Impossible Odds

by Dave Duncan

  He nodded approvingly. “That’s a very reasonable guess. We can’t be certain he came from Vamky, but it’s very likely. There are few destriers in Krupina, and only the brethren’s would be shod with cleats. They patrol the pass. Tell her what happened, Manfred.”

  “Wagon and horseman, Your Highness…horseman rode around a bit, driver turned and backed the wagon to where he wanted, about halfway across the road, so there was a gap, but not wide enough for a team to pass. And the horseman dropped some caltrops.” Manfred produced a caltrop, which he must have been holding in his hat, because anyone who put a caltrop in a pocket would be stabbed by its spikes. Nasty, evil little thing! “Not many. Just enough to panic the team, make sure it wouldn’t stop in time. I took this one out of one of the horses’ hooves.”

  “All the horses died?” Four beautiful horses!

  Manfred nodded. “Horseman went around after the crash to pick up caltrops left over—his prints were on top. He wore riding boots, not sabotons.”

  “Armor,” the Baron explained.

  She shuddered, trying to comprehend such cold-blooded evil being directed at her and her child. She was a widow. That idea was too big to fit anywhere…

  “Someone knew you were coming,” the Baron said. “A fast horse will outrun a coach. Could have gone from Krupa to Vamky by the east road, come around by the bridge. Might have been time to set up the ambush. Tight, though.”

  “Rubin sent his state coach south to draw off pursuit. He was betrayed!”

  “Not necessarily.” Von Fader sighed wheezily. “I’m afraid there is more, my…Your Highness.”

  “No!” she said sharply, and stood up. There must not be more! She had not caught up with murder yet. She limped over to the window, seeking escape, wringing her hands. The sky was bright, not much short of dawn, with early foliage outlined like black feathers on the trees. This room was familiar, unchanged, home. But she couldn’t stay. Someone had tried to kill Frederik. They might try again. The future was a blank wall across her path. Where could she go? Who would give her refuge? Nothing in her life or upbringing had prepared her for such a dilemma.

  She turned to see the Baron’s eyes on her, full of concern, but was that pity on the wizened forester? She would not concede pity. She went back to her seat.

  “Very well, my lord. What more horrible news have you for me?”

  “Manfred found this locket. Tell her where.”

  She had taken her jewel box with her. Not the state jewels, just a few trinkets Rubin and the Baron had given her and beads that had belonged to her mother. The Asch could play with the pretty things down in its canyon.

  The forester was talking. “…a bush on the edge of the big drop, Your Royal Highness. Lot of branches broken, some blood, bits of damask and silk, some hair.” He produced a couple of wisps from his hat. She did not take them. She could not remember what Rubin had been wearing. Nothing special, nothing she would recognize.

  “So a body was thrown into the bush and then fell through, into the river?” the Baron prompted.

  “Looked that way, my lord.”

  “Could it have been faked?”

  The little man hesitated, but only to choose his words. There was no doubt in his voice when he spoke. “I do not believe so, my lord. No footsteps on the mud there after the bush was crushed. Don’t see how it could have been faked.”

  Johanna knew his reputation, and obviously the Baron accepted Manfred’s opinions as infallible. He flickered her a reassuring smile, which did not work.

  “So the question before the court, my dear, is who went into the Asch leaving this locket behind? His Highness? Gold locket, heart-shaped, on a golden chain. Expensive. Was it his? Is it yours?” He passed it to Johanna.

  “I’ve never seen it before,” she said. The portrait inside was a flattering one of Rubin, head and shoulders. “No, it’s not mine.” Rubin had probably given it to some lady friend in the past, but to say so in front of Manfred would be disloyal. One should not speak ill of the dead. Why was the Baron pulling faces?

  “I doubted it belonged to either of you. You see, Your Highness, it is a conjuration, the sort they call a seeming. Brace yourself for a shock, my dear. Manfred, put it on. Show the Grand Duchess what it does.”

  It turned Manfred into Rubin. When Johanna tried it and peered at her image in her goblet, now she was Rubin.

