by Max Keith
“Seems one of his commoners took him in the back with a pig-knife, just as he was coming back from his hunting,” avowed her friend Turrve, an innkeeper at the Palace. Some years ago, just after she’d left Lammorel, the two of them had begun a sordidly lucrative trade in depleting the purses of his guests while she entertained them upstairs. Now she was back, though he was more careful these days; he’d been taken up for petty theft in the past year, and he was still smarting from the shame of being tied to the pity-post in the center of the town. Still, he gladly let her use the upstairs rooms for her evening activities, charging her a reduced rate for old times’ sake. “They say he still lives, though barely.”
“Who says?” Alorin tried not to sound too eager; Turrve did not know why she’d left the Tower. She was slowly eating a biscuit, all she allowed herself for lunch; Alorin was on an economy drive, knowing she’d earn nothing but her whore’s wages for this entire debacle. The Princess would not even begin to think of paying her as long as Lord Whitemar walked the earth.
“Ah, you know: ‘they.’ Errand riders, mail carriers, justiciars; the usual. Bards.” He took a deep drink of his own ale. “They’re seldom right, though normally there’s a small turd of truth in amongst all the rest of the shit.”
“No doubt.” Alorin was troubled. “What sort of commoner?”
“They don’t get that specific,” Turrve shrugged. “A wench, no doubt; a man would’ve stabbed his lordship in the front. It takes a bitch to do a man from behind.” He took another sip. “Meaning no offense. Present company excepted, I’m sure.”
“Of course.” Turrve did not know Alorin was a fighter, though he doubtless suspected. She smiled faintly, still sore from the night before; the man had been lucrative, but painful. That was often the way it went. “You won’t find me stabbing anybody, back or front. I’m more into getting stabbed.” She waggled her eyebrows.
“Back or front,” Turrve leered. They chuckled.
“That’s more my sister’s line, in truth. She’s a Free Fighter; I’m simply a Free Fucker.” She finished off her biscuit to the grins of a couple of fat old men at the end of the bar. “Be seeing you, Turrve. I’ve got people to talk to.”
That was the day she’d counted her coins and bought the clothes. She’d gone, as she always did, to see how the grooms at the livery were treating Pixie; she paid good silver and expected good service, but she made sure of it by tipping the livery manager a fuck per week. The saddle had cost more than the clothes, but the emaciated strip of leather she’d stolen from Lord Whitemar’s groom was giving her chafe.
She was gone after three more days, bound north over the King’s Road under her own name at last; there were people looking for brown-haired Lyria at Castle Whitemar and others, customers, looking for a coastal whore named Junessa, but nobody hereabouts knew the silver-braided Alorin Kaye. Travel was always fast on the Road, with good cheap inns and plenty of travelers to ease the way. And with no need to spread her legs anymore other than to mount her horse, Alorin spent the first few days of her journey with her ears open, listening for word from southbound travelers about what was happening at Castle Whitemar.
Her mind churned; if Count Clerent died, there were ways Alorin could convince Princess Raxillene it had been her doing. The Princess was smart, with many ways to gain information, but she did not know everything. What she would know for certain was that her enemy was dead, painfully, and that Alorin would accept a reduced rate, what with late fees. So she’d probably agree to pay out most of Alorin’s wage which, added to what she’d pulled out of her cunt, would make for a very well-compensated couple of months.
It was worth trying, anyway. And if the Count failed to die, well, Alorin was headed that way. She’d manage it yet.
The best inn on this stretch of the Road lay most of a day beyond the town of Stelver, between its cracked tile roofs and the crossroads just south of Castle Whitemar. Alorin drew up in the early evening, her lightening purse arguing for a night under the stars in a nearby wood. But there was no reason she couldn’t lay down a silver for a nice hot dinner; if she was lucky, there might even be mutton! And there would certainly be news as well, news she needed in order to make her plans. Once before, she’d murdered a sick man in his bed; it had taken a good deal of planning.
