by Sharon Green
But they didn’t knock. The sound of a key scraping in the lock came, and then the door was thrown open and more than one set of boots stomped in. That was when Elissia let herself “wake up” with a start, and when she saw the men staring at her she pulled the quilt up to her chin with a gasp.
“Your pardon, young mistress, but we’re searching for an escaped criminal,” one of the two men said, the older of the two. “Have you seen or heard anything of someone creeping around here?”
“N-no, sir, I haven’t,” Elissia answered in a quavery voice that wasn’t all acting. “I’ve been sleeping, bubut if anyone had tried to come in, I would have heard them.”
“Maybe we ought to make sure by checking under those quilts,” the younger guardsmen said with a leering grin, obviously impressed by Elissia’s wide-eyed “innocence.” “It’s a dirty job, but I’m willing to do it.”
“Save it for your off-duty time,” the first guardsman growled in disapproval, then looked at Elissia again. “We’re sorry to have bothered you, young mistress, and we’re leaving now. But if you happen to see any sign of that fugitive, send for us right away. There’s a reward for anyone who helps us to recapture him.”
“A reward?” Elissia asked, less nervousness and more interest in her voice now. “How much of a reward?”
“Ten silver pieces,” the guardsman answered, glancing at the younger man with satisfaction. Frightening the “young girl” wouldn’t have done anything to make her want to cooperate with them.
“Think of all the things you could buy with that much silver.”
“Oh, I am thinking,” Elissia agreed with a small amount of distraction, then she looked at the older guardsmen again with a smile. “I’ll make sure to look around very carefully once I’m up, and if I see anything odd I’ll send for you at once. Or will sending for any guardsman do as well?”
“Any of us will do, as long as the fugitive is put back where he belongs,” the man answered with a sigh.
“But make sure he doesn’t find out what you’re doing. He likes to play with pretty young things like you before he kills them, so don’t take any chances.”
“No, I certainly won’t,” Elissia agreed, back to being wide-eyed and frightened. “I’ll make sure I’m very careful.”
The man nodded before gesturing his companion out with him, and once they were outside the door was relocked. Elissia stayed where she was until she heard them finish up checking the last of the rooms on the floor, then got up as the sound of their boots faded down the stairs. If for some reason they’d come back, she hadn’t wanted them to find her dressed in boy’s clothing. She pulled her clothes out from their hiding place and began to get into them, and by the time she was dressed, Gardal had slid out from under the bed.
“You sounded awfully interested in that reward,” he said as he stood up. “Does that mean you intend to turn me in as soon as I’m not looking?”
“Of course,” she agreed as she finished with her boots and also stood. “I knew that freeing you would put a price on your head, and I’ve only been waiting for it to get high enough. Once I collect, I intend to buy myself some new clothes. This outfit has gone well beyond rank, and if I take a bath it will only be worse.”
“I’m in the same position, so I know what you mean,” Gardal agreed wryly. “Living in the same set of clothes for days ends up turning your stomach, but looking for new ones could get us caught. We’ll just have to put up with it until we’re out of here.”
Elissia nodded her agreement, then went to the window. She had no intention of going downstairs until the guardsmen were completely gone from the whole area, not even with her cap on. If one of those two guardsmen happened to see her, they were bound to get suspicious
“While we’re waiting for them to leave, why don’t you tell me about what happened that turned you so completely against Derand,” Gardal said from a small distance behind her. “At first I thought you were just voicing an opinion with nothing to back it up, but thinking about it made me change my mind. You’ve actually met and talked to him, haven’t you.”
Elissia hesitated a very long minute, but Gardal wasn’t guessing. He’d always been good at knowing certain things, and this time she couldn’t walk away from the conversation. But that didn’t mean she had to tell him everything
“Yes, I met and talked to him at the palace,” she admitted, speaking the absolute truth as she continued to keep her gaze on the window. “He acted gracious and charming while Father was there, but once we were alone he hurt me. At one point he said he’d let the marriage be annulled, then he changed his mind and afterward changed it a second time. I have no idea where he stands on the question at the moment, nor do I care. I refuse to be his wife under any circumstances.”
“I really don’t understand this,” Gardal said, his voice now showing his disturbance. “I can see you’re telling the truth, but that doesn’t sound at all like Derand. He’s been my friend ever since we were boys, and he’s never been anything but honest and fair.”
“Maybe that’s because he had no interest in getting you into bed,” Elissia said, forcing herself to sound disgusted and disillusioned. “He made me lie with him, and when I tried to protest he just laughed and said it was something his family believed in doing. And then he used that to hurt me even more.”
Elissia had carefully slanted the story, but there was enough truth in the last part of it that Gardal couldn’t help but notice. His hand came to her shoulder in silent support, commiserating with her without using possibly empty words. She reached over and put her own hand on his, thanking him just as silently, and they stood there like that for quite some time.
The guardsmen were very thorough before they finally left, and Elissia didn’t rush from the room as soon as they were out of sight. It was clear they were still in the neighborhood, checking everywhere, and could conceivably come back. For that reason Elissia resigned herself to even more of a wait, and then jumped when there was a knock at the door.
