It was possible. If so, he had certainly not had the best of the bargain, at least not from Durine’s point of view.
Then again, if somebody was going to kill him anyway, he had at least had one last night with his lady, rather than one last night of hoping some day to be the Earl of LaMut, so maybe he hadn’t been cheated quite as badly as it had first seemed.
‘Have you found anything interesting?’ Durine asked.
‘Interesting? You mean, like some note that says, “I killed Baron Morray and Lady Mondegreen, ha ha ha ha”, with a signature and seal at the bottom?’
‘Well, that would be interesting, but I was thinking about something a little more subtle.’
Kethol was clearly shaken; sarcasm wasn’t usually part of his repertoire.
Durine didn’t quite understand it. It was just another couple of deaths, when you finally came down to it, and Durine was used to being around death, after all, as were Pirojil and Kethol.
That was the trouble with caring about people. They were, every bit as much as horses and cows and pigs, sacks of meat; and meat spoiled and rotted, sooner or later. If you were going to rely on something, metal was always a better choice than meat, whether that metal was gold or steel.
Kethol plonked himself down in the Baron’s chair, and began going through the drawers. ‘No, I haven’t found anything interesting.’ He pulled out a small, bulging leather pouch, and upended it. Silver reals and a few small golden coins rang down onto the wooden surface. Kethol scooped them back into the bag, and put it back in the drawer.
Durine walked to the bookcase, and pulled down a volume. He riffled through the pages but didn’t recognize the language, although the glyphs looked vaguely Elvish. Carefully, he placed the book on the carpet, then pulled down the next.
‘What are you doing?’
Durine shrugged. ‘Well, it could be that the pass-phrase is on a piece of paper stuck in one of the books.’
‘Do you really have to do that now?’
Durine ignored Kethol. There really wasn’t any point in arguing, and there was nothing else useful he could do. Pirojil had intended for him to beat the truth out of Erlic, but the man was already limp with shame and self-disgust, and it was clear the only thing that Durine could have got out of the poor sod was some new bruises on his own knuckles, and the same story.
Durine didn’t have any objection to hurting people, but he didn’t need the exercise. While he wouldn’t have minded trying that technique out on some of the nobles–that Baron Viztria would, he thought, look a bit better with fewer teeth–he didn’t think that even with his present authority he could get away with that, and trying to work out the truth of something from what somebody was saying was Pirojil’s specialty, not his or Kethol’s.
He supposed that he could have taken a look at the bodies, but he had seen bodies before, and it seemed even more unlikely that his eyes would catch anything that Kethol’s eyes missed than it did that there was anything useful to see at all. The assassin had, after all, probably not carved his name into the flesh of his victims, any more than he had left a confessional note here.
There was probably more wealth in this room than in some of the bags in the strongroom below, although it was difficult to work out an easy way that they could be converted into cash, and Durine couldn’t quite see the three of them strapping bags of books to their horses before they rode out of town.
Though the sooner they did, the better.
Nevertheless, he kept working his way down the bookcase. If the pass-phrase was hidden in one of the books, it might have been written into the book itself.
And even that was unlikely.
If Pirojil had organized it, it would have been something clever–like, say, cutting the pass-phrase into a dozen parts, and giving each of the barons some of those parts, so that any three or four of them could reassemble the complete pass-phrase–and there was no reason to think that the LaMutian nobility was any less clever than Pirojil, or would simply leave such a valuable thing lying about for the easy perusal of some servant cleaning the Baron’s rooms.
He was halfway through the shelves when he noticed that Kethol was glaring at him.
‘Is there any chance you could actually do something useful?’ Kethol asked.
Durine shrugged. ‘Sure. Just give some idea as to what that something useful could be.’
‘Well, you could help me with the desk.’
Durine spread his hands. ‘I’ll be happy to help you look through the Baron’s desk, or go through his wardrobe, or anything else–but I don’t know what I’m looking for even if I see it.’
