Serpentine (The Beggar's Ride Book 1)

by Tim Stead

  The best bet was the grandest building. That much was obvious, but it was a very large building with four wings and three floors. It would have served to house two or three dozen ordinary families. In essence he was faced with the same problem as at the gate. The building was guarded and fortified.

  He took the same approach, circling the building looking for a weakness and he found it where he might have expected to, at the kitchen door. Someone was baking bread, and the smell, always one of his favourites, wafted across a small cobbled yard at the back of the house. The kitchen door was open to let out the heat.

  He slipped through. The kitchen was very large and more or less empty. A baker and his assistant were sitting by the ovens at one end, and Francis was able to pass through to the main house by a door at the other.

  He found himself in a wide corridor, a soft rug beneath his feet. It was quite dark, but a window at one end allowed in enough light to see by. There were several doors here, but he reasoned that the bed chambers would be upstairs, and so he needed to find a staircase.

  He walked to the end of the passageway and found himself at a T junction. Looking out through the window he saw that he was now at the front of the house. He could see the outline of a man standing by a lamp that was the source of the light – another guard.

  He chose the right hand fork.

  After perhaps twenty steps the passage opened out into a large hall. On one side was a doorway that could only be the grand entrance. It was a double door, high enough that a man could ride a horse through it and barely have to stoop to pass beneath the lintel. The hall itself was thickly carpeted and opened into large rooms on either side. A staircase went upwards, wide enough for five men to walk abreast, and split to left and right, feeding into a balcony that went all the way round the hall. A vast chandelier hung from the ceiling, unlit, and a great picture window, black in the night, dominated the stairs.

  Francis went up.

  He had taken only a handful of steps up the grand staircase when a step creaked beneath his foot and a sudden motion revealed a guard on the landing ahead. He had not seen the man sitting still in a chair set against a dark tapestry.

  The guard peered down the staircase in the dim light and Francis waited, trusting in his thief gift.

  When the guard sat back down he carried on, taking each step slowly. He wasn’t overly worried that a step might creak. In older houses that happened a lot, even when nobody was there. He just didn’t want it to sound like someone was walking up the stairs.

  He reached the top without further incident. There were half a dozen doors here, and another corridor stretching across the back of the house. Where to go now? He stopped and listened. If he was right there was only one man asleep in the entire house. He could hear nothing.

  He examined the corridor. In both directions it was empty, more closed doors and a scattering of tables and chairs, but nothing to indicate where the duke might be. He chose the right fork again and walked carefully down its length, listening at each door. Nothing. He could stumble around this place for a week and not find anyone.

  At the end of the corridor it turned and led him into one of the wings, or at least that seemed to be the case, but again there was no sign that anyone was here. He retraced his steps, walked around the balcony to the other side, rather than going down and across the landing where the guard was, and up the opposite flight.

  He checked the corridor. Nothing again. He was beginning to doubt that Duke Falini was even here. He walked to the corner and peered down into the left wing.

  There.

  Two guards were seated in chairs half way down the corridor. Francis felt a rush of anticipation and fear. Now he had found the duke he would have to do something. He stood still again, staring at the guards. He could kill them if he was quick about it. He had total surprise on his side.

  He had come to kill the duke, but was that really the right thing to do? He wanted people to be afraid, and dead men couldn’t be afraid. He wanted the duke to know what it felt like to be hunted, to have no safe place.

  Francis drew his sword. The two guards didn’t hear him soft-footing it down the corridor. They didn’t see him standing before them, picking which should die first. He wanted to do this quietly, and he needed a moment’s distraction. He picked a pebble out of his purse and tossed it down the corridor where it rapped noisily against the wooden skirting. Both guards turned to look.

  Francis killed the one on the right. A single thrust to the throat was quiet, quick and easy. In the moment that the second guard was still peering down the corridor he struck again, cutting at the back of the man’s neck as hard as he could. The man fell forwards, dead without ever knowing he had been in danger.

  Francis stepped back and surveyed the carnage. The floor seemed awash with blood. He was breathing hard and his heart was hammering in his chest. It felt like he couldn’t get enough air. He closed his eyes. It seemed that he wasn’t cut out for this kind of work after all. It had been easier the other night outside The Swan, but then he had been killing men to rescue his comrades and high on the discovery of his gift. This felt more like cold blooded murder.

  He regained his composure and waited, silent in the hallway, listening for any sign that he had been heard. He heard a distant creak like a tread upon a stair, but nothing else. A gust of wind rattled leaves against a window somewhere in the house, but that was all. There was no alarm, no sound of running feet.

  He put his hand on the latch and tried the door.

  It opened an inch.

  So this was it. He could walk through the door and Duke Falini would be at his mercy. His ill thought out plan had worked. He paused once more, then stooped to pick up one of the guards’ daggers. He dipped the blade in the copious blood, opened the door to the bedchamber and stepped inside.

  He knew what he was going to do.

