by Alex Bledsoe
“Investigating murders,” Kay said.
“The ones he committed?” a tall man with red hair snorted.
“We don’t know that,” Kay said. “He has an alibi, and as long as it holds up, I’m satisfied with it. But I haven’t had time to check it out. That’s why he’s restrained.”
A slender man with a long, drooping mustache said, “The guests sure think he’s guilty.”
“The guests also think they’re the whole reason the world exists,” Kay said. “Neither one is true. Mr. LaCrosse is a professional, just like we are. And hear this: Mr. LaCrosse better stay healthy, or I know some knights who won’t. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir!” they barked in unison.
Kay turned to me. “The show’s all yours. What do we do?”
I was rarely the shortest man in any group, but I was here, and it felt odd, as if I were the new kid in a tough school. “Gentlemen, I appreciate that you’ve lost a friend here today. I wish there was more time to mourn him, but right now, the longer we let things sit, the better chance the real murderer has of getting away. Has anyone left the room since this happened?”
“The queen retired to her quarters with her women,” the red-haired man said. “The only guest who’s left the room is you, sir, and the soldiers involved in guarding you. The other guests and all the servants have been kept here. The perimeter is secure. Sir,” he added, with a glance toward Kay.
“Well…,” began another knight, scarred from a burn across his chin.
“Well, what?” Kay demanded, then suddenly answered his own question. “Agravaine,” he spat.
“Yeah,” the burned knight said. “He took it on himself to question the serving girl who delivered the apples.”
“And he took Vince and Aidan with him,” Gillian added.
“Of course he did,” Kay snarled. “And none of you brave warriors stood up to him?” They all looked down or away, like guilty schoolboys, except for Gillian, whose expression remained neutral. “I ought to put the lot of you on report. You can be sure the king will hear about this.”
“Well, what difference does that make, anyway?” one of the other knights said. “Has anyone talked to Perfect Jennifer? She brought the murder weapon, after all.”
Kay was instantly nose to nose with the speaker; the younger man could not meet Kay’s furious gaze. “Back that talk down, mister. You are a member of the Knights of the Double Tarn, and you will show respect to your queen.”
“Yes, sir,” the offending soldier said, as sincerely as a pimp says, “I love you.”
“An investigation starts with the actual crime and works backwards,” I said, trying to sound as authoritative as my handcuffs allowed. “We follow the trail where it leads, not where we assume it goes, no matter how certain we might be. A smart criminal knows how to use assumptions like that, and since your friend was murdered right under the noses of the country’s best soldiers, I’d say the killer was pretty smart.” To Kay I said, “We should talk to the serving girl ourselves. She can at least tell us where she got the apples.”
Kay nodded. “Where are they?”
Gillian nodded at a door. “In there.”
As Kay and I crossed the hall, I felt the eyes of every single banquet guest follow me. I knew they were concocting elaborate conspiracies that had the Knights of the Double Tarn protecting me from justice for murky, nefarious reasons. I could do nothing to change their minds except produce the actual murderer, so I tried not to worry about it. “So who’s this Agravaine?” I asked Kay.
“Dave Agravaine,” he said through his teeth. “He’s a wild knife, and he’s got two toadies, Vince Hoel and Aidan Cador, who ask ‘How high?’ when he says ‘Jump.’ They’re all three worth their weight in gold in a battle, but they stink as human beings in peacetime.”
“I’ve known a lot of soldiers like that.” For a while, I’d even been one, but I kept that to myself.
Just as we reached the door to the indicated serving room, I glanced back and spotted Thomas Gillian, the intended murder victim, still watching me with that hawklike intensity. I couldn’t read his expression. I wondered if anyone ever could.
“Agravaine!” Kay bellowed as we entered the small room. It was identical to the one in which I’d earlier cornered Astamore, except that the door leading into the kitchens was closed and bolted.
Three knights surrounded a stool, on which perched the unfortunate serving girl. She huddled like a frightened sparrow, head down and arms around herself. “Get out there with the rest of the men,” Kay snarled, holding the door open. “We’ll take over here.”
