Betrayal (10 page)

Berengar stared forward as they rode hard through the forest.

“Up the ladder.”

He placed the book on his lap as he sat in the velvet chair under the candle light. His fingers traced over the fine etching of the leather cover. The book was more than a year’s wages of everyone in the closest village put together. It was carried across countless kingdoms before reaching his personal library.

He could barely read the ancient words painted across the gold leaf pages. He did not even care so much for the content which supposedly possessed some level of ancient magic. Magic was the stuff that peasants believed in because they did not have the personal power or wealth to shape the world around them. He did not care about the content as much as he valued the possession and the ability to possess what it represented.

He took a moment to lift his spectacles from the marble side table next to him. The thin wire arms were a level of metal working that only a few people within the kingdom could perform. The glass that was molded to bend light and make reading easier was a skill nearly lost to the world. The cost of bringing this pair through a half dozen kingdoms to his manor house in the shadow of the capital was enough to feed half the kingdom. The charity of feeding the poor might be forgotten the next time they grew hungry again, but having these glasses was an undeniable exercise of power and demonstration of wealth.

Possessing the throne and choosing who sat upon it was the work of powerful men. Deciding who sat upon two thrones was a legendary level of power that could not be ignored, and he would be a part of that too.

He perched his spectacles on his nose, barely feeling them from their fragile lightness. He folded back the leather cover, stressing the aged spine with a satisfying crackle. The title page itself was decorated with ink that stood up from the leaf and glistened in the shifting light. The single page was a more valuable piece of art than any that hung upon the walls of the palace itself.

He wet his lips in quiet satisfaction before turning the page, feeling its unnatural weight.

“Lord Caffrey?”

He jumped at the sound of his own name within his private library. The doors were closed and he had not heard them open. The heavy leather covers that lined the shelves and the rows of bound pages surrounding the room absorbed the noise and killed all echo, but rising out of the silence, the voice startled him like a clap of thunder.

He jolted and tore the title page. It was a small rip, but it started from the bottom center of the page and broke jagged up through the leaf for about half the distance of Lord Caffrey’s thumb. He could see the broken lengths of gold thread laced within the paper now exposed to the light.

He felt heat in his cheeks and the throb of a vein in the center of his forehead. He stared at the rip like it was a fissure through which an immeasurable fortune had fallen away. This volume had survived wars and the fall of empires. Now a single, impudent voice speaking two words had damaged it where fire, flood, pestilence, and famine could not.

Caffrey shook until his vision blurred with the intensity of it. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “You will regret the day of your birth.”

“Not nearly as much as you will regret the day of my birth, if you did what I think you did.”

Caffrey stilled and felt cold where the rush of blood had made him feel hot with rage a moment before. He rolled his head around the chair to see two dark figures hulking in the shadows. They stood just outside the circle of light from the candles suspended in the metal chandeliers above him.

He pawed at a drawer underneath the marble top of the side table. As the figures advanced, Caffrey cried out. “Someone! Help me!”

The drawer bound in its slats from him trying to force it free at the desperate angle. The wood screamed against itself, and the thought crossed his mind as the figures advanced from the darkness into the flickering light that he should have spent his wealth on a better drawer.

Caffrey forced his hand into the narrow opening and clawed at the forgotten contents inside. The marble edge and sharp lip of the drawer pressed at the fragile bones in the back of his hand. He came out with the brass spike of a letter opener which tapered to a sharp point, but sported the dullest of edges. It quivered in his fist, his fingers clutched over the ivory handle supposedly carved from the tooth of a dragon. Caffrey always suspected it was nothing more than a wild pig’s tusk. However, he paid handsomely for the lie.

As he rose from his chair and staggered away, Caffrey noted that the two men left their swords sheathed on their hips like they anticipated no great trouble in dispatching him. “Help me! Robbers. I have robbers in my home!”

The older of the two men, with a scar on his cheek and gray whiskers on his unkempt face, charged. He pushed over the marble topped side table, shattering the cherry wood of the drawer underneath as it crashed to the floor. Some part of his sheathed sword hilt snagged the upholstery of the chair and tore it open, revealing matted fluff inside.

Caffrey raised his hands in defense, still twisted sideways and shuffling awkwardly away. The man first slapped away the tome, sending it flying with its cover open like bird’s wings and its priceless pages splayed open. It landed on its pages crumpling and tearing them. The book then tumbled, casting torn leaf out across the floor and landing with the entire contents broken loose from the spine and cover.

Caffrey stared in gapped mouthed shock and did not think to lift his modest, but expensive weapon as he mourned his precious book. These men had no appreciation for the value of such things.

The man swatted aside the letter opener, bringing a whimper from Lord Caffrey. The blade clattered along the floor and up against the oak base of one of the shelves.

“You will be cut down for these crimes.” Caffrey pushed out the words with breath, but no voice.

The man seized Caffrey by his clothes and shook him. The noble squeaked and his teeth clacked together over the tip of his own tongue with a rush of hot pain. The skin on his face tightened and ached with the shock of it, and Caffrey gagged on the taste of his own blood.

His spectacles tumbled off his face and fell to the floor between them.

The man lifted the noble off the ground, ripping his silk robes and then slammed him down on his back. Caffrey landed on the thick, imported rugs on the floors of his library, but the impact still drove the air out of his lungs and threatened to wrap him up in darkness.

The robber’s boot planted on the glasses, crushing them with a sickening crunch.

The man slapped Caffrey across the face and brought the noble back into the moment, alert more from the shock and affront of it all than from the pain.

“How… Who do… Who are you?” Caffrey demanded with a cracked voice.

