Player's Ruse

by Hilari Bell

  But Jed slid down Chant’s shoulder, stepped up to the ramshackle remains of a water tank, and called confidently, “Come out and talk, you wart. I know you’re there, and if you don’t show your face, I’ll climb up and make you.”

  For a moment I thought his confidence misplaced. Then a muffled thump sounded in the broken tank and half a face peered through a gap in the crumbling slats. A familiar half a face. My heart began to pound.

  “You and who else,” a young voice answered. “I’m not afraid of you, Jed Potter, and they’re too big for the ladder.”

  “That’s him, isn’t it?” Jed demanded, and I heard Fisk fishing out our purse without waiting for my reply. Jed slipped away, and I tethered the horses and approached the old tank.

  He was right about the ladder; I’d not have trusted the decrepit wood with a child’s weight, much less my own.

  “You’ve no need to climb down,” I told the boy. “We only want to know who asked you to give me that note last night. And we’ll pay well.”

  Fisk, always alert, pulled out a silver roundel and flipped it.

  The eye widened, then narrowed warily. “No, you’re not getting me down. I didn’t have nothing to do with it. I just brought the note.”

  “You’ve heard about Master Dorn’s fall?”

  “I didn’t have nothing to do with it!” His voice grew shrill. “We used to tease him sometimes, but that was all. I didn’t do anything.” His breath caught.

  “Of course you didn’t.” I said with all the assurance I could muster. “Master Dorn fell down a flight of stairs. How could your note be responsible for that?”

  The single hazel eye searched mine, hope dawning. How long had this poor lad hidden, fearing he was somehow responsible for a man’s death?

  “You’re sure? Honest, for real?”

  “Yes. Think about it. Notes don’t make people fall down the stairs.”

  “What if you did it?”

  “Then Sheriff Todd would have arrested me,” I said. “He was there last night, you know. You’ve done nothing wrong, and neither have I. But if you tell me about the man who gave you the note, mayhap between us we can make something right.”

  The boy’s face vanished, and for a moment I thought I’d failed—then the hatch at the bottom of the tank squealed open and a pair of scuffed shoes emerged, followed by grubby legs, in grubby britches. He wasn’t wearing stockings.

  I sat on one of the crates to appear less threatening, and Fisk followed my example. He spun the roundel between his fingers, making it flash. The implicit invitation drew the child several steps nearer, though he stayed well outside our reach. His face bore a spattering of freckles I’d not noticed in the candlelight; his expression was deeply suspicious.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Who gave you the note?” I asked patiently.

  The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. Never seen him before.”

  Not a surprise, but disappointing. “Can you describe him?”

  Another shrug. “He was old.” For a boy his age that covered anything from twenty to ninety, but he went on without prompting. “His hair was almost all gray—just a bit of dark in it.”

  “Was he a sturdy old man,” Fisk cut in, “or feeble?” He rose slowly, so as not to alarm the boy, and walked a few steps in an old man’s tottering shuffle. The boy giggled.

  “Not like that. He looked like a working man.”

  “And a stranger,” I said thoughtfully. “I’d guess you know many of the working men in this town. Was he a sailor, mayhap?”

  “No,” said the boy. “They dress different. I thought . . .”

  I waited.

  “I thought he might be a farmer, in for the day. They sometimes look like that when they come into town.”

  “Were his hands hard or soft?” Fisk asked.

  “Hard.” The reply was confident. “That’s part of why I thought he was a working man.”

  “Did you notice anything else about him?” I touched the place below my eye where I’d ridden into a jagged branch when I was only a little older than the boy before me. “A scar? The color of his eyes? Something about his clothes?”

  If there was anything distinctive about the man, he hadn’t noticed it, and I rather thought he would’ve. Those hazel eyes were as sharp as they were wary.

  “A middle-aged countryman with no distinguishing features.” Fisk summed it up. “That’s even worse than a boy with straight brown hair.”

  He flipped the coin and tossed it to the child, who caught it but didn’t run off. “You swear that note didn’t have nothing to do with Ebb dying?” he asked again.

