling over the edge to my death. I watched for a thousand more that could slip, tinkle, crack or shatter and give me away to anyone inside. Again I looped a rope over a chimney, but this time I brought the end with me across the top of the building to the overhang where his window lay.
I tell you this: If a man is sitting around for a whole day, drinking progressively stronger libations you can assume three things. He is being consumed by sadness or fear. He is probably emptying his thunder mug out of the window every hour or so. Lastly, he’s extremely unlikely to remember to latch said window. A quick peek over the side confirmed at least the last of these, which is good because I was tired beyond reckoning of being wrong.
Without guidance from my head, my hands twirled the rope flawlessly around one leg, cinched tightly by hand and knee as I gently rolled off the roof and expertly hung upside down just outside the window. My free hand poured oil out of a long, thin vial on the hinges, and then skillfully worked the pig skin shutters open a bit at a time to minimize any chance of a creak, groan or squeal. It opened onto a room with no less than four candles burning into pools. In the light, a still form sprawled in a lonely chair at a table strewn with bottles. My knee loosened as my hands pulled me inside with all the sound of a gliding owl. The soft boots Aelia had purchased for me, comfortable and useless for long treks through the woods, made little sound on the floor. I stalked forward and removed the heavy climbing gloves. Then I pounced.
Sometimes you want quiet. Sometimes you want subtle. Sometimes however; You want to grab a sleeping man and tilt him back on the rear two legs of his chair to keep him off balance; You want your left hand to grab his right arm to keep him from grasping a weapon and slashing blindly at you; You want to grab him by the throat with your right hand to first squelch any cried but mostly so he knows that you are absolutely, irrevocably in charge. And if you had a bad experience with the last time you tried this, you wear a blade ring on that strong hand.
“Tell me who paid you off.” You would say.
And then he’d tell you.
Unless you were me. Then, you would pull him off balance, grasp his hand with a fist seemingly made of steel, and grasp his neck to cut off any scream and let the blade ring nick his neck ever so slightly and say, “Tell me who paid you off.”
That’s when you realize that you have been told your target had been drinking all day, you had counted on it. But now that he wakes up, thrashing and drunker than you have ever been in your life all he can say is, “Wha? Girroff! Isumin. Iscampn da DUKE!”
And while his lids droop and head lolls bonelessly, you silently scream out curses at every God you have even heard of. I should l know: I did.
So I took the chance and let go of his arm to slap him across the face. The clap resounded in the tiny room, and it brought him around a bit, but it was clear that if the Duke’s army didn’t catch him, he would likely drown himself in drink. Still, I controlled his sword arm and throat as I enunciated very clearly, “You have the guilty thirst of a traitor, O’Loinsigh.”
He reacted like a branded horse, or at least a drunken branded horse as he yelled, “Imma nottaraior. Iamma not. NOT!”
But at least his anger was clearing his head slightly, “The Duke’s men are out there looking for you, O’Loinsigh. Tell me who paid you off and I may find safe passage west to the border.”
The Captain leered at me knowingly, anger fading back into the comfortable haze of alcohol, “Shove yooour safe passage. I’mma goin’ to Riagáinhead.”
And it was as if he slapped me back, “The Grand Duke’s palace? Horatio O’Riagáin’s guards will kill you the instant you set foot on his land.”
But he simply rocked further back in the chair, suicidally letting my bladed hand keep him from toppling over as he sung, “Ooooooooooopen arms. Oooooooooooooopen arms.”
“You are mad. They will hang you from the walls as a traitor.”
My first clue was the sharpening of his eyes, the clearness of his voice as rage poured through him, “I am no traitor.”
While I was holding O’Loinsigh’s right hand to keep him from attacking, it very suddenly became clear that he was left handed. The dagger came out of nowhere, sweeping across my vulnerable belly. Instinctively I recoiled even though I tried to grip his neck tighter as he slipped out of my left hand. He hit the floor hard but bounced to his feet unsteadily, giving me plenty of time to try something else. I leapt away, sweeping a thick curtain of blankets from his bed over his head and using the momentary confusion to break his nose with a vicious kick. He collapsed immediately, dropping his dagger.
I swept the knife under the bed and watched him closely but he lay still, allowing me to sit for a moment. Say what you want, but scaling a building, hanging from a roof, gaining entry to a building and then wrestling with a drunk is enough of a night for anyone. Now all I had to do was drag him somewhere his screams would not be heard, let him sober up,
and break fingers until he told me who had bribed him to distract his own men.
