Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda (26 page)

If it bothered Miron that Forinel had appeared in Parliament just before the Emperor and Parliament were to award the barony to him, it didn’t show. Which spoke only to his self-control.

“I think,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “that everyone will find that Forinel can handle himself as well in Dereneyl — and in Biemestren, too, for that matter — as he did in the Katharhd.”

“Ah, yes, his wanderings in the Katharhd. There were quite a few stories about his exploits floating around the capital, although he’s far too modest to retell them himself.” A quick shrug. “At least in my presence.”

Did he suspect the truth? Was he probing? She couldn’t be sure, but there was no way of knowing, and the last thing she wanted to do was to seem defensive.

“If you have any questions, ask them yourself — of him,” she said.

“And see if he’ll boast to me?” Miron shook his head. “So that I could, perhaps, magnify the stories in my own retelling of them, and use that to embarrass him as a braggart? No, thank you. My brother is a fool — that he left you in the first place proves that beyond a shadow of a hint of a glimmer of a doubt — but he’s not that kind of fool.” He smiled over his wine. “Whatever he did, I think it’s very clever of him to refuse to talk about it, and I’ve more than a hint as to where that cleverness originates.” He saluted her with his wineglass. “Not with Forinel, who has always been something of a dolt, eh?” He drained his glass, then picked up the wine bottle with his own hands and poured himself some more, rather than ringing for the serving girl.

She could have protested, and she wanted to. Forinel had left her, indeed — to go out into the Katharhd and prove himself, as though he had had something to prove — but that had nothing to do with being a fool, unless all men were fools. Miron’s mother, Elanee, had had a strange effect on men, something that Erenor described as a latent magical talent. Forinel hadn’t been the only one affected — Elanee had had Treseen wrapped about her little finger, and it had been all that Kethol, Pirojil, and Durine had been able to do to resist her attempts to persuade them, when they had first arrived in Keranahan, to leave Leria here. Only their orders and that innate stubbornness of Kethol’s had made them able to resist her.

It would have been wonderful, Leria thought, to have that ability, but she didn’t, and had to make her way with native wit, sharpened by a lifetime of training, and she sometimes wondered if it would be enough.

He picked up the bottle and refilled her wineglass. “Well, shall we drink to the future true ruler of Barony Keranahan?”

“To your brother,” she said, raising her own glass.

As she brought it to her lips it occurred to her how strange it was that Miron had poured his own wine, and that meant that he had had to handle the wine bottle, and —

She let the glass drop from her fingers. It shattered on the floor, splattering her legs.

Miron was on his feet in an instant. “Are you hurt, Leria?” he asked, as he came around the table.

The serving girl ran in through the archway to the main hall a scant moment before Captain Thirien burst through the garden door.

“Some problem, my lady?” he asked, as the serving girl, napkin snatched from the table in hand, knelt down beside her to daub at the stained dress.

She shook her head. “No, it’s just my clumsiness,” she said. “I dropped a wineglass.”

He hadn’t had the opportunity to put something in her glass, not directly, but he could easily have slipped something into the wine bottle. Poison? Not likely. Some sort of sleeping potion? She didn’t know, but it had been something, she was sure.

Thirien smiled. “I’m sorry to have bothered your dinner, then, Lady,” he said, giving a slight bow.

Miron turned to Ella. “Another glass for the lady, if you please,” he said, as though he was used to speaking so politely to servants.

“Yes, my lord, and —”

“No,” she said. “I think I’ve had enough. I think there’s something … strange about that wine.”

“The wine?” Miron’s brow furrowed. “It seemed fine to me.” He raised his own glass, and sipped at it. “As it still does, although I’ve certainly had better.” He shrugged.

“Not the wine in your glass,” she said. “The wine still in the bottle.”

She hadn’t seen Thirien move, but somehow the thick-waisted captain was between her and Miron, his eyes on Miron’s. “There’s something wrong with the wine in the bottle, Lady?” he asked, not looking directly at her.

She nodded. “I think so.”

“Surely,” Miron said, “surely you don’t think I put something in the bottle, Leria, do you?” He spread his hands. “I’m aghast at the suggestion, and I’m more than a little offended.”

