The conversation between them was practiced, and on the surface conveyed nothing at first. “Tis a fine day.” Yender was saying, and it was, in truth. A bit of summer’s leftovers come in the middle of a cold autumn, and the sun was fine and warm. Amar barely needed his sweater. “A fine day for fishing, I’d say.”
“Yes.” Amar answered. “Or a good morning to drink an ale and put a bit of line in the water and watch it float.”
Yender laughed. “Aye. I’m told they used to be a bridge hereabouts, and ye could fish off the bridge. I reckon that’s all gone, though. Pity.”
“Nay, ‘tis no pity that.” Amar answered, hoisting his cup. “On the Moonday you’d set on the bridge all quiet like, just drinking and fishing, and along would come the prior asking why you wasn’t at temple. There’s no running away from the man on the bridge. I prefer my boats.”
Yender nodded and grinned. “Aye, but when I fish, I really want to catch a fish, not lie about and getting drunk. Or at least the both of them and not just the one. I hear there’s fine fishing on the Orr side of the river. The Pulflover side, too.”
“What’s an Arker man know of that?” Amar asked, but he was getting an idea now of what the man wanted.
“Well, I’m not just a tinsmith, of course.” Yender replied cagily. “I’ve an interest in where the tin comes from. My kin have a mine in the Danan Hills, and we get tin, of course, but sometimes nickel, too. I hear there’s a market for nickel in Orr.”
Amar raised an eyebrow. “Too bad you have to surrender all of your nickel to the baron, then. I’m sure the steelsmiths in Orr would love to produce Arker steel.”
“Aye, tis too bad indeed.” Yender agreed. “They pay a pretty penny for nickel in Orr, I’ve heard.”
Amar nodded. “I was wondering about you.” He said after a minute and in a low breath. “I heard you were asking a lot of questions about things here in Root’s Bridge. Questions about Lord Malli and the like.”
“Seems you hear a lot, Amar.” Yender replied. “Your name came up also. I understand you do a lot of fishing on both sides of the river. Seems like you could use a friend who also likes fishing to come along and conversate. Seems like this here Root’s Bridge isn’t troubled much by excise men or folk who like to nose about a boat and see what manner of fish you’ve caught.”
Amar smiled broadly. Smuggling nickel into Orr could be an amazingly profitable venture. Still, it was Orr, and the Duke of Orr would need to get a big piece of the profit to keep his men out of things. So would Malli Adkel. “It’s like a jewelry store, though, fishing on this river. You want to try on a necklace, you has to show your penny first.”
Yender put a hand inside of his cloak, as if scratching at an itch. The edge of a gilder shone briefly between his fingers, and then another. Amar’s mouth began to water despite himself.
He was a peculiar man, this Amar Stoneholt. He had half a dozen illegal and semi-legal enterprises, any one of which would have made him a substantial living, but he continued to live in his poor man’s house, all alone amid the bracken by the water. He had five large and well-appointed boats on the river and he even possessed a share in a ship down to Mortentia City, but he only ever took out his little fishing punt, and he rowed it himself. His personal poverty was more than just a façade to hide his wealth, it was his chosen manner of living, and he would have no more thought to surrender his poor man’s dinner at evening time than he would have thought to dress up in fancy clothing or ride about in a carriage.
In his poor man’s shack there was a large wooden chest under the floor, and when the night was full dark and the risk of a neighbor stopping in was gone, sometimes he would open the chest and count his accumulated riches, but he never spent a penny of it more than he had to, nor did he intend to leave it to anyone.
Yender Tinsmith had watched him the night before, from a hidden place in the brush just outside of Amar’s grimy window, and he’d been amazed at the quantity of gold and silver the old crook had accumulated. He did not doubt that his two gilders had been added to it.
Malli Adkel took every precaution he knew. He climbed into one black carriage by the quarry, then into a brown one in the middle of the Kundrell road, changing drivers and clothes. The brown carriage took him to Root’s Bridge, and he did not stop at his own house, but another, and he walked through the back row to his own home, held in the name of another man. He gave a brief greeting to the guard at the back door, walked into the den and relaxed.
