They were silent again for a long time, until Obair said: "I played here as a child. In this house."
"Yes, sir?" Altane had no problem envisioning Obair as a child, but he could not imagine him playing.
"Barlo's son was my best friend. His daughter..."
Silence again. Altane could not look at his master. Obair was supposed to bring Altane power and wealth. Instead, he'd let himself be trapped like a hare. If they didn't find a way out of this, they would be ruined.
Actually, they would be lucky if they were only ruined. It was more likely they would be hanged. And what was Obair doing about it? Hiding in a servant's hut, mooning over happier times.
They sat for over an hour. Altane wanted to search the larder for something to eat but he didn't. He may have been servant to a fallen man, but he wasn't a thief. Not yet, anyway.
He also wanted to stand up, walk out the door and ride away. He was good with a sword. He could hire out as a caravan guard, or board a ship....
He didn't do that, either. His master had been tricked--out-maneuvered--as though he was a child. Altane felt nothing but contempt for him now, but he couldn't bring himself to stand up and walk out of the house. For the life of him, he didn't understand why.
It was near midnight when they heard footsteps approaching the house. Obair and Altane bolted from their chairs and drew their sabers. Obair took up a position behind the door, Altane in the kitchen.
The door swung open. A wiry man of fifty rushed into the room. "Benna!" he called. He saw Altane standing against the wall, cavalry sword in hand. "Where are they?" he asked, his voice harsh. "Please."
Obair shut the door. The old man spun around, startled. Obair sheathed his weapon. "Barlo, what happened here?"
Barlo glared at him. "What have you done with Benna? With my wife?"
"Nothing. I swear it. The house was empty when I arrived."
The little man was not appeased. "Gossip is that you have betrayed your brother and arranged for this... test of his courage--"
"That's not true." Altane blurted out.
"The tale going around the castle is that you dared him in front of the guild heads and caravan leaders, and that you killed a whore in the back room of the silk house because she knew too much--"
"Do you believe any of that?" Obair asked calmly.
But the old man still wasn't finished. "Tonight a man came to me in the castle kitchens, and told me that my family has been taken hostage--"
Obair stepped toward him. "Who? Describe him."
"He was pale, medium height. His left eye was brown and his right one was green."
Obair looked at Altane. "Do you know who that is?"
Altane nearly laughed. Either his master was so near-sighted that he couldn't see the color of a man's eyes, or servants were beneath his notice. Furniture. "That's Laurent's servant. He's the one who gave Laurent the golden arrows."
"Is this true?" Barlo asked. He sounded like he wanted to believe it.
"You shouldn't have to ask," Obair said, with too little diplomacy. "Why did they take your family?"
"I'm to prepare the basilisk stones. It's a very difficult dish. One wrong cut... The last person who attempted it was my grandfather, and he poisoned your great uncle. I have a book that tells me what to do, but..."
"They want you to ruin the dish," Altane said. "They want you to poison him intentionally."
"My daughter..." Barlo pleaded.
"They will kill her anyway," Altane said.
"My daughter. My wife."
Obair nodded. "Do what you think is best. Just give me time, Barlo. Give me until sunup before you make your first cut. That's all I ask."
"Until an hour past sunup. I can wait that long. I think. But don't ask me to--"
"Do what you think is best," Obair said. Altane followed him out the door.
* * *
Midnight had already passed by the time Altane and Obair returned to the silk house. They crouched in the bushes at the edge of the meadow. The tables had been put away, but the stage for the musicians still stood. Obair slipped out of the tree line and crouched behind the stage. Altane circled the building, staying close to the trees and out of sight.
Reconnaissance complete, Altane crept to his master's hiding place and reported. Two guards stood by the back door with two more by the front. While they considered their next move, a fifth man came out of the back door and walked a circuit of the silk house.
When he had gone back inside, Obair said: "I taught Laurent that men should patrol in pairs."
"Perhaps he doesn't have the numbers."
