Scholar's Plot (2 page)

I drifted to the edge of the crowd, then turned and walked briskly down the lane between two more buildings, like a student hurrying back to his room for the pass he’d forgotten.

If the project was housed in an “old tower” then it was probably in an older part of the campus. I took a thorough tour of the campus architecture over the next half hour. There were four main squares, and three smaller ones just to make the place more confusing. The lanes were paved with flat stones, and gravel paths marked the lesser walkways — smooth, but noisy. There were also sections that seemed older than the others, but when I finally found the tower it was surrounded by much newer structures — its original neighbors having been torn down and replaced.

Only the tower had survived. It was an old, square-style tower, not the more modern round kind, with its back against the great outer wall and a courtyard off to one side — though the yard’s fence was a mere ten feet tall. I knew it was the tower I was looking for, because a bored-looking guard sat on a camp stool at the top of the steps that led up to the front door. His gaze was on something in his lap, that he worked on with small, deft motions.

He was so absorbed in his task that I walked clear across the square in front of the tower without 
him even noticing me. There were still a few scholars 
wandering about, so lecture attendance wasn’t mandatory, and if he had looked up it wouldn’t have mattered. I avoided the light from the scattered magica lamps, and with only a sliver of the Creature Moon setting and the Green Moon not yet risen, it was pretty dark.

Not your most alert guard, but no one could get through that door without being noticed. The odds of getting a twenty foot ladder up the outside of the campus wall without being noticed by someone in the street were pretty bad too.

On the other hand, there was a tree growing right up beside the lower wall that surrounded the tower’s yard, out of sight of the door. And there might be more accessible windows on the other side of the tower.

I made my way around the back of the neighboring buildings, and walked along the campus’s western wall toward the place where the tower butted up against it. My footsteps made no sound on grass, but it was so dark that I barely avoided several thorny bushes. After I’d been away from the lamps for a while my vision adapted, and it was worth it — there were three first floor windows on this side of the tower. All of them were dark, like the windows I’d seen on the tower’s upper floors in front, but that didn’t mean the jeweler wasn’t there. He preferred darkness.

Even the first floor windows were too high for me to reach — the ground floor of the tower looked to start about four feet above ground level — but with a bit of searching I found a half empty rain barrel, tipped it over, and rolled it back to the tower, as soundless as my steps on the well-cut lawn.

I had little fear of being caught — a student prank can explain almost anything — but my heart still beat a bit faster as I tipped the barrel bottom up under the first window and climbed up to inspect it.

Latched, from the inside. As was so often the case, the lock picks in my pocket were useless. Peering through the thick, bubbled glass in the dark was no help. I pulled out my pen knife and worked it into the seam between the window’s edge and the frame, trying to push the latch up. It didn’t budge, which probably meant it was the kind of latch that slid across instead of lifting, making that trick as useless as my picks.

I jumped down, and rolled the barrel over to the next window anyway. I hadn’t much hope, but there was always a chance that someone had been careless.

No one had.

I wasn’t worried about running out of time. Most university lectures last at least two hours, and that’s before they start taking questions. My father would leave for a lecture after dinner and sometimes not be home till midnight. If I wanted to scramble up that tree, drop into the courtyard, and try my picks on the side door, I’d have time.

What would happen if I walked up to the front door, said I was a friend of the jeweler, and asked to see him? In the morning, in my own clothes.

I considered this as I rolled the rain barrel back to its place and tipped it upright. The Green Moon, which was almost full, was beginning to rise — not that there was moonlight on the grass, but the sky was bright enough to keep me from running into bushes.

If the jeweler was being well-treated, they might simply let me in to see him. He was sort of a prisoner — no one could let a man that mad run loose, particularly one who could work magic. Even if he’d do no harm himself, which wasn’t guaranteed, he’d be prey to any villain who sought to use him — just as Tony Rose had.

There was no reason he couldn’t have a visitor. If they weren’t treating him well they’d refuse to let me see him, and I’d have alerted them that someone was interested, which might mean … what? Two guards? I couldn’t get past one.

The alternative was to climb the tree — and returning to try my luck openly sounded more practical.

I was turning to make my way back to the lecture hall, to depart with the crowd as I’d come in, when I saw Michael walking calmly into a circle of lamplight.

Michael.
Here
.

He paused to examine the buildings around him, looking much as he had when we’d parted company. Taller and thinner than I was, with straight, light brown hair brushing his collar in a nobleman’s longer cut.

He too wore a scholar’s coat, and he walked from one circle of light into the next as if he belonged here, as if he had nothing to hide.

I had taught him that.

I could hear his footsteps on the gravel, drawing nearer to the shadowy corner where I stood. Rage and excitement and pain swept over me, in waves that left me shaking.

But mostly it was rage.

How dare he turn up, just when I was beginning to be able to forget about our quarrel? At least I didn’t have to worry about how he was getting along without me — he was fine!

That was a good thing, because it meant that all I had to do was to see the jeweler, and when he turned out to be fine too, I could ride out of this town in the morning. And this time I’d take off for the far north, instead of dithering around on the Erran river plain as I’d been doing for the last three months.

The tree into the courtyard it was.

Michael was walking away from the tower, but even after he’d passed out of sight I kept an eye out for him as I made my way around the buildings once more, then walked down the outer wall to approach the tower on the yard side.

There was a slight breeze, enough to disguise some of the sounds I’d make, but I’d still have to keep as quiet as I could. And climbing a fully leafed tree wasn’t going to be quiet.

I couldn’t see the guard at his post by the front door — which was the point, because he couldn’t see me, either — but if he decided to make a round of the property he was supposed to be guarding, he’d probably catch me. However, the security didn’t seem to be all that tight. If they really cared about someone breaking in, they’d have cut down a tree that abutted the yard’s wall. I could go in, chat with the jeweler … and then get out of town before Michael ever learned I’d been here.

