The flat was barren save for blankets ranged as pallets along the walls. The dust was thick. A few sausages hung from a beam. Gnawed, moldy cheeses lay piled in one corner. A scatter of crumbs marked the site of a bread stack.
He glanced at the bodies. The rats had been at them. Tiny red eyes stared at him through a tangle of dry hair. He shuddered.
He prowled restlessly, sneezing as he stirred up the dust. There was no stink of corruption. Norath's creatures seemed immune.
He began searching, wizard's senses probing. Nothing. What had they done here, these created assassins? Sat in silence, eating when the flesh demanded? No games to while the time?
He murmured, „Norath, you scare me more than my old enemies in Shinsan."
Searching as if these had been true men, likely to conceal damning evidence, he nearly overlooked the paper. He looked for loose boards and secret compartments till by chance he noted the tattered, wadded scrap behind the cheeses, perhaps thrown there before the food was laid in.
A long, lazy hand, full of arrogance, declared, „Milady: The appearance of the bearer will assure you of the comple tion of my half of our agreement. Norath." The ink had faded to sepia
Varthlokkur eased toward the door, an unhappy man. This scrap could hang. Should he pass it to the King? The assassins had failed, after all.
The message was less important for content than for the language in which it was written. Itaskian.
Ragnarson found himself passing through Vorgreberg's west gate. His mount seemed to be taking him to Lieneke Lane without conscious guidance.
„Sire?" the voice called a second time, breaking his self-enchantment, startling him with its concern. „Are you all right?" Sir Gjerdrum and Aral Dantice were staring at him.
„Just daydreaming." He flashed a grin. „Tell Slugbait I got the Panthers match set back. Put your money on the Guards. We're going to win."
Dantice responded with a dubious scowl.
„Well, don't bet the deed to the old family farm. I'm headed out Lieneke Lane. Come from there?"
Gjerdrum nodded. He looked grim.
„Something wrong, Gjerdrum? Trouble?"
„No. It's personal. Going to tell Gwenie it's over. Can't think how to say it. Julie and me... there might be a wedding."
„Congratulations. I guess. Seen Mist, Aral? She pull out yet?"
„She's gone." Dantice fumbled inside his shirt. „Left you a letter." He was not a happy man.
Ragnarson accepted the envelope, opened it after leaving the younger men.
Mist merely repeated her apologies, saying he had been a friend good and true throughout her exile. As a gesture, she would leave her children with him. He grinned. Crafty witch. They would be less hostages to fortune here. She wasn't making a gesture. She was shielding them from the politics of the Dread Empire.
He'd have to hand them over to his daughter-in-law. How would Kris take that? Two more mouths, two more little bodies to cuddle and mend, another two hearts to keep unbroken... . „She's going to raise merry hell."
Lieneke Lane was quiet. His own house seemed silent, moody, withdrawn. Down the lane, Mist's place already looked deserted.
Kristen stepped out as he dismounted. She placed hands on hips, glared. „Just what makes you think I'm going to take care of Mist's brats too? What is this? An orphanage?"
„What?" He threw up his hands in faked bewilderment.
„Don't try to con me..."
Bragi's face drooped into an idiot grin. Sherilee was leaning out an upstairs window. Kristen shrugged, defeated by chemistry.
The old doorman collected Ragnarson's horse. Bragi gave Kristen a hasty peck on the forehead, charged upstairs. Sherilee squealed when he swept her into his arms.
Varthlokkur cradled his daughter with his right forearm. His left hand lay folded within his wife's fingers. He stared out the window. „Looks like rain tomorrow."
„What's the matter?" Nepanthe asked.
„Trouble."
„Always trouble. Ours?"
„The King's. Looks like Inger bought those assassins."
„Inger? She's so nice. I don't believe it."
„It wouldn't be a historical precedent. I think Bragi knows, too. He's trying to lie to himself. Like maybe if he ignores it long enough, Inger will come to her senses."
„Talk to him."
„Too much like telling a man his wife is cheating. He don't want to hear it. Puts him in a vise. He has to do something. Like as not, he takes a whack at you instead of the woman." He didn't want the King taking a poke his way. He might say something Nepanthe shouldn't hear.
How much did Bragi know about the east? And Mist? She would soon be intimate with the situation.
„Talk to Prataxis. Bragi will put up with anything from him."
„That might do it." But he was thinking Michael Trebilcock, not Derel Prataxis. Michael would do some thing.
The sun plunged into the clouds of the west. Derel and Baron Hardle reined in before the King's suburban home. They made a mixed pair, those two, yet were as alike as pod-mate peas today. Two more sour, embittered faces could hardly be imagined. They did not speak as they stalked toward the house.
Kristen answered their knock. The pandemonium of a small herd of children echoed behind her. „Yes?" Her smile faded as she saw their grim faces. „What's happened?"
„Is His Majesty here?" Prataxis asked.
„Come in. I'll get him. Strangle a few kids if they bother you."
Prataxis watched her bustle upstairs. He muttered, „More complications. He couldn't have picked a worse time."
„Uhm." Hardle, too, had seen enough to guess what was going on. „Can't say as I blame him. A delectable morsel."
Prataxis snorted. He was a man perpetually baffled by the power woman exercised over others of his sex. He just could not comprehend how an otherwise sensible man could be knocked cuckoo by a skirt, though he had seen countless such devastations.
The more he thought, the more irate he became. He was in a positive frenzy when Ragnarson appeared. „Where the hell have you been?" he demanded. „We did everything but call out the Vorgrebergers."
„What's happened?" It had to be bad to make Prataxis stand on his hind legs and howl.
Prataxis retreated, awed by his own temerity. „It's too late now."
Sourly, the Baron added, „Too late for anything but the weeping."
„What are we talking about?"
„We needed you in the Thing. To stand witness for yourself. We couldn't find you, and couldn't argue for you because you never told us... ."
„To the point. What did those idiots do?"
„They passed a succession law," Prataxis said. „Seems they started on it when we locked ourselves up out here. It went through today. The Estates bought enough votes... ."
„Succession law? The Estates?" Red crept through the King's beard. Prataxis handed him a rolled copy. He did not read it immediately. Derel would not be here, in this mood, were its terms acceptable. „Where the hell were you? Why didn't you stop them?"
„We were here till today," the Baron reminded him. „Along with Sir Gjerdrum, Colonel Abaca, and everybody else who might have made a difference. Mundwiller couldn't beat them alone."
Ragnarson ripped the roll open, read, hurled it away. He sat on the stairsteps, folded his fists before his face, gnawed the knuckle of a thumb.
Kristen retrieved the copy. She scanned it, stiffened. It fell from her hand. She glared at the men, flung herself from the hallway.
Ragnarson muttered, „Fulk. With Inger Regent. That's not what I wanted. Definitely not what I wanted."
Derel refrained from saying I told you so. „That's why I scrambled so hard trying to find you. Never occurred to me to look here till Gjerdrum mentioned meeting you at the gate."
„All right. We blew it. They slipped one past us. How do we undo it?"
„Lawfully, we can't," Hardle said. „They made a good job of it."