Duke Randall embraced Prince Alaric, who beamed his most charming smile. Then the duke bowed low over Brigit’s hand, before the prince escorted her away. Everything that happened up there had another meaning, or three, a mummer’s show Elisha could not hope to understand. The best way he could get on in this world of nobles would be to get out of it, taking up his tools in a distant town where no one had heard his name and neither assassin nor benefactor would bother to hunt him down.
But first, his brother’s child must be laid to rest. Shaking off Mortimer’s demands for his execution, Elisha damped his awareness, his very presence, down to nothing. He passed a couple kissing in an alcove, their masks resting on a nearby bench, and casually took up one of the stifling things to slip over his face. As he walked, he cast a slight deflection, calling upon the law of opposites to send out the idea of his absence. He made it small and local, not wanting to arouse too much suspicion. Elisha merged into the crowd as it departed through various arches and came to where the royal party said their farewells and good-nights.
“I’ll need my horse in the morning—early,” Alaric was saying to the duke’s steward.
“As you wish, Your Majesty.”
Brigit smiled thinly as the man bowed away from them, then she remarked, “I thought you would accompany me to the lodge, my lord.” These last words were a purr so sweet that Elisha knew she was furious. Pregnancy often heightened a woman’s emotions, and he wondered if she were feeling the effects and if her lord had noticed.
“Randall’s support is a good start,” Alaric responded, “but I have many other barons to meet, not to mention the Commons. And as you see, I’ll have to keep the various factions from killing one another if I’m to bring them together in my support. The French wish to pay their respects at Canterbury, and I’m hard-pressed to make excuses not to go with them. Come, darling, I’ll escort you to your room.”
A small cadre of knights and ladies fell in with them, allowing Elisha to dodge Brigit’s glance. “Those are not the only allies we must court,” she replied, maintaining her overly pleasant demeanor. “And a word from the king could win them over.”
“I’m sure a word from the future queen will be sufficient.” He, too, smiled, but fiercely. “The king has many obligations.”
“Not least of which are his promises to me.”
“I will be there as soon as I might,” he replied firmly, then added, “I have no wish to be separated from you any longer than I must.” Alaric caressed her shoulder as they stopped before a door, the knights and ladies separating, leaving Elisha lurking beyond the light of the last torch. Brigit glanced around, frowning, but Alaric’s palm moved up to cup her chin. “Do what you can and assure your friends that I’ll do what I can, when the time is right.”
“Of course, my lord,” she said, accepting his light kiss. “Let us talk again—very soon.”
“As soon as I may.” Alaric drew back. “I’m leaving early for London. Take the carriage when you go to the lodge.”
Her expression turned sour. “The carriage will take forever.”
“You are the lady who would be queen.” He touched the tip of her nose, as if admonishing a child, and Elisha briefly thought she would snap off the end of his finger. “If you must go, then you must go safely and with all due privilege. Sleep well.” Alaric gave a slight bow and turned with his guards to the room across the hall—the duke’s own chamber, given up for the occasion.
“What, should I fear bandits, my lord?” she called after him.
Alaric’s back went rigid, his jaw knotted, and Brigit nearly smiled. “Don’t worry, my lord, I shall take every precaution.” He shoved through the door and let it thump to behind him.
Brigit stared after him while the ladies made pretenses of yawning or stroking down their skirts. This little power play, though made of riddles, gave Elisha a hint of satisfaction. Brigit may have won her place, but all was not as settled as it seemed. She lifted her head at last. “Attend me.” She swept into her room with the ladies in parade and the last one shut the door. All due privilege indeed, but Elisha could hardly deflect the eyes and ears of half a dozen women in such close quarters in order to follow her and perhaps learn more.
Elisha turned away, at last, for his own bed in the dispensary, alongside the infirmary. This business about the lodge seemed a promising lead. Brigit apparently planned to meet with her supporters, other witches, from what she said. Yet Alaric didn’t deem her contacts important enough for his own presence. With that on top of his obvious interest in the woman the French were apparently offering, it was no wonder Brigit was furious. The important thing was she would be away from her prince and in the company of friends—Elisha’s as well as her own. If she took the carriage as commanded, Elisha could even be there ahead of her, to search for the talisman and prepare to confront her more directly if need be, if he could figure out where she was going.
