Count Scar - SA (6 page)

My spirits were low once more as I left Provost Balaam's office. I was not merely being sent forth from my peaceful life of prayer and my magic studies in the House of the Order to take up once
again a post out in the world I had rejected, this time in the service of some hardened northern soldier I had never met. I was also charged with looking into a matter that might involve the most
sinister sort of magic—with nothing to guide my efforts but months'-old rumors and a few impressions of the brother who had been the last capellanus at Peyrefixade. I would be responsible for
the well-being of all the souls at the castle too, including this Count Galoran's—and in addition to his soul's safety, that of his physical person. Stepping into the courtyard, I waved to the novice
holding the reins of my packhorse and of my mount to wait a little longer. Then I turned and went into the church to offer a final prayer for strength and resolution.

Chapter Three ~ Caloran

Chapter Three ~ Caloran

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Two days after the duke's visit, the triple note of the horn again announced someone riding up from the valley. Busy with the cook and his accounts, I sent Bruno, who shuffled back a minute
later to tell me a priest on horseback was coming up the steep road.

"I had better go meet him myself, but I'll be back," I told the cook. "This will be the Kapelanner the duke promised to send us." As Bruno and I headed toward the gate I said, for his ear alone,

"Probably the duke expects him to spy on us for him. And he as good as told me he has another spy in the castle already, someone he trusts completely. Maybe they're to spy on each other as well."

I chuckled. "This is as good as being back in the imperial court."

I was very interested in meeting this magic-working member of the Order of the Three Kings. Nothing beyond faint rumor of such a thing had ever made it north; I gathered from what the duke
had told me that the Order had been formed only after my own grandfather had left to marry my archduchess grandmother on the borders of the Empire. I persisted in thinking there must be
something heretical about it, except that the duke clearly believed in this Order and just as clearly detested the heretical Perfected Ones.

The priest appeared perfectly ordinary as his mare and packhorse toiled up the final incline. No magical flying powers, then, or he certainly would have used them, and no particular desire to make
himself appear a griffin or a cockatrice in order to impress me.

When my guards challenged him, he looked up calmly. "I am Brother Melchior, least of my Order, capellanus and spiritual advisor to Count Caloran if, God willing, he wishes to receive me."

One thing leading soldiers into battle quickly teaches is the ability to recognize reluctance. This priest, I realized with a start, was in spite of his calm words as reluctant to be at Peyrefixade as I
was to have him. Yet there was a determination there too, something that would have been courage in a soldier: a readiness to press forward no matter what the opposition if the cause was right.

"Enter, then, Father Melchior," I said, stepping out from the shadow of the gate, watching for his reaction to my scar.

The duke had not deigned to notice it. Melchior's eyes went very wide for a second, then he dropped his head hurriedly to urge his steed up the final incline.

Surprise, I thought, a surprise that went well beyond seeing a man with an old burn. It was as though he had just made an unexpected connection with something else. Was there some prophecy
in his Order about the Last Days arriving when a scarred count ruled at Peyrefixade?

Then I hope they don't arrive quite yet, I thought with an inner smile, before I had a chance to enjoy my castle properly.

"I am glad to have a priest here, Father," I said as he dismounted. "I'll want divine office sung in the chapel at dawn every morning."

"Of course. And I will start by conducting a service immediately. This has not been done here since the countess's death. And I wish to know at once if there are any sick or dying in the castle who
wish to confess their sins, or any others who would profit from God's word."

Good man, I thought, one who knew his business and went straight to it. I considered him critically a moment as he helped the grooms remove his luggage from the packhorse. With none of the
urbanity or veneer of one who had spent his life in society, he had a face that was very easy to read. Yet I did not feel that I understood at all what was going on in his mind that gave rise to the
expressions I recognized. His was not a soldier's face, but one with complicated thoughts beneath the surface, connected in ways I did not yet grasp. Clearly he would be worth closer study.

"I want to attend your first service," I said. "If you will wait for a few minutes while I finish some other business, we can go to the chapel together and also discuss your duties a little more." He
nodded and trailed after Bruno and me as we returned to the kitchens, while the grooms took his baggage away.

"I like this priest more than I expected," I muttered to Bruno in Allemann. "The duke may have chosen himself a good spy."

I had spent much of the morning going through the cook's accounts with him, a process made much more complicated by the very elaborate tally system he had devised to keep track of what was
on hand, what he had bought, and what he had used. The records for the spices alone comprised several sheets of parchment closely covered with lines, crosses, circles, and little wiggles. "I still
don't see, my lord, how I could have used so much pepper the last few months," he said, looking up from the pages with a frown. "But we slaughtered the pigs almost immediately after the
countess's death, and I was so distracted that I must have used most of it up in the processing without even noticing."

"All right," I said, wishing again for a lady to do this. My job should be the castle's defenses and the county's justice, not the staffs diet. "You say we have enough meat, enough flour, enough
vegetables, and enough wine. The seneschal says we need candles and cloth and leather, so

I'll have him buy enough spices when he's in town to last us until the prices come down a bit in the spring."

I was distracted by the sight of someone wrapped in a cloak slipping quietly across the far end of the kitchens. Bruno saw him too and jumped for him. "What's this, lad?" he cried, seizing him by
the shoulder. "Spying?"

The cook, startled, looked up to say, "That's no spy. That's my assistant" But then he added sharply, "Where do you think you're going? Don't you know we should be serving dinner before too
long, and me too rattled by the accounts to have made much preparation?"

