The commander kicked his seat back angrily and stood up. “I cannot be bought.”
“I’m not buying you. I’m buying your information. It’s an age-old practice.”
He slammed his finger meaningfully into the table. “I will not be influenced by—”
“Five thousand gold coins,” I said, “delivered here within a month. My word, I’m sure you know, is as good as the gold that will soon be overflowing from your encampment.”
The commander fell silent. Promising a man a mountain of wealth tends to make a mute out of him.
“Your horses look a fair bit ragged out there. Five thousand coins will buy a few strong, young ones. Or you could stuff your men’s pockets, boost their morale. Or, hell, stuff your own pockets and enjoy the finer things in life. I won’t tell, promise.”
The commander looked around, as if tiny bee-sized messengers were flying about, ready to cast judgment upon him. “We talk within the order about messages that get sent,” he said. “But it is known that these bits of information never leave the order.”
“I understand. I’ve a made a life of burying secrets. All I want to know is if you’ve heard whispers of Sybil Tath, daughter of Edmund Tath, pass through recently.”
The commander rubbed his knotted fingers together. “A messenger who rides a route from Rime to here and back came through about three weeks ago. Maybe a little more. He bore a verbal message sent from Lord Chachant Verdan to be delivered to Lord Dercy Daniser.” He eyed the door to his shack. His voice trembled slightly. “There is to be an exchange of vows between Lady Sybil and Lord Chachant, held in the kingdom of Edenvaile. All of the major families were invited.”
I shifted unconsciously on my feet. “When?”
“Ten days from now.”
“Thank you,” I said. “One month, five thousand coins. Count on it.” I turned and walked out of the shack.
The night seemed much colder than it had just a few moments ago. Bad news has a way of altering your perceptions. Unexpected news has a way of crushing them.
“This is exciting,” Vayle announced.
I lifted a brow and kicked a chunk of dirt. “You have an interesting interpretation of the exciting.”
“I’ve always wanted to bear witness to a grand wedding,” she said. “I assume we’re going?”
“Oh, we’re going.” Whether we’d be wanted was another matter entirely. I did have to admit that seeing the confusion march across Sybil’s face would be exciting. Discovering what she would do after the fact, however… well, that fell more on the spectrum of fear, loathing and general unhappiness.
I found the stable keeper spreading hay before a much-appreciative R.
“Sleep has been canceled,” I informed him. “How many messenger camps are between here and Edenvaile, and where are they?”
The old man wiped a bead of sweat away from his wrinkled forehead. He counted silently on his fingers. “Hmm, roundabouts nine of them. Keep your steed’s nose pointed straight here — well, as straight as you can, at any rate — and you’ll run into all of ’em.”
“Good man,” I said, slapping his shoulder.
“Oh, and by the way. If you’re wanting to shut your eyes for a wee bit on the way there, best camp is Hiven’s Camp. Commander Hiven calls it Hiven’s Fortress, which isn’t far off. There’s a great big inn with linens and all the fancy fixings. They even have daily hunts to invigorate morale, though I don’t expect the Black Rot would be needing such things.”
“Do they have wine?” Vayle asked.
His droopy eyes brightened. “Oh, yes. Lots of wine.”
Vayle smiled. “Good.”
He leaned in and offered a half-hearted whisper. “They even got a little special building there. The women inside don’t wear clothes.” He jabbed me playfully in the arm, and then turned serious as he glanced at Vayle. “Er, unfortunately nothing for the lady here… unless she enjoys the company of—”
“That’s quite all right,” Vayle said. “I enjoy the company of wine.”
The stable keeper unbounded our horses from their stalls. I flipped him an imaginary coin and told him that although we did not sleep here, the debt would nevertheless be paid in his name, perhaps with a few extra coins thrown in. He thanked me profusely, and Vayle and set off for the wedding.
I hated weddings.
We crossed the Rime border on the fifth day of our journey. R’s hooves thudded over a frozen tundra and beneath a slate sky whose clouds looked so thick and gray, one would be forgiven for believing the sun was eternally hidden.
