Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda (21 page)

It wouldn’t occur to Treseen, of course.

Treseen was far too busy being governor to remember what he used to have been, and it was no surprise that none of his captains would step forward, volunteering to take the chances involved. Much safer to ride out in force toward where bandits had raided, and know that they would find no resistance when they got there.

It wasn’t like soldiers actually enjoyed exposing their all-too-sensitive hides to enemy blades and arrows, after all, particularly when there was no chance of any loot when it was all done.

There were always risks, yes, but what of that?

Kethol was used to taking risks, after all, and this was the sort of thing that he was good at. The only question was exactly how to bait a trap, but between Pirojil and himself, they could surely work it out. Erenor might even have an idea, although it would probably be extraordinarily complicated and utterly impractical. Best to keep things simple.

“It would be interesting to see,” Melphen said.

Leria looked at him, once again, and he nodded.

“Then you shall, of course,” Leria said, her voice taking on a decided edge.

“Wait one moment,” Treseen said. “If you’re talking about me sending out half my troops to hare all over the countryside in search of a few lice-ridden bandits coming over the hills from Kiar, I think that you’ll find, Baron, that I’m still the governor here, and I’m not inclined to send even four, five companies out to chase around the barony, looking for these bandits — who undoubtedly have more than enough sense to scatter up and into the mists at the first sound of hoofbeats.” He shook his head.

“I wasn’t asking you to send out regiments, or even a full company, Governor,” Kethol said. “Just give me that Tarnell of yours — Captain Pirojil speaks highly of him — and have him and Pirojil pick out a dozen of your troopers who don’t close their eyes when they fire a rifle, and perhaps even know the flat of the blade from the edge — from the point, that is.”

“Tarnell? But he’s my aide, and —”

“What of that?” Melphen leaned forward. “Surely you can govern the barony for a few days without the help of one old soldier.”

“Well, yes.” Treseen gave in on that point with good grace. “Tarnell could be made available, at that.”

“But to do what?”

Leria leaned forward. “To make the bandits go away, of course. I think you can trust to Baron Keranahan to see to the details of that, can’t you?”

“But how — oh, never mind,” Melphen said. “I’m sure that a man of action like the baron would much rather show us than tell us.”

There was that.

There was also the fact that Kethol didn’t quite have an entire plan put together, and he didn’t want to talk about the outlines of it with the nobles, at least not until he had had a long talk with Pirojil, who would undoubtedly have some ideas for improving what was, at the moment, only a vague notion of setting a trap and springing it.

Kethol would need Pirojil, of course. It would have been nice to have some solid troopers from Barony Cullinane, and better to have Durine, but a few Imperials would do.

Moarin snorted. “I would pay in good coin to see that,” he said.

Leria smiled. “We accept.”

“Eh?”

“The baron gladly accepts your kind offer to cover his expenses,” she said. “And let me add, I’m grateful, as well.” She picked at her food. “It seems that the late baroness Elanee either spent or hid much of the money that should have been in the Residence strong room, and while I can surely come up with a few hundred silver marks, I’m pleased that you’ve offered to cover that.”

Treseen shook his head. “I’m not disposed to allow a special levy for this, this enterprise.”

“Levy?” She raised an eyebrow. “Who said anything about a levy, Governor Treseen? As I heard it, Lord Moarin has offered to pay for the baron’s expenses out of his normal stipend, and I’m sure that he wouldn’t think to try to squeeze an illegal levy on his crofters or landholders.”

The table fell silent, and all eyes turned toward Moarin for a long moment.

“Very well,” he finally said, with barely simulated good grace. “I’ll add fifty silver marks, and cover your” — he snorted — “expenses, upon success, as I know that a gentleman won’t take advantage in that. But,” he said, raising a peremptory finger, “I do insist upon that success — I’ll not pay a copper until presented with at least, say, half a dozen raiders’ heads, and the baron’s word, sworn on his sword, that that’s just what they are. When you can’t find these ghosts that flitter in and out of the shadows, I don’t want you executing a few upstart peasants as a substitute.”

“Done,” Leria said. She gestured with her eating prong at the assemblage. “You’re all witnesses — particularly you, Miron.”

