by Alex Bledsoe
“Marc!” Kay called. Then suddenly, with no real time to prepare for the moment, I stood face-to-face with the most famous king in the known world.
Actually, face-to-chest is more like it. If I thought the Knights of the Double Tarn made me feel small, then next to King Marcus Drake I was a dwarf. He stood six and a half feet tall, and his shoulders were as broad as one of the serving tables. His tunic, undoubtedly custom-tailored to him, nonetheless drew tight across his muscular arms. In contrast, his brown hair fell boyishly into his face, and he tossed it aside to reveal his clear, surprisingly kind eyes. I’d met my share of important people, and usually something about them immediately disappointed me. But everything about Marcus Drake measured up to his larger-than-life reputation.
He’d already removed his armor and was restrapping his sword belt as we approached. I wondered if the scabbard held the legendary Belacrux. Like everyone, I imagined this weapon as always gleaming, freshly polished, and razor-edged. Up close, though, the sword at his waist looked just like any other well-used battle weapon, the worn leather hilt grip stained with sweat and blood. If this was Belacrux, then it was the only letdown.
Drake saw me looking. “Yes, this is Belacrux.” I expected a huge, booming voice to make the rafters quiver, but instead he spoke with casual, conversational ease. “And, no, I’m afraid you can’t hold it.”
I said nothing. He grinned when he saw Kay. Despite his size, his smile was easy and genuine.
“Your Majesty,” Kay said formally, and knelt to Drake. I belatedly did the same.
“Rise, Sir Robert,” Drake responded in kind.
Kay gestured to me. “Marc, this is the man I told you about. Edward LaCrosse.”
I bowed. “Your Majesty.”
“Bob thinks quite highly of you,” Drake said. “Bob, loosen those cuffs. So give me the quick version of what’s happened here.”
“Didn’t he tell you?” I said as Kay unlocked the disk and let out the chain’s slack.
“Of course,” Drake said. “But I want to hear you tell it.”
Comparing stories was the oldest trick in the scroll; besides, I had nothing to hide. “Your man Patrice took a bite from a poisoned apple that was pretty clearly meant for someone else. No one else here had the sense or gumption enough to try and help him, so I did. I guess that made me look guilty to some people. Kay understood I had nothing to do with it and asked me to help find the real culprit.”
Drake looked at Kay, who nodded. The king said, “And you believe Thomas Gillian was the true intended victim?”
“Right now I do. I’ll change my mind if the evidence changes.”
Drake looked around. “And where is Jennifer?”
“In your quarters,” Kay said.
Drake regarded me seriously. “Do you believe the rumors that the queen is involved?” He did not lower his voice or whisper, and I couldn’t politely look away to see if the other knights within earshot reacted to the question.
“I don’t believe anything, I just follow the evidence. And right now there’s no evidence of that, except that she brought the apples.”
“That’s enough for some people.”
“I think some people wanted her to be guilty before there was even a crime.”
Drake’s eyes widened. I could’ve been more tactful, but my hand hurt and I was tired of being treated like a criminal.
“Well,” he said after a moment, with a tiny smile, “nice to see I don’t intimidate you.”
“I’m quivering on the inside.”
His grin grew. It was one of those grins that made you want to be his pal just so he’d grin at you again. Some men cultivated that; with Drake it seemed both inadvertent and sincere. “Then I suspect we’ll get along.” He noticed my hand. “That looks recent.”
I nodded. “Yesterday. I punched something thick a couple of times.”
“Dave Agravaine’s head,” Kay added.
Drake scowled. “Ah.”
“Your Majesty!” a new voice cried, and there was a commotion at the main doors. A mob of the nobles pushed against the guards trying to restrain them. “King Marcus, we demand an audience with you at once!”
“Hell,” Kay muttered, then yelled, “Get that door shut! Get those people out of here!”
“No, wait,” Drake called to the guards. “Let them in.” They obeyed, and the mass of pampered flesh surged toward us. I resisted the urge to step behind Kay.