Southern Rime was a blustery, pockmarked landscape with craggy hills and wisps of brown grass interspersed along the cracked ground of dirt and rock. It was a land of sheep and of buffalo and of people who apparently had no ambitions for finding happiness.
As Vayle and I pushed deeper into the misbegotten region, slushy flakes began pelting us in the face. Soon, as the air turned colder, the slush turned to snow that quickly reached depths of half a foot, with more on the way. Our progress slowed considerably. Thankfully, Edenvaile was a day’s ride away. So too was the wedding.
Vayle and I rode abreast, occasionally exchanging looks to remind each other that we both we were tired, sore and bored. We traded off horses at each messenger camp we came to so that we’d have fresh beasts for the journey.
I was now fifteen thousand coins in debt.
On the morning of the tenth day, the curved walls of Edenvaile appeared through the haze of gentle snowfall and fog.
Vayle unbuckled her skin of wine from her satchel and she sipped.
“Give me that,” I said, reaching over and taking a swig.
“Tangy,” she said. “And a little sweet.”
I inhaled the frosty air deep into my lungs. “I’m not drinking for taste.”
“Neither am I,” she said, licking the wine from her lips. She gave me a wink. “You haven’t told me how we’re getting in.”
I sat back in my saddle and pulled the reins gently back, halting my steed. The looming castle of Edenvaile stared at me unrelentingly.
“Well,” I said, uncertainty creeping into my voice, “we could wait for a market cart and steal it.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“True,” I said. “We could scale the walls.”
“That seems even more unlikely given we’ve no rope.”
“Fair enough. We could…” I bounced my head back and forth, trying to jar loose a brilliant idea.
“Why not simply walk in?” Vayle said.
I considered this. “We’re not what you would call welcome guests. Or rather, I’m not. Although Sybil did say Wilhelm helped her free me. But you can’t really trust a conjurer, can you?”
“Chachant has employed you to find who killed his father. You’re as welcome as any, I would imagine.”
“The Chachant of old,” I corrected her, “employed me to find his father’s murderer. Since then he has slipped into an increasingly rapid state of insanity that seems to have been induced by his wife-to-be.”
Vayle opened her mouth and caught a snowflake on her tongue. She swallowed it.
“Are you drunk?” I said.
“No. Why?” She looked offended at the suggestion.
“You’re eating snow.”
“I enjoy the coldness on my tongue. Walking into Edenvaile is our only option, Astul. Look around. There is no market cart. No secret passage into the sewers. There’s only the gate.”
I sighed. “If I find myself in that bloody fucking dungeon again…”
Our horses cantered up to the gate of Edenvaile and then slowed to a trot and then a walk. Atop the battlements were the city guard, dressed in silver steel breastplates and conical iron helmets with a thin nose piece running down the middle. They looked ridiculous. A black tabard wrapped around all of them, with the Verdan coat of arms featuring three golden swords pointing upward.
Those patrolling the parapet wielded bows, but those that greeted us below waved e
normous swords and pikes in our faces. And greet, truly, is too kind of a word. They met us. With what seemed like unabashed resentment. There were ten of them, with more pouring through the streets.
They all had excitement in their eyes. This was probably their big day to shine, to put on a show for mommy Sybil and daddy Chachant. Poor bastards.
“We’re here for the wedding,” I said, smiling.
A guard with three golden swords fastened to his cloak straightened himself. “Black Rot was not invited,” he said, taking note of the caparisons that covered our steeds.
“I assumed my invitation was lost.”
An explosive argument boomed from inside the kingdom, near the frozen fountain in the large square courtyard.
“Fucking find someone!” a voice bellowed. A very familiar voice. “I don’t give a fuck! Find someone with a hand.”
“Wilhelm!” I shouted.
The commander of Edenvaile’s city guard turned and, immediately upon seeing me, said something that looked quite foul under his breath.
