There were no signs of the confusion of fever about that stare, and she believed that he was fully aware of who she was.
“Soup—” She balanced the bowl she had uncovered on one hand and with the other reached for an ornately handled spoon.
He frowned and again turned his head slowly, apparently taking in all he could see of what was about him.
“Where?” His one-word question came faint and hoarse.
Willadene shook her head. “Somewhere in the castle. But I was brought here by hidden ways and cannot tell you more. It was by my mistress’s bidding!” she finished defiantly as his frown seemed to grow the blacker.
She was remembering the Chancellor’s instructions—were Nicolas to regain his senses she must summon aid. Well enough, but it was also plain that the man stretched before her was fighting to keep those same senses and he needed strength to do so. She could give him one of the potions Halwice had left, but the effect of that would be only temporary and the food she now held might do him more good at present. She hitched herself closer and dipped the spoon into the fragrant broth.
“Eat!” She tried to make her voice as commanding as Halwice’s could be. Even so, she was secretly surprised when he opened his mouth and allowed her to spoon the stuff into it. Five spoonfuls later he shut his lips firmly in refusal.
“Vazul—” He opened them again only to utter that name.
Willadene crossed to the length of bell cord and gave a vigorous jerk before she returned, this time to indeed take up one of the waiting bottles and measure out a half spoonful.
“It gives strength.” She pushed it at that obstinately closed mouth. His eyes offered her neither welcome nor thanks, but he allowed her to carefully spoon the potion into him.
“Ssssaaa—” Luckily he had taken the last drop of that mixture before that hiss startled the girl.
Padding across the floor into the fuller light which rimmed the trundle bed came Vazul’s creature, the first time she had seen it apart from the Chancellor. It haunched itself into a part ball, so that its fore body was well above the time-webbed carpets on the floor, its head high as if it sniffed in search of some warning scent. So plain was that action to Willadene that she found herself doing likewise. There were odors in plenty but most of them innocuous and familiar ones.
Her attention had been so fastened on the creature that she was again startled when Vazul loomed out of nowhere into the light. The heavily ornamented and bedizened robe he generally wore was gone and he had instead a plain, much less impressive garment of a dark gray—not unlike that of a working merchant.
“Nicolas?” He paid no attention to Willadene, and she had to scramble out of his way as he came forward to kneel beside the trundle bed.
There was a weak smile on that drawn face, and the eyes looking up no longer pierced like sword points.
“The same, lord Chancellor,” Nicolas’s answer was clear but hardly more than a whisper. “They did not get me this time either—”
Vazul’s hands moved and, with a gentle skill Willadene would not have thought possible in the stiff, reserved man, the Chancellor lifted the other a little and held him supported on one arm while he patted bed linen into a support.
“Ssssaaa—” His creature leaped upward on the bed, darting forward to insert its narrow head under Nicolas’s limp hand.
“No,” Vazul said with some of his customary dryness of speech, “you will still live to play games, boy. But no luck holds forever. You were found in the passage—”
“At least not in an alley.” Perhaps it was a laugh the younger man attempted, but it came forth as a croak. “It was city slinkers who brought me down—and waiting ones.”
“Soooo—” The sound the Chancellor made was not far from his creature’s hiss. “But what news do you bring?” It was as if for the moment he pushed aside one subject to concentrate on another.
“The best—for our purposes. Prince Lorien chaffs for a fight—he was never one interested in the hunting . . . of animals. He was provided with a guide and certain information. By your look, m’lord, no news has come yet, but I would swear it is on its way. I do not think that the Prince, having his tail tweaked after a fashion, will be bound by any boundaries. That is wild country and easy to cross from the kingdom where no highway posts stand.”
Vazul smiled now, stiffly as if such a change of feature did not come easily.
“His Highness will be well pleased,” he commented. “And this Prince, what can you tell of him?”
“Young, hot of blood, needing occupation.” But Nicolas’s voice was dwindling, and Willadene gave a quick glance to the time lamp on the table and dared to interrupt.
“My lord, it is time for a potion. See, he exhausts himself—”
There were beads of sweat now soaking the fringe of dark curls across the wounded man’s forehead.
“Well done"—as if he had not heard Willadene, though she was very certain that he had. Vazul’s hand smoothed the cover lightly over that bandaged body. His creature seemed to take that as a signal and darted to that arm, curling up to the Chancellor’s shoulder.
“1 think"—now Vazul did face the girl—"that I leave you in good hands. Halwice has gone hostage for this one.”
“I would—” Nicolas tried to move, to raise himself a little. It was Vazul who pushed him back.
“Heal, Bat. Your flights are certainly not yet ended. Give him the potion, girl, and see that he sleeps.”
She was already at the table for that and was aware only of a slight passage of air through the room but turned to find the Chancellor gone.
Nicolas eyed what she brought balefully. “How long do I lie here—’’ His voice quivered as if he was having some difficulty in speaking at all.
Willadene held the very small cup to his lips. “As long as my mistress thinks it well and proper.” She was having the last word after all, for his eyes were already closing.
