by Jack Porter
But other thoughts were warring for my attention as well. A million of them, most of them relating to Rolf’s various activities, where he had extorted or threatened the people of Camelot out of their coin, ostensibly to fatten the coffers of the King, but just as often to enrich Rolf himself.
I wanted to know how Rolf’s cons all worked. Part of me wanted to simply take them over, to pick up where Rolf had left off, and take his place at the head of the grifts. Another part of me simply wanted to put an end to them, to take that particular yoke from the necks of the townsfolk.
But even that motivation was far from altruistic.
Sure, such actions would help people, and some of those people would be in dire need of that aid. But mostly, it was a way of getting back at Rolf, and in fact at the King.
And there were more thoughts as well, each of them competing for my attention, but none of them immediate or urgent enough for me to speak out loud.
And then, Rolf burst out laughing.
He was sitting there with his arms chained behind him, with no real hope of escape, and yet he was sneering at me. As if he was still his old indomitable self, and I was again no more than the talent he had picked up for some job.
“You don’t know, do you?” he asked, his voice full of scorn. “Same old Mordie,” he continued. “You think because I am chained and you are not, that something has changed. But it hasn’t. You are the same weak-willed follower you have always been. Without someone to tell you what to do, you’re at a loss.”
My expression turned into a snarl of anger because in part, he was right. Since he had betrayed me, I had done my best to live by my own rules, and not someone else’s. Rule number one—make your own damn rules.
That one, I had pretty much covered. But rule number two seemed to have escaped me.
Know what you want.
I had thought what I wanted was revenge. But when it came to it, when Rolf told me who I was, suddenly that hadn’t seemed enough anymore. Or maybe it was. Maybe it was just that Rolf was too small a target.
I didn’t know.
And that was the problem. Just at this moment, I didn’t know what I wanted.
Rolf started to laugh out loud, and I considered stabbing him with my poisoned dagger again. Not anywhere vital, and not deeply. But just like I had done last time, breaking his skin a little more, letting the bee venom do its thing.
Instead, I blurted a question. One that had been on my mind since the fight.
“Tell me about Anwen,” I grated. “Why did you mention her?”
Rolf stopped laughing, but his expression had become the same superior smirk he had worn before. He thought himself unassailable, in a position of power. Which was a little ironic considering that he was chained to a post.
“Now, why would you care to know about that?” he asked. “Do you have a soft spot for her, perhaps? Even after she betrayed you to the King’s personal guard, and got you hanged for your part in her abduction.”
I had to give it to him. He had tasted the power of my poison and still had the gall to be such an unmitigated shit. I lashed out with my blade, intending to cut through his breeches and maybe score a wound on his shin, which was the closest part of him I could reach.
But even chained as he was, he was swift. He flinched his leg just enough that my blade missed him completely. At the same time, he swore out loud, and I knew that he wasn’t as blasé about my method of torture as he wanted to pretend.
The taste he’d had of Meghan’s poison had made an impression.
“Perhaps you have forgotten the rules of the game,” I said. “That is your one warning. When I ask you a question, you will answer. And if I sense any hesitation, or any hint that you’re lying, I will cut you again. And again. And again, until I get what I want. And if you don’t give me the information I want, I’m not going to stop with simply pricking your skin. I’m going to start cutting pieces of you off.” I paused and glared at him, daring him to continue to scorn me, to so much as grin. But my words were getting through. I could see he believed me.
“If you like, I’ll let you choose what you want me to cut off first. Perhaps a finger. Maybe an ear. The choice will be yours, and if you don’t choose, I will keep stabbing you until you do. Do I make myself clear?”
Every last hint of Rolf’s superiority had faded. He glared at me with cold, hard hatred, and set his jaw as if getting ready to fight. But in the end, he had no choice, and he knew it.
Slowly, he nodded.
“Tell me what you know about Anwen,” I repeated.
4
“It turns out,” he grudgingly supplied, “our friend Anwen was more than she seemed.”
“How so?” I demanded.
Rolf gave me an echo of his usual wolfish grin. “We thought she was no more than a merchant’s daughter, ripe for the plucking. But you got yourself in a pile of trouble when it became clear she had been chosen as the King’s newest concubine. Well, she was more than that.”
“Get to the point,” I said.
“The King doesn’t like to risk his property. From the time Anwen returned to him, he sequestered her away so that she wouldn’t be at risk from the likes of your loathsome, kidnapping self ever again.”
Rolf grinned as he said it, as if daring me to make good on my threat. But he was telling me things I didn’t know, so I let the casual insult pass.
“Go on,” I said.
“She stayed hidden for several weeks, from the time you found yourself dangling at the end of a rope, until you turned up again outside my cell, as near as I can make it. The only visitors were a handful of chosen servants, chambermaids and the like, Anwen’s own merchant father, and the King himself.”
Despite all my threats, despite the blade of my dagger glinting in the candlelight, Rolf was still a world class prick. He was drawing this out as if he had something to gain.
“You are trying my patience,” I said. “Perhaps you want to find out what it’s like to have one of your eyes plucked from your face.”
