by Hilari Bell
If the jeweler was being well-treated, they might simply let me in to see him. He was sort of a prisoner — no one could let a man that mad run loose, particularly one who could work magic. Even if he’d do no harm himself, which wasn’t guaranteed, he’d be prey to any villain who sought to use him — just as Tony Rose had.
There was no reason he couldn’t have a visitor. If they weren’t treating him well they’d refuse to let me see him, and I’d have alerted them that someone was interested, which might mean … what? Two guards? I couldn’t get past one.
The alternative was to climb the tree — and returning to try my luck openly sounded more practical.
I was turning to make my way back to the lecture hall, to depart with the crowd as I’d come in, when I saw Michael walking calmly into a circle of lamplight.
Michael. Here.
He paused to examine the buildings around him, looking much as he had when we’d parted company. Taller and thinner than I was, with straight, light brown hair brushing his collar in a nobleman’s longer cut.
He too wore a scholar’s coat, and he walked from one circle of light into the next as if he belonged here, as if he had nothing to hide.
I had taught him that.
I could hear his footsteps on the gravel, drawing nearer to the shadowy corner where I stood. Rage and excitement and pain swept over me, in waves that left me shaking.
But mostly it was rage.
How dare he turn up, just when I was beginning to be able to forget about our quarrel? At least I didn’t have to worry about how he was getting along without me — he was fine!
That was a good thing, because it meant that all I had to do was to see the jeweler, and when he turned out to be fine too, I could ride out of this town in the morning. And this time I’d take off for the far north, instead of dithering around on the Erran river plain as I’d been doing for the last three months.
The tree into the courtyard it was.
Michael was walking away from the tower, but even after he’d passed out of sight I kept an eye out for him as I made my way around the buildings once more, then walked down the outer wall to approach the tower on the yard side.
There was a slight breeze, enough to disguise some of the sounds I’d make, but I’d still have to keep as quiet as I could. And climbing a fully leafed tree wasn’t going to be quiet.
I couldn’t see the guard at his post by the front door — which was the point, because he couldn’t see me, either — but if he decided to make a round of the property he was supposed to be guarding, he’d probably catch me. However, the security didn’t seem to be all that tight. If they really cared about someone breaking in, they’d have cut down a tree that abutted the yard’s wall. I could go in, chat with the jeweler … and then get out of town before Michael ever learned I’d been here.
I reached the courtyard’s wall without incident, and there was now enough moonlight to inspect it as I walked toward the tree. Like the buildings, the wall was made of smooth river stones mortared into place. Because the stones were rounder, the mortared crevices between them were larger but, being round, all the stones sloped down and were completely smooth. River stone is worse to climb than stucco or brick, in my experience, which was considerable, as burglar had been my second criminal career. After picking pockets and before con artist, if you’re curious.
But if the wall was unclimbable, that tree might have been grown with burglars in mind. Either Pendarian’s groundskeepers didn’t know much about security, or the university didn’t really care. The tree had even been pruned so that, unlike wild elms, only the big branches remained. One was low enough that I only needed to put my hands on it and leap to be able to straddle it.
The branches’ slender tips shook like rattles, no matter how carefully I climbed, but you can’t have everything. And it grew so close to the wall that the branch I crawled out on only dipped a bit before it came to rest on the stone, creating a reasonable bridge.
I took a moment to examine my landing place, sitting on top of that high wall — and if you don’t think ten feet is high, you’ve never contemplated jumping down from it. The Green Moon had risen enough to illuminate the interior of the yard and shone clearly on the door in the tower wall. There were four steps leading up to a small stoop, and only two windows. Even in the bright moonlight, I couldn’t tell from this distance — about thirty yards — whether or not there was a keyhole in that door.
