The captain who entered the kitchen now was diminished, pale and drawn.
Not weak, though, Matt said. Still strong enough to drive that sword through you.
The captain advanced on David, his teeth bared in a feral grin. The point of his sword came to rest on exactly the same spot it had pierced in the chamber of the Sunstone.
“I warned you,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I warned you of the cost of mercy. And now you’ll pay that. In spades.” He pressed the tip of the sword through David’s shirt and the blade sliced through the thick fabric, breaking the skin with ease.
“Stop,” David’s mother cried out, pushing between them.
The captain rounded on Mareigh, slapping her so hard with his gloved hand that she spun and stumbled to the floor.
“Don’t—” David said, desperate to protect her, stopped only by the cold steel of the sword against his chest.
“Or what, whoreson?” the captain spat. “You’ve done your worst. You had me in your power and you stayed your hand. Now it’s my turn.” He held David’s eye, neither of them flinching, neither of them blinking.
The sword-tip drove deeper into David’s chest. David flinched, but he did not look away.
“Captain?” one of the men said. Then, after a moment, he repeated, carefully, “Captain?”
Bream flinched. “What?” he snapped.
“The Queen,” the man said, sounding uncomfortable.
“Don’t tell me about the Queen.”
The man tightened his lips and took a step back.
It was enough for the magus, however. “So the Queen wants us alive,” he said, moving toward the captain.
“The Queen just wants the Stone,” he said, his attention wavering between David and the magus.
David saw the opportunity that Loren had provided him and took a half-step back, away from Bream’s blade. The front of his shirt was wet and warm with his own blood.
“I could bring her your heads at the end of a pike and she would be more than pleased.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” the magus said. “I think she gave you explicit orders that we were to be brought to her unharmed.” Something flickered in the captain’s eyes. “And you know how the Queen treats those who disobey her orders.”
“As you will soon know first-hand,” the captain said.
“I expect I shall.”
David released the breath that he had been holding. This was probably only a momentary reprieve, but it was better than being slaughtered in his mother’s kitchen.
The magus extended his hands. “And will you be binding us to take us to the Queen?”
David didn’t understand: with his hands tied, the magus would be helpless, unable to draw on his powers.
The captain looked at him scornfully. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” he said. “Your herbs will do you no good now.”
Then David caught a hint of a smile, little more than a twitch in the corners of the magus’s mouth.
“Let’s go,” the captain barked to his men. “Take the prisoners.”
“All of them, sir?”
The captain looked at Mareigh, and at Tamas, sitting white-faced at the table. “No, leave these two.”
The captain’s eyes met Mareigh’s.
“But make sure they know we were here,” he said coldly.
He pushed David roughly by the shoulder, guiding him through the doorway into the tavern. As they followed, the men responded like animals in a burst of concentrated fury, attacking the tavern, overturning tables, smashing chairs and glasses. David could hear Mareigh crying out from the kitchen, but there was nothing he could do.
“That’s enough,” the captain said after a minute. “Let’s go.”
Not a piece of furniture remained whole, the floor scattered with chunks of wood and shards of glass. Mareigh gasped as she came through the door, but when the captain looked at her she kept her face expressionless.
“To the Queen?” the magus asked.
“Of course to the Queen,” he snapped. “Who else?”
“Perhaps the King might have an interest in this.”
Mareigh stiffened.
“The King has no interest in you whatsoever,” he said, his voice flat. “Your time as his trusted adviser is clearly at an end.”
The captain shoved him forward, driving them into the night.
The hotel elevator seemed to take forever. Jacqui paced as she waited. Maybe he was just upstairs, waiting for them to get back.
If not, she could call the police. That would probably be the best thing … Call the police? And tell them what? That her husband had been kidnapped? But he hadn’t been. Not really. And he’d only been gone for a few minutes.
She could tell them about Tony Markus, and the book … But she would sound like Chris, ranting and crazy.
Her heart fell as she opened the door to the empty hotel room.
“Damn it,” she muttered in the doorway, pulling David close.
She led him into the room and sat down next to him at the foot of the bed. She couldn’t go to the police. And she had no way of getting in touch with Chris, with his cell phone still in his jacket pocket.
His phone.
She didn’t draw breath as she started to rifle through his jacket pockets. Notebook. Pens. Spare pack of cigarettes. Wallet. She found his cell phone in the left inner pocket. She sat back down on the foot of the bed and started to scroll down his contacts.
It took her several minutes to work through the list, having to press at each cryptic nickname to figure out who he meant: Big Dick was Chris’s shorthand for his Canadian editor, Richard; Roger Dodger was how he referred to his agent—former agent; John Castille was the name that Chris had used for Dale in Coastal Drift. There were a bunch of others, publicists and newspaper contacts most likely.
She found Cat near the bottom of the list, under “Took Exec.” Executor? She took a deep breath as she pressed the button for details, hoping against hope.
But no. There was no address, just her phone number. She had no idea what she was going to say, but she pushed the Send button.