Rolf’s expression reverted to a snarl. “I think I liked you better before,” the Blackcoat said. “This new, improved Mordie might have more of a spine, but if you’d been like this when I first met you, I would have let the King’s Justice take your hand.”
I shifted on my stool, just enough to give him the idea.
He got the hint.
“I don’t know if you follow King Arthur’s prey, if you know how the woman becomes part of his harem,” Rolf continued. “If you do not, there is a simple ceremony. It isn’t a wedding, not exactly, but there is a blessing, followed by a banquet, of a sort.” Rolf glared hard at me once more. “It turns out that Anwen’s ceremony and banquet took place just two days ago, on the day I was scheduled to be hanged.”
There was bitterness in Rolf’s voice as he spoke, and I couldn’t help but get a modicum of pleasure from the fact that he apparently didn’t like to remember that I had bested him not once, but twice. Once with the sword, but also by using his own greed against him, and having him arrested by the only man in the King’s guard who could do the job.
“And?” I asked, legitimately curious. Part of me wondered where Rolf’s story would go. He was right, in a way. I did have a soft spot for Anwen. But I had largely put her out of my mind. She was one of King Arthur’s chosen. I had thought she would be forever out of my reach, even if I could get her to forgive my betrayal.
Rolf’s story both brought me a hint of hope and dashed it at the same time.
Anwen had been her own woman for far longer than I had expected. But if the banquet and ceremony had indeed taken place, then she was indeed out of my reach.
Rolf was studying me in the candlelight. “You are soft on her,” he said, his voice once more filled with scorn.
I didn’t bother to argue. Rolf had the soul of a viper. He had used me on certain jobs for the sole reason that he didn’t understand the ways of the heart.
“Do you really want to taste th
is blade again?” I asked him. “How about I stab you four or five times all at once, to make up for all of your procrastination? Or are you finally going to get to the point?”
“The point,” Rolf said, still glaring at me. “Is that somehow, someone smuggled Anwen a vial of poison. She managed to pour it into the King’s wine, and the only reason the King himself isn’t dead as we speak is that the poison acted too quickly. His taster collapsed onto the floor and started frothing at the mouth. He’d taken the smallest of sips, but that was enough to put him into a coma.”
Rolf’s feral grin had returned.
“The King had been reaching for his goblet when the taster collapsed. Your friend Anwen was part of a plot to kill the King.”
It was a stunning revelation. All I could do was stare, my mouth hanging open. Anwen had tried to assassinate the King! I didn’t know what to think, what to feel, except that my estimation of the beautiful woman had risen another full notch. King Arthur wasn’t exactly revered in Camelot and the surrounding lands. He was known to be vile and malicious, and if even half the stories were true, there would be a special place in Hell for him once he finally died.
But there was a measure of respect for the man. And a large chunk of fear.
King Arthur. Last of the Pendragon line – except for me. The man with the blood of dragons in his veins. And if that wasn’t enough, he had the mage Merlin at his side, and Excalibur as well.
Everyone in the city had heard the legend. That Excalibur was an enchanted blade, and it made Arthur all but invulnerable while he wielded it.
What the truth of those stories might have been, I couldn’t have begun to guess. Yet I believed at least some of it had to be true.
For Anwen to be part of a plot to kill the King almost beggared belief.
With my heart in my throat, I asked my next question. “What happened after? Is she still alive?”
Rolf grinned again. “I couldn’t tell you. All I know is what my man told me before I had him reach out to you.”
“And that is?”
“That Anwen’s merchant father has fled the city. That Anwen managed at least part of her escape, and that she left a trail of bodies in her wake in the process. As to where she is now, I do not know. She might be alive, but if she is, she won’t be for long.”
The way he said it suggested another secret. I had a million emotions coursing through my body. Hope and fear warred against one another, as well as anger toward Rolf and the King, and even to the taster, for ruining Anwen’s plans. Why I should care so much about a woman I’d only met for a moment, I couldn’t rightly say.
Yet I did. There was no denying it.
“Why do you say that?” I demanded.
If Rolf even thought of hesitating, I intended to make good on my threat. But it seemed that he had no intention of doing so. It seemed that he was enjoying telling me this.
He wouldn’t have stopped even if I’d asked him to.
“A plot like that doesn’t come out of nowhere. There are people involved. More than just Anwen’s father. Those people will know of the failure. What do you think they will do to prevent the King from finding out who they are?” he asked.
I knew the answer before Rolf had finished speaking. “They’ll kill her,” I said.
“Yes. They will. But even that might be the best option for Anwen now. Because what do you think will happen to her if the King’s men find her first?”
It was clear as day. Rolf was enjoying himself.
“They will torture her. They’ll make her talk.”
“Exactly.” Rolf took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if deeply satisfied with what he had said and done.
“You may have saved her from a half hour of discomfort,” he said. “But in doing so, you left her open to a whole lot worse.”
I was lost in a world of confusion, and didn’t know what the Blackcoat meant.