Then again…Baron Morray’s swordbelt, complete with dagger, was hanging from a hook on the wall. Durine didn’t think that the Baron had cut his own throat, and then Lady Mondegreen’s, but…
He drew the sword. A nice rapier, he decided, although the grip was definitely too small for Durine’s oversized fingers, and he would have preferred a larger bell-guard, and a polished one, rather than the deeply-inscribed curlicues that covered the surface of this one. Tastes varied, and Durine preferred things simple: he would have rather known that a sword tip would bounce off, and in which direction, rather than unreliably stick some times and bounce off at others, but that probably didn’t make much of a difference to the defender, and it might throw off an opponent’s timing, just a trifle, which could be more than enough.
Each to his own.
The light, narrow blade was well-oiled, without a hint of rust, and the tip was sharp enough to dig out a splinter. When he gripped the blade with his left hand, covering the blade with his sleeve to protect it more from the moisture of his finger than to protect his fingers from the edge, it flexed nicely, then sprang back straight. Not the sort of weapon Durine would have wanted to take into battle–even if you sharpened the edge, the light blade didn’t have enough weight behind it to cut to bone; but it was a fine duelling weapon.
He replaced the sword and drew the companion dagger. The hilt was covered with the same greenish dragonhide, and the brass hilt was inscribed with curlicues in complement to the bell-guard of the rapier.
But the dagger was heavy, balanced nicely at the hilt, and sharp enough to shave the hairs off Durine’s arm.
And utterly devoid of any blood, fresh or dried.
He hefted it in his hand. ‘Could the killer have used this?’
Kethol looked up from rummaging through the desk drawer, and his irritated glare quickly faded. ‘Possibly. Sharp?’
‘Very.’ Durine used the tip of the dagger to point to the now-bare patch on his forearm. He ran his thumbnail down the edge of the blade, and while the steel bit slightly into the nail, there weren’t any fine nicks that Durine could feel, much less coarser ones that he could have seen. ‘Hasn’t been used to chop at anything.’
Kethol shook his head. ‘Which doesn’t mean anything. The killer slit the throats very neatly.’
‘No wounds on the arms? Seems strange–you’d think that the killing of the first would have awakened the second.’
Kethol nodded. ‘I took out a guard, once, while his partner was sleeping nearby, just a few feet away, and–’
‘Dungaran?’
‘No. Semrick, I think, or it may have been Maladon. They all blur together after a while. But as I was saying, I’m pretty good, and he didn’t make a move until the knife was through his throat, but he did thrash around enough to wake up the second one, and I kind of had to rush with him.’
‘Maybe Lady Mondegreen or the Baron were heavy sleepers?’
‘I suppose so.’ Kethol sounded doubtful. ‘Either there were two killers, and they timed it well, or the killer was very, very fast. One of them thrashing around in their death throes wouldn’t have made much of a difference if the other already had a cut throat. Takes some speed, though.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘Of the barons, I’d say that Verheyen and Langahan are the fastest, having watched them spar with Steven Argent the other night. Verheyen
might even be a touch faster than the Swordmaster.’
‘Well, he is younger.’ Not that that had made a difference in their sparring. Speed was a fine thing, but Steven Argent had more decades of training in his wrist than Verheyen, and the Baron hadn’t laid a practice blade on him.
Which suggested an ugly possibility. ‘You don’t think it could be the Swordmaster, do you?’
‘No.’ Kethol sat back. ‘I hadn’t thought about it. Why would he want to?’
‘Well, there are rumours that he was having his way with Lady Mondegreen, too.’
‘There are lots of rumours.’ Kethol shook his head. ‘If you believe the rumours, the Lady was spreading her legs for every noble in the earldom. I don’t.’
‘Neither do I.’ Durine nodded. There was no way to be sure of anything, but he liked Pirojil’s theory that Lady Mondegreen had carefully been picking her paramours for the dark hair and grey eyes of the husband who couldn’t get her with child–which helped to explain her affairs with Morray and Argent, and if she had been willing to lower herself to commoners, added more additional local candidates than Durine could count.
