by Jeff Wheeler
“Don’t encourage her.” Royce pushed away from the chair.
“Royce, the poor woman is being locked in a box whenever suitors visit, I think maybe she could use a little help, don’t you?”
“Oh, she needs help all right, but we’re not in the helping business.”
Hadrian pointed at the purse. “But she’s also paying fifteen gold tenents. You like gold tenents.”
The door to the tea shop opened, ringing a small bell, and a splash of sunlight hit the floor as three elderly ladies entered while closing their parasols. They were warmly greeted by the owners who rushed out of the side office—a husband and wife, Hadrian guessed; he wasn’t sure. He and Royce had been working out of Medford for years, but this was the first time they’d set foot inside the tea shop. Most of their meetings were conducted in the far less affluent Rose and the Thorn Tavern. That wasn’t possible this time. Kristin couldn’t be expected to go to the Lower Quarter, much less Wayward Street. It’s likely she didn’t even know such places existed.
The three ladies glanced suspiciously in their direction. Two surly looking men with a young, well-to-do woman trapped between them raised suspicion. Especially Royce. His all-enveloping cloak and piercing glare screamed malevolence. He was the sort of man mothers described to keep children from wandering. And Hadrian wasn’t much better. Dressed in worn leather and totting three swords along with a three-day-old beard, he made the perfect accomplice. In most places they frequented, their don’t-bother-us appearance was a good thing—not so much in a gentry tea shop. At least the money had been put away.
Hadrian lowered his voice. “Come on, Royce, it’s an easy job. I’ve seen you do more on a dull night just for kicks.”
“So you’ll do it?” Kristin asked, that brilliant smile back again, all hope and butterflies.
Hadrian looked at Royce.
Royce glanced at the elderly women as they took seats across the room. He sighed, threw up his hands in resignation, then turned away.
“It doesn’t look like it,” Hadrian explained, “but that’s a yes.”
“Can I just leave the money with you, then?” Kristin asked.
Royce turned back and loomed over the little table and the young woman. “I was going to insist on that, even if we didn’t take the job.” This whispered statement was delivered with all the sinister foreboding known to make grown men shiver.
“Oh good!” Kristin jumped up, clapping her hands—her smile wider than ever. “And you’ll be there tomorrow night? Ridgewood Manor, about half a mile past the mill with the waterwheel.”
Hadrian glanced over at the trio of ladies openly watching. “We’d be happy to accept your invitation.”
* * *
Ridgewood Manor and the surrounding estate was a plot of land provided to the Port Minister as part of his compensation by King Amrath, ruler of Melengar. At one time it may have been grand, but the place was showing its age and wasn’t much to look at, at least from the outside. Two stories of mismatched stone, moss, and ivy, Hadrian might have mistaken it for a rustic inn or a once-fine tavern that had fallen on hard times. Three dormers jutting out of the gabled roof suggested a third story, and the two chimneys spouting on either side hinted at the owner’s indulgence for comfort. But the soot-stained manor wore an abandoned expression, a lonely melancholy reflected in the many unadorned windows that peered out on an empty countryside and an encroaching forest.
Royce and Hadrian had found the Lamb estate right where Kristin said it would be, some five miles southeast of Medford, just past the waterwheel of Abner’s gristmill. The house was nestled so far back from the King’s Road that a sign was needed. The simple plank, cut into the shape of an arrow and mounted on a listing post, was weathered to the point of uselessness. Following the arrow’s suggestion, they walked up a dirt road that faded into a two-track path as it wandered through a dense forest. After what Hadrian guessed to be a quarter mile, they found a clearing with a lonesome duck pond where a forgotten rowboat rotted. Beyond it stood the moss blanketed wall, the wrought iron gate, and the manor.
“What kind of person locks their daughter in a box?” Hadrian asked, staring at the house.
Royce settled in behind a thick patch of blackberry bushes near the eaves of the forest. The summer wind was somewhere else that evening, and nothing moved except the occasional flight of birds and a pair of mallards dunking their heads in the leaf-strewn pond. The sun was still high enough so that shade was welcomed, but the shadow of the manor was long enough to reach the rotting rowboat.
