The Crown Tower trc-1

by Michael J. Sullivan

Burrowed into his cloak, Royce woke to the same roar and drumming of rain that he’d fallen asleep to, but the cold and wet had forced him to abandon any further efforts at sleep. With a shiver and grunt, he carefully inched himself up to his elbows and peered out of his hood. A thick curtain of rain muted everything, leaving the world as colorless as a corpse. Water flushed down the hillside, and because he was in a cleft, a rivulet had formed beneath him. His body acting like a dam left Royce sitting in a patch of water.

  They were on the slope of a grassy hill scarred with rock and littered with bristling thistle and juniper bushes, everything prickly, a sea of burrs and nettles. Below, like rows of teeth, were stone walls bleached white and overgrown with moss and ivy. The mountains of Trent-if they were there-were lost to the rain. Royce had no idea where they were. He remembered little from their flight the night before and the opaque sky made it impossible to tell direction. He could see roads-nothing familiar, but the thin gray lines slicing through the hills below them were alive with riders. Men in pairs raced with cloaks flapping. There were larger groups, men on foot walking in formal lines. He also heard bells. At first he thought it might be a trick of the rain or his own tortured mind, but the sound came from every direction. It wasn’t until he managed to separate out different rates and pitches that he understood. Every village and town for miles was ringing the alarm.

  Hadrian had bent himself upright as well. Pale and gray as the day, they both appeared as risen cadavers bewildered and surprised to find themselves still tethered to the world.

  “What do we have for food?” Now that his stomach had settled, Royce was famished.

  Hadrian looked about the slope. “Some of these look like berry bushes.”

  “I meant, what did you get from the tavern?”

  “I didn’t get anything. I never had time to ask Dougan for any.”

  “Ask?” Royce was in the treacherous process of hoisting himself out of his tiny lake when he paused. “Why didn’t you just grab something? I thought that’s what you were doing behind the bar.”

  “I was grabbing our clothes. I had them drying there.”

  Royce looked down at himself. “Thank Maribor you dried the clothes.”

  “What did you want me to do, steal from Dougan?”

  Royce nodded dramatically.

  “I’m not a thief.”

  “Yes, you are, and you’d better get used to it.”

  “You have to steal something to be a thief. I put the book back.”

  “Tell them that when they catch us. I’m sure it will help.”

  Royce flinched and winced his way to higher ground. Muscles stiff and sore, his abdomen burned, and he suffered bolts of pain when moving. He felt worse than before, not surprising after spending the night soaked in a cold puddle. Shaking with the chill and his waterlogged skin, just lifting his arms was exhausting.

  “Do you hear bells?” Hadrian asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Those can’t be the ones from Ervanon still.”

  “They aren’t.”

  “You think it might be a religious holiday?”

  “Nope.”

  “This is bad.” Hadrian turned his head left and right, peering out through the rain.

  His hair plastered to his head, his face pasty white, he looked beaten. Royce knew that stare; he knew those eyes. He’d seen them every day on the streets where he grew up. They were like the windows along Herald Street after the Sickness.

  The fevers came every year to the city of Ratibor where Royce grew up, usually in winter, but once when Royce was young the Sickness invaded the city in midsummer. Unprecedented, they called it an ill omen. Everyone knew that was bad-it turned out to be worse than bad. Herald Street was one of the nice neighborhoods, one of the few in Ratibor. Royce liked to walk there when he was troubled, just to look at the pretty homes. It was how he dreamed, when he couldn’t anymore. That summer the houses looked different. It was hot and dry. The windows should all have been open trying to catch any breeze, but they were all shut, the curtains drawn. Pale lace that behind the dirty glass took on a particular color of gray-the washed-out hue of hopelessness, a sort of pallid vacancy that came with having time to dwell on tragedy. Hadrian’s eyes looked like the windows of Herald Street. They had the same color, the same closed-off emptiness, the same look of surrender.

  “How’s your side?” There was hesitancy in Hadrian’s voice, a tinge of fear.