  She must have cracked her head in the fall and gone crazy.

  Someone else had died? Rubin was still alive?

  Von Fader’s doughy face was congealed in misery. “Thank you, Manfred. In thirty years you have done me no greater service.”

  When the forester had gone, Johanna said bitterly, “You think I was trying to elope with someone.” That was what the world would think. She was ruined.

  “I know you better, my dear. I had seen you earlier that day and you were not plotting any such nonsense then. You would not cheat your son out of his birthright.” He scratched his beard again. “But that may be how others will interpret it. Oh, death! I cannot make sense of all this evil! Surely only Vamky is capable of conjuring that trinket, and the ambush was set up by men from Vamky. If that had been your husband in the carriage, then the murderer had a good chance of killing both him and his son, leaving Volpe as unquestioned Grand Duke and Karl his heir. Men have been hanged on weaker evidence.

  “But the locket changes everything! Someone was masquerading as your husband. What was the imposter trying to achieve? Abduction, most likely. But was he abducting your son, or you, or both of you? Did two conspiracies defeat each other? Did he say where he was taking you?”

  “He said Vamky.” Would she ever have emerged from that gloomy keep? “Or was he just planning to compromise me? If I ran away with another man Rubin could divorce me.” And be free to marry sweet Margarita of Trenko.

  “He could have found easier ways of arranging that!” the Baron protested.

  Johanna avoided his eye. “The imposter knew certain intimate endearments my husband bestows on me sometimes. Only he could know what they were!”

  The Baron harrumphed. “Pardon my crudity, Johanna dear, but you may not be the only woman he has so addressed.”

  “Of course!” Hundreds of them. She should have seen that. With the locket, the imposter might have been anyone, even a woman. Margarita of Trenko, perhaps? One of her own ladies-in-waiting. “He held Frederik!”

  “Does Rubin not do so?”

  “I have never known him to touch his son since Frederik’s naming ceremony.” And his laugh. That had not been Rubin’s laugh. People’s laughs were often distinctive. Had she met that laugh before?

  “Your husband would not put his own son in danger.”

  “Oh, never. He told me just a few days ago he wanted to see Frederik acknowledged as his heir.”

  After a moment’s silence, she realized that the Baron had really been asking her a question. Because she was now the expert in Rubin’s marital behavior. Rubin would not harm his son unless? Unless he had already murdered two wives and wanted to dispose of a third so he could bed the fair Margarita, who was of noble blood and thus available only in legal matrimony…? Staring at the old man, Johanna saw in his eyes the horror that must not be spoken. No one would suspect a man of killing his own son just to dispose of an unwanted wife. Not to mention three innocent companions. But if the Grand Duke had not been in the carriage, could he have been the man on horseback?

  “You are saying,” she said, although Ernst was deliberately not saying, “that the purpose was to kill me and Frederik?” No, that wasn’t right…Ernst had had a whole day to work on this. “Just to kill Frederik? That I was supposed to be here in Fadrenschloss and not in the coach at all? That it was a plot by Volpe to kill Frederik so that Karl could be second in line again?”

  Surely that was nonsense. If Volpe’s code forbade him to depose his nephew, how could he murder an innocent child to promote a dissolute son he despised?

  Then was Karl behind it? He ha
d the most to gain if Frederik died. He would be second in line again. Ridiculous! Karl wasn’t capable of organizing anything beyond a shoddy seduction.

  So?

  So it came back to the fact that Johanna had been present only by accident, when she was not supposed to be, so the fake Duke had been forced to take her also. It was Frederik who had brought the threat of revolution. Restore Volpe to his former place as heir presumptive and the coup danger would fade away. Rubin was not the bravest of men. He hated anything that interrupted his quiet life of studied promiscuity, and what happened to Krupina after his death interested him not at all. From that point of view, Frederik had been a mistake, perhaps a mistake that could be corrected. The fake duke had not known of the ambush, of course.

  She shook herself to banish the nightmares. The Baron was studying her. He looked ten years older than he had two days ago.

  “Advise me, my lord,” she said.

