Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda

by Joel Rosenberg

  It had taken no great effort for Beralyn to say a few unkind words about that Greta to Thomen, although she had had to be careful to not be too transparent. This Greta would be an acceptable match — and if Thomen didn’t choose her, there were easily a dozen young ladies of perfectly acceptable lineage in the capital at the moment, and more available on demand. Leria Euar’den had, surprisingly, been very useful in helping to arrange social occasions for visiting young nobles — she seemed to have quite a knack for it.

  “Oh,” Greta said. “I so dislike hearing talk of war on such a pleasant day.”

  Thomen smiled, and reached out and rested his hand on hers. “Then we shall have no more talk of war,” he said. “Peace is not nearly as good for building legends, but much better for the building of nations.”

  The margrave mirrored Thomen’s smile as he reached for his glass. “That’s worth inscribing on the castle gates, if you don’t mind my saying so. Still, that was very impressive.” His hand fluttered again toward where the horsemen still stood in line.

  The goo from the shattered gourds still dripped down the side of the decurion’s face, but he stared unblinkingly ahead, as though not noticing.

  “That aside, there are much more pleasant things to talk of than war,” Miron said, “and even more entertaining to talk of than trade and treaties, if the Emperor doesn’t mind me saying so.”

  “Like, for example, the various marriages that are in the offing?” the margrave suggested. “I understand that the lovely Lady Leria is soon to be married to your brother.”

  “Yes, the Dowager Empress was kind enough to summon her here to discuss the arrangements.” Miron nodded. “It’s quite a touching story. They were childhood sweethearts, you know, and Forinel took it into his head to abandon his duties in the barony, and hared off to the Katharhd, having all sorts of just wonderful adventures, although I’ve never quite heard all the details, and if there’s some reason why they have … decided not to wait until the autumn Parliament, I —”

  “I don’t think you have ever asked your brother for any of the details,” Leria said. “I think you’ve been far too busy complaining to everybody with a title, here and in Keranahan, that Forinel is unsuited for running a barony, and that you ought to —”

  “Enough.” The Emperor raised a hand. “I have no objection to us airing our minor disputes out loud. In fact, I insist on it — although I also insist that we don’t do it in front of Margrave Den Hacza. After all, I wouldn’t want any of you to give the margrave the impression that Holtun-Bieme is other than united.”

  “Of course it is not,” Miron said. “It’s utterly clear that the margrave is far too wise to not fail to think anything other than otherwise.”

  Miron’s compounded double negatives were hard for Beralyn to follow, which was no doubt intended.

  “Please.” The margrave waved the issue away. “It’s of no import — in fact, I find these open discussions something of a relief from the … strictures of King Belerus’s court. It’s far more free, and frankly more interesting, here. We have all these visitors from Pandathaway, Kiar, Enkiar — it seems that one can hardly take a step without tripping over some visiting envoy, delegate, or ambassador.”

  The fact that the margrave was mentioning that meant that he knew that the Emperor knew about those visitors. Not that Thomen had seen fit to mention so much as a word about it to his own mother.

  Den Hacza took a pastry off a tray and nibbled at it. “Still, I’m curious as to the subject of this demonstration, if you don’t mind my saying so. It’s long been understood by all that the Empire’s cavalry are perhaps even the equal of our own — our horses are better, of course, and I think I see more than a little Nyphien breeding in some of their mounts — but as for me, I’d find it much more entertaining to see a demonstration of rifle marksmanship. I think that my own troops have taken quite well to this new thing — although I must tell you that we’ve now more than a few deaf decurions; it’s quite noisy.

  “But one hears so much about your soldiers’ accuracy with rifles, and while I’m not a skeptical man, I’ve always thought that it’s much more interesting to see something myself than it is to hear tales.”

  Thomen nodded. “If you wish it, then it can surely be arranged.”

  “I’d like that very much,” the margrave said. “Could we arrange for that, perhaps, tomorrow, before I have to take my leave? I —”

  “Why not now?” Thomen pushed himself to his feet, and smoothed his tunic down around him, then held up a hand, fingers spread, when the rest started to rise. “Please, sit — this is just for …” He stopped himself, and shook his head. “No, perhaps everybody should see. It might be entertaining.”

  He turned to Beralyn. “Mother, would you be kind enough to lead anybody who is interested up to the ramparts — the eastern walk?”

  He turned about, picked up another gourd from the table, and walked over to where the horsemen were still waiting.

  ***

  Beralyn plodded slowly up the steps. Let the others follow at her pace. Everybody in the courtyard had, of course, decided to be interested, which was just as well for them.

  The margrave was quickly at her elbow. “May I offer my arm?”

  She forced herself to smile. “Why, of course, and I thank you.”

  She took hold of his offered arm, but didn’t rest any weight on it. She was perfectly capable of walking, after all. She was old, yes, but she wasn’t a cripple. She would have snapped at any Biemish who had dared to suggest that she couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs by herself — she had had to do that once, only — but if somebody was going to offend the margrave, it wouldn’t be her. Control was important.