If there wasn’t, I could still get out of the courtyard. Stacked against the taller, outer wall was a rack of woven wicker boxes, like chicken cages in a livestock market, and much of the rest of the yard was taken up with a mazelike series of pens and runs made of plank fencing or stretched canvas on stakes. A table with some benches sat near the door, and there was a privy tucked discretely into one corner. So even if my lock picks failed to get me in, a bench piled onto the table should get me back to the top of the wall.
Of course the plan was still to go in and chat with my mad friend, go out one of the windows on the far side of the tower, and then depart with the crowd leaving the lecture. But I’ve learned, over the years, that plans are usually overrated.
I rolled over and squirmed down till I hung from my hands, then pushed off the wall and dropped. The nearly silent landing jarred me from head to heels.
I walked briskly across the yard, and had just reached the bottom of the steps when the door at the top swung open. A middle-aged woman in a dark gown took two steps onto the stoop and then froze, staring at me. She drew in a deep breath.
“Please, don’t scream.” I offered her my most disarming smile — which is pretty disarming, if I say so myself. “I mean you no harm. I don’t mean anyone harm. I just want to talk with the crazy man who’s kept here. It’s … it’s a dare. And then you can let me out and I’ll leave. Please, Professor.” It was a guess, but she was too old to be a scholar, and the dark gown, with its narrow skirt and archaic ruffled collar, looked like the female version of an academic uniform. “Please, don’t scream. And don’t tell my dorm master?”
She eyed me consideringly for a moment before she spoke. “How stupid do you think I am?” She opened her mouth and screamed.
She went on screaming, and moments later a guard’s whistle joined in.
There wasn’t enough time to move the furniture, and in an enclosed courtyard with an unclimbable fence there was no point in running. I backed away from her, politely, and sat down on one of the benches to await arrest. Judging by the shouts it would be soon, and there would be lots of people to do the arresting. If I didn’t alarm the professor any further — and judging by that cool speech, she wasn’t very alarmable — maybe I’d get off lightly, even if my story about a dare failed.
I briefly considered telling the truth. It had worked for me last time, mostly due to the extremely peculiar fact that Michael and I were now regarded as heroes by all the Liege’s guardsmen.
I discovered this when a bit of card sharping went twisty on me several weeks ago in Easton Township. It wasn’t really sharping — I was too badly out of practice for that — but a mathematical trick I induced folk to bet on. And since I never encouraged them to bet more than they could afford to lose, it was usually safe.
But I’d been trying not to remember Michael’s appalled amusement the first time he saw me do it, and I missed the fact that some half-drunk young idiots in the back of the crowd were betting too high.
So when half of them lost, of course they called the guard to arrest me.
The professor had stopped screaming now. And what had she been doing in the tower, without a single candle to warn a burglar she was in there? It hardly seemed fair. The shouts were suddenly muffled, which meant the forces of law were now inside the tower and my life was about to get complicated. But at least the whistling had stopped, and if he had any sense Michael would use that disturbance as a distraction from whatever nefarious purpose he’d come for, instead of rushing toward the commotion.
On
the other hand, this was Michael.
And Michael’s proclivity for getting us into trouble had paid off with the Liege Guard in Easton, as soon as they learned I was Michael Sevenson’s comrade, who had summoned the guard to take down the Rose Conspiracy. And busted Tallowsport wide open, and saved the Realm from rebellion, maybe even an all-out war.
Myself, I remembered it more as a desperate scramble to save all our lives. The endgame had gotten ugly, too. Not to mention the quarrel after.
But when Easton’s guardsmen learned that I was that Fisk, they were perfectly willing to listen to my side of the story, and also to the witnesses who confirmed I was telling the truth.
The guard who now came rushing through the door behind the professor would have knocked her off the stoop if she hadn’t skipped aside, and a mob of burly students followed him.
After one look at their eager faces and muscular shoulders, I decided to be very meek about being arrested. I was considering whether to tell the Liege’s men that I was that Fisk, one of the heroes of etc., etc., and that the man I wanted to see used to be the Rose’s jeweler. And either that I just wanted to assure myself he was all right, or maybe that I was on an errand for the High Liege, which was far too secret for me disclose.