9
Long before the first morning bell, while the night still held grasp on the four portals to Kronengred, there were travelers heading toward the northern gate—and certainly no ordinary march of a merchant caravan or the pounding of some messenger.
There was one horse between the two of them, and yet neither rode. The horse itself moved with hanging head and there was a rime of dried sweat on its thin flanks. To the right of the clearly near-spent animal trudged a man in border mail and helm, a blood-darkened badge on the sleeve covering the arm he used to hold reins looped once about the saddle horn by which he urged the mount forward.
His companion was in much worse case, head hanging so that his chin near touched his breast, his lower face a mask of dried blood as he snorted for breath through a smashed nose. Instead of mail he wore a jacket of brine-hardened leather, and he certainly lacked both the sword slapping now and then against the other’s thigh or any other sign of weapon. His matted hair was gray-white with dust, and twice only the support of the horse to which his hands had been lashed kept him on his feet when he stumbled.
“Holla—the gate!” The voice was husky but the border guard managed to gain the attention he wanted. A lantern swung down from a beam overhead to more fully reveal the wayfarers.
“Who goes?”
“Vacher of the Hawk Liners—with a prisoner.”
There was some mumbling from aloft and a wait during which the prisoner would have gone to his knees save for the support of the horse. Then words reached them.
“ ’Tis Vacher right enough, served with him on the Burges route, I did. Let the man in, dolt—can’t you see he is fair done?”
They did not throw open the great gate but from the postern to the side there emerged light of a kind. A knife sawed through the cords which held the prisoner and he fell, lumpish face downward, while a flask was pushed into his captor’s hand.
Two more lantern bearers pushed their way to the scene, one of them wearing the slant bar of an underofficer on his helm.
“Wot you got here!”
He came to the point at once, giving the body on the ground a prod with boot toe.
The border guard finished his drink. “That there’s maybe something as the Cap’n will be glad to set eye on. Raider—”
Two of the men in that small group snarled, and one went as far as to half draw his sword.
“A raider,” Vacher continued, “as may know something as should be shared with honest men—such as why me an’ Samnnel an’ Jas’ was ambushed like they knew we was comin’. The Hawker, he couldn’t spare no more men and me, he knew I was woodsranger for Lord Gerorigius a’fore he took and died, so I had the best chance maybe to get through. What I did—an’ wi’ him along, too.”
But suddenly he tottered and would have fallen in turn had he not been caught by the man now beside him.
“Get ‘im in,” commanded the underofficer, “and have the set bones to ‘im. See this other is all properly tight also.” Once more he indicated the subject of this order with a kick to the inert body. “I’m for the Cap’n—trust he’s back from patrol. Big doin’s in the city last night and we was called out special.”
They obeyed orders with the snap of well-drilled men. But so intent were they on those very orders that they did not note a shadow lying belly flat on the ground, arm over face to better conceal its pale curve. When one of the guards caught hand in the prisoner’s mop of hair and pulled up his head and one of his fellows swung a lantern closer to the blood-soaked face, the shadow tensed. But it continued to lie where it had stationed itself at the first sound of the newcomers until the whole of the party passed back through the postern gate—and for a number of counted breaths afterward.
When the skulker moved at last, it was to squirm on belly back along the wall for what was equal to several strides and then, on hands and knees, scuttle to the protection of a cart. He could hear the snoring of the farmer sleeping above, willing to forgo any better bed in order to be first to the market in the morning.
The shadow did not need traditional gates to pass into the city. Beyond the cart he got to his feet and flitted away from the wall. The past Dukes had prudently had that land cleared of any form of hiding place long since. Yet the watcher found his way unerringly to the vast round of a rotting stump near the size of a small tower. Then came a scratching sound and he was gone.
The First Bell boomed out its daily message when a man, his lean body covered with a patchwork of rags, again came into view—this time not in the outer world but within a room, as if he were thin enough to melt through the cracks between the ancient boards.
“Hobbert.” The oiled voice gave his name as the only greeting. “An’ wot ‘as brought you out of your hole now?”
The man half cringed, almost as if he were greeting Duke Uttobric himself most formally. “News I do have, Wyche.”
“That being?”
“One of the Hill Hawks jus’ corned in. An’ he had Ranny—brought him in tied to his saddle.”
“If he came so,” the huge man commented, “then the lack wit was still alive—an’ . . .”
Hobbert moved a little closer. Once he even dared to glance at the tall tankard which stood within easy reach of the other’s hand.
“He—he knows somethin’ then—”
Wyche’s broken-veined face became a mask of malice.
“What a man knows can bring ‘im trouble, Hobbert. Like this—” He pointed to a large roach, foolhardy enough to attempt the top of the table in daytime, and brought his tankard forcefully down on the insect.
“I don’t know nothin’,” Hobbert gabbled in a hurry. “Only what I jus’ come here to tell you, Master Wyche.”