  “I swear,” I said. “It might have been sent to bring me to the scene, but he’d have died exactly the same no matter what you did with the note.”

  Color seeped into the child’s face; now that we’d paid him, we had no reason to lie.

  “Would you . . . What’s your name, lad? Oh, don’t look like that, I just want something to call you. I’m Michael Sevenson, by the way, a knight errant in search of adventure and good deeds, and this is my squire, Fisk.”

  The boy’s eyes widened; then he shrugged, caring little for adult craziness. “Cappy.”

  “All right, Cappy. If you saw this old man again would you recognize him?”

  “Yeah. The note didn’t make him fall, but the people who sent it killed him, didn’t they?”

  He wasn’t a fool, for all his youth.

  “I think so,” I said gently. “Though ’tis possible he simply fell. An accident.”

  Cappy didn’t believe that any more than I did.

  “Will you help us find the man? We’ll pay you a sliver roundel a day.”

  “A ha’,” said Fisk. “Unless this takes a lot less time than I think it will.”

  “What about it?” I held the boy’s gaze with my own. “You say you used to tease Ebb Dorn. There aren’t many ways you can apologize for that now. And you get to ride a horse.”

  His eyes flew to Chant and Tipple. “The destrier?”

  “The destrier.” I’d thought that might turn the trick.

  “A silver roundel a day?”

  “A ha’,” Fisk repeated firmly. “Unless Sir Michael has another bright idea?”

  “Sorry.” I motioned for Cappy to follow me over to Chant. “This time we have to do it the hard way.”

  There wasn’t enough daylight left, so we arranged to meet Cappy next morning. I worried that he’d not show, despite the lure of riding a destrier and being paid for it. But the next morning found him, tousled and yawning, beside the well where he’d told us to meet him.

  He woke up swiftly when I swung him onto Chant’s rump; he gripped the saddle’s cantle with one hand and the back of my doublet with the other, and asked if we could go for a run, “Since the streets are empty, near enough.”

  ’Twas not that early, and folk on their way to shop and work yard were streaming onto the cobbles. But the day’s heat was not yet oppressive, so I promised him a gallop down the first empty, uncobbled road we came to.

  We started our search among the farms at the city’s western edge, simply because ’twas nearest.

  At the first farmhouse the goodwife told us they had no men who matched Cappy’s description working their farm, nor did the next house up the road. But Merril’s uncle Hap might be the man we sought. And so might Master Kellan, up Cowslipper Creek, or Master Ridgby who grew grapes over by Pirate’s Lay, and had a brother who answered that description too, now that she thought on it. . . .

  Sturdy old men with no distinguishing features were even commoner than brown-haired street urchins, and while the urchins had come to us, the farmers were all afield and we had to go to them. At least Cappy got his gallop before the heat set in.

  What I remember most about that day is the dust and the stillness. Fat clouds scudded overhead, and I feared Nutter was right about a storm building. I saw no ships amid the waves’ sparkling dance, and I hoped they were all making
haste to shore.

  Eventually we made our way inland. We spoke to old men amid fields of grapes, beets, squash, grapes, flax, more grapes . . . The early crops were ripening, and it had been a good year. Huckerston wouldn’t starve, whatever the wreckers did to their trade.

  As Cappy rejected man after man, we were able to add to our description and skip the old men shorter than Fisk, and the ones whose hair was all gray or white. But there were still too many of them, and we’d not visited an eighth of the farms that surrounded the city when we stopped for a luncheon of corn biscuits, cheese, and melon that a farm wife had provided. The melon brought back memories that seemed funny now, and we amused young Cappy with the tale of the skunk. He needed some amusement, poor lad.

  “How long are you going on with this?” he demanded. “It could take years to visit all these farms. The guy could die of old age by the time we get there.”

  “Then you should be delighted,” Fisk told him. “A silver ha’ a day for years would set you up in a good apprenticeship.”

  “Huh,” Cappy snorted. Unfortunately his mouth was full. He wiped melon juice off his chin with the back of his hand. “I’ve seen your purse, mate. You don’t have that much.”