"Laurent can muster dozens of men if he needs to. What he doesn't have are men he can trust."
Altane nodded. Laurent had five men plus the servant with the mismatched eyes, but Obair didn't even have one. Altane imagined himself standing suddenly and shouting for the guards. His master would be captured or killed, and Laurent would almost certainly reward him. It would be a piddling reward, but more than he was likely to get out of a disgraced middle heir.
They crouched in the darkness, watching. Altane had plenty of time to wonder exactly how far he was willing to go to get this reward he wanted so much. Could he betray a man he despised? And what if that meant the death of Barlo's wife and daughter, two women he had never even met? What if it also meant Podor's death and open strife with the tenants?
Laurent would do all these things, and blame his own brother for them. Altane wondered what would have happened if he had pledged himself to Laurent instead of Obair. Would he have kidnapped Barlo's family and cut Snowflake's throat?
Altane was a grown man, fully two years past twenty, but he had nothing. No possessions, no loves, no friends, nothing except for a slow-churning resentment and a hunger for wealth. He had never given more than was asked or taken more than he was offered. Would he have done what Laurent's servant had done?
He didn't want to think about that question, or about his answer.
Hoof beats echoed through the trees. Obair grabbed Altane's elbow and steered him to the edge of the stage so he could see what was happening.
A man on horseback rode to the front door. The guards tried to send him away and an argument ensued. The rider's voice was slurred; he was obviously drunk and angry to find the silk house closed.
The argument drew the guards from their post at the back door. Altane and Obair unsheathed their swords and sprinted toward it.
The door was unlocked. Altane shoved it open and Obair followed him inside. A half-dozen women and kitchen servants glanced up as they charged the room. One yelped in fright. Obair hissed. They fell silent.
Altane barred the door. Before he could wonder if anyone had heard the yelp, footsteps approached from the hall.
Altane and Obair moved toward the other door, reaching it just as it swung open. Their long cavalry sabers were the wrong weapons for indoor fighting, but at least they had points.
The fifth guard charged into the room straight onto their blades. Both points entered just below his collarbones. The man's own sword clattered to the floor.
He sank to his knees, suddenly as pale as a ghost. "Where are they?" Obair said to him, his voice low and harsh. "Where did you hide them?"
The guard slumped backwards, sliding off the steel to the floor. His breathing became shallow and pinched, then he died.
"Damn," Obair turned to the woman standing beside the table. Altane recognized her; she called herself Century, of all things, and she was Podor's chosen. Like him, she was tall and broad-shouldered, with clear brown eyes and little ornamentation. While the others gaped at the dead guard in rapt fascination, Century glared at Obair.
"Where are the two women they brought here?" Obair said. "Where are they keeping them?"
Century frowned, but did not answer.
Altane spoke up. "Do you know who they are?" She shook her head. "Wife and daughter to the castle cook."
Century closed her eyes and let her shoulders slump. "Did you k
ill Snowflake?"
"Of course not," Obair said with guileless conviction.
"They're downstairs," she said immediately. "In the wine cellar. Laurent is at Holdfort, but he is upstairs with Sapphire."
Sapphire was Laurent's favorite. Obair nodded and wiped the blood from his sword. Altane saw the look on his master's face and knew what would come next.
They crept through the sitting room to the front door. The women and kitchen staff followed. Altane waved them back, but that only made them follow at a slightly greater distance. The front door was closed. Obair quietly laid the bar across it.
The stairs creaked under their feet as they ascended, the women close on Altane's heel. Century pointed toward a door, then led the women to the far end of the hall. Altane winced at the shuffle of feet and nervous mumbles behind him. At that moment, one of the guards began pounding on the barred doors. So much for a surprise attack. Obair and Altane took positions on either side of doorway, just as they had in the kitchen.
The bedroom door opened and Laurent's servant shoved Sapphire through it. Obair wrenched back his sword and caught her with his free hand.
