The Death of Dulgath (8 page)

Rissa Lyn, make certain to lay out my blue gown for this afternoon.

Rissa Lyn, ready a hot bath for when I’m done here.

No, Rissa Lyn, don’t close the drapes. He needs the light.

In two months, Sherwood hadn’t heard Rissa Lyn say anything in reply other than
Yes, milady.
But she was all eyes. Rissa Lyn watched Her Ladyship, and she watched Sherwood. She was peering at him again that morning as he hauled his easel into the study. Standing just under the stairs, she blushed when he looked over and withdrew.

He placed the easel where he always did, the floor marked with charcoal to indicate where each of its tripod legs went. This maintained consistency of view from one day to the next. Consistency of light was a bigger problem, and the reason the sessions were held at the same time each day. He went to the windows and threw back the drapes, tying them up. He was lucky—no clouds. Still, the shift of seasons was devastating. He should have asked her to start their sessions earlier to compensate. Now she might not come at all.

He hadn’t seen Nysa since the door had slammed the day before. That wasn’t unusual. He rarely saw her outside their sessions, and he always arrived first.

Sherwood took off his jacket and hung it on the back of his easel. He rolled up his sleeves and pulled out the tray to oil his paints. He kept his palette loaded so as not to waste pigments, but overnight the paint thickened. He liked his paint to be the consistency of buttercream. He wiped the stems of his brushes clean and lined them up in neat rows—largest to smallest. His favorite was in need of a re-bristling. It flared from fatigue, and too much paint lay trapped in the stem. Sherwood was a curse to a fine brush; Yardley had always said so.

Sherwood had begun his apprenticeship when he was ten years old, making Yardley more than merely an art instructor. The old perfectionist, with the irritating laugh and disgusting habit of spitting every few minutes, had been more like a parent to Sherwood than the tin miner and his wife who bore him. In addition to portraiture, finding and crushing pigments, and caring for his brushes, Yardley had taught him to fish, whistle, dance, navigate courtly life, and how to defend himself with fists and a blade. Where Yardley had learned sword fighting was anyone’s guess, but he knew what he was doing and he’d taught Sherwood well. An artist wandering alone on the open road was a target too tempting for many, and Sherwood’s prowess had been tested more than once.

His prep work done, Sherwood pulled up the stool and sat.

The room was quiet except for the sound of the sea drifting in through the open window, soft and muffled, a distant unending war fought between wave and rock. A seagull cried twice, then was silent. Wind buffeted the drapes and rocked parchments rolled up on the desk behind which Nysa usually stood.

Sunlight moved in an oblong rectangle across the floor, slicing over the desk and running up the paneled wall. Sherwood knew the time by the path the light took, tracking it with a painter’s eye every morning. He’d worked on the background of the painting only when Lady Dulgath wasn’t in the room, but he had finished everything that wasn’t Nysa weeks ago.

As the light reached the edge of the stone fireplace, he knew she was late.

Sherwood touched the leg of the stool, patting it as if for a job well done. While not the stool’s doing, it managed to still be there. She hadn’t ordered its removal.

That’s something—isn’t it?

As the light moved across the first stone of the hearth—the one he’d struggled to match in color because he was low on hematite—Sherwood began to face the reality that Lady Dulgath was making good on her declaration. He hadn’t believed her. They’d only had a small quarrel, a spat. People didn’t—

He felt his heart skip and a pressure on his chest, a tightness that made it difficult to breathe.

I’m only a painter. I’m nothing to her.

He tried to swallow and nearly choked on his own saliva.
I’ve never lost a subject before,
he thought stupidly, as if that mattered, as if it ever had.
Never failed to complete a project.

Sherwood stared at the empty space before the desk, at the marks he’d put on the floor to show Nysa where to place her feet.

It’s like she’s dead.
The thought crashed in.
What if she is?