  “It won’t take years,” I said. “I should guess three or four days to cover all the countryside. Unless we get lucky.”

  I wasn’t sure Cappy could withstand another day of squirming boredom; after a certain number of hours even a destrier is just a horse. By late afternoon I was wondering if I should give him the reins and start his first riding lesson now, or use that as a lure to bring him back on the morrow. Then our luck came in.

  The old man in the dusty straw hat, propping braces under the sagging limbs of a laden apple tree, looked much like any of the dozens we’d already seen—but Cappy’s slim body stiffened behind me, and the hand grasping my doublet tightened.

  “Good sir,” I called. “Would you spare us a moment?”

  He looked up, startled at being interrupted in the midst of his own orchard. But he stepped forward willingly and removed his hat, revealing a sun-browned face and a pleasant smile.

  “It’s him,” said Cappy. There was no doubt in his voice.

  The old man didn’t notice the boy until he spoke, and dismay vanquished his smile. “You’re the lad I gave that note to—curse me, I feared it might be trouble.” His eyes searched Fisk’s face, and mine, resting on the small scar beneath my eye. “You’d be the one the note was for, wouldn’t you, sir?”

  “Michael Sevenson,” I said. “I’m a knight errant, in search of adventure and good deeds, and this is my squire, Fisk. We’ve been looking for you for some time, Master . . .?”

  “Sanders.” His brows had flown up when I introduced myself. Now his pale eyes crinkled, but he fought manfully and did not laugh. “I thought there was something strange about that note,” he went on, the humor fading from his face. “I couldn’t see why the fellow didn’t deliver it himself if it was so urgent, or have the town crier carry it. But I couldn’t see any harm in it, either. Was I wrong?”

  His eyes were steady on mine and I couldn’t lie. “The note itself did no harm, but we fear the man who gave it to you may have. A man fell down the stairs to his death that night, and ’twas your note summoned me to witness it—and mayhap be blamed, but for some luck and the goodwill of others.”

  “To his death? But how could . . . No, tell me everything.”

  “We’d prefer it,” said Fisk, “if you told us everything. Who gave you that note?”

  “I didn’t know him.” Sanders looked deeply concerned, as might any good man finding himself involved in such a scheme. “I don’t go into town much these days, but I’d a broken plow blade for the smith, and I stopped at a tavern to talk to some friends. It was dark before I started back. A man stopped me on the street. He said he’d a note to deliver to a man at the big party Banker Burke was having, but he was late for another engagement and had no time to take it himself. Said he’d pay me a silver quart to hire a boy to take it in. I told him I’d deliver it if it was so important, but he said no, a lad would cause less commotion slipping through the crowd. He didn’t want to anger Master Burke, disturbing his party.” He turned worried eyes from me to Fisk, seeking understanding. “Burke’s got a temper, and the money to back it up. So I looked about till I found a likely lad”—he nodded to Cappy, who nodded gravely in reply—“and sent him in. And now you say a man’s dead?”

  “ ’Twas not your fault, Master Sanders,” I assured him. “It might even have been an accident. I believe the sheriff has called it so. Can you describe the man who gave you the note?”

  My reference to the sheriff seemed to reassure him. “Aye, right enough. He was a youngish fellow, in his thirties I’d say, on the short side and very slender. Kind that gets bullied sometimes, as a kid.” My heart was sinking—there must be thousands of such men in Huckerston, but he went on, “I thought it lucky he’d the brains to go for clerking.”

  “What made you think he was a clerk?” Fisk asked. At least that narrowed it down. There couldn’t be more than three or four hundred clerks in a town this size.

  “Well, he dressed like a clerk,” said the farmer. “Kind of plain, with no lace or ruffles on his cuffs. But mostly it was because clerks’ vision goes faster; all that reading and figuring, hard on the eyes. You don’t see a lot of folk that age in spectacles.”

