One Good Knight (28 page)

His head dropped another foot. “I know,” he said glumly. “But…but I hate making them unhappy!”

“If you can tell me how we could possibly bring Unicorns into the Palace, I would like to hear this plan,” she replied. “Honestly, I would very much like to add them to the invading force. But I can't see any way of getting them
to
the Palace, much less
through
the Palace.”

“But they look so dejected when you tell them they can't do something!” he said. “It's a heartbreak for them!”

She considered the options. “Well, how about this. Tell them they can join our forces but only if they can get to the Palace on their own.”

He perked up. “That is an excellent solution. I doubt very much that any of them will even think about it, much less plan it. Their attention span is usually dependent on whether or not a butterfly is passing. I will go talk to them.”

She smiled warmly at him. “Thank you. I hate disappointing them, too.”

But not too much.

Solon sprawled in his favorite chair, stared at the flame of the lamp on the table in front of him and brooded. The fox had vanished. Had not returned at all and there was no sign that it ever would. Solon was furious. He had tried tracking the beast, but for some reason the geas it was under had been negated.

How that could happen, he could not imagine. Unless…

The fox was in the Wyrding Lands and any number of things could have happened to it. It could have been caught and eaten. It could have attracted the attention of a Magician of some kind, witch or hedge-wizard, and the geas could have been broken in that way. A witch or a hedge-wizard should not have been able to do so, but it was the Wyrding
Lands and the Wyrding Others had powers inherent to their nature that were not altogether predictable.

Likeliest, though, was that the foul thing had gotten itself eaten. It would be ironic in the extreme if it had been eaten by his dragon.

Which might be exactly what had happened. If the dragon had sensed the fox carrying around that scale he'd given it— The more he thought about it, the likelier that scenario seemed.

At least he knew that the dragon was still alive. The charm remained warm. It had shown up precisely when it should have done to take the next two sacrifices, so there was no need to worry yet.

He had sent some nonspecific curses aimed at Andromeda, but they had neither rebounded nor struck home. They probably were too nonspecific. They had probably faded as such things did when they did not find a target.

But the Queen was demanding an answer. And he did not have one to give her.

Damn fox! Why could it not have—

Then he smiled. The Queen was no Magician, and he was the only decent Magician she knew. He could tell her whatever he chose, and she would never know one way or another. He rose, smoothed down his robes and moved into his bedroom.

It was an austere place, except for the not-too-obvious comforts of silken sheets and luxurious goose-down mattress and pillows. She never came here; he always came to her, like a supplicant. That
was how she liked things, but so did he. He did not want her here. She would be an intruder, impinging on his privacy. She would want to change the stark, white walls with lush murals, want to pile the bed high with pillows, want layers of gauzy drapes instead of the heavy damask, and flowers, flowers everywhere. He wanted only the occasional scent of bitter incense, aloes and myrrh. No flowers. No sweetness. Not even much sensuality, actually. Nothing overt.

She was everything overt, and becoming more so as she grew older. He craved a simpler style.

Well, perhaps he would not need to put up with her for much longer. For now, though, she was expecting him and it didn't do to keep her waiting.

He thumbed the hidden catch on the headboard of the bed, and the entire section of wall, headboard and all, moved slightly outward with a
click
, showing the outline of the hidden door-panel. He shoved on the bed, which slid sideways on hidden wheels, taking the headboard and the wall with it. After slipping into the passageway he tugged on the handle built into the panel on that side. Bed, headboard and wall moved back in place, and he pulled them shut.

The passage was black, stuffy and narrow, but he didn't need a light. It ended in only one place: the Queen's bedroom. Who had built it? Why? It had to have been installed when the Palace itself was built, and probably for the oldest of reasons, for the same (almost) reason he used it—to visit a lover.

Or perhaps not. It might have been for escape…

He felt his way along the passageway until his hands encountered the blank wall of the end; the latch and the handle were at waist height. He triggered the latch release and pushed a little, then tugged sideways. One good thing about Cassiopeia's penchant for draperies and arras everywhere was that they hid her side of the secret passage, which was not built into the headboard of a bed. He squeezed through the gap, leaving it open as always. If he had to leave in a hurry because of an emergency or the unexpected arrival of a servant…

She was alone, lounging luxuriously on a pile of cushions. He surveyed her with a false and foolish smile on his face. But behind his smile of infatuation he surveyed her coldly.

