Count Scar - SA (11 page)

The dukes expression was angry, but he spoke with his normal ironic tone. "Ah, well, he was done in any event. If we'd found him alive, I'd have presumed he'd been bought and hanged him as a
traitor. Lead on, Brother Melchior."

At the end of the wall the path descended a short distance to where it connected with the street. The knife swung to the right at once, and I could feel the lines of magic vibrate up the silken cord
as we followed the direction indicated. At first we found ourselves hurrying along broad ways among the fine town-houses of wealthy courtiers. Then we passed through the gate marking the
boundary of the duke's quarter and into streets lined with mansions belonging to merchant families grown rich supplying the court and town. A few late strollers stared as we hurried past,
bowing low when they saw Argave. Another gate brought us into a quarter of narrower streets lined with the shuttered houses and shops of artisans, tradespeople, and money changers: virtuous
working folk now mostly abed. At the far end of their commune, we entered the poor section of town.

We had gone quickly until now, with only a few corners where I must halt us until the knife found its bearing. But here the streets were mere alleys, cramped and twisted as the veins in a cheese,
and smelling just as ripe. Tottering houses leaned against each other like drunkards, and real drunkards staggered in and out of the taverns that sheltered in the ground floors of more than a few
of them. God's wayward children were here in force: idle footsoldiers mustered out with the current peace, fat ox-drovers, runaway peasants, dissolute apprentices, and the bawds who waited to
relieve any or all of them of whatever coins the taverns didn't take. Those men or women we encountered upon the streets slunk quickly up alleys or faded into doorways when they realized who
they'd met. But we could hear raucous laughter, curses, and snatches of lewd songs from nearby houses every time we stopped to wait for the dagger to show the way, and such halts became
frequent in these twisting streets.

At last the knife pointed up a black alley between two tottering houses that had leaned in toward one another until someone had felt it advisable to brace thick oak beams between them several
stories up. We edged around a pile of rotting cabbages halfway along, then the knife swung to guide us into the inner courtyard of the house on our left. The captain stepped up to a weathered but
quite solid-looking door and hammered upon it with his mailed fist, bellowing, "Open in the name of Duke Argave!"

The woman who eventually answered was a surprise. Her gown, though old and worn, was satin, her bearing queenly, and her hard face had once been beautiful and was still striking. She swept
dark eyes over us, then bowed low and spoke in phrases as well turned as any court lady's. "Greetings my lord Duke, good Magian fathers, gentlemen all. My pardon for your having to wait; we
fastened this door for the night some moments ago. You do too much honor to my poor house."

The duke, to my interest, looked momentarily nonplussed at the sight of her. Then he shrugged and replied in the same fashion, "I fear we have not come on a social visit, madame. It appears that
your house has recently harbored assassins and may hold one still."

"Indeed." Her black eyes shifted from him to me, and then to the dagger quivering on its line below my outstretched hand. "Then you had best enter at once and seek him out. I want no such
miscreants within my walls."

The cramped corridor passed a locked door through which low voices and the click of dice could be heard. But the knife led us on without a quiver to a steep narrow stair that wound upward at the
very back of the house. I could feel the lines of the magic grow stronger and stronger as we climbed. We heard a woman's high laughter as we passed one landing and a man cursing at the next.

Then, on the fifth landing, the knife jerked at its cord like a hooked fish. The ancient wood floor of the gloomy hallway was creaky and uneven, while beams leaned unexpectedly out of the walls or
pressed down from the ceiling. I heard both the captain and Bruno bump their heads and curse ripely behind me. When I reached the third chamber the knife actually pulled the cord from my grasp
and went clattering to the threshold. Duke Argave growled a command, and a bulky guardsman stepped forward and smashed the flimsy door in with one blow of his thick shoulder.

The big man lying in the garret room beyond made no objection. He would never object to anything again.

"It's big-foot all right." Count Caloran said as he stood up from examining the dead man's feet. "The size is right, and you can see the same worn spot in his right shoe that showed in the tracks."

"Madame, is this fellow one of your household?" the duke asked the dark lady, who was standing in the doorway looking with pitiless interest at the dagger in the dead man's chest and his
staring eyes.

"Of course not, my lord Duke. I let the chambers on this floor out to any who can pay. This man and another fellow simply, appeared two days ago and hired a room. They paid through
tomorrow."

"His friend was a smaller man?"

"Yes, and with just a hint of the gentleman about him which this poor fellow definitely lacked. They kept entirely to the house until tonight, then suddenly appeared downstairs, took a couple of
quick drinks with the gamblers, and left. I didn't even know this one had returned until now."

"And can you tell us their names or anything else about them, madame?"

She gave a short laugh. "If a man should ever happen to give a name here, the one thing of which I would be quite certain was that it was not his own, my lord Duke! I can tell you that they had
one visitor: today. He came and went wrapped to his eyes in a long cloak. But I knew from his voice and manner that he was a courtly gentleman."

"Might he have been this lord?" asked Argave, motioning the guards to nudge Thierri forward. She shook her head.

"No chance of it, my lord Duke. I'd certainly have remembered that red hair! This lordling was taller and had dark brows. Besides, he spoke with a touch of the Nabarrese in his tongue."

"Ah—so Alfonso is behind this!" cried the captain, and the duke nodded thoughtfully. "It could well be so."

"I know nothing of that, my lord Duke," the lady said. She pointed to the dagger in the dead man's chest, then at the one on my cord. "But those are both Nabarrese daggers. I saw the smaller man
slip one into his sleeve as he and this fellow were leaving tonight, though he'd carried only a soldier's dirk before. It may well be their visitor presented it to him earlier." An ironic smile pulled
the corners of her bitter mouth. "Then he came back tonight, met this fellow upon his return, and remedied an earlier oversight by giving him one also."