  It was simple enough. He crossed the bedroom to the bed. The duke was there, still asleep and snoring lightly. Just one thrust of the dagger would end him, but that would be too quick. It was peculiar to look on that face. He hated the man so much, and here he was in repose, looking like any other man.

  Francis held the knife over the duke’s face, and allowed two or three drops of blood to fall onto his forehead. The duke stirred, but didn’t wake, and Francis laid the dagger carefully on the pillow beside his head. When he woke he would know that someone had stood here, that his life had been spared, that he was not safe, not ever, not even here.

  He went back to the door and stepped out into the hallway, careful not to walk in the congealing pool of blood. He went down the corridor and stopped at the head of the stair, making sure that the guard there was still in his place. It would be even better if this man was unharmed and had noticed nothing amiss.

  He eased past, taking the steps one at a time. He remembered the stair that had creaked and stepped over it. From the great hall it was only a few paces down the next corridor, a turn at the junction, and he was easing open the door to the kitchen.

  He heard the noise just in time, a tiny noise like a soft shoe on stone, and he pulled back. The door opened, swinging towards him, and he was forced to jump out of the way. He thumped into the wall behind him and half fell to the ground, catching himself on his left hand. A man walked through, looming over Francis for a moment, and he feared that he was discovered, prepared for an attack, but the man turned and walked away towards the main house, a tray balanced on his right hand and Francis was left once more gasping for air and half paralysed by fear.

  Thief gift of not, he could not afford to be discovered within the grounds of the estate, not after what he had done upstairs.

  He rose once more, listened for a moment at the door and eased it open again. This time there was no surprise. He slipped into the kitchen and found it deserted. The table closest to him was arrayed with trays of cooling bread, small loaves that would fit into a man’s hand. He passed them by and slipped out of the building into the night.

>   22 The Great Plain

  It was only a month or so before Col Boran began to feel like it would smother her. Callista had walked every garden, enjoyed every ornamental terrace, walked all the rough paths that crawled about the foothills of the Dragon’s Back, but it was all too little for her. She longed to be away from the looming presence of the mountains, even if only for a day.

  In truth she was bored. There had been little enough to do back in Afael, but now she was free, and there was even less. It was worse because everyone else was always so busy, rushing here and there on errands for the god mage, waiting for an audience and doing whatever else.

  Callista felt useless. It was a new feeling for her. Her early life was a distant dream, but in those days she had felt special. She was the only child of a country lord and her time was spent mostly with her parents, her teachers, or the servants. There had been carefully managed meetings with other children, but all she had known was love and deference.

  Then there had been the darkness. Her mother had died and her father had become more distant. That had gone on for the best part of a year and then he, too was gone and she had been thrown into her uncle's world. Even the servants had come to scorn her, taking their lead from their new lord. Her personal maid had been dismissed and she had become friendless, afraid, worthless.

  All Callista had ever wanted was to grow up, to find a good man, make a good marriage and raise children in the happy house in which she had been born. That dream had been ripped apart, and here she was at Col Boran, a sparrow, a real sparrow amongst the world's great raptors, a pebble amongst mountains. She was nothing and lived on sufferance.

  Even so, Rodric and Laya were a blessing. She visited them almost every day and they spent many hours in conversation and playing parlour games and reading aloud to each other. Laya still seemed to brood about taking the test, but had delayed doing so. Perhaps that was because Callista begged her not to whenever she seemed inclined that way. She could tell that Rodric was troubled as well, though if it was about Laya or himself she could not say.

  It worried her a little that they were still here. There was no other reason for their presence than the test, and while they remained it was still possible that Laya, or even Rodric would attempt it. She was still unable to say for certain that Laya would fail, and Laya knew that.

  “You should go back home,” she said to Rodric one morning when she found him alone. Rodric smiled a crooked smile.

  “What would you do without us?” he asked.

  “Worry less,” she replied.

  “You worry about us?” He was half serious, half mocking.

  “Of course. You are my friends, and there is danger here.”

  “There is danger everywhere.”

  She slapped him on the arm, then gripped it, suddenly fearful again. “Promise that you won’t take the test,” she said. “Swear it.”

  Rodric sighed and patted her hand. “You have become like a second sister to me, Callista, I would not lie to you, and believe me when I say that, knowing what it would mean, I shall not attempt the god mage’s test. I do not doubt your talent.”

  She felt relieved. “And Laya?”

  “My sister is her own person. She will make her own decision in her own time. I do not speak for her.”

  Callista looked into his face. “I am afraid for her, Rodric,” she said.

  “There is always a price, sooner or later, for those who aspire to greatness,” he said. “I hope that it is later for all of us.”

  “I do not wish for greatness,” Callista said, and it was true. All she had ever wanted was to grow up in a happy home, to meet a young man and fall in love and raise children in her father’s house. She wanted to be happy and at peace. What more could anyone wish for? “Greatness is a burden.”

  Rodric looked at her carefully. He seemed surprised at her words. “Yes, it is, I suppose,” he agreed. “But think how you could change the world if you had such power!”

