As it still could, and probably would.
He glanced over at Tom Garnett. ‘This one can’t wait upon the Earl’s return, can it? I don’t see much other choice, do you?’
The Captain shook his head. ‘Somebody has to find out who murdered Baron Morray and Lady Mondegreen - somebody with credibility, that credibility backed up by the authority of the Earl of LaMut. And quickly, before everything falls apart around us. It can’t be you or me,’ he said, holding up one finger, then adding another, ‘as we’re the incompetent idiots who let the Baron get murdered on their watch.’
Steven Argent forced himself not to wince, but instead just nodded.
‘It could be Viztria or Langahan,’ Tom Garnett added another two fingers, ‘but to choose them is tantamount to turning over LaMut to Guy du Bas-Tyra, one way or the other. Besides,’ he said, shrugging, ‘you’ve spent time at the court in Rillanon, and those of the court in Krondor are only a little less devious. I wouldn’t at all put it past Guy to have sent his barons here just to make trouble —’
‘Of course not, but. . . murder?’
‘And what could be more trouble than this?’
‘You think that one of them is the killer?’
‘I don’t think so, but I don’t know,’ Tom Garnett said. ‘You don’t know. I know it’s not me, and I know it’s not you. But you don’t know that it’s not me.’
‘You?’
Tom Garnett threw up his hands. ‘It was my man who fell asleep on watch - maybe you should have Kelly or Karris keep an eye on me, down in the dungeon, I surely would, if our situations were reversed. I’m not even sure that it’s not Erlic, who -’
‘Erlic?’
‘The guard.’ Tom Garnett frowned. ‘He might have done it. I don’t have the vaguest idea as to why he might want to murder the Baron and Lady Mondegreen, but I can swear that falling asleep on guard isn’t his custom. Or that of any of my men - which is why I’ve got three men on his cell, and intend to go down to the dungeon and supervise them myself, lest we find that he’s hanged himself in that very cell. . . with or without some help.’
‘You think he may be a dupe?’
Garnett shrugged. ‘At this point, anything is possible. More likely, he might have seen something he doesn’t know he saw; talking to him may draw out a clue as to who’s behind this bloody-handed business. You might want to send someone to watch me.’
‘I trust you, Tom.’
‘Well, then maybe I need someone to keep me safe, as well as to keep Erlic safe.’
‘You don’t trust your men.’
‘Up until this morning, I would have trusted any of them, in any combination, with my life, and with things that I value more than my life.’ Tom Garnett’s hands actually shook; he knotted his fingers together in rage to stop the trembling. ‘But I’ve just been given reason to reconsider, haven’t I?’
He spread his hands, and stared at them until his traitor fingers stopped trembling. ‘And you can’t put any of the landed barons in charge of the investigation. All of them have something to gain with Morray dead, especially if suspicion falls on Verheyen.’
Steven Argent nodded. ‘There are only three men in this castle who we know have everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by these murders.’
‘Yes. Three men who don’t want anything out of LaMut except to be out of LaMut, with the money that they’re owed - money that will now remain in the vault until Earl Vandros gets back - unless somebody else knows the spell that will open the vault. Do you?’
Steven Argent shook his head. ‘No. I’m a soldier, not a clerk. At least, I was a soldier, up until this morning. But I take your point. Still, they could have accepted the offer to watch over Baron Mondegreen’s child, and if they did, that hardly makes them uninvolved.’
It had been an unlikely possibility, but the lady had been very persuasive, and -
No. No, he wasn’t thinking clearly at all. Agree to watch over the baby, then kill it in the womb - along with its mother and its father? When they could just have said no?
Stupid, stupid, stupid. His only excuse was that this wasn’t the sort of thing that he was used to.
Either way. . .
Tom Garnett spoke what should have been obvious to Steven Argent: ‘With respect, if it does, it makes them involved only innocently.’ Garnett shrugged, ‘They’d hardly accept the offer, and then kill the Baron and his lady, when simply saying no would have done, would they?’
Argent nodded. ‘I was just thinking that.’ He fell silent for a moment, considering his options. Then he said, ‘There’s an old saying, “you’ve a willing horse, so flog him another mile”. Send for them.’
