Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda (38 page)

Kethol found it more reassuring. They weren’t after
her
. Just him.

That was different.

He had always expected to die violently, ever since he had gone a-soldiering. Oh, the three of them had long been trying to squirrel away money to buy a farm or a tavern to support themselves when they hung up their swords, but he had never really expected to live to spend the money.

“Or, perhaps,” Erenor said, thinking out loud — Kethol had always thought that Erenor liked the sound of his own voice too much, “perhaps that’s what we’re supposed to think.”

“That may be.” Thirien nodded. “But it’s all too complicated for the likes of me,” he said. “I always prefer something simple.” He turned to face Kethol again. “If you’re going to be generous enough to keep me on, my lord, then I’d best get back to my duties.”

Walking away under the light of the flickering torches, the old man in the nightshirt with the bandy legs sticking out of his boots should have looked ridiculous, and perhaps he did, but Kethol couldn’t help but find a strange sort of dignity in him, as well.

Which was, immediately, ruined by Erenor raising his voice.

“Captain?” He beckoned him back.

Thirien took being ordered around with the best grace he could muster at the moment. “Yes, Erenor?”

“You’d best take to more than your duties — we’re going to have to leave the baron in your care for some time.”

At a quick private glare from Pirojil, Kethol managed to keep quiet.

“I don’t understand.”

Erenor shrugged. “Well, when somebody sends a killer after, say, Jason Cullinane or his father, or even the Emperor himself, it’s hard to figure out how to limit the field. We don’t have that problem in this case. The only problem we have is in making the accusation stick.”

“Treseen,” Pirojil said. “It could be Treseen.”

“Just because Leria has been pressing him on the account books?” Erenor shook his head. “He doesn’t impress me as being that scared, that bloody-minded, or that stupid. And Treseen, of all people, knows well that Leria isn’t here. Don’t you think he would have mentioned that to some hired assassin?” Erenor stretched out a hand toward Kethol. “Do you really think that, say, Lord Sherrol or his idiot son are behind this?

“No. When somebody tries to kill the baron — and tries to be sure not to kill Lady Leria — we can be sure it’s not somebody local, at least not somebody both noble and local. The lords are delighted that the baron has returned, after all, and they should be. Oh, maybe Lord Sherrol is a little irritated over that … unfortunate event the other night, and certainly his son isn’t an admirer of the baron’s, but this isn’t their sort of thing. I can think of only one candidate, and he’s in Biemestren.” His smile broadened. “Which makes it all the more interesting that Lady Leria is at court, isn’t it? I guess we could always include the Emperor —”

“— who is a fine and honorable man,” Pirojil said, interrupting. “He’s decent, and whether or not he had intended to marry the Lady Leria before Baron Keranahan’s return, he’d no more have the baron killed to remove him as a suitor than he would, would —”

“Would bugger a baby in broad daylight?” Erenor suggested.

Kethol didn’t like the image, but he had to agree. Nobles were by no means always noble, but the Emperor?

No.

“So it’s not the Emperor,” Erenor said. “But it’s somebody noble, and the place to prove who it is isn’t here — it’s in the capital. It would be interesting to see just what Lord Miron has been doing there, wouldn’t it?”

Thirien nodded. “Governor Treseen will have it looked into —”

Erenor interrupted him with a snort. “Governor Treseen is a thief — which doesn’t matter, not in this — and an idiot, which most certainly does. I think Pirojil and I had better look into this ourselves.”

Pirojil nodded, and Kethol silently agreed.

It made sense. It wasn’t even unprecedented. He and Kethol and Durine — solid, reliable, dead Durine — had been used, after all, first by the Dowager Empress to rescue Lady Leria, and later by Walter Slovotsky to find Forinel.

Of course, things hadn’t worked out the way anybody had planned, either time.

But there was something about being at the center of something important that seemed to have started appealing to Pirojil, despite his protestations that he preferred to be simply a private soldier.

Kethol knew how he felt; Kethol, after all, felt the same way. There was something about handling a problem himself, and not having to trust to his betters to see to it for him.

It was best that they look into matters themselves.