But…‘Everybody and his brother’s rooms haven’t been reeking of patchouli and myrrh. Argent might have decided that if he couldn’t have her, nobody else would.’
Durine didn’t really believe that, but he was with Kethol, and didn’t have to restrict himself to speaking carefully. And, besides, it was a possibility.
Kethol thought about it for a moment–the effort apparently was a strain–and then shook his head. ‘And do it in a way that could set off the very uprising that he’s been working hard to prevent?’
Durine put the knife back in its sheath. ‘I guess not.’ He paused, thoughtful. ‘Throat cut?’
Kethol shook his head in surprise at the question. ‘I already told you–’
‘No. Not here. That time in Semrick or Maladon or wherever it was.’
Kethol nodded, understanding the change of topic. ‘Yes. Pumped out a lot of blood, and fast, but he still kicked and thrashed like a stuck pig, even though I got through the windpipe and he couldn’t get a sound out of his mouth.’
Durine nodded. Having had some experience in such matters himself, he preferred a stab into the kidney–the shock of the pain usually froze the victim into paralysis–or a hacking blow into the base of the neck, hoping to sever the spine, but these were the sorts of things that professionals could have honest differences of opinions on and, by and large, Kethol’s results were better than Durine’s on this sort of thing.
Which suggested another, really ugly, possibility.
‘Yeah. You still prefer cutting a throat to stabbing from behind?’ He tried to make it sound like just a typical bit of shop talk, but Kethol didn’t take it that way. ‘Last night you were awfully quiet.’
Kethol pushed himself away from the desk and stood. ‘If you’ve got something to say, get it out. If you think I…I did that, then–’
Durine held up a hand. He wasn’t any more afraid of Kethol than he was of anybody else, but even so…
‘No, not really. I’ve never known you to kill anybody without a reason, and I can’t think what the reason would be. Jealousy? Anyone can see you were half-smitten with the Lady, but that’s no reason to kill her, and I was getting the impression that you liked Morray.’
‘Respected him, at least, sure.’ Kethol nodded. ‘So if you’re not accusing me of the murders, what are you saying?’
‘Nothing much. Just seems to me that you were awfully quiet last night, and that isn’t usual, and I’m wondering if there’s something you haven’t told me.’
‘And if there is?’
‘Then either tell me now, or don’t. Your call.’
Kethol swallowed, sat down, and started to talk.
Durine’s expression never changed while Kethol, keeping his voice low, explained about how he had created the mythical Tsurani scout from some old Blue armour, a dead horse, and a pair of brezeneden.
When he finished, Durine just nodded.
‘Too clever by half, but it seems to have worked.’ He almost smiled. ‘Sounds more like Pirojil’s sort of thing than yours. He didn’t have a hand in it?’
Kethol shook his head. ‘I didn’t have time to talk it over with either of you. The idea only occurred to me when both of you were on your way into lowertown, and I realized that I didn’t have the vaguest idea of how to stop a fight, except by killing everybody involved. The two of you might be able to impersonate officers, but that’s not my way. So I did what I could.’
He had done that, although Durine thought that Kethol’s worries about one mythical winter scout completely disrupting the Kingdom’s strategy were overblown. The captains had chewed it over, but the nobles running the war were used to reports from the lower echelons that overstated things–like a squad reporting heavy opposition usually meaning that there were another couple of squads of Tsurani over the next ridge, or maybe a company, rather than a legion.
The report about the scout had startled the captains, and Durine, as well, but the dukes and their senior officers would just add that report to the mix, and even if they believed it, they’d not blindly commit the entire forces of two dukedoms to prepare for an attack towards LaMut just because of this one report. If the Kingdom’s rulers were that easy to distract, they wouldn’t have stood up to the Tsurani this long.
‘These brezeneden, though,’ Durine said. ‘They sounded interesting. You think you could find where you buried your set?’