“Yes, we are that, indeed. All of us.” Miron raised his glass. “Let us drink to my brother the baron’s success,” he said.

If there was any sarcasm in his voice, Kethol couldn’t hear it.

***

They stood outside on the balcony, watching the distant pulsation of faerie lights off in the hills. There were only a few of them tonight, and they pulsed slowly through a muted sequence of dull orange to quiet red, to a blue so subtle that it could hardly be seen against the night sky.

They looked tired. He knew how they felt.

“It seems that we do make quite a good combination, Forinel,” she said. “In more ways than one.” She ran a long finger down the front of his chest, then held up her face to be kissed. Was she kissing him, or Forinel?

He wondered, then wondered why he was wondering. It shouldn’t matter. Her tongue was warm and alive in his mouth, and when he reflexively stiffened, she pressed her midsection up hard against him before he could draw back.

“I’ll come to your room tonight, again, if you promise to wait up for me.” She pulled his body against hers, tightly. “You’re just going to have to get used to the servants knowing about us, after all. Unless you’d care to take up sleeping alone.”

“I guess so,” he said, relaxing against her.

“Guess what? That you’ll adjust to the situation, or to sleeping alone?”

“I’ll adjust, Leria.”

Her cure for his tendency to blush was working, and he was bright enough both to know that he was being manipulated and to not much care. Besides, he felt better about her safety when she was with him. Maybe she wasn’t actually safer in his bed than she would be in her own room — probably less; there was nobody who could profit from
her
death, after all, as far as he knew — but it felt like she was.

“Well,” he said, “together, I guess, we make a decent baron. You supply the mind, and the style, and all I have to do is kill a few bandits.”

“You really can?”

“Of course.”

There was, of course, no “of course” about it at all. Any time you insisted on putting your body out in the field, trying to kill men who would be trying to kill you, there was always a risk.

But he could hardly say that to Leria, who was smiling up at him. It was hard to talk. There was still something about the way she looked at him that made it hard to breathe, much less talk.

“Make me a promise, please,” he said. “If you will, that is.”

“Of course,” she said.

“While I’m gone, promise me that you’ll keep Erenor near you.”

Erenor was devious, certainly, and Kethol never completely trusted him. But Erenor knew without having to be reminded that if he let so much as a bruise come to Leria’s toe, Kethol would hunt him down.

That Erenor knew that without having to be reminded didn’t, of course, mean that Pirojil wouldn’t remind him, as of course he would.

Repeatedly.

She nodded. “I promise.”

“Good.”

“You must make me one promise,” she said. “If you will, that is.” “Of course.”

“Come back to me.” She reached out and grabbed his ears, not gently. “I mean that: you come back to me. Even if you fail, we can live with that, we will live with that.”

He probably should have said something boastful and noble about how failure was not possible, about how he would not permit himself to fail, but that was too much Forinel and too little Kethol, and he was filled to bursting in disgust with being Forinel and not Kethol, so he just put his hands over hers, and she released his ears to hold them, one thumb stroking gently over his scars.

“Of course,” he said.

If I can, he thought.

He had always thought that there was something stupid about the way that the Cullinanes always tended to put themselves in harm’s way when they could have been sitting, warm and dry, around a table, and he was by no means sure that he had changed his mind about that.

But, if it was stupidity, it was the sort of stupidity that was catching.

He grinned.

“You’re smiling,” she said. “As though you mean it.”

“Yes, I suppose that I am.”

“You should do that more,” she said.

“I will. I’ll try.”

There was no need to try to smile, not now. It wasn’t just that it was easy — he couldn’t help smiling; it would have taken more effort than he could have managed to get the grin off of his face.

For the first time since he had taken on the form and role of Forinel, Kethol actually felt like himself, and it felt better than good.

8

W
ALTER
S
LOVOTSKY

After you reach forty, it’s patch, patch, patch.

— L. Sprague de Camp

W
ALTER
S
LOVOTSKY
MORE
ran up than climbed up the old stone steps to the parapet surrounding the inner keep of Biemestren Castle, thoroughly enjoying the way that his legs, and particularly his knees, obeyed him without any protest whatsoever.

