"C-can't we k-keep d-doing what w-we have b-been?" Kestrel asked, after a moment of forlorn hesitation.
Rune and Talaysen both shook their heads, and Rune spoke first. "Sooner or later he's going to find another kind of seeking-charm, and give the new ones to his agents. We won't know how to counter them, and they'll find you again. And while we're waiting for that to happen, some of these other lunatics we've seen are going to realize you really are alive, and come looking for you themselves. Then what?"
She put the pie down; her appetite was entirely gone.
Sional set his mouth stubbornly and raised his chin. "I t-tell them t-to g-go t-to hell."
"And when they find a mage to change your mind for you?" Talaysen asked, gently. "Oh, don't shake your head, Kestrel. They've got mages, especially Church mages. And ask Gwyna how powerful some of them are. She spent several days as a bird-a real bird, with feathers-and for anyone who can turn a woman into a bird, taking over your mind would be a mere exercise." He closed his eyes for a moment. "What we've begun to learn-it's nothing compared to what happened to Gwyna. I think that one day, we will be powerful enough to protect you from all of them. Rune, especially; I've never heard of anyone facing down elves the way she did. But we aren't that strong yet."
"I-I d-d-d-" He paused, and flushed. "I h-have to t-talk t-to my uncle," he said, his eyes meeting first Rune's, then Gwyna's. "I d-don't kn-know what else t-t-to s-say. H-he w-wasn't always l-like th-this. M-m-maybe if I t-talk t-to him, he'll und-d-derstand. And l-leave m-me al-l-lone. Th-that's th-the only th-thing I c-can th-think of." His face twisted up, and he looked about to cry. "R-Robin, I l-l-l-"
She caught his hands in hers. "I know that," she replied. "I do, I know that. I love you. And if there's any way I can make you safe-"
"How are we going to get you to him?" Rune asked. "That's the first question-"
"I c-c-an remember th-the p-palace, g-g-good enough to d-draw a m-map," he said. "If Master Wr-wren c-can d-do what P-P-Peregrine d-did to m-make m-me remember-"
"I can," Talaysen said slowly. "Then what?"
"I f-find a w-way to t-talk t-to my uncle alone," Sion repeated. "In h-his b-bedroom, m-maybe. If I c-can t-talk t-to him alone, h-he'll have to believe me!"
"First problem," Rune pointed out. "Getting into the palace."
"You can leave that to me," Talaysen told her. "I've slipped into a fair number of buildings in my time. The easiest way in is as a servant, openly, since servants are invisible to those they serve."
"Next problem-what if your uncle won't believe you?" Gwyna was still pale, and she didn't look as if she liked this plan at all.
"Magic," Rune said. "At least we can keep him convinced long enough for us to get out of here and somewhere safer. After that-well, our influence is going to wear off after a while."
"I say we can fake Kestrel's death once we're well away," Talaysen said unexpectedly. "I faked my own, I ought to be able to do his!"
Slowly Gwyna's color came back, and she nodded. "That should work," she said, and grinned a little-a feeble grin, but it was there, and real. "If it makes him safe from his uncle and those greedy fools, that's the best solution of all."
Rune sighed with relief. Good sense to the rescue, she thought. "The only question I can see is, the fake won't hold forever-it didn't for Master Wren. Then what? We're right back at the beginning!"
Talaysen chuckled, much to her surprise, and evidently to Kestrel and Robin's as well, from the incredulous looks they gave him.
"Kestrel wasn't a famous Bardic Guild Master who refused to quit making music," he said. "That was my own fault. If I'd had the sense to become a carpenter or something, they'd never have found me again. Kestrel, on the other hand, is not going to go find himself another position as a prince, and no one but us knows he really is a Bard."
"All right," Rune said. "I can accept that. So now the question is-how to we get into the palace? Everything we want to do hinges on that. If we can't get in and convince Rolend long enough to give us that breathing space to fake a death, we can't make all this work."
"I've been thinking for the past week or so," Talaysen said slowly. "Trying to come up with a plan that would work whether Kestrel wanted the crown or not-and I think I've got one."
He couldn't possibly have said anything that would have had a better chance of capturing their attention. As one, they leaned forward to listen.
Talaysen nodded, as if he was satisfied. "Remember what I said about servants being invisible? Think about that-then remember what Rune and I can do to fog peoples' thoughts and confuse them. Combine those two factors, and I think we can get in ourselves, find a way into the private quarters, for all of us, and once we have that, we have everything. Now-here is what we do, to start. Or rather, what Rune and I do. . . ."
* * *
Rune scrubbed pots with a will, her hands deep in lukewarm, soapy water. and kept her head down with her hair straggling into her eyes.
She hummed as she worked, concentrating on not being noticed. The girl whose clothes she had stolen was her same height and general build, but she looked nothing like the Bard-and while she could use magic to keep people from looking too closely at her, if she worked too hard at bespelling people now, she'd have no energy reserves for dealing with King Rolend later. The kitchen suffered from lack of light, though, which was to her advantage. Talaysen and the other two looked a great deal more like their own counterparts, but she was the weakest link here; there simply weren't too many women with Rune's inches.