Kethol nodded. Of course he could. Nobody else would have noticed just another hump in the snow, but he had deliberately chosen a place halfway between two trees, just in case he wanted to retrieve them later, and Kethol could remember a tree as well as he could remember a face.
‘Any possibility that you could make another couple of sets?’
Kethol nodded. ‘But–’
The noon bell rang. ‘We’d better get up to the Aerie, and see what Pirojil’s found out. Unless you think we’ll find any more of these “clues” here, or know somebody that I can try to beat some information out of?’
Kethol shook his head. ‘No.’
‘On your way, then,’ Durine said, making a brushing-away motion with his fingers. ‘I’ve got to use the garderobe, and then I’ll be right up.’ He raised a cautionary finger. ‘You can tell Pirojil about the brezeneden, but don’t talk about the other matter,’ he said. ‘He’s got enough on his mind, and we know that there are secret passages up there–the walls may have ears, eh?’
Kethol didn’t mention the Tsurani scout ploy, but he might as well have done, the moment he explained about the brezeneden.
Pirojil sat back in his chair, his hands folded over his belly, and then nodded.
Very clever, he mouthed, rather than said. Then, quietly, ‘When we’re done here, can you go make another three sets? And how long would it take?’
Durine had asked the same thing. Kethol nodded. ‘Not long. Several hours, probably.’
There was ample wood and leather, among the several score other things that the castle might need during a siege, stored on the racks down in the dungeon, and if he couldn’t find suitable thongs he could cut them himself out of a cowhide. The room they shared in the barracks had a hearth, and the teapot would serve to produce steam. Probably they wouldn’t be as elegant as those that the Ranger had made, but it could be done. Just a matter of cutting the strips, bending them into shape, and then weaving on the latticework of leather thongs.
‘Why?’
‘For the obvious reason.’ Pirojil nodded. ‘I think it might be handy to get out of LaMut before the snow melts, now that it’s warming up enough that we can, and–’ He waved it away. ‘But I’m letting myself get distracted. What did you see in Lady Mondegreen’s room?’
Kethol told him, in as much detail as he could. Pirojil didn’t interrupt, except to ask him to clarify a point or two. Not that there was much to clarify: the two dead people were dea
d; they had been sliced by somebody fast and good; and there was nothing at all that Kethol had found that resembled a clue.
Fantus seemed to enjoy the recitation, though; he had appeared moments after Kethol had, and Kethol hadn’t seen where the firedrake had come from.
Not that it mattered much; Kethol just drew his knife, and scratched at the drake’s eye-ridges while he talked, and Fantus arched his neck and preened himself, as usual. A firedrake was actually kind of a pleasant companion, although he had never heard of another tame one. If the three of them ever did manage the Three Swords Inn, he might see if there was a way to catch and tame one.
But thoughts of that long-off day didn’t stop his recitation. A knock on the door did.
‘Yes?’
Ereven, the housecarl walked in, bearing a tray. How he had turned the knob with his hands occupied was something that Kethol wondered about, but didn’t ask. Every profession was entitled to its little trade secrets, after all.
‘You asked to be served lunch, here, sir?’ Ereven asked, only a trace of a sniff suggesting his irritation at these interlopers treating the Swordmaster’s rooms as though they were their own.
‘Yes, and I also sent for Mackin–’
‘The dwarf, sir?’
‘Yes, the dwarf. Make sure he finds his way up here, please.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Durine walked in as the housecarl walked out, and sat himself down in a chair next to the hearth. ‘I could get used to these accommodations,’ he said. ‘Pity.’
‘Yeah.’ Pirojil seemed to force a smile. ‘A real pity, that.’ He scooped a meatroll up off the plate and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Very well, I–’
There was another knock on the door, and Mackin walked in without waiting to be given permission to enter. He nodded curtly at Kethol and Durine, then planted himself in front of Pirojil.
‘I take it,’ Pirojil said, ‘that the Swordmaster is still downstairs with the rest?’
Mackin nodded. ‘Well, you can see that he isn’t here, so that doesn’t make you all that clever.’