“People do strange things. For instance—you took this job.”
“I didn’t hear you say ‘No.’”
Royce knelt down, peering through the leaves, his sight methodically panning the grounds. “Actually I did. You just weren’t listening. You were swayed because she’s cute.”
“She is cute. People like cute things: puppies, kittens, babies—not you, of course, but most people. The fact that you hate puppies is really disturbing, by the way.”
Royce showed no sign of listening.
“If you really didn’t want to do this, we wouldn’t be here,” Hadrian said. “In fact, we could have just kept her money. Not like there was anything she could have done about it. So if it was such a stupid idea, why are we here?”
“Professional integrity.”
Hadrian laughed.
“Quiet,” Royce scolded, his head turning, eyes darting around.
Hadrian covered his mouth, the laughter reduced to airy snorts.
Royce scowled.
“Do you even know what the word integrity means?”
Royce sighed and shifted a foot to get a better look at the yard near the gate.
“No seriously,” Hadrian said. “Why are we here?”
Royce shrugged. “Curiosity.”
“So you want to know why he locks her in a box too?”
“That…and other things.”
“Oh? Ooh.”
Royce looked over. “What?”
“This isn’t about the woman at all. This is about her father.”
Royce pointed up at the house. “Lord Darren Lamb all but killed Medford’s underground trade when Amrath appointed him Port Minister. For more than a year, nothing moved in or out of the city.”
“Nothing illegal, you mean.” Hadrian struggled to find a safe place to sit among the thorny tendrils of the dense thicket, then he removed his left boot. While the trip from Medford was a generally pleasant walk along country lanes, somewhere near the gristmill Hadrian had discovered a pebble near his heel.
“Right—and he actually enforced the king’s tariffs.”
“The man was clearly insane.”
Royce smirked. “The point is he successfully corked the flow of contraband for the first year after his appointment, and then everything went back to business as usual. You don’t find that interesting?”
“You heard Kristin. The man’s wife died—and not from some fever. Think about it—wolves. That kind of thing can mess some people up. Do you really think he was concentrating on his work after that?” He paused holding his boot absently and looked once more toward the house. “I didn’t even think there were wolves around here anymore.”
“Maybe it wasn’t wolves.”
Hadrian turned the boot upside-down and began shaking it. “What do you mean?”
“Any man who shuts off the flow of contraband is going to have a lot of nasty enemies.”
“You know, not everything is a conspiracy.”
Royce turned and looked squarely at him. “And the steel box?”
Hadrian looked up. “Okay, you’ve got me there. But as you said, people do strange things. Maybe Kristin is right. Her father could just be overly protective.”
“Overly protective fathers threaten suitors with a thumbscrew by saying it won’t be used on their thumbs. They don’t lock their daughter in a steel box.” Royce pulled back a branch to give them both a clear view of the front gate. “I think
something else is going on in that house after dark.”
“Like what?”
Royce smiled. “That’s why we’re here.”
As the sun was about to set, a carriage carrying two men rolled past Royce and Hadrian. It entered the gate and the door to the house opened before it came to a stop.
A richly dressed man rushed out. “Finally!” His voice carried easily across the duck pond to the blackberry thicket. “I thought you might not be coming.”
Two men stepped out. “Sorry. Too many last minute things. Lost track of the time,” said the larger man.
“Well, I had Leta save dinner for you.”
“Kristin?”
“She’s safe. I locked her in for the night a few minutes ago. I don’t take chances anymore.”
They went inside. The door closed with a distant clap, and as Royce and Hadrian waited in the forest, the sky darkened and night fell.
* * *
There were times Hadrian wondered if Royce was actually a cat that some mischievous witch had turned into a man and then lost track of. The similarities were too numerous to be coincidental. An irritatingly-superior aloof nature, fastidiousness, a habit of roaming at night, and his general propensity for solitude were all evidence. But it was when he was hunting, as he was that night, that Hadrian really saw the cat in Royce. The man could sit perfectly still, eyes wide, for hours. He even breathed differently, as if smelling his prey.
