“She’s the only warrior in Ulfhaven! Other than the Lebendervlad, I mean, but they can’t leave the castle. She can’t go to war with Salzstadt on her own!”
“She can,” said Nicoleta, “and she will. She fights a dozen of the Lebendervlad at a time! There’s no greater warrior in the world. If you don’t get Greta back, thousands will die!”
Sloot had heard hyperbole before, and didn’t care for it; but even if Nicoleta’s opinion of Vlad were higher than it should be, it probably wasn’t by much, and he didn’t want to see even one person killed because Greta had been abducted by a vacuous idiot.
“What can we do?” asked Sloot.
“We can find Willie,” Roman answered.
“But he’s all hopped up on hero’s potion!”
“It doesn’t give you unnatural powers or anything,” explained Nicoleta, “just confidence. Extreme if-I-can-think-it-I-can-do-it confidence. You just have to believe in yourself!”
“I don’t suppose you have time to brew up another potion, do you?”
“No!” said Nicoleta, who then turned and ran back the way they came.
“It’s down to us,” said Roman. “If we can rescue Greta before Her Dominance finds out and takes up her sword, we can prevent a war. This is what the intelligence game is all about! Are you with me?”
***
Down the catacombs, through the grate, and quickly along the road they went. They made it to the Entrailravager farm when the sun had nearly set, where the proprietor confirmed that Willie and his bound-and-gagged lady friend had stopped for a horse that morning.
“Great,” said Sloot. “He’s got nearly a full day’s head start! We’ll have to leave at first light.”
“We leave now,” said Roman.
“But I’m exhausted!”
“And he’s got most of a hero’s potion to keep him going,” said Roman. “The moon is nearly full, we’ll have to make the best of it.”
“I’m exhausted, too,” said Myrtle. “What? Why would you be exhausted? You’re dead! And that means I can’t get tired? I thought you, of all people, would be more tolerant of the non-living.”
Old Man Entrailravager watched Myrtle’s argument with the somber amusement of a man who’d have preferred to have gone without amusement altogether. Country life was a lot busier than city folk realized. The distance wasn’t going to stare blankly into itself, after all.
Well, just the once, if we’re being entirely literal; but that will be right at the end of eternity, so there won’t be anyone available afterward to say “oh, now I get it” when it comes to pass, so it’s hardly worth mentioning.
They rode hard for several days, only stopping when the horses firmly refused to take another step until they’d been fed and brushed. Roman cursed them for being smarter than southern horses, who’d allow themselves to be run to death. Sloot was glad for the respite, sincerely wishing that he could turn off all sensation in the lower half of his body.
Eventually, Salzstadt came into view on the horizon.
“We’re too late,” Sloot groaned.
“Not yet,” said Roman. “As long as we get Greta out of Salzstadt before Vlad smashes her way in, we can avert a war.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then how can you be sure it’s a good idea for us to go into Salzstadt after Greta?”
“Oh, it’s not.”
“Then why are we doing it?”
“Because it’s less bad than all the other ideas I’ve had thus far.”
“And that’s the intelligence game, is it?”
“Congratulations, Peril!” Roman shouted, while invading Sloot’s facial airspace with a very stern finger. It was the pointing one, not the rude one. They were back in the Old Country, after all. “You’ve discovered the limits of my patience! For your own safety, I am revoking your right to speak until we’ve made it back into the city. And to answer your question, yes—this is the intelligence game, and it’s one that I’ve been playing for decades now. Now shut your whining trap, and let’s get moving!”
They rode the rest of the way to the east gate in silence.
Smugglers the world over love a flagging economy because it drives the rates of bribery down; unfortunately, the market was bullish at the time. Entrance to the city cost them nearly all the gold they had on them. The guards had eyed Myrtle’s broom as part of their price until she brandished it at them with surprising ferocity.
“I still don’t think it was a good idea to bring it along,” said Sloot as they hurried through the streets. “It’s not legal! What if you get arrested for it?”
“No one stops a woman to ask about her broom,” countered Myrtle. “It’s not proper. Besides, we may need it. We have no idea what’s waiting for us in Whitewood.”
Sound though her logic may have been, Sloot wasn’t the sort of person to take risks. At the age of seven, he reported one of his classmates on suspicion that she might have used a swear word, just in case someone had noticed him partially overhearing her on the schoolyard and was watching to see if he’d do the right thing.
Snitches Get Riches. That was the catchphrase of a very successful leaflet campaign that the Ministry of Propaganda had been carrying out at the time.
“It’s fine, Sloot,” said Roman. “If she’s stopped in the next few blocks and questioned, just keep your mouth shut. She can say she’s holding it for a friend.”
They turned the corner, and Sloot was distracted from his work on what would certainly grow up to be a massive ulcer someday. He wasn’t sure what he thought he’d see when Whitewood came into view, but dozens of white-gloved servants running around the place hadn’t been a leading contender.
“Wow,” said Roman as they walked into the courtyard. “They certainly work quickly, don’t they?”
“What’s going on?” asked Sloot. “It’s like they’re getting the house ready for―”
“For the reception,” said a woman dressed in a black dress so well-starched it would double as armor.