The front of his balding head shined as the morning sun played a game of now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t. The bags under his eyes were thick and dark, and he looked a good bit thinner than the last time I’d seen him.
He shoved his way between the city guards, coming to the forefront. “Go assist cock for brains over there,” he told them, “and find me a goddamn butcher.”
“Yes, sir,” they said, all together. They shuffled their feet and went to assist cock for brains.
“I’ve got a fuckin’ butcher who cuts his fuckin’ hand off this morning,” Wilhelm said, beside himself. “Can you believe it? A butcher cutting his hand off! What good is he then?”
“Why is the commander of the city guard concerned with that?” Vayle asked.
Wilhelm blew a puff of air between his cracked lips. “Because the commander of the city guard has become the commander of the kitchen, of the linens, of the drink, of the hunt, of the put-the-fucking-tables-over-here-you-fucking-vagrant-motherfucker.” He sighed heavily. “This place isn’t ready for a wedding.”
“Did you try informing Chachant of this fact?” I asked.
Wilhelm burst into explosive laughter laced with sarcasm and irritation. “You have a better chance of stumbling upon a beach in this land than finding the king out of his bloody quarters. I haven’t seen him in a week.”
“Is he still alive?” I asked, partially joking.
“Servant says she saw him yesterday, so yes. We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”
I pointed at Vayle and myself. “Does that ‘we’ include us?”
“What are you here for?” Wilhelm asked.
“The wedding. It’s such a magnificent—”
“Lies do you no favors. You’re not well-liked here anymore, given a previous incident.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is this about that stable boy? Gods, Wilhelm. Give it up. I didn’t kill him.”
“Gods? The Pantheon of Gods wouldn’t help you here. They’d say your dagger—”
“I was set up,” I said. “If I’m going to kill someone, it sure as shit won’t be some little twerp tending horses. And I surer than shit wouldn’t leave my weapon on the ground next to his corpse like some middling amateur.”
Wilhelm wiped the falling snow off his steaming head. He clacked his teeth, deep in thought.
“If you believed I did it, you wouldn’t have helped Sybil free me from your dungeon.”
“Saying ‘no’ to a queen-to-be isn’t something a commander of the city guard does,” he retorted. “You were also present when a tanner here got his throat slashed, time before last. You slipped out the next morning, conveniently.”
I guiltily unfolded my arms. “That was me. Had a bounty on his head. Borrowed some money from a certain lord. Never paid it back. Never had the intention of paying it back. So, he paid the debt with his blood. You know how it is.”
“Is this your way of persuading me to let a known killer of the Edenvaile populace inside my walls?”
I side-eyed Vayle and chuckled. “Firstly, they’re not your walls, so drop your balls down a few sizes, will you? Secondly, your king tasked me with finding the person who killed his father. Now, how do you think he would react if his commander of the city guard barred me from the city, cutting him off from potentially very valuable information?”
“You came here to talk to Chachant?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
The corner of his mouth curled into a seething frown. He shoved a finger in front of my face. “One misstep…”
“Right, right,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “And you’ll have my head, or some such. Got it.”
Vayle and I pushed past him on our horses, entering the city. Once we secured our horses to their stalls and kicked some roughage over for them, my commander and I took in the sights and sounds and smells of a kingdom on the cusp of a grand wedding.
It was rather mundane, actually. Wedding mornings apparently weren’t something to behold. Sure, the smell of stews laden with rosemary and peppers and mutton and duck and all of the other deliciousness that goes into them wafted through the air on this cold morning. And servants bounded through the kingdom, mostly between different doors of the castle. And there was the clanging of steel as the city guard prepared for its big day, holding a rehearsal ceremony near their barracks.
But displays of grandiosity, of enormous bouquets, of chariots marching through the streets, of trumpets and drums — those were notably absent. There was something that greatly interested me, though.
I found Wilhelm prancing through the streets, steam sizzling from his bald head. “What is that?” I asked, pointing my chin at the immense balcony of cobblestone that curved from one end of the castle to the other, about midway up, level with numerous newly placed doors. Men with mallets and chisels were erecting a gold-adorned banister.