Well, no mutton; this part of the Realm, alas, was not a sheep district. But she’d made the best of it at a long table, sitting furthest from the door before a bowl of pork belly and rice, with a sturdy helping of garlic-wine. But the fire was high and the place was crowded, the War having its usual lack of impact on the many people who’d chosen not to join the Army. The inn was awash with fat folk and good cheer, the traveling traders, entertainers, and mercenaries oblivious to everything outside their ale-cups.
Alorin sat carefully at first, darting shifty glances around the large room above a look of unconcern; she’d been sitting in the opposite corner, over by the bar, less than a year ago when Cashel had killed two men here just because they’d insulted his playing. That was always the problem with bards: they got touchy about criticism. Of course, she’d made a quick retreat with him, a bit concerned that he’d murdered the hecklers without castrating them first, but in the end it wasn’t her doing; she’d merely been eating her salad. She’d long since learned that her deadly friends did not share her beliefs about Seed-Debts, and had decided that she could either let them kill however they wished, or get an ulcer herself.
It was not a difficult choice, most of the time.
At length, though, she realized that nobody here remembered her; she tucked into her meal with a happy sigh, as always keeping her ears wide for anything they could pick up. She wasn’t concerned; she knew that a local lord lying near death, stabbed viciously by one of his own commoners, could not help but become a major topic of conversation. So she sat and listened.
A fat dealer in plum brandy, sitting at the next table back, was her chief informant; he was asking all the right questions of a group of local hired swords, looking to suss out the atmosphere up at the Castle before he shipped his intoxicating wares there. “So, you say the Seneschal’s in charge there?”
“Him, or the Steward; it hardly matters.” The toughs were slurping some of the man’s merchandise gratis. “One’s a cunt and the other’s a mage, so either way I’m doubting the Castle will be a good place for a prosperous man such as yourself to do business.” Loud guffaws. The mercenaries were traveling toward the Castle, she’d already heard, which was a message in itself. “Of course, my mates and I would be glad to relieve you of a demi-barrel; this is excellent stuff.”
“Why, thank you.” The merchant spoke through clenched teeth, for outside of Castle Whitemar there were few good places for him to sell between the Palace and Crownport. The Southlands were not known for their great cities. “It would be nice, though, if a man could know the truth about what to expect.”
“It’s the future,” one of the other bravos pointed out, his voice gravelly. “How can anyone know it?”
“No, but see, his Lordship’s got no heirs. No legitimate ones, anyway, other than a daughter. So the county’s lords are lining up.” Another slurp. “There bids fair to be a nice little war up there.”
“Hmm.” The merchant sounded a bit more excited. “Soldiers enjoy brandy.”
“That they do.” That was the second fighter again, the raspy one. “They also enjoy blood, though with the War going so badly I’ll be damned if I know why anyone’s thinking of fighting here.” Alorin was facing away from the group, but in her mind’s eye she saw the man shrug, then start talking again on cue. “This is why we can’t have peasants murdering lords. It makes things sticky.”
Alorin listened intently to the next exchange. “So he’s dead, then?” The brandy seller was a good questioner, blunt and fearless. It was almost as if Alorin herself had written him a script. “I’ve heard all manner of rumors.”
“Well, see, that’s the thing.” The first mercenary sounded craft
y. “You’ve got to figure, if he’s not dead yet, he’s on his way.”
“It’s been near a week,” the second fighter agreed. “They say the knife nicked his lung and, maybe, the big pipes around the heart. It’s but a matter of time.”
“You’re talking of Lord Whitemar?” This man was at Alorin’s own table, a bard moving south. He spoke in the accents of the Mearns, up north. “He’s dead, sure enough.”
“Join us?” The merchant was smoothly immediate with his offer, but the new man merely chuckled out of the corner of Alorin’s eye.
“Not hardly. I’m a wine man.” The bard demonstrated with a noisy sip. “No, Whitemar’s got to be dead. On account of I saw his murderer up at the Crossroads.”
“You did!” Even the mercenaries were impressed. “On the starve-stake?”
“I did.” The bard giggled, a gust of garlicky wine passing down the table. “Nobody would be on the stake at all, if he hadn’t nodded off.”
A pause.
“Right enough, I suppose.” Another slurp came from the mercenaries, and behind her back Alorin heard the fat merchant shift on his seat to face the bard.