He walked into the kitchen and ate a roll, still warm from the oven. Upstairs a hot bath would be waiting, for his maidservant Mati, the same Mati he’d restored to her position in the D’root keep, was very diligent in ensuring his well-being. He shared this house with her although he didn’t sleep with her, a nondescript estate that was little more than an elegantly furnished cottage, and she had her own quarters in the back. She kept the house scrupulously clean, an easy task for a woman who was used to maintaining a much larger place.
He stripped and climbed into the bath, a large copper kettle he had purchased in Elderest and paid a premium to have installed here. He washed and lay for a long time under the water, easing the tensions from his body until it was no longer hot. He climbed from the bath and donned his robe and slippers, deciding to have a last snifter of brandy before bed. It had been a long and tiring day.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs he was shocked to see the timber man, the same one he’d had whipped, standing in the middle of his living room floor with a bloodied broad sword in his hand. “Evening milord.” The man said simply.
“What is the meaning of this?” Malli demanded, backing away toward the stairs behind him. “How dare you enter my home?”
A strong hand pushed him forward into the room, and he turned and saw an unfamiliar face. A short man with thick shoulders and a wide and heavy face like a bulldog’s reached out and pushed him again. The man was dressed in a tradesman’s smock, a thing of dark leather like a butcher would wear. He had a short sword in his fist. “Who are you? What do you want?” He demanded. “I am not armed.”
“Good.” The man said, sheathing his weapon. “Blades aren’t my way.” Then he hit Malli square in the lower jaw, knocking loose several teeth. Malli staggered and looked for a way out, but the timber man stood in front of the kitchen with his sword, and several other old men he recognized from Root’s Bridge had come into the living room.
“Garnis O’Rockwall!” Malli cried, recognizing the miller. “What are you doing?”
“’Tis a reckoning, Malli. For Captain Hambar.” The miller said. “The account is past due.”
“Aye, for Captain Hambar.” Said another old man, the glass blower, Malli thought.
“Guards!” Malli cried, but he sensed that it was too late to call for them. His guards were men from Elderest, installed by Maldiver at his insistence, and little loved in Root’s Bridge. The blood on the timber man’s sword told their story. The man with the face of a bulldog kicked Malli’s feet from underneath him and shoved him down. Although the man was shorter than he was, his arms were as thick as the corner posts on a castle door.
“I have gold!” Malli exclaimed, even as the man batted his arms aside and reached out with his horribly thick hands to wrap fingers like iron pincers around Malli’s throat. His eyes were wide and intense, and on his face was a grimace of pure hatred.
“We’ll be having your gold, for you’re a thief and betrayer. In the afterlife ye tell them Yender O’root done ye with his bare hands.” The man said grimly. “And give my regards to the Black Duke when ye get to the hells.”
Amar Stoneholt was no fool. The so-called Arker man had told a good story, and if it hadn’t been for the Zoric men earlier, Amar’s greed would have made him fall for it. But Amar was cunning and suspicious, and he’d already had four of his men killed or gone missing to those folk from Zoric, and that barely a month gone. Zoric and Arker shared a border, but Amar knew the difference in accents.
He sat on a stump and waited with his little fishing boat tied up on the banks of the Dunwater, in a little hidden cove he often used for the smuggling of goods duty free into Elderest, Orr and Pulflover. Concealed in the brush were Rook, Farros and Moggs, hard men armed with long knives. It wasn’t the first time they’d done murder here, and the men were good at keeping their tongues. It was unlikely that anyone would come looking after this Yender Tinsmith, but if they did they could search the river all they wanted. It was sixteen ells to the bottom here, and lots of carp to do away with the body once proper weighted and sunk.
“He looked a tough man.” Amar was telling Rook, and Rook nodded his agreement.
“He did. But naught the three of us can’t handle. He carried no blade.”
“Aye, but for this business I expect he’ll have at least a knife. You lads take you no chances.” Amar’s own knife was tucked up beneath the back of his stained and dirty tunic.