Tom Garnett smiled as he got up. ‘I already did, sir. They should be waiting outside the door. And if I know Pirojil, he’s probably been eavesdropping just outside.’ He drew himself to attention. ‘Unless you have other orders for me, sir, ’I’ll be in the dungeon, watching the prisoner.‘
‘Yes, you’re dismissed, Captain. Send them in. And may Tith-Onaka watch over us all.’
Kethol shook his head.
The Aerie was filled with glares. The midmorning sun glared in through the window, and Durine and Pirojil were glaring at Kethol, if only because he was petting Fantus, rather than paying attention to anything else.
Well, what was Kethol to do? Steven Argent had just laid this matter in their hands, and gone downstairs to gather the remaining barons together for an impromptu council, and to announce that he had chosen Captains Kethol, Pirojil and Durine to investigate the murder of Baron Morray and Lady Mondegreen.
The Swordmaster’s latest orders made sense, sort of, in a way, but. . .
Pirojil put it into words for him.
‘There’s only one problem with this latest set of orders,’ Pirojil said. ‘I don’t have the vaguest idea how to find out who did this.’
Durine nodded. ‘Usually, after a battle, if I’ve wanted to know who killed somebody, I just asked - although I swear that Mackin is lying about having done that Bug all by himself.’
‘The one in the forest or the one near the Grey Towers?’
Durine raised an eyebrow. ‘He claims two? I thought he was just talking about that little mishap in the Yabon Forest last autumn.’
‘Could you two please, please keep to the matter at hand?’ Kethol pleaded. ‘I don’t know how we can do this either and as you know, thinking things out isn’t my specialty.’
‘Apparently.’ Pirojil frowned.
Kethol repressed a protest. His most recent attempt to think things out seemed to have gone well - it had distracted the baronial troops, after all, and perhaps it had even given Lady Mondegreen the arguments she had apparently needed to get Verheyen and Morray to come to terms with each other. He would have liked the opportunity to ask her that.
On the other hand, if that was so - and Durine and Pirojil would think it was so - that very distraction had also triggered the offer from Baron Morray, and Pirojil and Durine were still angry with Kethol for having not simply spurned that offer.
So it was best to keep his own counsel on whether or not he had been clever or a fool. He didn’t have the slightest doubt how the other two would see it.
In the meantime. . . ‘How long do you think we have?’
‘Hours,’ Pirojil said. ‘Unless we get awfully lucky. Baron Morray’s troops are loyal to him: and there are too many Mondegreens about; their lady is lying dead in her room, and the perpetrator of both crimes must be sitting downstairs in the Great Hall.’
‘Tom Garnett sending the Morrays and Mondegreens to try to break through to the closest villages made sense.’
‘Yeah. That’s why we’ve got hours, rather than a battle raging in the streets.’
It wouldn’t be the first time that feuding between local factions had turned into outright war - Pirojil could have asked the residents of Traitor’s Cove about that.
‘I’m hoping,’ he said, ‘that one group can push through to Kernat Vi
llage to the north or Vendros to the south, but they’re miles away, and I doubt that they can make it, especially through waist-deep snow, when they probably can’t even find the roads.’ His eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment. ‘Probably the best thing to do is to send out Tom Garnett’s and Kelly’s companies to slaughter one or the other side without warning - but I don’t think the Swordmaster is going to order that’
‘Bad precedent that,’ Durine said. ‘It just might run to slaughtering some mercenaries, rather than paying them off.’
‘Yeah, there is that. The story about Morray and Verheyen making peace between them isn’t going to sell very well -’
‘You don’t believe it?’
‘I do believe it, but I don’t think that it’s going to be very persuasive, not to the Morray and Mondegreen men, and it’s only a matter of time before they take matters into their own hands, or the regulars stamp on them a little too hard.’ Starting a fight was easy; stopping it before it started was difficult; crying halt after it had started was next to impossible.
Kethol nodded. ‘So we’d better do what we’ve been told to do - find out who did it, and quickly.’
