Coronets and Steel

by Sherwood Smith

  So now what?

  Not onward, obviously. Or back. When he got far enough to realize even a marathon runner could not have covered that distance, what choice but to retrace?

  I ran down the road until I was out of sight of the village. Then, facing the slope below, I drew in a long breath. “Here goes nothing.”

  And I was so right.

  Slipping and oozing down a mud-running mountainside is nothing I would have enjoyed even if I hadn’t been tired, hungry, lost, scared and semidrowned in a full-on thunderstorm. I bumped and slipped and rolled and fell, then climaxed my trip with an ignominious splat as one foot plunged into a hole (filled with slimy mud) and stuck. I fell face-down in the mud, my ankle wrenching excruciatingly.

  For a long moment I lay there in the mud, cursing with Catullan fluency.

  Good as it felt, it got me nowhere. So I sat up and faced into the rain, which at least washed some of the mud off my face, though my eyes stung and my teeth gritted from the load I’d already taken aboard. Then I checked my ankle. My years in dance had taught me a bit about leg and foot injuries. A light sprain was my guess. Not enough to be serious—as long as I kept from walking on it.

  “Right,” I said to the thunder. “What now?”

  I was sitting there, massaging my foot and debating what bright idea to try next, when twin glares emerged from the darkness below and to my left. A square, black car loomed out of the dark gray rain and crawled along slowly. From one of its windows a powerful beam flashed up and down along the slope I was on.

  There was no way they weren’t going to find me.

  Wincing against the headache, I forced myself to my feet. To hell with fate, destiny—or inevitability. The Murrays may go down in defeat, but they go down fighting, my father once said, and so I began inching my way back up the cliffside, as the sweep of the flashlight moved closer and closer and then lit up the area around my silhouette on the muddy incline.

  The light passed on—and then jerked agitatedly back as the car slammed to a stop. I peeked over my shoulder.

  Two car doors flew open, and two tall male figures leaped out, one burly and one slim.

  I meant to hustle up the hillside, but another hidden pothole caused my throbbing ankle to twist. The wrench knocked me to my knees.

  The two men reached me.

  Alec said something in that Slavic-sounding language as two different hands gripped my arms and helped me to my feet. I jerked my arms violently free, shouting, “Don’t touch me!”

  —and fell back with a splorch into the mud.

  The big guy backed off and trained his flashlight on me. Alec reached into the light and pulled me to my feet again. I stiffened, ready to claw and bite—and he waited. Offering no violence. I knew I couldn’t win any fight here, in fact a try would probably do more damage to me than to them. All right. So I’d bide my time.

  Alec must have felt my decision through his grip on my arm, for he shifted his hand to under my elbow. Support.

  The car was preferable to a muddy hillside in the middle of nowhere in pouring rain. I sighed, and cooperated as he started slowly downhill. “Ow. Ow. Ow,” I groaned under my breath.

  Now that “what comes next?” had thus summarily been taken out of my hands, my temper kindled again, and at every painful, squishing step burned brighter.

  “Come along,” Alec said grimly when at last we reached the car, and he thrust me into the front seat. The bulky man snapped off the flashlight and got in beside me without once looking at me. Alec slid in behind the wheel on the other side and slammed the running engine into gear with a blow of his palm that told me a lot about the state of his own temper. The car boosted forward with a roar that pressed us all back into our seats.

  SEVEN

  SO THERE I WAS. Me. Aurelia Kim Murray, law-abiding citizen of Los Angeles, California, squashed between two strange men in an unfamiliar car in the middle of God knows where in a deluge, and soaked and mud-smeared from braid to sandals.

  And I hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

  I kept my eyes focused front and center. The road was scarcely discernable beyond a windshield under full blast as if sprayed by a fire hose. As the silence grew protracted I said through chattering teeth, “There anything to eat in this hearse?”

  “No,” Alec replied.

  I’d said it to be goading; if he had offered me anything I would have turned it down with comprehensive disdain. I knew it was stupid to want to pick a fight. I should be afraid, but I wasn’t—yet!—my Murray temper was up, and if I didn’t do something to discharge the righteous anger simmering in me I would explode.