  What was Thomen doing, though?

  The margrave asked the same question out loud. “I’m curious as to what the Emperor has planned. Would you consider enlightening me?”

  She forced a smile. “I think that the Emperor would have told you, if he didn’t want it to be a surprise.” She tried to nod knowingly. “My son is a very straightforward man, generally, but he does like his little surprises.”

  The margrave didn’t make any comment.

  The party spread out on the walkway, looking down into the courtyard. They had passed the rampart where she had, far too long ago, scrawled Derinald’s name in chalk, and she watched carefully to see if anybody glanced down toward it.

  “You seem preoccupied,” the margrave said. “If you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Not at all,” she said.

  “To which?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are you not as preoccupied as you seem, or do you not mind my observation?”

  Smiling at him was easy. It was nice to be flirted with, as though she were a girl. It would have been nicer if the margrave weren’t distracting her from watching the rest of the crowd that had spread out across the ramparts.

  Nobody seemed to pay much attention to the buttress, one way or the other, as far as she could see. Which was unfortunate — if Tyrnael’s agent in the castle was one of the local nobles, or one of the visiting ones, he or she was well disciplined. Which, she supposed, was to be expected.

  The horsemen still stood there, and the servants were moving about, removing glasses and plates. What was Thomen up to? And where was he?

  “Your attention, if you please,” Thomen’s distant voice called out from — from behind her?

  It took all her self-control to force herself to turn slowly and look out onto the outer bailey.

  Braying and snuffling, the herd of goats scattered madly as Thomen brought his borrowed horse to a prancing halt at the far end of the bailey, almost under the outer wall.

  “Your attention all, if you please,” he said, again. His voice carried easily over the light breeze. “I’m pleased that my friend the margrave Den Hacza has asked to see a demonstration of Imperial marksmanship.” He held up the gourd, off to one side. “I’m even more pleased to be able to provide him
with one that I hope he will find entertaining.”

  No. He couldn’t be.

  “Now!” Thomen shouted.

  A shot rang out, and the gourd exploded, fragments splattering Thomen’s purple tunic.

  There was silence. Thomen reached down and pulled a cloth from his belt, and wiped his face.

  It was all very quiet, the silence shattered only by applause from the nobles.

  There should have been an alarm. There had been no announcement of rifle practice, and the guard held rifle practice outside the keep, anyway. The alarm bell should have been ringing madly, and the Home Guard, every man of them, should now be running frantically to their posts, armoring themselves as they ran.

  But it was all very quiet as Thomen finished wiping his face, then slowly turned, and rode off, back toward the road from the outer gates to the inner ones. The whole guard had known that there was going to be an unscheduled shot fired.

  Beralyn looked around, trying to see where the shot had come from. It couldn’t have been from any of the guards on the outer ramparts — she would have seen it. And the shot had been distant enough — she could have sworn it had come from behind her — that it couldn’t have been from any of the guard stations on the inner ramparts, either.

  The only indication was a puff of smoke, carried across the inner courtyard.

  The rifle shot had come from the donjon itself.

  Beralyn didn’t know much about this whole riflery thing, but she knew enough to know that even a good marksman, even the best marksmen in the Empire, would have found putting a shot into something even as large as a head to be difficult at that distance. The gourd was much smaller. The shot could easily have gone wide and low, and hit Thomen in the chest or even the head, and all the healing draughts in all the world could not bring back the dead.

  Thomen was an idiot, to risk his life just to make such a point with the margrave.

  Although the point had been made, granted.

  The margrave shook his head. “Amazing.” He was visibly shaken. “I’ve heard about how accurate the Empire’s soldiers are, but I hadn’t realized …”

  Beralyn nodded slowly. “I hope that you never see how good they can be in the field,” she said.

  She left the obvious unsaid: that if the Empire and Nyphien ever went to war, it would not simply be a matter of noble officers sitting on a hill, out of the range of the nearest Empire bowmen, directing the carnage below. Even a man should be smart enough to worry about a rifleman, hiding behind a tree, able to put a bullet in a head from an almost unbelievably great distance.

  Her son was still an idiot to have so risked himself, but he had made his point.

  Beralyn would have some very strong words for him. Perhaps this time he would even listen. This sort of idiotic heroics was what had gotten that horrible Karl Cullinane killed. That didn’t bother her for a moment — she would rather that his mother, if he had even had a mother, had drowned him at birth — but Thomen idolized that terrible man, and maybe he would see …

  No. She would try, but he wouldn’t listen to a useless old woman.

  But that was for later, and would be private, and for now all she could do in public was to smile and nod, and pretend that it was all a typical sort of thing in the Empire.

  15

  THE ASSASSIN

  THERE ARE THINGS you never notice until they’re gone, the assassin thought.

  Like breath, say. He could breathe, at least. Or the freedom to move your arms and legs, which he couldn’t do.

  There wasn’t much else to do except breathe and think, as he crouched motionless in the darkness of the castle garden, waiting for the guards to pass by again.

