“I have a feeling that I would just be able to pick the mechanical bit,” I said thoughtfully. It was almost insulting of Lord Pecus. At any rate, I could be reasonably certain that anything that I might wish to explore was not to be found behind the mysteriously locked door. Lord Pecus, like Melchior, was not the sort to hide his secrets behind an impressively and obviously magical door: no, if there were secrets to be found in Pecus Manor, they would be found behind ordinary, everyday doors. It was more than likely that one would never know that there were any. However, if Lord Pecus was trying to keep me busy with a false trail, then it stood to reason that there was something to be found around and about the Manor. I found myself cheered.
“Tell me about the cells,” I requested, observing Vadim over my plump feather-pillow. I was reclining shamelessly at my ease on the bed, shoes and all, fresh from my dinner with Lord Pecus.
I was in the mood to think and plan.
“There are two prisoners,” she said. She was sitting back-to-front on my bureau chair with her legs crossed, leaning over the back of it in her eagerness, and she looked like a street urchin instead of a lady’s maid. “One is a hairy drifter who can’t decide if he’s drunk or not, and the other one I couldn’t see. It looked pretty smashing, but I think the cells must have been servants’ rooms that someone altered.”
“Do they sit on an outer wall?”
She nodded. “Not reinforced, or anything, lady: just plain stonework. There’s something there, though.”
“A magical something?”
“Yes. But I can’t tell what it is.”
Protection, most likely, I decided, and lost interest. “Was it easy to find the cells?”
“Not easy.”
“It was a ruddy nightmare,” opined Keenan, with a dispassionate air well beyond his years.
“It was all slippy little Keep-Aways and things like that,” Vadim elaborated. She had gone slightly pink, and I had an idea that she was pleased with herself for having made it to the cells. “Don’t think he wants anyone down there.”
“Shouldn’t have put cells there, then,” Keenan grumbled, unconsciously echoing Lord Pecus; “People like a good night’s sleep.”
“Wasn’t anything compared with how hard it was to get back out,” Vadim said shortly. I gazed at her narrowly and discovered that Vadim had been really scared for a moment in those cells. The knowledge cost me a pang of conscience, and determined me to attempt this enterprise, at least, with Lord Pecus’ approval.
“Well done, my children,” I said, sitting up. It was enough to be going on with. “Keep your eyes open, but don’t go anywhere you can’t get out comfortably. And do not disturb Lord Pecus’ private quarters.”
I tossed them a coin each, with instructions to please themselves in the disposal of it, and they went to bed with bright eyes full of plans for tomorrow. I was no less full of plans, but mine would have to wait until dinner with Lord Pecus tomorrow night. It went against the grain to bring him into my plans, but I was hardly equipped for an assault on the cells, and involve the children again. I could only hope that Lord Pecus would consider the idea favourably.
I found myself alone the next morning. I had given Vadim and Keenan permission to go into the city and spend their coin, and they had left me with an alacrity that could have been construed as insult. I was not long left alone, however; and before I had had time to do more than flip a few pages of the Book of Interesting Excerpts (snooping on Lord Pecus, of course), Miryum was ushered into the suite. She was looking grim about the mouth, but her eyes were tinged with an unaccustomed amusement, and I allowed surprise to show through my pleasure.
“Miryum! What brings you to see me?”
“Perhaps we could take a stroll through the gardens, lady?” she said bluntly, throwing a cursory look around the room. I found it amusing that she suspected Lord Pecus of listening in on our conversation, but showed her through the long glass doors into the garden without demur.
“Something has come up,” she explained, when we had passed a little way through the garden. Her stride lengthened, and it occurred to me that I was being led nearer to the outer walls.
“You’re not attempting to break me out, are you?”
She grinned. “I’ll admit we thought of it. Well, Curran did, anyway, and Brennan was all for liberating you for the afternoon. We were heading over from Cottesloe way to try what we could do when someone tried to slice through the Glause-Civet boundary without stopping for the Waypoint.”