One of them completely ignored Kay and glared solely at me. He was the first Double Tarn knight I’d met shorter than me, but he had wide shoulders and a white streak in his hair that indicated a serious battle scar on his scalp. He moved with a cocky shoulder roll that radiated arrogance, and his features seem to have adopted a disdainful sneer as their natural expression. I guessed he was about forty, old enough to have fought in the last of the unification wars. “You’re the guy we pulled off Patrice’s dead body.”
“And you’re this far from getting a boot enema, Agravaine,” Kay snarled. “You had orders to stay in the hall. Were they too complicated, or have you just not washed your ears lately?”
“This skanky little wench gave Sam the poisoned apple,” Agravaine said. “She might be dangerous. We can keep a better eye on her in here.” Then, in an insolent, singsong taunt he added, “Isn’t that what Marcus would want, big Sir Bob? And don’t you always do what Marcus wants?”
The tension between Kay and Agravaine had an almost physical presence. Before Kay could throttle him, I said to him, “Thanks, we appreciate your initiative, but we need some time alone to ask the young lady some questions.”
Agravaine’s hateful gaze shifted back to me, and he smiled. It was the kind of smile that begged to be forcefully knocked down his throat. “Right. I always do what a man in chains tells me. Well, here she is.” He snapped his fingers, and the other two knights stepped aside.
The girl had not moved or spoken during this exchange. She sat hunched with her hair down over her face and shook so violently the stool’s legs tapped against the floor. I put my hand on her shoulder, careful not to let the manacle chain touch her. “Miss,” I said gently, “I’d just like to ask you a couple of questions, and then you’ll be free to go.”
She looked up slowly, and her hair fell away from her face. I saw bruises and an eye swollen shut. Fresh tears made tracks through the dried blood around her puffy lips. She was so terrified her breath came in rapid, shallow whimpers.
Kay inhaled sharply behind me.
Her beautiful serving gown had been torn off one shoulder, and her fingers clutched the ripped fabric so tightly her nails dug into her palms.
“Please, sir,” she said in a trembling, mechanical whisper.
My own hands began to shake. “I’m sorry,” I said genuinely. “I wish we’d gotten here sooner.”
Behind me, Kay stepped close to Agravaine. “You little pissbucket-”
His two pals stepped up behind him, their presence a looming threat that Kay ignored. “She insulted the queen,” Agravaine said defensively. “We can’t have the servants doing that, can we?”
“You just like smacking women around,” Kay hissed. “Don’t pretend otherwise.”
Agravaine laughed. In the small, dim room it sounded especially malicious. “Sure, if a whore needs it, I’ll knock some sense into her. Got to keep them in their place. Right, fellas?”
The two men chuckled in agreement.
The girl squeezed out fresh tears at Agravaine’s description of her. “I’m not a whore,” she whispered, so quietly only I heard it.
“Excuse me a moment,” I said softly, and turned. Somewhere in that simple motion, I made a fist and swung it with all my weight and strength into Agravaine’s round, smug face.
I hit him harder than I’d ever hit anything in my life. The weig
ht of the manacle added that little extra grace note, and the chain slapped me in the cheek. Bones snapped, some in my hand, most in his nose, and he dropped like a bag of wet mud.
He sat up almost at once and clutched his nose as blood oozed between his fingers. “Som ub a bid!” he cried, his voice distorted.
His two pals drew their swords. The distinctive shting was especially loud in the small room, and the blades took up an awful lot of space.
“Cador! Hoel!” Kay yelled, and stepped in front of me. “Scabbard those swords now!”
For a moment everyone was silent and still. Then the two sidekicks put their weapons away.
“He broke my nose,” Agravaine said as he stood. It came out as He brode my node. He pulled his hand away from his face and looked at the blood. “Hold him for me, boys. Oh, you are about to get such an ass-kicking.”
