Blood in the Water (24 page)

His wrath hung in the air like the threat of thunder.

“My lord husband, you are the only one who can secure Marlier’s forces.” Litasse looked up at Iruvain, wide-eyed and trusting. “Whatever your suspicions of Duke Ferdain, he cannot accuse you of ever openly attacking his interests.”

Unlike Duke Garnot. They all knew the truth. Duke Garnot had fought along Carluse’s border with Marlier as a young man. He had encouraged Duke Orlin to attack Duke Ferdain’s ships as they sailed along Parnilesse’s coast to Tormalin.

“Very well,” Iruvain said slowly. “I will send a courier to Marlier.”

Duke Garnot nodded, satisfied. “Tell him to send his whore on ahead as well, so she can learn what we decide in council with Lord Cassat and Lord Geferin.”

Litasse made very sure she hid her true feelings. Iruvain deserved no such credit for Triolle’s peace with Duke Ferdain. With Master Hamare’s assistance, it was Iruvain’s father who’d avoided provoking either Marlier or Parnilesse into a quarrel that would be Triolle’s ruin. After his death, Iruvain was merely too awed by his new responsibilities to cause offence. Master Hamare had barely been able to persuade him to look beyond his own borders. If her fool of a husband had only listened to the intelligencer, this whole vile plot hatched in Vanam could have been stifled at birth. Then her father would still be alive.

She smiled adoringly at Iruvain before making a polite curtsey to Garnot. “I see you have so much to do. I will make certain your accommodations are ready whenever you seek them, Your Grace. Should I delay dinner, my lord?” she asked meekly.

Iruvain looked at her with faint suspicion. “No, let’s not inconvenience the kitchens.”

“Very well.” She curtseyed and departed.

Pelletria followed, silent and unnoticed. They didn’t speak until they were safely in Litasse’s boudoir.

“You may have overdone the humility.” Pelletria was amused.

“He can hardly accuse me of being too modest a wife.” Litasse had more important concerns. “We need Karn. He must find a way to make sure he’s the courier taking Iruvain’s letter to Duke Ferdain.” She paused. “I think we had better rewrite that letter ourselves.”

Pelletria nodded. “I don’t suppose Duke Iruvain will point out the advantages of confronting this Soluran in Carluse territory instead of inside Marlier’s own borders.”

Litasse nodded. “Once he’s delivered that, he can ride on to Relshaz.”

“To summon the mercenaries we’ve had waiting there?” Pelletria frowned. “A courier dove will be faster.”

“And now Iruvain will send one.” Litasse nodded. “In the meantime, we will secure more certain aid than Marlier’s boldest whore. Lock the door.”

As Pelletria complied, Litasse searched among the keys hanging from her own girdle and unlocked the heavy chest beside her writing desk. “Have Iruvain’s sneaks told him how diligently I’m keeping the household accounts?”

“Naturally.” Pelletria helped her stack heavy ledgers on the floor.

Once the chest was empty, they could turn it over, laying it quietly on the hearthrug.

Litasse pressed the hidden slip of wood that freed the bottom panel. “How many hidey-holes did Hamare have round the castle?”

Pelletria took the intelligencer’s ledger from the hiding place. “Duchess Casatia had this chest made, Your Grace. She kept one set of household accounts to show Duke Gerone and a second ledger for her own purposes.”

“Saedrin save us!” Litasse would never have thought that of Iruvain’s beloved mother.

She shook off her surprise. Righting the chest, Pelletria set out the castle’s accounts on the table, along with paper and ink. She’d been doing the calculations while Litasse had wrestled with Hamare’s cipher late into these past few nights.

Some day Litasse was going to ask just when, and why, Pelletria had learned to copy her handwriting so accurately she was hard put to tell it from her own. She turned to a page she had dog-eared in the ledger.

“What have you discovered, Your Grace?” Pelletria looked at the list below the writing. All but three of the words were scored through with black strokes of ink.

“These are wizards whom Hamare believed could be bought.” Litasse’s hand strayed to the reassurance of the knife strapped to her thigh. “We know this Soluran and the plotters from Vanam use magic. Karn’s right. We must use magic against them.”

