Arefai didn’t catch it. “You are ready?”
I nodded.
“May I?” he asked.
“Please.”
Arefai cleared his throat loudly. “Kami Dan’Shir is now ready to begin his… tentative experiment,” Arefai said. “He thought it might be of interest to the lot of us. On behalf of myself and my future wife, it is my… pleasure and honor to thank Lord Demick for graciously offering his rooms for this purpose.”
Demick’s smile was even broader than Arefai’s. “It’s as nothing. I’ve even prepared a small entertainment of my own.”
Falling on your sword in shame? I wanted to ask.
Demick gestured to me, palm up. “Our attention is yours, Kami Dan’Shir.”
I bowed. “I thank you, Lord Demick. Ladies, Lords,” I said. “I’ve asked Lord Dun Lidjun to serve as a bowman this evening. As someone who has, of late, achieved some success in shooting, I think it’s fair to say that he’s a competent one.”
Dun Lidjun had already unwrapped the bow and arrow from his package.
“I took the liberty,” I went on, “of asking him to paint three bands of gold on an arrow.”
Four windows looked out across the courtyard at the other wing. “Please note the open window, where Tebol ha-Mahrir stands, a lantern in his hand.” Across the courtyard, Tebol stood, swinging a lantern back and forth.
I went to the window and raised a hand. Tebol slid a plain paper screen in front of the window, and was gone from sight. Still, we could see the flickering of the lantern from across the courtyard, even through the screen.
“There appears to be a flaw in the paper screen,” Narantir said, on cue. Timing is everything.
“Not a flaw, good Narantir,” I said, “but a mark I’ve made. That marking is, at the moment, in exactly the same place as the rip in the screen that covered the window last night. Lord Dun Lidjun, if you please, and quickly.”
Dun Lidjun had the arrow nocked; he walked to the window and drew it back to its full extension, his expression flat and unconcerned. Mind like water, mind like the moon, the warriors call it when they raise kazuh.
“You’ll see the lantern stop flickering at the moment that Tebol hangs it from its hook on the wall,” I said. Light flickered and then stabilized.
“Now,” I said.
Dun Lidjun loosed; the arrow flew through the night. I could more feel than hear the thunk of the arrow connecting.
“Lord and ladies, you will be amused to note that the arrow broke the screen at the same spot as did the arrow that murdered Minch.”
Tebol slid the screen aside, and took a bow.
“And you’ll also note,” I went on, “that the arrow sticks in the wall rather near the spot where Minch was so pinned. If Tebol had not dropped to the floor the instant he hung the lantern, he would have been killed in the same way.”
I turned to Demick. “I trust you find this experiment amusing, Lord Demick.”
“Oh, very,” he said, clapping his hands together twice. “So much so that I’ve ordered up a similar one. Two demonstrations, in fact.”
He turned to Lord Orazhi. “I know my lord Orazhi doesn’t like to have foreign archers running about his keep unaccompanied—as who would?—so I’ve asked that two of your men accompany my own Verden Verdunt to the rooms above, rooms that I understand are occupied by some of Lord Toshtai’s party. With your permission?”
Across the courtyard, following some signal I didn’t catch, the screen was pulled back in front of Minch’s window. “I’ve also asked a servitor to replace the screen.”
Demick reached his hands outside the window and clapped them together, three times, then twice.
An arrow hissed overhead.
Across the courtyard, the screen was slid aside. “Verden Verdunt is a talented archer, as well. As you can see, yet another arrow stands next to that of the vile murderer and the estimable Dun Lidjun.”
He leaned out the window and clapped his hands once more. Just once.
In the courtyard below, two warriors were helping a third up onto a branch of a gnarled oak. Limber as a young boy, the third man climbed up into the tree until he was obscured from our view by the leaves.
The wind brought the twang of the bowstring.
‘To save some time, I had Eren ven Horfen cache a bow and arrow in the oak tree.“ Demick turned to me. ”You’ll find that his arrow, too, has gone both through the hole in the screen and through the spot where some coward’s arrow murdered the late, lamented Lord Minch.“
Demick walked over to me and put his arm around my shoulders, one companion congratulating another one on a job well done.
