‘Or the Dimwood, for that matter,’ Pirojil said. Which was probably an exaggeration, but not much of one. There was not a lot of anything between Loriel and the Dimwood.
‘And more to the point, it doesn’t much matter what cushy billet you think you’ve procured for us if that billet is crushed beneath Tsurani sandals–along with us, eh?’ Durine said. He frowned and shook his head.
‘Would you just please think it over for a moment?’ Kethol pleaded. ‘Please?’
‘This stupid idea of yours–’
‘Hey.’ Kethol held up a hand. ‘It wasn’t my idea. I wouldn’t have brought the subject up at all, not without discussing it with the two of you–’
‘And somebody had better learn to keep his mouth shut, and work harder at staying invisible at other times than when we’re hiding in a forest, eh?’ Pirojil shivered. Maybe it was a little warmer –well, no maybe about it; it was starting to warm up–but that didn’t make it comfortable outside.
‘I don’t know what it is that you think I did,’ Kethol said. ‘Other than not telling the Baron no right away. All I agreed to–’
‘You should have said “thank you, my lord, for your very gracious offer, but no, no, no, no”, not left him to think that we might take him up on the offer, if the price is right or if pressure is applied. He might up the price and apply the pressure, eh?’ Pirojil wasn’t disposed to accept excuses. ‘As to what else you did, you flirted with the Baroness, that’s what you did, apparently.’
That was unfair, but Pirojil wasn’t disposed to be overly fair at the moment.
Durine shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Which shouldn’t have had such dramatic results. Then again, a little nick over the artery in your neck shouldn’t cause the blood to spurt out until you lie dead on the ground, either, but it does! Little things can have large effects!’
‘Just think about it,’ Kethol said, insisting. ‘I promised we’d think about it.’
‘I can’t help thinking about it,’ Pirojil said, his mind racing.
‘Well, then.’ Kethol gave a happy nod.
‘He said he was thinking about it, not that he was seriously considering it,’ Durine said.
Assuming that Kethol was telling the truth about his brief conversation with Baron Mondegreen, and Pirojil didn’t have any reason to doubt that–even Kethol could not be stupid enough to lie to him, not right now–Pirojil didn’t believe for one misbegotten moment that the origin of this idea lay with either of the barons, Morray or Mondegreen.
Lady Mondegreen was obviously behind it, and every indication was that she was terribly dangerous.
All roads led to her–from her husband having gained an inflated view of their abilities as warriors, right up to Morray giving up his campaign for the earldom.
Pirojil wouldn’t have been surprised if the idea of breveting the three of them to help keep peace in the city had originated with her, and Steven Argent didn’t even know that the seeds had been planted in his mind–perhaps while he was busy trying to plant the seeds of what would officially be Mondegreen’s son in her belly, although if she had manipulated the Swordmaster, she had probably been somewhat more subtle than to whisper suggestions while they coupled in the night.
No; that was wrong.
She had been pregnant for some time–that was clear from her trip to Mondegreen, to spend one last night with her husband and establish the child’s paternity. But the rest of the idea held up, and there was no reason to believe that her apparently effective dalliances had ceased upon her return to LaMut, and quite a lot of reason to believe otherwise.
It seemed that she wanted some reliable outsiders to watch over the upbringing of the child growing in her belly, the child that had apparently been put into her belly by one of the nobles with whom she had been cuckolding her dying husband, a child planted there quite probably with that husband’s knowledge and blessing.
Which meant either that she didn’t trust anybody around her, not even Morray, even though he had apparently been her childhood sweetheart; or that she, as a matter of policy, believed in coppering all bets.
Or both, of course.
That she was capable of being bloody-minded was no surprise to Pirojil, now that he had a moment to think about it. She had, after all, married Mondegreen rather than Morray, and it was clear that she had had the choice between the two of them.