He shook his head.
No, the castle would be thrown into chaos. She just isn’t coming. She isn’t coming because she doesn’t—

The familiar
swoosh-swoosh
of the brocade gown preceded her entrance. Lady Dulgath entered without acknowledging his presence. She whirled on her mark, spinning on her left heel. After looping the fox over her neck, she clasped the riding gloves in her hand. Her eyes focused on the chandelier.

“Chin up, just a tad more,” he said softly.

She tilted her head without a word.

Outside the study’s door that Nysa had left open, Chamberlain Wells could be heard saying, “She’s indisposed at the moment. But…well, let me inquire. I suppose she might see you. Wait here.”

That was Wells’s way of saying
She’s only wasting time with that infernal painter like she does every morning.
Sherwood didn’t have a problem with Wells, which was good, since he ran the castle and could make the artist’s life miserable if he wanted to. That said, he was of the same mind as many in his position, believing a painter’s time to be worthless.

Lady Dulgath allowed herself a glance at Sherwood. He smiled. She smiled back. His heart vaulted a hurdle, forcing him to take a deep breath. He nearly lost the presence of mind to pull the cloth over the painting before Thorbert Wells entered.

“My lady,” Wells said, pausing at the doorway to bow.

Thorbert Wells was a rotund man with a fondness for expensive belts that neither he, nor anyone facing him, ever saw. The chamberlain’s girth also hid his shoes, which that morning were a fine pair with soft leather uppers. Wells rarely wore the same pair twice in a week. He owned so many shoes that Sherwood had once asked Wells’s manservant if he ever placed a mixed pair on the chamberlain’s feet to see if he noticed. This was the sort of joke that gained Sherwood access to the kitchens at night and a swig from the hidden jug of barley whiskey kept under the floorboards.

“Sheriff Knox has some gentlemen here to meet with you,” Wells said.

“Gentlemen?” she asked.

“Ah…yes, concerning the recent unpleasantness.” Wells had a problem saying the words
assassination, murder,
or
killing.
Even when it came to butchering quails to eat, he was apt to say,
The birds will be dressed for dinner,
as if the fowl shared his penchant for belts and shoes and would be seated at the table.

Again, the lady focused on Sherwood, and he was certain she was looking for—perhaps not permission, but understanding. Sherwood’s heart climbed up his throat, as if searching for a better view of this extraordinary moment.

“Very well, let them in,” Lady Dulgath said with just enough irritation in her voice to suggest that interrupting their time together
was
a disappointment.

Wells bowed again, then waved three men in.

Sherwood recognized Sheriff Knox, although he hadn’t had cause to speak with the man. Still, he had seen him around, especially of late, and Hugh Knox wasn’t the kind of person one overlooked—he was the sort you crossed the street to avoid. Harsh, with a tendency to glare, he wore his blond hair tied back and had a red sash across his chest and wrapped around his waist. Edged in gold, the garment was the mark of his office. He wasn’t from Dulgath. The color of his hair and stubble told that story. The habitual squint of his eyes and sneer on his lips told the rest. This wasn’t a genteel man. He wore two sabers and steel shoulder guards over a thick three-quarter-length leather gambeson. That day he looked tired, understandable, given the
recent unpleasantness.
The man charged with enforcing the law and protecting the countess couldn’t be sleeping well.

A pair of men accompanied him, neither a native of Maranon.

One was tall, with a friendly smile and a relaxed stride, acting as if he were meeting a familiar bartender instead of a countess. He was dressed in worn leather and had dull buckles on three separate belts—none of which Thorbert Wells would have been caught in if his trousers depended on them—and a long cloak tossed jauntily over one shoulder. He one-upped Knox by wearing three swords. The one on his back looked big enough to fell a tree. The other man, a few inches shorter, might have been a woman for all Sherwood could tell. He was tented inside a dark cloak, hood up and his hands lost in its folds. Only a sharp nose, thin lips, and a pale chin presented themselves.

“Your Ladyship.” Knox went down to one knee. Rising, he gestured to the others. “This is Royce Melborn and Hadrian Blackwater of Melengar. They come highly recommended by Viscount Winslow of Colnora and Bishop Parnell.”

