What’s taking so long? Malden wondered as he toyed with the bodkin at his belt.
They’re being thorough, at least, Croy told himself as he clutched his hands together and leaned forward in his chair.
The last part of the house to be searched was the third floor. The chains in the master bedroom drew the watchmen’s attention, and they made a brave try at searching the laboratory, despite the noxious fumes. Other rooms barely drew their notice. By daylight most of the truly dangerous parts of the third floor were subdued and harmless, for which Cythera was glad—she would not have liked to explain some of the things the watchmen would have seen had they come after dark.
When they reached the sealed and locked hallway that led to Hazoth’s inner sanctum, they didn’t even glance at the door, just kept walking past.
“Here, I can open this for you, though you must be careful inside,” Cythera told them. “I believe he disarmed all the traps, but still it would be well if you—”
“Milady?” a watchman said. “There’s no door there.”
Cythera frowned and pointed out the door again. “This one.”
“Don’t see nothin’,” one of the others said. “Nothin’ there.”
She studied their faces—especially their eyes—looking for any sign that their minds had been clouded by magic. Hazoth must have enchanted them not to see the door, she thought—and she did not dare to try to break that spell. As for the watchmen, they just stared back at her, blinking occasionally, as if they were bored and wished to return to their work.
Chapter Fifty-Two
An hour or so later the watchmen trooped down the stairs to the great hall again, where they apologized to Hazoth for any inconvenience and then took their leave. Hazoth headed back upstairs to return to his studies, telling Cythera along the way that she should return to her normal duties.
As the watchmen stepped back out onto the gravel forecourt of the villa—
—and Croy jumped up, his chair tumbling out behind him—
—and Kemper and Malden leaned forward to get a better view—
—and Cythera clutched a silver serving fork to her chest, bracing herself for she knew not what—
—absolutely nothing happened.
The watchmen were allowed to exit the villa without any further delay. They marched back to the tent, where they reported at some length to their serjeant. Then the porters returned to take down the tent, and all departed together, heading up the Cripplegate Road toward the Stink, and thence back toward Castle Hill.
And still nothing happened.
Hazoth returned to his studies. He did not leave his laboratory for the rest of the day. Cythera went about her duties. Normally she would have been glad for Hazoth’s preoccupation. Any time to herself—any time when he wasn’t demanding things of her, or torturing her for his amusement—was precious. Now, though, she was more frightened than ever. Hazoth might or might not realize her part in summoning the watchmen, but it didn’t matter. When he finished with his day’s labors he would want someone to blame for the interruption, someone on whom to take out his anger. What was coming would be terrible, even worse than the punishment of the night before. There was nothing for it, though. All she could do was keep at her work. If her head was slightly bowed, if her hands lingered on the familiar knives and spoons in the silver cabinet as if she were lost in gloomy thoughts, it didn’t stop her from finishing the task.
Up by the trees, thoroughly sodden with rain, Malden clucked his tongue in disgust and looked over at Kemper. The intangible card sharp was dry as a bone—the raindrops had passed through him without stop. “I need to get dry,” Malden announced. “Come, I have a spare cloak back at my rooms. We’ll make a fire. And then we need to confer.”
“I don’t unnerstand it,” Kemper said, trailing after Malden as he hurried up the street leading out of Parkwall. “He just let ’em in? Let ’em ransack his spread?”
“They didn’t find the crown,” Malden told his associate. “That much is certain. If they had they would have dragged Hazoth out of his hole and conveyed him forthwith to the palace dungeon. Or rather, they would have tried. He would not have gone easy.”
“Now that, I would’ve paid t’witness,” Kemper chortled.
Malden was thinking out loud. “Vry said he would search every house in the city for the crown. Yet I cannot believe that he would start here without some reason. I would think he would avoid Hazoth’s wrath if at all possible. So he must know. He must have some sign that the crown is in there—and yet, his watchmen left without it, and without a fuss.” He shook his head. “Perhaps he has another scheme in mind, and this was only a feint. Which only tightens our schedule. We must steal the crown back before he gets it—or all is lost.” He shivered inside his wet tunic. “We need to sit somewhere and think hard on this.”
“Aye, lad, and sure.”
“Perhaps a brandy or two wouldn’t hurt.”
That seemed to cheer Kemper immensely.
The two thieves were around a corner and gone before they could see the one real consequence of Anselm Vry’s raid. In the stables of a rich man’s house just across the way from Hazoth’s villa, voices were raised and a horse was starting.
“Just be reasonable, friend, it’s your death out there!”
Croy turned on his host with flashing eyes. For a second he thought he might strike down the merchant who stood in his way. Then he gripped the man’s forearms and leaned close to speak. “Forgive me. You’ve been so very kind, taking me in like this. I know I’ve put you in danger just by being here.”
“Think nothing of it—but think of yourself now. If you go riding up there in this state of excitement they’ll arrest you on the spot.”