He had not gone far past the Hall when a quiet step fell in with his, and Elisha stopped and turned swiftly, his guard returning with the sting in his shoulder.
The little Frenchman stood there, once again in his mask and tunic.
“If you’re trying not to be recognized, sir, you’ll have to take more care with your garters.” Elisha pointed, and the man’s exaggerated mask aimed downward, sagging. Then he reached up and slipped off the mask, sliding back his hair.
A bit younger than Elisha, with hair the color of flax and an angular face, the Frenchman squared his shoulders. “You are in danger here, too alone.”
“I don’t want what you’re offering, nor will I go to Paris.” Elisha started moving again, and the messenger caught up.
“You do not know what I offer! Nor for whom.” The accent grew suddenly stronger, the voice sharper, and Elisha slowed unwillingly. The man looked around quickly and drew closer, his face in the weak light of the distant torches looking sickly, his eyes too dark. “The voyage of the ambassador was a fortunate timing for me. It is not on the king’s behalf that I ask, but for the rest of us.”
“If you’re going to ask me to kill your king, then best go now,” Elisha snapped, adding an edge of menace, but the little man stumbled, his hands reaching, his breath caught. “Good God,” Elisha breathed, “not really.”
The messenger looked around again. “Do not speak so, I beg of you.” He swallowed and shook himself.
Elisha, too, lowered his voice. “I spoke in jest. Or rather, I thought I did.”
Steeling himself, the man knit his fingers together. “Is it permitted to talk another way?” Elisha must have looked confused, for the other extended his hand a little, inviting contact, then finished the gesture, placing his fingertips lightly on Elisha’s hand. He could feel the effort of will to craft the words, the sense of another language running underneath, before the man spoke at last, skin to skin. “Our king is gone strange. I am of his household, and I see many things.”
“My own country has enough trouble without adding yours.” Elisha suppressed his next thought, that Alaric, as king, would be trouble again, even without Brigit at his side. Unless Elisha were willing to become an assassin in truth, there was nothing he could do about that.
“Our king will make trouble for yours, if he suspects weakness. The ambassador will tell him all, and already he has agents here to find his chance.”
“I’m not the one you should be warning.” Elisha moved as if to shake him off, but the messenger hung on, coming with him almost to the door of his room.
“He has been killing us. We cannot see how he can know who we are—we have done nothing, made no act, and yet the arrests come, or simply the knife.” The man still shielded his emotions from the contact, but couldn’t hide his fear. His dark eyes searched Elisha’s face.
“Then what do you want from me? I will kill no more kings.”
“Help us to come here. Help us to know who to trust.”
Elisha almost laughed. “Oh, you have come to the wrong man.”
Th
e French magus shook his head. “When I came to you, I pushed you, to see what kind of man you are. You have committed a great act, and with a great magic, yet you live at liberty. It seems this country may be more favorable than our own land.”
Elisha’s own position was precarious, but he might know others who would help, if he had the freedom to think without worrying that he would betray his thoughts. “My room is here. We can talk in the air.”
He pushed open the door to usher the stranger inside, the messenger giving a little nod as he stepped through, then a horrific shriek as a pair of blades hacked through him, blood spattering from his lips as the sound died.
Chapter 5
The messenger collapsed backward as the blades tore out again, grating on bone. Elisha caught him, swinging with him toward the floor. The shriek reverberated against the stone, and a voice called out. The attacker moved swiftly, metal gleaming, knives shone against the bare skin of his chest. He glanced down. “Shit.” Then he lunged with a strange creak and clatter.
Elisha scrambled sideways, carrying the Frenchman with him, and the weapon slid along his arm, thunking again into the messenger’s chest. The messenger jerked and shuddered against him as the blades ripped free again.