I reached the courtyard’s wall without incident, and there was now enough moonlight to inspect it as I walked toward the tree. Like the buildings, the wall was made of smooth river stones mortared into place. Because the stones were rounder, the mortared crevices between them were larger but, being round, all the stones sloped down and were completely smooth. River stone is worse to climb than stucco or brick, in my experience, which was considerable, as burglar had been my second criminal career. After picking pockets and before con artist, if you’re curious.

But if the wall was unclimbable, that tree might have been grown with burglars in mind. Either Pendarian’s groundskeepers didn’t know much about security, or the university didn’t really care. The tree had even been pruned so that, unlike wild elms, only the big branches remained. One was low enough that I only needed to put my hands on it and leap to be able to straddle it.

The branches’ slender tips shook like rattles, no matter how carefully I climbed, but you can’t have everything. And it grew so close to the wall that the branch I crawled out on only dipped a bit before it came to rest on the stone, creating a reasonable bridge.

I took a moment to examine my landing place, sitting on top of that high wall — and if you don’t think ten feet is high, you’ve never contemplated jumping down from it. The Green Moon had risen enough to illuminate the interior of the yard and shone clearly on the door in the tower wall. There were four steps leading up to a small stoop, and only two windows. Even in the bright moonlight, I couldn’t tell from this distance — about thirty yards — whether or not there was a keyhole in that door.

If there wasn’t, I could still get out of the courtyard. Stacked against the taller, outer wall was a rack of woven wicker boxes, like chicken cages in a livestock market, and much of the rest of the yard was taken up with a mazelike series of pens and runs made of plank fencing or stretched canvas on stakes. A table with some benches sat near the door, and there was a privy tucked discretely into one corner. So even if my lock picks failed to get me in, a bench piled onto the table should get me back to the top of the wall.

Of course the
plan
was still to go in and chat with my mad friend, go out one of the windows on the far side of the tower, and then depart with the crowd leaving the lecture. But I’ve learned, over the years, that plans are usually overrated.

I rolled over and squirmed down till I hung from my hands, then pushed off the wall and dropped. The nearly silent landing jarred me from head to heels.

I walked briskly across the yard, and had just reached the bottom of the steps when the door at the top swung open. A middle-aged woman in a dark gown took two steps onto the stoop and then froze, staring at me. She drew in a deep breath.

“Please, don’t scream.” I offered her my most disarming smile — which is pretty disarming, if I say so myself. “I mean you no harm. I don’t mean anyone harm. I just want to talk with the crazy man who’s kept here. It’s … it’s a dare. And then you can let me out and I’ll leave. Please, Professor.” It was a guess, but she was too old to be a scholar, and the dark gown, with its narrow skirt and archaic ruffled collar, looked like the female version of an academic uniform. “Please, don’t scream. And don’t tell my dorm master?”

She eyed me consideringly for a moment before she spoke. “How stupid do you think I am?” She opened her mouth and screamed.

She went on screaming, and moments later a guard’s whistle joined in.

There wasn’t enough time to move the furniture, and in an enclosed courtyard with an unclimbable fence there was no point in running. I backed away from her, politely, and sat down on one of the benches to await arrest. Judging by the shouts it would be soon, and there would be lots of people to do the arresting. If I didn’t alarm the professor any further — and judging by that cool speech, she wasn’t very alarmable — maybe I’d get off lightly, even if my story about a dare failed.

I briefly considered telling the truth. It had worked for me last time, mostly due to the extremely peculiar fact that Michael and I were now regarded as heroes by all the Liege’s guardsmen.

I discovered this when a bit of card sharping went twisty on me several weeks ago in Easton Township. It wasn’t really sharping — I was too badly out of practice for that — but a mathematical trick I induced folk to bet on. And since I never encouraged them to bet more than they could afford to lose, it was usually safe.

But I’d been trying not to remember Michael’s appalled amusement the first time he saw me do it, and I missed the fact that some half-drunk young idiots in the back of the crowd were betting too high.

So when half of them lost, of course they called the guard to arrest
me
.

The professor had stopped screaming now. And what had she been doing in the tower, without a single candle to warn a burglar she was in there? It hardly seemed fair. The shouts were suddenly muffled, which meant the 
forces of law were now inside the tower and my life was about to get complicated. But at least the whistling had stopped, and if he had any sense Michael would use that disturbance as a distraction from whatever nefarious purpose he’d come for, instead of rushing toward the commotion.

On the other hand, this was Michael.

And Michael’s proclivity for getting us into trouble had paid off with the Liege Guard in Easton, as soon as they learned I was
Michael Sevenson’s
comrade, who had summoned the guard to take down the Rose Conspiracy. And busted Tallowsport wide open, and saved the Realm from rebellion, maybe even an all-out war.

Myself, I remembered it more as a desperate scramble to save all our lives. The endgame had gotten ugly, too. Not to mention the quarrel after.

But when Easton’s guardsmen learned that I was that Fisk, they were perfectly willing to listen to my side of the story, and also to the witnesses who confirmed I was telling the truth.

The guard who now came rushing through the door behind the professor would have knocked her off the stoop if she hadn’t skipped aside, and a mob of burly students followed him.

After one look at their eager faces and muscular shoulders, I decided to be very meek about being arrested. I was considering whether to tell the Liege’s men that I was
that
Fisk, one of the heroes of etc., etc., and that the man I wanted to see used to be the Rose’s jeweler. And either that I just wanted to assure myself he was all right, or maybe that I was on an errand for the High Liege, which was far too secret for me disclose.