Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda (43 page)

He didn’t know what Forinel would have done, and it didn’t matter. Maybe Forinel would have wanted Miron to stand trial, or maybe he would have taken this shameful assassination attempt as a blot on the family’s honor.

Kethol didn’t know much about honor, and less about trials.

But he knew a little about loyalty. Kethol and Pirojil and Durine had served Karl Cullinane, the Old Emperor, and the three of them had been the only survivors of the Emperor’s Last Ride, which had cost Karl Cullinane his life.

Kill the Emperor’s son?

No.

Not even over Kethol’s dead body — Pirojil would be there to follow through if Kethol failed. It would end here, and it would end with Miron’s body on the floor. And if there were more bodies than that, that was fine with Kethol.

Leria seized his arm, but he shook it off.

No.

He’d defer to her about many things. She was smarter than he was, and better educated, and she had a feel for things that made his head ache.

But
she
hadn’t stood on the sand in Melawei, among the bits of bone and flesh that were all that had been left of the man that Kethol had served. Kethol had. And
she
hadn’t sworn, flat of her sword balanced on the palms of her hands, that she would protect that man’s son and daughter — and Kethol had done just that.

This disguise of too-solid flesh didn’t change that, not for a moment.

The whole hall was silent until Thomen nodded. “So be it: it’s your privilege, Baron Keranahan. It’s your decision. Shall we sit in trial, with your brother being judged by me, or —”

“No.” He turned to Miron. “You and me, right here, right now.”

Miron smiled. “And if I win? When I win? Will all agree that these vile charges are untrue?”

“I guess you’ll have to wait and see,” the Emperor said.

Like all the others, both Kethol and Miron had hung their sword belts on the back of their chairs. A sword was not just the right of a noble, it was the badge of a noble.

“If I may,” Pirojil said, stepping forward. “I have two matched swords here, one of them mine. I have befriended the baron, and I hope he will honor me by using my sword.” He drew his own sword and laid it on the blanket next to the other.

Miron quickly walked over to the blanket and picked up Pirojil’s of the swords. “I think I’ll take your sword, Captain Pirojil. I suspect that the other one has been tampered with.”

Pirojil picked up the other sword, and gave it a few practice swings.

“No,” he said. “It’s just fine. There was some rust on it, I think, but that’s been polished off. Tampering with swords is your sort of thing, Lord Miron, not mine.” He turned to avoid putting his back to Miron, and walked backwards until he reached Kethol.

The sword felt right in his hand. And it was familiar.

Pirojil nodded. “This used to belong to a friend of mine,” he said. “I think he would want you to have it, don’t you?”

Pirojil didn’t have to show him the bone pommel for Kethol to know that it was Durine’s sword.

Why Pirojil had retrieved it from the cave, and why he had arrived in the hall just in time, was something that Kethol would ask him later. If there was a later.

Pirojil leaned forward. “Forget everything else,” he said, as though he had read Kethol’s thoughts. “Kill him now, and we’ll have time to talk about it later on.”

Leria was nodding, too.

Miron shrugged himself out of his short jacket, and tossed it to one side. “Well, I wondered if it would come to this, although I probably should have been wondering
when
it would come to this, eh?” He raised his — Pirojil’s — sword in a quick salute, then gave it a few practice swings. “A bit heavy and clumsy, but it will do, it will do.”

The whole world, the whole universe, became Miron.

The marble floor was clear from the main table to the side tables.

A noble would have said something. The real Forinel would have said something. He would have talked about how his brother had disgraced their house, their line, perhaps. He might have challenged him or taunted him, or both. He would have said something.

But Kethol just walked, slowly, quietly onto the floor, and took up a ready position, not bothering with a salute at all.

He wasn’t even angry, not at the moment.

Fighting had nothing to do with being angry. He didn’t believe for a moment that Miron hadn’t tried to have him — and worse, much worse, her — killed. But it wasn’t a moment for anger, and it wasn’t about him.

They engaged tentatively in a high line, then Miron feinted low, but Kethol met the flat of his blade with the flat of his own, and slashed at Miron’s arm as Miron retreated.