“Easy enough to tell,” Thirien said. “Wizards are supposed to be good at that sort of thing.”

Miron shrugged. “Wizard? I see no need to bother the wizard, but, if you’d like to, you certainly may.” Moving slowly, he picked up the bottle and refilled his own glass, then set the bottle down on the table, where Thirien could reach it easily.

“I think you’ll find a glassful left, for the wizard to do whatever wizards do. As for me, I prefer a simpler test.” He lifted the glass. “To innocence,” he said. He drained the glass and set it down on the table. “Perhaps a trifle overly tannic, yes, but a fine bottle of wine, and I most certainly did not put anything in the bottle.” His lips were tight as he turned back to Thirien. “Captain Thirien, if you’d call one of your soldiers to accompany me, I find myself in need of fresh air, and I’d like a reliable witness to the fact that I am
not
about to go out into the garden and purge myself of this wonderful wine, for fear of some poison or potion in it. I know a gentleman would do no such thing, and I am, I assure you, a gentleman, but it seems that there are some who do not think me such.”

He bowed toward Leria, deeply, too deeply, then straightened himself. “For that, I can only blame myself for whatever it is that I have done that could have raised such an unworthy suspicion in such a lovely head as Lady Leria’s, and I’ll endeavor not to give such offense again.”

She didn’t like the way that Thirien was looking at her. “With the lady’s permission, I’ll accompany you, Lord Miron,” he said.

His face was stern, and almost expressionless. She couldn’t tell if he wanted to see for himself that Miron wasn’t going to make himself vomit, or whether the old captain wanted to absent himself from the company of the flighty girl who had made such a wild accusation, but the two of them walked out through the garden doors, and it looked for a moment as though Miron was going to wink at her.

But the moment passed, and the doors closed behind the two men, and then she was alone with the wine bottle, and with Ella looking up at her, puzzled, as well.

“Should I take the wine up to, to
him
, my lady?”

“Yes, I suppose you should.” Leria nodded. “You might as well, although I’m sure it’s fine.”

She stood alone in the great hall, and cursed herself, since there was nobody there to do it for her. She thought that she had been so clever, that Miron had been trying something — perhaps to drug her, and then pretend to help her up to her rooms?

And what then? Of course, Miron wanted her — that had been clear for a long time, but equally, of course, he wasn’t the sort of fool who would risk his own neck just to have an unconscious woman.

On the other hand, he was apparently just the sort who would tempt a foolish girl — who wasn’t nearly as clever as she had thought she was — into making a provably false accusation against him, and she had obliged him by doing just that, and in front of a witness.

The next time …

Once the word of this got out, the next time that she opened her mouth to accuse him of anything, she wouldn’t be believed.

***

The carriage, accompanied by a full troop of Imperials, arrived at first light, which didn’t surprise her at all. Erenor was nowhere to be seen, either, which also didn’t surprise her.

She was only half-surprised that Elda reported that Miron’s bed hadn’t been slept in, and that he, and several of the horses, were gone.

She sighed as she let them help her into the carriage.

It wasn’t a day for surprises. She had had more than enough of those yesterday.

11

B
ANDITS

I find it very easy to be philosophical about personal discomfort. As long as it’s somebody else’s personal discomfort, of course.

— Walter Slovotsky

T
HE
NIGHT
WAS
cold, and the short, hard rains just after sunset had left everything painfully damp.

Cold and damp and dark: now, that was something Kethol was familiar with. There was a real comfort in familiarity, even if it was only familiar discomfort.

Kethol lay, stretched out on the waxed ground cloth, silently cursing himself for not having waxed it himself. Nobles didn’t prepare their own gear. Nobles didn’t do this, nobles didn’t do that … nobles couldn’t wipe their own asses, probably.

There was a spot just to the right of his right thigh where the rainwater that had soaked the pine needles had soaked through, leaving him miserable and wet.

He had been more careful with the smaller ground cloth next to him where his longbow lay. His body being wet was uncomfortable, but tolerable — but a wet bowstring would stretch more than it ought to, and that would be dangerous. You had to be able to count on your weapons, as much as you had to be able to count on yourself.