“Your breakfast is now being delivered,” Renni’s voice came from outside, calming the pounding of Elissia’s heart. “Please open the door for me, my hands are rather full.”
Elissia put a hand up to keep Gardal from going immediately to the door, then went there herself after gesturing him into standing behind it. Renni hadn’t used any names, and it was just possible that she was being forced to say what she had. Elissia unlocked and opened the door slowly and carefully, putting only her head out, but the precautions were unnecessary. Renni stood there alone with a tray in her hands, and she grinned when she saw Elissia.
“If you’re not going to let me in, I’ll have to eat all this myself,” Renni said in a very soft voice, obviously teasing. “I thought there might be hungry people in this room, but if I was wrong ”
“You’re not wrong, so come on in,” Gardal said at once after having looked through the slit of the opened door. “It’s okay, El, she’s alone out there.”
Elissia had already begun to step back, and once she was out of the way Renni carried the food in.
“After missing supper last night, I knew someone would be interested in this,” she said, glancing at Gardal. “If you’re still hungry once this is all gone, send ‘Sentor’ down for more. He still has a long way to go before using up the silver he paid when he first got here.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, following her to the bed as though he were on a string. “My, my, but that does smell good.”
“Then help yourself,” she said, putting the tray down and giving him clear access to it. “There really is enough for two.”
She’d turned to Elissia with that, but after closing the door Elissia found that she wasn’t in that much of a rush to get to the food. The conversation she’d had with Gardal had done a good job of killing her appetite
“You’ve got nothing better to do than eat, so you might as well get down to it,” Renni said when she saw the expression Elissia hadn’t been able to hide comple
tely. “With all those guardsmen prowling around the neighborhood, Wyole won’t be by for quite some time even if he’s expected. And I got the impression they’re checking out all neighborhoods, trying to find this escaped criminal of theirs. They’ve even got part of the army involved in the search.”
“The part that’s voluntary rather than conscripted, I’ll bet,” Elissia said, disliking the sound of the whole thing. “That criminal is someone who really sounds dangerous, so I won’t be surprised if they have orders to take him dead instead of alive. Waysten would be in a lot of trouble if people found out who the fugitive really is.”
“She said she’s decided to turn me in because she wants the silver they’re offering as a reward,” Gardal put in around a mouthful of food. “Now that she thinks they’ll probably kill me out of hand, I wonder if she intends to change her mind.”
“Not if you keep saying things like that I won’t,” Elissia told him as Renni chuckled. “And stop looking at the food on my plate. If Wyole makes it through after all, I intend to be ready to leave at once.”
Gardal protested his innocence without pausing in taking his meal, so Elissia went over to the bed and began to do her own eating. She really did need the food to keep up her strength, and she knew her brother well enough to know that he would have eaten her portion without a second thought. She would not mind at all going after more for him if he was still hungry when he finished, but she still had a younger sister’s hatred of letting her older brother near anything of hers.
Renni wished them a good appetite and went back downstairs, leaving Elissia and Gardal to eat in peace. After a short while Elissia discovered that she wasn’t able to stuff any more down, and Gardal graciously offered to help finish what she hadn’t. So she sipped tea from her cup while Gardal cleaned her plate, and once he was through she gave him the best smile she could.
“If you really do want more, I don’t mind going after it,” she said when he looked over at her. “Renni’s a marvelous cook, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is, but unfortunately I don’t have the room for more,” Gardal said with what sounded like true regret. “If we’re still here by lunchtime, I’ll see if I can take you up on your offer.”
“All right,” Elissia agreed, and then they ran out of what to say. She wished she knew whether they would still be there at lunchtime, and the worry that they probably would be obviously bothered Gardal as well. The longer it took for them to leave the city, the greater the chance that someone would discover the whereabouts of the “fugitive.”
The minutes and hours dragged slowly past, and Elissia discovered that Gardal’s pacing was beginning to fray her nerves rather badly. When she knew she couldn’t stand another second of it, she decided to take the breakfast tray downstairs and see if anything was ready for lunch. Eating would distract Gardal for a while, and maybe then –
Once again Elissia’s heart began to pound at the knock on the door, and this time Gardal didn’t have to be told to stand where he couldn’t be seen. Elissia went to the door the way she had earlier, but peeking out showed no one but Renni. This time, however, the small woman looked excited rather than amused.
“Wyole is here, and he’s come with good news,” she said as soon as she was in the room. “The word is spreading everywhere that the fugitive has been recaptured, and it seems to be true. The men from the army have gone back to their barracks, and the guardsmen have stopped searching houses. That should mean that you two will be able to leave soon.”
“That is good news,” Gardal enthused while Elissia tried to forget what it was she would be leaving to find. “And if things go well enough, we might even be able to ride straight through the gates without anyone stopping us.”