Was that because she had had her eye on being the wife of the Earl of LaMut and hitched her wagon to Mondegreen’s star? She certainly would have noted Vandros’s unavailability because of his longstanding attachment to Felina, and his likely ascension to the dukedom. Logic argued against her setting her cap at the younger earl. If she wanted to rule in LaMut it would have to be as the wife of the man to follow young Vandros.
Had she really worked all that out and calculated that Baron Mondegreen was likely to become the Earl–before anybody else had?
Or was it just that she had expected to outlive Mondegreen, and had her eye on both baronies?
It even could have been that she just preferred the man she had chosen to the man she had passed over. Call it affection, or love: call it anything you liked. It hadn’t stopped her from manipulating other barons and soldiers with an ease and ability that terrified Pirojil, who didn’t think of himself as a man easily frightened.
Pirojil always preferred to have a high opinion of the opposition, even if it usually made sense to keep that opinion to himself. He had to admire the enemy here, because the enemy was clearly Lady Mondegreen, and she was good at what she was doing, and capable of laying plans that would take years to complete, promptly adjusting her tactics as things changed on the ground–what with her husband’s inability to get her with child, and the wasting disease that had, finally, killed him.
Pirojil thought he had had great respect for the political abilities of Kingdom nobility, but this woman…It was a shame that she wasn’t born a man, or Pirojil knew who would be running the staff meeting in Yabon City at this moment, if not presiding at the table of the Viceroy in Krondor.
She was probably good at some other things, as well. She had managed to persuade Morray to make a deal with his enemy, Verheyen, with Morray’s only payment being herself and the appointment as regent of Barony Mondegreen in return for Morray giving up his claim on the earldom.
Had that been the plan all along? It seemed likely, although there was no way to know for certain.
Morray didn’t seem to be the sort to take a sure small profit over a large speculative one, and the word was that he had possessed a more-than-average chance at being the next Earl of LaMut. Yet, in the space of a few hours, he had given up on that. Pirojil nodded. Very nicely done, Lady Mondegreen, he thought. From what Kethol said, while it was clear that Morray was dedicated to the notion of raising Lady Mondegreen’s child as though it was her freshly-dead husband’s, it was also clear that Morray thought the child was his.
As it might well be.
He could blame the Swordmaster, as well, come to think of it. Steven Argent had apparently, although probably unintentionally, planted in Lady Mondegreen’s serpentine mind the notion of the value of outsider bodyguards with everything to lose if something happened to whoever they were supposed to protect: so it wasn’t surprising that she would want a set of bodyguards like that–or those specific bodyguards–for her own child.
And he could blame himself and Durine and Kethol, too, for that matter, for the quick and effective way that they had protected Baron Morray during the Tsurani ambush that had only been a few days before, but was already starting to feel like ancient history. That had apparently impressed Lady Mondegreen, for whom combat had been a nebulous thing until the Tsurani had dragged it into her lap.
So Pirojil could blame the three of them for that. He chuckled to himself. As long as he was diverting himself by blaming, he could blame the Tsurani, the King, Prince, and Regent and the gods themselves, and probably be more right than wrong.
Not that laying the bl
ame would do any good.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘my careful, considered, thoughtful answer is the same one as my offhand, reflexive, instinctive answer: no.’ He shook his head. ‘I like things just a leetle more straightforward than they are here, and this Lady Mondegreen scares the shit out of me.’
‘Lady Mondegreen?’ Kethol hadn’t worked it out, yet. Pirojil would have to explain it to him slowly, later.
Using very small words. One. At. A. Time.
‘Yes. Her.’ Durine was nodding. ‘Yeah. I’d much rather have her as a friend than an enemy, but…’
‘Shit, yes. I’d rather be in a death duel with Steven Argent than that. At least with the Swordmaster you’ve got a chance to see the blade coming your way.’
Durine nodded again. ‘Or run away from it, without knowing that you were just running into some other blade, put in place against just that eventuality.’
‘Enough chance of that if you’re a friend, eh?’
‘Yeah.’