“I think you’d draw far too much attention,” the captain said. “Wizards don’t tend to travel much, and —”

Erenor held up a finger, silencing him.

“Then, perhaps, I’m not a wizard.”

He muttered a few syllables, and he
changed
.

Kethol had to admire the gradualness with which it happened: thin, gray hair thickening and darkening into a warm brown while wrinkles smoothed and a bent stature became firm and upright. There was, of course, no hint that it was an illusion, no intimation that he might not be a strong man in his thirties, well muscled like a laborer, not an ancient, ascetic wizard.

“And that will hold how long, after someone so much as lays a finger on you?” the captain asked.

“Oh,” Erenor said, “I think it may still work.” He reached out and took the scabbarded sword from the captain’s hand, and slowly drew the sword.

Strong fingers gripped it both at the hilt and near the tip, and Erenor seemingly almost effortlessly bent the sword into a shallow arc, then slowly let it go straight again.

He smiled. “I wouldn’t think that Baron Keranahan would have given you a sword that could easily shatter or bend without springing back into shape; I’m pleased to be right, as I usually am.”

“Pfah,” the captain said. “Just another illusion. The sword never bent, eh?”

“Then, if you will,” Erenor said, “grip my hand in both of yours, and squeeze.”

Thirien belted the sword around his waist — it still looked silly, over a nightshirt — and gripped Erenor’s hand in both of his.

The captain was in his sixties, yes, but his shoulders were broad, and his forearms thick. He squeezed; only the set of his jaw and the way the tendons on his arms stood out, drawn tight, like a bowstring, showed how much he was attempting to crush Erenor’s fingers.

Erenor simply smiled more broadly and squeezed back, smiling and squeezing and squeezing and smiling until the captain, with a muttered oath, released his hand and nodded.

“Well, it’s apparently a day for me being wrong,” Thirien said. “I’ve never seen such an illusion.”

Kethol would have been more impressed if he hadn’t known that this was actually Erenor’s real appearance, that the old, wizened wizard was just a seeming that Erenor — never much of a wizard, except for his illusions — assumed to give himself some stature.

And, for that matter, it had served Erenor to lure unwary travelers into making foolish wagers, as Erenor had done the first time he had met Pirojil. Kethol was vaguely irritated with himself that the thought of Erenor swindling the usually difficult-to-fool Pirojil brought him more amusement than the anger that it should have.

He wasn’t surprised that the idea appealed to Erenor. Erenor was far too tricky for his own good, and liked things complicated.

Still …

“I’ll be going with you,” Kethol said.

***

Pirojil wasn’t surprised. That was the problem with Kethol.

Heroism.

The idiot.

It always had been and it always would be. Kethol had his virtues — he was by far the best tracker and woodsman that Pirojil had ever known, a good horseman and a better swordsman, and there was nobody alive that Pirojil would rather have had at his back in a fight — but he had one horrible, constantly frustrating weakness: he always had to be a hero. His idiocy in trying to stop a dozen bandits single-handed was only the most recent example. It was only through luck, and because Kethol had long been partnered with Pirojil — and Durine, for that matter — that Kethol’s insistence on being a hero hadn’t yet gotten him killed.

Yet.

“Eh?”

“I said,” Kethol repeated, “that I’ll be traveling with you to the capital.”

Erenor’s smile was conspicuously absent. “I’m not surprised. Lady Leria is there, after all.”

Thirien nodded. The explanation satisfied him.

The best way to lie, Erenor always said, was to tell a little bit of the truth. And there was some literal truth in what Erenor had said — it was no secret that Forinel had gone adventuring to prove himself to his childhood sweetheart, and it was no secret to Pirojil that Kethol was in love with her, as he would have been with any woman who would spread her legs for him without having first heard the sound of coins clinking into a wooden bowl.

Still, it made sense — absent Leria to guide him, Kethol/Forinel didn’t know much about running a barony in general, or any more about the barony than a casual visitor to Keranahan would. Most of that, of course, could be explained by his long absence, and vague references to injuries, or simply avoided. But it was always best to keep the necessity for explanations to a minimum, and zero always did make the perfect minimum.