The man with the mismatched eyes charged out behind her. Altane saw an opening for the man's throat, but turned his blade at the last moment to parry a thrust at Obair's belly.
Steel rang. Obair grunted as the point of the servant's straight, slender dueling sword dug into his thigh. Sapphire and Obair fell to the floor.
Altane felt a cold rage blossom inside him. Obair may not have been the most clever man, but he was Altane's only hope for a better future, and Laurent's servant had tried to kill him. He attacked again, driving the other servant back toward the door.
The man gave him the same icy butcher's stare. That look stole some of Altane's confidence and fury. The servant thrust at Altane's belly. Altane barely managed to parry. A follow-up slash came too near his throat and he almost missed a second thrust.
The man with the mismatched eyes was good, and he was not fighting with the wrong sword.
He is going to kill me, Altane thought.
The servant suddenly shouted in pain and fell to one knee. Obair's blade was buried in his calf. The servant aimed a thrust at Obair. Altane cut off his sword hand at the wrist.
Altane kicked him in the chest, shoving him back into the bedroom. The servant fell, his lifeblood pouring onto the floor. He clutched at the bloody stump of his arm, his expression just as stony as it had been in the hall. Altane took off his head in a single cut.
Out in the hall, Sapphire had crawled into a corner, and Obair had dragged himself against the wall. He wiped the blood from his blade.
"You!" Altane pointed at Sapphire. "Don't move." He pointed at Century, who stood at the front of the crowd. "You, bandage my master's injury." Century nodded and left to fetch supplies.
His voice sounded strong, but Altane felt light-headed. Laurent's servant would have stuck him in that duel if Obair hadn't struck from the floor. He had come too close to death and it had stripped him raw. Some part of him was missing; he felt lighter for its absence.
The pounding grew louder from downstairs.
Had Laurent's servant been motivated by loyalty or for his own gain? And why had Altane killed him when he could have had everything he wanted just by turning on his master?
He could have done it. If he'd known what was going on when the celebration had turned into a mob, he might have done it then. But now, the ambition that would have driven him to murder was gone. He had cut off its hand and its head, and he felt strangely hollow.
Altane remembered the grief in Barlo's voice, the way Century's lip had curled when she asked if Obair had killed Snowflake, the fear on Sapphire's face as she almost stumbled onto the point of Obair's sword.
It occurred to him that he had just killed the man he'd wanted to become. It felt good.
He heard the front door begin to break.
Century returned and knelt beside Obair, wrapping clean linen around the wound in his thigh. "I can pack it in honey," she said.
Altane heard the guards shouting below. They were inside the building.
"I wanted to question Laurent's servant," Obair said. His tone was sharp.
Altane picked up the dead man's dueling sword and moved to the top of the stairs. The hilt was slick with blood but there was no time to clean it. "I would have thought you'd be used to disappointment by now, master."
The guards spotted him. As they charged up the stairs, they roared, trying to intimidate him.
"There's no one left to pay you!" Altane shouted at them, but they couldn't hear. He kicked a small table down the stairs. The first man, a paunchy youth with a bright strawberry birthmark on his face, tripped and struck his mouth on the edge of a step. The man behind him stumbled over him and fell.
Altane stepped onto the second man's sword and stabbed him through the back of his hand. He screamed. Another tried to climb forward into the fight. Altane feinted toward him. Trying to dodge, the man leaned too far over the rail and fell to the floor below.
Their charge broken, the men stopped shouting.
"There's no one left to pay you," Altane said again. The men looked at the sword in his hand. They knew where he'd gotten it. They backed down the stairs and left the building.
The man who fell over the rail did not move. He had not fallen far, but he had landed badly.
Altane went back to Obair and the others. "Is there a carriage here?" A young girl dressed as a stable hand nodded. "Ready it."
Altane recovered a set of keys from the pocket of the green vest on Laurent's dead servant, then wiped his bloody hands on the silk vest.