Durine nodded. ‘Which brings us back to the question of how?’
Kethol turned to Pirojil. ‘How is usually your specialty.’
Pirojil threw up his hands. ‘In this? This isn’t my specialty. This isn’t anybody’s specialty.’ He closed his eyes for a moment. After a while he said: ‘One place to start is with information.’
‘Like, for example,’ Durine asked, ‘going around and asking everybody in the castle, “Excuse me, my lord, but did you happen to cut a couple of throats last night?”?’
Kethol didn’t think it funny at all, but Pirojil nodded. ‘Like that. Let’s see if we can work out how the barons - and the captains and guards, who also have free run of the castle - spent last night and evening.’
‘And you think they’re going to tell us?’ Kethol didn’t understand.
‘No, you idiot - but if, say, Baron Viztria says that he was up until dawn chewing the fat with Baron Langahan, and Langahan says he went to bed early, we know that one of them is lying.’
Kethol nodded. ‘Somebody was watching the hall, and took advantage of the guard falling asleep.’
‘Or maybe not falling asleep. Maybe he’s in on it, too. Somebody had better ask him.’ Pirojil turned to Durine. ‘Ask him. Thoroughly. Then find me.’
‘And you’ll be?’
‘I’ll be down in the Great Hall, interviewing the nobles and the captains - somewhat more gently than you’ll be talking to that idiot Erlic.’
Durine nodded.
‘And me?’ Kethol asked. ‘I’d be useless at that, idiot that I am.’
‘If you can restrain your sensitivity over the fact that you’re a dolt for a moment, maybe you can be of some value.’ Pirojil grinned. ‘You can scout the terrain.’
‘Terrain?’
‘Yes, terrain. You were raised as a forester, son of a forester, yes?’
Kethol didn’t like to talk about it, or about the destruction of his boyhood home that had sent him out to make his living with bow and sword, but it was true, and he nodded.
‘Well, what does a forester do if he finds the guts of a poached deer out in the forest?’
Kethol shrugged. ‘That’s not hard. You see if you can track the poacher from it, try to get some idea of the direction he came from. If you get really lucky, you’ll find the arrow that took the deer.’
‘That happens?’
‘Sure. If it goes right through the neck, an arrow can hide itself pretty well, and poachers are sometimes sloppy. If you find an arrow, even though it’ll probably be unmarked - poachers aren’t usually considerate enough to mark their arrows for you - you can usually get some sort of clue from the fletching and the arrowhead as to where it came from, and that gives you a clue as to -’
‘Clue, yes. That’s the word. We’re looking for clues. Check out the lady’s room - and see if you can find some sort of clue.’
Kethol’s forehead wrinkled. ‘I don’t think that there are going to be any arrowheads in there, and I doubt even more that I’ll be able to track somebody across the carpet.’
Pirojil spread his hands. ‘I don’t know what kind of clue. Maybe the weapon that cut their throats? It could have been left there, I guess,’ he said, sceptically. ‘If it’s distinctive. . .’
It didn’t sound likely. Indeed, it sounded just this side of impossible.
‘And search Baron Morray’s rooms,’ Durine said.
‘Again: for what?’
‘And, again: I don’t know,’ Durine said.
‘I do,’ Pirojil said. ‘For something - a slip of paper, maybe, or a notation in a book. Neither too easy or too difficult to find, but it’ll have some sort of short incantation written on it, the spell that will allow somebody to open the strongroom in the dungeon.’
Worrying about getting paid at a time like this shouldn’t have disgusted Kethol, but it did, and he let his disgust show on his face.
Pirojil just shook his head, ‘Really gone native, haven’t you?’
‘Shit, Pirojil -’
‘Well’ Pirojil said, the ghost of a smile flickering across his ugly face, ‘I suppose I must have gone native, too, because I wasn’t thinking about our pay, not at the moment. But right now we’ve got to worry not just about a band of Morray’s men, ready to avenge their murdered baron, but a band of mercenaries, some of whom will work out that they don’t get paid until somebody can open the strongbox, and I don’t think the Swordmaster is going to appoint one of the barons as even a temporary bursar until we’ve discovered the murderer; and even if he does, it won’t much matter if the Bursar can’t open the strongroom safe.’
