The Fox (84 page)

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she retorted. “Don’t you dare. They come to hear me sing and to look at you. If you were another woman I’d hate you for that, but you aren’t, and anyway they still come to me.”

“Which is the most important thing,” the prince observed, his fingers still tented.

“What does that mean?” she demanded, pushing the delicate fabric of her sleeve up past her wrists so she could extend her hands to the fire. Her gown was dark, and far more simple than anything she usually wore, which was a signal to the others that she had planned her campaign well.

They had not been clever, they had been clumsy.

The prince said a little more heatedly than he had intended, “That the welfare of the kingdom is of far less importance to you than its gifts.”

The Comet shook out her pale blond hair, the droplets glowing before they hissed in the fire. “How tediously sententious that sounds!” She lifted her rounded shoulders, then added with faint humor, “But then I never do tell anyone what I really want, do I?”

Tau caught the change in her mood, and came forward, bending to take her hand. He kissed it smackingly.

“Eugh.” She gave an extravagant shiver. “Your lips are cold. Spare me your frog kisses.”

“How did you follow me?” he asked.

She considered them. They were really listening now; further, they were seeing
her,
and not what they expected to see. She’d made her point, and without either of them being drearily obvious.

“In pieces,” she said. “You lost me a couple of times, but each time I marked where, and next time you left dressed like that—” She pointed to Tau’s ordinary sailor clothes, the cap that covered most of his hair. “—I’d race ahead to where I left you last, in hopes you’d pass me by and lead on. Your twistiest evasions were always at the beginning.”

The prince raised his brows, and Tau flushed, laughing.

“It took only three attempts to follow you,” she finished. And, less triumphantly, “I was trained. But I left my home and that life. And no, I’ll never talk about it. My voice gave me a new life, one I built with care.”

Tau grinned.

She grinned back. “If it had been something honest, like your mother’s pleasure house, yes I would have told you. But it wasn’t.” She sighed. “I know plenty about politics. I don’t really understand the motivations behind risk for an ideal—I’m used to risk for gain. But though I cannot be loyal to a place, or an idea, I am to people. And I do communicate with prominent performers all over the continent, who have their own ways of hearing things.”

Tau turned to the prince, hand open, a gesture the prince successfully interpreted as Tau’s tacit acceptance of the Comet’s implied offer. But the decision was his. Elgar the Fox’s needs could be pursued anywhere; the kingdom’s welfare was the prince’s affair.

He hesitated only a moment. It had taken a long time to discover her real name—Denja Arrad—back when he was first taken with her. Now he suspected that the name was as false as her initial interest in him had been. But despite it all, he liked her, admired her.

Could he trust her?

Taumad seemed to think so. And he had learned to trust some far more surprising characters.

“All right, then,” he said. And with an attempt at humor, “At least we won’t have to sit here breathing mold anymore. ”

Chapter Twenty-three

EVER since his return from the unsuccessful search, Fleet Commander Hyarl Durasnir had been rising before dawn—but not for his meditation watch, during which he had long been accustomed to working through the old weapons patterns as he let his mind range free. He was too busy for that luxury now.

The result was a sense of day-long physical as well as mental cramming. There was no help for it. The stream of reports and decisions that had been abandoned for the harbor search had dammed up, clogging the course of business, trade, cruises—everything. While Rajnir brooded at his window, encouraged by Dag Erkric to design a series of entertainments to lift morale, the labor of governmental log-jam clearance fell to Durasnir.

Despite the complexity of demands, delegated tasks, interviews, and reports, Durasnir found his thoughts returning to the private interview that old Dag Ulaffa had requested the day of his return.

The sea dags seldom interfered with land matters; the Yaga Krona were even more removed, involving themselves in daily affairs only when a matter concerned the welfare of the prince. Sometimes such “matters” led to jurisdictional bickering. The army and navy were customarily united in only two things: their oaths to the king, and their resentment of the powers granted the Erama Krona and Yaga Krona, whose chain of command ran parallel to everyone else’s.

There were a few who never raised petty conflicts. Dag Valda, Chief of the Sea Dags, was one. The other was old Ulaffa, senior Yaga Krona under Erkric. Ulaffa spoke as Yaga rarely, but when he did, Durasnir always listened.