But as they pulled me to my feet to hustle me off, it occurred to me that my only crime was trespassing in a restricted area of the university. If I refused to pay my debt with coin, I’d probably be asked to redeem myself by working for the university, maybe even for the department I’d disturbed. I might be able to learn enough about the jeweler’s situation that I could leave without having to see him. Or maybe talk my way into his presence.
And the more quietly I went with my captors, the greater the chance that I could avoid meeting Michael.
What was he doing here, anyway?
What under two moons was Fisk doing here?
It had taken some time to find my way to the source of the commotion. Once I had, I barely had time to step into the shadow of a flowery shrub, and then watch as a band of young ruffians, and an older man in rough sturdy garb, hustled Fisk out of an old building and down the walkway.
He went meekly, and like me he wore a scholar’s black and red. But something about the relaxed assurance with which he endured his captors’ eager clutch made him look older and more confident than even the man who seemed to be in charge.
I let them pass me by, for trying to effect some escape would only have given away my own illicit presence.
Once they were out of sight, I even began to doubt what I’d seen. Not that I wouldn’t recognize Fisk’s walk and his curly crop, even by moonlight. But I’d been fantasizing quite often about finding Fisk in need of my rescue. If I’d seen a student who looked a bit like him, it wasn’t impossible that my idle daydreams might have tricked my eyes.
It was only in the nightmares that I arrived too late, and found him maimed, flogged, and, in one particularly hideous dream, hanged from a beam that creaked under his slowly swinging weight. I’d awakened from that one gasping, and shaking so hard that True came and licked my face.
When I actually thought about our quarrel, I knew that Fisk didn’t want to be found, much less rescued. So after I left Tallowsport, I’d dithered about the river plain for months, giving him time to get well ahead of me, whatever direction he’d gone in.
And now, when I wanted him, he was getting too far ahead, while I stood wrapped in bafflement.
I hurried off toward the main gate, taking one of the shortcuts I’d discovered while exploring the campus these last few hours. I’d found my target, the great library, quite easily, for my brother Benton’s directions had been precise. ’Twas only as I stared up at its looming bulk that I’d stuck on the question of what to do next. My plan was to burgle the chief librarian’s office. ’Twas what Fisk would have done, and I could think of no better scheme to find the evidence Benton needed. But when it came to doing such a thing without Fisk’s assistance, I found myself at a loss.
So I’d wandered the campus for a time, figuring out escape routes — as an amateur burglar, I was likely to need them. I was about to start trying to open the library windows when I heard a woman screaming and a whistle blowing repeatedly — clearly an alarm.
’Twas also a good excuse to leave a task I was almost certain to fail.
Now my roaming stood me in good stead, and I managed to reach the corner of a building near the gates in time to watch the small party of law keepers approach. They stopped to exchange a word with the gatekeeper, and between the magica lamps and the moonlight I could see their captive’s face clearly. ’Twas Fisk, no doubt about it. And despite his calm, somewhat depressed expression, he clearly needed a rescue!
I wasn’t fool enough to imagine he’d fall at my feet, weeping with gratitude. But if I got him out of whatever scrape this was, mayhap he’d relent enough that we could talk calmly, and mend this break between us.
The mob of them went on through the gates. I’d stepped out of the shadows to follow when I realized that I was in disguise, and here without permission. Benton had said the old gatekeeper was nearly blind with cataracts, but that he knew men’s voices well. And the scholar’s guard, whom he could summon with his whistle, weren’t handicapped in any way.
I took a breath and made myself think. I would be able to find Fisk any time in the next day or two, in the Liege Guard’s lockup. This close to Crown City, in the High Liege’s fief, there were no local guards except in the smallest villages. This might prove inconvenient, for the guardsmen who served the High Liege were generally better trained than local troops.