He gave the keys to a frightened young woman and told her to free the prisoners in the basement. From his spot on the floor, Obair said they were to be fed and given the chance to wash as well.
Sapphire cautiously approached the servant's corpse then kicked him in the crotch with all her strength. She began kicking and stomping on him.
The other women followed her into the room and did the same. Within seconds, Sapphire had been jostled out of the way. The other women crowded around the body, stomping and kicking it with savage joy.
Sapphire squeezed out of the room. Altane expected to see tears in her eyes, but all he saw was hatred.
"I didn't know," Sapphire said. "I didn't know they'd kill Snowflake afterward."
"That's because you're a damned fool," Century said in a low, tight voice. "We all are."
Altane knelt beside his master. "This wound is not serious, sir. We'll take the crock of honey with us and I'll rebandage you on the way to Holdfort. Century and Sapphire will come, too. Dawn is not upon us yet."
Obair stared at him. "Where is Altane, my servant?"
I cut his head off, Altane wanted to say, but he held his tongue and helped his master to his feet. They heard voices from below. Altane was about to meet Barlo's family.
* * *
The guard posts were held by Laurent's men. Sapphire and Century, riding on top of the carriage, smiled at them. The gates swung open.
In the courtyard, Altane helped his master and Barlo's family from the carriage. Obair shouted Barlo's name. Now that they were inside Holdfort, they did not have to sneak like thieves. Still, guards and servants scowled and muttered in the doorways. Obair's private guard was nowhere in sight.
Barlo burst through the kitchen doors and ran across the dusty courtyard. He wept as he embraced his wife and daughter. They wept with him.
Century and Sapphire saw a pair of the Deed Holder's counselors and hurried toward them. Within moments the women were leading the old men to the great hall, deep in conversation.
Obair stared up at a balcony in the east tower. Laurent stood there watching, a blank expression on his face. After a moment, he went inside.
Barlo and his family clutched at Obair's hand and thanked him profusely. There were tears in their eyes. Obair accepted their thanks and slipped away as graciously as he could manage.
He took a handful of gold coins from his pack and started across the courtyard.
"Have you started preparing the beast?" Altane said.
"Not yet," Barlo said. "It's time, though."
"Sir," Altane said. Obair turned back to them. "Sir, order your youngest ram slaughtered for a feast."
"Why?"
"To celebrate your brother's bravery and good Barlo's expertise."
Obair's voice was low. "And if Barlo fails?" Altane stared at him, his expression blank. Show no fear. Obair finally nodded. He limped toward the blacksmith, gold coins jingling in his hands.
Altane grabbed Barlo's sleeve and pulled him away from the others. "Come with me. We will slaughter a feasting ram together. Your staff can prepare it while you prepare the venom cock's stones alone."
An hour later, Altane stood beside Obair in the Holder's family hall, waiting for Podor and the feast to start. The tables were full of somber caravaners and tenants. Several had brought bodyguards, and for some reason they'd been allowed to keep their weapons.
Laurent was not there. The kitchens were buzzing with third-hand versions of Century and Sapphire's story. It was said that Podor believed the women, but others were unconvinced.
Altane was sure his master did not care in the least, but what if the true heir died? Laurent could not sit in the chair now, and Obair would be dogged by rumors for the rest of his life. Eventually, there would be open revolt and a mad rush among the families of caravaners and cropsmen to petition the Lord of Wind and Clay for the Deed. It would be open war.
Podor arrived and took a seat at the center of the long table. His father's seat. The assembled men watched with closed expressions.
Finally, Barlo emerged with the venom stones on a gold platter. Every man in the room watched him set them before Podor. Sitting on it were two small, shriveled, blackened nuggets of meat. They looked like pieces of coal.
Obair lifted an empty chair. It scraped against the stone floor, breaking the silence. He carried it across the room, set it opposite Podor's seat and sat across from him.
Bad Little Girls Die Horrible Deaths: And Other Tales Of Dark Fantasy Page 13