The other snorted. “You were a bar since you drew your first breath, Hobbert. But sooner or later"—his hot stare swept the smaller man from head to foot and then back again—"you’ll settle accounts. As it is, this time you’ve used what little wits as rattle around in that lousy skull of yours.” His grin was hardly better than his malice of a few minutes earlier.
“Get you to the kitchen an’ tell that slob of a Jacoba as how I’ll stand you a full belly for once.”
Hobbert disappeared—this time through the conventional doorway. The chair, large as it was, squeaked as Wyche shifted his weight. He was neither grinning nor scowling now. ‘Twas never really lucky to be caught up in the plots of the nobles. On the other hand—let a city get in such a muffle as the hand of a man was ready for his neighbor’s throat—now that meant rich pickings for him as let the others do the blooding while he did the harvesting.
That Ranny was taken suggested perhaps a major danger to those who had his own—temporary—allegiance. But any pile as old as Kronengred had secrets within its walls, and a man could well have his throat slit before he could flap his tongue.
Yes. He took another long pull at the tankard. To pass on Hobbert’s message might be to his advantage for the present. He tapped the stained board of the table with his fat and puffy fingers. How—and who—that took some thinking on.
During Willadene’s exploration of the room where Nicolas lay and she appeared to be imprisoned for the present she had come across a chest. Perhaps the contents had once been precious—robes of state. The clean odor of cedar had greeted her when she had managed to raise the heavy lid, but the garments, too long folded, slit and tore at her handling. However, she got out enough of them to form a pallet not too far from that of her patient.
By Halwice’s reckoning that last dose should give him several hours of sleep. She had hungrily finished the solid food on the tray—rolls stuffed with mince of meat—cold, to be sure, but nonetheless welcome. And she had drunk very sparingly from the pitcher of water. The flagon of wine which had accompanied it she pushed to one side.
For a while she sat on the bed she had contrived and watched Nicolas. It seemed to her that his sleep was peaceful, and under her light touch his skin was no longer heated as much. Halwice’s potions worked well, always supposing she could reach the patient in time.
However, it was not Nicolas the wounded charge who interested her now but rather Nicolas the man. She did not know how clever she was at estimating age, but she felt that he could not be too many years ahead of her. Both Halwice’s and the Chancellor’s treatment of him had suggested that he was of some major importance to those secrets she knew existed but refused to try to explore. If the Herbmistress wanted her to know something she would tell her—and that Willadene held to.
He was, of that much she was certain, a spy—ears and eyes for the Chancellor and beyond him the Duke. Only someone with strong nerves and quick wits could play that role for any length of time.
She wondered if he still nursed suspicion of her as he had from the first. She—
On her pallet of metallic-threaded rags the girl stiffened, and her head jerked around toward the door—that door which was so securely fastened save for the space at the bottom through which the tray had been pushed.
That space—she regarded it narrowly and as carefully as she could in this dim light. Surely it was not large enough to admit—a man?
However, one hand flew to her nose. So utterly vile was the whiff she had caught that it nearly choked her. There was something outside that portal now—something which was utter danger.
She had her belt knife, yes, but she would be no match physically for a determined killer, and somehow she was sure that who—or what—lingered now without had come to slay.
There was no time to extinguish the lamps. Anyone stooping or kneeling could look through the flap and make sure that the prey was safe inside. Or—
She did not have Halwice’s everpresent healer’s bag, but before her eyes now, on that tray waiting to be collected, was a pepper mill—perhaps put with all food served as a matter of course.
Willadene half threw herself across the space between, and her hands closed on that most pitiful of weapons. Whatever was waiting without had not moved, of that her nose assured her. She tried to breathe shallowly, fighting the pressure on her that that filthy
odor continued to exert.
The pepper mill worked quickly as she turned—savagely but silently as she was sure it might give her away.
Then—
The flap was being lifted! Willadene planted herself in what she hoped would be the best position and waited—
Luckily, in spite of the lamps, the trundle bed was out of direct line of anyone so attempting to spy on them. He or she would have to assume the most awkward position in order to view who lay there.
There was a hand on the swing flap and Willadene was astounded. She had expected a man’s fist; this was the well-kept hand of a woman, a single red-jeweled ring catching fire from the lamplight.
Hand—then an arm clad in ruby silk, a shoulder, a mass of hair which must have been hastily released from some elaborate headdress, the waving strands hiding the face.
But those strands were no barrier to what Willadene held. She chose what she believed was her best moment and blew. Holding her own nose tight with her other hand against what might drift upward, she puffed the thick coating of pepper in her palm straight at her target.
Her answer was a veritable explosion of a sneeze, enough to strip raw the unfortunate nose which allowed it. What she could see of the interloper jerked back and away. The flap of the door dropped into place. Yet she could hear a series of more violent sneezes, plus a smothered cry of pain. Perhaps some of her improvised weapon had reached eyes as well.
Still, as she crouched there she continued to be aware of that evil smell. For all her torment the unknown on the other side of the door was making no move toward withdrawal.
“What’s to do—?” The words were clear enough for her to understand but slurred. She slewed about to face the pallet.