"But tha' knows tha' always leaves me go visit m' mother every week," mumbled the assistant, keeping his eyes down. Nervousness had strengthened his accent. His face was flushed, and he tried
unsuccessfully to ease himself from Bruno's grip.

"That's right, lad, that's right," the cook started to say.

"I am count here," I barked. "No one leaves to visit anyone without my express permission." The cook started to object and thought better of it. His assistant's cloak had fallen back when Bruno
took hold of him, and I could see now that he held some sort of pouch that he was unsuccessfully trying to pull the cloak back over. "And show me what you're carrying!"

"Nothing!" he protested. He was young, not much more than a boy, and genuinely terrified.

I took the pouch from him and opened it. As I suspected, it was full of food: several loaves of bread, a ham shank, some turnips, and, in the bottom, a cloth bag the size of my fist full of
peppercorns.

"This explains your disappearing spices," I told the cook, handing it to him.

"But Cook ha' tol' me 'twas all right to take a little something to m' old mother—" the boy said desperately.

"But not to take and sell the single most valuable item in the kitchen," I replied grimly. The scar on my cheek felt as though it was pounding with anger. "How long have you been doing this?

Were you cheating the countess too, or did you start after her death?"

He was down on his knees now, trying not to cry. "I'm sorry, m'lord Compte! Forgive me! I ne'er did it before! I'll ne'er do it again! Twas just this winter when m' old mother—"

"I don't need to hear about your old mother," I retorted, drumming my fingers on the hilt of my sword. "I only want to hear what choice you make. Your options are the following. You can leave
my service immediately, with nothing but the clothes on your back, not even taking enough time between here and the gate to scratch a flea on your butt. Or else I shall accuse you formally of
gross theft, put you to the ordeal before the knights, and have you horse-whipped when I adjudge you guilty. After that, and assuming you live, you will be told to leave with the same haste with
which I am telling you to leave now."

But he was gone before I finished speaking, leaping up from his knees to sprint toward the gate. "Tell the guards, Bruno," I said, "that he is not to be admitted again under any circumstances.

And tell them why." He grinned as he hurried off.

"There should be enough pepper here for a few days at least," I told the cook, "until the seneschal makes his trip to town. You did not, by any chance," looking at him sternly from under my
eyebrows, "know what he was taking on these little visits to his mother?"

His protests were nervous but sincere. "You were right to dismiss him, my lord," he said timidly, "but without my assistant I'm afraid dinner will be late today." I nodded briskly and turned to
find Brother Melchior staring at me.

Disapproval, I thought. Well, he was a priest. Probably in his Order erring brothers were given a chance to fall on their knees and attain forgiveness. I shrugged. If this had happened six months
from now, I might have forgiven the boy myself. But if I failed to act decisively in the very first instance I discovered someone trying to cheat me, I would not have a castle to call my own in six
months. The lessons from leading soldiers were clear: discipline first, mercy after discipline had been well established.

But the priest surprised me as we walked toward the chapel. "Do you suspect others of stealing from you?" he asked. "If you are planning to horse-whip all the thieves, you might prefer to have
certain knowledge that your suspicions are accurate. And there— Well, magic can help."

We stopped while I looked at him more thoroughly. About my age and about my height, with the air of assurance that all priests have that they are doing precisely the right thing at all times, but
with an intelligence and an intensity behind it that I had not seen in many priests. "Divination," I asked slowly, "isn't that what they call it? The power to see what is hidden?"

"That is correct."

"So are you going to tell me the boy hadn't been robbing me?"

"Oh, no." He turned to continue again toward the chapel. "I practiced no magic here. Some of the older masters of our Order can practice their particular art wherever they are, but I need my vials
and powders and my books even to begin. In this case— When you had his confession, divination seemed scarcely necessary. I hope to begin unpacking immediately after divine service so that I
may continue my studies while here."

"You might try to find out," I suggested, "why the late countess fell off a rampart she should have known as well as she knew her own image in the mirror."

His eyes met mine for a second, his expression a mix of intensity and of the curious reluctance I had seen before. "The provost of my Order," he said slowly, "suggested the same thing."

In the next few days the castle began settling into a comfortable routine. Brother Melchior sang the divine office in the chapel each morning as yellow dawn broke over the mountain peaks, and I
saw to it that no one overslept more than once. Leading a castle, I decided, was no harder than leading men into battle—easier, because I didn't have to deal with raw terror, either theirs or mine.

"I wish there was some sort of map or plan of Peyrefixade," I said to Seneschal Guilhem on the second day. "I think I know where all the principal chambers are now, but I'm still not sure of the
extent of the store rooms, and that old part of the castle around to the back is very confusing."

Guilhem gave me the lugubrious look that seemed customary with him. "You might ask the bouteillier. He was making a map."

Surprised, I sent for Bouteillier Raymbaud. The seneschal's responsibilities were the castle itself and its income, and I would have thought the bouteillier had plenty to do supervising the staff and
the wine cellars. Maybe, I thought with an inner smile, he had his eye on the seneschals position if Guilhem became too ill to continue his duties.

"Raymbaud's only been here since shortly before the countess took over," Bruno informed me while we waited for him. He seemed to be seeking out information about Peyrefixade as assiduously
as I was, and it helped that his information was different. "The duke recommended him when she and Lord Thierri were married, but the rest of the knights and the staff have all been here since
the days when old Count Bernhard still ruled."

Raymbaud was a young man with a courtier's grace but a heavy accent in speaking the Royal Tongue. Or not a heavy accent, I corrected myself, because he didn't sound anything like the cook's
fool assistant, but his intonation differed from that of the rest of the staff in ways my northern ear could not yet clearly identify.