I experienced a sinking feeling that was only partially alleviated by the almost certain knowledge that Susan couldn’t possibly have made it to Glause since our commlink yesterday. I found myself wondering just how good Kit’s travelling spells had become since I had last seen him.
“I take it that the matter concerns me?” I remarked, looking sideways at her. This time I thought the amusement was more prominent than the grimness.
“We had a great deal of-” she paused momentarily, increasing the impression of humour by a slight curve to her lips; “Er, difficulty, cornering the fugitive. I don’t know what magic she was using, but it was fast. And then when we did corner her, we almost lost her again. We have to report all border-jumpers or I swear I would have let her go, lady, just for the pleasure of seeing her give Emmett a bloody nose.”
Oh dear. Kit’s travel spells must have significantly improved: it certainly sounded like Susan.
“We bought her to you,” Miryum continued, approaching the front gate. It was large and impressively scrolled in black barwork, and through those bars I could see the blue-clothed backs of three more horselords. “Said she knew you, so we thought we’d call her bluff.”
Susan’s voice said conversationally, through the wall of bodies: “Let me go, or else.”
I curled my fingers around the bars, leaning languidly into the gate. “All I can see is fine, upstanding horselord, Miryum.”
They turned at the sound of my voice and parted, but warily; and I was treated to the view of Emmett, his nose bloody, sitting on a remnant of what must have been the previous boundary wall. Susan was perched on one of his knees, her arms pinioned to her sides by Emmett’s huge hands, and he was grinning at her.
“Or else, what?” he said.
“I’ll take that as a refusal, then,” Susan said. Her voice was quite pleasant, but she had her head on one side in a way that I knew boded ill for Emmett. She gave me a sliver of her attention. “Hello, Belle. Surprised?”
“Not particularly,” I said, my lips twitching. “I must say that I find it a little hypocritical of you to animadvert on my criminal tendencies, however. Emmett, do let her up.”
“And let her draw Curran’s cork as well? Tempting, but no.”
“Last warning, lummox.”
He gave her a rough shake. “Less of the insults, pipsqueak. I’ll let you go when I’m sure you’re not going to hit anyone else.”
“Belle, do you mind?”
“Go ahead,” I told her, watching with interest. “It’s been a few years since I’ve seen you work. I trust your technique will reflect the years.”
Emmett gave her a cool look and tightened his grip on her forearms. It must have hurt; but Susan, who had a far higher threshold for pain than I, only smiled. Then she leaned forward and planted a robust, smacking kiss on his lips. Emmett gave a muffled yell and leapt to his feet, shoving her away, and Susan leapt away with perfect timing, landing like a cat. A moment later she had surrounded herself with a wall of translucent blue fire. The horselords shouted with laughter at Emmett’s discomfiture; but they, like myself, had evidently experienced the pain of that blue fire for themselves, because they kept a respectful distance from Susan. Young as she was, she was a force to be reckoned with.
“Emmett, my sister Susan,” I said, flourishing one hand in her direction. I reversed the flourish. “Susan, my friend Emmett.”
“Very entertaining,” said Miryum, still grinning. “I would like to know what we’re to
tell the border guard, though, lady.”
“Susan? Was there a reason for your hostile invasion?”
She shrugged, and drifted over to me in a shimmer of flames. “We made good time over the mountains, but something went wrong as we got lower. I would have stopped if I could.”
“Would you?” Miryum’s voice was dry. “I wonder? You didn’t spare any punches, child.”
Susan cocked her head in Miryum’s direction, but evidently decided to let the epithet pass unmolested. “The lummox wouldn’t let me go. I was in a hurry. I told you who I was.”
Curran looked at me, grinning. “It didn’t seem likely, Isabella: a relative of yours, astride a horse? So we brought her in.”
“Tried to,” put in Brennan, with greater accuracy. “Where’d she learn to hit like that, Bella? Not from you, I’d swear.”
“Certainly not!” I said coldly.
“No, Belle is more ladylike than that,” Susan observed. “She doesn’t have to use her hands.”
