by Damien Lake
Landon interjected, “Kerwin had better stay as well.”
“He won’t like that.”
The archer shrugged. “The Healer will need a strong pair of able hands to continue aiding her. Dietrik would try, I have no doubt, but his arm has not yet fully recovered. It would not matter how much Dietrik wanted to help.”
Marik nodded, glancing at Dietrik who refrained from defending his capability. He fixed his gaze on Ilona. She responded, “Not on your life. I’m going with you.”
“What? No you’re not. We’re walking into a fight!”
“Did I offer to jump headfirst into a war with you?” Her eyes flashed fire at him. “Not that I recall! But you need me to lead you there. And if he moves, you will need to find him again in that mirror, and then you will need me to lead you there!”
Marik scowled, while Landon added, “She has the truth of it.”
“Fine!” he snapped. “Dietrik, you guard the door and leave Kerwin inside to help. We’re going to grab this bastard and I’ll hang him out a window until he sings, ‘Sartha’s Dirty Linen’!”
Dietrik nodded. Marik packed the mirror away. Landon adjusted his sword since he had left his bow at the Swan’s Down. The three travelers entered the fray.
Chapter 22
Ferdinand Sestion received a clap upon both shoulders, his father beaming on him as he delivered it. “A fine showing today, I hear! Planning to hang that sword by your side, aren’t you?”
“If I can,” Ferdinand replied, smiling with excitement. “I showed Keegan the proper way to handle a lance!”
“Knocked that upstart clean to ground I heard,” Baron Santon Sestion grinned, giving his son’s shoulders a firm grip before releasing them. “Oh, how I wish I had been there to witness that!”
“We only have the duels remaining.” Ferdinand bounced on his heals, thrusting an invisible sword forward with one hand. “Hah! I’ll have the reach on that stunted rascal! I should advance through the first two rounds at the very least!”
Santon nodded. “My son, you have shown yourself adept at the ways of the warrior. You do me proud.”
Ferdinand flushed a light pink. “Swordsmanship will be toughest. Only one will win this round. All the contenders are well versed in its practice.”
“Win or lose, few can say they have accomplished as much.”
The younger Sestion nodded. Heady exhilaration still coursed through him, demanding action, dissatisfied with remaining stationary. “I’ll make sure Walthers has my training gear arranged properly. Then I need to practice with the new blade you had crafted for me.”
Baron Santon nodded fondly as his son dashed down the hall, understanding the restless energy in the youth. If Walthers had so much as placed a flower vase atop a lace doily off center by a half-inch in the last sixteen years, he did not know of it. Still, Ferdinand needed to move, to act, to work off his excitement.
The sun descended on Thoenar to end a very successful day. Santon stepped into his office which sported massive windows. Glass enough to nearly fill the entire western wall. Through these panes he commanded a view of his back garden, so large and sprawling and filled with a magnificent sylvan kingdom that he could easily dismiss his property’s far wall in the distance.
Gloom shrouded the corners while warm golden velvet painted the oiled wood floor in shades of sunset. The baron crossed to his cherrywood desk to light the fluted chimney-lamps against the coming night. His eyes missed the man sitting in one of the two chairs before the looming furniture piece.
Santon jumped when he realized he was not alone. Discipline kept him from yelling out. Instead, “How dare you enter into my office, my home, uninvited! How did you get in?”
“Your man at the gate was too busy unloading your son’s training equipment from the carriage to notice us walk in. I thought we should have a conversation. A talk just between us. Words I thought you might wish kept private.”
“Private?” Santon’s gaze narrowed. “If you have issues you feel need come to my attention, then you may address me through the proper channels. Be gone before I summon the cityguard!” He punctuated the announcement with a sweeping gesture at the door.
The uninvited guest rose. He made no move to exit. “I find this curious,” he said conversationally. “You discover a man dressed like this,” he glanced down at his attire, the quality of which would be passed over by Walthers even for use as rags to polish the servants’ furnishings, “in your home, but did you call for help on the spot? No. Could that be because you have an inkling why I might be here? Or what business brought me?”