“Don’t think about that even for a minute,” Elissia said at once, brought sharply back to the problem of keeping Gardal safe. “If Waysten decided it was taking too long to find you, he could well have called off the search and circulated that rumor just to draw you out of hiding. If you thought it was safe to just ride through the gates you might be silly enough to try it, and then he would have you again without turning the whole city upside down. We’ll wait for Wyole’s people to find us a different way out, even if it takes longer than we want to wait.”
“All right, all right, we’ll do it your way,” Gardal said with both hands held up in front of him. “You always have been better at this sort of thing than I am, so I won’t argue with you. But what about going down for some lunch? I’m starving again.”
“You’re always starving,” Elissia said while Renni chuckled, then Renni took the tray and the two of them left. As they walked downstairs, Elissia couldn’t help wondering if the story about the recapture was just a ruse. If it wasn’t, some poor innocent had been taken in Gardal’s place, and Elissia felt really sorry for whoever it might be
Derand, in his male disguise, finished the breakfast Kravil had cooked for him and then he went to a window to stand and look outside. He, Kravil, and two of the men were the only ones left in the house, everyone else having gone out looking for the girl and her brother hours earlier. Even Listan had gone, joining the search rather than simply directing it. There was also someone keeping an eye on the blue house, just in case the girl took her brother there. Derand didn’t really expect her to, but the possibility still had to be covered.
“If we don’t find them soon, we’ll find instead that we’ve run out of time,” Derand muttered, staring out at a neat back garden without really seeing it. “If I’d told her the entire plan, at least she’d understand what I’m up against and do something to ease the situation. But she can’t work with a plan she doesn’t know about, so if this whole things comes apart it’s no one’s fault but my own.”
Derand had done a lot of thinking since the fiasco of the day before, and because of that he’d also spent a lot of time cursing at himself. He’d admired the girl’s cleverness and ability, and then he’d gone ahead and discounted her entirely. He’d seen her in the future as one of his most trusted advisors, but he hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her everything he meant to do. Now he stood here waiting and worrying, about her and Gardal both. Time was quickly running out, and what could happen to the two if they weren’t found soon was something he didn’t want to imagine.
“And you know she has to be deliberately hiding from you,” he told himself, leaning one hand on the window frame. “You caused her anguish and then walked away, but you’re not feeling so righteously justified anymore, are you? You were a fool to do that to her, and now you’re paying for it.”
Yes, he was paying, all right, and the final price might end up being much too high. It was too late to change the plan he’d set in motion the day before, and couldn’t even change the timing of it. He should have arranged for some way to communicate with the others, but that would have added to their risk and so he hadn’t. How many other things were there that he should have done but hadn’t?
A knock at the front door intruded on Derand’s thoughts, a distraction that was very much a relief. Being left alone with his thoughts was something he usually appreciated, but right now it was more like being silently tortured. And going to answer the door was his to do. Kravil was busy in the kitchen cleaning up, and the two men left as guards were under orders not to let themselves be seen. Private guards in houses like that stayed out of the way, doing nothing to bring themselves to the attention of guests.
So Derand strode to the door and pulled it open – only to freeze in place. Six guardsmen were right outside, with one of them standing forward as spokesman.
“Excuse the intrusion, my lord, but we’re searching for an escaped fugitive,” the guardsman began, then he looked a bit more closely at Derand. “Are you the owner of this house?”
“No, no I’m not,” Derand said at once, reminded of what he looked like by the way the guardsman inspected him closely. “I’m just here visiting, and at the moment the owner is out. What did this fugitive of yours do?”
; “He’s a murderer, and there’s a reward for his capture,” the guardsman muttered in answer as he began to move forward. “How can you be here visiting when the owner of the house is out? And why would the owner of a house like this have someone like you visiting him? You’re not even dressed as well as the servants around here. I think you’re lying.”
“But why would I lie?” Derand tried desperately, silently cursing the gleam of intelligence in the man’s eyes. Guardsmen were supposed to be stupid, but the one in front of him wasn’t typical of the breed. “If you’ll wait until the house’s owner gets back, he’ll be able to tell you – ”
“I have a better idea,” the guardsman interrupted, and at his gesture Derand was suddenly being held by the other guardsmen who had quickly surrounded him. “Instead of waiting for someone who might never show up, let’s look a bit more closely at someone who’s already here.”
Derand tried to pull himself free of the hands holding him without making too much of a fuss, but it was way past time for smoothing things over. The lead guardsman reached over and yanked on Derand’s false beard, and the fool thing came away much too easily. When that happened other hands came to hold Derand still, and a sword point was even presented to his throat.
“Now, isn’t this interesting?” the guardsman said with amusement, glancing at the false beard before throwing it away. “Let’s see if there are any other surprises waiting to be discovered.”
A pair of minutes later Derand stood there without the wig and shape-altering pillow as well, and the guardsman was positively delighted.
“Do you men see now what can be accomplished if you keep your eyes open?” he said to the others, his satisfied stare resting only on Derand. “We’ve just earned ourselves that reward in silver.”
“I’m not the escaped murderer you’re looking for,” Derand tried to insist, but a blow to the back of his head cut the words short.
