01 - Honour of the Grave (28 page)

“You know where my son is,” he said. His voice was low, and rumbly; it was
flecked with steel. He clipped the ends of his words, as if any other manner of
speaking would be profligate.

“As I told your other sons, I don’t,” Angelika replied. “Though I enjoyed your
grand entrance. Very dramatic; were you an actor at one time?”

He curled his upper lip, showing sharp white teeth. He nodded to Gelfrat, who
placed his palm on the back of Angelika’s head and pushed it down until her face
was pressed hard against the polished surface of the table. Despite herself, she
gasped in pain.

“Tell me where my son is,” Jurgen said.

“Flattening my face won’t give me miraculous oracular powers.”

Gelfrat pushed harder.

She made choking noises until he eased off. “I’m no fool. I don’t want to be
tortured. If I knew, I’d say.”

“I know some of what has transpired. Benno had a message relayed to me.” He
pronounced his bastard son’s name with a notably chilly tone. Angelika regretted
that she couldn’t see Benno’s reaction. “You claim that one of those so-called
princes of the borderland has him.”

“The one whose town you had flattened—Davio Maurizzi.”

“On another occasion,” Jurgen said, “I might meditate upon the irony of a
guttersnipe such as yourself daring to reproach the actions of a Jurgen von Kopf. However, at present, I am permitted no such
luxury. You will fully recount the extent of your interactions with the boy, and
then tell me how we might go about laying our hands upon him.” He tapped the
tops of his fingers into the palm of his left hand. When Gelfrat failed to
interpret the meaning of his gesture, Jurgen cleared his throat.

Gelfrat removed his hand from her head and stepped back.

Angelika sat up, rubbing her face. Her chair creaked. She could think of no
good reason to deceive von Kopf, aside from the good feeling it would give her,
so she told the truth. She began with her discovery of Claus’ body, and
concluded with her capture by Benno’s men. Her best touch, she thought, was the
light and offhanded manner in which she described the battle with the Chaos
creatures. Even Jurgen had to raise an eyebrow at that.

When it was clear that she’d finished, he asked, “So you persist in your
contention that you have no idea of his present whereabouts?”

“No. But if you let me and Franziskus go, we have a better chance of finding
him than you and yours. I’ll consider doing it, for a fee of six hundred crowns,
and a pledge that no harm comes to him.”

Jurgen’s laugh sounded like crinkling paper.

“Five hundred crowns, then.”

“You give a curious account of yourself,” Jurgen said. “A looter with a
conscience. Or part of one, at least.” He stood, placing the tips of his fingers
on the rich wood of his table-top. “The contradictions and hesitations with which
you salt your tale lend it the odour of truth. Though I am inclined to believe
you, I must be certain. I cannot help noticing that an array of scars and
contusions mars your rude beauty. Perhaps, then, you already know what it is
like to be tortured.” His smile called only on the muscles closest to his mouth;
the rest of his face remained stonily immobile. “Before I have my experts
proceed with you—”

A commotion arose behind a set of tall, carved doors at the end of the room.
Remembering the mansion’s layout, Angelika knew that they would lead into the
foyer. Jurgen turned toward the sound, flushed with annoyance. The sounds stopped, and he turned back to her, opening his mouth to speak. Then
the doors swung open.

A servant, balding, a snowy ruff of hair around his ears, slipped through the
doors and then closed them again. With downcast eyes, he snivelled into the
room, trembling. Before he was more than ten feet across the long chamber,
Jurgen barked at him, and he halted.

“You have been warned that this meeting was not to be interrupted,” Jurgen
said.

“I assure you I utterly understand sir, but there is an arrival of an urgent—he would not be deterred, and he asserted, asserted considerable—”

“Who dares?” Jurgen demanded.

The doors opened. A short, potbellied man stood behind them. He watched them
move as if surprised that putting pressure on hinged doors causes them to swing
open.

