by Bell, Hilari
Fisk was right. They wanted the Rose enough to bargain for him. “I’ll be happy to show you…if you’ll agree to plead for leniency for those who signed with Roseman before they learned that he planned to commit treason.”
Given how closely Roseman had kept that secret, I thought this would include most of the mercenaries and mayhap even Jack. Though Jack and Wiederman were in the plot so deep, I doubted anything could save them from the noose.
“For lesser crimes,” I went on, “you can try and convict them as they deserve.”
“All right,” the commander said. “I’ll plead for any who didn’t know of the treason when they signed on. And I’ll make it clear that they surrendered voluntarily as soon as they could. But after that ’tis up to the judicars what becomes of them.”
’Twas an honest answer, and the best terms I was likely to get.
“Done. Let me tell the others, quickly, and I’ll take you to Roseman.”
It turned out to be impossible to tell the others quickly, and more shouted conversation ensued as the desperate mercenaries tried to obtain a guarantee of leniency. The garrison commander pointed out that he didn’t have authority over the judicars, but he said their surrender might be taken as proof of good faith. If they truly hadn’t known…
It soon became clear that this would take a while. Unless the mercenary commanders were more stupid than I thought they were, ’twould end in the deal Fisk had described. But I knew my orphans, and Roseman didn’t have time to waste.
“Give me some men,” I told the commander. “I’ll trust you to keep your word, and take them to Roseman now.”
I expected him to abandon the negotiations and go with me, for capturing the Rose himself was what an ambitious officer would do. Instead he sent a full troop, with a captain in charge of it, and remained to oversee the surrender—which was what a commander who cares about his men’s lives should do. I thought he would keep his promise, to try to get them off…and now, ’twas time to see if the orphans had kept theirs.
I led the Liege’s men to the stockyards. Walking through the maze of pens felt even more eerie accompanied by well-armed allies than it had surrounded by enemies…mayhap because my dread of what I’d find was greater.
We reached the sick-barn, and I stood for a moment with my hand on the latch, breath held in a last moment of hope that for once Fisk might be wrong.
It took only a glance at the bloodied mound of cloth and flesh, half buried in a heap of stones, to see my fears fulfilled.
The soldiers pushed past me, rushing into the barn, but I turned aside to lean against the wall, staring into the yard with eyes that watered in the brilliant light.
And the worst thing, as I listened to them exclaim over the savagery that had been done here, was that I wasn’t surprised. I had known, all along I had known, that if I left the Rose in the orphans’ power they would almost certainly kill him.
But if he’d been alive and free when the Liege’s men arrived, Fisk would have died. I had sacrificed those children’s souls to my friend’s survival…and even now, I didn’t see what else I could have done.
The guard captain emerged from the darkness, taking deep breaths to clear the stench of death. “You’re certain that’s Roseman?”
“’Twas Roseman I left chained to the post. If the dead man is chained to the post, then ’tis him.”
“Who did you leave guarding him?” His voice was cold—the Liege reserved the right to mete out justice to himself and his judicars. And at the moment, I cared no more for that than the orphans had.
“I left him with people who had such cause for hatred, that even if they knew they’d hang for it they’d have killed him anyway.” And I’d still left him there. “Do you really want to know who they are?”
“Not really. And ’twould be far too messy to charge the hero who captured the Rose with refusing to assist the law. Ridiculous, in fact. Assuming Captain Dalton confirms your identification of the body, I think the commander will be willing to accept that after his capture Master Roseman encountered some enemies, who took advantage of his helplessness to wreak revenge. That’s more or less the truth, anyway.”
“More or less.”
But the truth, the real truth, was that I’d left children to kill for me. I didn’t know what else I could have done…but this was not the act of a knight errant.
I stood at a study window, watching Michael and the two men who held Wiederman’s bound and struggling form walk through Roseman’s garden to the front gate.
“Will they agree?” Mustache murmured. Like several other officers, who’d come back to watch, his gaze was fixed on an empty street—beyond which lay the army that would decide all our fates.
“Why wouldn’t they? The people they want are Roseman and his chief subordinates. Everybody else is small fry. Or at least, you can claim to be. ‘I was following orders’ is an excuse that will resonate with military men. And they don’t want to get their men killed any more than you do.”
“Um.”
The gates swung open as Michael reached them, proving that there were soldiers sheltering behind…probably not just that wall, but all the walls around the house.
Wiederman was struggling violently now—though what he thought he could do if he broke free, surrounded by armed men, I had no idea. Maybe he wanted to die by the sword too.
But with all eyes fixed on the discussion—on which our lives really did hang—it was easy to turn and walk quietly away from the window. If Michael had been there I probably couldn’t have done it…which was why I’d made sure Michael wasn’t there. None of the guardsmen gave me more than a passing glance as I made my way to the kitchen, and down the basement stairs.
Jack left off trying to hook the key ring with his belt buckle.
“So you didn’t hide any picks down here,” I said. “You always were an optimist.”
“Fisk! I knew I could count on you to be sensible.”
“I hope you were sensible enough to plan an escape route,” I said. “Or you’re going to have to hide till the search has passed and everyone’s asleep. Even then the house will be guarded.”