“Shit.” The attacker lurched into motion, running, blood dripping, back down the corridor Elisha had just come from.
“Hallo! What happened? Holy Mother!” yelped the night attendant emerging from the infirmary.
“A man attacked us. He ran for the Great Hall—shirtless and bloody. Stop him and send help. Go, go!” Elisha shouted as he rolled the Frenchman to the floor, already stripping off his own doublet and tunic to staunch the wounds. He held the magus on his side, pressing the silk against the pulsing wounds at his back. The man’s hand groped up his arm, clinging. Elisha opened all his senses, searching for the wounds with practiced hands and the awareness of the magi. Nine blows penetrated the man’s chest. Elisha brought to bear all his anatomical knowledge, following each blow almost as if he moved with the weapon. Five thrusts cut the man’s heart as if slicing it for a feast.
Blood gushed over Elisha’s hand, soaking the shirt. Too much, too fast. The magus’s grip tightened, burrowing into his flesh, and Elisha stilled. A burst of images sprang through the contact—a king at prayer, a witch dying, castles and towers, the king again, meeting with several others, a grand figure with a hat like an arched door, who blessed the king in a church so magnificent it dazzled the viewer. Then cold, an ebbing away. Elisha reached back, tried to cling to that fading life as he sought for the means to stop so many wounds. He urged the flesh to heal, fumbling in his pouch for the slight talisman he carried, a scrap of cloth given to him by a friend and returned to him after he had applied it in a more traditional healing. The talisman, endowed now with the strength of friendship, the urgency of his earlier need, and even the blood of the nobleman he had bandaged with it, magnified his talent. Power warmed his hands, the wounded flesh rousing, twitching to his urgency. The slashed heart gave a thump and a shudder, and blood sluiced over Elisha’s knees. The weapon must have many blades, for he swore the attacker had struck only twice. Blades in both hands? Maybe. Bare-chested? Had he imagined that? The Frenchman’s erratic heartbeat grew still, and the slight response of his own healing instinct faded, the flesh releasing all tension. A magus could be strongest in death, but even then he must live long enough to use it.
Elisha crumpled the cloth talisman in his hands, slumping back on his heels. He had lost many on the battlefield, but at least he’d had a chance, a knowledge of what was coming, if nothing else. This …
“Elisha.” Mordecai’s hand was on his back, and others came near.
“A man was hiding in my chamber. He had a knife, a handful of knives—I don’t know.”
The night attendant returned, hurrying along with a pair of servants from the Hall. “What can we do?” he called, then swallowed and stopped as he took in the scene. “Nobody covered in blood, sir, though some of ’em are sleeping without their shirts. I don’t see how he could’ve got out, but maybe through the arches, if he dodged the king’s men.”
“Bare-chested and bloody? He’d’ve had to cross the breadth of the hall, and nobody noticed?”
“Not so’s we’ve heard.” The attendant tipped his hands. “Anything taken, sir?”
“I’ll check,” Mordecai said, slipping back the comforting heat of his hand to lead the attendant inside. After a moment, a candle was lit and their voices murmured.
“That’s one of the Frenchmen,” one of the servants said.
“The ambassador will need to be told, but the duke first.” Elisha dripped again with another man’s blood. He was careful not to wipe his face.
“I’ll go to his Grace.” The young woman trotted off.
“A few of the containers are missing, some expensive things,” Mordecai said. “Looks like robbery.” It would explain the clatter of the man’s emergence. Elisha searched his memory for any detail of the man’s presence, chill and cutting and angry: not enough to identify him. “Who is this?” Mordecai held out a sheet and the two of them covered the dead man, leaving a square of linen pale against the stained stone of the floor.
“The man who approached me earlier. He came to ask me some questions.” Elisha rose stiffly, bloody garments still clutched in his hands, his branded chest spattered as well. “He was already in fear for his life.” Elisha stared down at the covered corpse, the day’s second, and both times his own life had been at risk. Robbery? Or a second murder attempt? And what to make of the jumbled images the magus sent him with his dying breath? “I need to wash up. Could you ask his Grace to meet me in the chapel, if he’s willing?”
