A Princess of Landover (19 page)

B
erwyn Laphroig, Lord of Rhyndweir—for such was his full name and title—strolled through the weapons room of his castle in an irritated state. He was restless and bored, but the solution to these conditions was not to be found here. There was nothing in this room or even in the whole of his barony that could satisfy his insatiable need to make the young and lovely Mistaya Holiday his wife. There was no other woman who could replace her in his thoughts, none to whom he would give even momentary consideration. Thinking of her only worsened his condition, unfortunately; thinking of her made him even more determined to find a way to have her.

It had seemed easy enough in the beginning, when he had decided he must replace his old wife. Things had not been going well for some time between them, and he could sense that she was looking for a way out of the marriage. Such insolence was intolerable, and he was perfectly within his rights to make certain she could not act on her foolish fantasies. Even her son had become a source of irritation, always clinging to her as if she were a lifeline to a safe place instead of deadweight that would pull him down. He cared nothing for them, really, so it was not difficult for him to decide to dispose of them when he determined they were no longer necessary.

Like his brothers and sisters. Like everyone else who had outlived their usefulness.

His counselors would have been horrified had they realized the extent to which he had gone to fulfill his ambitions. The ambitions alone would have horrified them. Even more certain was the response of his fellow Lords of the Greensward, had he chosen to confide in them. Not that he would ever do such a thing. But if they knew that he had long coveted not only his father’s title and lands, but the King of Landover’s throne, as well …

He smiled despite himself. Not much to guess about there. If they had known, they would have found a way to dispatch him in a heartbeat.

He had confided in no one, however, and given no one reason to suspect the truth. He had disposed of his older brother all on his own. His younger had disappeared shortly after and was never seen again. A poisoner he had enlisted to his cause had taken care of his troublesome wife and son without anyone knowing, and then he had taken care of the poisoner. There was none to bear witness against him, no voices to speak, and no eyes that had seen. It had all been done quickly and quietly, and no trace of his crimes remained to convict him.

Still, Ben Holiday suspected the truth and did not trust him. That might have been worrisome had he thought the High Lord could prove anything.

A door opened at the far end of the room, and his scribe, Cordstick, a wisp of a man with a huge mop of bushy hair, came hurrying across the room. “My Lord,” he greeted, bowing low, hair flopping. “We have a problem.”

Laphroig didn’t like problems and didn’t want to hear about them, but he nodded agreeably. “Yes? What is it?”

“We received word from one of our loyal subjects that there was a man—well, not a man, really—but he was asking questions in the town below the castle about you, and he …”

He stopped, as if uncertain where to go next with this. “He was asking questions about your family, my Lord, all of them, including your wife and child.” He swallowed hard. “About their untimely deaths.”

“Get to the point.”

Cordstick nodded quickly. “Well, we thought it best to detain him, my Lord. We knew you would want to question him about his interest in your family, not knowing, of course, what his purpose might be. So we sent guards to take him prisoner and hold him for questioning.”

He stopped again, looking around the room as if help might be found among the suits of armor and racks of sharp weapons. Laphroig rolled his eyes. “Yes, you took him prisoner. And?”

“After we had done so, we discovered he was not a man at all, but a kobold. Why anyone would confide anything in a kobold, I couldn’t say. Perhaps they didn’t, but it was enough, it seemed to me, that he was asking these questions. I thought that holding him was the better choice, if it came to a choice about what to do with him, kobold or not, and …”

Laphroig held up his hand. “You are trying my patience, Cordstick, and I have very little of it to spare this morning. Who is this kobold? Do we know his name?”

Cordstick looked miserable. “We do. Now, after seizing him. It is Bunion. He is the King’s man, a creature of some renown.”

Rhyndweir’s ruler was angry, but not surprised. Of course the High Lord would try to find out what he could now that he knew Laphroig’s intentions regarding his daughter. But that sort of thing couldn’t be allowed. Not even by the King. Not in Laphroig’s own lands.

“There may be unpleasant repercussions from this business, my Lord,” Cordstick ventured. He bit his lip. “Perhaps we should let him go.”

“Perhaps not,” Laphroig answered at once. “Perhaps we should torture him instead and discover the truth behind this intrusion into the affairs of Rhyndweir. Perhaps we should make an example of him so that Ben Holiday will think twice before he sends another of his spies into our territory.”

Then he hesitated, holding up one hand quickly to stay Cordstick’s departure.

Torturing one of the High Lord’s people, he thought suddenly, would in all likelihood complicate his plans for marriage with the High Lord’s daughter. Perhaps discretion was the better part of reprisal in this situation. Yet it galled him that Holiday would feel free to send someone to spy on him in his own barony, no matter what the situation might be. He stewed about it for a moment,
thinking that if the kobold simply disappeared—as others who had troubled him had—no blame could attach to him.

“Where is this creature?” he asked his aide.

“Downstairs, in one of the anterooms, safely under guard,” the other replied with a confidence that immediately troubled Laphroig.