“No need for that. Roseman had an escape tunnel dug when he bought this house. It runs from this room to a garden shed in the next block, and the shed’s roof is tall enough to get you over their wall. Wiederman and I were the only others who knew about it.”
I wondered if Tony Rose had silenced the diggers, or if Jack simply didn’t count them.
“Wiederman won’t be going.”
I took the time to look at the keys, and found the right one on the second try.
“Like old times, isn’t it, lad?” His bright, wild grin brought old memories flooding back. Not all of them were bad.
In truth, enough of them were good that my heart cracked, just a little.
I had long known that Michael would never forgive me for this. But while there was a world of difference between Jack and Michael, when it came to me, how much difference was there between being Michael’s squire and being Jack’s lad?
It was time to become my own man. Whatever the consequences.
Jack went straight to the back wall, where several large kegs lay in cradles. He pushed aside the block behind one of the levers that tipped them and dragged the lever back, much father than I’d have thought it could go. With a soft click, a section of what looked like solid stone wall swung open about two inches. As neat a mechanism as any I’d seen.
“You’ll have to slip out of town with me.” Jack pulled the panel wider. “The Liege’s men will be all over the place. Your friend with the tattoos will have a hard time getting past them.”
“Michael doesn’t have to hide from the Liege’s men,” I told him.
“This is no time to go soft on me. The judicars take treason very seriously.”
“They probably will,” I said. “You’re going to have to lay low for a long time. They’ll circulate your description, and every bounty hunter in the Realm
will be after you.”
“Then we’d better get moving.” But he stopped, a faint frown gathering as I made no move to follow him.
“I don’t have to run,” I said. “Michael and I have nothing to fear from the Liege’s men. I brought them here.”
In the old days, I used to try to startle Jack. He was smart enough, and knew me well enough, that it was curst hard. Now, seeing his eyes widen and his jaw drop, I couldn’t help but feel some satisfaction.
“You brought them? You… You took down Tony Rose?”
“And all his men,” I said. “And his empire. And you. You know, Jack, you might want to consider that just because a man doesn’t like scattering corpses in his wake, that doesn’t make him soft.”
The lamplight caught his face. For just a moment, before he swung the panel shut, I saw fear in Jack’s eyes.
It wasn’t because I’d beaten him, either. I’d become unpredictable. No longer his lad. I would never see Jack again—not if he saw me first.
I found I was glad of that.
I put the block back under the lever, which pretty much guaranteed Jack would be long gone before anyone found his escape route. Then I went back up to the kitchen.
The room was in chaos. The Liege’s troops were in the garden now, the Rose’s men exiting without weapons, their hands held out, empty, where the troops could see them.
I went into the hallway, where the Liege’s troops had already entered the house. Evidently, the kitchen had been the last area to surrender. They were still taking men in the Rose’s livery down the stairs and outside. I wasn’t in the Rose’s livery and carried no weapons, which put me lower on their priority list, but it wouldn’t let me leave the house unaccosted—and I wanted to get out before Michael came back. I’d have to talk to Michael, or he’d assume I’d been kidnapped or something and come after me. He’d done it once before. But we couldn’t have that kind of fight here, in public…where someone might overhear, and decide to hold Jack’s escape against me.
The door to Roseman’s office was open, and the crowd of those seeking to get in flowed out into the hall. Going nearer, I could see that the door to the inner office had been smashed, probably with an axe. A clerk came out through the jagged hole, carrying a padlocked document box.
“Lot eight, H through L,” he told another clerk, who jotted it down. As he made his way past me, I saw that the box had a tag tied to the lock, marked with the number.
I went on up to my room and packed my things. It took a few minutes to contrive a tag that looked like the one I’d seen, but I had pen and paper, and I managed. I marked my pack as lot fourteen, and carried it down the stairs and out of the house, walking briskly, like all the other clerks who swarmed about the place.
I made it out of the front doors, and it wasn’t the Liege’s troops that stopped me, but a familiar voice, pleading.
“Let the rats go back to their holes, good sir, the light hurts their eyes, tender, beady, their little feet running over sheets and corpses as they feed. The rats won’t like this, won’t like it if you cut off their tails. I have to feed them, back in the attic, so you must let me go. They eat blood they do, and flowers and seeds and needles. Let me feed them.”
The mad jeweler, surrounded and held by four Liege guardsmen. I couldn’t tell if the tears on his face came from crying or the bright light—though they’d let him turn away from the sun.
I went up to the man who appeared to be in charge of him.
“You do understand that his madness is real? He’s not faking.”
“Well, it can’t be a fake, not if he can work real magic,” the man said. “But I understand. We’ll watch out for him.”
That was a phrase that could be interpreted several different ways.
“He’s been tormented before, by people studying his magic,” I told them. “They got nothing from him. Roseman treated him almost decently, and this man served him well.”
Curiosity dawned in the soldier’s face. “The Liege wants to understand his magic too, but no one’s going to torment anyone. There’s a project at Pendarian University, that’s where he’s headed. Those professors, they teach kids. They aren’t monsters.”