  The car screeched around a narrow turn. I glanced at Alec’s hands, which were steady on the wheel. He knew what he was doing, all right, so I said snidely, “You’d better slow down if you don’t want to burn tracks from here to Texas.”

  “Would you prefer to ride in the boot, Aurelia?” he responded pleasantly.

  “Why not? It would be a lovely finish to a swell day,” I snarled back, and was pleased that despite my clacking teeth my voice sounded corrosive enough to blister cement. “And the company much preferable.”

  He kept driving.

  A sign flashed by, Slavic names spelled in Roman letters, and numerals representing kilometers. Names all unfamiliar, distances meaningless.

  We sailed on for a time in the increasing downpour. Occasional lightning spilled across the windshield in splashes of brilliant liquid light; the thunder drowned the grinding car engine.

  We were in a taxi. There in front of my knees was the meter, dark and silent. They had commandeered a square black Mercedes taxi of the type so common all over Germany and Austria.

  A surreptitious glance to the right: the big man glaring through the windshield, his heavy jowls looking like they had been carved from weathered granite. Rain gleamed on his short salt-and-pepper hair, and his huge hands gripped his knees. He might have been about seventy, even older, judging from the deep furrows in his face, but he looked twice as tough as most Marines half his age. On my left, Alec’s profile was equally stony; there was an implacable look to the cut of his mouth, his jawline. Even the fine strands of damp black hair drifting down across his forehead added to the general ambience of anger.

  They’re mad? I fumed silently. They’re mad?

  The burly guy addressed Alec in that language I’d heard twice, once the night before and once at Schönbrunn. Alec replied in it, slowed the car, and without warning whipped us into a tight U-turn that pressed us all to one side. He drove on a way and then turned sharply onto a half-hidden access road, flinging us in the other direction.

  Water dribbled coldly down my scalp into the neck of my sodden blouse, making me shiver. “Ugh,” I snarled.

  The car rolled onto a wider paved road. The speed picked up. Alec said, in English, “Tell me, Aurelia, was that your own idiotic idea or did your damned brother put you up to it?”

  “Brother?” I sat bolt upright. “That explains it. You’re as crazy as a bag of alligators!”

  There was silence for the remainder of the trip.

  My eyes stung increasingly as the muddy water in my hair drained down into my face. So I was pleased to see how the wet from my clothing spread outward to dampen my companions’ portions of the car seat, and I hoped I smelled like a swamp.

  The muted lights of a city loomed up, scarce white and yellow arcs that looked alien and uninviting, unlike multicolored neon America. Another road sign flashed by, but the window directly in front of me was steamy enough to haze the words. The storm slowly broke up, the rain and thunder intermittent, as daylight began to fade.

  My eyes stung so sharply I had to shut them. I pulled my foot up onto the seat and began massaging my ankle.

  The two men held a short exchange in that language (was that a Latinate word for night?), and a few seconds later Alec slowed the car and parked it. I kept my eyes shut until the car was stopped; my temper had cooled enough to leave a numbing, aching exh
austion, but when I opened my eyes to see sunset colors purpling a now benign sky, I let out a slow breath of relief. The vanished sun eased the sensation that I was trapped in a time warp, and that this day would never end.

  Okay, time to shake the goon squad. First a quick scan. We were in a crowded parking lot beside a huge, cream-colored Gasthaus with a bright flowering hedge bordering it. Beyond was a paved street, and on the other side newer buildings sat in a civilized cluster.

  Alec shut off the engine and got out. He held out his hand to help me out. Naturally I scooted the other way, as the big man was already out and heading for the trunk. I forgot about my ankle and nearly took a header when it promptly gave out.

  So much for making a dash. I caught myself on the open door and when Alec came round and silently held out an arm I snapped, “In about two seconds I’m going to yell and scream.”

  “This is an inn. A public one,” he said with strained sounding patience. “The idea is to hold a consultation in comfort before we progress any further.”