Aging. Definitely aging—hints of a wrinkle there, a sag here; breasts that were no longer pert; the signs of a little more chin than she should have… Age did not treat women well. It gave men dignity, but it left women with signs of wear.

She looked up. “Have you—?”

“Yes. News, my Queen. They are both disposed of.”

Relief suffused her features. “The dragon?”

He shook his head. “The Wyrding Others. Some sort of monster, possibly a Hydra, possibly a Chimera,” he said, lying fluently. “My informant could only convey an appalling number of heads and teeth, and an ambush on the road.”

She laughed. And though he was in agreement
with her about the need to eliminate Andromeda, still, there was something sickening about the fact that this woman was laughing about the death of her own daughter.

“One less trouble to worry about. What chance that anyone will ever find remains? I might be forced to act if they do.”

“None,” he lied again. Or—well, this wasn't a lie; no one would find remains because there were no remains to be found. “The thing came back several times to drag everything to its den. No one will ever find anything.”

Unholy joy. That was certainly the right description for her expression. And as he joined her in her bed, he wondered how long it would be before he could be wed to her, then rid of her.

 

The Queen watched the hidden door close behind Solon, and wondered how long it would be before she could afford to be rid of him.

The problem was that he was a Magician, and they were always tricky to eliminate. She sank back among her pillows and considered her options.

There was poison, but Wizards were notoriously suspicious of their food and drink and Solon was no exception to that rule. He examined every bite and sip, never ate anything in public that did not derive from a common platter, never ate or drank anything in her presence that did not come from a source they shared. For all she knew he never ate or drank any
thing in private that he had not prepared with his own hands. So poison was probably not an option.

There was the possibility of doing it with her own hands. That had the advantage that she could always claim he had tried to take advantage of her, or better still, that she had discovered he was the one who had summoned the dragon. That was better still, because it was the truth, and one misleading truth was better and more effective than a hundred lies. So that was a possibility. The only problem was that so far she had not seen him in a single unguarded moment for as long as she had known him. Not even in bed. Especially not in bed.

So that left getting someone else to do it.

The best would be to have someone discover he was the summoner of the dragon. Then she could easily condemn him as a traitor and have him put to death.

The problem with that particular scenario was that he would implicate her, as well. And while as the Queen she could have him silenced, one way or another, there would always be doubts. And without him to hold the Border against interfering interlopers like Champions and Godmothers, the next thing she knew there would be someone calling her to account.

So that was probably not viable.

She turned over on her stomach and rested her chin on her arms, thinking. Getting one of her Guard simply to kill him probably would not work, either. He was much, much too clever to be caught doing anything egregious. No one would believe her if he
was found here and she claimed he had forced his way in, and unless he was killed on the spot—not likely—the same problem arose as with denouncing him. He would talk. Word would spread. The jealous-lover scenario was also not a good choice, tempting though it was. Not unless she could find someone who was both hopelessly naive and much more powerful than he was.

She had to laugh at that idea. Powerful wizards of whatever ilk did not get that way by being naive. She might be able to find someone, but it was a certainty that she would only trade one problem for another.

Irritating. Very irritating.

And none of this had to happen, that was the most irritating part of all. If that tedious husband of hers had just had the grace to die by himself— It wasn't as if he had been doing anything remotely useful with his life. If he had been a great King and Warrior, he would have conquered the Wyrding Others and gotten back all that valuable property for the Crown. The timber in there was amazing, so the shipwrights said. Acadia could have exported it, even started shipbuilding trades here. She frowned. It just gave her a headache. All that timber waiting to be exploited and no one touching it. And for what? So the trees could grow to a size too big to support their own weight, fall over and die. What good did that do?