“Kami Dan’Shir and I want you to know that all this entertainment has been, as we have intended, a diversion. We hope that you have found it amusing, as we resume our researches into the matter of the murder of Minch.” He bowed deeply to the other lords and ladies, then smiled at me. There was genuine pleasure in his grin, if only simulated warmth. “Don’t we, my dear Kami Dan’Shir?”
“Yes, Lord Demick,” I said, the words ashes in my mouth.
I could have beaten my head against the rough bark of the oak, but that wouldn’t have made me feel any better. Although it probably wouldn’t have made me feel any worse. I can’t say for sure; I didn’t try it. I also didn’t try cutting my own throat to see if, as they say, that’s really not a bad way to die.
I guess it could be, but who reports on such things?
An idiot like me wasn’t going to figure that out, either.
My father used to say that timing was everything, and I had been too damn quick, and for no good reason. Well, there was one good reason: I was in a hurry to show off a solution that would clear Arefai, for all the good it had done me, which was none.
The rough bark of the old oak gave ample purchase for fingers and toes, and a dip in the low branch hung just over the tips of my outstretched fingers.
I thought about getting Narantir to help me up and decided that I didn’t need to trigger another sarcastic, caustic comment, so I stepped back three paces, then took three quick steps forward, leaped, caught the branch and pulled myself up, balancing easily. I would like to say that it was the thousands of hours practice I’d put in as an acrobat that made it all possible, but I don’t need to lie for practice. Almost anybody could leap high enough to do what I’d just done, and anybody a bit taller than I was wouldn’t have needed to leap. Anybody with something to stand on could have done it even more easily.
Whoever had done it, if anyone, hadn’t left any indication of his passing, not here. The bark was unmarked, and while there was ample evidence of old limbs trimmed off by Lord Orazhi’s groundskeepers over the years, all the stumplings were old; none of the tiny branches sprouting out from the larger ones were freshly broken.
I walked along the branch toward the base of the tree, then found the right footing to climb several branches up toward an opening in the leafy canopy above, then through the opening.
Demick had found a good spot. Above and below, the spreading canopy of green leaves shielded this place from view. The base of the branch was wide enough to stand on easily, and there were two other branches off the trunk where one could rest a foot to take a differently angled stance.
I mimicked drawing a bow. Plenty of room, and only a few windows were visible from here.
I wasn’t the first person to find this place. The dark bark was broken off in places, revealing the lighter bark underneath. Some ripped leaves and a half-broken green twig showed where somebody, momentarily off-balance, had grabbed in panic for support. The only trouble was that there was no way to tell if some or all of the damage had been done by the murderer or by Demick’s soldiers.
Too fast. I’d been too fast, too hasty. If I had inspected things properly, I would know. Not that I could tell what good it would do me. Arefai could climb a tree as well as anybody else.
I shook my head. No, that didn’t make sense. I could see Arefai killing Minc
h, but not by stealth. And aiming through a window screen at a spot of light? Not Arefai; he wouldn’t do it. While he was by no means a friend of the lower classes—there was a spot on my cheek he had once slapped in casual demonstration of that—Arefai wasn’t the sort to casually kill somebody, hoping that it was the right somebody.
Edelfaule, on the other hand…
Edelfaule, on the other hand, would do me no good as a murderer. Even if he did it. Unless, of course, I could use that to some other purpose. Perhaps—
“Guards, guards!” The voice from below was firm and loud, but unpanicked. Rough voices called out orders.
“You there, out of that tree. You are surrounded,” the voice said, lower enough in tone that I could tell that it was Penkil Ner Condigan.
I didn’t move.
“It’s just me, Kami Dan’Shir,” I shouted. “I have Lord Orazhi’s permission to have the run of the castle and grounds.”
“Well, come on down now,” Penkil Ner Condigan said.
“And be slow and careful as you do,” a gruff voice said, in counterpoint.
I made my way back down and carefully lowered myself to where the bottom limb joined the trunk, then came down from there.