  Comfort. “All right. Consultation I’ll go for,” I snapped, still hanging on the car door. “In comfort. I’ll wait here while you set it up,” I said in an unsubtle attempt to test the boundaries of the apparent truce as I propped my throbbing foot in the doorframe of the car.

  Alec’s answering smile was ironic, but he only lifted his head and said something to the other man somewhere behind me before walking off to the inn’s entrance. I leaned my forearms on the top of the car door and put my chin on my folded fingers as I breathed deeply of the heavy, wet-grass-smelling air. The trees and plants around the perimeter of the building and parking lot were pleasingly green and newly washed.

  The car shifted as the trunk clunked down. The burly man hove into view, muscling two handsome suitcases and a matching overnight case tucked under a massive arm. He trod on around the side of the building without a glance in my direction.

  Aware of my total lack of kick-butt chick ingenuity, I did not even check to see what Mr. Big was up to. My foot hurt so much I wouldn’t be able to outrun a one-legged rooster. Talk? All right. I can’t run, but I can talk. And he won’t like what he’s going to hear.

  So I bolstered my courage with this stirring resolution; secretly, I was heartened to see that my first (and, I hoped, last) taste of Durance Vile was to take place here and not in some sinister old castle with five centuries of mildew and no plumbing.

  The Gasthaus appeared to be clean and prosperous. Two of the three floors sported rows of bright-flowered window boxes.

  Comfort . . .

  And then I remembered my suitcase, lying in the middle of some soggy field. “Crap, crap, crap,” I moaned.

  Right on cue Alec reappeared. His brows quirked at my exclamation, but all he said was, “I’ve engaged three rooms. This place is said to have fairly decent food. There is only one bath in the second story, which is where the rooms are, but,” he smiled, “you shall have it first.”

  I let go of the car door, stepped away and slammed it shut with a thrust of my hip. As Alec extended a hand I shrugged away. “No, I’ll walk, I’ll walk.”

  He fell in step beside me as I limped painfully across the parking lot, around the corner of the building, and past a row of windows, each framing patrons seated at tables. I made the mistake of glancing inside. Sure enough, every single person at every single table seemed to have nothing to do but get an eyeful of my mud-crusted form.

  I sneaked a glance at Alec’s sharply averted face. From the set of his shoulders, the muscle in his jaw, I could tell he was trying his best not to laugh. Argh.

  Inside we were greeted with a heavenly aroma of fresh bread, braised onions, and beef stew. We crossed an old-fashioned, painfully clean lobby, off of which was the dining room full of hungry travelers ranging from yammering toddlers to stolid oldsters.

  Alec said, “Stairs this way.”

  “Wonderful.” I eyed the pretty folk-pattern tiled steps as if they were a pit of snakes. There was a good sturdy rail, at least, so my progress up the steps was no harder than it had been from car to front door.

  On the first landing I paused to rest as three people came down from above and passed me by, then I made a depressing discovery: true to the European way of counting, the second floor was, in fact, the third floor—at the top of a narrow double flight of stairs.

  Alec must have been watching; he waited politely for the people to pass him, then without any warning picked me up.

  I squawked, “Hey! Put me down.”

  “What’s the matter? No one’s around to see.”

  “It’s gotta be against the Villain’s Code,” I retorted.

  This time he did laugh.

  As soon as we reached the top Alec set me down and walked on toward an open door, leaving me to limp in his wake.

  The third floor was an attic suite. Under a sharply slanting roof there were four rooms, a WC, and a bathroom, all opening off a small square landing. Apparently Alec had taken them all over. One of the rooms was in the process of being set up as a sitting room; I reached the open door to see a stout woman in a shiny black widow’s dress and kerchief directing the movement of tables and armchairs by two sweating young men.

  She broke off when she saw me and gave a shriek. Backing toward her chairs as though to protect them with her life, she burst into rapid-fire Slovene.

  Alec soothed her protests in stilted but adequate Slovene by promising that the “young woman” would not touch her beautiful furniture until she had bathed.