“Anselm Vry will listen to logic. When I show him I am his only hope, he will give me what I need to finish this,” Croy said, and released the man. He grabbed up a saddle from a tack locker and threw it over the back of his host’s most hot-blooded stallion. As his host pleaded with him, he cinched the girth tight. He reached back and checked both his swords, making sure they were tied down in their scabbards and wouldn’t shake loose. Then he pulled a long felted cape over his back—the teased wool would keep out the rain, and protect his steel from rust. He grabbed the pommel and made to mount, but a hand on his arm stopped him.
“They won’t just arrest you,” the merchant said, shaking his head. “They’ll cut you down like a dog. Once they see your blades, they will not show mercy.”
“I will move their hearts with my plea.” Croy hoisted himself up over the horse’s back and dropped heavily into the saddle. He grabbed up the reins and jerked the stallion’s head around so it faced the road.
“You say two different things. Is Vry a man of reason, or a man with a good heart? I’ve found them to be contraries not often reconciled in a single nature.”
Croy shrugged. “One way or another I’ll convince him. And if I don’t—then maybe I’ll die today. But I’ll perish in the name of justice.”
“Then do me one favor, before you die.”
Croy grimaced at the delay, but he nodded. He never failed to pay his debts.
“When you reach the castle gates—dismount. Turn my horse around and give him a good whack on the hindquarters. He knows the way home. If I’m to lose a friend today, I can at least get my best palfrey back.”
Croy laughed bitterly and dug in his spurs.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Despite the cool day, the palfrey was panting and its flanks were dripping foam by the time Croy thundered up the Cornmarket Bridge and through Market Square. At the main gate to Castle Hill, a guard waved his pikestaff in the air to demand that Croy halt, but the man was wise enough to stand back rather than be trampled as Croy shot through the gate at full gallop and passed into the bailey. Workmen threw down their tools and jumped out of his way as he leapt the pile of broken stone before the tower. He didn’t slow the horse until he was right before the main door of the palace, and th
en only long enough to jump down and send the horse wheeling away, headed back to its master as promised.
For a moment all was stillness in the courtyard. No one dared move, for they did not know why he’d come or what he wanted. If he had sprouted horns and bat wings in that moment, he doubted the watchmen and the guard would be more surprised by his appearance there.
He was thankful for their caution. It gave him a moment—the space of a few breaths—to make his demand.
“Anselm Vry!” he shouted, throwing back the hood of his cloak. He reached back and untied his swords, just in case.
He could hear the palace guards rushing into place behind him, their mail clanking and the butts of their weapons sounding on the flagstones. He did not turn to look at them. “Vry, come out, I would speak with you!”
There was much confusion and raised voices shouted at him, but he could barely hear them. The blood was pounding behind his eyes and the world was tinged with red. If Vry would not come out and speak, then he would go in—and the Lady help any man who stood before him.
But in the moment before he began to cut his way into the palace, Vry appeared, standing on a second floor balcony. “Sir Croy, this is too much,” he said. “I’ve tried to turn a blind eye, I’ve tried to earn you mercy with honeyed words, but—”
“Your men—they came and they went. Without—Without it!”
Vry looked around at the throng of people in the courtyard and then glared daggers at Croy. “Watch your tongue.”
“They searched the right house. They were unopposed. How could they fail? There is only one way. Sorcery.”
“The men of which you speak have not yet returned. I have not heard their report. There is no point to this chaos and nothing to discuss.”
Vry looked peeved, but he made no order for the guards to attack. For the nonce they held their places, weapons ready. Perhaps none of them wanted to be the first to attack—they knew what Croy was capable of. Once the first of them moved, though, Croy knew the momentum would shift and they would all be upon him.
This was the moment, then. He would make his plea, and Vry must be convinced.
Croy drew Ghostcutter and heard the people around him gasp. Some screamed. He dropped to one knee and held the sword before him, point down to touch the flagstones. He bowed his head before it like a knight standing vigil in a chapel. Like the champion of the kingdom that he was. “Give me every man in the watch. Give me a company of them, at least. I’ll tear that house down stone by stone. I’ll carve it out of the magician’s heart, if that’s where he’s hiding it.”
“I can hardly do as you ask,” Vry said.
“Don’t take me lightly,” Croy insisted.
“Believe me, I don’t. If any man could do it, I believe it would be you. But don’t you understand? My hands are tied by laws and customs. I’m not a field marshal to make war inside the city walls. I am bound to protect the citizens, not slaughter them based on unproven information and the fervor of your belief.”
“A crime has been committed! Your city demands justice!”
“I’m afraid that’s true,” Vry said in icy tones.
Croy stared up at him without understanding.
“I’ve done all I can for you, Sir Knight. My duty requires this. Croy, you are under arrest. You have violated the terms of your banishment, and by remaining within the walls of the Free City of Ness you have invoked the punishment of death. Guards, take him—alive if you can, dead if you must.”
And with that, Anselm Vry turned and went back into the palace.
Croy had failed.
“Drop that steel,” someone said from just behind him.
“Get down on the flagstones with your arms spread out.”
“Hold where you are or be cut down.”
Three of them, then, of immediate concern. Doubtless there would be more behind them. Croy’s heart, which had been burning with unquenchable fire a moment before, turned cold and froze over with ice. His brain quieted for the first time in weeks. Every instinct, every reflex he had spent years training and honing, came alive in him.