She let the blue-fire spell drop as Emmett approached cautiously, and smiled up at him with a perfect good humour that held no trace of either animosity or smugness. It was one of the traits in her of which I most approved.
“Truce, pipsqueak?”
He was holding out his hand to be shaken: she clasped it and did so.
“Truce, lummox.”
Susan sauntered toward the gate, kissing me through the bars, and I found that I could only just see over the top of her head. The commlink had not done justice to her height and health, nor the sheer abundance of her chestnut hair, which had grown several inches since last I saw her.
“Good heavens, Su!”
“I think it’s all the horse manure,” she said cheerfully, grinning. “I’ve been growing ever since Kit went away, anyway. You’re looking as slim as ever.”
“I think it must be all the tea,” I retorted, unable to hold back an answering grin.
Behind us, Curran muttered in an audible aside: “Heaven help us, there’s two of ’em now!”
*
Lord Pecus was surprisingly amenable to my tentative suggestions regarding his prisoner. He had the faintly amused look of one humouring a small child, for which I only forgave him because I was getting my own way. After all, it is never productive to cavil at receiving what one asks for on the grounds of the manner in which it is given. Moreover, he made no objections to my questioning the drifter without his presence, and though it was obvious that he didn’t expect me to be successful I was pleased to have a little privacy in which to work. His only stipulation was that I should not enter the same room as the prisoner, and since I had no intention of doing so, it was no hard promise to make.
I borrowed one of Damson’s sootiest aprons for the occasion, and wore it over a plain dress of brown wincey that I had used in not a few of my less grand adventures. It was a little tight across the shoulders, but I had done my growing early, and overall it was a good fit. With my hair carefully tousled and a light dusting of soot on my face I looked suitably urchin for my part, and nodding at my reflection in a satisfied manner, I proceeded downstairs to give commands to a very surprised footman.
It didn’t take Lieutenant Holt very long to arrive, puzzled but willing to help. When he understood what it was I wished him to do, he grinned, and enquired: “Does Alexander know?”
“I’m not to enter the prisoner’s cell, but otherwise I may do as I choose,” I said, with perfect truth. “Will you help me?”
“Happily!” he assured me, replacing his hard-topped Lieutenant’s helmet with every sign of enthusiasm. “How rough would you like me to be?”
“Oh, throw me in!” I told him blithely. Drunk or no, drifters were a shrewd clan with a nose for deception, as versed in it as they were themselves; and I didn’t want to ruin things at the outset by being handed into the cell like a ladyship.
“He’ll need to hear the key turn, so you’ll have to lock the door. Don’t activate the magic lock.”
Trophimus nodded obediently. “Throw you in, lock cell door, don’t activate the magic.”
“Very good. Vadim! The blood, if you please!”
Lieutenant Holt watched in interest as Vadim drew one finger along my right cheek. A few beads of bright red appeared in my peripheral, large and heavy.
“It won’t dry,” she warned me, standing back to observe the effect. “So you can’t stay too long. They’re noticing people, them drifters. If you have to stay longer than it should take to dry, wipe it away and it’ll show a cut for a while.”
“Did you make that spell yourself?” asked Lieutenant Holt, fascinated, but I forestalled him with one raised finger.
“Later, if you please! I have a cell waiting for me, and blood that won’t dry on my face. Vadim will tell you all about it when I’ve finished.”
“Nervous?” he enquired with a grin, marching me down the stone stairs.
“Oh no!” I said, as we approached the basement door. “This is not the first cell in which I have been imprisoned, after all.”
“Now that is a story I want to hear!” remarked Lieutenant Holt, pausing before a door in massive oak. “Are you ready?”
I took a moment to gather a few, precious tears in my eyes, and settled my shoulders in a suitable slump. “You may proceed.”
I was thrown into the cell with perhaps more violence than originally intended, and scraped my knee painfully on the flagged floor. Fortunately Trophimus was a better actor than I gave him credit for: he didn’t look back, though he must have heard my exclamation of pain. I spat at his retreating back as I clutched my knee, not allowing myself to enjoy the scene too much for fear that my amusement might show through. Already the drifter had wandered over to the bars that adjoined our cells, and was regarding me with a kind of interested sympathy.