Hadrian crawled from the brambles and walked beneath the eaves for a time before finally just lying on the lawn and staring up at the stars. He used to gaze at the night sky often as a kid. Having grown up in a tiny manorial village there wasn’t much else to do at night—and it appeared there still wasn’t. These stars were different than the ones he had grown up with. The manor was too. Difficult to form a precise thought, the place had a lonely, sad feeling. It was impossible to imagine someone as alive as Kristin living there.
Hadrian fell asleep, and when he woke a full moon was in the sky. He crept back to Royce who remained just as he’d left him—a cat on the hunt.
“Have a nice nap?” Royce asked.
“How long was I sleeping?”
“Few hours.”
“Anything happen?”
His answer was a howl that rang through the night.
“Was that a…?”
“A wolf,” Royce said.
“But we’re only five miles outside of Medford.”
Royce shrugged.
“First time you heard it?”
Royce shook his head. “Off and on for a while now.”
“Getting closer or farther away?”
Royce peered thoughtfully toward the house. “Neither.”
While Hadrian was pondering this, Royce stood up. “Getting late. Time to steal an heiress.”
The wall around the manor was only four feet, and they hopped it, landing in a small front-yard garden. Despite the season, no flowers bloomed. The hedges were ragged and grew over the stone walk. The bird bath was dry, filled with only old leaves and a water stain. Royce peered in the dark windows, then looked up toward the roof.
“Just wait here,” Royce said as he moved to the corner of the house and began climbing the irregular edge stones. Designed as a pretty border, they made an excellent ladder for the likes of Royce. Hadrian waited among the overgrown beds and empty planters watching the ghostly form of his partner creep along the roof to one of the dormers where he slipped inside an open window.
Another canine howled, closer this time but muffled—behind the house perhaps? The night had turned chilly, the ground wet. Morning would be coming soon, and Hadrian wondered—if only for a moment—if Royce had let him sleep out of kindness. He still made the mistake of thinking of Royce as a normal person, at least what Hadrian thought of as normal. The two had debated the nature of what normal was on far too many nights. Royce won those arguments because he had a way with logic which eluded Hadrian, unless Hadrian was drinking. At those times, at least in his own mind, Hadrian declared himself the victor. Royce hadn’t been giving Hadrian his rest out of kindness; he was waiting for the right time. This was the witching hour, the small of the morning when the living left the world to ghosts, goblins, and thieves. Everyone inside would be asleep.
The front door opened and a shadow waved him to enter.
“Three of them asleep in the big room.” Royce pointed into the darkness. “Drunk, I think. Stairs are this way. Stay close. Be quiet.”
Oouuuwwoo.
The wolf howled again—much louder.
Hadrian stopped Royce by grabbing his arm. “That’s—it’s…”
“In the house—yeah.”
“Can’t be a wolf then. Has to be a dog.”
Royce only shrugged. “Heiress,” he said, and led the way down a hall into the kitchen. Walls of stone with an obstacle course of pots and pans on the floor and dangling from overhead beams, it smelled of smoke and grease. Royce led Hadrian to a set of stairs beside a barrel and a pile of wood. Down they went, leaving most of the light behind. Only a single shaft bled down the steps to a cellar filled with racks of wine. In the center of the basement floor, Hadrian could barely make out a trapdoor with a metal ring and a big brass padlock, holding it fast.
“Kristin?” Hadrian called softly.
Oouuuwwoo.
The thieves stared at the metal door, then at each other.
The trapdoor had a jailer-style peek window that Royce slid back.
All Hadrian saw was a pair of vicious eyes and bright canine teeth that caught the light as a wolf snarled and snapped.
They both stepped back in shock as the caged animal growled and yipped louder than before. Hadrian heard the sound of feet rushing across the floor above them.
“Damn it!” Royce said, pulling his dagger from beneath his cloak. “Let’s get out of here.” He moved toward the stairs.