I’d probably only need to pay whatever fine Fisk had earned … and what had he been doing to raise such a ruckus?
If I tried to rush after him now I might end up under arrest with him, instead of being able to bail him out. All I had to do was wait till the lecture Benton was attending ended and I could depart with him, shielded by the crowd, as I’d come in. So I went back to the lecture hall. I paced up and down before the doors for several minutes before I realized that might look suspicious and set out to roam the campus once more.
I was too distracted to attempt burglary now. And if I could get Fisk’s help, I’d be less likely to get caught, anyway. I knew what I was doing on a university campus, in disguise, but what was he doing here?
In some sense, if it hadn’t been for Fisk, I wouldn’t have been here.
When I was finally ready to leave Tallowsport, having had several matters to tend to before I departed, I abandoned some minor scruples and wrote to my sister, Kathy. I’d left that task to Fisk before, as it seemed to me that a man who is unredeemed — not to mention disowned by his family — shouldn’t correspond with them. Not to mention that Father would be furious with Kathy if he caught her writing to me.
Over the next several years, as Fisk and Kathy’s correspondence took on a life of its own, there was no need for me to contact her. Fisk shared her news with me, and passed my news on to her. But after Fisk had been gone for three weeks, I abandoned any hope he might return and wrote to Kathy myself, asking if she’d heard from him.
She hadn’t, and she’d been frantically worried when his letters stopped coming so suddenly. After he’d written to tell her we were taking on the most powerful crime lord in the Realm, too. She’d begun to believe we’d both perished, and she expended quite a lot of ink describing exactly how inconsiderate that had been — of both of us.
I thought that unfair, since ’twas Fisk who was her correspondent. But he clearly wasn’t now, so I told her of our quarrel — putting all the blame for her worry on Fisk, where it belonged.
Her next letter came from Slowbend, not Crown City, telling me that Benton was in trouble and I must come at once. When the letter carrier found me, I was only three days’ ride away. In fact, I’d gotten into town just this morning, and Benton came down to the stable attached to his rooming house to make his case before I even got Chant unsaddled.
“I didn’t do
it,” he said. “I was framed.”
Benton was much of a height with Fisk, and also had brown hair. But where Fisk was solid, Benton’s stocky frame ran to plump. And Fisk’s sharp eyes never held the dreamy abstraction that so often filled Benton’s.
When we were younger, I’d sometimes come across my brother standing with a book in one hand, and a single sock or half-eaten apple forgotten in the other.
Even Father hadn’t thought to do anything with Benton except send him to University, pay his fees, and then (according to Kathy) boast to all the neighbors when he graduated last fall, with honors.
If this scandal destroyed his academic career, that would all change. They planned to hire someone to replace Benton for the fall term, he told me gloomily, which meant they’d start interviewing other scholars in just a few weeks. Once they’d given his job away … well, no university needed two professors of ancient history. Most didn’t even need one, and Father wouldn’t tolerate an idle son hanging about. Indeed, Benton might find himself forced into the job of steward that I’d taken up knight errantry to avoid — and ’twould suit him even worse than it would have suited me.
But after he graduated, the university had promptly hired Benton as a junior professor specializing in the history of the ancients. I thought ’twould feel strange, to go straight from sitting in a classroom to standing before one and teaching, but clearly no one at the university found anything odd in it. And, as I soon learned, he hadn’t gone straight from learning to teaching. He’d had to write a dissertation, first.
“I know how it looks,” Benton said. “But I didn’t plagiarize it. Not one word!”
He was petting True’s ears, and True leaned against him consolingly, his ropy tail beating the packed earth of the stable floor. True is mostly hound, with dashes of other breeds, and a short brindled coat in which the ears are the softest part. Benton not only shares my Gift for animal handling, he loves them even more than I do. He was distressed when I explained the dog was mute — though as far as I can see, it doesn’t seem to bother True.