Mordecai’s eyebrows rose, but he gave a nod. “We’ll see to the body.”
Down a short flight of steps from the infirmary was one of the castle’s three wells, with a trough alongside, easily filled. Elisha scrubbed as best he could and pulled on one of the damp shirts that always hung nearby. He knew it had been a slow time in the infirmary if the shirt he’d worn at the last surgery had time to dry. His trousers would be stiff with blood, but he’d deal with that later. Something in the messenger’s sending was bothering him, something he hoped the chapel would help him understand. Taking a lantern from its loop, Elisha crossed the lower and upper yards to the little church that served the duke’s retainers. A few candles still flickered on the side and main altars, but not enough to reach the painted ceiling. Elisha held up his lantern, illuminating the half-dome flared with gold around the figure of Christ. To either side stood a pair of Evangelists, and there—he saw the man he was looking for, a man in the same hat he’d seen through the Frenchman’s eyes: Saint Peter.
“Elisha? I’ve just left the French ambassadors. First their gift is ruined and now this.” Randall spread his hands and let them drop.
“The pope,” Elisha said, pointing up. “That’s the hat, isn’t it, Your Grace, the one Saint Peter wears?”
Randall clenched his teeth, and gave a nod. “I am talking to you about quelling a war with the French and you are asking me about Saint Peter’s mitre.”
“The dead man was a magus, he came to me to ask for help in immigrating here—for all of the magi he knows in Paris. Their king has been killing them. He showed me a series of visions, memories. One of them showed the king meeting with the Pope.”
“Yes, well, they’re both French, aren’t they? If his critics are to be believed, the king is the Pope’s master, even before the Lord. Is this all you know about the killing?”
“He feared for his life, Your Grace, and now he’s lost it. Maybe we should be asking the French what they know.”
The duke groaned. “I have no intention of leading them to believe I think them guilty of killing their own. I’ve already had to invent a twisted ankle to explain his being in the infirmary in the first place. It seems to have been a robbery, and that should satisfy them, though it would look better if we’d caught the man. And I don’t
expect anything will placate them but for a long visit with His Royal Highness, Prince Alaric.” He sat heavily on the single pew, reserved for his family, and ran his fingers through what remained of his hair. “I had thought to send you to them in the morning, to tell the tale. In light of what you say, it seems better I should keep you away. Perhaps find an urgent mission to send you on for the time being.”
Elisha stared down at his master, his almost-friend. To him, the death was personal, an affront because he could not prevent it, but to Randall, it was something else entirely: a tiny move on a vast field. Lowering the lantern, the bloody trousers sticking to his legs, Elisha came forward, trying to remember everything that had happened. “He told me their king would be eager for war, if he spotted weakness, Your Grace. I’d wager the killer was a magus as well, and he concealed himself from the searchers.”
Randall gave a slight nod. “That’s something. Allyson might be able to look. I’ll tell her what you’ve said about the magi of France, as well. I believe she may have kin across the channel.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Elisha gave a bow of his head, but Randall waved it off.
“I’ll have to face them all in the morning. Many of the barons still hold land over there.” He set his hands on his knees and pushed himself up. For a moment, their eyes met, and the duke shook his head. “We both need our rest.”
“Aye, Your Grace,” Elisha murmured as he followed the older man out into the night.
When he tumbled into his own bed, it was not his own king he dreamed of, and the branded skin of his palm and chest itched like the Devil, looking for a way in.
When he prowled into the solar too early the next morning, in search of breakfast, he found the duke already there and nearly withdrew at the relief on the man’s face. “Then we are still friends, in spite of everything—come, sit,” Randall called out. “I was rather harsh last night. It’s been a dreadful spring, and summer looks no better.” He waved Elisha toward a cushioned seat, a breadknife still in his hand. “Have you recovered from last night’s trouble?”
Elisha Magus Page 4
