Fey 02 - Changeling (28 page)

"Shoot through here, nothing moves," Hector said.
 
"One arrow, if yer good."

"He was good," Stowe said.
 
Too bad, too.
 
If the arrow had gone awry, Alexander might have had a chance.

"He was here long time too."
 
Hector leaned away from the trunk to show Stowe some scrapes on the bark.
 
"Maybe hours, maybe days."

Days, in this precarious place.
 
Stowe felt dizzy just sitting there.
 
The wood dug into his back and buttocks.
 
The air was cooler up here, and the water had made its way inside his boots.

"He was determined, then."

Hector nodded.
 
They were both thinking the same thing.
 
This was not a crime of passion.
 
No villager woke up one morning and decided to kill the King.
 
This was a planned assassination, done by a patient and deliberate man.
 
Who knew how long it would take for a person to locate the exact spot on the road, pluck the right amount of leaves and then settle to wait on the only nearby tree.

"I still don't know how he escaped," Stowe said.
 
"The guards ran out here right away."

"Not right away," Hector said.
 
"They couldn't run in that water.
  
Ye had boots, and it took time.
 
He coulda hid in the water. Hollow
 
a reed, put it in his mouth, breathe through it.
 
City men wouldna see him."

Stowe was about to deny that, but he didn't.
 
If Hector had crawled under the surface of the water, he would be invisible.
 
It was a good plan, but it didn't feel right.
 
Too risky for a man who would sit days in a tree.

"But I think something else," Hector said.

Stowe gazed over at him.
 
Hector looked natural here.
 
The mud blended with the tree bark.
 
Even the whites of his eyes reflected the silver lights flickering through the leaves above their heads.
 
Hector, a creature of the Marsh, as alien from Stowe as the Fey.

The lights struck Stowe as odd.
 
He had never seen lights that flickered in a perfect circle before.
 
If he had had time, he would see if the man had tried to pull leaves from the branches higher up.

"This man rooting through the Marsh," Hector said.
 
"Nearly killed a crane.
 
I splashed, scared the crane.
 
We don't kill them, ye know."

Stowe didn't know.
 
He wasn't even certain what a crane was.
 
But he nodded anyway.

"The man, he wasn't from here.
 
Too tall.
 
We got no one that tall."

"Did you get a good look at him?"

Hector shook his head.
 
"He was as far from me as the road.
 
But he didn't know customs.
 
And he was thin.
 
Normal thin, not like someone who ain't eaten."

"Could you see his skin?
 
Was it dark?"

Hector held out his arms, and gazed down at them as if they would provide the answer.
 
"No darker'n mine."

Stowe frowned.
 
For a moment, he had thought Hector was describing a Fey.
 
Then he looked at Hector's arms, covered in mud.
 
The deep, dark brown of the Kenniland Marshes.
 
Islander skin wasn't that color.
 
Islander skin would reflect like sunlight off water.

"Like your skin now?"

"Ain't no one with good sense gonna spend time in the Marsh without covering his skin."

Stowe took that as a yes.
 
Tall, thin, dark.
 
Not knowing the customs.
 
"Carrying a bow?"

"Had the arrow lined and the crane in his sights.
 
Fine shot, that man."

"You think he killed the King?"

Hector shrugged.
 
"Seems right."

"Do you know where he is now?"

"If I was him, I'd be long gone.
 
Ye gave him time, ye know.
 
If he hid.
 
Ye all come to the village like something's on your tail, and all of ye come.
 
No one stays by the Marsh.
 
No one watches to see if someone comes out of hiding."

Stowe heard the tone again.
 
City people.
 
City people who were too stupid to know better.
 
But they were panicked and frightened, and Stowe, at least, hoped that someone in the village would have told him he was wrong, that Alexander wasn't dead, that Alexander had merely fainted from pain.

No one had told him that.

And he had let the killer get away.

So far.

"You didn't see the man leave or where he was going, did you?"

"He was farther north," Hector said.
 
"The palace says the Marshes start here, but they really start north a ways."

"When was this?"

"Day or so after ye hit the village.
 
I wouldn'ta thought nothing of it if it weren't for that crane."

North.
 
Toward Jahn.
 
A Fey had come down to the Marshes to murder the king.
 
A perfect murder.
 
It would look like disgruntled peasants.
 
Alexander had been wrong.
 
Even with Jewel in the palace, the Fey would never give up.
 

But to murder Alexander.
 
Where would it get them?

It would get Jewel closer to power.

Which meant Nicholas was in danger.

A sense of urgency Stowe hadn't felt before filled him.
 
All this time he had wasted.
 