Sestion’s normally affable manner vanished. He donned a cloak of harder nature stored in a secret interior closet until needed. Calculation narrowed his eyes, decreasing his mouth to narrow line. “You have a point at that. I must have been mistaken. I will call for my men.”
He moved for the door when he suddenly found cold steel against his neck. Santon shifted his startled eyes to discover a second man standing behind him. This one appeared at ease, his back to him, hilt resting on his shoulder as the blade protruded rearward, bumping against his jugular in a seemingly careless manner. It was clearly a threat…without directly being a threat.
A sweat bead formed near Santon’s eye. He could sense the menace concealed under the casualness.
The first interloper bent to retrieve his own sword, an oversized blade too long to hang at the hip. Santon noticed the straps crossing his chest that reveled a sheath fixed to his back.
“I suggest that making any loud sounds would be a bad idea,” the second man offered, twisting the hilt so the bare steel scraped along Santon’s neck in a parody of shaving.
Santon held his ground, unafraid, though no fool either. “You doom yourselves, threatening a noble thus.”
“Threaten? Us? Never. But I expect us to reach an understanding before the night falls,” the first replied.
“Do you?” The baron raised a fingertip to the sword’s point, easing it away from his skin with a cocked sneer. He faced the speaker. “And what, pray tell, gives you the notion you have any chips to bargain for your ‘understanding’ with? Do you believe you can threaten me into giving you whatever you desire?”
The speaker ignored his words. “Do you know what your biggest mistake was, Sestion?”
Santon frowned at this presumptuous barbarian. “Mistake?”
“For a man who dabbles in the black markets and illegal goods, you used the same underling for all of your dirty work. I suppose he earned your trust, but that left him with a good deal of knowledge concerning your dealings among the dark guilds.”
When the baron remained silent, the man continued. “He didn’t remain very loyal once we grabbed him. We only wanted to ask about who hired him to kill Hilliard Garroway, except he was so terrified he was positively eager to spew a mountain of interesting facts.”
* * * * *
Marik saw comprehension illuminate the baron’s eyes. “Ohhh.” He stretched the word, sounding more amused than fearful. “You struck me as vaguely familiar. So you were a bodyguard for the baron of the rock pile, were you? A pity. Perhaps you can escape with your skin intact. Or perhaps you are seeking new privileged employment?”
“That won’t be a concern, seeing as he’s still alive.” Or was when we left. Ercsilon, let him still be when we get back!
“Alive?” Santon barked this in disbelief.
“Very. I assumed that was what your man wrote in his dispatch to you. You should have taught him to double-check his kills before closing the job. Too bad you won’t be able to discuss it with him.”
“You killed my man.” Flat, cold orbs glared at Marik. Cold unlike Ilona’s frosty glares. A chill gaze utterly lacking in mercy.
“No, we didn’t. But if he stops running before he reaches the Stygan, I’ll be surprised. He might jump in without waiting for a ship and swim across.”
Santon snorted a lung-full of air through his nose. “If you expect threats and promi
ses to weaken my knees, prepare for disappointment. Of the three of us, I have least cause to worry after keeping my head upon my shoulders.”
He walked across the room, rounded the desk and sat in the carved rosewood chair. Marik watched him settle as another man might prepare to discuss an ordinary business proposition. “Isn’t it amazing how a problem can perplex you so thoroughly, but seem so obvious in hindsight?”
Santon raised a questioning eyebrow in reply as he pulled a tumbler of scotch from a drawer complete with a squat crystal glass. He poured a measure without offering any to the two mercenaries.
“It should have been obvious after the attack by your woman assassin in your own home. We kept asking how she knew Hilliard would be anywhere near the women from the brothel she eeled her way into. All we could come up with was that Ferdinand might have a hand in that.”
