by Bell, Hilari
I wasn’t unduly dismayed, for I’d expected both these results. I’d come here mostly to distance myself from the others, and because I’d nowhere else to go, but I expected no difficulty in finding my assassin.
I had only to wait, and he’d find me.
My beloved faced a hard dilemma the next morning — she wanted to yell at me, she wanted never to speak to me again, and she couldn’t do both. I felt for her. Really. (Well, no, not really.)
“You should have waked me! And Rupert, too!”
“You couldn’t have stopped him,” I said reasonably. “I couldn’t stop him.”
“That’s not the point! The point is that the two of you made the decision without even consulting... I’m not speaking to you!”
Rupert was too busy wincing and trying to shield his eyes from the light to join in. But at least the argument, combined with the results of his indulgence, kept him from trying to hurry us off before breakfast.
And I admit, there was an odd emptiness in the place where Chant and Michael should have been riding.
On the other hand, I did not miss the dog.
We’d already guessed that the kidnappers were traveling east to Potford, where there was another river crossing, but we had no idea where they might go after that. And according to Rupert, the bridge at Potford was in the midst of town, and too wide for us to block, anyway.
“Have you been there?” I’d never heard of anything in that sleepy river town that would attract the Heir to the Realm. “I thought it was nothing but a stop on the road to Borrowston.”
“My father and I went through it on the way to Borrowston,” said Rupert, and my brows rose.
Borrowston was the largest city in the northern Realm. The residents called it “the Sword of the North,” but everyone else who’d been there called it “that ghastly frozen swamp.” It was a sea of mud in summer, a sea of frozen mud in winter, and the fumes from its smelters poison everyone year round.
“Why did you go to Borrowston?” I asked. “Why would anyone go there? Even kidnappers surely have better choices than that.”
If they didn’t I might have to go there, and Borrowston’s mosquitoes were said to carry off ... well, not horses, but rabbits and small dogs.
“I’ve been to all the major cities in the Realm,” Rupert said. “Father’s always trotting off to one fief or another — either to argue with someone, or just parade around with a troop and make his presence felt. Until I went to university, he took me with him. Borrowston’s not as bad as they say.” He smiled suddenly, though the bruises that darkened one side of his jaw must have twinged. “They do more than smelt the ore — and there’s copper and tin too, not just iron. They have mills that beat iron into steel, and they make brass. There are sculptors who’ve set up shop there, for access to the metals. But they ship the gold, silver and gems downriver to Carralan, to the stone cutters.”
The education of the Heir of the United Realm was more extensive than I’d thought.
“What about the mosquitoes?” I asked.
He grinned. “’Tis not that they’re bigger ... but there are a lot of them.”
It made sense for the High Liege to make sure his Heir knew all about the Realm he’d govern, just as Michael’s father would make sure his heir knew every corner of his own fief. Just as I might someday show my son ... what, pastures full of cows and sheep?
I had a hard time picturing it. I looked at Kathy, riding pointedly on Rupert’s other side; the thought of her holding our child in her arms was enough to resign me even to sheep and cows.
So the quicker we got Rupert back to his father, the better.
“Since you know so much about what’s going on in the Realm,” I told him, “maybe you can deduce where they might be taking Mistress Merkle.”
Rupert shook his head. “Not without some idea of who’s behind it, or what they want. If they do cross the Pottage, we can assume they’re trying to avoid Father’s authority ... but Baron Tatterman, who owns the keep where they first stopped, isn’t at all political, as far as I know.”
It turned out he knew a lot about the fiefs we passed through over the next two days, and not just about the barons’ politics. He talked about the dangers of coal mining, the unusual prevalence in magica herbs in the marshes around Kerrigen, and as we rode past a large flock of sheep, he even treated us to a lecture on hoof-rot and how it could be prevented.
Kathy, country-raised, appeared to be interested in this. I shuddered.
Tracking the coach through small villages was so easy that we had some trouble keeping behind it, and we didn’t dare overtake it till we had a plan. When we hit Potford, where they’d already crossed the Pottage, I suggested that Rupert take the time to purchase clothes that made him look less like a runaway nobleman. He also picked up some ordinary tack for his horse, and Kathy borrowed some tools at a livery stable and cut that flowing mane and tail down to a more normal length. Champion was still outstanding, but at least he was no longer a walking signpost — and Rupert’s bruised face made him look a bit less noble as well.
The High Liege, not to mention advisor Arnold, had specifically told us not to give any landholders on the other side of the river material to embarrass the throne, and upsetting the men who held the purse strings was no part of my plan.
But while Rupert was trading a magnificent saddle for a cheaper one, I took the opportunity to slip into a stationers shop and purchase a roll of their finest paper, and some better ink than the stuff I carried.
Not embarrassing the High Liege was important ... but so was getting out of this with a whole skin. And I don’t care how furiously your liege is feuding over mineral rights, no local sheriff or judicar could completely ignore a High Liege writ.
