Mr. Bull had chased them off his stoop just that very morning. He wasn’t sure where they’d gone. I bet it wasn’t far.
I didn’t ask Mr. Bull or the Arwheat brothers or anyone else to keep their mouths shut about my bathing habits. They weren’t going to talk to outsiders, and asking would only have insulted them.
I dressed in my clean clothes and put on my clean shoes and slipped out of the bathhouse by the back door. From there I stuck to alleys and walls until I found a cab at Merry and managed to climb inside without ruining my shirt with a sudden flight of arrows.
Tamar was my first stop. She’d need to know I intended to bring Carris home in the morning.
That’s all I planned to tell her. The last thing I needed was Mr. Tibbles to show up yapping at the Timbers.
The management of the Wolford Inn has definite ideas about freshly bathed menfolk just breezing up the stairs to visit their female guests. I was on the verge of testing the mettle of the bespectacled young man behind the desk by walking up anyway when Tamar glided down the stairs.
She was all smiles. She was wearing a light blue day dress and a white hat with a blue ribbon. The white basket that held Mr. Tibbles was trimmed with the same blue ribbon.
“Good morning, wife of mine,” I said. “Ready to come home?”
“Hah. I like it here. How much is this room costing this man, Suthers?”
“One and half crowns a night,” replied Suthers without looking up from his scribbling. “Not counting five coppers for laundry and eleven for meals.”
Tamar seated herself on a velvet settee across from me. Mr. Tibbles peeked out of his dainty basket and growled.
I feigned a grimace.
“Sugar. Honey. Snookums. Mother is leaving. Leaving tonight.”
She nodded, once and quickly. Her smile slipped briefly but didn’t fall.
“You promise?”
“Cross my heart.” I rose, crossed the thick old carpet and sat beside her.
I had no doubt Suthers and his listening little ears were at attention, so I chose my words carefully.
“You’ll be home in the morning. All will be well.”
She put her hand on mine.
“Thank you.”
I squeezed her hand and rose. She didn’t let go.
“I have to get Mother packed,” I said. “There’s a lot to do before she can leave.”
“I can help. Let me help.”
I gently pried my hand free.
“No. It’s for the best. You know how Mother can be.”
Suthers snorted. I made a mental note to come back, when all this was over, and glare at him menacingly.
Tamar didn’t like it. Not one bit. But finally she nodded, gave me a brief fierce hug and darted up the stairs.
“Your Mother must be quite a woman,” said Suthers.
“Half ogre and half Troll,” I replied. “Maybe I’ll put her up here, next Yule. You’ll enjoy getting to know her.”
He had no reply to that, except to bite the end of his pencil.
I was dying to talk to Evis. But Avalante would have to wait.
Darla met me at the door. Her hug would have broken ribs on a lesser man.
“I dreamed of you last night,” she said.
“Was I mounted on a stallion with the sun flashing in my manly eyes?”
She hugged me tighter. “Damn you.”
People were beginning to stare. We separated. Mary blushed and laughed. I sought out my customary chair and found a still-warm biscuit wrapped in a linen napkin nestled on the cushion.
The biscuit was accompanied by ham. Honey-glazed ham. A cup of coffee made a miraculous appearance in my hand.
A man, I mused, could get used to such things.
“She’s been up all night worried sick,” opined Mary, as soon as Darla was with two clients and well out of earshot. “Ye ought to be ashamed for yourself, a’ treatin’ such a gentle soul in such a high-handed way.”
“Well, you told me good. Is there any more of that coffee around, because if there is…”
But Mary was gone, a very unladylike word passing her prim country lips.
I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. I didn’t have a hat or I would have hidden my face with it.
Mary was right. I was right. Darla was right.
I didn’t see a damned way to a more peaceful life for any of us.
I wasn’t dozing when Darla plopped in my lap and kissed me.
“Good morning,” she said. She forced a smile. “I should have brought two biscuits.”
“Good morning yourself. And one was fine. A little bird tells me you lost some sleep.”
Darla shrugged. “It’s only sleep. I’ll get it back. You’re here. You even smell good.” Her smile faded. “Wait. These clothes. They’re from the bathhouse, aren’t they? What happened to your others?”
“Relax. Mud, not blood. I spent some time in a pile of trash. I stank, but nobody died. No one was even rude to me.”
“That’s what I love about you, Markhat. The glamorous places you go. Mary, can you handle things for a bit? We need to go hat shopping.”
“Aye, buy him a new head while you’re at it.”
We rose. Her hand was tight around mine. “I’ll be back when I can.”
I had a thousand things to do. Nay, ten thousand. A hundred thousand. I had nefarious plots to foil, kidnappers to double-cross, wars to avert.
So naturally, I took my lady to the Park, and we staved off war and wrack by feeding fat pigeons cornmeal and letting the sun warm the tops of our heads.
I told all. I didn’t set out to. I’d meant to spare Darla the details of my walk with the huldra, my visit inside Hisvin’s house of dusty dead.
But lies no longer come easily with Darla. Even the sneaky lies that are mere omissions of the truth.
I’d thought I’d lost her once. Leaving important things unsaid.
Not again.
She listened and nodded and squeezed my hand now and then, but she didn’t cry or turn away, not once.
And when I’d said it all, we let silence sit with us for a bit.
“I’m disturbed by something,” she said at last.
“Disturbed? Really? Do tell.”
She prodded me lightly with an elbow.
“Why would Mr. Lethway tell the kidnappers you were coming? He knows if you meet an untimely demise, the Regent gets the papers. Wouldn’t getting you killed be suicide for him?”
I nodded.
“So?”
“Could be a couple of things. One, he thinks he’s in the clear if my blood winds up on someone else’s hands. Two, he’s so mad he’s not thinking straight. Three, Pratt sent that note, not Lethway, trying to shake things up so he can use the confusion to make his play.”
“Would Pratt do that?”
“Maybe. He wants Carris and Lethway’s wife. He doesn’t give a damn about anything else.”
“I thought you and Pratt were friends.”
“We might be. Or not. I’ll know tonight.”
She tossed a fresh handful of crushed corn to the pigeons.
“You know what I think?”
“That I’m a handsome devil with charisma to spare?”
“I think Lethway realizes he’s not getting out of this. I think he knew he was doomed the moment you showed him those papers he tried to burn with the Barracks. What if that’s true, hon? What if he’s planning on just killing everyone at that place tonight? What if he doesn’t care if he dies, too, as long as he dies a hero?”
“I’m not following.”
“He’s spent his whole life being a war hero.”
“Actually, he stole half a million of the Regency’s crowns, but go on.”
She looked away from the pigeons and up at me. “He’s ruined, darling. If it isn’t you that turns him in, it will be Mr. Fields. Or this third person. Or someone who just drops out of the sky. His wife is lost to him. And his son. All he has is his name, and he’s about to lose it too. Don’t you see? If he dies tonight, he won’t be exposed as a war profiteer. No one would bother with an investigation.”
I mulled it over.
She tossed more feed to the birds. “I see who’s leaving town, you know. And who isn’t leaving. Old money. War heroes. Honey, these people already have homes out of Rannit. They could go and live well whether Rannit stands or falls. But they’re not leaving. Mary summed it up best.” Darla affected Mary’s backwoods accent. “They won’t run ’cause they’d rather die being Lord So-and-So than live being just plain Mister. That’s what I’m saying. Please tell me I’m wrong.”