At the head of the mob was Chauncey DeGrandis, his gaudy yellow color scheme replaced with sky blue. He wiped sweat from his face with a handkerchief. “Your Majesty, I apologize for my rudeness, but this confinement is intolerable. Here is the man responsible for the murder.” He pointed at me. The others murmured their assent. In back, I saw Lord Astamore vigorously nodding.
Drake put a large, gentle hand on the puffy man’s shoulder. “Calm down, Lord Chauncey, or you’ll blow up and bust. Now take a deep breath-that’s it, all the way down, let it out slowly-and tell me in simple words what you’re so upset about.”
DeGrandis did as the king commanded, wiped his face again, and continued in a much calmer voice, “That man murdered one of the Knights of the Double Tarn. We all saw it. And now we’re the prisoners, and he’s being protected by Sir Robert.”
Drake smiled. His tone was even and infinitely patient. “I understand why, if you believe that’s the case, you’re so upset. I would be as well. Now I want you to answer my questions in the same calm way. Can you do that?”
DeGrandis nodded.
“Excellent. Now-why do you think this man is a murderer?”
“We all saw him standing over the body.”
Drake nodded. “Ah. I see. But to beg your pardon, I’ve been told that the unfortunate Samuel Patrice had already fallen before this man reached him. Is that true?”
DeGrandis licked his lips before speaking. Drake’s rank, size, and paternal demeanor took the wind from the soft man’s outrage. “Well… I wasn’t watching at the time. Personally, I mean.”
“Then I’m sure you have a reliable source, someone who saw this man with Patrice before he fell?”
DeGrandis laughed nervously. “I… it’s just general knowledge, Your Majesty.”
Drake’s eyebrows went up. “‘General knowledge’?”
DeGrandis sighed, knowing he’d been defeated by the king’s logic. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
The others murmured among themselves, reconsidering their positions. It had nothing to do with my true guilt or innocence, and everything to do with staying on the king’s good side. DeGrandis was a casualty in the eternal battle for royal favor, and the mob felt no loyalty to the man who’d led them a few moments earlier.
Drake, his hand still on DeGrandis’s shoulder, shook the other man in a friendly gesture that probably rattled his teeth. “Lord Chauncey,” he said with a little laugh, “do you remember all those years ago when we put down the new law codes? You were there, I believe. You sat to my left, about two rows back, didn’t you?”
DeGrandis did not look up. He sounded like a small child. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Does ‘general knowledge’ fall under any of the categories of proof we agreed on? Especially for capital crimes?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“I’ve just arrived, Lord Chauncey. I know what Kay’s told me, and now what you’ve told me. I’ve heard what the man you accuse had to say as well. And I may ask some others to tell me what they saw. Now, this ‘general knowledge’ you mentioned must have started with someone. Whom would you recommend I talk to, to find out more about it?”
DeGrandis looked up sharply, realizing here was a chance to pass the blame to someone else. “Er… well… Lord Astamore has been the most vocal in his condemnation of that man.”
The look on Astamore’s face was enough to balance all the crap of the previous day. He looked around, but all the exits were guarded and his former friends moved diplomatically away. I made eye contact with him and smiled, j
ust as he’d done to me the day before. I didn’t normally traffic in revenge, but, hey, when it’s handed to you by a king…
Drake nodded. “I see. Well, then, I’ll be sure and talk to him.” Then he looked over the other nobles. “Does anyone else have anything to add to what Lord Chauncey has just told me? Anyone?… Very well. I’m going to go upstairs, visit my wife, and wash off some of this trail dust. I’m sure you’ll all understand that I need you to remain here as my guests until we resolve this tragedy. Thank you in advance for your patience, and remember, this is the law, our law, at work. And the law, gentleman, is what puts the grand in Grand Bruan.”
The room bowed to him and he turned to Kay and me. In a low voice he said, “Gentlemen, let’s get out of this circus, shall we?” Without waiting for an answer he headed for the door, and we followed. No one else did.