“Olga …” Sloot remembered her from his dinner at Gildedhearth when she’d served as his mannerist. His hands darted behind his back to hide his knuckles.
“Mr. Peril,” she replied. “I must say, you and Willie’s valet have gone to a great deal of effort to make an explorer of him. Frankly, I figured you’d just pay off the newspapers to write some glamorous reviews, while you spent a few weeks in Stagralla or something.”
“Er, yes,” said Sloot, turning a pointed look to Roman. “That would have been much easier, wouldn’t it?”
“Just the one then, ma’am?”
Sloot jumped. He hadn’t been expecting anything in particular, and he certainly hadn’t been expecting the ghoulish figure in the black robes and pointy hat who was suddenly standing next to him. He hadn’t made a sound, but rather abruptly began existing uncomfortably close to Sloot in a particularly ripe-smelling way.
“That’s all I know of. How about it, Mr. Peril? Any more ghosts in the house?”
“Ghosts?”
“There was Millford,” said Olga. “He was the butler when the goblins first infested the place. He was charged with locking up after everyone else had fled, never made it out.”
“I talked to him,” said Sloot. “He asked me if the goblins were all gone.”
“It takes more than a conversation to exorcise a ghost on the haunt. Just the one then, Milgrew. Thank you for your services.”
Milgrew nodded, then turned to Sloot and flashed a butter-yellow row of teeth the way that coyotes smile at rabbits, before slinking away to whatever crypt he was squatting in.
“Anyway,” said Olga, “Willie brought his poor, traumatized fiancée to Gildedhearth ye
sterday, and we got started on the arrangements at once. There are some things that need your signature.”
Olga held out the master ledger to Sloot. Sloot, being himself, started to panic. Surely she’d seen that there was no money in the coffers! They hadn’t had a chance to get their payment from Winking Bob for the Carpathia job.
“Yes, right.” Sloot took the ledger and opened it. Instead of bursting into flames as he’d expected, the totals came up to far more than had ever been there before. Not only that, but the zero and less-than-zero figures he’d entered before were missing entirely.
“What is the meaning of this?” yelled Sloot. He’d been angry before, but he now found himself boiling with a rage unlike any he’d ever felt. He had never expressed rage before and decided that he didn’t care for it. He wished he’d known that it was coming so he could have prepared for it better.
“Lower your voice,” said Olga. She still had her wand, which was now pointing in Sloot’s face.
“I will not! The numbers in here are— Ow!” Olga’s wand smacked firmly against his forehead. “Stop that! I said the numbers in here are―”
Her wand did not find its mark the second time, thanks to the intervention of Myrtle’s broom.
“That’s enough now,” she said to both of them. “Why don’t we go inside and have a little chat?”
Sloot and Olga wore scowls as the four of them moved past decorators, tailors, bakers, and a burly woman with a chisel who was turning a colossal block of ice into what looked like Willie fighting a pack of lions with one hand, his other busy holding a fainting Greta about the waist.
“It’s not finished yet!” she barked, when she saw Roman’s sidelong glance at her work.
They moved into the study, where Olga shut the doors behind them.
“I’m parched,” said Roman, who started pouring himself a brandy from a crystal decanter. “Anyone else?”
“This is all of Willie’s stuff,” said Sloot.
“Of course it is,” said Olga. “What else would it be?”
“But it was stolen!”
“Ahem.” Roman opened his eyes wide and jerked his head toward Olga.
“Give it up, Roman,” said Sloot. “It was stolen, and it’s back now. I’m sure that’s no secret to Olga.”
“You are correct,” replied Olga. “I was one of the first to know that this one was likely to steal from you.” She pointed at Myrtle with her wand. “However, I must admit I didn’t expect that she’d utterly clean you out! I apologize for underestimating you.”
“That’s complicated,” said Myrtle, “and besides―”
“What about the ledger?” demanded Sloot.
“What about it?”
“You know very well. The numbers! I kept a very accurate accounting of every penny in and out, including the bit about the robbery, but that’s gone. All gone!”
“Is that really what’s bothering you? Come now, Mr. Peril. You know how things work, you’ve spent most of your adult life in the Three Bells counting house! In all of that time, have you ever had cause to use red ink?”
“Only here,” said Sloot. “Only when Whitewood was robbed, and―”
“Exactly. I wonder where you even got it. Please don’t answer, it wasn’t a question. The point is that you work for the Hapsgalts now, and the Hapsgalts are wealthy beyond measure. You never speak to them about money, and you certainly never record temporary truths in their ledgers!”
“Temporary truths?”
“Where did you get it into your head that Willie was going to be allowed to go broke? Sure, Lord Constantin likes to talk tough, but those of us who see to his interests would never let something as simple as not having any money turn a Hapsgalt into a poor person!”
“So you …” Sloot stumbled about in the dark of his vocabulary, unable to find the words. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“And the furniture?”
