Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda

by Joel Rosenberg

  But it wasn’t so.

  He couldn’t breathe, and if Pirojil and Erenor hadn’t been hold ing him upright, he surely would have fallen, but he wasn’t dead, he wasn’t gone. He was still there. He couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t speak; his heart couldn’t beat, and he missed breath and speech and heartbeating, but he was still there.

  And then, slowly, the blackness swept up and over him until it became a light as white as that of Erenor’s faerie flare, and his last thought was not to wonder if he was the only person ever to notice that a man didn’t die instantly when his heart stopped, but rather to wonder how many before had learned this just before it all went —

  16

  NIGHT IN CASTLE KERANAHAN

  PIROJIL WASN’T THE one who liked to take chances. The man looked dead, yes, but …

  He eased the tip of his belt knife into the dead man’s neck, right over the artery, to let the blood ooze — and it oozed, not spurted, which meant that the assassin was indeed dead — before he let the body drop to the carpet.

  He didn’t even feel badly about it.

  After all, the castle servitors would have had to take the carpet out and wash it anyway, after the way the would-be killer had voided himself in death.

  Well, at least he hadn’t gotten any on Pirojil. That was something.

  Pirojil had smelled the shit-stink of men fouling themselves in death more times than he probably could count, and of a surety more times than he cared to count, but, still, he tried to avoid breathing through his nose until he led the other two out into the hallway. The fact that he was familiar with the smell didn’t mean that he had to endure it unnecessarily, after all.

  And killing?

  There were times when killing bothered him, at least some, but not when the intended victim had been Kethol, and —

  Not Kethol, he corrected himself. Kethol was gone, disappeared, lost somewhere in Therranj, living with the elves, maybe dead.

  But definitely gone. The baron was not Kethol. The baron was Forinel, Baron Keranahan, who had recently returned from Therranj to the Empire of Holtun-Bieme to claim his barony, and if the connection would seem suspicious to anyone — and there was no reason why it would — why, the two men didn’t look the same. Kethol — wherever he was, which certainly wasn’t here, of course — was about the same height, but lanky and rawboned, with a shock of red hair that had lost only some of its fire over the years. Forinel was about the same height, but built solidly, and with features far more regular, and a much smaller collection of scars.

  This wasn’t Kethol. This was Forinel. It was getting harder and harder to remember that, and while Pirojil was certain that he would never speak it out loud, he had to constantly watch himself. This supposed Forinel’s swordfighting technique was identical to Kethol’s, but of the few swordsman Pirojil knew who were familiar enough with Kethol’s style — not to mention good enough to detect that — none were here, after all.

  And, also granted, his skills with a longbow were far beyond what Leria had remembered of Forinel as a boy — but it wasn’t impossible that Forinel had learned the Way of the Bow while off in the Katharhd and Therranj.

  Remember, he thought. This is Forinel, not Kethol.

  It was important to keep reminding himself of that even in private. That way, there was less of a chance of him making a mistake in public, and he had come far too close to that the other night in Dereneyl.

  Erenor looked insufferably smug as he tucked his lightstick away into a hidden pocket in his robes. Not well hidden enough — wan, yellow light shone through like a firefly that couldn’t seem to turn itself off. Noticing that, Erenor muttered a low, guttural phrase and the light died even more quickly than the assassin had.

  He shook his head. “Well, the only good side of this I can see is that it does give the baron some additional legitimacy.”

  Pirojil had decided, some time back, that it was easy to waste time trying to figure Erenor out. Half a heartbeat was far too much time trying to figure Erenor out — whatever else you could say for the wizard/swindler, his mind twisted in unpredictable directions.

  “Very well,” he said, “why is that a good thing?”

  Erenor laughed. “You really don’t see?”

  “No, I really don’t see,” Pirojil said.

  Erenor had taken to laughing a lot at Pirojil lately, and Pirojil would have found that irritating if he didn’t already find just about everything about Erenor irritating. There was always the temptation to improve Erenor’s attitude with a few cuffs and kicks, but Pirojil felt that if he started in with that, he’d never know where to stop.