Hadrian took one last look at the wolf. It lunged at the opening, a long snout punching through the hole. When it drew back, the light glinted on a silver chain and heart-shaped locket around the animal’s neck.
* * *
“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” Lord Darren Lamb was short, plump, in his late forties, and still in possession of his own hair. He stood just outside the kitchen, blocking their path with a spear and struggling to wipe his eyes clear of sleep.
With him were two others. A thin fellow with a burning candelabra in one hand and a long dagger in the other. He dressed in the black and scarlet robes of a Nyphron priest. The other was a tall man with a bald head and goatee, wearing a stiff-collared doublet and holding a saber.
“Nobody and, oddly enough, absolutely nothing,” Royce replied. His voice was cool, relaxed, but the cat was crouched, claws out, fur high.
Hadrian moved to his side where he stared at his lordship and the spear. The blade was bright silver.
“Nothing?” Lord Darren said incredulously. “What are your names? Why are you here?”
“Misunderstanding,” Royce said. “And if you’ll move aside, we’ll be leaving.”
“I don’t think so,” the tall man with the saber growled. “You’re a pair of thieves, come to steal from his lordship.”
“King Amrath will take your hands for this,” the thin priest with the bouquet of candles said.
“Is that true?” Lord Darren asked Royce.
“Which part?” Royce asked.
“Are you thieves who’ve come to steal from me?”
Royce rocked his head from side to side. “Sort of—but as you can see, we didn’t. Changed our minds.”
“I’m Lord Darren, Port Minister of Medford, and officer of the king’s justice. Do you know that?”
“Actually, yes.”
“I have the power to execute you right here.”
Royce smiled. “You can try. Wouldn’t advise it.”
“Your lordship.” The saber-bearing, bald man raised his weapon. “Do I have your permission to—”
“Your
daughter is a werewolf?” Hadrian asked.
Everyone looked at him—even Royce.
Lord Darren’s eyes grew wide, and he stepped back as if Hadrian had threatened him, but while he carried three swords, he hadn’t drawn any of them.
His lordship shot a nervous look at the priest. “You swore—”
“I didn’t tell anyone,” the priest replied quickly. He had a sharp whine to his voice.
His lordship turned to the bald man.
“Don’t look at me.” The tall man lowered his blade to a less awkward position, but still kept the tip pointed at Royce.
“So she is a werewolf,” Hadrian concluded.
“You’re not serious,” Royce said.
“You saw what was in the box.”
“I saw a wolf.”
“That wolf is wearing a heart-shaped silver locket around its neck.”
“Drop your weapons,” Lord Darren declared in a commanding, although less confident tone.
Royce looked puzzled. “Why?”
“The two of you are under arrest for attempted burglary.”
“No, I meant why should we put our weapons down?”
“Put them down or we’ll make you drop them,” the tall man said, and raised his blade once more.
“Don’t do that,” Hadrian said quickly, and laid a restraining hand on Royce’s shoulder, drawing him back. “Threats just make him grouchy. But I’ll tell you what—how about we all put the blades away and discuss the situation in a friendly manner. What do you say?”
“I say we’ve already talked too much.” The tall man took a step forward.
Hadrian saw the attack coming, read his feet and shift of weight. The bald man knew how to use a blade. He had experience but no talent. Hadrian, having positioned himself in front of Royce, became the default target. Stepping close, Hadrian ignored the sword and blocked the man’s arm. He caught him by the wrist, twisted, took the weapon away, and shoved him to the floor. Then Hadrian turned on the priest who shuffled deftly forward with his dagger ready to stab. He stopped as Hadrian pointed the saber at him.
“Drop it,” Hadrian ordered.
The priest hesitated.
“Drop it or you’ll be the one to lose a hand.” Hadrian was lying. He wouldn’t cut off a man’s hand when he only had a dagger any more than he’d hit a woman brandishing a shovel. The priest didn’t know that, and years spent with Royce had taught Hadrian intimidation was a useful tool in saving lives. This wasn’t the lesson Royce intended him to learn, but Royce wasn’t the best teacher.