Too bad she didn't have another job, Rune thought, with an idle corner of her mind, as she chipped away at some burnt-on porridge that had been left there since this morning. When I left the Bear, I thought I'd left this behind me too. Ick. I hate pot-scrubbing.
The stone-walled kitchen, too small for the number of people crowded into it, was ill-lit, with only two lanterns for the whole room, cramped and hot; in the inevitable confusion of dinner preparation it had been fairly simple for them to slip into the root-cellar to hide, then to lure individuals away and knock them out with a song of sleep. Their victims would be found in the cellar some-time tomorrow, but the chances of their being discovered before then was fairly remote-Talaysen had waited until the last foray after roots and onions was over before sending them to dreams. There was no reason for anyone to go down there now, and raw roots weren't high on anyone's list of edibles to steal. King Rolend's expert handling of his people extended to his kitchens and servants-they were all well-fed, and if they stole anything to munch on, it would be a bit of meat or a pastry, not a raw onion.
The pot-scrubbers ate first, even before the courtiers and high servants that the meal had been prepared for, so the only time anyone said anything to Rune and her fellow cleaners, it was about the dirty dishes. Other than that, they were left alone.
She freed a hand long enough to wipe sweat from her forehead and the back of her neck. The other three had taken the place of other cleaners and sweepers. Gwyna was two stations over, in charge of pewter mugs and utensils; Talaysen and Sional had been in charge of carrying garbage out to the compost-heaps. Now they waited, brooms in hand, for the signal that the nobles were finished eating. That was when they and the other cleaners would trot up the steps into the dining-hall-
That is, that's what they would do if they really were sweepers.
The lowest of the low, the invisibles. Dull-witted, just bright enough to clean up after others, not bright enough to be any danger to anyone. That was the kind of servant Talaysen had been looking for to impersonate. Someone no one in his right mind would ever suspect.
It wouldn't be long now. The great ovens were closed; the last of the pastry courses had been sent out. Servants were trickling out of the kitchen, in the opposite direction of the stair they were going to take; heading for the barn-like servants' hall and their own dinner. A gong sounded above, as Rune watched them out of the corner of her eye. That was the signal that dinner was over, and no one was lingeri
ng over food or wanted something else. The cooks gathered up the last of their utensils and dropped them in the nearest dishtub. The cleaners could now begin their job-
The chief cook and all her helpers swept out of the room, chattering and complaining, which left no one to oversee the kitchen itself. The drudges on dishwashing duty were normally half-wits at best, like Maeve; dull creatures that would do anything they'd been set at until the last dish was washed, or until they were stopped and set on something new. They wouldn't notice when Gwyna and Rune left.
Talaysen and Sional hung back from the rest of the sweepers; like the drudges, the sweepers weren't the brightest of folk. Probably no one would notice that they were missing until noses were counted-and then it would be assumed that the missing men were either off drinking filched wine, or tupping the missing drudges. When servants were missing, their superiors generally assumed "improper conduct" rather than anything sinister, and the lowlier the servant, the more likely that was. That was why Talaysen had chosen the ones he had; the ones thought to be shiftless, ne'er-do-wells. When he and Rune had made their earlier foray into the kitchens, there'd been trouble with those two men over laziness and slacking. For the kitchen steward, it would simply seem a repetition of the same, with the tall simpleton drawn into the group to make up a foursome.
Gwyna and Rune dropped what they'd been working on back into the dishtubs and joined the men. As they had figured, the other drudges didn't even look up form their work.
"Follow me," Talaysen whispered, propping his broom in an out-of-the-way corner full of shadows where it might not be seen for a while. Kestrel did the same. Rune wiped her hands on her apron, grateful that the King's concern for his servants extended to keeping them bathed and clean. Some of the drudges she'd seen in inn kitchens would have given them away by the reek of their stolen clothing, and there weren't any fleas to torment the conspirators with unexpected biting at precisely the wrong moment.
They followed Talaysen up a back stair-not quietly, but yawning and letting their feet scuff against the stairsteps, talking among themselves as if they had just finished dinner and were heading for bed. Talaysen first, followed by Kestrel-then Robin and Rune together, as if they were two best friends, whispering and giggling behind Kestrel's back. This part of the staircase was well and brightly lit, and it would have been impossible to slip past the guard posted at the entrance to the second floor-so they weren't even going to try. Instead, they were going to be as obvious as possible.
The guard on the landing of the second floor-the floor with the royal suite on it-nodded to each of the men, and winked slyly at the women. Rune giggled and hid her face behind her hand as if she was shy. Robin gave him a saucy wink right back, and wrinkled her nose at him.
He gave her a pinch as she went by; she squealed and slapped playfully at his hand-but once again, the King's care for choosing his servants came to the fore. He made no effort to follow them, and no effort to back up his flirtation except a verbal one.
"Saucy wench like you needs a man t' keep her warm o'nights," the guard said, with a grin, but without leaving his post. "Tell ye what, ye be tired of an empty bed, or cold around about midnight, ye come lookin' for Lerson, eh? By then I be off."