The palace didn't know, and it would take him days to get back there.
 
Days, even if he sent his swiftest messenger ahead.

He was trembling.
 
"Anything else unusual about the man?
 
Anything at all?"

Hector closed his eyes and frowned.
 
A piece of mud flaked off his forehead and fell on the collar of his shirt.
 
He didn't seem to notice.

Then he opened his eyes, but his stare seemed far away.
 
"His hair," Hector said finally.
 
"I ain't never seen hair like that on a person.
 
It was black as a cat's and it run to his shoulders.
 
First I thought it was mud, but if a man had mud in his hair it wouldn't blow with the breeze."

That it wouldn't.
 
Stowe didn't need any more.
 
He had all the evidence he needed.
 

A Fey had murdered Alexander.

Nicholas was next.

The war wasn't over.

The second round of fighting had just begun.

THE CORONATION

(One Day Later)

FOURTEEN

Charissa's arms ached.
 
She was polishing the silver railings behind the huge dais.
 
The light from the two story window had faded, and someone had lit torches around the room.
 
One of the butlers had left for candles so that each work area would be illuminated.

Three days to clean the Coronation Hall.
 
Three days to make it spotless.
 
Didn't the gentry know that sometimes what they asked was impossible?

The Master of the House had agreed without conferring with the Master of the Halls.
 
He had been appalled.
 
No one had used the Coronation Hall in centuries.
 
Coronations were held at the Tabernacle --had been for every King except a run of Constantines five hundred years before.
 
Constantine the First had built this section of the palace, and he had tried to wrest control from the Rocaan, even, some said, tried to have the Rocaan killed, although Charissa thought that part a story.
 
One of the chamber maids had told Charissa the entire history of the Hall as they were polishing the brass rails near the door.

That had seemed like months ago, even though it had been a day.
 
The entire palace staff --except for the kitchen staff --had focused on preparing this room, and it would still be a close call to have it done by noon the following day.
 
No one had looked in the hall in years.
 
It had been taken off the cleaning roster when the dead King had been a baby, maybe before.

The Coronation Hall made the Great Hall seem tiny.
 
The chambermaid, whose name was Lis, had told Charissa that the Great Hall had been built first, centuries before this part of the palace, and that you could tell in the way the room was put together.
 
Finally Charissa had asked Lis how she knew so much, and Lis had smiled.
 
Lis didn't work in the palace.
 
She worked for Lord Enford, and his wife taught the servants to read, and actually let them have time in the library.
 
Lis had found a liking for history, especially history of buildings, and had learned everything she could about them.

But Lis had moved to a different part of the Hall that afternoon, and Charissa had lost her companion.
 
The woman who worked beside her now was elderly.
 
She had come from Lord Miller's estate where they frowned on talking at all. Charissa had thought all places were the same, but she soon discovered that she preferred working in the palace to places with rules like Lord Miller's.
 
Lord Enford's estate sounded frightening in its opportunities.
 
What would a woman do who could read and who knew history?
 
It did little for Lis.
 
She had to leave her family and let them continue to farm.
 
Charissa at least got room, board, and wages which she could send home.

Charissa sighed and sat back on her heels.
 
She hadn't realized until she moved that her knees hurt too.
 
The woman beside her kept stopping and putting pressure on the small of her back.
 
Charissa at least didn't have to worry about that.
 
She was young, and she was sturdy.
 
She had to be.
 
She had worked for days straight with only a few hours sleep a night.

The Master of the Hall let everyone have a bit of sleep.
 
He said it made them fresher, more able to see and attack the dirt.
 
Charissa wasn't certain.
 
She always felt more tired after those naps, as if the time away allowed her body to assess its aches and pains.

She rubbed her neck and glanced around.
 
Men hung from scaffolding, cleaning the arches, and shining the windows.
 
Women huddled on the floor, polishing the gold, silver and brass that covered everything.
 
Washer women had scrubbed the large floor each day, and had finally gotten the grit off of it.
 
They were still scrubbing, and would until the butlers supervised the tables.
 
That, someone had said, would be around dawn.
 
Charissa hoped to be in her room by then.

The Hall did look better than it had.
 
When she had first seen it, she thought the cleaning task impossible.
 
Spider webs hung from the arches like gossamer sheets, and the dust was so thick that inches of it covered everything.
 
The great miraculous two story window was hidden under layers of dirt and grime, and the seats on the second floor balconies were broken and rotted.
 
When the Master of the Hall had shown the chambermaids the areas to begin polishing, Charissa had thought he was joking.
 
The tarnish was so thick and black it looked as if it had been burned on.