Looking closer, I saw that the men who held him were gripping his arms quite gently, so it might be true.
“Excuse me, but who are you?”
I turned and walked away, ignoring him. He might have gone after me, if not for the evidence tag on my pack. And the fact that one of Roseman’s men, trying to escape, would never have stopped to chat with him.
Carrying “evidence” got me all the way out the gate. I walked to the cart where evidence was being logged in…and right on past it. One yank removed my makeshift tag, and I became just another man in the crowd. It had gathered rapidly, now that the battle was over.
In fact, as rumors that the Liege’s troops were sacking Roseman’s townhouse spread, it seemed like the whole city was turning out to watch. Making my way through the throng felt like swimming against a stiff current, and it took some time before I got far enough from the house that walking was no longer a struggle.
Those who hadn’t gone to see for themselves stood in the street, speculating wildly. Some said they’d got the Rose in chains, to haul off to the Liege to be hanged. Some said they’d hanged him already, from the balcony in the entry hall, or a tree in the yard. Or that he’d had his head cut off in the fight, clean off. Or no, it was his arm cut off, and he bled out before they could stop it, or… Everyone sounded nervous, but no one seemed particularly upset at the thought of Roseman’s death. Though I heard a few say the Rose was too smart to be taken, that he’d escaped through a secret tunnel and was long gone by now.
I noted that Jack’s so-secret tunnel was no secret from the friends and neighbors of the men who’d done the digging. For such a successful scammer, Jack wasn’t very perceptive about people.
I reached the inn where Michael had been staying and told the clerk I’d come to collect his things, since he’d probably be a guest of the High Liege for a while.
“You mean a prisoner?” The clerk was in his early teens. The older staff had probably gone to find out what was happening. “Did he get arrested, along with the Rose?”
“No, I mean a guest,” I said. “An honored one, because he helped bring about Roseman’s downfall.”
“How do you… Were you there? What’s going on? Is Tony Rose really dead? How…?”
I gave him a brief description of the battle, and he was so fascinated and distracted that he gave me the key to Michael’s room without proof or protest.
The room was bleak and somewhat shabby, like so many rooms we’d shared these last… More than two years, now. I would keep my temper, even if he lost his. I’d known what I was doing. No need to get mad about it.
I was always the one who packed both Michael’s and my bags, because I was neater. I’d gotten accustomed to sorting things by weight and fit, rather than what belonged to whom, so it took longer than usual.
I would miss Kathy’s letters.
I was finishing up when the door slammed open, and Michael strode in.
“You let Jack go. That’s why you sent me out to negotiate the surrender. So you could sneak down to the basement and let him go.”
“They’d have hanged him.”
“He deserved to hang! He was willingly complicit in starting a war that would have killed hundreds, maybe thousands, and who knows how many other crimes—and you let him go! I left children to kill, because that was the only way I could think of to save you. How could you do this?”
“I told you from the start that I wouldn’t go after Jack,” I pointed out. “You just didn’t listen.”
“But he ran off and left you to take the blame for some scam. He told us about that, Fisk. He bragged about it.”
“Yes. He did that. But he also taught me. I owed him.”
“I saved your life. But I notice that debt doesn’t weigh with you.”
“If you�
��re going to bring that up, I’d have to say that Jack’s probably saved my life more often than you have. That’s not what this is about.”
Michael clutched at his hair, a gesture I’d never seen him make. “This isn’t about loyalty. It’s about justice. It’s about right and wrong, and all the things that matter.”
And here we came to it. As I’d known we would.
“Those things don’t matter to me.”
“Yes, they do.” He’d deluded himself about that from the day we met. “I know they do, for I know you. Mayhap better than you know yourself! We can track him down, make this right. You know how he got out of the house. He may still be in the city. We can find him.”
“You couldn’t,” I said.
“But you could. You’re the only one who can. Who can make what I did, what the children did, mean something. Accomplish something.”
“Killing the Rose wasn’t enough? Your tender little children know what matters. They’re probably dancing on the man’s grave. And I betrayed Jack to Roseman to save your life, though you don’t seem to have noticed that.”
Despite my resolutions, I was shaking with anger. Michael might be right about some of it. I knew he was right about some of it, but I no longer cared. “You’re not the only one who’s had to compromise.”
“Is that how you see justice? As a compromise?”
“I see justice as a scam,” I said. “But that’s not what matters, really, even to you. The thing that’s making you so mad, is that for once it didn’t all end up the way you wanted it. You couldn’t create your perfect, knight-errant ending this time, no matter how hard you tried. Because this time, Michael, it wasn’t your call.”
“But you’re my…my…”
“No. I’m not your poxy squire, I’m not your employee. My debt to you was paid off long ago.”
“I acknowledged that! I freed you to go then. And I certainly free you to go now. Go, and make your own lousy, crooked choices. And no doubt get yourself hanged, if that’s how little justice means to you. Here’s your share of the blood money!”
Michael pulled a fat purse from his pocket and dumped roughly half of it onto the bed. Despite my emotional turmoil, the sight distracted me—the coins that clinked onto the blankets were gold roundels. And there were a lot of them.