“Are you sure?” Pelletria’s frown deepened her wrinkles.

“Garnot of Carluse said ‘
if
we don’t crush this Soluran’. Litasse took a sheet of paper and began writing. “He’s twice faced the man in battle and lost both times. My father hated Garnot but he never denied that the swine’s the finest commander of all Lescar’s dukes.”

She looked up, her pen paused. “Garnot said ‘if we don’t crush this Soluran’ because he’s not at all sure we can. That’s why he has no hesitation in allying with Draximal when they’ve always been at daggers drawn over the Great West Road. That’s why he’ll send Iruvain cap in hand to Duke Ferdain and forget the bad blood between Marlier and Carluse just as long as they can secure Ferdain’s mercenaries. Duke Garnot’s even ready to threaten Orlin of Parnilesse with whatever it is that Duchess Tadira knows about their father’s death. Uniting all the dukedoms is the only way Garnot believes he can defeat this Soluran. And he still says ‘if’, even though he has no idea that they can call on a wizard.”

She wrote, swift and decisive. “I won’t shed a tear if Carluse falls but if the Soluran looks our way next, we will need more than mercenaries to defend us. If Duke Garnot prevails, well, I won’t stand to see him crown himself High King on the strength of that victory, even if I have to suborn wizardry to stop him.”

Her voice shook despite herself. It was all very well coming to this shocking conclusion alone in the night, staring at the canopy of her curtained bed. It was quite another to say such a thing out loud.

But what else could she do, friendless as she was, to avenge her dead father, to see her mother and sisters rescued? To salvage Triolle from the wreckage of Iruvain’s indecision? Desperate times called for desperate measures.

What could Archmage Planir of Hadrumal do to her anyway? She was Duchess of Triolle. He could hardly lock her in some island dungeon. He would rebuke her, certainly, and she would weep prettily, begging his forgiveness. She would plead ignorance and grief, whatever it took to placate him. The thought of doing so soured her stomach, but what other weapons were left to her?

Pelletria watched her triple-sealing the letter. “This wizard’s in Relshaz?”

“So Hamare’s ledger says.” Litasse gazed at the letter, her hands trembling. “Let’s just hope he’s still there to be found.”

Chapter Seventeen

Tathrin

The City of Relshaz,

13th of Aft-Autumn

“Just look big and dangerous.” Sorgrad threw back his cloak to free his sword hilt.

“He can manage big,” offered Gren.

“Shut up,” Tathrin growled.

“Better,” Gren approved.

The merchants who paused at Tathrin’s father’s inn reminisced fondly about this city of canals embraced by branching channels of the River Rel as it met the sea. They recalled the glittering fountains, the perfumes of the flower-hung balconies, the white-painted buildings and the wild salt scent of the breeze. They spoke of the myriad exotic wares that Aldabreshi galleys brought up from the Archipelago: pungent spices, enamelled bronzes, fabulous glassware, ceramics fine as eggshell and rainbows of silks from gossamer to heaviest damask.

They didn’t mention the reek of stagnant drains in filthy slums like this or taverns like the Sea Serpent with its obscene sign, stinking of unwashed bodies and smoking tallow. The windows were so dirty that candles were lit barely halfway through the afternoon.

As they entered, conversation slowed and everybody stared. Tathrin was getting used to this by now and they all looked at home here after three days of not shaving, barely washing and no clean clothes since they had left Carluse. Gren looked if he’d rolled out of a rag-picker’s cart.

Sorgrad led the way through the scarred tables and skewed benches. Men hunched around a table, casting rune bones. Tathrin saw a trio land: the Sea Breeze, the Reed and the Chime. The next man’s hand threw the Deer, the Horn and Calm.

“Moons uppermost.” He pointed to the heavenly rune, where the Greater and Lesser Moons showed on either side, the Sun hidden face down. “Lesser runes rule.”

“Do we have time for a game?” The younger Mountain Man cracked his knuckles hopefully.

“There’s no skill in runes.” Tathrin was careful to mute his scorn. “I laid out all the odds for you, remember?”

It had been something to do while they endured nine tedious days of the lengthening siege of Carluse. Tathrin absolutely agreed with Gren. Sieges were really boring.