“I am Captain Berengar,” the man declared, leaning down and staring Lord Caffrey in the face. “Formerly of the Elite Guard to the King. I have dedicated my life to cutting down evil men and rooting out injustice from the dark corners where it tries to hide. And now I have come for you.”

“I know you.” Caffrey winced as the deep cut on the tip of his tongue found the edge of a tooth. “I was at the ceremony where they pinned a cheap, iron medal upon your uniform. This act of treachery against the nobility of the kingdom is a far cry from that grand day, captain.”

“All but a handful of the Elite Guard were cut down at your gate by a coordinated ambush,” Berengar said over Caffrey. “I will cut down those responsible and expose the truth. I can do that with you, or with the truth you lead me to in exchange for your skin.”

“So, I give you names,” Caffrey said, “and you walk out of my library leaving me to live. Is that the proposal?”

“It is the best offer you are getting tonight, Lord Caffrey, and the window on an agreement is closing.”

“Then I give you the King himself. He is the top of the chain of command for your conspiracy.”

“The King ordered his Guard to be murdered in the night, along with the crown prince of the eastern empire?” Berengar asked in disbelief.

“The King gives all orders on life and death,” Caffrey said from his place on the floor. “How many times and how many people did he order dead at your hand, captain? May I stand?”

“If you think you are brave enough, you can try, but it is my will that you remain right where you are.”

Caffrey made no motion to rise. The second man circled around the scene and stood by the shelves on the far side of the room where he leaned. One of his boots rested on the bent edge of a torn page where the book lay scattered and destroyed about the floor. Caffrey turned his head toward the second man and gritted his teeth. He stared at the offending boot as he spoke. “I know you too. Your picture dons many trees and posts throughout the kingdom, Lieutenant Nisero.”

“It is not the best rendering,” Nisero remarked. “One might have to already know me to recognize me from that picture.”

“Perhaps,” Caffrey said, “but many search for you and will find you for your part in the terrible crime that brings you two crashing into my library. Or is it still three, since your swollen daughter joins you in your banditry, captain?”

Berengar grabbed Caffrey by the throat and squeezed him against the floor. The noble’s eyes bulged and his face went from pink to red to purple. Lord Caffrey’s tongue protruded from his mouth showing the dark cut on the tip. The noble choked out the words. “You will pay.”

“If you don’t want my hand on your throat,” Berengar snarled, “then remove it yourself.”

Caffrey’s hands stayed at his sides and he hissed through his constricted airway. “What is it that you want to know?”

Berengar relented on his grasp, but kept his fingers wrapped around the curve of the man’s throat as proper color slowly restored to his face. “How do you know about my daughter?”

“I pay large sums to be kept in the know. There is no more valuable knowledge in the kingdom at the moment than your comings and goings. I know you questioned your man, Forseth, dangling from a snare in the woods like a hobbled peacock.”

“Did you know we were coming for you?”

Caffrey appeared pensive, but did not answer.

“I did not have a hand in killing those men,” Nisero said.

“Do you break into my home, destroy priceless heirlooms, assault me, and stand over me threatening my life to argue your innocence to me, then?”

“You said we would die for our part in all this,” Nisero clarified. “I did not do anything nor conspire with anyone.”

“Your part and your crime, Lieutenant Nisero, was having the nerve and the great misfortune of surviving. It is a crime that powerful men simply cannot forgive you for doing.”

“Powerful men like you?” Berengar asked, still holding Caffrey down by his throat.

“There are no men like me. Powerful men come to me when they are not nearly powerful enough. I am in a class unto myself.”

“So unweave the mystery for me, Caffrey, in exchange for your life.”

“Is that what your man Forseth told you? That I was the key to the mystery of why the Elite Guard and the eastern prince and heir had to die?”

“He told us lies, so we come to you to find truth,” Berengar said.

“Truth is an expensive prize with sharp edges,” Caffrey replied. “Most men claim they want it, but very few truly do. If you let Forseth live after suspecting his part in the betrayal and after knowing that he lied to you, then why would I believe that you possess the iron to kill me, a noble, for the same offenses. The only iron you seem to hold, captain, is that which was pinned on your chest.”

Berengar tightened his grip again and elicited a gurgle from Caffrey. Berengar leaned down closer. “I have a deep affection for Forseth. We spent many years killing lesser men in fine robes together, earning me that medal you saw pinned that day. I did not keep the trinket, but I still have a habit of killing lesser men. Have I done anything tonight to make you believe that I view you in any type of regard?”

“I told you it was the King,” Caffrey reiterated. “Go to his throne room, tear his robes, and pin him to the floor of the palace by his throat, if you are so brave and righteous.”

“Why would the King order the deaths of his men and the assignation of a foreign prince, Caffrey? Explain it, if this is your argument.”

“What is there to explain, captain? Every time a king sends men into battle, he is ordering their deaths. Taking the lives of men under him is the daily work of a royal. And every war between every kingdom in all of history has been to cut down those that would seek to take a throne. If you do not understand that much, you are not capable of grasping the nuance of political intrigue.”

“Perhaps the destruction of the King was your goal, Caffrey. Maybe you set us upon him as a part of your plan for overthrow.”

Caffrey managed to roll his eyes even with the captain pinning him to the floor. “What would I have to gain by the destruction of the kingdom? Look around you, fools. Does it appear that I thrive on disorder? Does my wealth expand in a collapse of the entire system? Smart men and powerful men will always find a way to profit in and from war, but I have no need to rip apart two lands to further my own agenda. Men at my level don’t have to resort to such lows to get what we want or need. I don’t kill kings; I lead them about as if I have a ring in their noses.”