“Hungry, was yer?”
I gave a defiant sniff, and tossed a few straggly locks back. “No. I ain’t a drifter, I’m a good girl. I never done it!”
“Much they believe yer, in here,” the drifter offered, with doubtful comfort.
“Much they do!” I agreed, a single tear quivering on my eyelashes. I was very proud of that tear: it is not as easy to cry on demand as the regrettable multitude of tantrum-throwing children would suggest. “One rule for the likes of them, and one for the likes of us!”
He watched the tear fall, and advised: “Dry up yer bubblin’ chicky; it never helped a soul.”
“I ain’t bubblin’!” I said indignantly. “An’ as for helpin’, well, I reckon I can help meself!”
I tilted my chin at him and removed my hairpin and thumbtack from their hiding place in my corsets. For the first time, the drifter showed real, sharp interest.
“What you doin’, chicky?”
“Them as has sharp peepers gets ’em put out,” I told him pertly, fiddling with the door lock. It was a rather delicate four-tumbler job, but not beyond my skills; and before long I heard the unmistakeable click that meant the lock tongue had slotted back into its hole. I grinned my triumph back at the drifter, and he licked his lips.
“Go on, chicky. Let a cellmate out, eh?”
I gave him a look of carefully melded suspicion and hesitation. The door is unlocked, my demeanour pointed out, and I should be off: however, I was a good girl, and my mam had taught me never to leave someone in distress. “’Ow do I know what you done, then? You might be a murderer, you might, and then where would I be?”
“Ah chicky, does I look like a murderer?”
“You looks like you’re avoidin’ the question,” I said sharply. Mam’s girl was no fool. “You want out, you tell me what you’re in for.”
“Wanted somewhere warm for the night,” he said easily, gazing earnestly at me.
“It’s no good lying to me, cobber,” I told him, with perfect truth. I tapped my head, signifying the possession of superior, if not magical powers of lie detection. He went quite white, and swallowed.
“My aunt were one of your kind,” he
said quietly. “You see the future as well, chicky?”
“Enough,” I said, again with perfect truth. Enough to know that potato soup would be the opening course at dinner tonight, at least. Not to mention the Book of Interesting Excerpt’s powers of extrapolation, which, though its power was not strictly mine, at least belonged to me.
“No more lies, cobber.”
“I was driftin’ through the Sinkhole, just markin’ time: cobber came up to me and asked if I’d like to make a bit of coin. Nat’rally I said yes.”
“Nat’rally,” I murmured, fascinated. Perhaps I really could see the future. The conversation was going exactly as I would have predicted. For the sake of the part, I added darkly: “Told you to kill summun, did he?”
He gave me a reproachful look. “Now, chicky, don’t be saying things like that. All I had to do was break a window, and run. Told me where to run, and all, he did.”
“That’s daft,” I opined, but I was almost certain he was telling the truth. “Orright, then: what else?”
“That’s it, chicky. He told me not to get caught, though; and he’s not the kind you want to cross. Least he paid right up, eh?”
“Makes yer wonder,” I said quietly. Was that Trophimus’ step outside the door? Surely I had not been that long? I stepped closer to the bars and said to the drifter: “Want to know your future, cobber?”
His eyes pleaded with me. “Let me out, chicky; we can take him down!”
“You’ll get out,” I told him crisply, hardening myself against the plea. “Soon. But don’t you wait around, cobber; you run as far and as hard as you can, savvy?”
Trophimus was stepping through the door, and the drifter’s eyes bored into mine for a loaded moment before he said: “Savvy,” and walked away, distancing himself from the prisoner who was clearly about to be removed. I had seen it a dozen times at Trenthams; the way a group of girls would suddenly dissipate in the face of authority, distancing themselves from the unfortunate who had called down said authority on her head. It was amusing to find that schoolroom logic held true in the prison system.
Masque (The Two Monarchies Sequence) Page 22