“The AT&T Wireless customer you are trying to reach …”
“Damn it.”
She looked at David, still sitting at the end of the bed, his feet together, his back straight, staring into the mirror on the opposite wall, his reflection staring back at him.
“What are we going to do, David?” she asked.
She put the phone back into Chris’s jacket. When her fingers brushed against the notebook again, she pulled it out.
On the front cover, Chris had written “Lazarus Took” with a silver pen, the way he labelled all his notebooks. The words were neat and regular, unlike most of his writing. Her hands shook as she slipped off the elastic closure and began flipping through the pages.
“Ha.”
Close to the front of the book, in spidery black fountain pen ink, was a page titled “Cat Took.” Chris had added under her name, at various times, “webmaster,” “Executor,” “Granddaughter,” then her e-mail address and her cell phone number, each on a separate line.
And last, her address.
The streets of Colcott were cool and silent. The moon hung high over the walls. The sharp snap of the soldiers’ boots echoed in the still air.
The men marched in unison, staring straight ahead as they cut through alleys and lanes, retracing the route that had brought Dafyd to the castle the first time.
“This is awfully familiar,” David muttered, and the magus glanced at him sharply.
“Watch what you say,” the old man said, darting his eyes to the guards around them.
“Does that mean you have a plan?” David whispered, keeping his voice as low as he could manage.
The magus shook his head almost imperceptibly. “No. No plan.” David could barely hear him. “Things are unfolding unexpectedly …”
“Then what was all that back at the tavern?” he asked, t
hinking of the magus offering his hands to be bound, and his mention of the King.
“When it comes time,” the magus said, “one must play all the cards in one’s hand.”
The rooms of Raven’s Moor were dark, and it was difficult to distinguish any details as Cat led me through the house toward the tower.
I wanted to slow down, to look around. I couldn’t help myself—I knew that he had been dead for more than half a century, but I wanted to spend some time in the rooms that Lazarus Took had inhabited, just looking. Remembering him as the writer I had loved, once.
“It’s right through here,” Cat said, leading me into a huge, old kitchen, then to a narrow staircase on the other side.
“He wanted to keep his private rooms away from the rest of the house,” she said as we started up the dim stairs. “He needed the quiet for his work.”
I could relate.
The top of the stairs widened into a spacious office. I had to catch my breath: the room was lined with bookshelves, crammed to bursting with leatherbound volumes. The tables and the leather chair were stacked with papers and more books. A large, ornately finished oak desk dominated the room, with a leather chair behind it, and a closed door behind that.
“This is it,” Cat said, sweeping her arm to take in the whole room, from the shelves and desk to the high windows and the door leading out to the balcony, overlooking the Pacific. “The scene of the crime.”
Her voice was playful, but her words were jarring: being here, in the most private of his places, I could picture Lazarus Took pacing the floor, letting the view of the trees and the ocean distract him while he was trying to write. I could picture him reading in the chair, holding his book with one hand, a glass of brandy in the other. Or behind the desk, his pen flying over the pages of a notebook.
I was picturing myself, really, imagining myself living and working in this room.
I took a step past Cat.
“I think you’ll find everything you need in here,” she said. “It’s as he left it. I couldn’t bring myself to clean it up.”
I nodded appreciatively.
“I’m going to find the cordless so you can call your wife,” she said, turning away. “Take a look around.”
I was surprised, first, by how comfortable the study seemed. I had expected a palpable sense of menace, of cruelty, but I felt nothing of the sort. Just a writer’s room, a place of creativity and contemplation. There was a pipe rack on the desk, and I imagined that I could still smell traces of sweet tobacco in the air.
I looked across the bookshelves, but I didn’t find what I’d expected. No magical texts. Instead, the shelves were packed tight with volumes of philosophy, Victorian children’s books and early editions of the classics that would likely be worth a fortune to a collector. There was no dust on the books or the shelves, or anywhere in the room for that matter. Cat might have been reluctant to move anything, but she kept it clean.
I turned toward the window. This wasn’t the room of an evil man. There had to be somewhere else in the house, a ritual room, a place where Took could shake off his disguise, his respectability. I considered the door behind the desk. It made sense: behind the facade of gentility, I’d find the real Lazarus Took.
I pushed the chair aside so I could get to the door. I jiggled the knob, only to find it locked.
There had to be a key. He’d have kept it somewhere close, out of sight but convenient.
I reached for the main drawer of the desk, but before I could open it, my breath stopped fast in my throat.
There, centred on the blotter, was a copy of To the Four Directions, as if Took had been looking at it the last time he had sat here.
The upper right corner was dinged.
“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered, feeling suddenly like I was going to be sick. My hands were shaking as I reached for the book … as I opened the front cover …
“Oh, Jesus.”
Matthew Corvin, Seattle, 1976
I dropped the cover closed.
I didn’t even want to think about her motivations, what game she was playing. I just had to grab the book and get out, before she came back.