“Ha!” Santon scorned the very notion. “My son has many qualities, but a honed mind for business is not among them.”
“I thought as much,” Landon stated, stepping beside Marik before the massive desk. “He seems too much an honorable young man to fall in with such underhandedness.”
Sestion gazed back blandly. He refused to allow the archer to rile him with indirect insults. “An aspiring idealist, hopeless at accepting the facts of life.”
“The facts as you see them, you mean.” Santon shrugged.
“You suggested to Ferdinand that he host a ‘barons only’ gathering when you weren’t at home, didn’t you?” Marik demanded. “After setting your viper in place.”
“Not mine,” the baron revealed. “I had little to do with any of these machinations. Since Darteel undoubtedly already informed you, I’ll say that I have a great many business enterprises pending in Spirratta which that righteous fool Tilus continually interferes with. The raggedy Dark Father there also has his reasons for wishing Tilus to cease his meddling. He makes his own plans in those regards. The local guilds secured their woman assassin a place through their own ends. I had nothing to do with their plotting.”
“That does not hold water,” Landon countered. “You may have held a social event in your home as a favor to the local guilds, for an equal favor in return I am certain. You may have informed them of our location at the One Soul’s chapter house after we carelessly told you during Hilliard’s registration. But today’s assassin was employed by you alone.”
“That’s right,” Marik picked up the thread. “That’s hardly standing aside while others work their schemes! Why did you do that?”
Sestion studied them with scorn. “You expect me to tell you?”
“Why not,” Landon asked. “You are planning to have us killed at the earliest opportunity in any event.”
The baron actually laughed. “And you stand there bold as brass accepting it! Very well, out of respect for your brashness and since you think you know more than you do. The local guilds came to me, knowing of those very interests in Spirratta I mentioned. They knew I wish for the duke to stop interfering. I had no intention of exposing myself, but the plan had merits. After those incompetents failed to make your deaths look like the work of cutpurses in the alleys, I had to help them find you. When they failed again, as you surmised, they came up with that foolish plan to strike when least expected.”
“Foolish?” Marik responded. “It almost worked.”
Sestion waved his glass. “Over-elaborate. Proof only that even pigs can pull carriages under the right circumstances.”
“We destroyed the thieves from the foreign guild,” Landon said. “None were left to fulfill the Dark Father’s plan. Why risk exposure in a fourth attempt?”
The baron swallowed deeply of the liquor, elbow resting on a sweeping armrest. His glass glowed in the pooling sunfire. “Why waste a golden opportunity? You were supposed to assume you missed a few during your daring raid. Whoops, looks like they killed our barely-baron after all. More the fools us.”
Marik burned with a growing rage at this callous man. He struggled to control his temper. They had come to rattle his cage but the court baron refused to acknowledge his tenuous position. “Doesn’t attacking one of your own bother you?” he growled. “I thought you nobles saw it as the worst injustice if you were so much as jostled in the road!”
With a renewed laugh, Sestion replied, “One of my own, is it? The barony of Stonescape is a commoner’s joke! Not an acre of tillable soil, not enough bodies under Garroway’s rule to fill this room. Needs a subsidy from the crown every other year to afford his own taxes. Provides not a single worthwhile benefit to the court. Garroway has about as much right to nobility as the two of you. One less purported aristocrat dragging down the rest of us. One less base pretender to challenge my son for a prize unworthy of rabble.” He raised his nearly empty glass in a toast.
Landon sidled near to prevent Marik from leaping. He need not have bothered. As much as Marik would like to kill this man, Sestion knew they did not dare. Hence his apparent unconcern of their lethal nature. “I assume that is why Hilliard was the chosen target,” Marik fumed. “You hold no qualms about killing a Garroway, so you would only help the thieves as long as they went after him. But you’ve been found out. I’ll say this straight since we aren’t ones to play games of politics like you. Cry off your schemes. You can’t afford to continue playing for Hilliard Garroway’s life.”