The sun came up and the day began to grow warmer.
“Dawn you said.” Rook said impatiently, his voice coming from his place hidden in the brush. It was a cold morning, but not cold enough to keep the bloodflies in their beds, and all four men were suffering their bites.
“Aye, dawn it was.” Amar replied. “Something could be keeping the man.”
“Mayhap he’s abed with that L’nelle again.” Moggs said suggestively. “I reckon she could make a man late.”
Amar laughed with them, but he didn’t share Moggs’ opinion. This Yender hadn’t seemed the type to let a slipskirt interfere with the doing of business. He waited another hour, until it was far past dawn and they’d all missed breakfast, then he slapped and killed a bloodfly, leaving a little red spot on his sleeve and stood up from the stump he’d been sitting on. “He’s played me for a fool.” He said in a disgusted voice. “He’s not coming. You lads head on to work. We’ll get another opportunity.”
He climbed down into the punt and rowed to his own dock, a quarter of a league down the river, tied it up and walked up to his house. The door to the river had been kicked in and the lock broken. In a panic of apprehension he ran into the house. The carpet had been thrown aside and the floorboard ripped open. The chest he had spent a lifetime filling with gold was gone. The room was just as he had left it in the morning, and nothing else was disturbed. Then he saw the glove. It was a finely tooled glove of doeskin, treated and dyed in green, and he knew it immediately. Of course! Who else would have known where Amar kept his gold?
He ran all the way to the Dulcimer, surprising Farros behind the bar, getting the place ready for the day’s custom. Several people were already there awaiting brunch, and later they would testify that Farros and Amar left the Dulcimer in a panic, and that Amar was carrying a knife openly.
Witnesses who had been at the Ferry’s Landing that morning saw Amar and Farros come in, and after a hasty and secretive talk with Rook, all three had gone out straight away, leaving their angry customers to look elsewhere for their mid-morning meal. Tammos the blacksmith saw Amar, Farros, Rook, Moggs and Fat Loseth walk in front of his open smithy, for he’d been making nails, which was boring and tedious work. When he’d seen them coming by, all in a panic and ‘looking like murder,’ as he put it, he’d looked up and paid attention. He remembered all five of them, and what they were wearing. He wasn’t absolutely sure, but he thought Amar might have had a knife in his hand.
Garnis O’Rockwall, the miller who had been in town for twenty something years and who was well-known and liked by all, swore that he heard Amar say ‘I’ll kill the thieving bastard’ when the five passed in front of the bakery.
Andimus O’Morin, the glassblower, a man of impeccable reputation, testified that he heard Amar talking as they passed by his shop. “We’ll kill all of the fuckers.” Amar had said, and Andimus begged the court’s pardon for the foul language. “T’was his words and not mine.”
But to magister Askelyne, who was called in special from Kundrell to hear the case, it was the testimony of Dwennon Woodwright, a former soldier and a respected long-time resident of Root’s Bridge that had put the thing beyond doubt. He had heard screams and the sounds of fighting coming from a cottage in town that nobody was sure who lived in, and he’d run to fetch the warders right away. The warders had come upon Amar Stoneholt and his four co-conspirators leaving the house in a hurry, and none of them telling the same story as to why they were there. In the house they’d found Malli Adkel strangled, and his two house guards murdered as well, with bloody knives laying about and the house ransacked. There was no trace of Malli’s maidservant Mati, and inquiries throughout the area produced nothing.
When put to the question Moggs admitted they’d gone there after money that Amar said Malli had stolen, and this was corroborated by Rook, who broke after only an hour in thumbscrews. Loseth the Ferryman and Farros the barkeep were spared the question because the others had already confessed. Lorten Askelyne was not from Dunwater, and he did not put men to the question for no purpose.
None of the five would admit to the murders, and they told a confusing and inconsistent story of finding the bodies already there. Their story was given the lie by the testimony of Dwennon Woodwright, and their attempting to discredit him by the mere fact that he’d previously been flogged for debt was both shameless and self-serving. When Amar tried to bring in a wild story about some tinsmith from Arker, it was plain he had become desperate.