All of this took us the better part of the afternoon, and we decided to spend the night there, letting the coach draw a bit farther ahead of us. After we crossed the river the next morning, I let Rupert hurry us along almost as fast as he wanted, with the result that we rode into Alton at dusk. And while a number of people had seen the coach drive into town, no matter how many coins we flashed, no one at the other end of town had seen it depart.
Alton was a market center, almost a small city, but someone should have noticed the coach we were looking for driving out ... unless it hadn’t driven out.
“They must have stopped here for the night.” Rupert’s voice was tense with hope. “Maybe this is the chance we’ve been looking for.”
“How could they take Meg into an inn?” Kathy asked. “I can see stopping for luncheon — they could say she preferred to eat in the coach. But they can’t leave her in the coach overnight, and they can hardly haul her through the taproom in chains. She could start screaming, or tell a chambermaid she was being held against her will, beg some groom to go to the sheriff... They can’t have stopped at an inn.”
“They might,” I said. “Particularly if your friend is smart enough to pretend to be too frightened to try anything.”
Particularly if she was too frightened to try anything. There are plenty of ways to cow a prisoner into submission, but I wasn’t about to say that to either Kathy or Rupert, who both assured me that Mistress Merkle was indeed that smart.
Without Michael here to lure all the assassins in the Realm, we decided it was still smart to split up the search. Though I sent Rupert and Kathy off together, to check out the expensive coaching inns while I took the rougher part of town by the stockyards. And we all agreed to return to the stable where we’d lodged our horses by nightfall at the latest.
If anyone found the right inn before nightfall, we agreed to immediately return and get the others. To clinch the matter, I pointed out that any rescue attempted before everyone was asleep was almost certain to fail — and that would result in yet another plan we couldn’t use again.
Kathy saw the logic in this, and nodded immediately. Rupert thought it through and nodded reluctantly. I hoped I could count on one or the other of them to remember their promis
es, on the off chance they came across the inn where our villains were staying.
Because I knew villains, and those men would avoid a respectable upper-class inn like the plague.
So I went about my own search with some hope of success, a hope that intensified as I approached my sixth inn.
The Addled Cock had once been a thriving inn and tavern. It loomed over the smaller shops and houses around it, three full stories of sagging beams with cracked plaster between them. The sun was getting low, but even that cheerful light couldn’t make the Cock look good. The tavern was still thriving, judging by the noise that came through the taproom window and the number of people going in for dinner ... but thriving was relative, in this neighborhood of broken shutters and peeling paint. The whole street wore an air of, You don’t bother us, we won’t bother you. And the big sprawling inn that lorded over it added, And if you do bother us, we’ll knock out your teeth.
At first glance, you’d have thought that the fence around the inn’s yard would fall over if you sneezed at it, but there were no missing planks, even in the narrow passage that separated it from the bakeshop next door. The alley behind the yard was bigger, and the stink from the inn’s midden — they threw their garbage over the fence, instead of into a composting bin — explained why no one else was there. There was a gate into the alley, and my knife slipped easily into the crack between gate and fence post ... only to discover that this was the kind of latch that slid aside instead of lifting.
I stepped onto the fence’s central beam and swung myself up to look over it. The compost bin had long since overflowed, which explained the pile in the alley. A surprisingly sturdy stable occupied one side of the yard. In the remaining weedy ground, the coach with the crest scratched off its door was parked beside three others. I wasn’t even surprised — this place practically screamed Den of Thieves. Then the fear hit, and my heart began to pound.
I had found it. I should immediately go back and tell Rupert and Kathy. That was the agreement.
But if I did they’d come up with some crazy scheme to get Mistress Margaret out of there, and we didn’t have enough information for scheming.
If this was a burglary, I’d have spent a week scouting the place, figuring out their schedule, trying to spot some weakness. Well, if I’d been planning to burgle this place, I’d have waited till I sobered up and then wondered how, even drunk, that could have seemed like a good idea. Den of Thieves, after all.
We didn’t have a week. That coach would drive off tomorrow morning, and my beloved would never let a chance like this slip away.
That was the thought that decided me. I didn’t want Kathy anywhere near this place, until I’d scouted it as well as I could. I might not let her near it after that, even if I had to leave her bound and gagged while Rupert and I went ... adventuring, the old gods help me.
There was no one in the yard now, and no time for caution or finesse. I stepped up to the fence’s highest beam, resting one hand on top of the planks before I leapt over. It was a six-foot drop onto packed earth, so I didn’t land lightly. But nothing sprained, and I scurried over to duck behind a pile of moldy straw beside the stable. There I knelt for a while, watching the inn and pulling splinters out of my hand.
There was a weedy kitchen garden, and today had been washday, but you can’t tell much about what’s happening inside a building by looking at its back wall. So I listened instead, and the clamor from the kitchen windows confirmed that they were starting to serve dinner.
My stomach grumbled, but I ignored it. In a place like this, on the downhill slide, dinner meant that most of the inn’s employees would be working in the kitchen or the taproom. And most of the guests would be in the taproom eating. Which might give me a chance to check out the other thing I’d noticed. In this neighborhood very few windows held glass, and on this warm summer evening all the shutters had been thrown open to catch the breeze — all but the shutters of one window on the third floor.