  “I cannot,” he said angrily. “I am too old to straighten such a tangle. There are so many possible explanations! Were there two conspiracies? Or was it a double bluff? Who was the intended victim? Perhaps Rubin did know of a plot to overthrow him. So he sent you and your son off to safety, not realizing that Volpe would go so far as to ambush the carriage. Then where is your husband now? Who rules in Krupa?”

  And dare she go back there?

  “I am not fit to travel yet,” she said.

  “Of course not.” The Baron heaved his mass off his chair and waddled over to stare out the window. “Daylight!” He sighed. “Neither the coachman nor the woman could be identified. The coach was firewood. But the horses carried the Grand Duke’s mark. By the time we had collected the bodies yesterday it was too late to send word to Krupa, you understand? So I can claim, anyway. But I dare not delay longer. I must send word to the palace today. Now! Someone will be here before dark. If your disappearance is already known, another someone may be here even sooner. This is the first place they will look for you.”

  She saw that she was not merely in danger herself. She brought danger with her like a plague. “You must not take risks for my sake, my lord.”

  The Baron remained at the window, a monolith staring out at the mountains. “No risk. Very few people know you have come back, and I swore all of them to secrecy. You could be wandering in the woods or sheltering in some charcoal burner’s cottage.”

  “No!” She rose, and was at once reminded of her aches and bruises. “You must not take the risk!”

  He turned to frown at her. “Do not be foolish, Johanna. It is no risk for a few days. Your husband told you that rebels were about to seize the palace. You were abducted by someone unknown. Your husband is dead. He tried to kill you. His uncle tried to kill you. Not all of those statements can be true, but any one of them is enough excuse for you to remain in hiding until you know it is safe to emerge. I ordered the foxhole made ready.”

  “But hiding the Grand Duke’s wife from him must be treason at the least!”

  “Nonsense. Hiding her from rebels is true fealty. Fadrenschloss will give you sanctuary, and I will hear no argument.”

  She was back to being a child again. She went to him and hugged him.

  • 8 •

  The foxhole had not changed. It had been her refuge before her marriage and now was to perform the same service again. Frederik found the strange, curved, dim little room very interesting to visit—but only for long enough to walk to the cot at the far end and back again.

  “We are going to stay here for a while, darling,” his mother told him. “See how nicely it has been cleaned and prepared for us! Are you hungry? Thirsty? There’s food here. And I think there are toys in this box. There is everything we can possibly need here.”

  “Need go potty,” the Marquis said firmly.

  Johanna stared around in panic. Almost everything.

  Once that emergency had been dealt with—it was under the bed—he was reasonably content to have his mother all to himself and not be in a coach. His bruises and scrapes bothered him, but he found her swollen eye very amusing. He kept trying to punch it. Small boys are like that.

  “I do hope you grow out of this,” she told him, fending him off.

  About the only thing that might betray the foxhole to its enemies would be a two-year-old’s temper tantrum, which no stone wall in the world could muffle completely. However, after an hour or two of throwing the toys around, Frederik settled down on his mother’s lap to hear a story and went to sleep before it was finished. This was good fortune. Johanna had barely laid him on the bed and covered him with a blanket when the bell tinkled and she rushed to the nearest squint. There were three such spyholes, one overlooking the roadway up to the barbican, one the bailey, and another the Great Hall. Since none of them currently showed any activity at all, she returned to the driveway view and stayed with that, waiting.

  There had not been time for the morning’s courier to reach Krupa, let alone for a response to arrive at Fadrenschloss, but Vamky was only a couple of hours away. Whoever was coming now must be specifically hunting for the missing Grand Duchess, as von Fader had said, and this was the most likely place. Soon a cavalcade appeared in her field of vision: heralds, standard bearer, a troop of the Palace Guard escorting a man in civilian dress. No armor, no blue on white. Soon she recognized the ducal banner in front. So it was Rubin. She felt a great surge of relief. Her married life had been far from perfect, but had the newcomer been Volpe, her lot would have been exile and penury.