Penkil Ner Condigan stood there shaking his head in self-disgust, a half dozen warriors scattered around him, now sheathing swords and taking arrows off the nock. He spread his hands. “My apologies, Kami Dan’Shir; I thought I’d solved your mystery.” He gestured at the tree. “I understand that Lord Demick has shown that the murderer could have fired from the tree. When I heard movement, I thought that he might still be up in there, hiding.”
Hiding in the oak tree ever since the murder. That was the most stupid idea I’d ever—
Well, no, it wasn’t. Anything was possible, and the old oak could have concealed half a dozen assassins in its upper branches.
A chill came over me. And it still could. Penkil Ner Condigan’s theory wasn’t insane, merely unlikely. Investigating it couldn’t hurt anything, and if there was somebody up the tree, that somebody wasn’t Arefai, and my head was off the block.
I nodded. “You there, Lord Warrior—Penkil Ner Condigan may have an idea here. Which of your men is best at tree climbing?”
The warrior, a barrel-chested bear of a man in leather and bone armor that had been burnished until it almost glowed, laughed, and not pleasantly. “I don’t know, and wouldn’t ask. Tree climbing is an occupation of boys and fruitpickers. My warriors are neither. You are, so I understand it, a discoverer.” He jerked his thumb at the tree. “Discover.”
There are things that I’ve enjoyed more than climbing up, high into an old oak tree, looking for a murderer. But, since nobody was there, there’s never been anything I’ve done that’s been more pointless.
Lord Edelfaule was kind enough to join our group high in the wizard’s tower.
Dun Lidjun was repeating—for the sixteenth time, I believe—his observation that the flight of an arrow was an arc, not a straight line, and that a good bowman often had to make sure that the arc traveled through one point or another before hitting its target.
“Classic hunting problem in the woods, after all. You have a straight shot at a flying gander, but you know that the arrow is going to rise after it leaves the bow, so you see with your mind not only the beginning and end of it all, but the path that it might take. Or perhaps you don’t pull the arrow all the way back, and select a broader arc that will carry your arrow above a tree limb, or exchange your bow for one with a stronger pull that will send the arrow in a flatter arc. The arrow could have been shot out of there, or from above, or from the tree.”
The old man shook his head. “All you had to do was ask, instead of assuming that you know everything, simply because you’re a dan’shir.” There was more of sadness than anger in his voice. “I’ve admired your audacity, boy, in the time that you faced me with a sword in your hand, in the time that you exposed the murderer of Felkoi, but audacity has its place, and its place is not to be spread all over, like jelly on a slice of bread.”
Narantir chuckled. “I knew it would all end badly,” he said. “You confuse authority with knowledge. Something that, of course, no members of our beloved ruling class have ever done, but that’s why they are lords and ladies and you’re but a bourgeois.”
There was a knock on the door. Before an invitation to enter, the door swung open to reveal Edelfaule, a thin smile on his almost lipless face.
“Well, I’ve just failed,” he said. “After spending most of the last hour trying to have Father give me your head for my wall, he finally broke down and said no.” He reached out a long, slim finger and tapped me on the chest. “You embarrassed me nicely with your little demonstration in Den Oroshtai, you petty little bourgeois, but that was with money, something your kind knows far too much about.
“This was a matter of blood and honor, something you’d know nothing about, Kami Dan’Shir, eh?”
For a moment, for just a moment, I almost gave it up. Enough bowing and begging, enough mewling and groveling. I’d grab Edelfaule by the throat and squeeze, squeeze hard with hands strengthened by years of swinging from a trapeze, from years of lifting and hauling, and I’d squeeze until his blood ran between my fingers.
No, that’s not what I would do. Even if Edelfaule didn’t block me, Dun Lidjun stood behind me, and the old warrior could have me chopped into tiny pieces before my fingers touched his neck.
“I bid you a goodnight, useless dan’shir.” With one hand, Edelfaule smoothed down the already smooth front of his robes and smiled as he turned and walked away.
Narantir tilted his head to one side. “I don’t suppose you want to invite Lord Dun Lidjun to fire an arrow from Edelfaule’s room, would you?”