Miron dropped the point of his sword, and beckoned with his free hand. “Come on, come on. Surely you can do better than that. Try me — let me see if I can beat you as easily as I did when we were boys.”

A noble duelist would have felt Miron out, probed his defenses, tried to lure him into an attack, seeing if he could manage a stop thrust on an extended arm.

But Kethol ran at him, in full extension, and batted Miron’s blade out of line, not caring for a moment that its tip pierced his sword arm, paying no attention to the agony that shot through him, at the way that his fingers refused to grip the hilt of the sword, at the way that it fell from his fingers.

Because Kethol had another arm.

He snatched the hilt of Durine’s sword with his left hand, twisted it away and into his own hand and gripped Miron’s shoulder with every bit of strength that he had in his wounded arm, and ran him through, then twisted the blade, back and forth, over and over and over again, ignoring the way that Miron’s deafening screams became weaker, and weaker, until he fell silent, and Miron slipped from the blade, to fall to the floor.

Kethol tried to take a step, but he slipped on the blood-slickened floor, and fell, hard on his side.

Leria was at his side, trying to hold his wound shut, careless of the way that blood was spattering across her arms and chest. He wanted to say something, although he didn’t quite know what.

It was just as well, perhaps, that the darkness came up and washed over him.

He probably would have said something stupid.

Part 6

Post Mortem

22

F
AREWELLS

L
ERIA
LOOKED
DOWN
at his sleeping form. He was so awfully pale.

Filistat, the Spidersect priest, laid a reassuring hand on her arm. “I’m sure that he will be well,” the priest said, smiling genially, as he twitched his fingers to beckon his familiar back toward him.

The huge spider walked across Kethol’s chest, and, preposterously silent, made its way down his right leg before scampering into the ample recesses of his brown robe, peeking several eyes out from between the folds of the robe, from where it perched on top of the priest’s ample belly.

“Not even a scar, and he will probably be awake shortly,” Filistat said, giving a quick look at where Pirojil stood by the unlit hearth. “You could wake him now, I suspect, but I think it’s best to let him sleep.” He looked over at Pirojil, again, who was sitting at the table, still cleaning the swords, and frowned. “If you had gotten the healing draughts to him quickly enough, he wouldn’t have lost so much blood. Still, that’s the only thing that I can find wrong with him. Hand healing draughts?”

“No.” Pirojil shook his head. “Eareven — but I used a lot.”

“Apparently.” Filistat ran a thick finger down Kethol’s shoulder. “I can barely feel where the wound was, and even the healing structures beneath the skin are fading — I don’t think he’ll have any loss of motion, or any pain, for that matter.” He smiled. “Not that the pain would mean much to a man like him, but a man should have two good arms.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “He’ll be well.”

Forinel’s — no, she would call him Forinel, but he would always be Kethol, inside, and that was more than fine with her — Kethol’s face was still deathly pale, and his chest only slowly rose and fell as he breathed.

But he
was
breathing, after all, and the priest said he would be well, and what more could she ask for?

Pirojil didn’t respond to the priest other than by nodding. He had been at Kethol’s side more quickly than Leria would have thought he could move, and he had gotten the small brass flask of healing draughts out very quickly, and even giving Miron’s head a final kick hadn’t slowed him down.

But the blood had been spurting in a red fountain from Kethol’s arm. Pirojil had pressed down on the wound, stemming the flow long enough for Leria to pour the sick-smelling liquid over his hands, and into Kethol’s shoulder.

They made a good team, the three of them.

She drew the blanket up over him. He was so cold and pale that, for a moment, she had to lay her hand on his chest to be certain that he was still breathing.

The priest smiled. “He just needs to sleep, and eat, as much as he can, until he can restore the blood he lost. Rare beef, broth — any kind of broth, as long as it’s salty — and he should be up and around in a day or two.” He looked up at her. “He’d best not travel until he’s fully recovered. Give him a tenday of rest, though, and he should be well enough for travel, and other … strenuous activities.”

He looked like he expected her to blush, but she just stared levelly at him, until he looked away.