In the stairwell, Drake paused between floors and ran a hand through his hair. Thanks to the sweat and wind from his ride, it stayed in a rather unflattering position. “What a nightmare,” he muttered.
“Sorry, Marc,” Kay said. “I tried to handle it, but nobody listens to me. They’ll only pay attention to you.”
“I know you did your best, Bob.”
Kay turned to me. “Other than running into Agravaine again, did anything else happen while I was gone?”
“I learned some more things. The poison the killer used was shatternight. That’s important for two reasons: one, it doesn’t grow anywhere in Grand Bruan, and two, it loses its potency soon after it’s picked. That means that whoever used it came straight here from some place where it does grow.”
Kay and Drake exchanged a glance. Kay said quickly, “That was the first thing I checked. She’s not here. I promise.”
“Who isn’t?” I asked.
“My sister Megan,” Drake said. “She’s… well, she has issues with me. And with my kingship. That’s why she left the island.”
“She’s a lunatic,” Kay said.
“That’s too harsh, Bob,” Drake corrected. “She has the strength of her delusions, and that makes her dangerous. But she hasn’t been seen on the island in five years. And she was never a good one for being discreet, so if she ever did come back, everyone would know it.” He looked at Kay. “Although you did check, right?”
“I checked.”
“What’s she got against you?” I asked Drake.
“That’s personal,” Kay said gruffly, and crossed his arms.
“No, that’s all right, I think Mr. LaCrosse deserves to know so he won’t think we’re keeping relevant secrets.” Drake paused a moment to organize his thoughts. “Megan is only my half sister. She believes, and sadly she may be correct, that my father raped our mother to conceive me. Only my former adviser Cameron Kern knows for sure, and he refused to discuss it with me.”
“That’s one of the reasons,” Kay interjected, “he’s now a former adviser.”
“Bob,” Drake said warningly. “At any rate, Megan is two years older than me, so she remembers how being thought of as the king’s whore affected our late mother. And on top of that, she left the island as a young woman and became a moon priestess, and we all know their opinion of men in general. Because of all that, she feels I deserve the punishment my father never received in his lifetime.”
“Awkward to have treasonous family,” I agreed.
Drake smiled with a sad little sigh. “Yes.”
“And entirely beside the point,” Kay said. “I’ll look over the guest list and see if any of them have traveled outside Grand Bruan recently, to somewhere they might acquire shatternight.”
“What about the other knights?” I asked. “Have any of them been off the island?”
“Three of them went to Sartoba to help train their army,” Kay said. “They got back two days before this incident.”
“Check it out,” Drake said. Kay nodded. To me the king asked, “Anything else?”
Your sister isn’t the only moon priestess in your family, I could’ve said. But I decided this wasn’t the best time. “I’ll let you know as soon as anything occurs to me.”
“Good. Let’s talk again in a bit after I’ve cleaned up and visited Jennifer. I owe her some private time, especially since we’ll have to hold court very soon and make some public statement.”
Kay and I both bowed, and Drake continued up the staircase. Just before he reached the next landing, he stopped. “And, Mr. LaCrosse? There’s a very good doctor here. Gladstone, I believe is her name. Go see her about that hand, and tell her I sent you. She’ll fix you right up.” Then Drake disappeared upstairs.
I turned to Kay and grinned. “Have to obey the king, you know.”
“I’ll send Gillian with you again,” Kay said. “To watch your back and such. Make sure you don’t get ambushed again.”
“Please, no. His charm is too overpowering.”
Kay laughed. “You got that right.”
“Besides, Agravaine’s not the kind to try something in broad daylight. He’s like a cockroach, he needs shadows to function. I noticed he wasn’t in the hall when Drake arrived.”
“You can be sure Marc noticed, too. All right, I’ll take you down to the infirmary. Come on.”
NINE
The infirmary consisted of one big room filled with cots, and a smaller room for examinations. In the glow from the windows Iris was even more breathtaking. Her black hair, deliciously tousled the previous evening, was now neatly parted and combed, and a touch of artificial color shone on her eyelids and lips. Her white coat was immaculate, and beneath it she wore a powder-blue gown. The calves revealed below the hem were certainly good medicine for me. She sat writing something on a jar’s label before she put it on a shelf. Then she turned, saw me, and smiled.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said as she stood. Then she spotted my hand and scowled. “Well, that tells me you didn’t follow doctor’s orders. What happened?”