I don’t suppose that stars really snicker, although maybe there’s times that they should.
Idiot, idiot, idiot, a billion stars blinked.
Toss left catch left, toss right, catch right. Juggling didn’t help.
You stupid idiot, I thought, you fell for it.
Lord Toshtai has silently, like loose-tongued Spennymore of legend, persuaded you to trade your ox for a magic plow. And in the morning, the bones of the ox lie chewed and white on the ground, and the magic plow has become an ordinary piece of wood and iron, no more capable of moving around on its own than another piece of wood and iron.
The world doesn’t care a fig for Kami Dan’Shir; it never has and it never will. And nobody in Den Oroshtai did, either.
It all began to fall into place.
I was a freden, a throw-weight.
The marriage of Arefai and ViKay threatened too close an alliance of Den Oroshtai and Glen Derenai. The combination of the large armies of Lord Orazhi, the devious cleverness of Lord Toshtai, and the field marshallship of Dun Lidjun was too much of a threat for Patrice and the Agami lords to stand still for. They probably would have redeployed their forces and marched on Den Oroshtai, but that would have left them vulnerable in the north, and they couldn’t have that.
Where brute force couldn’t serve, conspiracy would have to. Minch had been sent to interfere with the marriage, paid with a sword that would declare him much more than a minor lord. In return, he was to embarrass Arefai, as he had tried to do at the hunt. Members of our beloved ruling class are bloody-minded, even when it comes to their own selves. Minch was willing to risk being killed in a duel where, upon examination, it would be shown he hadn’t given proper offense, which would shame Arefai.
Perhaps, just perhaps, Minch even expected to be murdered.
Now turn to Lord Toshtai, the most subtle and clever of men. He didn’t know what Demick and Minch would try, but he expected something.
So, Lord Toshtai: bring along this new dan’shir, and have your idiot son Arefai prepare the dan’shir’s image of great competence at anything and everything. Disposable like a peasant, but accorded enough respect and honor that, when things get hot, when the road gets tiring, when your idiot son kills a man and i
s in danger of being thoroughly disgraced, you throw all the responsibility and attention away with the dan’shir freden.
Nicely done, Lord Toshtai. And all you had to do was treat me with just a little lenience, just a touch of gentleness.
Nicely, nicely done.
A keep is made for keeping people out, not in.
All I’d have to do is find a length of rope, tie a loop around a battlement after a patrol had passed, then slide down the rope and be gone. The gold I’d won from the late, lamented Minch could keep me housed and fed for years, assuming I could find a way to break it down into more credible money. I couldn’t rejoin my father’s troop, but the north was full of intinerant acrobats; I could find work and hide among them.
Of course, my sleeping quarters here would be swept for a loose hair or bitten toenail, and Narantir could and would use that to help the horsemen of Glen Derenai track me down. I’d be lucky to escape for a day or two.
Loose hair… wait a minute.
I ran back up to the workroom at the top of the wizard’s tower and threw the door open.
I woke up to a cold cloth slapping my face and Tebol’s angular face looking down at me. “Can you hear me, Kami Dan’Shir?”
“Nicely done, Kami Dan’Shir,” Narantir said, from off to one side. “Did anybody ever tell you never to bother a sleeping wizard?” The wizard’s voice seemed to come from too high up; I looked over and found him stretched out in a net hammock suspended from two hooks on an overhead beam. It looked deucedly uncomfortable, but not nearly as uncomfortable as being hit, hard, by a wizard’s spell.
“What happened?” I asked, although the fool words came out as a triple grunt.
Tebol felt at a pulse, then nodded and stood. “You’ll be fine in a moment. But Narantir’s correct; you really should make a habit of knocking before you enter.”
I have, from time to time, truthfully claimed to be unheroic. That was before, lying on the cold stone floor, having been hit by a wizard’s spell, I rolled to my belly and managed to rise to my hands and knees. Dapucet, the Power that holds the world together, exercises no more strength than I did as I rose first to my knees and then to my feet, the world spinning gently under them.
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