Not Exactly The Three Musketeers

by Joel Rosenberg

  It would have worked neatly, but Durine had already ducked to the right, his left arm flinging his cloak back like a fisherman tossing a net; there were several gold coins sewn into the hem of it, both as weights and as part of their collective cache of money.

  His left foot came up and caught the robber in the gut, kicking him away, the combination of the cloak and the kick taking him out of action at least for a moment, although Durine wouldn't have minded if the robber smashed his head open on the wall behind him.

  Moving swiftly, the boy in front of him brought up a knife, but Durine had been looking for that, too, and his left hand came down, seizing the wrist and squeezing it tight so that he could feel bones grind against each other, while his right hand slapped the boy's head back and forth once, twice, three times.

  Durine let the limp body drop to the ground, then stooped to pluck the knife from the boy's fingers. No sense in letting a nice knife go to waste.

  The other robber had bounced off the wall and fallen on his too-pretty face. The fool didn't have the presence of mind to lie still and hope Durine wouldn't bother with him - he was starting to struggle under the cloak, trying to get to his hands and knees and get it off him at the same time. Durine didn't want to get it all dirty and bloody, so he simply brought the bottom of his fist down on the hidden head, then snatched his cloak away.

  The cosh fell from nerveless fingers, and Durine kicked at the head with his boot, just once.

  Once was enough.

  Durine neither dawdled nor rushed as he retrieved their weapons, using the boy's knife to slice both of the coshes open, letting a stream of lead shot fall to the street. Durine never believed in carrying a cosh; he had hands, after all.

  The older robber's knife was a long rusty blade of cheap steel; Durine bent it double against the wall, and threw it to one side. But the boy's knife was another matter. Not a bad knife, at that. A finger-long blade of good sharp steel, single-edged, wooden hilt tightly wound with brass wire, flat steel pommel. The sort of thing a nobleman might carry at his waist. Certainly stolen, and probably worth keeping. With a little work on a new hilt - perhaps a thicker one that would fit better in Durine's oversized fingers? he would have to think about that

  - it would be unrecognizable, as it would have to be if he were to keep it.

  He wouldn't want to be accused of theft, after all.

  Durine sliced off a piece of the boy's shirt, wrapped the knife tightly, and stashed it in his own pouch before he knelt down next to the bodies. Sometimes it didn't work. Sometimes, even on a nice bright night like this, a night made for robbery, a pair would go to ground after their first score, and if that was so, if Durine was their first intended victim, that meant that Durine would have to find another set of robbers or go home none the -

  Ah. A fat purse gave up a nice handful of bright coins, and the hidden coachman's-style belt pouch disgorged a trio of engraved rings and a small handful of unmounted - well, now unmounted - jewels, although it was hard to tell what they were in the dark.

  No matter. The rings would melt down easily enough. The jewels, along with the money, he pocketed, and walked away, not bothering to check to see if by some chance either of the two footpads had survived. What were they going to do, go to an armsman and complain?

  Durine grinned to himself as he picked up his pace, now without a trace of weave in his walk.

  It was all logical, and Durine prided himself on being logical, if not particularly clever. He and his friends needed more money than simple soldiers earned, but Durine was unable to take it by honest means like gambling, and he was almost as unwilling as he was unsuited to being a thief.

  On the other hand, there was more than one way to graze in the tall grasses that Biemestren had become with the growth in trade of the empire, and there was little enough else to do with the family safely in residence at Biemestren Castle. If he could not or would not graze in the grasses himself, he could eat of those that did, and sometimes the grazing was good, and when the grazing was good the animals were fat with coin.

  He was still silently congratulating himself as he approached the barracks and found himself surrounded by a troop of men in imperial livery.

  "And you would be Durine?" the officer asked.

  "Well, yes." He shrugged. "Somebody has to be. Why not me?"

  Chapter 2

  The Dowager Empress

  The wind from the city below changed again, bringing the smell of horse urine and woodsmoke to her nostrils.