  You can go tendays without even thinking about breathing, but the moment you duck your head under the water in the cut-off barrel you’re bathing in, or take in a lungful of smoke from a campfire, you’re reminded of how much you miss it.

  Stretching and moving around were like that, now. He hadn’t thought much about how good it was to be able to move, even a little, since the last time he’d been on an ambush. The body, it seemed, needed to move, and he simply couldn’t, not until he was sure that the guard had passed by.

  The baron was not cooperating; he was going to have to do this the hard way.

  The cool night was cloudy, only a few stars peeking through breaks in the dark masses, while off in the distance faerie lights quickly pulsed from a bright red to a muted orange and an almost actinic blue, then back again.

  He could have done without the faerie lights, but they were far enough off that they couldn’t reveal his position, as long as he didn’t move.

  And he didn’t move. He had been crouching long enough that his thigh muscles were complaining and his back muscles were doing worse than that, but he had long since learned to accept — and, if possible, give — far worse pain as simply a fact of life.

  It was all just a matter of space and timing, after all. He had memorized the map of the castle grounds and the keep’s floor plan long before, of course, and had, of course, immediately destroyed it as soon as he had. A mercenary soldier in the pay of the Empire would have no reason to have such a thing on his person, and once he had committed it to memory, there was no need for the map.

  The gold had been a different matter. He couldn’t leave it in his footlocker, as it was not at all uncommon for a signature knot to be learned by a thieving supposed comrade or a momentarily empty barracks taken advantage of by one less clever who would simply use a knife — what would Dereken, a private soldier, be doing with so much gold?

  Some questions were best not asked, and if they were not asked, it would be easy not to have to have an answer. It had been much easier to keep the gold coins on his person until he could arrange a stint in the barracks saddlery, and stitch most of the coins inside his saddle, with a few substituted for the lead weights at the hem of his cloak, just in case he had to abandon the horse and saddle.

  If everything went right — and he was determined to make it go right — he would ride away on his pay this night.

  He smiled to himself. Yes, of course, only half the money had been paid in advance, but that half would have to do. The merchant who had hired him had sworn that the rest of his payment would be made when Forinel was dead, and he had dutifully agreed on a meeting time and place, several days hence.

  He would, of course, be long gone well before that.

  A hired killer was a loose end, and whoever it was who wanted the baron dead would have an easy opportunity to tightly tie up said loose end with sharp steel across Dereken’s throat rather than tie it up much more loosely, with gold in Dereken’s pocket.

  Leaving him dead might solve the problem more neatly than that — Dereken’s company, after all, was in the pay of Governor Treseen, and his dead body would point toward Treseen.

  Which probably meant that Treseen had no involvement.

  Who was his real employer?

  Lord Miron was the obvious suspect — killing Forinel would as much as give the barony to him — and Miron was said to be spending his time in Baron Tyrnael’s court these days, five or six baronies away, across into Bieme proper.

  But who was supplying the gold didn’t matter. What did matter was the gold in his saddle, and the geas that made it literally impossible for him to try to ride away from Keranahan until he knew that Forinel was dead. He had tried, of course, but he had found himself unable to take the eastern road; his fingers and feet wouldn’t give his horse the commands, and he couldn’t even try. He couldn’t even find himself able to believe that he could leave without killing Forinel.

  Well, that was part of the bargain, and while he would have broken his side of the bargain without remorse or hesitation, he had been unsurprised when his employer had left the room, and sent in a masked wizard to lay on hands and murmur words that could not be remembered. Actually, he was relieved about the implications of that mask, how it suggested that they wouldn’t kill him when the job was done
— it had actually made him consider, just for a moment, risking collecting his pay.

  As, no doubt, it had been intended to.

  He smiled to himself. You’d think that —

  He froze in place, forcing himself not to breathe, not to move, not to look up at the ramparts. He had once avoided a night ambush when a flash of starlight on the eyeball of a hidden killer had alerted him, and he didn’t intend to pass the favor along.

  But there was no hesitation as the even footsteps sounded above; the two guards didn’t even pause in their muttered conversation, and he more felt than saw that their attention was directed outward.

  The man who called himself Dereken — shit, that was his name; his name was whatever he called himself at the moment, and never mind what they called him in other places — moved closer to the northern portico.

  Peace had made them all lazy. There were square indentations in the ground where the barding would have been installed, turning the opening into a solid oak wall, and making the portico entrance even less accessible than the massive oak door on the front end of the keep. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised if there were murder holes in the room above this entrance, as there surely were in the keep’s foyer, giving defenders one last, probably pointless chance to hold off an enemy that had breached the outer walls.

  But that wouldn’t give the baron and his wife-to-be — and damn the geas for preventing him from taking the obvious opportunity after he killed the baron; the closest he had ever come to mounting a noblewoman had been that fat town warden’s young wife in Enkiar during the cross-border raid two years ago — the opportunity to walk out of the great hall on a cool evening and smell the roses.

  It would have been nice if the baron had done that himself this evening.