The tip of Kay’s sword touched the hollow in Agravaine’s throat, then lifted his chin. He’d drawn it so fast and silently none of us noticed. “You’re not doing anything, soldier. All three of you are on report. Get back out there, and if I see any sign of you anywhere else before we leave, I’ll personally demote each of you back to assistant squire.” Kay glared particularly at Agravaine. “And I promise you, that’s a lot less than Marc would do if he were here.”
Agravaine pointed a bloody finger at me. “Me and you, asshole. Soon.” Then he looked at the girl, who curled up even tighter under his glare. “And you? Remember what I said.”
Then they left, slamming the door behind them.
Kay turned to me. “That was smart,” he muttered as he sheathed his sword. He opened the door and yelled, “Morholt! Find a doctor and send him over here. Now!”
He closed the door, then turned to the girl. His whole demeanor softened, and he spoke with a kindness that surprised me. “Miss? What’s your name?”
“Mary,” she said in a tiny voice.
“Mary, I’m Bob Kay, and this is Mr. LaCrosse. We’re truly sorry those men hurt you. They did not have orders to do so and they will be punished for it. I know they probably threatened you as well, but I promise you they won’t be in any shape to hurt anyone when I get done with them. You saw they were scared of me.”
She made a low, whimpering sound that eventually became the words “All I said was that the queen gave me the apples. I never said she poisoned them. I swear, I’m a good citizen, I love Grand Bruan.”
I found a basin with some water in it, dipped a napkin, and reached to wipe some of the blood from her face. She winced and drew back from my hand; I abandoned the idea. Instead I asked, “Mary, did Queen Jennifer give you the apples personally?”
She nodded slightly.
“Did you notice if they smelled funny?”
She shook her head. “We were in the kitchen; there was so much cooking, I couldn’t smell anything.”
“Did she arrange to give them to you before the banquet?” I pressed, as gently as possible.
“No. She brought them down to the kitchen, and I just happened to be the one picked to carry them. She said… she said I looked the prettiest.”
She began to sob, and I glared over the top of her head at Kay. “That guy owes me more than a broken nose to settle this.”
“Not while you’re toting that hand,” Kay said.
I looked and saw that the knuckles were already red and swollen. I’d been so angry I hadn’t really registered the damage. When I tried to flex my fingers, pain shot up my forearm.
“Uh-huh,” Kay said wryly. “A sword jockey with no sword hand; choice.”
Someone knocked softly at the door. “It’s Dr. Gladstone,” a woman’s voice said, and she entered without waiting for an invitation. She closed the door behind her, looked around, and said, “I can’t work with romantic mood lighting. Turn up that lamp, will you?”
Kay adjusted the wick, the room grew brighter, and I got my first look at Iris Gladstone. She was about thirty, clad in a distinctive white coat and toting the little black satchel of her profession. Everything about her spoke of strength and elegance, from her short black hair to eyes so big and blue it was like looking into the sea itself. She seemed somehow too glamorous for such a down-and-dirty job as physician. Or maybe because she was such a knockout, I couldn’t imagine her tending bloody injuries.
“That’s better,” she said as the lamp stopped flickering. “So I was told there’d been an accident in the kitchen,” she said in a deep, take-charge voice. “Somebody slice open a finger?”
“Ah… no,” Kay said, and stepped aside to reveal the girl.
The doctor’s face darkened when she saw the injuries. Her hands quickly danced around the bruised eye and cut lip, brushing back the hair to check for other marks. She murmured soothingly to Mary, then turned and glared at us with the kind of fury only the morally righteous can have. “And which one of you chivalrous sons of bitches did this?” She glanced at my manacles. “You?”
“You’ll probably get a visit later from a knight with a broken nose,” I said. “His fist matches up with those bruises.”
She stared at me for a moment as the words got through her fury. Then she noticed how I cradled my hand, and the tiniest smile I’d ever seen moved across her moist, voluptuous lips. “So does your fist match his broken nose?”
I shrugged. “I swatted a fly.”