Wild stories and weak attempts at impeachment spared them nothing, for the evidence was quite clear. They were all promptly hanged, for even in Root’s Bridge freemen may not kill members of the gentry, no matter how recently raised, with impunity.
Yender O’root rode steadily into the evening, and he kept a wary eye, for even on the well-patrolled king’s roads of Pulflover, one might encounter a highwayman. He had a woman with him, and she rode her own horse and contemplated her future optimistically. Mati the housekeeper would become something quite a bit more once she reached the merry old town of Arker, and she jingled the twenty gilders she’d been paid for her silence more than once. It was enough to see her pensioned and living in a fine house, and her still young enough to marry.
They were riding thus, her behind him and a packhorse laden with sacks that looked like grain but were in fact full of Amar and Malli’s gold bringing up the rear when they encountered four grim looking men with dirty faces, shabby beards and light blue eyes, coming on to evening. The men were a hard-looking lot, riding ill-bred hill ponies with shaggy hides and ribs showing.
“Yender O’root.” Their leader called. “You pop-eyed lunatic. You’re going the wrong fooking way, you idjit. Root’s Bridge is behind you.”
“Shut your mouth, Abinar sheepstealer. It’s ye who’s going the wrong way. Unless you’re looking for a bath house, and surely ye ought to be. Ye stink like one of your prize hogs. Ye Roots were too slow, as usual. The black griffin rides again and I’ve already settled for Root’s Bridge.” He laughed grimly.
“What, all by yourself? I’ll believe that when I see it.”
“Go on and see it, then. Be damned if I have another word for a sheep-stealing pig farmer if my first word isn’t good enough. It’s like ye lot to send four men, and when was one of us not enough fer a job like this?”
Abinar paused, as if considering his retort, while his fellow Roots fingered the hilts of their long knives and eyed the two riders speculatively. But the peace of the Green Hills held for the moment and finally the old man nodded and gave the younger man a grudging smile. “All right, Yender. Tell me what you done. P’raps you’ll save me a ride in the dark.”
Chapter 77: Silver Run, Diminios Dominion, Mid-Leath
When Raine Unhalsen walked in out of the cold and dusty wind and into the Silver Penny, his favorite tavern in Silver Run, starting a rebellion was in no place in his thoughts. He might have chosen a different place, but he liked the Silver Penny, and it was the closest tavern to the stockyard, where he’d finally driven in his herd. Coincidentally th
e Silver Penny was the closest tavern to the king’s road south, so it was the first place where the king’s men placed the notices.
Raine was curious, and a bit flush with the earnest money for the sale of his herd, for the drovers were still paying high penny for walking beef, what with the war and all. So he’d ordered two flagons of ale at once, and asked the tavern keeper where he might find a clean ten-penny whore, and incidentally, “let’s all hear what the news be from the king’s town.”
The truth was Raine couldn’t read a single letter of any kind of chickenscratch, and he’d never much felt the lack. There was always some know-it-all around eager to show off his excessive learning, and the tavern keeper was no exception.
The Silver Penny was busy for autumn, for the free cattlemen like Raine were bringing in their half-wild herds, and prices had not fallen a bit since spring. It was a fine year to be a drover, and money was flowing as freely as the ale and the talk.
“Warrant.” The tavern keeper said importantly, obviously proud of his letters. “Information is sought as to the whereabouts of the King’s Eye Lanae Brookhouse.”
“That’s an old one.” A middle-aged drover with a sun-beaten and shiny look to his face said. “She’s been looked for since Mardis.”
“No, she were found. Looks like she’s lost again.” The tavern keeper replied. “This warrant’s not two weeks old. Now you lot let me finish.”
“Go ahead.” Raine said, leaning back in his chair.
“Lanae Brookhouse is sought in connection with the kidnap and murder of the Prince Kaelen D’Cadmouth, and the kidnap of Queen Eleinel D’Cadmouth. She is both dangerous and tending to murder. If she is captured, do not attempt to question her, but deliver her and any companions to the nearest royal garrison.”
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 102