  Not that that was, necessarily, a bad idea.

  “It’s a good thing,” Erenor said, his tone insulting in its patience, “because it guarantees that whoever sent our late, lamented friend is … well aware that the baron is home, and not elsewhere.”

  As usual, Erenor had a point, and, also as usual, he’d expressed it in a way that would probably make no sense to other ears. If somebody outside of the very small circle that knew of the deception and substitution had been listening in, they’d not have gotten a clue.

  The noise had finally brought the guard — two soldiers, clad in light leather armor, were making their way cautiously up the staircase, the leader holding a lantern in one hand, and the other still had his sword sheathed.

  Idiots.

  Too afraid to disturb His Lordship’s slumber to do their fucking job.

  Pirojil blamed them, and Thirien, the idiot senile captain of the House Guard, and would have blamed himself if Erenor hadn’t noticed the bad security and decided that — at least while Leria was in Biemestren, answering the Dowager Empress’s summons to attend her — Kethol should room with them while Erenor baited a trap with a seeming.

  It had, at the time, seemed overly cautious to Pirojil. After all, you simply couldn’t protect yourself from all dangers, everywhere, but you could wear yourself down to a nub worrying about it.

  If it had been anybody but Kethol, his longtime com — if it had been anybody but Forinel, Baron Keranahan, Pirojil would have been more annoyed with Erenor for having been right than he would have been upset at another dead body.

  Pirojil was used to dead bodies, after all.

  “Is there … is there some problem, Captain Pirojil?” the taller asked. Pirojil tried to remember his name, but he didn’t try too hard. The possibility of getting friendly with the Keranahanian troops was small, and the idea had less appeal.

  “You know,” he said, keeping his voice level with some effort, “that I once served as part of the Emperor’s bodyguard. The Old Emperor — Karl Cullinane himself.”

  “Yes, but —”

  He had intended to surprise the guards with the body, but a waft of air from the room brought the smell into the corridor. Nostrils flared and eyes widened.

  “I don’t know about you, but I always figured that letting an assassin in to kill the man I was supposed to protect was a bad idea.

  “Don’t send for the servants. Clean it up yourselves.”

  Their discipline had been ruined by somebody, Pirojil decided, when they looked to Forinel for confirmation. Well, at least they were looking to Forinel, and not Erenor.

  Forinel just nodded. “Tell Captain Thirien we’ll be out in the garden.”

  ***

  Kethol didn’t know what he had expected to find out in the garden.

  Another assassin, perhaps?

  That would have been nice. Killing another assassin would at least have given him something to do, instead of standing around in the dark, wishing there was something within the range of his sword to kill.

  Irritated, he flicked the tip of his sword at one of the rosebuds, shattering it into a brief shower of petals that were carried on the stiff breeze, leaving only a heavy scent behind.

  He instantly regretted it. It wasn’t the rosebush’s fault, after all.

  Kethol — he knew he was supposed to even think of himself
as Forinel, but in private he had long given up on the idea — was out in the garden with Pirojil and Erenor when the guard captain approached, his sword belt clutched in his hand. Thirien looked more comical than military in his white sleeping shirt, bandy legs revealed from the mid-thigh to the tops of the boots that he had hurriedly thrown on.

  Under the light of the flickering torches, the old man’s hair was mussed from sleep, and his beard was flattened on one side, as though he had been sleeping on it, which he probably had.

  His mouth worked once, twice, three times, and then he shook his head.

  “My baron,” he said, bowing. “It’s evident that I’ve failed you.” He held out his sword. “I’ll have my things packed and be gone in the morning.” He turned to Pirojil. “I know you’ll immediately have the guard posts and schedules changed, in case my foolish tongue wags where it shouldn’t. I’d swear to it that it won’t, but it seems that my oath is worthless. You have my apologies, Captain Pirojil,” he said. “As you know, I spoke openly against His Lordship keeping you on here. You will forgive an old man for listening too much to wagging tongues, I hope.”

