Everybody Loves A Bard (Raxillene's Rogues Book 1)

by Max Keith

  * * *

  It took some minutes, afterward, to get everything settled. They left all the bodies in the close little stone room and carried Cash, as gently as they could, out to the main cellar, where a gasping and drawn Franx set about trying to figure out which implements to remove first. At one point he paused while, with a gentleness he seldom showed, he spread a foul-smelling unguent into a particularly evil-looking slice to the back of the bard’s hand. Drinn saw his eyes take on a faraway look, and then Franx sighed.

  “My owl has spotted our Imperial Mage,” he sighed, troubled. “Down at the harbor, asking after a ship.” He raised his eyes to catch Drinn rubbing nervously at his burned face. The warrior stared back, then looked pointedly over to where Alorin sat over against the wall, her leather trousers pulled down around her knees, doggedly sewing her thigh up. She was always very careful with that kind of embroidery; she’d had much practice.

  The valkyrie swept her grey eyes over the four of them, her voice wan but steady. “You are in no condition to face him again, Poildrin.” Drinn cleared his throat nervously, already impatient to be out of the basement. He seemed particularly unnerved by what Alorin had done to the Blade of Langmyre.

  “Ships won’t leave until morning,” he claimed uncertainly. “The owl can keep watch on him until then? Meanwhile…” he shrugged and tipped his head sideways to nod at where the light was fading through the shattered window in the other room, studiously avoiding looking at the dead Langmyre. “We need to go soon.”

  “Obviously,” Franx snapped, but he did not stop what he was doing. Cashel hadn’t yet woken up, and it was obvious that if he survived at all, he would not be doing so on his feet. “None of us can carry him until we deal with ourselves. If you’re so impatient, go rig up a stretcher for Cash. We’ll need to wait until nightfall before we move him anyway.”

  Drinn slumped and looked at the basement stairs. “Can we not do this somewhere else?”

  “Something the matter, warrior?” Alorin was using Langmyre’s knife to cut her thread, keeping careful track of the needle; she did, after all, have more sewing to do. “You’re not usually so shy about bodies.” She frowned as she examined one of the cloths she’d been using to swab up her blood, then tossed the rag into the other room.

  “Bodies, yes.” Drinn looked away. “But Langmyre’s not even a body anymore.” He got to his feet and adjusted his dirk. Alorin Kaye glanced back at him without emotion, then ignored him as she decided which of her wounds she should sew up next. “I’ll just go upstairs, then.” He shuffled off, rubbing at an angry bruise on his forearm; Brasher had apparently been more capable than he’d realized. He hadn’t even felt the hammer hit him.

  The steps were scattered with dirty ash where Farrick had fled, his heavy footprints continuing down the corridor toward the salon. It occurred to Drinn that he could use his hatchet to chop up a bed, fling the mattress aside, and use the rope frame to haul the stricken Cashel back to… where? The garret was all the way across town. He shook his head and gazed listlessly out the back window, over the great marble bath to a long, low stable block at the foot of the garden. As he watched, a candleflame bobbed past one of the blurry windows.

  There was somebody out there.

  His weariness falling away as it usually did at these times, Drinn pulled his blood-mucked dirk back out of its sheath and thought about what he might find. Whoever it was had waited for the owl to leave before creeping out into the gathering evening, but the fact that they seemed to be leaving encouraged him.

  Then, too, Lady Wennowes was a wealthy woman; there could well be a carriage in there, or even a cart. For Cashel.

  He snuck through the back door as silently as he could, then stayed in the shadows as he crossed the long, sloping back garden. The familiar sounds and smells of horseflesh drifted into his scorched nostrils as he went, getting stronger and stronger; they brought him countless memories, for once he’d been a cavalryman. He shook his head slightly. Focus. Who knows how many of the Wennowes servants aren’t accounted for?

  The big sliding doors on the far side gaped open, just enough to admit a quietly slithering person. So he slithered quietly and, thus, made it through to a familiar world of stalls and oats and shit and the soft gleam of shined leather. A horse whinnied nervously from the first stall in, nervous from the bloody smell off Drinn’s tense body. “Hurry, you little bastard,” came a hiss from one of the end stalls, near the side door. “We haven’t got all night.”

  “I’m moving as fast as I can, m’lady.” Sullen, even surly; that would be the groom, sounding like grooms everywhere. This one spoke in the soft flat accent of the Fleens; he was far from home, but Drinn was farther. “Bein’ I’ll have to go get the sidesaddle, if m’lady insists; ‘tis down the other end.”

  “Then get it.” Even in whispers, the voice was imperious. “You know I can’t ride astride.”

