Volle (42 page)

He stripped and climbed between the sheets. Sliding his paw under the pillow to pull it closer to him, he touched a leather pouch and froze for a moment when he remembered what it was. Slowly, he pulled it out and held it up to the faint starlight. It jingled softly as he held it up.

“You promised,” he whispered. “You
promised
.” He held the pouch to his nose, but it had lost any scent except for its natural leathery smell. He held it to his chest and curled up around it. Though he didn’t cry, nor did he sleep; his thoughts spun with could-haves and should-haves, images of both the cougars, their scents and smiles, their paws on his chest, and the holes that were left in his life and the lives of others by their passing.

Sometime during the night he resolved to take the gold to Xiller’s relatives in Vilutian. He opened the pouch to count the gold, but he couldn’t seem to count it properly and the gold pieces looked different to him, not like the Tephossian Royals. There were either fourteen or fifteen of them, or maybe sixteen, and they seemed to have pictures of Xiller in his jaguar makeup on them. Frustrated, he put them back in the pouch and went back to his attempts at sleep.

Chapter 19

In the morning, he woke tired and bleary, the pouch still clutched in his paw. Helfer was sitting beside the bed.

“Morning,” he said cheerfully. Volle grunted something. “I came to drag you out for a run.”

Volle shook his head. “Not today, Hef. Tomorrow. I promise.” His paw curled around the pouch as he said those words.

“You sure?” Volle nodded. “All right. If you promise…”

“I do. Honestly. I feel a bit better. I just need one more day.”

“All right.” The weasel got up and put a paw on Volle’s shoulder. “Mind if I have lunch with you?”

“No. I’d like that.”

“All right. See you then.”

“Thanks, Hef.” Helfer smiled and left, closing the bedroom door as he went.

Volle settled back in the bed. In the battle between sorrow and anger that had raged in him since yesterday, sorrow now had the upper paw. His immediate world was no different, but knowing that Xiller wasn’t going to return to share his bed again had changed everything. Knowing that Prince Gennic would not take over the crown, as they’d always assumed he would, changed everything. How was King Rachlas taking it? Was the royal family devastated? No, they would be brave and vengeful.

He supposed he would see the towers of the palace at Caril himself before long. In all the excitement surrounding Dereath’s surprise appearance yesterday, he’d forgotten that he would likely be removed from Tephos before Prewitt’s investigation amounted to anything. Seir would let him know when he saw her today…

He sat up suddenly. How was he to meet Seir if he couldn’t leave the palace?

He chewed his lip and pondered that. He could take the secret passage by the baths, but in the middle of the day that area would be dangerous and discovery was likely. If only he could get a set of papers—Arrin! The fox worked with the Steward and could get him forged papers, just for a day. It wouldn’t be too difficult, and no one would be the wiser.

He threw on a shirt and pants, and hurried upstairs to the Steward’s office. Alister’s inner door was closed, and thank Gaia, the office was empty except for Arrin. He looked up as Volle entered, and his initial smile faded a bit.

“Volle, they said you’re under arrest! What are you doing here?”

“I’m just confined to the palace.” He lowered his voice, sitting next to Arrin’s desk. “I need to ask you a huge favor.”

The fox looked distinctly uneasy, and Volle suddenly knew what his answer would be, but he pressed ahead and asked the question anyway. “I need to get out of the palace today to keep an appointment. Can you get me a set of papers?”

Arrin’s ears folded all the way back. “I can’t.”

Volle tapped the desk softly. “Can’t or won’t?”

“Volle, you’re—they say you’re a spy or something, and that you had something to do with some foreign prince getting killed…”

Guilt triggered anger, bringing an involuntary growl from Volle. “Do you believe that?”

Arrin recoiled. “I don’t know. Is it true?”

Volle stared at him. “Not entirely,” he said grudgingly.

“But some of it? Which parts?”

“I’m not a spy. I heard that the cougar who was here was the one who killed Prince—that prince. But I didn’t know anything about that.”

Arrin chewed his lip. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t…”

He got up. “Thanks,” he said brusquely. Volle knew he was being unreasonable, but he couldn’t understand why Arrin wouldn’t at least try to help him. His anger was compounded by his underlying guilt at knowing that Arrin’s reservations were justified: he was a spy, and he did want the papers to go meet with another spy. Arrin should still have trusted him, he told himself as he stalked out of the office.