Besides, two ordinary soldiers — even if one of them actually was a wizard in (or was that out of? With Erenor, you could never be quite sure) disguise — wouldn’t have much influence in Biemestren. Oh, certainly, they could get the ear of the Imperial proctor — Walter Slovotsky seemed to have some respect for both of their talents — but there was no guarantee that he would be in the capital, and while Pirojil thought that he probably could get a message passed to Leria, there was no guarantee. Imperial livery or not, you couldn’t just walk into Biemestren Castle, not without a pass.

But, on the other hand, a baron, even a Holtish baron from an occupied barony, would not be turned away at the door, and could surely get an audience with the Emperor. Hang this around the neck of Miron — or his absent neck, if he wasn’t in Biemestren — and that would go a long way to making things easier around here.

Pirojil wondered if that had been Erenor’s plan all along.

“If the line is still up in Nerahan,” Erenor said, “we can have a telegram to the proctor by late tomorrow.”

Pirojil shook his head. Even if he wasn’t known to Berten and Ernel, his captain’s warrant should be good enough to get a telegraph message sent, but announcing their coming?

No.

Shit. After that little excursion along the border, Pirojil had been looking forward to some quiet time, helping Kethol — damn it, Forinel, Forinel,
Forinel
 — to adjust to life as a baron. Nothing more dangerous than a deer hunt, he had thought, or maybe a boar at worst, and killing a boar, as long as you were hunting with somebody you could trust, was mostly a matter of paying attention and hanging on to the spear.

And there was every chance that by serving a baron — a phony baron, but one nonetheless — some coin would end up sticking to his fingers, to be added to the stash that he and Durine and Kethol had been building for years. In his mind’s eye, he could see the size of his homestead in Barony Cullinane grow, tenday by tenday.

He didn’t trust Kethol’s judgment — baron or soldier, he was always too inclined to be the hero — and he didn’t trust Erenor at all.

So why, he wondered, did he feel like somebody had breathed life back into him?

Pirojil decided that he wasn’t only ugly, he was stupid.

But he still smiled. “Let’s see … we’ll need to raid the strong room for some coin, and I’m sure that you can find some Keranahan livery for all three of us,” he said, thinking out loud, “and a message for the Emperor, sealed with the baron’s seal, should explain to any Imperials what we’re supposedly doing if we get stopped on our way. If the governor or any of his men show up here …”

“Since my loyalty isn’t in question, you can leave that to me.” Thirien shrugged, then smiled. “‘Good morning, Governor,’” he said, addressing the air in front of him. “‘The baron is out hunting boar or deer or more bandits, and is not expected back for a few days, at least, and can I offer the governor some refreshment?’”

He thought for a moment before he turned back to them. “In fact, it would seem to me to be best if the three of you equip yourselves with boar spears, and some packhorses, and cut through the forest until you reach the Nerahan road.”

He chuckled as he clapped a familiar hand to Kethol’s shoulder. “It won’t be the first time I’ve let you sneak off to hare about, eh, Baron?”

Part 4

Final Attacks

17

T
HOMEN

When the student outsmarts the teacher, it speaks well for the student — and probably better for the teacher.

— Walter Slovotsky

A
H
,
TO
BE
Jung again,” Walter Slovotsky said, “as Freud said with his dying breath.”

As Aiea set down the serving tray, she gave him one of her not-quite-patented he’s-making-obscure-references-again looks. She had taken to doing that a lot, lately.

Looking, that is.

She looked pretty, she looked at him, and she looked like she wanted something, which was also something that she was doing a lot of lately, so he did the obvious thing, which was to take her in his arms and hold her.

Which was also something that he had been doing a lot of lately.

She had been spending a lot of time with Thomen, of late. That actually bothered Walter a little, and it bothered him that it bothered him at all. He wasn’t the faithful type, himself, although he had been far too busy for any dalliances at the last Parliament, and maybe he was slowing down, or maybe it was that he was just, finally, a happily married man. Hard to say.

He had just become a creature of habit, he decided. Habits were bad.

Just as well there was no assassin looking for
him
 — at least as far as he knew — at the time. It wasn’t like he hadn’t ever had people trying to kill him. And not just people, either.