  The warrior was big, but so were the shadows; it was simple for him to duck quietly into one of them, just off the long aisle lined with stalls, and wait for the groom to come by. Which he did, presently, looking harried and much put out; of course, he would have his bedroom out here. There was a good chance he didn’t even know anything at all about what had gone on at the house. But, to his misfortune, he was holding a club. So he’d need to die.

  Drinn never really enjoyed killing with a knife, but he was not in the mood this evening to be finicky. The groom proved a small man, like many of them, but his kidney was right where it belonged; the dirk punched straight through it for a silent kill, the fellow not even able to gasp in shock, his eyes wide and bulging as Drinn whipped the knife out and thrust it deep alongside the neck behind the collarbone, angled well downward; the blade slithered back out as gravity dragged the dying man into a heap on the dirt floor, and then Drinn was out and across the aisle. Moonlight now filtered through the windows.

  He heard the impatient Lady Wennowes and one other voice, soft and vaguely familiar; of course. It would be the girl from the basement, the one he’d let go. She’d have told her mistress everything, but of course the woman would have figured it out on her own regardless when she heard the crushing sound of her basement exploding.

  Once he was sure it was just the two of them in the next stall, Drinn relaxed, took a breath, and then stepped straight through.

  He first thing he saw with a horse’s broad glossy ass. Gitsey was down low, cinching a girth strap with nimble fingers while Lady Wennowes stared hard at her. At his appearance both women froze and fixed wide eyes on him; for the second time that night he was a monster, dripping with blood and menace, silhouetted from behind. Gitsey squeaked.

  “I don't wish to waste time, m’lady Wennowes,” the warrior began, and it was true; he was ready to kill her and be done with this. “I just need to know for sure whether you’ve been a traitorous, spying Imperial bitch. Then we can make an end to this, and some of us can get some sleep.” He held the dirk slack at his side, and watched tiredly as the two women exchanged a glance.

  Had Drinn been more perceptive, or perhaps less exhausted, he might have caught the meaning of that glance; in any case it went on just slightly too long, carried just slightly too much meaning. But in the end Gitsey won. Lady Wennowes sighed, looked briefly at the moon out the window, and nodded once. Then, relaxed, she turned to face the warrior. “Traitorous? To your ancient, senile King? Or to his drunken asshole of a son? Either way, of course I’m a traitor; they deserve nobody’s loyalty. And a spying Imperial? I suppose. But I won’t be called a bitch by the likes of you, warrior.” She spat the word, meaning it as an insult.

  “Calm down,” he muttered. “I called you ‘m’lady,’ didn’t I?” He let his eyes drift toward the cowering girl under the horse. “You again. Begone, I think I said, no?”

  She looked up at him with huge purple eyes, the sort a man could drown in. In the old days, he reflected, she’d have made a fine prize for a horny warrior. She cleared her throat, but her voice still tre
mbled when she spoke. “I’m trying to begone, sir,” she managed, gesturing to the horse. Again she and her mistress traded a glance, and again Lady Wennowes looked away. “I beg your mercy.”

  “I granted it once already,” he said bleakly, but he merely lashed out and gave her a hard kick beneath her ribs. “Go, girl, or I’ll kill you after all.”

  “M’lord,” she shrieked, and then she was gone, flitting into the night as if pursued by all the demons in the hells. Which, to her, he probably looked like. Maybe to Wennowes as well, but that did not bother him.

  “Well.” He sighed heavily. “How do you want it?”

  “Dolt,” she snapped. “I want a trial before a King’s Justiciar. And then, no doubt, a sword to the neck, or even a hanging; I care not.” She glanced angrily around. “But I will not die in my own stable.”

  He shrugged. “Then you shouldn’t have brought yourself here, m’lady.” His anger was swelling. “I’ll be plain: I don’t like you very much. The gods hate disloyalty, and so do I. And, on top of that, you fucked Cashel.”

  She blinked. “I fucked who?”

  Drinn’s smile in reply was dangerous. “Cashel. The man you sold to an Imperial Mage while his sperm was still in your smelly cunt,” and then he stepped up, cuffed her hard along the side of her head, and pushed the dirk up underneath her ribcage as she landed in the hay. He aimed for her liver; he wanted her to die very unhappily.

  She gave a harsh gasp, those fine legs of hers curling up instinctively as she lay and retched. “See,” he went emotionlessly on, “I don't much like traitors.” He stabbed again, then tore the blade back out in a vicious draw-cut across her belly. “And your friend, that fucking Imperial Mage of yours? He’s a right evil shit, and it was in your house that I found him. So here’s another, for keeping such poor company.” The woman shuddered, feeling the coldness of the long blade as he buried it into her breast. She glared up desperately, her eyes rolling like a horse’s, and suddenly Drinn felt the fury. “You and your men hurt my friend,” he hissed, and then it was a quick jab to her eye, the blade stirring as she writhed; the eye ripped free with a savage twist of the warrior’s wrist, and he kicked her savagely in her split gut, and then she was still, her breathing faint and growing fainter, her entrails flopping out into a spreading pool of blood as her fingers lost the strength to hold them in.