“I guess,” he said, “that I had best be going, as there’s no more need for me here.” With that, he gathered his robes about him, and bowed himself out.

The three of them were alone, although maybe she should just have thought of it as the two of them, given that Kethol was asleep.

Pirojil looked for a long moment at Kethol’s sleeping form, then went back to the small table where he was busy cleaning the swords. A small pile of clean rags lay on the table, and a growing heap of bloody rags lay on the floor next to him. He ran a clean cloth down one of the blades, then examined the cloth thoroughly, nodded, and ran his thumbnail down both of the sword’s edges and gave the bone pommel a final quick polishing before setting it down, and picking up the other, the one with the brass pommel, shaped like a walnut.

“Is there something I can do to help?” she asked.

“If you’d like.” He nodded. “You might want to oil that sword,” he said, gesturing at the glass bottle on the table. “Have you ever done that before?”

She shook her head. “No, I can’t say that I have.”

“Don’t stint — you want to be sure you get the oil into every crack, because if you don’t, water will find its way in, one way or another, and it will rust. I think that Forinel will want to keep that sword, all in all. You might even find that it’s what he usually chooses to carry, rather than a noble’s rapier. A little more awkward to carry about than a smallsword, perhaps, but … I don’t think anybody would question his choice of it, do you?”

“No, I don’t think so, either.” She shook her head as she accepted the sword, hilt-first. It was lighter than it looked, although the grip wasn’t quite right in her hand; the finger impressions in its wire-wound leather surface were too large and widely spaced for her, and probably for Kethol and Forinel, too. “It is the sword that he dispatched his traitor half-brother with, and I can see how nobody would question why he would choose to belt that sword around his waist.”

“Yes.” A thin smile played across his thick lips. “That’s what I was thinking, my lady.”

“‘My lady’? Really, Pirojil.” She arched an eyebrow. “After all we’ve been through together, don’t you think you can call me Leria?”

“I don’t think so.” The smile was gone. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to get in the habit of first-naming my betters, all things considered, my lady,” he said, gesturing at the seat across the table from him. “More than a little unseemly, perhaps.”

“If you insist.”

“No.” He shrugged. “No, I don’t insist about much.” His lips twitched. “Insisting isn’t the sort of thing for the likes of me, or Kethol, or Durine or Erenor. But …”

“But?”

“But I think, as I said, that getting into bad habits is, well, a bad habit in and of itself, my lady.”

“As though Forinel or I would ever call you to account for being too informal with us, or permit anyone else to do so.” She snorted. “Really.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’ll have any occasion to worry about that,” he said casually — too casually. “Not in the near future, in any case.”

She sat back. “Why not?”

“Because, well, when the two of you go back to Keranahan, I’ll not be going with you.”

His eyes never seemed to leave the surface of his own sword, and he wrapped a bit of cloth around his index finger and rubbed heavily at a spot that she was sure was utterly free of anything except gleaming steel and oil.

“It’s not just that questions might be asked — as they would, eventually.” He found another clean spot and rubbed at it, as well, and still his eyes wouldn’t meet hers. “I think that Forinel has the right … partner to lean on, in more ways than one, and another old soldier who should be off soldiering isn’t going to be of any real help, not in matters political. Besides, Governor Treseen is not overly fond of me, as well, and it would be a bad idea for me to be in his way — I’m getting a little tired of every damn thing going wrong in Dereneyl being my fault.”

What is the real reason
, she couldn’t ask. Is it me?

He might as well have read her mind: his ugly face split in a smile as he shook his head.

“I’m about done in, my lady.” True enough, his face was lined, and if anything the wrinkles had deepened in recent days. “I’ve had enough of blood feuds, and enough of killing people I don’t know well enough to have any grievance with — and I don’t need to make any new enemies at the moment.” He tapped at the captain’s tabs on his shoulder. “Besides, I’m spoiled — I’ve gotten used to having some rank, but I’m not vaguely qualified, not even as a captain of march. Governor Treseen was right about that — I’ve never even raised a company, after all, much less commanded one. It would be a bit hard to go back to being an ordinary soldier, after all this.”