  Beralyn Furnael, dowager empress of Holtun-Bieme, quickened her pace along the broad stone walkway atop the battlements, a walkway that was lit only by flickering torches, widely spaced.

  She seethed as she walked the parapets, and swore half-remembered oaths taught to her in childhood by a family retainer more years ago than she tried to think about. As she passed the guard station, both of the soldiers leaped to a brace, despite her standing orders that everybody simply stay out of her way but otherwise ignore her during her nightly walk.

  She would have stopped to discuss the breach with them, but she was too tired, and felt that if she stopped, she wouldn't be able to start again. Besides, she already had an appointment to put a scare into some soldiers; there was no need for an appetizer before the meal.

  On to the next guard station...

  There were fourteen such stations along the outer wall of the keep; she had now passed a dozen, and had but two more to trudge past if her count was correct, which it was, more often than not.

  She had been making an effort to count of late. It felt as though the last few guard stations got further and further apart every day. She was getting too old, that was the problem, and while that problem would cure itself eventually, the rest of it wouldn't. This daily walk - rain, shine, sleet, or hail - around the top of Castle Biemestren's walls helped to keep her going, but tenday by tenday, it took more time and more effort, and the climb up the ninety-three steps to the parapet got harder and harder all the time.

  But iron will would succeed where soft flesh alone would have failed, and before she stepped off into the Great Dark, her son would be secure on his throne and his new dynasty established. Her nightly walk didn't just help to keep her thick old blood oozing slowly through her veins; it was a time to help her focus her thinking. The Widow of Biemestren Castle, they called her, and the walkway above the walls that encircled the outer ward was now called the Widow's Path, the term laden with equal portions of scorn and fear.

  Good. Let them all fear her. Scorn was perfectly acceptable, if the fear came with it. She had lost her husband and one son to the cursed Cullinanes, and while that maniac Jason Cullinane, the Cullinane heir, had chosen to abdicate the throne in favor of Thomen, that earned him and them no good will.

  Not from her. Thomen ought to have been the heir in the first place, not given the crown because Jason Cullinane just didn't want to be emperor.

  Besides, the Cullinane heir could probably reclaim the crown if and when he pleased. Beralyn didn't believe in fooling herself; while she didn't share the awe of the almost legendary Cullinanes and their Other Side friends, that put her in a small minority.

  Idiots, all of them.

  She had known the late, great Karl Cullinane all too well. He had been deft with a sword, no doubt, had had a certain air of authority and competence about him, but he had been clumsy enough to let both Rahff and Zherr get killed in his presence. And he had been reckless enough to get himself killed -and not leading his troops in battle, for which there would at least have been some sense and sanity, but while leading some pursuers away from his son, like a mother deer leading hunters from her hidden fawns.

  He had gotten what the mother deer usually got, and Beralyn Furnael missed him not at all.

  It wasn't like he was completely gone, either. Even dead, he lived on in legend: Karl Cullinane, the Old Emperor.

  If she had had any spare spit, she would have spat. On all the Cullinanes. Jason Cullinane was off somewhe
re, haring about, searching for some childhood friend who was in trouble, knowing full well that even though he was avoiding his responsibilities in the empire, others would look after his barony and his family for him, just as others had looked after his father's responsibilities for him. Jason's mother, Andrea, and his sister, Aiea, now slept safely in a guest suite not two floors away from Thomen, their doors guarded by soldiers from Barony Cullinane and Thomen's explicit and very public command that no harm was ever to come to them.

  Pfah. Beralyn could have laughed while they were murdered in their beds. If that wouldn't have made Thomen look like an accomplice in murder. If that wouldn't have made the emperor look like he couldn't even protect people under his own roof. If Thomen wouldn't have known that Beralyn was behind that. If, if, if - the bile rose in her throat at the taste of ifs.

  Captain Derinald was waiting for her at the last guard station. He was a tall, slim man with a careful way of speaking in counterpoint to the sloppy hand-waving gestures that spoke of his Nerish upbringing.