Durine nodded. ‘Best thing the Swordmaster can do, assuming things don’t break into open warfare, is just pay off the mercenaries - and the regulars, for that matter. Money tends to settle people down.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Pirojil looked from Kethol to Durine.
‘Any volunteers to mutter something that sounds like a spell while trying to work the safe?’ He shook his head before answering his own question. ‘No.’ His mouth twitched. ‘Come to think of it— He walked to the door, and leaned outside. ’Send for Milo and Mackin, two mercenaries down at the Broken Tooth. Tell them to report to me, in the Great Hall, now.‘
‘But—’ the guard outside started to protest; Pirojil silenced him with a pointed finger.
‘If you’ve got any objections to my orders, go and ask the Swordmaster. He’s put the three of us in charge of this, this, investigation, and I suspect that he means it.’
Retreating footsteps sounded in the hall, and Pirojil turned, grinning.
‘I’m getting to like this being in charge thing.’
Durine shook his head. ‘I’d like it a lot more if I knew what we were doing.’
‘Me, too,’ Kethol said.
On that the three of them could agree.
Still, the rule of ‘when you don’t know what to do, do what you know how to do’ did make sense, and Kethol had looked at dead bodies before. This talking to people was another thing - what did Pirojil expect, that the murderer would jump up and say, I did it, if Pirojil just looked at him sideways?
‘Well, we’d all better do our best to look like we know what we’re doing.’
Durine grinned. ‘Is that what officers and nobles do all the time?’
‘Probably. But let’s get to it.’ Pirojil clapped his hands together, and gestured the other two to their feet. ‘Durine to the dungeon; Kethol to Lady Mondegreen’s room; and I get the assembled barons and captains. We meet back here, at noon.’ He grinned. ‘I’ll have Ereven bring us lunch.’
Durine made his way down to the dungeon, balancing carefully on the gritty stone steps.
Tom Garnett and three of his soldiers were gathered in front of the nearest of the cells. A huge brass key that Durine assumed was the key t
o the cells hung on a hook next to an oil lantern hanging from an overhead beam - on the opposite side from the cells. A man locked in a dungeon cell might be able to get at it, if he had a long enough stick with a hook on it, but presumably there were no long, hooked sticks as standard equipment in the Earl’s cells.
All four men - no, five, including Erlic - drew themselves up, not quite to attention as Durine approached, but one indicating respect for his rank, if not for the man. They all looked familiar, and so did this Erlic.
Durine shook his head. A week ago, or less, an age ago or more, two of these four men had been the ones that Tom Garnett had sent to bring Durine to the Swordmaster, to be assigned, along with Pirojil and Kethol, to protect Baron Morray.
‘Disgusted with me, eh?’ Tom Garnett said, apparently misreading Durine’s expression.
‘No, Captain. Disgusted, certainly, but not sure who with, except for Erlic.’ Durine shrugged. ‘But enough of that. I’ll need to talk to Erlic, privately.’
‘Can’t do that, Captain,’ one of the others said, shaking his head. ‘We’re on orders not to take our eyes off him. Some people think that he might decide to avoid the Earl’s justice, and I’m one of those people, and never mind for the moment that orders are orders.’
How Erlic would do that was an interesting question, Durine thought. He had been stripped of his tabard and trousers and boots. He had dropped the thin blanket that he had had wrapped about him when he had come to attention, and now he stood shivering in a tunic that reached to his knees.
Well, maybe he could tear the blanket into strips, braid the strips into a rope, tie one end of the rope to the bars and the other around his neck, and then make a flying leap and break his neck, but Durine reckoned he would notice Erlic trying to do that, and could probably stop him.
But Durine didn’t say anything; he just looked at Tom Garnett, who quickly nodded.
‘We can lock you in with him, I suppose, and remain within shouting range,’ His lips were white as he turned to the soldier who had spoken.
‘Captain Durine isn’t sure that we’re not involved,’ he said, quietly, casually, as though commenting upon the weather.
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