“Highly recommended for what?” she asked, tilting her head from side to side, studying the two.

Knox hesitated and glanced awkwardly at Wells and Sherwood. “Perhaps we could speak privately?”

“Is it a secret?” she asked.

“In a way, milady.”

“They are here to protect me, yes?”

“No,” the one in the hood said without so much as a pleasant tone, much less a
milady.

The countess raised her head to stare down her nose at him, no attempt to hide her irritation. “Then why
are
you here?”

“We’ve been hired to find the best ways to kill you.”

Sherwood dropped his favorite brush, adding to the woes of its bristles. Wells clamped a meaty hand over his mouth, making his big cheeks swell as they flushed red. Knox closed his eyes, tilted his head up toward the ceiling, and opened his mouth but said nothing.

Lady Dulgath folded her arms under the head of the fox and raised an elegant brow. “Really? And how much are you being paid? Hadrian—is it?”

The hood shook. “Name’s Royce, and that information is between me and my employer.”

This time even Knox brought a hand to his face.

“Pardon me,” the taller one with the swords butted in, “my lady, I’m Hadrian.” He offered a gracious bow. “I hope you’ll excuse my partner. He’s not accustomed to speaking to…
people
…ah, people such as yourself. You see, we were asked to evaluate security measures to see if there are ways to improve them. Royce is an expert at finding flaws, particularly when it comes to threats of assassination.”

The chamberlain cringed at the mention of the “a” word.

“So you believe my life is in danger. That’s why you’re here?”

“Don’t you think your life is in danger?” Royce asked.

“Not particularly.” She expelled a huff of air, pivoted on her left heel, and turned her back to them. She took three steps toward the window, stopped, then spun on the same heel back to face them once more. “If I did, would I allow a man with three swords and another shrouded in a hood to enter my private study?”

Royce shrugged. “I just thought you were stup—”

“Royce!” Hadrian snapped. In a milder tone, he continued, “My friend is very tired from our long trip. Now, if no one is trying to harm you, there’s no reason for us to be here. But since we’ve traveled so far, and on the expectation of payment, I hope you won’t begrudge us the opportunity to at least tour Dulgath. Neither of us has been to Maranon before. Your corner of it is most beautiful.”

Lady Dulgath continued to stare at Royce. “Draw back your hood,” she ordered.

Hadrian laid a hand on the other one’s shoulder and whispered something to him.

“Is there a problem?” the lady asked.

“I’m here to do a job,” Royce said. “Not entertain you.”

“You’ve come to my castle unbidden and have failed to show any sign of decorum or decency. Would you rather entertain me from my dungeon?”

Royce sneered. “Would you rather I—”

Sherwood didn’t know why he did it. If anything, it was because he couldn’t abide the words that were likely to finish that sentence. He grabbed the nearest bottle of pigment and hurled it at the man. The artist was to the side and slightly behind the visitors when the bottle flew. With his hood up, Sherwood couldn’t see the man’s eyes, and he knew Melborn couldn’t have seen him. The bottle was small but heavy due to its thick glass—as ideal for throwing as a polished river stone. His aim was perfect. The container should have cracked against the hooded man’s head, but it didn’t. Instead, a slender hand darted from the dark cloak and snatched the bottle from the air. Then the hood turned, and Sherwood felt like a mouse who’d caught the attention of a hawk.

The taller man stepped in again. “Perhaps we should attempt this meeting at another time?”

Wells’s face was so red it neared purple. “I think you are right. I shouldn’t have allowed this intrusion in the first place. Gentlemen, if you will?” He shooed at them, his large sleeves flapping with the effort.

Lady Dulgath said nothing, but she continued to stare at the hooded man as he and the others left.

Only then did Sherwood look down at his tray. He was sickened to realize he’d thrown the bottle of Beyond the Sea.

Chapter Five
Castle Dulgath