  “A little better than yesterday,” Royce lied. He wasn’t sure why. What difference did it make? “So are those berries edible?”

  Hadrian hesitated a moment, then turned to the bushes as if it had taken that long for the words to reach him. He stood up, slow like an old man, and Royce heard a sharp intake of breath when he put weight on his left leg. Walking over to the bushes, Hadrian stood there as if he’d forgotten what he was doing.

  Royce watched. If it was going to happen, it would happen now.

  Having lived through worse, Royce knew it could be done. He had never felt the gods had singled him out for punishment. That would presume he was important enough to be noticed. He was just one more overlooked life that should have ended early. He was just too stubborn to lie still and over the years had grown too mean to give in. But he knew nothing about Hadrian. He was a soldier, but what did that mean? Had he spent his few adult years riding on a fine horse with plenty of food, slaughtering unarmored footmen while he remained safe in a steel suit? Had he ever been alone, abandoned, and facing death?

  If he was going to break, this would be the time. Few ever lost it in the heat of the moment. It was always afterward, once they had time to think. Then the windows were shut and the lace curtains drawn. Royce watched silently. The day before he might have taunted him, tried to push Hadrian over the edge. Instead, he just waited. He felt no sympathy-no one ever had for him. The moment stretched as Hadrian stood in the rain, looking out across the valley, not seeing, just staring.

  Then he bent over and plucked a berry.

  In a few minutes he returned with a cupped hand. “Blueberries,” he said, sitting down beside him. Royce tried one. Tart. He realized that while his stomach was better it wasn’t perfect.

  “So what’s your story?” Hadrian asked.

  “My what?”

  “Your story-your history.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Do you know who your parents were?”

  “No. My earliest memory”-Royce paused to recall-“was fighting a dog for food.”

  “How old?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t even know how old I am now. I was at a workhouse-a place for orphans. I escaped. I was five or maybe six by then. Stole my food after that, ate a lot better as a result. Got in trouble pretty quick.”

  “City watch?”

  “Wolves.”

  Hadrian stared at him, confused. “What is this about wolves?”

  Royce tried a second berry. Sweeter. “A kids’ gang. Finest group of pickpockets under the age of twelve. There are a lot of orphans in Ratibor. Competition is fierce. Must have been fifteen rival groups fighting for hunting rights. And there I was going it alone-oblivious. I didn’t stand a chance. Still, I was better at stealing. The Wolves saw me. I was in their area and they didn’t like it, so they offered me a deal. I could be drowned in the cistern, leave the city entirely-which was a death sentence at my age-or join them.”

  “How were they?”

  “Like anyone-only more so. Nice until you have something they want. They kept me alive.” He plucked another berry from Hadrian’s palm. “How about you? How’d you learn to fight like that?”

  “My father. He started training me almost from the day I was born. Day and night, no days off, not even Wintertide. Not that there was much else to do in Hintindar, but he was fanatical. Combat was like a religion to him. I figured there was a purpose, a reason behind it. I expected he was grooming me for military service, thought he would send me to the manor to start as a guardsman, thinking I
would work my way up to sergeant at arms maybe. If I was lucky, Lord Baldwin would be called to service and I’d go along. If I was really lucky, I’d do something heroic on the field and King Urith would knight me. That’s what I thought my father was thinking anyway.”

  “What was he thinking?”

  Hadrian shook his head slowly as he looked out at the lake far below. “I don’t know. But when I was fifteen, I asked when I would apply to the manor. Most boys started as pages much younger-fifteen was the age to sign up to be a squire if you were noble, or man-at-arms if you weren’t. My father said I wasn’t ever going to the manor. I wasn’t going to Aquesta either. I wasn’t going anywhere. He wanted me to replace him as the town blacksmith when he got too old to swing the hammer.”

  “Then why’d he train you like that?”

  “He never told me.” Hadrian popped the last of the berries into his mouth and chewed.

  “So that’s when you left.”