The temptation was strong to close his eyes for just a moment, but he had long ago learned — and painfully; the decurion had had a very, very heavy hand — that if he did that, if he allowed his eyes to close longer than it took him to blink, the next thing he would see would be morning light streaming over the horizon.

He was beginning to wonder if this would ever work. After two tendays of planting poles and stringing cable — no, of having others plant poles and string cable; Kethol tried to be honest, at least to himself — he had been certain that word of the new telegraph line would have reached up into the hills and into Kiar.

So where were they? They should have already tried to take the cable, days before.

He hoped it would be here — and it should be. Most of the rest of the twisting path that the telegraph line took went along the tops of the ridges, and that would let somebody trying to cut the cable be silhouetted against the night sky. The Kiaran bandits were cautious enough, at least he hoped, to avoid that.

That would have been less of an issue if the sky wasn’t so clear, but tonight the stars shone brightly overhead, and a dozen clusters of distant faerie lights pulsed lazily on the horizon.

Pirojil had announced that they would run this section of the telegraph alongside an ancient streambed in the draw simply to speed things up — it was, after all, both easier and quicker to roll the pine telegraph poles downhill than to have horses and men drag them up the ridge — but their real reason was to bait the trap.

Kethol couldn’t see the phony cable in the dark, but he didn’t have to. Earlier, he had snuck down, as he did each night, to throw the hooked end of his long coil of line over the top of the cable, and had pulled it tight when he made his way back to his stand.

Drawn taut, staked in place, the line vibrated every now and then when one some bird chose to perch on a nearby length of the cable, and he would instantly come alert.

It was nice to know that he was useful for something.

He hoped that he would detect somebody sawing away at the cable before it went limp when cut, but he wasn’t at all sure how far the vibration would carry, and he trusted more to his ears than to the fingers that rested on the line.

Off to the east a hoot owl announced to all and sundry that it had just snatched up a field mouse. That and the twittering of fidget bugs said that Kethol was alone.

Which he was. You could trust the insects and animals to tell you the truth, if only you knew how to listen to them.

They were stretched thin; the nearest one of the soldiers to him was that man of Tarnell’s — he said his name was Thorven, but that was an Osgradian name, and the soldier had never quite gotten the Salket lisp out of his voice. There was probably a story there, but it wasn’t any of Kethol’s business, or of Forinel’s, for that matter.

He hoped that none of the soldiers would move around. He had ordered them to remain in place, and he had had Tarnell order them to remain in place, but he was more aware than most that soldiers were not always obedient — particularly not when ordered by somebody they didn’t particularly trust.

They were a clumsy bunch, at least by his standards. Not one of them could move to a stand silently. When they took their positions in the early evening, they stumbled up and down the hills, seemingly taking every loose rock and stepping on every dead branch that they possibly could.

He was much more confident of the Keranahan peasants. Wen’ll was perhaps the best of them, but they all at least knew how to move silently. And once on watch, poachers all, they knew about being absolutely, utterly still, about waiting for an opportunity.

His only question about them was how well, if at all, they would fight. Which he wouldn’t know until it happened, so there was no need to worry about it now.

The light breeze brought a distant, pleasant reek of skunk to his nostrils.

Close up, the smell of the skunk was utterly painful, but off in the distance it seemed to have a comforting, homey smell to it. It made him relax, in the same way that the musky reek of rotting humus on a forest’s floor always did, although he wasn’t sure why, because they didn’t smell at all the same.

It would have been interesting to know what it was that had excited the skunk, but he was confident it wasn’t a human — there would have been some outcry. Men who would no more than grunt from an arrow in the belly would still shout, and scream, and dance around when sprayed by a skunk, after all.

He let his mind wander. As long as you kept your ears and eyes open, that didn’t hurt any. He tried not to think about Leria, but that never worked; he couldn’t help but think about the way that she smiled at him, or about the way that her legs had wrapped around his waist while she groaned beneath him. It wasn’t right that somebody like him should be thinking that way about somebody like her, and never mind the fact that it had been more her decision than his.