And who knew what else was in those mountains? Gold and silver surely; there were Dwarves in there, and everyone knew that Dwarves went where
the gold and silver and gems were. All that could have belonged to the Crown, too, if her husband had just done his duty by her and his country. Treaties weren't worth a feather. But if he had really needed an excuse, there was a ready enough one in that the Treaty Lands were simply packed with dangerous creatures that the so-called “good” ones were protecting. If those Wyrding Others were so “good,” so benign, then why hadn't they been turning in the “bad” ones? That alone was sufficient reason to invade the Treaty Lands.

As it was, he had to be gotten out of the way so she would have a freer hand in controlling these people. Without a Warrior-King, she was going to have to hire mercenaries to take over the Treaty Lands, and he simply would have put up too many objections to the kinds of taxes needed to pay for something like that. And it wasn't as if she'd raised taxes all at once. A little here, a little there—people learned to cope, learned to work a little harder. Those that couldn't, well, they had to give way to those that could.

Couldn't they see how she was going to make them all prosperous? It really was annoying how ignorant they were.

She stared at the flame of her scented oil lamp and pondered the puzzle. It certainly was obvious God put some people in the seats of power. Most people were too stupid even to know what was good for them. It required those who were superior by birth
and by native cleverness to be the shepherds over these sheep.

People like Cassiopeia.

Take the storms she'd had Solon create. If people had simply been law-abiding and hadn't persisted in trying to evade the port taxes, she wouldn't have needed to have Solon work nasty weather magic on the coastline. It was too bad about the farmers and herdsmen living there, and the fishermen, but the fishermen were probably all smugglers themselves, and the farmers would be able to relocate to much better situations once she had the Treaty Lands under control.

It was all about control. Everything would be so much better once she had it all under control.

Even the dragon… If people didn't have the sense to understand that she knew exactly what needed to be done to make Acadia into a Kingdom both envied and respected, then they would have to reap the fruits of their ignorance. Once someone had lost a daughter to the dragon, he became remarkably cooperative. It was too bad that those girls all had to die because their fathers were fools, but unfortunately, one could not make a pigeon pie without squab dying.

She caught herself frowning more deeply, and with a sigh, forced herself to stop. Frowning made wrinkles. This was not sorting out how to be rid of Solon, either.

Perhaps it would be best to turn to the professionals. Using a hired killer presented a number of
advantages. He would not ask questions. He would not make demands past his fee. And above all, he would get the job done.

The more she thought about it, the better she liked the idea, in fact. A hired professional would know how to remove a Wizard and have the right tools for the job. There would be no accidents. No, this was a good idea, a very good idea. He would be expensive—well, a couple of shipwrecks would pay for that. But there was certainly no one in Acadia who could do the job properly, so she would have to look outside the country.

If she put things in motion to find her assassin now, by the time Solon became truly unbearable, she would have the man.

She smiled to herself and snuggled down more comfortably among her cushions. She would get the search started tomorrow. This would take some careful work—indirect of course, but Solon was not the only person of negotiable nature she employed. That was another trick, really—learning how to play such creatures off against one another. But superior intelligence and breeding would always tell.

 

Andie was no longer in charge of washing dishes. In fact, Andie was no longer relegated to doing any “chores” as such, unless she had the time and wanted to. The two new girls had been more than happy to take over from her so that she could help Peri in the one area where he and she outshone everyone else.

“My friend and companion, the lore-scholar,” Gina called her, and with some truth. She and Peri were searching through his books looking for every scrap of Traditional magic that might be invoked on their behalf. And for tactics that might help the tiny “army” invade the Palace with no casualties.

So far, the going had been slow. A pity, but there it was. Gina was much more versed in Traditional paths as applied to the art of war than Peri or Andie were. Still, it was worth searching for, and in the process they had found one or two useful bits of information.

That the best time to stage this invasion would be right before the Watch changed, because the men on duty would be tired and thinking of dinner and bed, and not looking for trouble.

That it would be best if the Princess went in with the first of the invaders and showed the Guards who she was, because it was just possible she might be able to turn one or more to their side. Or, if she couldn't turn them, frighten them, as they would certainly think they were seeing a spirit.