  “No. I was in love with a girl in the village-maybe not love, but as close as I’ve ever been, I suppose. I was going to marry her.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “I got in a fight with my rival-nearly killed him.”

  “So?”

  “He was also my best friend. We were both in love with her. Hintindar is a small place and didn’t have a future for me. I figured everyone would be better off if I left-me included. So I hiked out and joined the army. Been fighting ever since.”

  Far below, two perhaps three miles away, Royce noticed a dozen men moving along the road. One was on horseback wearing black plate armor and a red cloak. The rest were footmen, some with pikes and some with bows. Out in front was a pack of hounds.

  “What is it?” Hadrian asked.

  “They’ve got dogs-I hate dogs.”

  “Who does?”

  “That patrol.” Royce gestured down toward the valley.

  Hadrian peered out. “What patrol?”

  “The huge patrol down there.”

  Hadrian squinted and shrugged.

  “Trust me, there’s a dozen or so footmen and a knight wearing black armor, so he might even be the seret you met at the tavern. You didn’t leave anything at the tavern, did you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you dressed my wound, what did you do with the part of your cloak that was around me? Did you leave it behind?”

  “Didn’t see any point in bringing a bloody rag.”

  “Damn.”

  “What? They have hounds?” Hadrian asked. “The dogs are hounds?”

  “Yep.”

  “But dogs can’t scent in the rain, right?”

  “No … of course not.” Royce didn’t really know but he wanted it to be true.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Just walking.”

  “Where?”

  “Right below us.”

  As Royce watched, the dogs veered off the road into the brush on their side. “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh, what?”

  Royce lost sight of them as they disappeared under the heather. A moment later he heard them bay.

  “Did I hear something?” Hadrian asked.

  “They have us.” Royce pushed himself up, feeling dizzy the moment he did.

  “I thought hounds couldn’t scent in the rain.”

  “These can.”

  Royce staggered up the slope, feeling like someone was sticking a hot blade in his stomach.

  “We can’t outrun them, can we?” Hadrian asked, catching up.

  “Not even if we were healthy.”

  Behind them, the baying of the hounds blended into the rain and the sound of ringing bells.

  Hadrian reached the crest of the hill first. “A farm!”

  “Horses?”

  “Not even a mule.”

  Royce looked back and saw the patrol rushing up the hillside. The knight was out in front just behind the dogs. He didn’t think they could see them yet, but they would soon.

  “Maybe we can hide in the farm?”

  “Farm? What’s their crop? Rocks?” Royce asked.

  “Better than getting caught in the open.”

  The land wasn’t rocky so much as filled with rocks, which lay scattered on the grass like the remains of a stony hailstorm gathering mostly in gullies and at the bottoms of hills. They worked as effective obstacles, preventing anything close to sure footing as the two blundered down the slope.

  Not surprisingly, the farmhouse, the barn, and even the silo were built of stacked stone. A rambling wall corralled a small flock of sheep, and there were a half-dozen chickens wandering the space between the house and the barn where numerous puddles formed in the mud to either side of a stony path.

  Smoke rose from the chimney that poked out of the thatch roof, and both men made for the front door. Hadrian paused to knock. Royce walked in. An elderly man seated at a weathered table and a woman working near the hearth started at his appearance.

  “Don’t move or you’ll die,” Royce said, struggling to stand upright and gritting his teeth to manage it. That was fine, clenched teeth just made him more menacing.

  Hadrian followed him in. “Sorry about the intrusion.”

  A boy around the age of ten trotted from one of the back rooms and halted, wide-eyed. The old man grabbed his wrist and jerked him to his side. White-haired and balding, the man moved quicker than Royce might have expected. He wasn’t as old as he looked.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” the man asked.

  “Just do as you’re told,” Royce snapped.

  “My name’s Hadrian, he’s Royce, and we just need a place to get out of the rain for a bit.” Hadrian’s tone was gentle, and he was smiling-not sinisterly, not malevolently, or crazy-dangerous-like, just cheerful. If he were a dog, he’d be wagging his tail.