A light dusting of powder whitened the man’s face; rouge, judiciously
applied, brightened his cheeks. Most of his eyebrows had been plucked away, and
replaced with thin, elegantly curving lines drawn with a grease pencil. The same
pencil emphasized a beauty mark northwest of the intruder’s straight and
unobtrusive nose. In contrast to his round, generous torso, his face was gaunt;
his chin receded and his cheeks, beneath the make-up, were sunken. His hair had
achieved a purity of blackness possible only through prolonged dyeing; a trio of
ringlets, curled like the tails of baby pigs, lay against his forehead. A velvet
chapeau, in blue and gold, angled itself across his head; it was like a pill
hat, but with an upturned brim, trimmed in lace. He wore a jacket of sky-blue
silk, intricately embroidered with golden thread, over a golden vest with trim
that matched the jacket. His trousers, which terminated just below the knee,
matched his vest; even his stockings were adorned with twin ribbons of blue and
gold. Angelika could not help but compute the resale value of the dozen
carved-ivory buttons that decorated his coat, or the diamond-inlaid silver
buckles on his thick-heeled leather shoes.

“Brucke,” Jurgen said, by way of greeting. He’d drained the anger from his
voice, but Angelika saw that his left fist, which was held behind his back,
stayed taut inside its leather glove.

This Brucke, whoever he was, cast a bored but questioning look in the
direction of Angelika and Franziskus. “Ah,” he said.

“My man here will escort you to the drawing room,” said Jurgen, “where, when
I have disposed with some business here, we may discuss whatever it is you wish
to—”

Brucke threw up manicured hands. “I refuse to inconvenience you.” He drew a
chair from the table’s corner and sat himself in it. He plunked his meagre chin
into his hand and gazed vacuously at one of Jurgen’s display plates. “Please,
continue.”

Jurgen glared at him.

After holding von Kopf’s attention for what felt to Angelika like a full
minute, Brucke dryly smacked his lips and said, “It’s just that I heard that a
procession had come into town. I thought I might be the first to congratulate
you on the safe return of your dear son, Lukas.”

“He is not here.”

“Oh,” Brucke said, but not in a surprised tone.

“Let us not discuss this in the presence of inferiors.”

Brucke waggled dismissive fingers at this notion. Jurgen’s jaw stiffened.
Brucke stood up and approached the two prisoners. “These are witnesses, then?
Perhaps they can help you find him? Oh, but I see they are shackled.” He gazed
deeply into Franziskus’ eyes. “You did not bring the boy to harm, I hope.”

Franziskus, looking past the interloper’s shoulder, read Jurgen’s
ever-stiffening expression, and declined to reply to the powdered man.

“Brucke,” Jurgen said, “if you’ve come to hear a report on the progress of my
efforts, I’ll of course tell you all that you wish to know. Any fact pertaining
to my absent son is, however, strictly within my private purview—it is a
household matter.”

Brucke moved, lowering himself into the chair Jurgen had just vacated. He
folded his wrinkled hands together. He faced Angelika, but looked through her
rather than at her. “But while the count is indisposed, and you prosecute the
war for him, your reputation and that of Averland are inseparable,” he said.

Von Kopf coughed. “Here is your war report, dear Anton. By example, the
border princes have been taught the folly of their double-dealing. Now they will
assuredly do their best to impede the orcs when they make their main push north.
In the meantime, our own forces are regrouping after the victory at the Castello
del Dimenticato. Though it is only half likely that the orcs will come close to
us, I’ll soon deploy a triple regiment a hundred leagues into the mouth of the
pass, ready to repel their weakened onslaught with ease.”

Anton Brucke sniffed, and removed a lacy handkerchief from the breast pocket
of his vest. He dabbed at the area beneath his nose. “You’ll agree, naturally,
that your present role requires you to maintain popularity with the troops, as
well as the citizenry in general.”

“Please let my servant escort you to the drawing room, where we may parley at
length.”

“All I mean to say, dear Jurgen, is that you may overestimate the degree to
which the common soldier cares for the upholding of the von Kopf honour. The
count, in his wisdom, has always supported your family, and your company of
Sabres. You are exemplars of Averlandish determination and vigilance. But we are
the sort of people who understand these sorts of things. The common fellow, the
groundling, the gutter-grubber, may not appreciate the reasons for rigidly
sticking to the letter of dusty ancestral rules. He might perceive them as—well—
over-harsh.”