  "Good evening, Your Majesty," he said, his hands spread wide as though in greeting to a longlost friend. "It's good to see you looking so well."

  She grunted. "I understand that it is quite dark, Derinald, but even in the blackness of night you should be able to see - and smell, if that tiny nose of yours is good for anything beside impressing the ladies with how large the mustache underneath it is - that I'm sweating like a pig, just as you should easily be able to hear that I'm wheezing like a horse. I'm a feeble old woman, and easily gulled - as you well know - but I'm not easily moved by hollow pity or empty flattery."

  "Your Majesty is, of course, correct that she is not easily moved by such; permit me to tender my apologies." He offered the crook of his elbow, which she accepted with a quick tightening of her lips in gratitude. Walking up the stone steps was painful, but walking down was dangerous.

  "Since you've returned, I take it you found them?" she asked.

  "Of course, and as Your Majesty instructed," Derinald said, "they await you in the throne room."

  "And my son?"

  "Abed, presumably asleep."

  "Good."

  Thomen probably wouldn't approve of her intentions with the Cullinane soldiers, but what he didn't know, he wouldn't protest. What her son hadn't forbidden, Derinald would know better than to report to him. There were legends that the way a wizard created a thrall was to steal its soul and keep it in a bottle. There were simpler ways to do that if you were the dowager empress. It was merely a matter of finding someone who you could persuade you would reward for loyalty and silent obedience, and who you would even more certainly punish for any lack of either.

  It was hardly necessary to ride such a thrall with sharp spurs and a heavy bit. The certainty of punishment and an occasional reward were sufficient in and of themselves; taking the thrall into one's confidence sealed him in his obedience and industry.

  In this case, it was in essence a very simple plan, and there was no need to keep it from loyal Derinald.

  Thomen had wanted that horrible Walter Slovotsky to investigate that problem in Keranahan, thinking it not much of a problem at all - and, besides, it was his sort of thing. A no-doubt-pretty young noble girl, who needed some assistance? The legendary and entirely overrated Walter Slovotsky was perfect for such an assignment He would likely charm half the women of Keranahan out of their clothing and onto the nearest flat surface, and if in doing that he - whom Beralyn held responsible for Zherr's murder just as surely as if he himself had wielded the knife instead of Pirondael - might leave his own back open for someone else's knife, Beralyn would waste no tears.

  Which was why she had been prevailing upon her son to order Walter Slovotsky to Keranahan.

  It was just his sort of thing. He could take a carriage and ride out there, planning on retrieving the girl to Biemestren, spending his days pumping her in the carriage while enjoying the scenery.

  He certainly would make himself a nuisance there; perhaps he could just get himself killed.

  But Walter Slovotsky had dodged: he had left unceremoniously, in the middle of the night, before Thomen had the chance to make his suggestion and order.

  Still, with Walter Slovotsky gone, a few Cullinane soldiers would do.

  Either they would succeed in Keranahan, and their success would be hers, although it would only be a small one, or they would fail, and their failure would be the Cullinanes', and Beralyn would make that a major embarrassment. It was like that child's game of egg, rock, and water. Egg floats in water, rock smashes egg, water washes rock.

  If your opponent picked before you, you could always win. And if you could force him to choose ...

  She touched at her pocket, where the letter rested.

  'Take me to my rooms. I'll want to bathe and change before I meet them."

  Derinald nodded. "Of course, Your Majesty. It will do them no harm to await your pleasure."

  She gave a derisive sniff at the very thought that one could even think otherwise.

  Pirojil had never liked throne rooms, and this one was worse than most. Too many memories, some of them personal.

