He stamped a foot in the opening in a fencer's
appel. "She was transferred to duties in
Brimiarde about five years ago, just as I--"
"There is no Sister Kate in Brimiarde,"
Mother Superior announced firmly. "There is
no Sister Kate in the order. If you do not
instantly remove your boot, I shall lodge a
complaint with the Privy Council--just see if I
don't!" She slammed the door in his face.
Homecoming was not turning out as he had
expected.
The clink of masons' hammers and a powerful
stench of paint were reminders that the west wing was still under
construction. Hoare knew where he was heading, though,
and led the way to a huge emptiness that must be
destined to become a reception hall. It was lit
by enormous windows along one side, while
plasterers labored in a high spiderweb of
scaffolding covering the opposite wall and tilers
crawled antlike around the floor, creating
swirls of color. He set out across it, aiming
for a group of men standing at the far end.
"If you think this is big, you should see--"
"Halt!" A squad of four Blades
blocked their path, and the foremost had his sword
drawn.
Hoare roared, "Snake!"
"Beg pardon, Leader. Standing orders,
sir." Snake was trying with a notable lack of
success to conceal his amusement at this opportunity
to challenge his superior. He had been a new
boy when Durendal left and now wore an
officer's sash, but neither maturity nor the
voluminous new livery could make him
look much less like his namesake than he had before.
He was still as thin as a rapier. "The Sisters are
questioning your compan--" His eyes widened. "Sir
Durendal! You're back! You're alive!"
Durendal said, "Wait!" before Hoare could
say anything he would have to retract. Two White
Sisters were hovering in the background, both of them
mature, competent-seeming women. One looked
close to nausea and the other not far from it, and the
cause could only be the contents of the heavy bag he
bore in his left hand. "I was intending to present
this package to His Majesty. It is a
conjurement, yes, but I did not expect it to be
still active."
The three junior Blades were still adjusting to the
presence of the famous Sir Durendal, but
Snake himself--and, more important, Hoare also--
had progressed to the next step. Their faces had
hardened into doubt and suspicion. A man
returns from the dead, heads straight for the King, and
triggers the sniffers' alarms. Who or what was
he?
"You had better leave it here, brother,"
Hoare said warily.
"It is fairly valuable, and I suspect the
Sisters would rather have it removed from their presence."
He looked at them to make the remark a question.
"Whatever it is, it is vile!" one of the women
snapped.
"You speak truer than you can know. Well, let
us send it to a safe place." Durendal laid
down the bag and fished in his pocket for the golden
bones. He transferred them to the bag without--he
hoped--any of the watchers seeing either them or the
gold block itself. "Leader, would you have this taken
to your office, please? Without anyone looking
inside it? And give orders for it to be kept
safe and confidential."
Hoare seemed reassured but not totally
convinced. "Of course. Fairtrue, see to that.
Take it to my office; stay and guard it until
I get back."
The young man thus addressed was sandy haired and
fair complexioned, with a face suggesting more
affability than intelligence. Durendal had
met him before, because he had been introduced to all
the candidates in Ironhall on the night of
Wolfbiter's binding, and now he recognized the
other two Blades also. The beefy one had been
Wolfbiter's Second, by the name of
... Bull-something. Bullwhip. His eyes were
bright with hope. So were the others'. All three of
them would have been friends and contemporaries.
He shook his head. "Just me. He died with
great honor, though. I returned his sword to the
hopes die and imagined their reactions if they
heard that Wolfbiter's killer was now within the
palace. But he did not want them to get
to Kromman before he did. He would explain at
the inquest. He handed over the bag to the one called
Fairtrue. "Careful! It's heavy."
Too late. Fairtrue dropped it with a thud
that shook the hall, fortunately missing his feet.
He picked it up again with an embarrassed laugh.
"Must be solid gold!"
"We don't need a speech, Sir
Fairtrue," Hoare snapped. "What is
required in the present instance is prompt
obedience to orders!"
"Yes, Leader!" Pink faced, the youngster
hurried away, canted sideways by the weight of
his burden.
The men all looked to the sniffers, who
exchanged worried frowns. They did not seem very
reassured. Flames! Durendal felt in his
pockets to make sure he had not overlooked
any more of the gold bones. None.
"Have you been carrying that package for some time,
sir?" asked the elder.
"Three years, sister."
"Ah. You vouch for him, Commander?"
"I vouch for him before any man in the Guard."
