I Know Not (The Story of Fox Crow) (20 page)

      “If you were under my command I would have you flogged.” He whispered

      “Being under your command would be flogging enough.” I responded.

      He wanted to lash out, but instead he stalked toward my room and tried the door handle, obviously shocked to find his entry denied. He kept his voice low as he demanded, “Why is this locked?”

      I decided I had had enough of the game, and I sat down and continued to eat, “So I don’t have to kill any nosy bastard I find inside.”

      Control comes hard for some, easy for others. For all the levers I had just shoved under his skin and pried with all my might, Roehm managed to get himself together while I watched. It took real practice to do that. “I do not care for your tone.”

      And as much as I could use an ally, I just couldn’t get around a man walking in on a situation I had held together for weeks by force of arms and will, and started acting like he was in charge, “Imagine the bereft desert that your hurt renders my soul.”

      He smiled, unkindly, “You are not too old to beat, peasant.”

      I smiled back, a promise of later reconciliation, “And you are just the right age to toss into a pig pen.”

      Roehm lunged forward and planted his fists on the table with a resounding thud, his voice echoing off the walls, “What did you say to me?”

      I picked up the still steaming bowl of stew, planning to throw it in his face before engaging him with steel, because fair fights only exists for bards, “I said there are things even pigs do not eat and you, sir, rank just below offal on their list.”

      Of course that was a lie. Pigs will eat everything, including a corpse, and leave little but hair and teeth behind. I think he knew it, too. There it was, the narrowed eyes, the slight tremble of bloodlust and bile floating just under the surface. This was the edge of his control. “You think you can bleed me, whelp?”

      But I just couldn’t let well enough alone, “Assuming that when I cut you I get more than dust?”

      Fortunes in any gambling hall can change with a single roll of the dice. That’s when the door to Aelia’s room opened up and she entered the room, forcing me to once again come to my feet. She stood in the doorway for a few seconds, trying in vain to find a diplomatic way to say, “Have you two come to any understand of who is in charge?”

      I hooked my thumb at Roehm as he said “Yes” and interrupted with, “He thinks he is.”

      Aelia affixed me with an icy stare, “And who do you think is in charge, Crow?”

      I reached through the many disguises in the back of my head and chose the perfectly ingratiating, winning smile and slapped it on my face, “Why, you, of course Grand Lady.”

      “Quite.” she said, managing to fit a lifetime of disapproval and disbelief in that one word. “You have caused me quite a bit of trouble.”

      My tone was light, my words were not, “I am sorry, Grand Lady, of course I should have let the assassin take his shot at you from the rooftop. He may even have missed.”

      Roehm hissed, “Speak to her with respect, cur!”

      Fighting men, and whatever his former position Roehm was a warrior through and through, are real sensitive about honor. If you convince someone they have to go off onto a field of battle and die in horrible, painful, long, and drawn out ways, they better have a reason. I figure that someone just like me came up with honor so they would have a reason to do it. Sadly, it does become awkward at times like this. He had placed Aelia above himself in his great view of what is. By failing to kowtow to every whim, living in the same suite, and generally treating her as an equal, I was placing myself on her level, and thus above him.

      “No, Crow. You did not capture the traitorous captain alive.”

      “Those were not O’Riagáin’s orders,” Roehm made a sound like an aborted bark, probably at my use of Horatio’s name without the fifteen titles attached to be properly obsequious, “Milady.”

      “Be that as it may now he will never give up his cohorts. And, by placing the head of Horatio’s Guard Captain in front of him in public…” Aelia threw her hands up and paced the room, agitated as a juggled beehive, “You might as well have accused him of ordering him to sabotage the patrols.”

      “If the head fits, Milady.”

      Her shoulders fell, “Horatio is my cousin, Fox.”

      “Name one noble here that is not at least a cousin to every other.”

      “No, he is a close cousin. We spent summers together. He is my friend.”

      Words, not mine, came bubbling out of the fog and out of my mouth, “You can only be betrayed by those you trust, Milady.”

      “Stop it, Crow. It is not Horatio. He would not have my father murdered.” She had grown pale, shaky, her voice drained of strength by the very thought that someone so close to her could have plotted to destroy the person she most loved in the world. “Unlock your room and gather your effects. You will be moving into the boys’ room.” Roehm made to protest but she cut him off, “They may be young, Captain, but they have proved up to the challenge of safeguarding my life. Sending them to the guard camp now would feel ungrateful.”

      While they began to start what was obviously a rehashed argument I went to my door and dug through my pouch for the key. I felt kicking me into the crowded room with four snoring youths slightly ungrateful, especially since Roehm would be much more comfortable in a garden variety coffin. Still Roehm argued that he had men of far greater experience available to come and provide close support. She felt better with people she knew. At least, he argued move me -who nobody really knew - out to where trusted men could watch me. I stifled a retort that would cause sailors to flinch and unlocked the finely crafted dwarven lock.

      The key I had just used caught my attention.