  The procession disappeared out of her field of view, and she shifted over to watch the bailey. The Grand Duke rode forward to the steps. The Baron was waiting to hold his reins. In a moment the two men went indoors together.

  No doubt Ernst would lie his head off to start with. He would not admit that Johanna was there until he was certain that her husband’s intentions were honorable. That would be tricky. He could not ask about coups or imposters or conjured lockets without revealing that he knew more than he should. Johanna must wait for his signal. The guards were dismounting, handing over their horses to the Baron’s men, and there were a lot of them, a big escort.

  No doubt host and guest had gone to the solar for a private chat and she would learn nothing more until after Rubin had left. If he was really suspicious, he might stay a week or two. Or have his men search Fadrenschloss. That would be a deathly insult to the Baron, of course, equivalent to calling him a traitor to his face, but Rubin was capable of that. With little hope, she crept halfway down the narrow stair to the spyhole overlooking the Great Hall. Her view was again restricted, covering little more than the throne on the dais at the far end and the approaches to it. Shafts of sunlight angled down, turned to silver by dust motes. Ancient banners hung motionless from the rafters.

  Then the two men came into view below her, heading toward the throne. The Baron thumped along on his cane, grotesquely foreshortened. Rubin was limping slightly on his right foot! Oh, spirits! She stared in horror, trying to will that limp away, but it just became more evident as her angle of view improved. Where there was one enchanted locket, there could be more. Had the Baron noticed? If he hadn’t, would he notice in time? Frederik moaned and Johanna raced up the stair to comfort him before he discovered her absence and erupted.

  But now she knew how the Grand Duke had managed to ride from Krupa to Fadrenschloss so quickly this morning—he hadn’t. He had come from Vamky. And he wasn’t the Grand Duke.

  It took some time for the entire staff of Fadrenschloss to answer the summons and assemble in the Great Hall. When they had done so, Johanna could only watch what happened. She could not hear. The Baron introduced the Grand Duke, although just about everyone in the castle had been employed there long enough to remember him only too well. They cheered politely, no more.

  The disguised Lord Volpe then made a brief speech. Johanna could supply the words for herself, except that she did not know how much she was worth and had to guess at the numbers. Soon the two nobles departed and the audienc
e dispersed to go back to work. How many people knew of the foxhole? How many would sell out? One would be enough.

  By then Frederik was awake again, wanting to be fed.

  “You should be proud of yourself,” she told him as she buttered his bread. “Here you are, not yet three years old, and already you have a price on your head.”

  Grinning, he patted his curls with both hands, trying to find the price, whatever that was.

  It would not be called a price, of course. “Reward” would be the word used, but blood money was what it was. Find the poor little heir lost in the woods and win a fortune. Whether you ever collected would be another gamble altogether. A fake Grand Duke need not worry about his reputation for honesty, because he would not be using that reputation for long. Once the loose ends in the succession had been tidied up, he could arrange for his predecessor’s official death and start to rule in his own name, his own face.

  She wondered if Rubin were dead already. More likely, she decided, he would be kept locked up somewhere safe until his son could join him. The strength of monarchial government was that you solved nothing by striking off a crowned head: The Grand Duke is dead, long live the Grand Duke! Frederik must die before or right after his father. Also, since there was a slight chance his mother might be carrying a brother or sister, she had better be sent off too. Tidier that way.

  About noon the imposter rode off down the road with his guards, but the alarm bell gave no all-clear signal. Johanna had expected that. If Volpe had posted a reward for her capture, as she surmised, then he would have left some men behind to wait for snitches to take the bait. Then they could secure the prisoners. Wishing she had counted his entourage when it arrived, she reconciled herself to a day alone with a screamingly bored Frederik, perhaps several days.

  The tantrums would stop when he turned three, Ruxandra had promised, but he had still had a few months in hand and tantrums were his only way to express dissatisfaction. He could not understand that bad men might be prowling the castle listening for a baby yelling. He did sense that temper fits were attracting more attention than usual that day, so he used them more often. There were times when Johanna thought her son would drive her crazy. She also knew she would have gone crazy already if he were not with her.