“No, you fool, put your hand flat against the wood. Now spread your fingers.”
Tinwright did as he was told, but it was hard with his arm trembling so.
“Open your eyes, poet.” Hendon Tolly made it clear this was not a request. “It takes all the joy out of the thing if your eyes are squeezed shut and teary like a little boy waiting for the clyster pipe.” He drew the knife back by his ear.
Other than the lord protector’s guards, they were alone in the room known as the King’s Counting House, which had for years been the office of the royal exchequer. The walls, paneled in golden fir, were stained with food that the lord protector had thrown against them and pock-marked with ominous, dagger-blade holes.
“Now, watch,” Tolly said, and flicked the knife. Despite a slight flinch from Tinwright, it did not harm him, but buried itself nearly two inches deep between the tips of his right index and middle fingers.
Hendon Tolly drew another knife, seemingly out of thin air. “Stay… !”
This blade smacked into the wood only a few inches away from the first and stood quivering, almost touching the web of Matt Tinwright’s thumb.
Tolly smirked. “By the Knot of Kernios, look at you! Pale as death and shaking like a leaf! What does a poet need all his fingers for, anyway?”
Tinwright swallowed. Hendon Tolly expected to be answered. “For writing… ? Remember, you wanted me to write about… about your triumph, my lord.”
“Triumph, yes. Except that crocodile-swiving autarch is trying to steal it out from under me.” A third dagger suddenly flashed through the air so close to Matt Tinwright’s face that he could feel the breath of its passage. As it shuddered in the wall beside the poet’s head, Hendon Tolly stood up. “He believed I had this… what was it called? This ‘Godstone.’ So perhaps it truly is necessary to the whole enterprise.” He pointed at Tinwright. “You… you will find it for me.”
Matt Tinwright was completely muddled. His hand stung where he had brushed the skin of his thumb against the blade of the lord protector’s knife. “Me, Lord? I don’t understand.”
Tolly looked at the guards along the far wall, who were grimly doing their best to seem attentive to their duty while never looking directly at Hendon Tolly for fear he would notice them; bad things happened to people the lord protector noticed. “You will examine Okros’ books and scrolls and find out about this Godstone the autarch needs. You will get it for me.”
“But, my lord, I know nothing about such things… !”
“And I do?” Tolly glared at him. “Get on your knees, poet. I grow weary of you.”
“My lord... ?”
“Down!”
Matt Tinwright pushed his forehead against the cold stones of the King’s Counting Room. He heard the lord protector’s footsteps getting closer, then the sound of one of the knives being yanked out of the wooden paneling. A moment later something cold and sharp slowly traced the spot where his left ear connected to his head.
“It would be the easiest thing in the world to take your ear, poet,” said Tolly sweetly, almost as though he were soothing a small child. “Or both of them. What kind of poet would you be then? A deaf one?”
Matt Tinwright didn’t bother to point out that he might still be able to hear even with his ears cut off. In fact, he didn’t even breathe as the knife tickled his tender skin.
“I have other things I need to do, poet. You can read and you are not the dullest man in my kingdom. I’m sure you can make sense out of all those old, learned fools rabbiting on and on. Find out what the autarch meant. Then find out where the stone is.” For a moment the blade of the knife pierced the skin and Tinwright had to struggle not to cry out. “Or bad things will happen—and not just to you. Lest you think you can simply flee my employ and hide from me, you should know that I have a watch on your sister’s house. Your mother is living there, too, I believe. It would be sad for them both to be burned for witchcraft in Market Square.” Tolly suddenly laughed. “No, I suppose we will have to burn them somewhere in the inner keep, won’t we? Too many cannonballs landing on Market Square these days. Wouldn’t want the autarch doing our work for us…”
Matt Tinwright was struck dumb with horror, not so much at the idea of his mother and sister being burned as witches—although his sister, at least, had done nothing to deserve such a fate—as the thought that if Lord Tolly’s men entered the house, they would find Elan M’Cory there, and that would certainly be the end, both for her and Tinwright.
“Of course, Lord,” he managed to say at last. “I will do just as you ask. You needn’t worry about me or my family.”
“Good man.” The cold, sharp thing was no longer against his head. Hendon Tolly had turned and was walking back to his chair, allowing Tinwright to breathe freely again. “In a while I will show you to Okros’ chambers—I think his books are still there. But first, I have had a thought. Put your hand against the wall again.” He settled into the chair, pulled a kerchief from his pocket and draped it over his face. “I think I can do this without being able to see you, but you’d better talk, just to be on the safe side—that will help me aim. Recite something, poet.” He lifted the knife.
This time Matt Tinwight did close his eyes. If the lord protector couldn’t see, he didn’t want to either.
An hour later Tinwright was waiting outside Avin Brone’s cabinet, through some miracle still in possession of all his fingers. He could not help feeling impatient. He was off Tolly’s leash for the first time in over a tennight and he had many things to do, visiting Avin Brone only the first.
Tinwright had seen no one either following him or watching for him when he left Hendon Tolly, but just to be cautious, he had left and then come back into the residence through a minor gate, then promptly lost himself in the warren of tiny rooms that had been made in the past two centuries out of what had once been the broad heights and expanse of the old King’s Chapel on the ground floor. More recently, it had been a school for the sons (and a few daughters) of nobility. Now the siege had driven all the castle’s defenders back to the inner keep, and the boxy maze was serving as the lord constable’s chambers, crowded with pages and soldiers. Brone, in exile only a month or so before, had been given his own small suite of rooms.
The men in Eddon livery guarding Brone looked very serious—Tinwright could tell this was no sleepy backwater. However much Brone infuriated and terrified him, he had to admit that the man was formidable. Only a few months ago he had been all but imprisoned in his house at Landsend and roundly mocked at court. Now he was back in the thick of things again, his chambers right next to those of Berkan Hood—the man who had replaced him! Brone had outmaneuvered them all. With Olin gone and so many of the March Kingdoms’ best dying in battle during the last year, no one else commanded near the loyalty Brone still did—certainly not Hendon Tolly.
“By the three benevolent brothers, where have you been, little Tinwright?” said the big man when the poet was finally allowed in. “I’ve got Perch and Chaffy looking for you with the aim of breaking your legs.”
“Hendon Tolly has kept me at his side for the last tennight and more.”
Brone only snorted at this and didn’t even offer Tinwright a drink (he never did), but underneath the usual bluster, he seemed fairly pleased to see the young man alive and well.
“I’ll keep the guards out a bit longer, then, eh?” said the count. He took a comfortable listening position with his sore foot on a hassock. “Tell me everything you have seen and heard, poet. Give me something useful and there’s gold in it for you.”