She hadn’t done anything to harm them–save for wrapping them more and more tightly in local politics, and politics was a dangerous sport, and not to Pirojil’s taste.
Protecting yourself was one thing. Spending twenty or more years protecting not just one baron for one little patrol, but a baby baron, through to his majority, was something else entirely. And knowing that you had been picked precisely because you had no local connections, that you understood that if anything, ever, happened to the baby, the boy, the man, it would be your fault…
That would certainly compel whatever fool agreed to that to take great pains with the safety of the baby, the boy, the man.
But Pirojil wasn’t that kind of fool, and he really did want to be able to sleep some time over the next twenty years, and on better than a one-in-three.
‘So,’ Pirojil said, ‘we have to decide. Yes or no? Do we decide that we enjoy the taste of LaMutian conspiracy, and ask for more, with a helping of intrigue on the side? Or do what any sensible man would, and run the moment we can? And if that means leaving our pay behind, so be it.’
Durine chuckled. ‘I think your position on it is clear. As is mine.’
‘But–’
‘Shut up, Kethol. It’s my turn to speak.’ Durine shook his head. ‘I’ll be clear about my choice: I am leaving. If it’s with one or both of you, that’s fine. If you want to stay behind and take service here, Kethol, I’ll wish you well, bid you goodbye, and make sure that the gold is properly divided before I go. I don’t like things complicated, and the more we get involved with this northern nobility, the more complicated things get. Not for me.’
Pirojil nodded. ‘I agree. Two of us say no to the Baron’s kind offer. If you want to say yes, you’re on your own.’
Kethol stood silently for a moment, and then his shoulders slumped. ‘You’re right, I guess. I just wanted to think about it.’
‘We’ve thought. We’ve talked. Decide.’
Kethol raised both palms in surrender. ‘Oh, never mind. I’m with the two of you.’ He sighed. ‘And if you choose to think me a fool for having considered staying, then you can just go ahead and do so.’
Pirojil clapped a hand on Kethol’s shoulder. ‘Well, what I think is that there are no other men I’d rather have watching my back, and that’s a fact. We’re agreed, then?’
‘I already said so.’
‘Good.’ Durine nodded.
A thought occurred to Pirojil, but he dismissed it, or at least tried to.
Manipulation was one thing; murder another.
It was unlikely that Lady Mondegreen had poisoned her husband so that she could marry her lover. Wasn’t it? The Astalon priest treating the Baron would probably have been able to discern the existence of the poison, if not necessarily find a cure.
No, he decided, she hadn’t murdered her husband. If she was willing to leave dead bodies in her wake in order to advance herself, there was no reason why she would have waited this long to rid herself of a troublesome husband, and the trail of bodies would have been long. Besides, Durine had known his share of cold-blooded killers and he relied on twenty years’ experience that she wasn’t such a one.
In any case, it was almost over.
The air was warming, peace had been made between the two most hostile of the feuding barons, and all they had to do was politely turn down Baron Morray’s and Lady Mondegreen’s generous offer, get their pay, and head south as quickly as possible, leaving LaMut behind them. Assuming that they could get their pay before they had to leave.
He shivered.
It might be warmer outside than it had been, but he felt colder.
TWELVE
Morning
Everything appeared peaceful.
The golden morning sun had just barely breached the eastern walls, so that it shone in through the now-unshuttered windows, splashing golden morning sunlight into Lady Mondegreen’s bedroom on the second floor of the castle. Tapestries covering the stone walls opposite the windows blazed with unexpected vibrancy, made brilliant by the golden light playing across them. An array of jars and bottles resting on her personal table glimmered like jewellery as the sunbeams reflected off their glass and porcelain surfaces, sending sparkling motes into the gloomy corners of the room. As the sun rose, the reflected light seemed to move, alive, shimmering and changing colour from golden, to silver, to white.
An obviously empty bottle of fine Ravensburgh red lay on its side on the bedside table next to two glasses, one empty, one with a thimbleful of wine remaining at the bottom. Some delicacies lying on a tray beside the wine–shelled nuts, sweetmeats, and a bit of cheese–had dried during the night.