Every little thing that could go wrong was going to go wrong, he felt. Nobody was really trying to help him. He felt, in that moment, utterly alone.

The feeling lasted all of ten minutes, until Helfer joined him for lunch. The weasel’s attempts to cheer him up didn’t exactly work, but they did make him feel less persecuted.

“It was a nice run through the snow. You should’ve been there. Nobody’s been in the garden since the snow fell, even the gardeners, and it’s beautiful, all white and clean.” He grabbed a roll off the tray Welcis brought in and stuffed it in his muzzle, continuing to talk muffledly through it. “Cold, but you get used to it. Mmf. And you get nice cool breezes up the skirt. Wow!”

Volle tapped the table and gave Helfer a weak grin. “I’ll come out tomorrow.”

“That’s the spirit! And we’ll go to the Lonely Cock tonight, and you’ll feel better. You’ll see. You just need to get—what?”

Volle was shaking his head. “I can’t. I’m confined to the palace.”

“What?!”

“Dereath. He used his vacation to go digging up stories about me coming into the country from somewhere else and insinuating that I’m not who I say I am. So Prewitt confined me to the palace until he can check some of the stories.”

Helfer regarded Volle closely for a moment, but when he spoke, his words were not at all what Volle expected. “You know, being confined to the palace isn’t such a big deal.” He winked.

Volle stared at him, and then remembered. “Hef, you’d…”

“Shh.” He indicated the parlor door, behind which Welcis had retired. “I was just thinking that instead of going out, you could come have dinner with me tonight and we could have a quiet evening together.”

“That sounds great. Could I come by earlier, though? I really don’t have anything to do since I can’t take my walk through town.”

Helfer grinned and nodded. “Sure. I’m not doing much this afternoon anyway.”

“Thanks, Hef.” He managed a better smile. “Seems like I’m saying that a lot lately.”

“Sorry you have to. You’re having a rough couple of days. At least the cotillion seemed to go so well.”

Volle chuckled without much humor. “Everything started to go bad there. Ilyana decided to get in a practice session. It was pretty bad. Then I got home, and…” He stopped talking and looked down at his plate.

“I know.” Helfer sighed.

Volle hadn’t really had the time to think about what his night with Ilyana had meant. That had been pushed back to a remote corner of his mind, to deal with at some future time. At the moment, he wasn’t sure it was something he would have to deal with at all. He found himself almost looking forward to the order to return home. At least he would be out of this morass.

But he would miss Helfer. He looked fondly at the weasel. “I’ll get over it eventually, Hef. I really appreciate your help.”

“Hey, whatever I can do. I know what it’s like to lose someone close to you.”

Volle shook his head. “What you went through is far worse. I might have loved him, I’m not sure. But you lost your father. That’s horrible.”

Helfer was silent, and then sighed and picked up a piece of meat. He looked at it before popping it into his muzzle. “Losing anyone is terrible, especially when it happens so suddenly. But you just have to move on. That’s what I learned. Death is a part of life.” He looked up. “Did you go to the Cantor? That helped me, back when…you know.”

Volle nodded. “It helped me remember that Gaia and Canis are looking out for me. And that Felis is looking out for him. Easy to lose sight of that. Though I wouldn’t have thought you’d pay much attention to the church.”

Helfer chuckled. “Weasel is a nice ancestor to have. He likes you to do whatever makes you happy. For some it means serving others.” He indicated Welcis again, behind the door. “For others, it means sampling all of life’s pleasures to the fullest.”

“Isn’t it ‘Mustelis’?”

“Oh, properly it is, but we like to call him ‘Weasel’ because everyone knows who his favorites are.” He grinned and leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Besides, it really annoys the skunks and badgers when we do that.”

Volle smiled, and Helfer clapped his paws together. “Well, finally I got a real, honest-to-goodness smile out of you, fox. You’ll see—a quiet dinner with me will have your spirits back up in no time.”

“Oh, that’s just the rumor the servants want to hear,” Volle said. “You know that they already think we’re lovers?”

“Sure.” Helfer shrugged. “Kind of nice not to live up to their expectations, I think.”