  “That’s cool,” I said, “but I lost my suitcase. After this hypothetical bath what do I wear, a toga made out of Madam’s curtains? Or is a bath towel acceptable outerwear here?”

  Alec said, “Kilber will have put one of my valises in the bath for you by this time. Go along. Please make use of whatever of my gear you wish. We’ll be served dinner up here,” he added.

  “I’d rather know what’s going on right now,” I replied, but without my earlier heat. Only the most incompetent villain would stage scenes of Unmentionable Mayhem in such a setting. And as I’d rather be clean, dry, and warm before tackling any “consultations,” I limped into the bathroom and locked the door.

  Then slid under the doorknob the single chair with the Vuitton case and folded fabric placed on its seat.

  The bathroom was a narrow room next door to the WC, with plain plaster walls and a sink below a small mirror, lit by a lone bulb hanging from the high ceiling.

  The tub was a monster on feet, nearly the size of a Jacuzzi—without the jets and other goodies. I turned the century-old knobs so the water splashed in at its mightiest trickle, but at least it ran hot enough to steam gently and invitingly.

  As the water dribbled in I turned my attention to the stuff The Enemy had made available for my use. Since I had no clothes or supplies my scornfully high-handed repudiation of Alec’s offerings would have to wait for another opportunity.

  Two thick, neatly folded towels sat on top of an also neatly folded dressing gown of a soft, extremely expensive combed cotton. I shook it out and held it up, hoping there would be a barbaric dragon embroidered on the back, or at least some vulgarly ostentatious intertwined initials over the breast pocket, but it was unrelieved deep midnight blue. In the case were soap and shampoo, pricey French brands, and a comb and a silver-backed brush—the frame probably a hundred years old, judging from the etched patterns, the bristles new and natural.

  The water was deep enough to climb into, so I peeled off the clammy, gritty clothes, unpinned my hair, and lowered myself into the water. Oh, that felt good! I lay there, soaking long enough to feel my aches and bruises ease. Even my ankle and shoulder felt considerably better by the time I reached for the soap and shampoo and began to degrime myself.

  Rinsing thigh-length hair in a bathtub with water pressure a step up from a drip required patience. Then it was time to turn my attention to my clothes. My underthings and top were easy to wash out, but the jeans presented a challenge. N
ot sure if I should use soap lather or shampoo I finally used both. Big mistake. Ever tried to wring jeans out by hand? Especially with blistered palms? Finally I gave up, hoping they’d dry by morning.

  I used a towel to wrap my hair into a turban, straightened up the bathroom, and put on the dressing gown. It was roomy; I wrapped the sash firmly around my waist, rolled the sleeves back to my wrists, slipped the comb into one of the huge pockets and my hairclip into the other pocket, then hobbled out.

  Madam and her minions were gone. The door to the parlor was open. Alec sat with a teacup in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He, too, wore last night’s clothes.

  “Which is my room?” I asked truculently, to cover my embarrassment.

  “There.” A nod behind him.

  I opened the door to a small, charming bedroom with a high four-poster single bed, a table and chair, and a wardrobe in the corner. The door latched on the inside. I draped my wet clothes over the chair and table and the bedposts, then limped back into the makeshift sitting room and sank into a large upholstered armchair next to the table.

  Despite the situation, a sense of well-being suffused me when I discovered a fresh pot of tea waiting.

  Alec excused himself, and for a long time I sat back in the deep, comfortable chair with my fingers wrapped around the warm teacup, staring at the window across the room and ignoring the growling of my stomach.

  When I finally raised the cup, my lip against the rim, I thought, what if there’s something in it?

  Down crashed the cup, and my mood.

  That was when Alec reentered the room, damp clean hair swept back from his brow, the rest of him elegant in a pair of charcoal slacks and a white dress shirt.

  His eyes were marked with tiredness, his gaze light and cool and alert as he addressed me in that pleasant, curiously familiar tone. “I ordered dinner to be brought up at eight because I thought you’d be a lot longer in the bath than you were. But then, without your usual battery of cosmetics I suppose there isn’t much to do beyond the basics, is there?” He dropped tiredly into the other chair.