He Drank, and Saw the Spider

by Alex Bledsoe

  I approached him along the wall, where theoretically he couldn’t see me. I intended to surprise the fat bastard, but he somehow sensed me coming and turned to meet me just as I reached him. “Mr. LaCrosse,” he said genially. “I believe I owe you an apology.”

  “I believe I owe you an ass-kicking,” I shot back. To the girls I said, “Ladies, leave.”

  They looked at Cudgel for confirmation. “It’s all right, this won’t take long.”

  “And then you’ll tell us how you defeated that whole brigade single-handedly?” one of them said with hero worship in her eyes.

  “I shall indeed.”

  When the girls were gone from earshot, I said, “You tried to poison me.”

  “I tried to incapacitate you,” he corrected. “If I’d wanted you dead—”

  “—don’t say ‘then you’d be dead,’ because then I’ll just have to punch you for being smug.”

  “Well, I do apologize. Sincerely. I regret my conduct, and any discomfort it caused.” He bowed as much as his bulk allowed. “I hope you’ll keep it to yourself and not tell King Gerald.”

  He could’ve brought up my father’s name and not taken me so off guard. “King Gerald? What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “Oh, come now, my friend. He hired you to do a job, and he hired me to watch you do it and report back to him.”

  If I’d been better rested, or the dregs of the hangover hadn’t hung stubbornly on to fuzz up my brain, I might’ve tried to bluff him. As it was, I knew I didn’t stand a chance of mentally outmaneuvering him at that moment. “Look, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. We saw Gerald, yeah. But he didn’t hire me.”

  Cudgel smiled and patted my cheek. “That’s cute.”

  “Touch my face again, fat man, and you won’t be eating corn on the cob for months,” I said. “What exactly did Gerald hire you for?”

  “As I said, to watch over you.”

  “And what did he tell you he’d hired me for?”

  Cudgel’s eyes narrowed. “By heavens, you don’t know, do you?”

  “I’m going to, or I’m going to have your blood on my clothes, but not my conscience.”

  “You threaten when you should cajole, my friend. I’m easily persuaded to share my knowledge.” He rubbed his fingers together to indicate the sort of persuasion he meant.

  I put a coin in his hand. “Talk.”

  “I was told by the Lady Opulora, on behalf of King Gerald, that you were a sword jockey and had been hired to find someone. Since your ilk are not known as the most reliable or trustworthy of employees, they hired me to follow you, and alert them when you had accomplished your job. I was under the impression they believed you would keep the information to yourself, to negotiate a higher fee.”

  “But you didn’t follow me.” I’d certainly seen no sign of it before we got to Mummerset.

  He threw back his head and laughed so deep and loud that everyone in the room turned to look at us. “Oh, you poor fool, you never even saw me, did you? I watched you play that ridiculous battle game in Mahnoma, you know. I’ve been behind you the whole way. Luckily, I was far enough behind that I was able to also befriend Prince Jack when I encountered him on the road to Mummerset.” He shook his huge, shaggy head. “For a sword jockey, my friend, you miss an awful lot.”

  “You’re not the first to say so,” I agreed. All this new information threatened to make my skull shatter, but I had one more question to ask. I knew the answer; I just needed it confirmed. “Whom did they tell you I was looking for?”

  He rubbed his fingers together again. I gave him another coin.

  “A young lady of sixteen summers,” he said. “She’d have dark hair, and probably a regal disposition.”

  “Regal,” I repeated.

  “You’re playing dumb again, sir.”

  “Believe me, I ain’t playing.” I patted his face now. “All right. You’ve got two gold pieces in your pocket that, in addition to answers, better also buy your silence.”

  “I have no interest in the events of Mahnoma, I assure you. I’ve found far more lucrative pickings here in Altura.”

  I knew he meant Prince Jack, but that wasn’t my problem. I left him to his sycophants, who rushed back to him as soon as I stepped away.