She was relieved. "Then we shall assume that it
is only some residual odor ... taint. I
mean, a residual taint of the conjurement."
The taint was on his soul, too. As Durendal
proceeded on his way, he noticed Hoare
gesturing to Snake to follow and bring his men. The
incident was troubling, a shadow on his loyalty
when he faced a showdown with Kromman over which of
them was lying. And the King was obviously busy with
other matters. To force bad news on him at such
a time would be utter folly.
"Perhaps we ought to leave this for now?"
Hoare cocked a disbelieving eyebrow.
"Second thoughts? You? You're certain that
Kromman lied to him?"
"Yes."
"Telling fibs to His Majesty is
classed as treason, and there is nothing to which
Ambrose the Great assigns greater priority
than treason in all its multifarious
manifestations. Just watch. Wait here, all of
you."
The King was consulting a roll of drawings, standing
within an entourage of about two dozen men ranging from
splendidly attired nobles to artisans in dirty
rags, and dominating them like a swan among
cygnets. At first he scowled when Hoare
appeared before him, but his reaction to the whispered
explanation was instantaneous, suggesting a
full-force gale hitting a scatter of dry
leaves on a courty
ard. A moment later there was
no one within twenty feet of him except
Durendal, bowing low.
As he straightened, the King said, "You are very
welcome back, Sir Durendal. Your
return gladdens our heart."
"Your Majesty is most gracious. It is
always an honor and pleasure to come into Your
Majesty's presence." It was, too.
Ambrose was certainly bigger than he had
been, but his height and the skill of his tailors had
turned obesity into mere overwhelming mass. A
lesser man must have collapsed altogether under the
magnificence of his attire--fur, brocade,
cloth of gold; ruff, gems, gold. Only his
face gave him away: the shrunken mouth, the
mountain of butter encroaching on the famous amber
eyes. There was white in his fringe of beard, and the
rest of it had faded to a dull brown, yet he was
still an unquestioned monarch. Durendal felt small
before him.
"You escaped from captivity? We shall look
forward to hearing of your exploits."
"I was never captive, sire."
The piggy eyes shrank to pinholes. "Then how
exactly came you to be separated from
Inquisitor Kromman?"
"I left him for dead in the desert, sire.
I tried to kill him and am sorry to learn that I
failed."
A royal foot tapped on the tiles. "You
had some reason for this, I presume?"
"Because he killed my friend and Blade, Sir
Wolfbiter, and very nearly killed me also."
The King looked slowly around the great empty
hall. All the spectators backed away even
farther. "We are waiting, Sir
Durendal."
"My liege. We arrived at Samarinda
..."
He told the story in full detail. The
King gave him his complete attention--he had always
been a good listener. For twenty or thirty
minutes the nobles and master craftsmen stood
impotently silent, Blades and White
Sisters conferred in faint whispers, tilers and
plasterers worked their hearts out in case the King should
glance their way. When Durendal had finished,
two red blobs of fury glowed on the royal
cheekbones.
"I was informed that you and your Blade insisted on
breaking into the castle despite contrary advice from
Master Kromman. When you did not come out at the
agreed time, he returned to the lodgings you shared.
He waited two weeks and when you still failed
to appear he gave you up for dead and left the
city."
A man could not say, I know you appointed him
Secretary only a month ago and to put him on
trial for treason so soon will be a public
admission that he deceived you, but I am sworn
to defend you from all foes and that man is a liar
and a killer.
All he could say was, "I am prepared
to repeat my story before the inquisitors, sire."
The King thumped the roll of drawings against his
thigh a few times. "Trusting of you. Secretary
Kromman told me his story in the presence of
Grand Inquisitor herself."
Death and fire! A trickle of sweat
ran down Durendal's ribs. The King was warning
him that the inquisitors defended their own. Mention
of Mother Spider raised the stakes considerably.
If the King accepted his Blade's story, he
must at least dismiss and perhaps destroy a senior
minister. Would he even dare to try? The Office
of General Inquiry might not cooperate in
decapitating itself. To be certain that he had the
truth of this affair, he would have to put someone to the
Question, and that was using sledgehammers for
drumsticks. The best Durendal could hope for
now was dismissal from court. It was what he
wanted, wasn't it--retirement? Honorable
retirement, though.
"I have the gold I mentioned, sire. Did
Master Kromman describe the gold, and, if
so, how did he explain his knowledge of it?"