  He spat down at the twitching mess, and then wiped his boots and his blade on her skirt. On her finger Drinn noticed a nicely wrought gold ring, with a massive sapphire. He shrugged, his old battle instincts unable to let the ring lie on that dying hand. So he stooped, snapped and twisted and sawed until he got the finger off, and pocketed the jewelry; fucking thing ought to bring at least seventeen or eighteen golden mergansers. Then he went to find a cart.

  Epilogue

  The trees were growing rusty and dry when at last they rode over the grassy road plunging into the Priest’s Ford. The sea crossing to the port at the Palace had been rough, but then early autumn off the Cape was like that; poor Alorin Kaye had barely recovered her land legs, a sea-voyage typically being the only thing that ever made her anything other than unflappable. Her hair, the orange still persisting at the ends of her silver locks even after three weeks, was bothering her. On top of that, she was suffering bitterly from her monthly curse, swaying as her horse surged out of the water.

  “Home,” she croaked firmly; the passage of the River Allwhite meant they were back in the Borderlands at last, though still nearly two days’ ride from the Tower. Cashel nudged her.

  “So, what, you’re magically recovered now?” He was in little position for mockery; the voyage had left him, too, heaving over the side, and he was still kitten-weak and hideously uncomfortable after what the Imperial Mage had done to him. None of which kept Alorin’s arm from striking fast, a ringing slap that left the bard reeling. His horse seemed to laugh at him.

  “Don’t push it, Cash.”

  The coming of the owl interrupted whatever Cashel was planning on saying, albeit from a distance, and Franx let himself smile tightly at the bird as it plummeted down onto his arm, thence to hop onto his grey-hooded shoulder. “News from the Tower?” he asked it, digging into a pouch for one of the little celery sticks he kept as snacks for the bird. Alorin looked away as the owl retched it down.

  They all stopped, studying the turnip-field landscape, while the mage had one of his odd conversations with his familiar. The owl was accustomed to flying messages here and there, usually clutched firmly in one of its bony talons, but whenever it cranked its head around and moved its beak to Franx’ ear, the mage seemed perfectly able to understand it. “Really?” he said now, nodding. “And how does she know this?”

  The silence continued until, with a gently stroking finger, the mage rubbed the bird’s back. “Go on home, then,” he told it quietly. “You tell the Princess we should be back by Wednesday noon, if she cares. Oh, and have her write some of those people she knows over the Mountains; by now, somebody’s probably seen Aslo Farrick.” He was still bitter over the Imperial Mage’s escape, and hoped they could go out after him again soon. The owl blinked its gold-merganser eyes, snapped its head back upright, and was gone, a silhouette against the low clouds. Drinn was pulling his cloak listlessly around him.

  “Well,” Franx announced into the stilted silence. “It seems the Princess has had a letter from one of her Imperial friends over the Mountains.”

  “Should we celebrate the mail getting through now?” Drinn had had more beer than was good for him at the Palace the night before. “Is that what we’re reduced to?”

  “It seems,” Franx went on, not even looking at the warrior, “that the Imperials do not believe we’ve killed their chief spy in the Northlands.” He sighed. “We’ll lose money on that part of it, then.” The Princess always drove a hard bargain with her servants.

  “Funny,” Drinn smiled mirthlessly. “I could have sworn that was her eyeball I plucked off my dirk.”

  “No, the letters seem to suggest that Tallora Wennowes never was the Imperial agent there.” He looked around. “It seems to have been some other woman.”

  “So?” Drinn shrugged. “Alorin got that Bitch of Langmyre, too, if that’s what they mean.” He shuddered, looking nervously over at the valkyrie.

  “No, not her either. The Princess’ informant tells her we killed Langmyre in response to some sort of power struggle between her and the real spymaster. Something about everyone in Tallora Wennowes’ house knowing too much.” The mage looked steadily over at Cashel, who had a sudden sinking feeling. As in, sinking into a bath. “Cash? Any other members of Wennowes’ household that you might not have paid enough attention to?” Drinn, his eyes widening slowly, frowned at himself. Twice, he’d let the slinky little bitch go. Twice.

  Cashel looked away and thought about the wet, naked, weasel-like body, and he couldn’t help but smile a bit. Despite his yanked pubes.

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