  Even after all these years, Kethol couldn’t read Pirojil’s expression.

  “I remember. Something,” Pirojil said, “about how Keranahan didn’t need to hire on any Cullinane-loyal lackeys, I seem to recall.”

  “Your memory fails you, Captain Pirojil.” Erenor smiled. “No, I don’t recall it was that kind, and I do remember what Captain Thirien said about a wizard who can’t even come up with a death spell to kill the rats in the stables.”

  Which Erenor hadn’t, not quite directly. But eating bowls scattered around the floor of the stables, filled with some horrid poison that, with a few muttered syllables, suddenly smelled like a particularly ripe Rumushian cheese, had served as well, although they had had to kennel all the dogs, who liked the cheese just as much as the rats did.

  It had worked for a tenday or so — then the rats came back. The rats always came back.

  Thirien eyed both of them levelly, and nodded. “Yes,” he said, quietly. “It’s clear that I … made too much of my years of service, and not enough of the way that age has sapped my wits.”

  Quite a change in his manner from just a few tendays before, when he had objected both openly and privately to the new captain — who had never served in Keranahan; who had been fealty-bound to, of all things, a Biemish barony; who had been given a rank that he had earned without ever having raised so much as a company to command; and who was so butt-ugly that it was said that even the two-copper whores in town wouldn’t have anything to do with him.

  Granted, Pirojil hadn’t been brought on as an equal to the captain of the House Guard; his title — and the Imperial warrant that went with it — was intended to keep him out of the chain of command of both the relatively small House Guard and, more importantly, the occupying Imperial troops in town, under the command of Governor Treseen.

  Thirien turned back to the baron, and held out the sword — still scabbarded — on the palms of his hands.

  “I received this at the hands of your father,” he said. “I swore to him, and I swore on it, that I’d serve him and his family with loyalty and devotion. It’s clear that I’ve failed, and if it wasn’t for your wisdom in ignoring the prattlings of an old man, my failure would have cost dearly. I’m sorry, boy.”

  The right thing to do would have been to accept the sword, to dismiss the captain from his service; the real Forinel would have done that.

  But the truth was that Thirien hadn’t betrayed his oath. He had promised to protect the real Baron Keranahan, not some imposter. Thirien could have even sat in a room and watched while somebody whittled on Kethol from ears to crotch to toes, and not been forsworn.

  So Kethol shook his head. “You didn’t swear to be right, and you didn’t swear to be successful,” he said. He reached out and folded the old captain’s fingers closed, and squeezed them tightly over the scabbard. “Will you betray your baron now by walking away simply because you happened to be wrong this one time?”

  Maybe that was the right thing to say, even if an imposter was saying it: Thirien drew himself up straight.

  “It’s not my loyalty that’s in question.”

  “No, it isn’t. Nor is the loyalty of any of the House Guard,” Erenor said.

  “Eh?”

  Erenor was pleased with himself, as he usually was, when he had figured out something faster than somebody else, and Kethol had long since gotten used to that, although it didn’t make him feel any less like wiping the smile from Erenor’s face, preferably with a grinding stone.

  “The killer,” Erenor said, “was expecting Lady Leria to be here — he made that much clear before he died.”

  “But —”

  “In fact, he expected that she’d be sleeping in the baron’s bed. So did whoever sent him.”

  Even in the torchlight, the old captain’s face seemed to redden. His lips were a thin, tight line. “If I can find the name of the man who thinks to speak in front of others of, of, of how the baron and his lady conduct themselves —”

  “Oh, please.” Erenor’s smile broadened. “None of us are children here, and with the exception of the baron, none of us are nobles, either — just save that indignation for a moment. My point is this: is there anybody in the Residence — soldier, serving girl, stableboy or the like — who doesn’t know that the Lady Leria left most of a tenday ago, summoned to visit the Dowager Empress?”