It was his way to enjoy things thoroughly.

It wasn’t just the absence of the pain. It was also the absence of the place that he had gone to to make the pain go away, at least for a while.

There was a lot that he didn’t like about the Spidersect priest’s little shop at the juncture of what were officially known as the Avenue of Pirondael’s Treachery and the Street in Honor of Baron Tyrnael’s Stand at Lundel, but which everybody still called Dog Street and Cleric’s Row.

For one thing, the trouble with the Spidersect was, well, all the spiders.

He didn’t like spiders. He had never liked spiders.

He didn’t like the little trapdoor spiders that lived in small dugouts along the edges of the walls, although they were generally shy enough not to come out when Filistat had visitors. He didn’t like the tiny feather-legged spiders, their bodies no bigger than the size of his smallest toenail, that hung on the walls and seemed to watch him, although he couldn’t see their eyes. He didn’t like the even tinier Oecobiuses, even though Filistat said that they did more to reduce the flea population than all the others put together.

He thought that the bright green color of the lynx spiders was an interesting contrast to the usual blacks and browns, but he didn’t much care for them, either.

But he most particularly disliked Filistat’s familiar, a large, hairy tarantula whose slick black body was the size of Slovotsky’s fist, and whose fangs were sharp-tipped slivers of what looked like bone, and Walter Slovotsky even more disliked the way that Filistat would coax the spider up onto Slovotsky’s leg, step by hairy-legged step.

Filistat had had it climb up that leg until it reached Walter’s sore right knee, then slowly, slowly, while Filistat muttered some vague incantations and vaguer assurances, the spider would sink those fangs — painlessly, yes, but they were still fangs — into Walter’s right knee, and the swelling would go down almost as quickly as a man’s erection would after hearing, “Doesn’t that look just like a penis, only smaller?”

He shuddered. Spiders.

Then again, as a kid, much to the embarrassment of Stash and Emma Slovotsky, he would wail when taken to the doctor for a shot, and scream that the needle was hurting him from the moment that old Doctor Menzer touched him with the alcohol-soaked cotton ball.

The spider — and the Spider — took away pain, not even causing a little in so doing, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

What he did like was the way that his formerly swollen knee was working again. Arthritis? Some sort of tear in the cartilage? He didn’t know, and he didn’t really care — the point was that it didn’t hurt. There were other pleasures than the loss of pain, granted, but few were quite as wonderful, and none was quite as stark.

It looked like it was going to be a good day.

The last bits of Parliament business were wrapped up — well, many of them turned over to Bren Adahan, but Walter’s role was wrapped up — and the last news along the Nyphien border was that there was no news. Quiet was good, as a general principle, although the Nyphs would bear watching.

Forinel and the rest were, by now, safely ensconced in Keranahan, and since Walter didn’t officially know that Forinel was really Kethol, he didn’t officially have anything to worry about, and he wasn’t much for worrying, anyway. Figuring things out wasn’t worrying, after all.

Sure, Kethol and Pirojil would be worried about failing, but at worst it would appear that Forinel, during his long absence from Holtun, had become unsuitable for the job of baron, but probably not sufficiently unsuitable that the Emperor would have to consider replacing him.

And it was a job, after all.

Not the most pleasant of jobs, Walter had long ago decided. If you choose to play king of the mountain, there’s always somebody who wants to come knock you off so that he can be king of the mountain. That applied to a bunch of little kids playing out in a construction site at the edges of Hackensack on the Other Side as much as it applied to a baron — or an Emperor, for that matter — here and now, and that made it a lousy job, despite the perks.

Much better to be an assistant to the king of the mountain, and get to go off and do interesting things while others did the dirty work.

Walter Slovotsky was growing old, but he was resolutely determined not to grow up any more than necessary. The only question right now was whether he ought to be waiting around in Biemestren himself, or go off to do some troubleshooting — in New Pittsburgh, say. Aiea liked New Pitt, and while the sounds and the smells of the smelters weren’t exactly Walter’s favorite things, it was a nice place to visit, and it was a good idea for the lord proctor to pop up there, or anywhere, every now and then, without warning.