By Divine Right (11 page)

T
HE
T
WENTIETH
Y
EAR
OF
K
ING
L
AIDIR
’
S
R
EIGN

The pounding on my door pulled me from slumber, and I drifted toward waking like a piece of sodden wood floating toward the surface of a lake. I had one hand on the door latch and the other clutching a dagger behind my back before I managed to get both eyes open. A guard, one of the king’s by his dress, stood outside next to Gareth, one of the night constables. I snuck a glance out the window. The glass in my quarters wasn’t of sufficient quality to offer me anything more than an impression of what lay beyond, but I could tell the sun wasn’t up yet.

The remnants of some dream I didn’t want to remember cracked my voice. “What?”

The guard gave me an almost imperceptible bob of his head. My title was the least in Laidir’s court. “You’re needed, Lord Dura.”

I tried to keep my temper in check. My unique position in service to the king seemed to require the same hours as a midwife’s. “What about Jeb?” I asked, mentioning the chief reeve, the one who should have been awakened instead of me.

Gareth shook his head. “We thought we should wake you first. There’s been a killing in the merchants’ quarter.”

A thread of panic shot through my chest, as if someone had filled my heart with ice, but I kept my gaze on Gareth with an effort. What had I dreamed? I kept my voice steady and played the part of the interrupted sleeper as best I could. “So? What’s so dire about some fool shopkeeper who can’t keep his money safeguarded?”

Gareth’s plain soldier’s face lost what little expression it held. “It’s a churchman.”

I stifled my next comment and turned back into the apartment the king provided me as a lord in his employ to get dressed. It took me a moment to realize I already was. Only my cloak and boots were lacking. Another surge of panic brought me to full wakefulness, and I moved quickly to prevent the guards from entering at my delay. I lit a candle and spotted my cloak lying across a chair on the far side of the room. I crossed over and lifted it.

An oath crossed my lips before I could prevent it at seeing spots of blood on the hem. I rolled it into a bundle and shoved it beneath the armoire before retrieving another and picking up my weapon. All of the city’s reeves wore a sword, but most of them didn’t expect trouble. I seemed to attract it like a lodestone drew iron. I moved to a small stand and tucked a pair of daggers into leather pouches stitched into the back of my belt and slid another into the inside of my right boot. Then I tried to reconcile myself to being awake before dawn.

Jeb ran the city watch and did it well. If it came to brawling or persuading some poor unfortunate to confess, Jeb’s methods yielded results. His fists served as a fair approximation of iron and he enjoyed using them to convince people to mend the error of their ways. It was amazing how the sound of his knuckles popping loosened a man’s tongue.

But murder presented a different challenge, particularly one without witnesses or one involving people of importance. Jeb’s persuasion couldn’t quicken the tongues of the dead, which explained Gareth’s presence at my door. And I had proven my worth to the king. A year prior, I’d had the mixed fortune of solving a crime that earned me his favor. Over the objections of the rest of the nobility, the king raised me to lordship, though without lands or gift. I became the least in his service. My current duties were the price I paid for my nobility and another reward he’d given that I esteemed more highly.

We exited the halls of King Laidir’s stronghold and came out onto one of the blocky staircases that led downward, descending the massive tor on which it had been built, carved from gut rock. Enormous granite stones merged with the mountain that defined the ponderous edifice of Laidir’s seat. The vertical walls were high enough to be impervious to ladders, and the surrounding landscape made it difficult to bring siege engines close enough to do any real damage.

The massive city of Bunard, King Laidir’s seat of power, spread beneath us. The Rinwash curved around the stronghold to the north and west, but branches of the river had been diverted to supply water to each quarter of the city. If the sun had been up I could have seen the bridges connecting each section of the city, but in the darkness only the ends were visible, illuminated by the watch fires at each bank.

I followed Gareth downward until we arrived at the king’s stables, the smell of horse strong in the still air of the morning. Mounting
quickly, we set out for the merchants’ quarter as the sky showed hints of slate in the east, riding southwest, passing by the four massive cathedrals of the divisions of the church, each with their criers’ stand out front—thankfully empty. I appreciated the silence. By the time I returned, the day’s chosen lector would be out front, declaring each division’s interpretation of the Word for the unbelieving.

After crossing the first bridge, we rode through the opulence of those living nearest His Majesty, structures just short of castles, with broad sweeping arches and stained-glass ballrooms. The scarcity of land precluded the types of formal grounds many of them maintained in their holdings, but their meticulously groomed gardens exuded wealth and order just the same.

They were as welcoming as iron.

We crossed the next bridge over the Rinwash, heading into the high merchants’ quarter and turned south, passing homes nearly the equal of the nobility, though they lacked the space for private gardens and they held about themselves the concentrated energy of those focused on profit.

When we later passed over the next bridge, the buildings changed from heavy-cut granite to wood, first with several stories, then with just two or one, their plain windows already glowing as those within began preparations for their day in the marketplace or at their craft. The ring of a hammer started somewhere off to my right, and the smell of bread drifted to me, reminding me I’d yet to eat.

Gareth took the opportunity our travel afforded to provide what little information he had around mouthfuls of dark bread. “We found two men, one dead from blood loss, the other nearly so.” His mouth pulled to one side beneath a nose that had been broken so many times that it changed directions often. “A seamstress heard the clash of steel and started screaming, but by the time the night watch arrived, the attackers had fled.”

I logged Gareth’s pithy summary away. My heart beat faster with each step closer, and the abstraction I felt in the presence of the dead commanded my attention. I concentrated long enough to ask a proper question. “Do you have any names?”

He nodded. “The watchman recognized them. The dead man is Robin. He’s the menial of Elwin, the man who got hit on the head. They’re Servants.”