“Don’t you see?” he asked. “If Bryce and Durstan had sullied her as they planned, she would no longer be fit to be the King’s consort. Perhaps he would have had her killed out of no more than spite. Or perhaps she would have been allowed to live out her life, the daughter of a merchant, none the worse for wear.”
Rolf had told me what I wanted to know. He had answered my questions, if with a bit more truculence than I wanted. Anwen was most likely still alive, somewhere within Camelot, with both the King’s guard and her conspirators looking for her.
It didn’t matter who caught her first. Not really. Either way, it wouldn’t end well.
And, in a very real way, it was all my fault.
I gripped the hilt of my dagger hard enough that the skin of my knuckles turned white. Out of no more than anger, I wanted to bury the blade in Rolf’s grinning face, wanted to jam it into the top of his head. Or at least, I wanted to use the added weight and solidity of the handle to smash him a few times, just because the things he’d said weren’t what I wanted to hear, and to wipe the knowing grin off his face.
But I knew that if I was to start along that path, I wouldn’t stop. Not until Rolf was a quivering mass of ruined flesh, a corpse in the Goose and Quill’s cellar.
Even then, I wanted to do it. To me, Rolf’s life had become forfeit the moment he had left me to swing. And it seemed as if Sir George shared my mood. No longer content to sit calmly on my shoulder and watch, the rat dragon stood up to his full height and stared at the Blackcoat as if they were mortal enemies. And through it all, the Blackcoat grinned at me as if he understood exactly what I was thinking.
I let out a growl of frustration and jammed my dagger into its sheath. Then willed myself to relax.
“Are you hungry?” I asked with forced casualness. “I brought plenty of stew. The cheese is a bit hard, but the bread is still fresh. I even brought down a tankard of water to slake your thirst.”
Rolf eyed me suspiciously. He didn’t trust me in the least, yet his interest was clear. He was hungry, and thirsty. He couldn’t keep his eyes from flicking to the tray on the table.
“I could eat,” he allowed.
I gave him a nasty grin. “We all could,” I said. With that, I picked up the rag he’d spat out onto the floor, and wadded it up.
“Open wide,” I said.
The look on his face was one of pure malice. He didn’t shake his head in refusal, nothing as direct as that, but he clenched his jaw tight.
As quick as a blink, I drew out my dagger and cut him across the face, laying his cheek open almost to the bone.
Rolf flinched and let out a curse, and I knew that it wouldn’t be long before Meghan’s venom did its trick. I waited, enduring his curses as he called me every name under the sun and then some, and then his face became a mask of agony.
For the first three heartbeats beyond that, he kept his jaws tightly closed, but then the pain took over.
The Blackcoat let out a wail, and opened his mouth at the same time.
I jammed the wadded rag into his mouth and clamped my hand over his face so he couldn’t spit it out.
He struggled against me, throwing as much of his weight against his chains as he could, his muffled voice full of incoherent rage and fury and threats.
“Calm down,” I said, “or I’ll open your other cheek to match.”
I hadn’t sheathed my dagger and held it in front of his eyes so he couldn’t help but see it.
I don’t know if I could have regained my composure under the same circumstance. But Rolf managed. It was almost admirable, in a way, how he could muster such strength in the face of the torment he suffered.
And, I had to admit, I was disappointed.
I almost decided to open his other cheek anyway. But I decided against it.
“That’s better,” I snarled. Then I did sheath my dagger once more and found the gag I had used before.
It was no more than a thick rope with a knot in the middle. I placed the knot over his mouth, pulled it tight, and tied it without any gentleness at all behind his head.
When I was done, I was sure that not only could Rolf not speak a word, but his every breath would be painful.
He would spend the rest of the day and the night, as long as I chose to keep him like this, afraid that he would choke on the wadded rag I’d stuffed down his throat.
I glanced at the tray of food that still remained.
“I’m done with this,” I said. “I think I’ll feed it to the butcher’s hogs. They might appreciate it.” I looked at Rolf and I could almost sense the waves of hate coming off him. “But don’t worry. I’ll leave you this tankard of water.”
True to my word, I took the tankard from its place on my tray and placed it carefully beside Rolf where he sat.
If he spent the effort, I figured that he could probably move around so that he could tip it with his hands. But there was no way on this earth that he could raise it high enough to drink, even if he somehow managed to dislodge the gag.
That done, I picked up the tray and the candle.
“You won’t be needing this,” I told him, and took the food and Rolf’s only source of light back to the narrow stairs, making my way back up to the tavern.
5
The conversation with Rolf had left a sour taste in my mouth. I was angry and frustrated. I wanted to lash out, to hit or kick someone, for no other reason than that Rolf was still able to get under my skin even though his every breath was at my behest.
He was right. I didn’t know what I wanted. I had thought to squeeze information from him, to learn of all his cons, grifts, and money-making schemes. But then what? What would I do with the knowledge he gave me?
Instead, I had learned of the terrible danger I had placed Anwen in.
Sure, it wasn’t like I gave her the poison or set her on her path. Logically, none of that was my fault. But somehow, I felt as if I had added to it.
I felt connected to the merchant’s daughter, and I couldn’t ignore the truth in Rolf’s words.