  So if Cudgel told me the truth, then I’d actually been working on a case all along, and now the two ends of it, Alturan and Mahnoman, were starting to pull together. The Lady Opulora wanted to find Isadora. I doubted very seriously if she was truly acting on the king’s behalf. But she did act with King Gerald’s authority. Something she’d seen in my palm that day convinced her I knew where the girl was. But that still left me with my two central questions unanswered: Who was Isadora? And why did someone want her dead? Because if Opulora had tried to find her, and kill her, when she was a baby, I knew of no reason why the sorceress’s intent would be different now.

  Then a fresh truth hit me. If Izzy was in danger again, it was because I’d brought it back into her life. That was a fun realization.

  I happened to glance out through one of the huge, floor-to- ceiling windows. The sun was down, but the sky was still light, and I briefly saw three figures silhouetted as they topped a distant hill. I couldn’t even tell for certain if they were approaching or departing, but two of them were on horseback and the other was on foot. This third one was huge, hunched, and reminded me instantly of Tatterhead, but it was gone before I could confirm it.

  Coming on the heels of Billy Cudgel’s revelations, this confused me even more. If it was Tatterhead, what was he doing here? Had he followed Cudgel, who followed Liz and me? Had Cudgel already sent some sort of message back to Opulora?

  Doors slammed open across the dining room, bringing me back to the moment. Glendower barged into the kitchen, pushing a maid and a manservant aside. He bellowed, “Izzy!” I slipped through the crowd and stood just outside, where I could hear and mostly see what happened.

  He found Isadora and her cousin Cassandra at the center of a group of maids and boys dressed as servers. Cassandra wore a severe black gown in contrast to everyone else’s colorful finery. They whispered urgently, but they weren’t exchanging amusing gossip. Whatever it was, it was deadly serious.

  “Isadora Bianca Glendower!” her grandfather said, using her full name the way parents always do when a child’s in trouble. “What are you doing here?”

  “Grandpa,” she began, “Cassie has something to—”

  “Cassandra needs to get out of here before I tan her hide. You’re not too old for a spanking, young lady. And you,” he said to Isadora, “what you need to do is get out there and execute the duties of your office. Why, when your grandmother was alive and hosted the shearing feast, she welcomed all, served everyone, danced and sang and made sure everyone else had a drink before she took one.”

  “But Grandpa—”

  “Here you are, acting as if you were one of the guests instead of the hostess. Bloody hell, girl, you’re supposed to be a goddess; Eolomea would not be hiding in the kitchen with the maids.”

  “She would if she—”

  “Forget it, Izzy,” Cassandra sighed. She was used to being ignored.

  Glendower took Isadora’s arm, not roughly but firmly, and pulled her away from the maids. “There’s no time for argument. The guests are out in the courtyard, and the dinner should be ready. Go invite them, and not another word out of you!” He pushed her toward the door, then grabbed Cassandra’s hand. To the maids and servants he said, “And you—get back to work. Now!”

  The staff all looked terrified, but I couldn’t imagine them being that scared of Glendower, whose bluster couldn’t hide his gentle nature even when he was put out. A few of them looked back, into the depths of the kitchen itself, as if some monster dwelled there. What frightened them so badly?

  Glendower saw me when he came out of the kitchen, but luckily didn’t realize I’d been deliberately eavesdropping. He pushed a sour-faced Cassandra into the crowd wit
h the admonition, “Go mingle!” Then he sighed and turned to me. “If you and your wife ever have children, Mr. LaCrosse, pray for sons. Daughters are exhausting. Women are exhausting.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. Still, I wondered what Isadora and Cassandra wanted to tell him. In my experience, it was always smart to let people convey their information, even if it turned out to be nothing important; you risked missing the one time it was.

  I looked for Liz and found her in the garden, again surrounded by three young men. She winked at me, and her disappointed suitors melted away into the crowd. I quickly told her what I’d learned, and what I’d seen through the window.

  “He was following us all along?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Do you believe what he told you?”

  “Yes. I mean, he enjoyed it too much to be lying. That foolish shell hides a vicious turtle.”

  She winced. “Don’t do metaphors.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And you think Tatterhead was coming here?”

  “I couldn’t tell. I mean, maybe it wasn’t even him. It could’ve been a trick of the light.”