I was once a very good burglar. My mind automatically plotted the best route — shinny up the drain pipe to the slanting beam, up that to the cross beam, and if that crack in the plaster wasn’t too crumbly... The shutters were latched from the inside, but they were dilapidated enough I could probably slide my knife blade through to lift the bar — and then swing them open to find, what? A fence making a deal for stolen loot? A bunch of footpads divvying up the take?
I had to do it, to keep Kathy from coming here, but I needed more information before I went up that drainpipe — and there was laundry drying on the line, which gave me an idea.
I folded a couple of sheets and hung them over my arm. If I met a customer in the hallway they’d take me for a member of the staff. If I met someone on the staff, I could tell them there’d been an “accident” with the sheets in my room, and that I hadn’t wanted to bother anyone. If I looked embarrassed enough they wouldn’t ask for details.
It was harder to find another way into the building. The back door opened into a hallway that passed right by the kitchen, and the front door was next to the taproom where dinner was being served now.
I’d hoped for a side door, but there weren’t any. I did, however, find a window that opened into an unused parlor toward the back of the house — and like all the other windows, its shutters were open.
Burglars love summer.
I threw the sheets into the room, followed by my boots, for the windowsill was higher than my shoulders and hard soles scrabbling against the side of a building are noisier than bare feet. Inside the room I found a corner where I couldn’t be seen and tidied myself, refolded the sheets, and calmed my breathing. Then I walked quietly to the door, peered out to be sure there was no one in the hallway, and strode down the empty corridor as if I’d been working there for years.
It’s tricky to walk confidently through a place you’ve never seen before. You can’t look around to see where you want to go, you can’t hesitate, and you can’t hurry too much either.
This hall led straight to the front entrance, with the stairs coming down on the left. Doors on the right side of the hallway opened into half a dozen parlors, proclaiming that this inn had once served people who could pay to dine in private. They were all empty, now.
A big archway on the other side of the entry hall revealed the tables at the back of the taproom, complete with customers awaiting dinner and a girl serving them. She was taking an order, mostly turned away from me, and I swung around the newel post and walked upstairs with my sheets.
I have no idea if anyone noticed me, because after that first glance I never looked back.
I was prepared to walk past whoever I met with a pleasant nod, and offer either story if they stopped me, but I met no one on the stairs as I climbed to the second floor and then the third. The third floor hallway was empty on this side of the building, but the room I wanted was at the back. I walked (confidently) down the hall, turned the corner ... and saw that I’d hit the target. The man who sat on a plain wooden chair, outside the room with the latched shutters, was one of the three who’d ridden past our hiding place to get help to move the log.
The knife in his hands didn’t intimidate me; he was using it to entertain himself, carving something on the head of a stick. The shavings made a mess on the floor at his feet.
He might have been watching us from behind the ramparts at the old keep ... but he also might not have, and to turn back the moment I’d seen him would look suspicious. I balanced the sheets on my arm, and gave him a pleasant nod as I walked past him and on around the corner at the far end of the hall.
It was so quiet I heard the chair creak as he shifted his weight — he could hardly help but hear my footsteps. So I kept on walking till I came to an open door, which I closed behind me without trying to be either loud or quiet.
This was an inner room, with no windows and four beds that were probably rented to those who couldn’t afford a private room. I wanted to sit down and breathe till my heartbeat slowed, but Jack had taught me
that verisimilitude was best achieved by the real thing. I stripped one of the beds and remade it, and if my sheets weren’t as tightly tucked as the chambermaid had left them, I doubted anyone who rented this bed would complain.
Since our adventure with Roseman, I hadn’t thought about Jack and the things he taught me nearly as much as I used to.
With the perfectly clean sheets crumpled up in my arms, I went back around and past the guard once more. This time he didn’t even look up as I went by.
Down the stairs, down the corridor to the empty parlor, and out the window to the yard. I was about to throw the sheets in an empty laundry basket when a thought occurred to me.
I now knew all I was likely to learn. The room where Mistress Margaret was imprisoned was on the third floor, behind latched shutters, with a guard outside the door. Maybe one inside with her, as well?
If we came back in the middle of the night the rest of the inn would be asleep ... but how many more guards would be in that room?
The sun had dropped beneath the horizon while I was inside, but even in the deepening dusk, anyone who happened to look could see me climbing up that wall to the shuttered window.
On the other hand, there wasn’t anyone around to look.
The staff and customers were busy with dinner, and the odds of finding Mistress Merkle alone in that guarded room were better now than they would ever be again.
Besides, Kathy would be with us if we came back later. If I got Rupert’s wench away now, there’d be no reason for Kathy to come within a mile of this place...
Love really does make people crazy.
I went back to my blind behind the straw pile to cut the sheets into strips and knot them into a rope. The strips had to be pretty thick before I trusted them to hold my weight, and the knots used up a lot of their length. I had to take several more sheets off the drying line before I had a rope I thought was long enough, and it made an unwieldy bundle wrapped around my chest.