“Yeah.” Volle flicked his ears. “I don’t know if I want my spirits lifted just yet, Hef. I think I want some time to grieve.”

“I understand. We can do that too, if you want.”

“Maybe. I don’t know what I want just now.” Except to talk to Seir and get this over with.

Helfer nodded. “Come on up whenever you’re ready.”

When Volle did come up to his chambers, a couple hours later, he showed him the door in his wardrobe. “There’s a ladder behind it, here, and careful, it’s missing one rung. You go down a passage and come out in a smelly basement that’s a storage area for the palace, which by a coincidence, I happen to own.” He grinned. “A lot of my mead and wine is stored there. The key is hanging just inside the passage. Just wait until it’s deserted and then go out into the alley. And for Gaia’s sake, don’t be seen. Questions about how you got out would be very awkward.”

“I have this cloak and I put on plain clothes,” Volle said. He was wearing the linens he’d worn upon arriving at the palace, both because they didn’t identify him as a noble, and because he fully expected not to be one by the end of the day. “Maybe I should leave the cloak.”

Helfer eyed him critically. “If you don’t mind being cold, I think it works better without the cloak.”

Volle nodded and hung the cloak on a nearby peg. “All right. And…thanks again.”

Helfer patted his shoulder. “Anything to help you out. Just be careful.”

As Volle walked through the low, dank tunnel, he realized that Helfer hadn’t once asked him why he wanted to go out. The weasel’s trust in him made him smile tightly, and vow inwardly to repay him if it were at all possible.

As promised, the key hung just inside the door at the other end of the long tunnel. Volle took it and pushed the door open carefully.

The storage area was dark, lit only by the light of a grimy window in one corner. His eyes were already adjusted to the dark of the tunnel, so he saw the stacks of crates and barrels easily. He listened, but caught no sound other than his own breathing, and no living scent other than his own and that of a couple small rats. Quickly, he eased out into the room and closed the door behind him.

He navigated his way easily through the storeroom and found the door out. The key unlocked it smoothly. He eased it open, checking the alley for movement before sliding out, closing and locking the door, and pocketing the key. It was done so quickly that anyone glancing into the alley, away, and back again might reasonably have thought the fox had appeared out of thin air.

Anxious to avoid attention, Volle stayed to some of the smaller streets he knew and got to the park without seeing anyone he knew. The park was crowded with children playing in the snow and adults enjoying the crisp winter air, but he found an empty bench that had already been cleared of snow and sat down. He could just see the corner of the park where the lion statue stood, and the statue’s head stood above a row of bushes. From this distance, against the bright snow, it was hard to make out the details of the head, and he had little trouble substituting Xiller’s head in its place.

He didn’t know how long he stared at the statue, but when he turned his head, Seir was beside him on the bench. Her head was bowed and her paws were clasped in her lap. She wore a plain woolen cloak that was pulled tightly around her shoulders, and grey linen pants. Her paws were bare even though they had much less fur than Volle’s. Some mice wore boots in the winter, but others hated the restrictive feel, and Volle knew without asking that that was why Seir went barefoot.

“He didn’t know what he was doing,” he said in a low voice.

“It’s pretty hard to tear out someone’s throat by accident.”

Volle felt the sick feeling in his stomach again. “He thought he was being heroic. They told him the Ferrenians were evil.”

“That doesn’t help very much.”

“It’s all I have.”

Seir looked at him then, and put a paw on his knee. “I know,” she said softly. “I’m sorry for all of us.”

“He was set up, Seir. They used him like a weapon. But he had feelings, and dreams. He wasn’t just a sword, made to kill. But that’s how they used him. He didn’t realize it, and neither did I, but I should have seen it. He wasn’t that clever—he admitted that himself—how could he be on an intelligence mission alone?”

“It doesn’t make much sense for him to be an assassin, either,” Seir pointed out.

“Maybe that’s why I didn’t see it.” Volle sighed and looked at his paws. “I’m ready to go home. Even if it means Duke Avery gets a shot at me. I imagine he’s slavering at the prospect.”

Seir kicked a little pile of snow with her paws, which were just long enough to reach the top of the drift that had gathered at the base of the bench. “I’m sure he would be if he knew the whole situation.”

“I don’t want another week’s respite before you tell him. I just want this over with. I failed, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for more things than you can imagine.”