  “I can’t imagine there’s too many like him wandering around loose,” she said.

  “He wasn’t loose when we saw him. He was on a pretty short leash.”

  “Maybe the other two are his minders. How much time do you think we have?”

  “Depends on whether he was coming or going.”

  “Enough time to get through the banquet and get everyone out of here before the trouble starts?”

  “I hope.”

  “Should we tell anyone, try to prepare a defense?”

  I thought about it. I’d seen angry Mummerset mothers chop a vile soldier apart, but whatever Tatterhead was, mere hoes and rakes wouldn’t stop him, no matter how many there were. These were farmers, not fighters. “No,” I said. “If it is Tatterhead, he’d just demolish them.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “Keep our eyes and ears open. Hope for the best.”

  “And prepare for the worst?” she said wryly.

  “That’s how I start every day, baby.”

  Chapter

  SEVENTEEN

  The foyer and garden were packed now, and I couldn’t imagine who might be left in Mummerset or the surrounding hills. The combined heat from all those formally dressed bodies made everyone a little twitchy. The murmurs were just on the verge of turning into complaints, when a single loud, sharp bell note sounded and everyone grew silent. A wave of delicious odors washed over us. My appetite, suppressed by the whole Devil’s Dew incident, asserted itself like lust on a honeymoon.

  Then Isadora appeared in her full Eolomea regalia. Everyone applauded, a few whistled, and somewhere in the garden a dog even barked. Isadora smiled graciously, then held up a hand for silence.

  “This is the great feast that welcomes Eolomea back to the world, and with her the light, heat, and flowers of spring. We eat and drink together to renew our community and our connection to the gods, and I am especially humbled that you let my family be your hosts. Welcome, then, to our table.”

  She bowed, to more applause, and we followed her into the dining room. I spotted the same maids that had been talking to Isadora, standing in a line along one wall. They all looked terrified.

  The main door and foyer became a total bottleneck; Liz daintily held my arm as we waited our turn. I looked around for some of the other players in this drama, and at the very back of the crowd, still out in the garden, I saw Ajax’s towering form. His hair was slicked down and parted straight, the way a mother might do a child with a cowlick, and the formal attire he wore strained to contain his chest and arms; if he flexed wrong, he’d burst all the seams. If he was there, it meant King Ellis was, too, but I couldn’t yet spot him.

  Liz saw Ajax. “Uh-oh.”

  “I know,” I agreed. He had a matching bruise on his forehead from my head butt. I wondered if his thumb ached as much as mine.

  “Well, if Tatterhead does show up, maybe the two of them can duke it out,” Liz said.

  Audrey was having some difficulty moving through the crowd with her cane. Liz and I stepped to either side of her and made space while people jostled us.

  “Thank you, young man,” she said when we’d gotten through the door. More loudly she said, “You’d think one of these ungrateful sheep dippers would show some respect and help a crippled lady to her chair, but no, it had to be the new town drunk. That’s the thanks I get for pouring drinks for you lowlifes for twenty years.”

  There was a small table off to the side, with chairs scaled down for children. Cassandra, certainly no child, sat all alone at it, arms crossed in a sulk. A couple of other kids took seats as far from her as they could get.

  We filed around the long table, which had benches instead of chairs. I chose a spot in the middle, on the side near the inner wall so I could watch both the table and the windows. Outside, the light had faded to a dark blue glow behind the hills. Above this, the first stars appeared.

  No one sat until everyone was in position and Isadora stood at the head of the table. Two young men held her chair; once she’d been seated, they went to the foot of the table and held that seat for Owen Glendower.

  Glendower sighed as he sat. His face, so recently filled with annoyance and aggravation, had turned winsome and sad. He gazed down at Isadora, no doubt imagining his late wife, Bianca, in the same place. Then he said, “If you’re standing on ceremony, you’re wasting boot leather. Sit down, everyone.”

  I helped Liz negotiate her feet over the bench, an awkward move because of her dress, but one that every other woman in the room repeated. I noticed Ajax remained out into the foyer, watching through the open door. He was hidden in the shadows, so unless you knew he was there, you’d miss him. Not a bad trick for a man his size.