“They say she’s been in the dungeons since they found her.”
“Sure she has.” That was the gravelly voice again. “Been well and truly raped, I expect, and serve her right too.”
“She’s dead meat, whether Clerent dies or not.” The merchant sounded decisive. “Whether hanged for attacking him or starved for killing him, she’ll rot either way.” He brooded. “You’re sure this starver you saw was the killer, now?”
“Certain.” The bard turned back to his pork, already bored with the conversation. “I asked her. She had the warrant nailed to the stake, anyway. It’s her.”
“Huh.” Alorin could hear the wheels turning in the merchant’s head. “Seems a Count’s funeral will need some brandy, don’t it?”
“Expect so.” The mercenaries, Alorin knew, would be planning on murdering the merchant and stealing his barrels tomorrow. She wondered whether he knew it. “If you wish to pay us, say, a gold merganser,” the gravelly one was rasping, “we’d be glad to ride with you…”
And that was all Alorin needed to hear. The details of their business arrangement, or lack of, mattered not at all to her, for the bard was right: a woman on the starving-stake meant a lord had been murdered, without doubt. The stake was the highest punishment in the land. Her thoughts wandered puckishly back to the patchy body she’d seen near the Priests’ Wood, back before ever she’d heard of Annalene and the sad little village of Raughn, before Jesseney and Lord Whitemar’s amazing cock. Before Sir Hobb.
She’d be at the starving-stake the next day, she knew, to see for herself. She had questions to ask, and maybe a risky journey past the crossroad to the Castle itself, for she had to know Count Clerent was dead before she went home to the Tower.
And claimed her money.
There would be no doubt, of course, that she’d demand payment for Lord Whitemar’s death whether or not she was the one to sink the knife. She’d not lie; the Princess would know if she did. The Princess always knew. But all the same, Alorin could make a good argument that, no matter what, Count Clerent would not have been murdered if not for her. He’d been stabbed before arriving home, which meant his men hadn’t guarded him; one of them had fallen to her knife. It also meant he’d been away longer than planned, for instead of going straight home from the Priests’ Wood, he’d come south.
To chase Alorin.
And then he’d kept coming to the Palace, for his audience. Without the protection of many of his knights. And all because she’d killed Sir Hobb.
Thus, the assassin had been able to strike because of Alorin. That, she could sell to the Princess. Again, less late fees and interest; Franx the mage would figure all that out, but with that, and what she’d made on her back these past weeks, she could afford one of those new crossbows, with the special cocking mechanism that didn’t even require a handcrank.
So she rolled awake from beneath a bush just as the sun was whispering into a cloudy sky, feeling refreshed and ready for her day; she always enjoyed sleeping under the stars. Pixie was impatient to be gone, her ears flickering quizzically around, and so she and her mistress took the northern road before any of the folk at the inn were stirring; a slip of cheese and some jerked meat were enough to break Alorin’s fast, and as dawn broke slow and bleary she was already well on her way to the crossroads south of Castle Whitemar.
She rode carefully; any of the hunting party would know her at sight despite her hair, for Pixie was a distinctive horse. So she strapped her shortsword high on her hip, made sure to keep her right hand free, and rode shifty-eyed and wary. She was dressed for trouble, though not quite for fighting, in comfortably tight leather trousers and a short tunic, the whole draped in an old green cloak. The morning was drippy and silent; the scattered clouds of the morning had drawn over the world in a damp, depressing blanket, peppering down with occasional light rain.
As she knew she would, Alorin smelled the crossroads long before she saw it; like all such places, it played host to a royal mail-box and a long, stale latrine, likewise presumably royal. Then there were the stakes, most of them mossy and leaning with disuse, but today two of them were occupied, though one by the skeletal lumps of dried-out matter than all of us, she thought, would one day become.
The other, closest to the latrine, held the red-haired woman Alorin had expected to find.
She halted by the mail-box, frowning over Pixie’s head; the horse was skittish from the smell. Annalene was facing away from her, clad in nothing but a short raglike dress that left her legs mostly bare; her naked feet scrabbled uselessly in a small pile of her own bloody shit at the base of the stake. Her body slouched down over a massive iron staple driven through her body beneath her ribs, then through the stake to curl around the back.