I pulled the mist of predawn into my lungs and squinted through the darkness. Some might resent the studied aloofness of a Merum priest or the zeal of the Vanguard, and others might even take exception to the aggressive mercy practiced by the Absold. But no one in their right mind begrudged a Servant. They didn’t preach, wouldn’t fight or try to change anyone. They served others. But for some reason, two men of the most humble of the four orders on the continent had been killed. My heart quickened again.

We rounded a corner and came to the edge of a small grassy area bordering a clump of plain wooden buildings that looked as if they were huddling against the dark. A stone wall about eight feet high separated the area from the bank of one of the branches of the Rinwash River.

Gareth pointed to a pile of limbs and cloth sprawled against the base of the wall. Here and there pale white skin showed against stone or fabric. Dark wet blotches covered the tunic. Gaping wounds assaulted my vision as the smell of blood hit my nose, and I fought to keep the remnants of my last meal in place. Gareth said something that almost penetrated the spell cast by the dead man, but none of the words registered as important.

I ignored him. Distraction was the enemy. Death begets death, and my job was to bring the killers to the gallows. I knew one thing immediately—Robin had been taken down by at least two men, maybe more. Deep slashes on his legs that matched those on his torso testified to as much. A single fighter would never risk a low-line attack that way. I pulled a breath heavy with mist off the river into my lungs as I counted the wounds. “They didn’t just kill him—they cut him to pieces.” Even his face. “How did anyone recognize him?”

Gareth shrugged. “I asked Ahden that same question. He recognized Robin’s clothes and the chip in his front tooth—and knows of his service to Elwin.”

I bent and shifted the hair to see his eye. I signaled Gareth closer with his torch. The details of death and the shadowed surroundings faded as I gave myself to Robin’s stare. So like the others I had seen at the end, regardless of the why or how of their passing. His eyes—a startling blue, like a potter’s glaze—focused on something so impossibly far away in death that he appeared to see through me, the city, and the kingdom. Even the stars were too close to capture his attention. A familiar longing awoke in me at the sight of it, and
I desired nothing more in that moment than to somehow pull his attention from eternity so that he might answer my question. “Tell me, Robin, what do you see?”

Robin didn’t answer, of course. I was too late, as I always was.

“Milord?”

Gareth’s voice pulled me from myself. He stood with the torch, shifting his weight from foot to foot, discomfited. No wisdom had been forthcoming from Robin, just as none had come to me from my family, the duke’s brother, or countless others. “Scan the area, Gareth. Tell me what you find.”

He wandered from spot to spot on the grounds, careful to avoid touching the body or disturbing the scuff marks in the turf where the earth bore witness. I turned from the pull of Robin’s gaze with an effort and climbed the steps to the top of the wall, my mind split between trying to understand what lay before me and worry. There’d been blood on my cloak.

From my elevated vantage point, the extremity of Robin’s defense became clear. The grass, trampled by the attack, flowed back and forth like the strokes of a painter. My experience in battle didn’t rival Gareth’s, but even I could see Robin had fought bravely and well, very well. That last fact struck me, and I stopped to consider its implications. Too well for a Servant.

I descended the heavy granite steps, my breath misting the air before me. Gareth stepped to my side. The presence of Robin’s corpse didn’t prevent him from munching on his bread, his face impassive. “Reminds me of the last border war. Even after the bodies had been hauled off and burned, you could tell where the worst of the fighting was by looking at the grass. Rough business. Robin didn’t go down without a fight. He gave as good as he got, or nearly so.”

I nodded to acknowledge Gareth’s confirmation and reminded myself I only had three more months of duty as the head of the city watch. After my marriage to Gael, I would be more elevated among the nobility that despised me. I blew air through my hands trying to warm them. “What do you see?”

He smiled at the chance to display his veteran’s knowledge once more. “Come. I’ll show you.” He led me toward a patch of earth. “Trace the scuff marks.” He bent. “See how the grass is bent and torn, pointing toward the river. Robin and Elwin were backing away with a pair of men following. There’s a bit of blood here. Robin’s,
I think, because just after you can see the scuffs turn a bit. I think Robin was trying to protect his wounded side. And then we come to this.” Gareth pointed to a pair of bloody splotches on the ground. “See the space between there and here? Both Robin and his assailants found their mark.” My lieutenant knelt and touched the grass. “They all struck hard.”

Two puddles of deep vermillion, almost black in the predawn, perhaps a foot in diameter discolored the earth, perhaps a cupful, maybe two. “It doesn’t look like so much.”

Gareth shook his head. “When a man’s bleeding through his clothes and moving, Lord Dura, this is enough to kill.”

I nodded, convinced. He pointed at another spot between us and the body a few feet away. “Robin got marked again.”

We traced and read the desperation of Robin’s defeat written in splashes of blood on the ground until we stood over him once more. A few feet away to Robin’s left the grass had been flattened and a sluggish pool of blood marked one end of the spot. I knelt, searching the ground under the yellow light of Gareth’s torch. Droplets of blood littered the grass, smudges really.

“This is where they found Elwin?”

Gareth nodded, but something seemed wrong. Elwin should have been behind Robin, but from the scuffs in the grass and the blood spatters, it appeared he’d been out to one side or possibly in front when his enemies took him. “Why would he be here?” I muttered, not meaning for my voice to carry, but Gareth heard me anyway.

“Men do strange things in the rush of battle, my lord.”

My misgiving remained despite my silence. “Is there anything else?”

Gareth led me to a spot several paces away, pointing to a pair of shallow grooves on the ground running parallel to each other. “Someone was dragged away.”