      I locked the door, then unlocked it, then locked it again. I took another key out of my pouch and tried it. Well tended and well oiled, the lock opened and latched without a hitch.

      Roehm frowned at me, “Quit wasting time and move your effects, peasant.”

      I turned to him, eyes not seeing him at all, “Front door.”

      I brushed past him as he developed a really good belly of fire and yanked open the door, causing Jon and three men in Aelia’s colors I did not know to jump. “Key.” I ordered.

      Dutifully Jon handed it over, and receiving a tongue lashing from Roehm for his trouble. It didn’t last long, just enough for me to test three keys on the front door. Two of three opened it without fail. I raced back to my door, where again two of three worked the latch. I remember the hot water, and the door I thought I had secured.

      “Roehm?” perhaps it was my boldness in questioning him mid rant that had him stumble to a stop, “Did you request water be brought for this room?”

      He nodded, and I turned to Aelia, hand out. “Your key.”

      This caught Roehm’s attention, and he came at me like a bad tempered terrier. I insulted him still further by ignoring him, going to Aelia’s room and trying all four keys. Only two worked. Only one worked them all, without fail.

      It was the key I had taken from the assassin.

      Roehm remembered he needed to punish me for something and came at me, but I stopped him with a pointed finger, “Roehm, you hate me.”

      The old warrior stopped, glanced at Aelia for permission, then smiled, “More than any other man, living or dead, has hated anyone. More than drunks decry the dawn, more than soldiers despise the chiurgeon, more than prostitutes hate the pox-”

      “-Yes, yes, I have heard you are far more deadly than any prostitute, but it is your hate that makes you the perfect man to come with me.”

      “And why should I do that?”

      “Because I have known the Grand Lady for several weeks, she knows when I get like this I am always right, and if I ask her she will order you to. This way you get to save some face and look like the better man.”
Or would have, had you not made me point it out
.

      But, moustache trembling, he came along without being ordered. We spent a half an hour checking the handful of keys in dozens of locks all across the castle/inn. Only one worked, but that one never failed. I handed it to Roehm.

      He examined it closely, then slipped it into his pocket, “What now?”

      I wanted to bristle as he took what was clearly mine, but instead I pointed down the hallway, “We have to beg an audience.”

      “What?”

      Two minutes later we were in front of Horatio O’Riagáin’s door. That isn’t true: we were in front of six guards; in front of four servants; in front of one haughty nose wipe; in front of his door. I had no hat to hold in my hand, and the mental costume I was wearing really required one, but still I was already here longer than I needed. It was important to disguise the reason for the visit, though. Thankfully, I was about to be dismissed by the chamberlain, or seneschal, or whatever they called haughty functionary in this castle, “I was sent by the Grand Lady Conaill, Grand Duchess of Conaill to apologize for the audacity with which I brought the traitor’s head to the festivities.”

      The functionary sniffed twice, as if I stunk, “I am sure a letter will do-”

      Then the door was flung open, and a disheveled, red faced Horatio stared out into the hall, focusing on nothing but my characteristically contrite form as everyone went down on one knee.

      “What is the meaning of this?”

      I swear, that’s just what he said. As everyone else looked at their mental maps to make sure they were currently located nowhere near the place at fault for the Duke’s displeasure, I took him at started in a shaky voice, “Your Grand Lordship: I am to confer the most sincere apologies of your favored cousin, Aelia Conaill, Grand Duchess of Conaill and I am to beg for forgiveness. I, lowly creature that I am, sought to remedy the harm caused your house by taking the traitor to your table, unknowingly implying-”

      “SILENCE!” He shrieked, but after a pregnant pause, seemed to regain some of his composure, “Please tell my sweet cuz that her,” special emphasis, “apology is not needed. I just hope you are going to be flogged for your impertinence.”

      I bobbed my head toward Roehm, “The Captain is taking me so, now, Your Grand Lordship.”

      Horatio looked pleased, but he was a moon to Roehm’s shining sun. “Very well, carry on.“

      And he retreated inside, shutting the door firmly.

      Roehm and I rose and we left in haste, but as my mind finally got the last few pieces into position, Roehm was busy being amazed at the wrong thing, “To take a flogging to protect the reputation of the Grand Duchess. I never thought you had it in you.”

      “Forget that, you dolt. Did you see the lock?”

      “The lock?”

      Why, why, why must everyone around me be so dim? Before I kill the next assassin I am going to have to have a lengthy conversation with him or her so I might at least have a chance of finding an equal
! “The lock. The lock. The lock on O’Riagáin’s door!”

      “I fail to see-”

      I took out a knife, causing Roehm to blink and wonder where it had been stashed. I scraped at the lock on one random door. Years and years of age gave way before the blade, leaving shiny, silvery steel beneath. “Do you understand?”

      Roehm did not understand, and was coming upon a very foul mood…but that was because he was becoming more and more convinced that there would be no flogging after all. But it was much later that things got worse.

      That was when I approached Aelia and said, “I know who’s paid to have you killed.”