And he realized—even as he jumped up and spun around to face his foes—the horrible mistake he’d made.
The appeal he’d made would have brought tears to the eye of a general. But Anselm Vry was no warrior. He was a clerk. An administrator. For him the rules, the numbers of life, were everything. It didn’t matter what was just or right. Only what was formally allowed.
Ghostcutter came around in a broad arc, Croy’s hand loose on the hilt. He didn’t need fine control for this stroke. The wooden haft of a halberd was cleaved in twain as the iron edge of the sword whistled through the air. A guardsmen’s cloak was shortened by several inches. Even as the stroke came around, Croy reached behind him and drew his shorter sword. It fit his left hand just fine.
A halberd point jumped at his face. He parried with the shortsword and metal clanged off metal, not the ring of a hammer on an anvil but the nerve-wracking noise of blade grinding off blade. A pikestaff with a leaf-shaped point came jabbing in low, aimed at his groin. Croy side-stepped the attack, then tipped the pike up and away with Ghostcutter’s foible.
The masters-at-arms who taught these guards had convinced them that polearms were superior to swords. That swords couldn’t parry halberds and pikes because swords didn’t have the reach.
That notion was based on the speed of an average swordsman. For an expert at blades like Croy, who spent every waking moment of his youth practicing ripostes and reprises, lunges and ballestras, the theory fell apart.
Which was not to say he was invulnerable. When a guardsman came up behind him and brought the axe blade of his halberd down toward Croy’s unprotected skull, Croy didn’t see the blow coming. He only heard it whistling through the air.
So he barely had time to lean back and let the blade slice down in front of him, while the haft of the weapon clouted him across the ear until his head buzzed and rang and his vision swam.
They would encircle him and bind him in a forest of wooden poles, he realized. He could only fight a few of them at a time. No matter how good he was, he couldn’t hold off every guard in the castle. In time they would whittle him down, get him with near misses and grazing cuts. If he bled enough he would die, no matter how many men fell with him.
There was a part of him that thought it good. That dying like this, in Cythera’s name, was worthy. Had he been a younger man, he might have given in to that death wish, that dream of honor and glory.
But he was older now. He knew what was truly important. If he died here, Cythera would remain a slave forever. As easily as that the bloodlust fled from his veins.
He waited until a polearm came down just before him, its blade cutting deep into one of the soft shale flagstones. Then he put one boot down hard on the polished wooden haft. Swinging Ghostcutter behind him to deflect an attack, he jumped forward and got his other foot on the shoulder of the guardsman before him. The man grunted in pain as Croy levered himself up and over the circle of attackers, jumping free of their ring of death. He came down hard on the pile of broken stone and rolled, tucking his swords in so they wouldn’t fly loose from his hands.
Rolling to his feet, he looked around, breath heaving in and out of his lungs. He saw guardsmen everywhere—and more, watchmen streaming in through the gates to aid in the attack. Dozens of men, all of them armed, all wearing coats of mail beneath their tunics and cloaks. Croy had no armor at all.
Someone jabbed at him with the curved blade of a billhook. Croy deflected the blow easily with his shortsword with barely a glance. Guards were starting to scramble up the pile of stones to get at him, though. He needed to move.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Ahead of him, at the main gate leading down into Market Square, the guards were lowering the portcullis. The points were halfway to the ground already as they heaved at the winch. If he was going to live through this, he needed to get through there before it closed. Unfortunately there
were half a dozen guards in the way.
Croy roared like a lion and charged forward, smacking one man in the face with the flat of Ghostcutter, knocking another off his feet by hitting him in the stomach with the shortsword’s pommel. A spear came straight at him, point first, and would have skewered him had he not danced to the side and into the path of another man. The fellow looked terrified as he realized that Croy was inside his reach, his long polearm now a liability instead of an advantage. Croy headbutted him and ducked under the arm of yet another attacker. The point of a halberd dug into his back, but he barely felt it.
The portcullis was right before him then, with no man in the way. It was only a foot and a half from the ground. Croy threw himself forward and rolled underneath, the iron points tearing at his clothes. On the far side he climbed to his feet and stared back through the open grate. More men than he could count were racing toward him, shouting for the gate guards to raise the portcullis again so they could get at him.
He laughed, though not harshly. Then he sheathed his swords and turned to go.
And promptly slipped and fell on his own blood.
He reached behind him and felt the wound on his back. It had felt like nothing—but then, in the heat of battle a man’s sense of pain was often skewed. Whether it was a mortal wound or not, he could not tell, but he could tell it was bad.
He had no time to stanch it, however. In a moment the gate would be reopened and all those men would be on his heels. He had to take what little advantage he had, and run while the going was good.
First, though, he had to stand up.
Croy sheathed his swords and got his hands underneath him. The muscles in his back quivered and a faint echo of pain cut through the numbness of battle. His body obeyed his commands, however, and he was able to get his feet beneath him. The oily blood on the cobblestones at his feet nearly made him slip again, but he slid forward and scraped the worst of it off his boots.
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