Alorin sighed, then climbed from her horse and set her free to graze somewhere less fetid. If the condemned girl heard her boots crunching toward her, she gave no sign; of course, she’d been here for a few days, long enough for the blood to dry around the staple. She’d be weak as a kitten. She was still alive, though, her skin goosebumped in the rainy chill as Alorin came around. The large pretty eyes, once so feisty, glared dully at the valkyrie as she halted a pace away. “Annalene of Raughn,” Alorin said quietly. She hoped she didn’t sound too indifferent.
The girl drew a wheezing breath. “Do I know you?” She appeared understandably bitter. A trickle of clotted blood, once part of a much heavier flow, flecked her chin; the front of her dress below the staple was a stiff purplish plate of dried blood. “Come to gawk, I suppose.” She struggled to hold her head upright, even though it was locked brutally up by a spiked iron collar. She spat.
Bitter indeed. Alorin reflected a moment on what a horrible death this was; it could so easily be herself on a starve-stake, too, for she’d killed more than her share of lords. “Not at all.” She waited, forcing herself to look at the horror on the girl’s face. “You knew me, once. I’ve something to say to you, if you’ll hear it.”
“Fuck you.” Whether the girl had killed her lord in a fit of rage or after long, dark brooding, she was surely regretting it now. “Leave me be.”
“I can help you,” Alorin told her bluntly. “I can end this.”
The laugh that came from those bloody lips was more of a snarl, her face twisting into a grimace as her body shifted around the staple. “You know you can’t.” She stared, at last, into Alorin’s grey eyes. “They’ll nail you up right alongside me.” Her face was dead-white, like a fish.
“They’d need to find me.” Alorin drew her shortsword, making sure Annalene could see it. “They haven’t yet. Besides, I care little for lords and their laws.” She held up the blade. “One thing.”
Annalene stared feverishly at the sliver of steel, its edges keen. She licked dry lips with a dry tongue, and when she spoke her voice was a whispered croak. “So be it.”
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br /> “I know he’s dead,” Alorin began, “else they’d have killed you some other way. So here’s what I need to say: thank you. I was to have killed him, and I failed. You succeeded, and for that I’m grateful.”
The half-dead eyes narrowed now. “You’re Lyria.”
“I am.” She hefted the shortsword and glanced up and down the road. She saw nobody, but she had to be quick. “So thank you. I’m indebted to you.”
“Are you.” The girl had no hope. “Then hammer me free.”
“You’d die anyway,” she shook her head, glancing down at the staple. It would be impaling her twice, she guessed, at liver and at entrails, bracketing the empty stomach. The wounds no doubt burned with fever, but even at best they’d be another two or three days killing her. And yet, there was no time, either for Alorin or for Annalene, to be gentle. “I can only make it faster.”
A strange gurgling sound accompanied a weak trickle of blood from her mouth; the girl’s lolling tongue swept it away. “You’d pay your debt to me by killing me.”
“I would.” She held the shortsword point-up now. “And in another way: I killed Sir Hobb-of-the-Wood.” Alorin struck when she saw the light, a brief and fading kind of joy, kindle in Annalene’s reddened eyes: the last moment of happiness she would ever know, in the last moment she would ever live.
The fatal wound was difficult to give, for it was important that Alorin show no extra holes; it was a Middle Crime to thwart the starving-stake, worth an ear or a finger. They’d assume her father had done it, but they’d punish the entire village; Raughn would become a collection of sad-eyed, nine-fingered starvelings. With luck, the father had fled already.
The shortsword had a wickedly clipped point, and she thrust it straight up into the liver wound, carefully angled upward; she felt the blade grate against the iron staple, encountering weakened muscle but nothing else as the sawbacked blade punched up between the lungs to skewer her heart, the hilt shuddering slightly in her grasp as it beat once, then once more, and then fluttered to an uncertain halt in a long, bright flow of fresh blood, making its way in a thin but steady river down over Alorin’s fingers. The flow increased markedly as the valkyrie hauled her blade back out, but the trickle slowed almost at once; Annalene had lost too much blood already.