  Liz squirmed to get comfortable in her dress. She muttered, “If I’d known it was picnic style, I’d have worn something with fewer petticoats.”

  I spotted King Ellis at last, seated three spots away from Owen Glendower. I wondered if the two had ever actually met before. If this was the first time, it promised to be even more memorable than it usually was when a commoner met a king.

  Oddly, I saw no sign of Billy Cudgel. He would’ve taken up space for three, so it wasn’t like he could hide in plain sight. And I couldn’t imagine him turning down free food. Had I scared him off? Or was something else afoot?

  The maids went around filling our goblets. The one who served us was trembling so hard, the drink barely made it into the cup. She was also white with either fear or nausea.

  “It’s all right, honey,” Liz said. “I won’t bite you, you know.”

  “Y-yes, ma’am,” she said, and quickly moved on.

  Opposite us, at the end nearest Isadora, Beatrice grabbed the pitcher from her server and poured her own drink. She looked angry, but not at the girl; her eyes stared daggers at the kitchen door.

  Directly across from us, Clancy sat next to Phoebe. Even in what I’m sure was her best finery, Phoebe looked strong enough to tip the table with one arm. She wore a medal around her neck on a gold ribbon, so I assumed she won the sheep-shearing contest. Still, Clancy’s goofy grin assured me he saw her as the epitome of beauty, which is exactly how a man should see his girl.

  He saw me and waved. “Hello, Mr. LaCrosse! Feeling better?”

  “Back to full strength, Clancy. Sorry you had to see me like that.”

  “Oh, no worries, Mr. LaCrosse. Seen many a drunken man at festival time.”

  At the children’s table, the little girls Hero and Helena sat on either side of Cassandra. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but whatever it was, they were talking animatedly to each other as if Cassandra weren’t between them. The older girl looked even more miserable.

  Dorcas passed behind us, and I touched her arm to stop her. Quietly I asked, “Why are all of you so scared?”

  Before she could answer, a
crash came from the kitchen, followed by a man yelling, “For fuck’s sake! More melon? Fine, I’ll get you more melon and I’ll ram it right up your fucking ass! Would you like it diced or whole?”

  A girl whimpered a response, and the voice replied, “For fuck’s sake, one minute you’re fucking that stupid goatherd and now you’re trying to fuck me from behind!”

  Something else crashed, and the voice exclaimed, “You know what you are? I’ll tell you, to save time. You’re an ugly, six-nippled pig!”

  The kitchen door flew open, and a serving girl no more than eight or nine ran out, sobbing. The slight heels on her shoes tripped up her inexperienced feet, and she fell beside the table.

  A man appeared in the kitchen door, clad in the white coat of a chef. And I recognized him, too: it was Gordon, the smart-ass I’d encountered on my first night here. I couldn’t believe he was old enough to run a whole kitchen, but it was clearly a reign of terror.

  He drew breath to yell more abuse at the little girl, then realized the whole table was silent and still, staring at him. Defiantly, he snarled, “What? You work in my kitchen, you fucking wake up, move your ass, or piss off home.”

  My temper began to boil, but before it bubbled over, a loud slam rang out as Isadora slapped the table. “All right, that’s it!” She got to her feet so emphatically that her heavy chair tipped over and hit the stone floor. We all jumped at the noise. “You arrogant, narcissistic bastard, I have put up with this shit all my life, and it stops now!”

  Her brother put his hands on his hips and, in a mock feminine voice, said, “Oh, the great beauty is offended.” In his normal voice he continued, “Why don’t you just get your tits out and get it over with, it’s the only thing anyone wants to see, anyway.”

  I’ve never seen a plate used as a weapon before, but Isadora snatched one from the table and skimmed it like a Lindwocky throwing disk. It struck her brother right in the face with enough force to shatter. He sat on the floor, hands flying to his mouth. Blood began to flow almost at once.

  “My fucking teeth!” he yelled through his fingers. He pulled one hand away and looked into the palm. “You broke my fucking teeth!”