  “You’re wounded,” the old man said. “Both of you-you’re the two thieves they’re looking for.”

  Royce drew his dagger and let it catch the light from the hearth. That always had an effect. Alverstone’s blade looked like no other. “We’re also armed, dangerous, and as you might imagine, desperate.” Royce stepped closer, causing the man to stand up and move his son behind him where the boy tilted his head to see. “In a little while a knight leading a patrol of soldiers will arrive here. They will ask if you’ve seen two strangers-wounded men. You’re going to say you haven’t. You’re going to convince them we aren’t here and make sure they leave without entering this house.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because we’ll be in the back room with your wife and boy.” Royce paused to glance at his son for effect. “And if they come in, or if I hear you whisper-if you try to be tricky or sly-I’ll slit their throats.”

  “He will not!” Hadrian said.

  “Yes, I will.” Royce glared back over his shoulder with a whose-side-are-you-on look.

  “Listen, we haven’t done anything wrong,” Hadrian said. “There was a misunderstanding, and a fight, and we defended ourselves. Now they’re after us, so we’d appreciate it if you could help.”

  All three just stared.

  Royce shook his head and glared at Hadrian. “They don’t care. All they know is we’re in their home, and they want us out. You can’t reason with these people. Those are their troops coming to protect them. They aren’t going to side with us.”

  “Lord Marbury sided with us,” Hadrian said.

  “And they arrested him for it, remember?” The house lacked windows, but he could see well enough through the gap between the door and the frame. Through the cracks he had a fine view of the barnyard and the chickens snapping up worms among the puddles. He could also see a bit of the main road. Nothing yet.

  Hadrian took a seat, rubbing his leg above the point where he’d tied a strip of his cloak.

  “You know Lord Marbury?” the old farmer asked.

  Hadrian nodded. “Good guy. Had a drink with him recently.”

  “When?”

  “Four, five
days ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Iberton, in a little tavern at the edge of the lake.”

  The man exchanged looks with his wife, who maintained a scowl.

  “Keep quiet,” Royce growled.

  “We’re in their house looking for help,” Hadrian said. “The least we can provide is answers.”

  “I don’t think you understand the meaning of the word least.”

  A pot began to bubble.

  “See to the pot, woman,” the man said. “No sense letting the meal burn.”

  The woman hesitated. “Why not? They’ll just be taking it for themselves.”

  “A little food would be nice,” Hadrian admitted. “We haven’t eaten for…” He hesitated.

  The man nodded. “Get them each a bowl.”

  “You’re a fool,” the woman said. She was plump with baggy cheeks, an extra chin, and pudgy fingers. Royce couldn’t help wonder how she got that way farming rocks.

  “We don’t deny food to anyone under this roof.”

  “They’re not guests,” she hissed.

  “They’re under my roof.” He turned to her. He didn’t look like any farmer Royce had ever known. The body type was wrong, especially for his age. Decades behind a plow had a way of stunting a man, but he was tall, broad shouldered with powerful forearms and a straight back. “I won’t be accused of lacking generosity to strangers.” The voice was odd too-proud. Royce didn’t know too many farmers and had never spoken to one of these northern rock growers, but pride in the face of invasion was unexpected.

  “They’re criminals-outlaws on the run with the justice of the church on their heels.”

  The old man leveled a harsh look. “Lord Marbury is no criminal, but that didn’t stop him from being arrested. Now dish them each a bowl.”

  “These two aren’t Lord Marbury. You shouldn’t help them. It’ll get you in trouble.”

  “I’ve been in trouble before.”

  “It will get us in trouble too. Think about me. What about your son?”

  The man paused only a moment, then pulled the boy around so he could look the lad in the eye. “There’s doing what’s right, and there’s doing what’s safe. Most of the time you do what’s safe because doing different will get you dead for no good reason, but there are times when doing what’s safe will kill you too. Only it’ll be a different kind of death. The dying will be slow, the sort that eats from the inside until breathing becomes a curse. Understand?”