“I used it to make a point. Emphatically.”
“I bet it hurt.”
“It sure got my attention.”
She smiled knowingly. It was only adorable. “You know what’s ironic? First thing this morning I saw a broken nose that had also gotten twice as bad overnight. Damnedest thing. Two self-increasing injuries in one day.”
“Something must be going around,” I agreed.
“Bob, take those manacles off. And step outside, will you?”
“I think I should stay-”
She gave him a significant look. “Bob.”
Kay sighed, unshackled me, and went back out into the hall. He closed the door, but left a small gap. “Close it all the way, Bob!” Iris called. He did.
She nodded toward the examination table. “Now hop up there, little boy. I should warn you, though, that if you’re going to keep playing so rough, I’ll have to speak to your father.”
I jumped onto the edge of the table. She lifted my hand and gingerly pushed my sleeve up my arm. When she ran her fingertips lightly over the bruise, I winced. She said, “That tough-guy veneer really is just skin-deep, isn’t it?”
“If that.”
“You can cry if you want to, I’ll never tell. Now wiggle your fingers.” I did so, and she pushed on a couple of them. “I think you did some real damage this time, soldier. You need a cast.”
As she poured fresh water into a basin and placed it on the table beside me, I said, “I noticed that the beds in the other room were all empty. How’s the girl Mary?”
“She left. Said she wanted nothing more to do with castles and knights.”
My professionalism managed to get my attention. “And you let her? She was a witness to a murder.”
She shrugged as she withdrew a roll of cloth and began cutting it into strips. “She wasn’t my prisoner.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“Back to whatever small town she was plucked from, I suppose. She’ll probably marry her childhood sweetheart and start squeezing out babies.”
I said n
othing. Mary probably couldn’t tell us anything else, but then again, maybe I hadn’t asked the right questions. I wondered if Agravaine had gotten to her.
Iris said, “I heard King Marcus is here.”
“Yeah, he got in this morning. Gave me a royal command to come see you, in fact, when he saw my hand.”
She poured some white powder into the water, and it immediately turned cloudy. “That’s a relief. He’s a good man, and he’ll straighten out these metal-plated idiots before someone else gets seriously hurt.”
Since my career as a knight was aborted pretty early, I never had the luxury of fighting directly for king and country. Certainly I had never served under anyone who inspired the loyalty of Marcus Drake. My warrior years were spent as a mercenary, a sword-for-hire battling for anyone who paid me. I didn’t care who the enemy was, or why we were at war with them. During those years I killed lots of people with no more thought than I’d have swatting a fly.
And our medical facilities were nonexistent. If we got cut, we stitched each other, and if we got stabbed anywhere vital, we died. If we were too wounded to fight, we were dumped: no parades, no medal ceremonies, no bards singing of our deeds. Certainly no neat rows of beds in an airy, clean castle, or beautiful young doctors to bolster both our flesh and our spirits.
As Iris checked on the progress of the thickening liquid in the bowl, I said, “So Agravaine came to see you?”
She nodded. “He said he ran into a door going to pee in the middle of the night. I don’t think his nose will ever set right now.”
“That’s too bad.”
She smiled again. I could watch her do that all day. “Treating his injuries is always a pleasure. I look forward to his final one.”
“That’s a bit callous.”
“Doctors have to be callous. If we got emotionally involved with our patients, we’d go nuts.”
That wasn’t terribly different from the way a soldier had to think; it was one reason I was no longer a soldier. “So you never get involved with patients?”
“Never,” she said at once. She dipped one of the cloth strips in the bowl, then draped it over my knuckles. It was wet and heavy, and she immediately overlapped it with another. She pressed the dangling ends against my skin, and they stuck there. She began threading strips between my puffy fingers.