  “I think the world is fine as it is, Rodric,” Callista said. “With a little luck it is possible to live a fine life, and there will always be men whose hunger or character drives them to evil deeds. You cannot change that.”

  “And if there was no hunger?”

  “There is always hunger, if not for food, then for money, if not for money then power, and more. It never stops. You cannot make every man a king.”

  “And what of justice?”

  “We have dragons for justice. What more do we need?”

  Rodric frowned at her. “Have you no ambition?” he asked. It was the first time she had felt a hint of disapproval from him. “Are you like the Seth Yarra who thought that change was evil?”

  “When great men disagree lesser men die,” she said. “Change is good where it is warranted. Rodric, must we argue?”

  She could see that he wanted to rebut her statement, but he smiled and sat back in his chair. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry. You are more like my sister than I had credited.”

  “I will take it as a compliment,” she said.

  “Indeed it is.” He stood. “But I have agreed to meet Laya elsewhere. Will you come with me?”

  Callista shook her head. “No. It is kind of you to ask, but I will not intrude, and I have other things that I must be about.”

  She didn’t. She was still bored and at a loose end, but she felt that Rodric wanted to be alone with Laya, and she wanted to have time to think about the things he had said, to test them against her own modest philosophy.

  They parted, and Callista wandered back to Sithmaree’s house. She came across the Snake outside the stables. There was a groom with her, and two horses.

  “There you are,” Sithmaree said. “I was going to send men looking for you.” Callista was somewhat taken aback.

  “Looking for me?” she asked.

  “Yes. We’re going riding. I’m going to show you the plains. You’ve been stuck here long enough, and so have I. I’m going mad with boredom.”

  It was uncanny. Yet again it was as though her mind had been read, and the prospect of getting away from Col Boran for even a day was delightful – even with Sithmaree.

  “I should change,” she said. “I can’t go riding in this.”

  Sithmaree smiled. “Hurry, then.”

  She ran to her room. She knew exactly what she was going to wear because she had exactly one riding suit – a set of clothes gifted to her by the Snake. It consisted of a solid pair of breeches and a matching jacket, both thick brown cotton and both decorated by leather patches in strategic places. It fitted perfectly, though she hadn’t seen it or a tailor before it had been presented to her. She changed quickly, putting on a loose cotton shirt beneath the jacket and a pair of good boots. She tucked a scarf into her belt and ran back out again.

  Sithmaree and the groom were still waiting. Callista hesitated because the Snake was standing between the two horses, and she didn’t know which she was supposed to mount.

  “Which one do you like?” Sithmaree asked.

  She had to choose? Callista had ridden before, of course. She had been riding since she was ten, and she had been given a horse by her father, but it was nothing compared to these. Sithmaree’s horses were a hand or two taller and would have delighted a king. One was black and the other was bay. She thought the black looked fierce, and it held its head high and looked down at her, but the bay seemed more placid. It turned to examine her with a curious eye.

  “The bay,” she said.

  Sithmaree held the reins out to her. “She is called Telsirian, and she is yours.”

  “Mine?”

  “Aye, I don’t use her much, truth be told, and she’s better not used as a pack animal. It’s a waste with such a fine beast.”

  Callista approached the bay. “Telsirian,” she said, stroking the mare’s velvet nose. “Does it mean anything?”

  “Queen of the Plains,” Sithmaree told her. “She was wild born. I took her when she was no more than a foal.”

&nbs
p; Callista checked the saddle girth and pulled on the stirrups to be sure that they were firm, just as she had been taught, then swung up onto the mare’s back. The horse accepted her weight at once.

  “Well, then, let us be off,” the Snake said, and guided her own mount through the gate of the stable yard, out onto the streets of Col Boran. It was only minutes before they were off the cobbles and the horses had soft grass beneath their feet.

  “Are you set then?” the Snake asked.

  “I am.”

  “Then let us ride.” She dug her heels in and the black exploded away across the plain. Callista followed, urging Telsirian on, and she found the bay equal to the task, keeping pace with Sithmaree’s mount as they streaked across the endless expanse of the Great Plain like brother arrows from a god’s bow.

  The exhilaration of the gallop never left her that day. They rode for an hour before their midday, and ate sitting beneath a spindly tree on a knoll that gave them a spectacular view back towards the Dragon’s Back.

  “They are not so big,” Sithmaree said, gesturing at the snow capped mountains. “You will see how my plains make them small until they cannot be seen at all.”

  It was the first time that she had seen Sithmaree proud and happy, and she remembered that the Snake was a lord of the plains in the old Benetheon. This was her place. Callista had not really seen the plains before, though she had travelled through them to reach Col Boran. They had been nothing more than an obstacle to her, a thing that she must pass through. Now she saw them as the Snake saw them, as a place to be, a home – even if not for Callista.

  “You lived here,” she said.

  “For many years. I know every trail, every place where water might be found, every tree that bears fruit.”

  “But there is nobody here,” Callista said. “No people.”

  Sithmaree smiled. “Yes.”