Wilhelm gave me a look that exhausted men give when they’re about to quit on life. “That,” he said, arms outstretched, “is the grandest of all grand balconies.” He rolled his eyes and added, “It is where the wedding will take place.”
He muttered something under his breath and jogged off again.
“Isn’t that curious?” I said to Vayle, who poked her finger into the iced-over fountain in the market square.
“If I was going to have a wedding,” she said, smirking at the mere idea, “I would have it in a place where I would not freeze my tits off.”
“Unless… you wanted everyone to bear witness to your big day.”
“I would not want that.”
I made a seat out of the frozen fountain. “Let’s think of people who would, shall we? I’ll go first. Those who crave attention. Doesn’t sound like Sybil or Chachant.”
Vayle sat next to me and stretched her tired back. “How about an uncertain groom who may wish to plunge to his death after the exchange of vows?”
I laughed. “I think you’re getting close. How about someone who wants to create a spectacle?”
“A spectacle would be wasted inside a candlelit castle,” Vayle agreed.
“You would want it to be an unforgettable moment. One that would have people talking until they can talk no more.” I slapped Vayle’s knee and added, “By the Gods, Commander Vayle, I think we’re on to something! Now let’s see if we can’t solve this riddle.”
Vayle skated her nail across the ice. “Consider those involved.”
“Chachant and Sybil.”
“The marriage is happening unexpectedly.”
“Quite unexpectedly,” I agreed. “Why the rush? They can’t possibly be prepared to host an ambitious event in such short time.”
“Unless the marriage must happen,” Vayle said.
I clicked my tongue. “Sybil gains nothing from this marriage, it would seem,” I said, feigning ignorance. “Mydia is next in line if anything were to happen to my good friend Chachant.”
“Unless something befalls Mydia.”
&nb
sp; “Ah,” I said, lifting a finger into the air insightfully. “And if something were to happen to them both at the same time, why… Sybil Tath would become the Queen of Edenvaile and Lady of the Verdan Family.”
“Unforgettable indeed,” Vayle said.
Chapter 17
There were plenty of misfortunes that could have befallen Vayle and me as we sat at the fountain, pondering our revelation concerning Sybil Tath’s wedding. For instance, the ice beneath us could have cracked, soaking our asses in water so cold we wouldn’t have been able to feel our cheeks for weeks. Unlikely, yes, but possible and perhaps preferable to what actually happened.
What actually happened was that the doors of the Edenvaile keep opened, and a woman dressed in heavy wools from her neck to her toes stepped out.
Sybil Tath.
She looked as if she’d just woken up, her black hair askew and wavy. It was too bad she hadn’t fallen into a permanent sleep.
She gripped the iron baluster that edged along the stone steps leading up to the castle front. She slowly descended into the market district courtyard, careful of her every step on the snow and ice that blanketed this city.
It was strange seeing her like this. The last time I’d laid eyes on her, dried mud had streaked her cheeks and days-old blood had dotted her chapped lips. I’d felt sorry for her. I’d felt… well, it didn’t matter now. In the end, it was all a ruse. All a trick to gain my trust, and I had fallen for it.
Sybil picked her eyes up and a cast a narrow gaze into the courtyard. Her head cocked and her mouth fell agape.
“Astul? Astul!”
With a smile so fake not even the drunkest merchant would buy it, she shuffled her feet along the strips of ice hurriedly. It almost looked like she was skating. When she reached the fountain, she leaned down and embraced me in what was possibly the most uncomfortable hug I’d ever experienced.
Still, I had a job to do, and that job didn’t consist of revealing my overwhelming need to stick a knife in her throat… yet.
“I’m so happy to see you,” she said, holding my shoulders as she pushed away. She nodded at Vayle. “Commander Vayle. How are you?”
An Assassin's Blade: The Complete Trilogy Page 18