  Even before the conquest of Holtun had turned the two countries into the empire of Holtun-Bieme, the Old Emperor - then, technically, Prince Karl Cullinane - had had Prince Pirondael's bric-a-brac self-portraiture stripped away from the walls, the carpets rolled up and put away, and the tables and chairs and rows of benches moved over to the Home Guard mess, leaving the large room stark and empty save for the elevated throne at the far end. The throne room hadn't gotten much use for audiences, not during the war years, and not during the following ones - although the Old Emperor had been known to bring in a bunch of randomly chosen Home Guard soldiers for a practice melee with padded sticks every now and then, giving a special bruising to any one of them who he even suspected might be taking it easy on him.

  Pirojil rubbed at his shoulder at the memory. The truth was that he had just been suffering from a spot of indigestion that day - but that hadn't saved him from the Old Emperor.

  He suppressed a grin at the memory. He had done a lot more for Karl Cullinane than take a few bruises with good enough grace.

  There was a time when he and the other two had ridden through hell at the Old Emperor's side, the sole survivors of the whole troop that Karl Cullinane had taken with him on the foolish escapade that had gotten him killed, as Durine had always known that his excesses would. Nobles didn't go out and risk their own tender hides; that's what they had soldiers for.

  But even after Karl Cullinane's death, while Jason Cullinane was the heir and Thomen Furnael but the regent, Pirojil, Kethol, and Durine might have been, at least in theory, ordinary soldiers, but they had been his companions in battle, and that had brought a certain status.

  But now it was different. Lush Kiaran tapestries in deep, restful shades of rich forest green and midnight blues covered the walls, and ankle-deep carpets, dark crimson like fresh blood, covered the floors.

  The oak tables and chairs and benches were back, and they had spawned others - when Parliament met, the barons and major lords were dined here -and another, equally large and majestic chair had been added next to the emperor's throne.

  Kethol's head cocked to one side. "I don't know why she added another throne for him," he said.

  Durine just grunted; the big man didn't think it was funny, either.

  Pirojil's hand dropped to where the hilt of his sword should have been, would have been, in the old days. The Old Emperor used to grin at that habit of Pirojil's, a habit that Pirojil had to consciously control.

  But these days there was no Cullinane on the throne, and there was no sword at his hip. These days, the three of them were to come unarmed into the Residence, on the rare occasions when they were summoned to the Residence at all.

  Pirojil turned at the sound of footsteps to see the arrival of the dowager empress, accompanied by Captain Derinald and a quartet of soldiers from the House Guard.


  Her dumpy bulk was concealed by a long-sleeved black muslin dress that didn't quite cover the blocky shoes, and her dark gray hair was tied back tightly behind her head, as though keeping it tight kept her lined face from falling off.

  Derinald and the rest of the soldiers were decked out in the black and white uniform of the House Guard: black leather tunic over a rough-woven cotton shirt and black cotton trousers for the soldiers; blousy white shirt and black leather vest over silver-trimmed trousers for the officer. There were some that said the House Guard were the very elite of the Home Guard, the emperor's personal troops. And there were others, like Pirojil, Kethol, and Durine, who just thought they dressed better - but Pirojil, Kethol, and Durine knew well enough to think that and not say it.

  Pirojil and the other two had come to a stiff brace, which the dowager empress dismissed with a flip of her liver-spotted hand.

  "Be easy, you three, be easy," she said, her eyes sunken pits in her piggish face. The flickering light of the torches on the walls enhanced the already-deep hollows in her cheeks.

  The bright gold clasp at her throat, holding the collar of her dress tightly closed against her livery flesh, provided the only bright note in her dress, or her person. Her withered lips were pursed into a permanent frown, and her jawline was jowly and doughy, but the eyes still held more intelligence than Pirojil was comfortable with.

  Intelligence was an important thing, he had long ago learned to his anguish and pain, but intelligence was not always a friendly thing.

  "I have a problem, and I require your help in solving it," she said. "It will require some time and effort."

  Kethol nodded. "Our pleasure, of course," he said, lying for all three of mem.

  "But you haven't heard what it is yet," she said with the slightest of sneers, as though she had taken Kethol at face value.