I shook my head, walked over to the table, and searched for a bottle that had more liquor than backwash in it. That’s when I saw that the leather covered jug in the middle of the table was not a jug, but a pouch, stuffed so full it sat upright. With trembling hands, I opened the drawstrings and released the contents to glint in the light. It was a fine scrip, made with several internal pouches for bits of copper or silver, but instead of whatever kind of bric-a-brac the center chamber of the leather vessel was meant to hold, there were instead golden coins.
“You are a man after my own heart, Captain.” Each coin was thin but heavy, and bent easily to the tooth, testifying to the content of pure gold. “You were expensively bought.“
But there was something off… I brought forth a fresh coin and examined the edges, experimented with the minting marks and held the gold up to the light so it could catch every sparkle cast by the candles. It brought a chill to my skin as I saw every perfection on every gold coin.
The whole bundle disappeared into my oversized belt pouch next to a dozen bits of equipment and I turned to the still recumbent and blanketed form of O’Loinsigh.
“I know who paid you, Captain.” I jostled him with one boot but he lay without twitching. “The game is mine, Captain, get up and I can get you to a place of safety.”
I kicked him lightly, and then not so lightly, to the same effect. I drew my short sword with my off hand, but he did not move. I felt my scalp prickle and I planted my heel on the thumbnail of his exposed hand. In seconds, I was pressing with my whole weight and getting no response. That’s when I used the tip of the sword to flip the blankets aside to expose his pale face and the explosion of blood leaking from his throat.
I opened the turncoat Right hand, the hand that had tried to stop him from falling back even as I pulled away from his dagger, the hand I could not use to draw the sword because it was the hand with the finger with the damned ring blade on it. It was just a small nick, but the artery was large and the blood thinned from excessive drink. Now, the only link to the person trying to have Aelia killed was also dead. And I was willing to bet that my escapades on the roof had not been forgotten, but instead were creeping through diplomatic apparatus like caustic chemicals in an alchemist’s lab.
I had to find a connection that couldn’t be dismissed due to rank or station. Failing that, I needed Aelia to send me after the man with the money. Or even whoever controlled the assassins. A sharp knife in the dark would solve-
Pain exploded across my back, a lifetime of lashes compressed into a few minutes. I could only make a strangled cry and fall to the floor. My limbs trembled. My vision blurred. It felt like venomous insects crawled underneath my skin, pulling out chunks of skin from the inside, hollowing me out into a bag of useless flesh.
Fists of agony pounded me again and again, dropping me to the floor where darkness leapt on me like a predator.
The world was in color, bolder and richer than I had ever seen. Every splinter and stain of the run down room gained a beautiful random life of its own. Everything seemed to fit into a master puzzle I could only guess at, where this rats nest of an inn was so squalid not because of abuse or neglect, but because it was in its very nature. It could not be anything else, but perhaps it could be more… I lifted my head from the floor to stare at a cloaked angel standing above me.
I had always known he was there.
Something began to scrape my heart with veins of frost as the figure raised his arms. Two hands, carved of aged alabaster, emerged from within the robe woven of webs and night. He held a crooked staff topped by a regal raven in his right hand, carved of ebon wood so pitted and worm-eaten it seemed to wither and crumble in his grasp. His left held the most powerful and incomprehensible weapon I had ever beheld. Easily ransomed for a king’s crown, the gold and ruby blazed in the shape of a lidless eye. Set in a golden lattice of razor sharp metal it defied sanity, every time I judged I had the hilt marked, the precise method to wield it escaped my grasp. He seemed to be offering the staff and weapon to me, waiting with the patience of one who has no life left to trickle through the hourglass. Power. Secrets. Wealth. I reached for the eye at the center of the weapon-
And the door to the room smashed open. Corpses, dressed in rags, piled in with hands clasping poisoned blades. Chained to the floor by thick links bolted to my back, I had nowhere to run as they piled upon me, teeth flashing black and rotten.
I awoke too frightened to scream. Then the room swam into focus, a plain place of dirt and desolation. I shook off the vision, or at least pushed it back into the Fog. The pain didn’t stop. Not really. It just started to fade until it was tolerable. I sat up, tears and snot streaming off my face into my lap. It faded further and further, but it never went completely away, never. For all I knew it would always be there, a phantom agony waiting to pounce and torment me forever. It had kept me prisoner until morning, and if the man at my feet was not a wanted criminal I would be in a lot of trouble trying to explain his unlawful exsanguination.