“Or what?” Sestion rose and returned to Marik’s side of the desk, nose-to-nose with the mercenary. “My word versus the wild story of a common sword swinger? The cityguard would never let you near the lowest magistrate with so simple a tale as that! You have no evidence to implicate me, and would require ironclad proof by the cartfull before anyone would so much as consider opening an inquiry. Neither can you kill me. If my body were found without a handy assassin nearby to take the blame, as you fortunately had, the magistrates would move the heavens to learn my fate. Every investigative mage the cityguard could call upon would work their magics to determine what happened in this room. You two could have caught me raping your daughters but you would still hang for murder in the first degree.”
“We do not need such absolute proof,” Landon spoke. He had redrawn his blade at Sestion’s approach. “Rumors spread like wildfire in the right instances. All it would take is the right words dropped in the correct situations to set all your peers to gossiping about your ties to the dark guilds.”
The baron watched Landon through slit eyes. Marik resumed the disclosure. “That alone would cause you no end of trouble, but don’t forget your man Darteel. We know about several of your little business dealings. Quiet tips to the cityguard here or in Spirratta would have them baying like dogs. They would stumble onto the facts of your involvement while they tore apart your black deals. Then opening an inquiry on the hearsay of a pair of commoners would be a political risk to no magistrate. I’d hate to do that to Ferdinand, but we know enough to shame you. Possibly enough even to have you brought before the king on high charges once enough of your dealings were exposed.”
Sestion continued watching them for several moments before muttering, “I believe you understand plenty concerning games of intrigue.”
“Enough to inform you of one last card we have played,” Landon added. “We have already informed several friends and close acquaintances of what we learned. If any one of us meets an untimely end by your plotting, those tips to the cityguard will immediately be passed.”
“So this is your threat then? You hold your knowledge to my throat rather than that sword.”
“Think instead that you trade us your schemes for our silence. A business deal.”
“Business is not conducted with knives.”
“Isn’t it?” countered Marik. “You seem to have a great many such dealings in the city’s shadows.”
Santon shot him a hate-filled look. “Be on your way then. You’ve won your ‘understanding’. Take it and leave my sight!” He walked to the windowed wall to watch the last red fiery slivers melt into the foliage crawling up the proper
ty wall.
Marik glanced at Landon, who shrugged. What else could they do? They departed. Mission accomplished.
In the hallway they waited in the trophy room while the gaunt gateman passed on errands for his master. They stepped lightly and met no others on their way to the front door. Silently they exited the Sestion household.
Ilona met them on the nearest corner. She wanted to know how matters had progressed. Marik explained, reviewing the encounter in his mind as he did so. He asked a question of Landon. “What’s your take?”
Landon shrugged. “We have him over a barrel, and he knows it. But I think it best we depart Thoenar as soon as Hilliard can weather the journey.”
Marik sighed, nodding sadly. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“Sestion might reconsider if we give him time to examine his situation. Best not to linger. Hilliard is no longer a contender. Nothing holds us here.”
Nothing? Marik surreptitiously peeked at Ilona from the corner of his eye. She caught the look, having been watching for it.
“Yes?” She waited.
“Well…” Well what? “I suppose…we have to take Hilliard back to Spirratta.”
“So?”
“So…I guess I’m leaving…” He trailed off, at a loss to articulate the acid roiling in his gut.
“Are you saying you want to abandon me?”
“No! I mean, I don’t want to, but—”
“Then don’t.” She gazed down through those endless brown eyes, so much like frozen earth, pinning him with all the steely power her gaze could hold over him.
“I have no choice!” Rage at the unfairness of life boiled within. He used it to fight back against her forcefulness. “I have a contract to finish! I have to return to Kingshome and might not ever return to Thoenar! I can’t come and go across the entire kingdom whenever I want! If I could, I would do it for you!”