  “No, but —”

  “But the killer thought that she’d be here. I was watching — he had to overcome some resistance against killing her. Probably a poorly constructed geas.”

  “Powerful enough,” Pirojil said.

  “Pfah.” Erenor wasn’t impressed. “Powerful enough to persuade him to stop his heart beating, yes. But why would anybody go to the bother to protect the lady if he knew that she wasn’t going to be here? Geases are tricky things — this one slowed this fellow down, had him spending too much time dealing with it, and not enough time to slit a throat.”

  “Which wasn’t there,” Kethol said.

  “Not that he knew that. Which indicates that this was set up before Leria was summoned to Biemestren.”

  “Miron.” Pirojil nodded. “Who is conveniently in Biemestren, too.”

  “Well, he’s the obvious candidate — but just try to prove it.” Erenor cocked his head to one side. “Although it is fairly suspicious, and should seem fairly suspicious to anybody. But you’re missing the other part of it — it was as important to whoever sent him that she wasn’t killed as that you were killed, Baron. And I think that’s very … interesting, don’t you?”

  Kethol found it more reassuring. They weren’t after her. Just him.

  That was different.

  He had always expected to die violently, ever since he had gone a-soldiering. Oh, the three of them had long been trying to squirrel away money to buy a farm or a tavern to support themselves when they hung up their swords, but he had never really expected to live to spend the money.

  “Or, perhaps,” Erenor said, thinking out loud — Kethol had always thought that Erenor liked the sound of his own voice too much, “perhaps that’s what we’re supposed to think.”

  “That may be.” Thirien nodded. “But it’s all too complicated for the likes of me,” he said. “I always prefer something simple.” He turned to face Kethol again. “If you’re going to be generous enough to keep me on, my lord, then I’d best get back to my duties.”

  Walking away under the light of the flickering torches, the old man in the nightshirt with the bandy legs sticking out of his boots should have looked ridiculous, and perhaps he did, but Kethol couldn’t help but find a strange sort of dignity in him, as well.

  Which was, immediately, ruined by Erenor raising his voice.

  “Captain?” He beckoned him back.

  Thirien took being ordered around with the best grace he could muster at the moment. “Yes, Erenor?�
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  “You’d best take to more than your duties — we’re going to have to leave the baron in your care for some time.”

  At a quick private glare from Pirojil, Kethol managed to keep quiet.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Erenor shrugged. “Well, when somebody sends a killer after, say, Jason Cullinane or his father, or even the Emperor himself, it’s hard to figure out how to limit the field. We don’t have that problem in this case. The only problem we have is in making the accusation stick.”

  “Treseen,” Pirojil said. “It could be Treseen.”

  “Just because Leria has been pressing him on the account books?” Erenor shook his head. “He doesn’t impress me as being that scared, that bloody-minded, or that stupid. And Treseen, of all people, knows well that Leria isn’t here. Don’t you think he would have mentioned that to some hired assassin?” Erenor stretched out a hand toward Kethol. “Do you really think that, say, Lord Sherrol or his idiot son are behind this?

  “No. When somebody tries to kill the baron — and tries to be sure not to kill Lady Leria — we can be sure it’s not somebody local, at least not somebody both noble and local. The lords are delighted that the baron has returned, after all, and they should be. Oh, maybe Lord Sherrol is a little irritated over that … unfortunate event the other night, and certainly his son isn’t an admirer of the baron’s, but this isn’t their sort of thing. I can think of only one candidate, and he’s in Biemestren.” His smile broadened. “Which makes it all the more interesting that Lady Leria is at court, isn’t it? I guess we could always include the Emperor —”

  “— who is a fine and honorable man,” Pirojil said, interrupting. “He’s decent, and whether or not he had intended to marry the Lady Leria before Baron Keranahan’s return, he’d no more have the baron killed to remove him as a suitor than he would, would —”

  “Would bugger a baby in broad daylight?” Erenor suggested.

  Kethol didn’t like the image, but he had to agree. Nobles were by no means always noble, but the Emperor?