But right now I needed a way to get back to Aelia and convince the other nobles that I had sat all night on the roof, and caught an assassin, because I am a hero, not a scoundrel. After all, in a dragon’s cave you will find dragons, but also you will find knights. The Captain would help greatly to that end. Then I remembered that O’Loinsigh was dead.
But I also remembered a head was easier to carry than a body.
12
The Missing Pieces
The jugglers, musicians, and acrobats looked quite entertaining. The bear baiter was a bit much. Moreover every bodyguard in the room watched the bear intently, perfectly willing- the only question was able- to turn the damn thing into a rug the instant it twitched toward the nobles sitting behind the feast tables.
I strode into the great hall without fanfare, or much in the way of cleaning. I had the look of a man who had ridden far and wide in a short amount of time. In fact I had gone to a dry patch of dust in a back alley and splashed my clothes to make sure that’s just what I looked like. Once the damned bear and his owner cleared the way I pushed past the next series of acts, the functionary trying to keep everyone in line, and the two guards at the entrance to the makeshift stage and stood at the center.
The murmurs of the great and the good pattered on the ground like the last lingering moments of a contrarian rain. As their disapproving stares grew in intensity, I stiffly went to one knee before them. Horatio left me there for a good, long time before he recognized me, “Ah, the rooftop bodyguard. Why have you interrupted our entertainment?”
People starving, barbarians sacking and burning farms, nobles dropping like flies, and he’s worried about delaying his entertainment. By way of answer, I walked to the front of his place setting - causing all four of his bodyguards to coil for attack. I pretended not to notice and I sat the tied bundle of blankets on the table. I said, “Your Grand Lordship: A gift from your cousin Aelia Conaill, Grand Duchess of Conaill.”
I left without being dismissed. I smiled only a little when I passed by the doors to the corridor beyond, for the great hall behind me erupted into exclamations of all kinds as Horatio unwrapped O’Loinsigh’s head. By the time I made it back to the apartment, a warm glow was growing inside my chest. The idea of shocking a room full of blue bloods and especially laying the head of the traitor at the feet of his employer, brought a smile that filled me from beard to boot leather. I passed Jon on guard duty on my way into Aelia’s suite. He started to say something, but a raised hand stopped him. Fine, the fact that that raised hand was covered in Captain’s blood may have stopped him more than the hand, but he shut up and that’s what mattered.
I was delighted to find a basin of lukewarm water on my dresser, and aghast I had left the door unfastened so that any random functionary could gain entrance. It was unlike me. So unlike me I checked every fingerlength of the room, then I sniffed the water but detected no traps or poi
sons. Still, the nagging voices that echoed out of the Fog spurred me to toss out the contents and go fetch fresh myself from the kitchens. Each time I passed Jon he acted like a puppy with the bladder of a mouse. I made it a special note to stop him from talking to me each time.
It wasn’t mean. Not really. I just had enough on my mind and now I just had to figure out the next step.
Once again ensconced in the safety of my room I carefully removed the heavy weight of gold from inside my shirt, as well as a dozen means of stealthy death. I stripped down and washed down, careful of the old wound that must lay, buzzing, across my upper back. The skin felt slightly textured, but otherwise unbroken. I pushed thoughts of the malady aside, however, because the auction would begin in four days. Four days was a long time with a price on one’s head. Before one more poxy bastard was allowed to try to kill me, I was going to eat like a noble and then sleep like a child. I pulled on warm clothing across my damp skin and fastened only three blades to various locations- practically going naked- as I strode out into the common area, right into Theo who was sitting at the table, eating thick stew with gusto.
I exclaimed wordlessly as he came to his feet and he embraced me like a brother. I felt a cold shock as he touched me, but then relaxed and embraced him back, feeling nascent tears press at the back of my eyes. I held him at arm’s length and stared at him up and down, finding no hurt nor malady. But then a doubt, “Godwin?”
“Still abed. He’s been denying himself sleep, making himself sick with guilt that we killed the first set of horses.” He smiled as he ladled out stew into a bowl for me.
I Know Not: The Legacy of Fox Crow Page 17