"I might," Gwyna replied smartly, not betraying by so much as a blink that the guard had just told them something they hadn't known-when the change of guard was. "Then again, I might not!"
"Ah," Lerson growled playfully, faking a swat at her with his halberd. "Get along with ye!"
She scampered up the stairs behind Rune, who'd waited for her. They giggled together all the way up to the next landing-which was unguarded-where they opened and closed the door twice, to make it seem as if they'd gone to their quarters.
But instead of leaving the stairs at the servants' floor, they continued quietly, carefully, to the top, and the seldom-used storage rooms for old furniture.
Talaysen had been here before them, in the guise of a dim-witted fellow assigned to carrying up barrels of summer clothing, and he had made certain that the door at the top of the stairs was well-oiled. Nevertheless, Rune held her breath as he opened it, they all filed through it, and he closed it behind them without a betraying creak.
The darkness in this hall was total, and the air was thick with dust. She suppressed a sneeze.
This part of the plan was pivotal. She waited as Talaysen felt his way past them; then took Gwyna's hand at his whispered command. Gwyna held Kestrel's hand, and Kestrel had hold of Talaysen. Careful questioning of palace servants on Talaysen's last visit had told him of the existence of a spiral stairway that went straight from the Royal Suite to the attics, with no doorways out onto any other floors. It was guarded-but by only one man. It came out in a linen closet at the end of the hall, and had been built so that bedding and furniture could be lowered down the hollow center of the stairs by means of a block and tackle. That had been Talaysen's second job here-lowering down the boxes of warming-pans and featherbeds for winter. With no landings in between, the stairs could be made as narrow as feasible and still be used by men to guide the burden up or down. There was, however, no railing. And the stairs were bound to be just as dark as these attics.
Talaysen found the door and opened it, a little at a time. It did creak, and Rune just hoped that the guard at the bottom would attribute the tiny squeaks as Talaysen moved it, bit by bit, to mice.
She tried not to think of the drop that awaited her if she missed her step, and waited until it was her turn to follow Gwyna into the stairway. She felt her way along the wall, and inched her foot over the doorframe.
There. Her hand encountered the rough brickwork of the inside of the staircase, and her foot found the first step. And the abyss beyond it.
She pulled her foot back, and began the agonizingly slow progress down.
There was no way of telling time in the thick, stuffy darkness. She thought she heard Gwyna breathing just ahead of her, and the occasional scuff of a toe against the stone of the stair, but that was all. She couldn't have seen her hand if it was right in front of her face, rather than feeling the wall. She counted twenty steps-thirty-began to wonder if there was going to be an end to them. Maybe this was all a dream-or worse yet, maybe they were all really dead, killed protecting Kestrel, and this was their own private little hell, to descend this staircase forever and ever and never come to the bottom of it-
But before she managed to give herself a case of the horrors, her questing foot found only a flat surface, and she bumped into Gwyna.
Talaysen held his breath for a moment, and pressed his ear against the crack that marked the door into the linen closet. He heard nothing.
Good.
The King never expected any serious threat from above-so the guard on this stair was really one of the guards that patrolled the hallway beyond. And if what he had been told-under the influence of a "trust me" spell on another of the guards-was true, the guard stationed here was more in case someone broke in through one of the windows. He never checked in with anyone, from the moment he went on station, to the moment he turned his watch over to the next guard.
Talaysen eased the door open, slowly-this one, thank God, had been better taken care of than the one above. It opened with scarcely a squeak.
Now there was light; outlining the door at the other end of the closet. He motioned to the others to stay where they were, and eased himself up to kneel beside it, pressing his ear against the gap between door and frame.
There-there were the steps, slow, and steady, of the guard. He began to hum under his breath, timing his magic so that the guard would begin to feel sleepy just about when he reached the door to the linen closet.
The footsteps receded-then neared, and began to falter a little. He heard a yawn, quickly stifled, then another.
He hummed a little louder, concentrating with all his might. He would have to overcome the will of a stubborn, trained man-one who knew his duty was to stay awake, and would fight the magic, although he didn't know
what he was fighting.
Another yawn; a stumble. A gasp-
The sound of a heavy body falling against the wall beside the door, and sliding to the floor.
He flung open the door, quickly, squinting against light that was painful after the darkness of the stairway. A man in guard-uniform sprawled untidily on the dark wooden floor, his brow creased as if he was still trying to fight off the effects of the spell. With a quick gesture, Talaysen summoned Kestrel, and together they pulled the guard into the closet.
In a few moments, as the women sent him deeper into sleep, they had stripped him of weapons, bound and gagged him, and muffled him in a pile of sheets and comforters. Talaysen took his sword; while he wasn't an expert, he knew the use of one. Kestrel, who hadn't held a sword since childhood, seized the knife. With a quick glance up and down the hall to be certain they were unobserved, they stole out and headed for the King's private study at the end of the suite-the one place they knew they had a chance of catching the King alone. That had been the last bit of information they'd gotten on their scouting foray. No one entered that room without Rolend's express permission, not even servants-and Rolend always went there directly after dinner.
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