  * * *

  I stopped the first town-bound carter I saw—he was hauling a load of raw clay for the potteries—and paid him to take Cappy back with him. I told them both ’twas because Fisk and I had no need to return to town, but the truth was that if I couldn’t share my tumbling speculations soon, I might burst. ’Twould be both unfair and dangerous to burden young Cappy with more knowledge of this affair.

  Fisk paid him off, and the carter too, and we watched them roll away. The slanting sun of late afternoon cast humps of shade across the road—a welcome respite, since the day was hot enough to send sweat trickling down my spine. The moment they were out of earshot, I said, “Burke. It has to be Burke.”

  Fisk drew up Tipple’s reins and set her walking in the direction of Makejoye’s camp. “Not necessarily. Willy Dawkins can’t be the only slim man in Huckerston who wears spectacles.”

  “But ’tis the perfect alibi!” I exclaimed. “Burke was at the party, but the note came from outside. And what better place to plan a murder than your own house.”

  “Almost anywhere, I’d think,” said Fisk dryly. “It almost guarantees that you’re one of the suspects.”

  “Not if you were in full view of every important person in town for the whole evening,” I countered. “As I said, the perfect alibi. No one suspects him.”

  “Except you, Noble Sir,” said Fisk. “How do you think he pushed Ebb Dorn down the stairs—not to mention why—while in full view of every—”

  “He didn’t do it himself,” I interrupted. “ ’Twas probably one of those hard-looking men-at-arms. Just as ’tis they who go out and wreck the ships for him.”

  “So you think Burke is the brains behind the wreckers?”

  “Tell me you don’t think ’tis all connected,” I demanded.

  Fisk’s scowl deepened, but he couldn’t deny it.

  “Fisk, what’s the difference between a banker and a bandit?”

  He gave me a suspicious look. “A banker makes you fill out contracts.”

  “Exactly. As head of the Bankers’ Guild, Burke has access to all the insurance records—which means he has access to the ships’ manifests. He’d know better than anyone when to send his men to light the fires.”

  Fisk was scowling again, as he does when he wants to disagree with me but can’t. “He’s pretty . . . trusting to send his men out without supervision. Most criminal gang leaders want to be there when the job goes down.”

  “Well, I can’t see Burke scrambling up and down the cliff paths. Besides, it lets him give himself an alibi. He probably has a subordinate among h
is men whom he trusts, who commands in his absence. A troupe of men-at-arms would be a perfect cover for a wrecking gang—he can hire them from out of town without anyone thinking it strange. People expect them to be tough, dangerous, and good with their swords. And they have no ties to the local community—’tis far safer than trying to find a local bully who’ll commit murder after murder and not talk.”

  Remembering the cold-eyed men who’d handed me over to the sheriff, I had no difficulty thinking of them as the wreckers—now. At the time the thought had never crossed my mind. No more than it had crossed the sheriff’s, or anyone else’s.

  “This man is clever, Fisk,” I said slowly. “Underestimating him would be a bad idea.”

  “Well, I refuse to burgle his house,” said Fisk. “One of those hounds was bad enough, and if his armsmen really are the wreck—”

  “No one’s asking you to burgle his house,” I said. “I’ve never asked you to burgle anything—’tis always your idea. We have to figure out another way to find evidence against him.”

  “I don’t want to find evidence against him,” said Fisk. “If you’re right, and you actually might be, I want to stay as far away from him as possible.”

  “I knew you’d agree,” I said. “And think of—”

  “No,” Fisk said hastily. “I don’t care about the reward. Besides, if everything is connected, then why is Burke trying to drive Makejoye away? He had a contract holding us here; if he was behind everything, surely he’d have canceled it.”

  ’Twas my turn to frown. “Mayhap he feared ’twould draw suspicion on him. Or feared he might lose stature if he canceled the performance.”

  Fisk snorted. “He doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Besides, he could have hired the Skydancers and paid Makejoye a cancellation fee. No one would have thought twice about it.”

  “Then I don’t know. Mayhap the harassment isn’t connected to the wrecking after all.”

  “Your theory has too many holes in it, Noble Sir.”

  “Do you think I’m wrong? About it being Burke?”