On a chair beside the bed, a man’s clothing and a woman’s nightgown lay neatly folded.
The bedside lantern had long since burned itself out of oil, or been quietly, peacefully extinguished.
The bedclothes had been disturbed no more than bedclothes would normally have been disturbed in sleep by the two forms that lay there, intertwined, beneath the covers.
It was all peaceful.
The lovers lay facing one another, as if they had been gazing into one another’s eyes as they succumbed to slumber. Even what seemed to be a veritable sea of blood from their cut throats had soaked into the sheets and clotted, leaving Baron Morray and Lady Mondegreen lying together, unmoving in death.
THIRTEEN
Investigation
The guard had fallen asleep.
White-faced, still shaking, he admitted as much.
Steven Argent believed him.
The Swordmaster gestured him into a chair while Tom Garnett looked on. There was no point in keeping a dead man at attention, after all, and clapping him in the dungeon could wait for a few minutes, until Steven Argent worked out what questions, if any, he ought to ask him right now.
He found himself possessed of a bizarre sense of utter calm. He didn’t even ask the man when he fell asleep, or how long. How would he know?
How could the idiot have been so sloppy? How could Tom Garnett have picked a sergeant who would have picked a soldier to stand guard over Morray’s suite who would have been so sloppy? How could Steven Argent have picked–
Damn!
‘Are you certain that you didn’t see Baron Morray go to Lady Mondegreen’s room?’ he asked, quietly.
‘Nossir. I mean, yessir. I mean, yessir, I did.’ The soldier was staring straight ahead, not meeting the Swordmaster’s gaze. ‘It was none of my concern, I thought, and the Baron didn’t need to tell me that. I just stood my post–I could see the lady’s door, down the hall, and I didn’t think that the Baron would have wanted me to move over to a post in front of her door while he was inside.’
That made sense.
Not that it would have made any difference if he had fallen asleep while standing next to Lady Mondegreen’s door, or had just gone down to the barracks and abandoned his post.
First things first, he thought, first things first.
The obvious
suspect was Verheyen–at least, that would be the obvious suspect to Morray’s men.
Tom Garnett nodded, as though he was reading the Swordmaster’s thoughts. ‘I’ve got the Morrays, with Karris’s company, on a quick march to the north, with the Verheyens and Kelly’s men to the south.’ His mouth twitched. ‘I know it’s not my prerogative, but–’
‘But it seemed more important to separate them, even for a few hours, than it was to take the few extra minutes to get my orders on the subject.’
Garnett agreed with a nod. It would have seemed that way to Karris and Kelly, as well.
Not that Steven Argent thought that it was Verheyen, not given the arrangements that Verheyen and Morray had made between them the night before, which amounted to Morray’s surrender. Yes, Verheyen might have hated Morray, but part of that was just rivalry over the earldom, and as of last night, that rivalry had ended, with Morray’s surrender. Whatever animus remained would be set aside once the larger prize was won.
But if not Verheyen, then who?
And why?
Steven Argent shook his head. That sort of question wasn’t going to be answered by an idiot of a swordmaster, who apparently couldn’t keep his mind on the simple task his earl had given him of keeping one land baron alive, and who had such slack discipline among his troops that soldiers fell asleep on watch.
He shook his head. There would be no excuses. He had always emphasized such basics, and any one of his sergeants would have kicked a man bloody if he’d found him sleeping on watch, even what was supposedly a perfunctory watch as that on the Baron’s suite in the castle had been. And yes, it had been important to separate the factions of these fractious barons in this once-in-a-lifetime combination of too many of the wrong troops in LaMut, too few of the right ones, and a blizzard locking them all in the city.
He would present his resignation to the Earl, immediately upon Vandros’s return, and in the unlikely event that the Earl would have such a useless fool as a private, Steven Argent would expiate his guilt with a sword and pike in the line.