Then he’d discovered the younger Mountain Man had as much of an aptitude for numbers as his brother. So Tathrin had found paper and pen and run through every possible permutation of the nine bones with their twenty-seven runes, to prove that wagers on which three symbols might land upright was betting on nothing but chance.

Gren nodded. “But what makes you think I give the drip from a trollop’s—”

“Hush.” Sorgrad frowned over his shoulder.

They followed Sorgrad to the rear of the dimly lit room.

That summed Gren up really, Tathrin mused. No matter how clear the facts might be, if they didn’t suit him, he simply ignored them.

No matter how disastrous it would be for Sorgrad to use his magic to overcome Carluse Town’s defiance, Gren still urged his brother to act. He had the sense not to suggest wizardry to Evord himself, but he was just as ready with madcap schemes for overcoming sentries or even scaling the murderous cliff face on the far side of the castle crag.

Tathrin wondered if Evord had decided to send them to Relshaz, to pursue Charoleia’s warning that Triolle was recruiting mercenaries, just to get rid of Gren’s pestering. Though as it turned out, everything they’d discovered today suggested Charoleia was right. How many mercenary companies had left the city in the past few days? Eleven? Twelve?

“Klare.” Sorgrad tapped a man on his oiled-sailcloth shoulder. He was deep in conversation with three others all dressed like watermen. “You’re a hard man to find.”

“Only when it suits me,” the man replied, unsmiling.

His dusky skin might just be the accumulated grime of years but Tathrin doubted it. He knew that plenty of Relshaz folk had mingled mainland and Aldabreshin blood, though he’d seldom seen such faces in Vanam, Caladhria or Lescar. Most slaves who bought their freedom from their Archipelagan warlords rarely left the trading cities of the coast.

“Do you know where I might find Dandren Quicksilver?” Sorgrad asked amiably.

“Wrong side of the city, runt,” Klare sneered. “He took ship up the coast this morning.”

“Just him or the whole company?” wondered Sorgrad.

“The whole company.”

Tathrin couldn’t see what warranted Klare’s satisfaction.

Sorgrad frowned. “Where do you suppose they’re going?”

“The Carifate.” Klare seemed to think that was obvious.

“Sorry to have troubled you.” Apparently chagrined, Sorgrad headed back to the noisome street.

As he followed, Tathrin wondered why two of the other men had betrayed the same smugness as Klare. The third merely looked bemused.

The door slammed behind them. “What now?” Tathrin asked.

“Klare was too pleased with himself to be lying, so the Quicksilver Men have definitely taken ship up the coast.” Sorgrad walked towards an alley offering a path through the crowded buildings.

“He was too quick to say they’re heading for the Carifate,” Gren insisted.

“He was.” Sorgrad nodded. “Well, Charoleia’s heading for Parnilesse. Tathrin, have Aremil ask young Branca to find out what they can about goings-on in Carif.”

“I will.” Tathrin wondered briefly if that port city infested by mercenaries was as unsavoury as Relshaz. “So the man who told us earlier that Dandren was taking a barge upriver was lying?”

“Egil the Toad?” Sorgrad looked thoughtful. “It seems so, but he’s not usually one to piss in another man’s ale. Do you suppose he was lying to us in particular, or just to anyone looking for the Quicksilver Men?”

“Let’s beat some answers out of him.” Gren cracked his knuckles again. “If I can’t get a game of runes, I may as well break some heads.”

The appalling thing was Tathrin knew he wasn’t joking. Either prospect entertained Gren equally.

“Give me a moment.” Sorgrad was still thinking. “That was Capale the Sailmaker with Klare.”

“Looking like a hound that can’t catch the scent?” Gren shrugged. “Yes, it was.”

“Capale’s a crook but once he’s bought he stays bought.” Sorgrad smiled. “We’ll see what a few silver crowns can buy from him later. I don’t think we’ll trouble Egil the Toad again. Let’s go and see Downy Scardin instead.”

Gren was surprised. “You’re ready to pay his prices?”

“We can spend coin or we can spend time,” Sorgrad said tersely. “We don’t have time to waste.”