Ulaffa had come to him because Erkric was elsewhere; even Valda, he knew, had been summoned home to Venn. Ulaffa was therefore the ranking dag in the south, and Durasnir the ranking warrior.

So Durasnir had heard Ulaffa out. The problem was Durasnir did not take young Wafri seriously. There had to be a reason no one among the Venn knew the wounded guard who had been whisked away to Limros Palace. Patrol schedules were changed often, whether on land or at sea. It was not just humane but good policy to avoid anyone being stuck on night duty for months on end. The Ymaran guards had a different schedule rotation than the Venn and no one had paid much attention hitherto. The Venn guards looked down on the Ymarans. Said they had at best rudimentary military training, they were weak, soft, frequently drunk on duty, worthless for much beyond standing around wearing their lord’s livery. But Prince Rajnir wished the Venn and the Ymarans of Beila Lana to work side by side, so they did—without much mixing.

It wasn’t until late one night, as he lay awake beside his sleeping wife and took the time to think the matter through, that he finally identified what had bothered him.

The problem of the wounded warrior was not isolated.

First, there was the question of how Elgar the Fox could have attacked someone when under the influence of white kinthus. It was an accepted function of the herb for people to behave as if their limbs had been unstrung; most, in fact, couldn’t walk at all until it wore off.

Second was his own private doubt. How could someone as preternaturally competent—if not to say long-sighted—as Ramis of the
Knife
waste a commander on a mission that should have been given to those trained in covert and solitary action? There was absolutely nothing in Elgar the Fox’s confession that indicated he had been trained as a spy or assassin. It would have been far more believable that Ramis would perform such an assassination himself.

That didn’t even touch the question of motivation. How would Ramis benefit if Prince Rajnir were assassinated? Assassination would succeed only in turning the king’s eyes away from the northern problems to the south. And that would result in him sending a force to descend in punitive fury. Rajnir’s plans were his own—that was understood in the Land of the Venn, while the Great Houses were still stalemated over the choice of another heir—but the goal of settlement and regulation of trade under the aegis of the Venn was the king’s will.

What he was fairly certain of was that the anomalies in this situation, for once, did not have Erkric’s guiding hand behind them. Dag Erkric had been as surprised as, and perhaps more angry than Rajnir, which suggested he had in fact wanted the Marlovan alive for his own purposes.

Now, lying awake on the first cold harvest night of the year and gazing through the window at the icy sliver of moon, he mentally reviewed Ulaffa’s report on his interview with the Ymaran officer who had written out Indevan Algara-Vayir’s confession.

He was either angry or fearful,
Ulaffa had said.
He did not want to talk with me. So I approached him again, this time with Dag Signi to witness, and she said he was mortally afraid.

Ulaffa, appointed by the king. And Signi, who had been a hel dancer-in-training long enough to see revealed in muscle movement what others tried to hide by artificial stances, tones of voice. When Signi or Ulaffa spoke, Durasnir listened.

So, it was time to lay aside his work yet again, though he loathed the prospect of more time lost, and the consequent complications, delays, and tempers. He had better investigate this matter tomorrow.

He turned over and went to sleep.

One of the many evidences of Wafri’s respect for Inda’s putative abilities was the fact that he was never permitted to sleep in darkness. There were glowglobes installed high on the vaulted ceiling which never winked out.

So Inda did not know how long he had been imprisoned; he would waken and that narrow window high up would show blue or black, or the gray of cloud, rarely in succession. Sometimes golden light slanted in, stronger than the cool white of glowglobes, when the sun was right. There was no counting days when you fell asleep in dark and wakened in dark, or fell asleep in daylight and woke again in the same.

For a time he’d watched the window until he found that it made him too angry that it was beyond reach. Early on, when movement was still easy, he’d even wrestled the wooden bed frame up against the wall. He clambered up, despite how dangerously it wobbled, to discover that the edge of the window was still beyond an arm’s length in reach.

So then he refused to look at it. He did not want to know if he could fit through it. He had no interest in night or day. What he watched was the door. He waited for a single slip on Wafri’s part, such as a visit without a host of guards beyond the door.

That never happened.