Prior Belthesar put his arm under mine as we followed the others down the steep stairs and back out to the street, murmuring, "That work was well done, my son." I was grateful for the aid, as
my body had been seized with the quivering weakness that inevitably follows any major piece of magic-working. But after we'd gone a little way I summoned enough energy to whisper, "A
question, my father."

"Yes, my son?"

"Duke Argave treated the keeper of that house with a great deal more forbearance than I would have expected, and spoke to her as if to a lady of rank. Does he know her?"

The prior gave a low chuckle and checked to make sure the duke was walking well ahead of us before answering. "Ah, yes, that would have been a good ten years or more ago, long before the period
when you were attached to our priory. Yes, that fine lady was a glittering ornament in the duke's assemblies at one time. A great courtesan, and for several years Argave's principal mistress."

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"Tell me something, Father Melchior," Count Caloran said, turning in his saddle to face me. "Was all that business with the copper and the cord and the canting in the ancient language
necessary for what you did, or is it just for show, like the passes of a street conjurer?"

We'd remained in the city through the day after the attempt on his life. This had been a good thing for me, as I would have found it difficult indeed to ride any distance immediately after doing so
much magic. I'd spent the whole of the time at the priory either resting, eating, or praying, awakening this second morning refreshed and ready if not wholly eager for the journey back to
Peyrefixade.

"May I assume you don't think what you saw was mere illusion such as a street conjurer's tricks?"

"Oh no, I'm convinced enough that you Magians can do real magic now! But if I'm to have you as my capellanus, and especially if I'm to continue my family's patronage of your Order, I should
also like to know a bit more."

I put up a hand as if to adjust my hood in order to hide a smile. This northern count might play the straightforward soldier to the world, but he had his subtleties when he cared to exercise them,
just as I'd told them at the priory. He'd clearly divined the Order's interest in placing me in his service. "The exact answer to the question you pose has been much debated, Count. Some argue
that all the materials and charms are but aids to focus the mind of the trained magic-worker, but that the mind alone does the real business. Others maintain that the natural properties of certain
objects, such as the power of lodestone to make iron seek and point, renders those objects essential to the doing of specific types of magic except for the most skilled. As to the charm and spells, they
have come down to us from magic-workers of centuries and even ages past, some even from long before the time of the great Urbs itself. We study magic, like all other learning, in the language of
antiquity, and at least most of us find we need that language to summon it up."

"Interesting. You must show me some more of your magic when we are home at Peyrefixade again." We rode in silence for a while. Peasants out pulling a few last turnips from the fields or
gathering brush from along the road for their fires looked up, to see the count passing with his retinue of knights and his priest, and bowed briefly before turning back to their work. Then he said,

"Tell me something more of this Prince Alfonso."

"I do not know that I can add much to what Duke Argave must already have told you, Count."

"What Argave tells one is colored by Argave's eye. I want the view through yours."

I turned my gaze toward the south for a moment, where the border mountains loomed beyond the hills that enclose the long valley up which we were riding. "Prince Alfonso inherited very young,
much younger than yourself, Count. Indeed, he is not much older than you even now. His principality, Nabarra, is as you must know the first region one reaches when traveling south out of our
own kingdom. I saw a good deal of him once, when he made a visit to our duke's court during my time with the priory. He came to settle with the duke over some land up in the mountains to
which both had laid claim and stayed a whole fortnight. He is proud and easily angered; he struck a page who spilled wine on his sleeve so hard the poor boy lost several teeth and almost lost his
eye. He is also reputed to be ruthless in dealing with enemies—and those who merely might be enemies."

"I have some reason to believe that is true." He laughed grimly. "According to Duke Argave, this Alfonso would be happiest to control Peyrefixade himself. Failing that, he would prefer it be in
the hands of someone who would offer little resistance if he should decide to war openly upon the duke one of these days. Apparently having a man seasoned in Emperor Friedricn's service holding
Peyrefixade is not to his taste."

"That is not unlikely. Former princes of Nabarra warred often with our duke's ancestors. Alfonso's house has long believed it has a rightful claim to this side of the mountains. Peyrefixade
commands the key invasion route used in those past wars."

"And does this Alfonso obtain magical assistance from these heretics I hear of, as the duke and the counts of Peyrefixade do from your Order?"

"Oh no, Count. Alfonso and Argave may agree on little else, but their minds are alike here. The prince's father was another matter; he died excommunicate for making the Perfected too welcome
in his domains after the war. There are supposedly many of them there still, passing now as followers of the True Faith. But the prince is reckoned a faithful son of the Church, and is if anything
an even fiercer persecutor of the Perfected than the duke himself."

"And how do these heretics, these 'Perfected,' manage to pass themselves off as honest folk?" the count continued. Something in the way he asked made me think he had already heard much of
their ways but again wanted my own opinion. "Don't the heretics need to assemble to perform their devilish rites? Don't people notice when they sacrifice babies and animals to their idols?"

I felt my face burn and could not hold my tongue. "Those are lies, Count! The Perfected read the same Bible as ourselves. They have no idols, and they certainly never sacrifice babies, or even
chickens. They believe, however, that it is possible to attain salvation through human effort alone, without either grace or the sacraments. They hold that one must overcome the body and its
appetites and strive until one lives quite without sin. A person who has become thus perfected is in fact saved while yet on earth."

"Ah, hence the name 'Perfected'! I must say, this all sounds a good deal less vicious and heretical than I had been led to suppose. Did not some of the early fathers of the True Faith, the ones who
withdrew into the desert to live away from worldly temptations, preach something similar?"