“Take me to him,” he ordered. “I’ll decide what to do with him once I’ve seen him for myself.”

Drawing his black robes about him, tilting his head so that his slicked-up black hair cut the air like a shark fin, he swept through the door to the halls beyond, leading the way and forcing Cordstick to hurry to catch up to him. With his scribe barely managing to regain the lead, they ascended from the weapons room to the upper receiving chambers, moving from those reserved for invited guests to those well back and better fortified. Always best to take no chances with those who sought to work mischief in your realm, Laphroig was fond of saying.

But apparently chances
had
been taken in this case, Rhyndweir’s Lord realized as they approached the holding chamber and saw the door standing ajar. Rushing forward now, the two burst inside and found all four guards hanging by their heels like ornaments from the drapery cords, gagged and bound and weaponless.

Of the kobold, there was no sign.

Laphroig wheeled on a terrified Cordstick. “Call out the guard and find him!” he hissed. “Immediately!”

His scribe vanished as if by magic, and Laphroig stalked from the room in fury, leaving the guards hanging where they were.

I
t took barely an hour to determine that Bunion was nowhere in the castle, but that before departing he had located and thoroughly searched Laphroig’s office and its records. Another might not have been able to determine that anything was amiss, so neat and tidy was the room in question. But Laphroig was immediately suspicious, and after tamping down his rage sufficiently to act on his suspicions had gone directly to his private chambers. There he had
discovered that safeguards he had personally installed and were known only to him had been disturbed. His protections had been breached and his personal files and papers examined.

Laphroig sat down for a time to think things through while waiting on the search for the kobold to be completed. He didn’t think the creature could have found anything of value, since he made it a point not to keep anything that might give him away. There were no records on his acts, nothing to show that he had dispatched those family members who had stood in his way. There were no notes or revealing pictures or anything of the like. There was nothing that could have helped the kobold in his efforts to discover what role Laphroig had played in the deaths of his family.

He paused, a chill running down his spine.

Unless …

He went at once to the bookshelves set in the stone wall to one side of the writing table and looked. Sure enough, the book on poisons was gone—the book that had provided him with the recipes for the nectars necessary to dispatch his wife and son. He took a deep breath and exhaled. He had kept the book only because he thought he might have need of it again sometime. The poisons he favored most were underlined in that book, and the poisoner’s notes on the details of their usages were written in the margins. He had forgotten about that, thinking that no one would ever have reason to look at one book shelved among so many.

But the kobold had. How it had found it in the short time provided was a mystery he could not solve. In any case, the damage was done.

He waited until Cordstick appeared with the unsurprising news that Bunion had escaped completely, and then he ordered the four guards still hanging in the library to be cut down and hung from the castle walls instead. Cordstick, grateful that he wasn’t the one sentenced to hang, carried out the order swiftly, wondering if perhaps it was time to look into another line of work. If he hadn’t served the family for so long that it no longer felt as if he belonged anywhere else, he might have packed his bags then and there.

As it was, he simply made it a point to stay out of his master’s

way.

I
t was nearing sunset when he had cause to go in search of Rhyndweir’s Lord once more. He felt some small confidence in doing so this time, having news of a different sort to offer up. Although his master kept his counsel close and private, Cordstick knew him much better than he suspected. It was inherent in the nature of his service that he should be able to do so, because knowing the mindset of the master you served had saved more than one servant’s neck over the years.

He found Laphroig in his office, slumped in his reading chair with the lights off and the curtains drawn. His black clothes were a rumpled mess, and his black hair was sticking up all over the place. His pale face looked ghostly in the near darkness.

“My Lord,” Cordstick ventured tentatively.

“Go away” was the miserable response.

“I have news I think you should hear,” Cordstick pressed gently, careful to remain just outside the doorway.

A short silence followed. “About the kobold?”

“No, my Lord. About the Princess Mistaya.”

Laphroig was on his feet at once. “The Princess? Close the door! Come over here where we can talk privately. Shhh, shhh, keep it quiet now. Just you and me. Tell me quick—what is the news?”

Cordstick had judged his master rightly. He closed the door to the chamber and hurried over to stand next to him, bending close and speaking in a whisper. “Our spy at the King’s court sends news that isn’t known as yet by more than a handful of people. The Princess Mistaya has disappeared. The King and his Queen are looking for her everywhere.”

“Well, well,” Laphroig murmured, his mind racing with possibilities.

“If you were to find her, my Lord …,” Cordstick began.

“Yes, that would make the High Lord beholden to me in a way he
could not ignore, wouldn’t it?” Laphroig finished. He was smiling so broadly that for a moment he assumed a frog-like visage. “Yes, yes.”

He put his hand firmly on his scribe’s thin shoulder. “You must find her, Cordstick.” His grip tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Before anyone else has a chance to.”

Cordstick nodded in agreement, shuddering inwardly at the other’s rather hideous smile. “As you wish, my Lord,” he managed before scurrying from the room.

LIBIRIS