What did happen was a sudden wakening under weak blue moonlight. Only this time Inda did not gasp, finding himself trembling on the bed in a sweat, his mind gripped in a nightmarish reliving of one of Wafri’s visits.

Instead he sensed someone with him. It was that same strange sensation that he’d only felt in battle before. It was extraordinarily clear and sharp, like a poke inside his skull; despite the glass shards of pain in every joint when he moved, he sat up, looking carefully around the bright cell.

Empty.

He lay back gratefully, as always facing the door . . . and again that insistent mental poke.

But there was no raised sword behind him, no arrow whiffling through the air. There was nothing behind him except the wall.

So he looked directly up—and painful prickles ran from his neck down his arms when he saw, dangling from the window, a long rope.

He blinked. Rubbed his eyes. Opened them. The rope remained. One glance at the cell door. Shut. Locked.

Inda rolled over cautiously. At least he
could
move, after the last session with the healer. He climbed slowly up on the bed, trembly as an old man. Stretched up a hand—and his fingers closed around scratchy, twisted hemp.

Suspicion. Was this rope one of Wafri’s tortures in a new form?

He didn’t care. He’d go up that rope no matter what was at the other end.

The rope jerked twice in his hand. He lifted his other hand, gripped the rope, then lifted his feet.

It held firm.

So he began to climb, at first rapidly, but very soon he slowed, his hands slick with sweat, muscles trembling. He slipped, the hemp burning until he clutched with a death-grip that halted his descent. He swung slightly, then thumped against the stone wall.

The weakness made him angry enough for a short burst of strength, and though he weakened again very swiftly, at least he made it to the window, where two strong hands reached through to grasp his wrists.

He stuck a leg through and turned sideways. Then came the worst part, a pull through the narrow window. But Inda was so thin he squeezed through, though the stone scraped his ears and his chest.

And he was free. He collapsed onto flat stone, struggling for breath. He was too exhausted to speak, and too dizzy to open his eyes.

“How bad is it?”

Holding out a flagon.

Inda forced himself to his elbows, caught his hair under them and collapsed again. Fox helped him lift his head and held the flagon to his lips; Inda sipped the bitter concoction, choked, then recognized listerblossom and willow among the flavors. Pain ease. He drank it down without stopping, then dropped flat again, eyes open. The blue-white crescent of moon revolved gently opposite Fox’s bony face. “What?” Inda whispered. “No ‘I told you so’?”

Even in the moonlight Inda looked terrible. “If you haven’t done enough of that on your own, then you won’t listen to any words of mine.” Fox sat back on his heels. “Can you move?”

Inda gritted his teeth. “If it kills me.” He sat up and clumsily began to braid his hair, but he winced and his hands dropped.

Fox took over, his touch impersonal. Inda dropped his head gratefully as Fox whipped his hair into a tight sailor’s queue, wondering what kind of torturer made someone look as bad as Inda did, then had his hair washed? The idea made him queasy.

“I don’t know how long this respite will last. What I’d like to do in departure,” Fox said, “is indicate our royal displeasure. What do you say?”

Inda breathed in slowly. The dizziness was gone, leaving an almost hysterical euphoria. Fox! Here! How? Inda tried to frame a question, felt his emotions tumble, and shook his head.

Fox said lightly, “Inda, we are probably the most wanted two fighting men in this half of the world. I feel we owe it to the Sartoran continent to live up—no, really, to surpass— our reputations. After all, we do not want to risk becoming stale.”

“I don’t understand,” Inda said.

Fox hung the flagon on his sash. The moonlight painted the bruises around Inda’s jaw black. His visible joints— knuckles, wrists, ankles—were equally black and puffy. Suspecting it must be worse under Inda’s clothing, Fox kept up the light words. A semblance of normality. “While you were loafing about down there, I was busy enough for the both of us. Wafri had a second perimeter on guard just for you when he was down in your cell. So last time he had all his boys at this end of the palace, I was busy laying down some gifts in thanks for his hospitality. And, a while ago, when the extra guard was dismissed to their hard-earned slumbers, I put in my finishing touches and climbed up to invite you out in hopes you’d like to join me in expressing our appreciation of the Ymaran style of entertainment.”