The shrewd little eyes grew no warmer. "He
said little about gold, but I am sure he can
present other explanations of how you acquired it.
I want to see this gold. Where is it?"
"In a bag in the Commander's office, sire.
The sniffers took exception to it."
"Damn the sniffers. You may have brought a
profit for ..."
The King had turned to look for his Blades.
Hoare was grinning, having just finished saying something
humorous. The other three and the two White
Sisters were all shaking with suppressed laughter,
unaware of the royal glare suddenly fixed upon
them. It felt like a month before one of them
noticed.
Hoare came hurrying over. "My liege?"
"Go and bring me Sir Durendal's bag."
"Sire, the White Sisters were very ... Um,
yes. At once, Your Majesty!" The Commander
backed away, bowing. His sovereign's fury
seemed to follow him all the way to the door like
tongues of fire.
"Your return is most timely, Sir
Durendal," the King muttered.
Not sure what that implied, Durendal said,
"For further evidence, I must have imprinted a
substantial scar on Master Kromman's
belly."
The King left off glowering after Hoare to glower
at Durendal instead. "He was wounded when
brigands attacked the caravan on his way
home."
Shit! "Sire, he has obviously kept
his lies as close to the truth as possible. But he
did follow us into the castle, he did not wait
two weeks for us to emerge, he did close the
trapdoor and the gate on us, he certainly
possessed an invisibility cloak, which--"
"Those were his orders."
"Sire?"
"The cloaks are a state secret, to be
denied at all times. They do not confer
invisibility, only a sort of unimportance,
and they are extremely difficult to use. If
an assassin walked in here wearing one, you would
probably see a page or another Blade, and
you would pay no heed--but only if the man kept
his head. If he let his own attention wander for an
instant, the cloak would reveal him. Kromman
could no more have loaned you his cloak than you
would loan an unruly horse to a man who has
never ridden. It would have been useless to you. And if
he did follow you into the killers' den, then he was
taking little less risk than you were."
The swamp grew deeper every minute.
"He did not wait two weeks! He fled
right away. He lied to you."
"A man may reasonably conceal his own
cowardice."
"He used the cloak against me, sire, which is
hardly the act of an innocent. He might just
argue that closing the trapdoor was a necessary
precaution with dawn breaking, but never that locking the
gate was." Was this now the extent of his complaint
against the King's personal
secretary?
Ambrose glared at him as if he were a
cast-bronze idiot. "It was already light. He
assumed that you were either dead or had found a hiding
place within the castle. The next night he went
back and unlocked the gate and waited until
dawn. He will also claim he tried to run from you
later because he did not know who was pursuing him.
He has hairs growing out of his nose. Is there
anything else about him you dislike?"
That thumping noise must be earth falling on his
coffin lid. "If that is what Your Majesty
believes, then you had better put me to--"
"No!" bellowed the King. The watchers all
shivered and retreated a few more paces. "I
don't believe it," he continued in his former tones
of quiet menace. "Accept an inquisitor's
word over a Blade's--what kind of dunce are
you calling me? He tried to steal all the glory
and leave you to die, but I can't prove it without
putting one of you to the Question, so I won't. He
is a bottom-feeding worm, but a prince must
use the tools available to him, and very few are beyond
reproach, as you are. I congratulate you on a
superb accomplishment. You have lived up to your
glorious reputation, Sir Durendal."
Speechless, his Blade bowed.
The King said, "Name your reward."
Fire! He thought of that estate he had never
seen. Release? No, not that. And he had sworn
to obey his liege, not to pander to his feelings.
"Justice for Wolfbiter's death, sire."
The King swelled, his fat fists clenched, his
beard bristled. "Sirrah, remember your
place! Not even you can speak to me like that! Name
another."
"I want nothing else except to continue
to serve Your Majesty as best I can." To Be
Withand Serve--that would be Harvest's answer if he
could ask her the same question. It was the purpose for
which he had been made.
Ambrose accepted the amendment with reluctance.
"Very well, I will grant you that. But you will
remember that justice is mine, Sir
Durendal. I will have no duels or blood
feuds in my court."
Oh?
The hall stilled like a mill pool after a
trout has taken a fly. Courtiers and
Blades fell silent; even the busy artisans
paused in their clinking and shuffling, as everyone sensed
the confrontation--the mysterious newcomer glaring
rebelliously at his sovereign, the King's
face growing steadily more inflamed while he
waited for assent so dangerously withheld. Veins
began to bulge at his temples. His foot