“Everybody knows Winking Bob, Mr. Peril. Now if you please, you’re all three expected at Gildedhearth for dinner, and so help me if you’re not wearing something more expensive than the horse farm where you’ve undoubtedly slept for the last month, I’ll shove you into the closet and swear through the keyhole until you’re smothered in goblins.”
Credit had been extended to them at Olgropp and Delancey’s, a tailor so grotesquely posh that they had to go see a slightly lesser tailor first, just so they could meet the dress code to get past the surly man at the velvet rope who was all nostrils and no breath mints. Sloot was not so much offended as curious as to how someone whose job seemed to consist entirely of asking, “Do you ’ave an appointment?” and competition-level scoffing could afford the dress code himself.
Truly top-notch tailoring, it seemed, involved a detailed set of measurements that Sloot doubted could have been useful. He was posed, stretched, and prodded by a team of seamsters in ways that would have made him blush with abandon even if he’d been allowed to remain in his undergarments.
“And why must I remove them?” he’d asked at the outset.
“Oh, right,” said a seamstress brandishing a measuring tape like she knew how to murder him with it, “because we’re all a bunch of perverts who’d rather look at that than not.”
“I just don’t understand what it’s got to do with tailoring!”
A very tall seamster with double recurve moustaches stepped close enough to Sloot that he nearly fell over backward trying to look up at him. Given Sloot’s relative state of undress, this made him even more uncomfortable than it would have otherwise.
“Every one of us spent years studying tailoring at the University of Salzstadt to harness the mysteries of double-stitching, gussets, and buffeted lapels. You need to attend a wedding rehearsal dinner in the home of Lord Constantin Hapsgalt in a matter of hours. I have time to either explain to you what this has to do with tailoring or to put my years of study to work. Now strip, hold your arms out, and pray that our gossip moves on to something more salacious than your paler regions within the week!”
The immensely capable staff at Olgropp and Delancey’s finished their challenge with minutes to spare, and the impeccably festooned three of them were whisked away by carriage to Gildedhearth.
“I’ve never been dressed this well in my life,” said Myrtle, as the carriage rumbled over the cobbled streets. “It’s just the sort of absurd caricature of human experience that the privileged ruling class uses to bolster their divine right to subjugate their countrymen. Will you shut up and let me have this?”
“I hope you can keep him under control tonight,” said Roman.
“Nice talk,” said Myrtle. “Did that air of superiority come with the suit? Arthur! Sorry, Roman.”
“Just you remember that people have rotted away in dungeons for speaking truth to the wealthy. I’m not sure what happens to those who possess those who rot in dungeons, but it can’t be pleasant.”
Myrtle looked up and to the left. Up and to the right. “That seems to have done it,” she said after a moment.
“How about you, Sloot?”
“I don’t like this,” said Sloot.
“What, the suit?” asked Myrtle. “I think you look rather dashing in it.”
“Thanks, but I meant this. We put Willie in mortal danger, and he escaped despite our not lifting a finger to help him. Now we’re being invited to dinner at Gildedhearth?”
“It’ll all be fine, trust me,” said Roman.
“How do you know that?”
“Don’t worry about it!”
For all of Roman’s apparent worldliness and purported ability to judge the character of others, he had a blind spot for one simple fact: telling a worrier not to worry is as likely to be successful as telling any living person to calm down. When they finally arrived, Sloot was worrying so ferociously that he could hear nothing mor
e than a high-pitched whine and his heartbeat. Myrtle held his arm tightly as they walked, in case he toppled.
Sloot was dressed well enough to get past the butler without filling out an application this time. He even got a curt little bow out of him. “The clothes make the man,” as the old saying goes. That had only been true in a literal sense once in recorded history, and the resulting chaos was harrowing enough that wizards were henceforth forbidden from summoning laundry golems in every civilized nation worth visiting.
The last time he’d seen the dining hall, it had been tastefully decorated with a few paintings of wealthy Hapsgalt ancestors, cherubic statues, and hunting trophies. Now it looked as though a wedding cake’s nightmare had projectile vomited on every surface, and goblins had attempted to clean it up by showering it with tinsel. There were white silks draped over everything, pearloid baubles gathered in conspiratorial cliques, and every stick of furniture was gold-leafed within an inch of its life.
“You’re just in time,” said Olga. She appeared abruptly, startling Sloot. “Those are your seats, and these are your mannerists.” A pair of black-clad young men stepped to her sides from behind a pillar, each holding a wand similar to Olga’s.
“Your protégés?” asked Roman.
Olga nodded.
“And you’ll be ‘helping’ me again, I presume,” said Sloot.
Olga nodded again. She seemed to be having a hard time suppressing a truculent little grin that begged Sloot to give her a reason.
The hairs on the back of Sloot’s neck stood up, but it wasn’t in anticipation of the dinner thrashing that awaited him. He looked toward the head of the table and saw Mrs. Knife and Gregor sitting in the same seats as before, sneering at him with all of the malice that old house cats employ in welcoming a new puppy.
“There they are,” said Willie, beaming in the goofy way that only he could, “my sidekicks! So glad that you made it out of Carpathia alive. I was worried. I had to resort to heroics to manage it myself.”
“Good to see you well, m’lord,” said Roman.
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