“Oh, Chris,” Cat said, almost flirtatiously, “you should see yourself.”
Caught.
She was standing at the top of the stairs. In her right hand she held a gun, levelled at my chest. The black hole of the barrel gaped hungrily.
“Going somewhere?” she asked.
Mareigh watched through the front doorway of the tavern as the guards disappeared up the narrow street, torches held high against the midnight black. The door lay in splinters at her feet.
She watched until they passed out of sight before she turned back inside. She ignored the destruction that the men had left in their wake: there would be time to clean later. Time to repair. But not now.
She almost bumped into Tamas when she entered the kitchen. He jumped back before he realized it was her. The boy was drawn and pale, his face twisted in anguish.
“Oh gods, Mareigh,” he choked, looking around the tavern behind her.
She could see the little boy inside his young man’s body, the boy she had known almost his whole life.
“What did they do?”
She shook her head. “Nothing that can’t be undone.”
“I’m sorry, Mareigh,” he said tearfully. “I could have …”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, but her voice was gentle. “There’s nothing you could have done that wouldn’t have ended with them taking Dafyd anyway, and leaving you dead.”
He looked like she had slapped him, the words that she had intended to comfort him having precisely the opposite effect. “I could have tried.”
“Go home,” she said, fighting the urge to cup his cheek in her hand. “See to your mother. It’s best you keep your distance from all this, for her sake.”
He looked crestfallen, defeated. “He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?” he asked, in the voice of that little boy.
“Of course he will,” she lied.
Jacqui forced herself to drive slowly along the winding backroads outside Seaside. She knew she was going south toward Cannon Beach, but out here the roads were largely unmarked, and she had already taken a wrong turn, requiring a lengthy backtrack.
She had Chris’s road atlas spread open on the passenger seat, with David buckled into the back. Every few minutes she would ease the van onto the shoulder and double-check the thin blue lines to reassure herself that she was on the right route, silently cursing the time it was costing her.
With the sun going down, the trees along the sides of the road cast shadows that plunged the road ahead into almost complete darkness. She clenched the fingers of both hands tight around the steering wheel and craned forward. She let the van slow as she followed the turns of the narrow road, barely more than a path worn through the forest. She didn’t let herself worry about what she would do when she got to the house: she just had to find it.
One step at a time.
Mareigh pulled the stool from beside her bed over to the cupboard. Balancing on one foot, she stretched her arms deep into the highest shelf. Her fingers searched blindly for a moment before they brushed against the smooth corner. Stretching a little farther, she managed to grip the box and pull it free.
She had screamed at him when he tried to give it to her. Had told him that she would never use it, that as far as she was concerned, he was already dead to her. Her soldier. Her hero. Riding away from her. She had made a mistake, and would accept and deal with the consequences.
As the memories came back to her, thoughts that she had suppressed for almost two decades, she stepped down and set the box on the bed.
It was a plain wooden box. It wasn’t even locked—there was no use in securing things that she didn’t care about.
“But there has to be something I can do?” he had pleaded, uncomfortable in his sudden powerlessness.
“Yes,” she said, her right hand cradling, unconsciously, the
small swell of her belly. Something that would make a difference to her, that would enable a life for her and for their unborn child. For a mother to raise a child alone meant destitution; this, at least, would address a few concerns.
When she told him what she wanted, he stared disbelievingly at her for a moment, then burst into laughter.
“A tavern?” he said. “I would give you anything in the world, and all you want is a tavern?”
“A tavern is a life. My life. Our child’s future.”
Her hand shook now as she opened the box.
He had eventually agreed. “Is there nothing else?”
Oh, there was so much else she had wanted, but those things were not hers to have, and she knew better than to even mention them.
When she shook her head, he reached into the pocket of his tunic. “I understand why you have asked for what you have. But there will come a day when you may require something else. For yourself. Or for our child.”
“There won’t.”
He withdrew an envelope and held it out to her. “If that day should ever arrive, come to me. Bring this letter”—he’d placed it in her hand—“and this.” He twisted the large signet ring off his finger. When she tried to wave it away, he pressed it on her. “You are carrying my child,” he said, in a voice of exquisite pain and sadness.
She took the ring and the letter, and put them into the box that same day. And later, when she and Dafyd, then weeks old and still hungry at the breast, had moved across the channel from Colcott Town to the city inside the walls, from the scullery of the inn to the tavern that bore the name she had given it, she put the box on the highest shelf and tried to forget about it.
“If there is anything I can do …”
Yes. Yes, darling, there is.
“How did you get this?” I gestured at the book on the desk.
“It always comes back,” Cat said. “It’s part of the charm.” She smiled. “Well, a charm, actually. A homing spell, you might say. This time it happened exactly the way you thought it would, Chris. Tony Markus called me, saying that we needed to talk about Lazarus’s ‘legacy,’ as he called it. And here we are.”
Bedtime Story Page 44