A flicker of appreciation, but no more than that, touched her face. Then the hard look clamped down again. “Amazing how often you armor-clad assholes manage to hurt the people you’re supposed to defend, especially if they’ve got breasts.” She opened her black bag and brought out a small jar of ointment. “Now, will one of you boys be genuinely useful and light a couple more lamps? I’d like to see what I’m doing.”
I took down a pair from a shelf with my good hand. Kay took them from me, arranged them for best effect, and lit them. Gladstone ignored us, but that was okay. It gave me the chance to watch her slender form as she worked, attending to the wounds with efficient gentleness. She produced vials and powders from her bag and applied them sparsely, but with a feather-light touch. Mary obeyed the doctor’s entreaties, and within moments she’d stopped crying and started to lose the red flush of panic.
“Will she be all right?” I asked softly, not wanting to startle the girl.
The doctor looked up and our eyes met. It was no more than an instant, but it was enough. Sometimes you meet someone and just know, instantly and without a doubt, that you’re destined to cross all the boundaries that separate you. The process defies logic and common sense, but everyone’s experienced it at least once. At that point in my life, it had happened twice before, and both those women were dead. It scared the hell out of me to feel it again for this no-nonsense doctor, and I was actually glad I had a murder to solve to help keep my mind off it.
“Yes,” the doctor said. “Eventually.”
“May I ask her one last question?” I said.
“Not on my watch,” Dr. Gladstone snapped as she applied a bandage over the girl’s split cheek.
“No, it’s okay,” Mary said. “I want to help.” She looked up at me with the tiniest spark of renewed defiance in her battered eyes.
I asked gently, “What happened to the rest of the apples?”
She looked blank and thought for a moment. Finally she said, “I don’t know.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Dr. Gladstone snapped. She put her hands on her hips and gave us both a hard expression that would’ve done credit to a North Sea berserker. “This girl’s coming back to the infirmary. If I even smell a knight in shining armor trying to get near her, I’ll show you what an angry doctor can do to one of you walking meat sacks.” She turned away to stow her gear back in her bag and added, “And you-come see me about that hand in about three hours. It should be nice and painful by then.”
“Miss, I’m truly sorry,” Kay repeated to Mary. “We’ll make sure you get the best care, and those men will pay for what they did to you.”
Mary nodd
ed, but her eyes had gone glassy again and I had no idea if she really heard his words.
We went back into the main hall. Once the door shut behind us I asked Kay, “Do you know her? That doctor, I mean.”
“Sure. Iris Gladstone. She was with us on a couple of campaigns back before Marripat Hill when she was still a girl apprentice. She stitched up a cut on my back once.”
I nodded, resolved to seek out this Iris Gladstone later whether my hand hurt or not. Assuming, of course, I wasn’t locked up awaiting execution. “She’s tough.”
If Kay knew what I meant from my overly appreciative tone, he let it pass with a shrug. “Field doctors have to be. Since peacetime, she’s trained healers to go out into the country, opening their own practices.”
“You don’t use moon priestesses?” That altruistic but secretive sisterhood operated hospitals in most parts of the world.
“There are no moon priestesses on Grand Bruan,” Kay muttered. “They’re against the law.”
I was about to ask why when I spotted Agravaine and his pals huddled conspiratorially near the main door. When they saw us, they looked away, then at the ground, then slunk off into the crowd.
“Those guys really push it,” Kay said. “Now what?”
“Let’s go talk to the queen before Agravaine has a chance to get to her.”
“The queen?” Kay said, and sounded startled. “Why do you think Agravaine would go to the queen about any of this?”
I looked at him in genuine surprise. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Humor me.” The suspicion in his voice added the unspoken, Unless you’re more involved than you’ve said.
“It’s simple. Who else would’ve sent him to intimidate a key witness whose testimony implicates the queen? That girl is the one link between the queen and the apples. Another couple of minutes and they would’ve had her convinced apples didn’t even exist. And even if the queen didn’t personally send them, they were surely doing it on her behalf.”
Kay nodded. “Pretty simple when you explain it that way.”