“If you insist on making your point in front of the prisoners, perhaps you
could at least get to it.”

He rose to pat an unappreciative Jurgen on the shoulder. “Pardon my
prolixity. I know you are a military man, and accustomed to short, barked
orders. All I am saying is that you may wish to suspend judgment when and if you
do recover custody of poor, callow Lukas. A literal application of your family
oath could prove distracting at an otherwise crucial moment.”

“And tell me, Anton—does this advice come from the count, or from you?”

Brucke emitted a droll chuckle. “You know as well as I do that the count
is…” He looked at the prisoners. “You know how the count is.”

Jurgen put his hand on Brucke’s silk-coated shoulder, and squeezed hard. The
courtier winced. “In that case, I will entertain these suggestions with all
respect due to the person making them.”

“You know nobles and their ways: what did you make of that strange display,
Franziskus?”

They were still shackled, but now they were bound back to back around a
timber support beam. At Jurgen’s command, Gelfrat and a complement of Sabres had
roughly led them out of Jurgen’s manor, through his courtyard, and along the
streets until they reached one of the town’s south towers. They’d been dragged
up narrow, curving stone steps and deposited in their present location: a small
room that might normally have been used to store weapons or provisions. Their
ceiling was the floor on which the tower sentries walked. From a narrow window,
hardly big enough to stick an arm through, Angelika and Franziskus heard the
voices of the watchmen, and the occasional bout of raucous laughter. The storm
had been in full cry as they were led through the streets, and now, though their
clothing had dried somewhat, they were chilled and damp.

“I am no expert in high politics, Angelika. My father always avoided the
court and courtiers, as much as he could. He said they were asps, the lot of
them.”

“A novice in a nunnery could tell you that much.”

Franziskus clucked his agreement.

“But from what the way that Brucke fellow spoke, he would be an adviser to
the count, yes?” Angelika continued.

“So I gathered.”

“And he wanted Lukas left alone.”

“That’s what he said.”

“Which means there is a safe harbour for the boy, when we find him: we’ll
take him to the count, who’ll protect him.”

Franziskus moaned.
“When
we find him?” He rattled his restraints.
“Unless he’s in a secret compartment somewhere in this cell, I don’t imagine
we’ll be doing that in the near future. Remember Jurgen’s threat—at this very
moment he’s securing the services of a first-class torturer.”

“Naturally, we have to get out of here before we can do anything.” Pushing
her back against the support beam, Angelika wiggled into a standing position. “I
was hoping he’d put us in a brig or stockade somewhere on his own estate, with
the activity of servants and dogsbodies to cover our escape.”

“That thought probably entered into his calculations.”

“Or he just didn’t want us dirtying up his estate with our stench of
dishonour. Let’s think. First we need these shackles off. Then: how many guards
do you figure they have outside?”

Franziskus, who faced the stout wooden door, framed in an archway of granite,
squinted doubtfully at it. “How does that even matter? The door is firmly
locked!”

“My wager is, there’s one guard only; you saw how narrow the staircase is,
when they hauled us up here. This is not normally a prison cell, so there’s no
proper place for anyone to stand guard outside that door. Maybe there’s no guard
at all.”

They heard coughing on the other side.

“I wish you were right, and I was wrong,” said Franziskus. “But I don’t think
we can make any travel plans yet.”

“Enough gloom. I can’t do all the escaping by myself.” She studied her
leg-irons for weak links, then released them in frustration.

They heard muffled conversation by the door. Angelika picked out two separate
deep voices. There was a third, which took her a while to pick out: it was a
woman’s soft cooing.

“Someone selling something?” Franziskus asked.

“Shh!” said Angelika. She strained to hear but individual words were
impossible to make out. From the tone of it, her guess was that the woman was
trying to overcome the reluctance of the two men. The conversation ceased. She
sighed.

The door opened. Petrine Guillame, still clad in her tight, green-flocked
gown, with its generous neckline, rushed through the archway, brushing past both
guardsmen, who grinned like fools. Full purses hung at their belts. Franziskus
kept one eye on them; and with the other, he watched Petrine throw herself to
her knees before him.