Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda (10 page)

So he had little sympathy for the Keranahan rulers, who had been forced, the poor fellows, to live just outside a fine woods, rather than in a smelly city.

He spurred his horse, and rode down to the gates of the Residence, trying as hard as he could to look like a man who had ridden down this road a thousand times before, and utterly sure that he was failing.

“I’m sorry to say,” Leria said, again, “that you’ll find that almost all of the staff is new to you.”

“Miron’s mother never did like anybody that my mother had brought on,” he said, as she had told him to. “So she finally got rid of the last of them? That’s like her.”

Miron let that pass without comment, which was a nice change.

“Treseen didn’t mention that he was sending a rider out ahead of us,” Pirojil said.

“No, he didn’t.” Erenor’s mouth twisted. “Did you ask him if he was?”

“No,” Pirojil said.

Shut up
, he meant.

Yes, their coming had been announced, something that Kethol could have worked out even if he hadn’t noticed the groom walking down an obviously hard-ridden mare over in front of the stables, or the messenger, in Imperial black and silver, dippering water from the well next to the kitchen.

A small troop of eighteen soldiers had formed up in two lines beside the gate, all in the green and gold livery of Keranahan. Not much of a company, but Keranahan was still under occupation, and it would have been more than a little surprising if there were a regiment-sized House Guard.

What did surprise him was the thick-waisted guard captain, who broke into a trot, panting as he ran up the road toward them, a broad smile under a broad, many-times-broken nose threatening to split his face.

“Forinel, Forinel,” he said, his voice thick. He took the reins as Kethol halted his horse. “It’s been so long, boy. I mean, Baron.” He grinned, and beckoned with his free hand. “Would you be so kind as to get yourself down off that sorry, spavined, swaybacked excuse for a mount and greet me properly, boy, or I just might let myself forget for a moment that you’re the baron and I’m just a simple soldier, and give you a good blading across the backside.”

You could try
, Kethol would have said.

But that didn’t seem like the sort of thing that the baron would say.

Awkwardly, not knowing quite what to say or do, Kethol levered himself out of the saddle and lowered himself to the ground.

“Captain Thirien,” Leria said, formally, as she dismounted easily from the back of her small brown mare. “Are you not happy to see me, as well?” The tone of her voice held only a hint of reproof.

She slipped her arm familiarly about Kethol’s waist, and gave him a reassuring squeeze that almost made him forget how adroitly she had given him the captain’s name without drawing attention to the fact that she was doing just that.

The captain’s smile didn’t falter as he drew himself up straight, his ample belly threatening to split his tunic’s stitching.

“Lady, I am always happy to see you, and always happy to welcome you to the Residence,” he said, his tone no less warm for being formal. “And I’m pleased enough to piss to welcome you as the new mistress-to-be of the Residence, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

He turned from her to grip Kethol by the shoulders. The captain — Thirien, his name was — had stronger hands than Kethol would have guessed.

“But this one, this man-who-left-here-as-a-boy — him I never expected to see again, and you’ll forgive me, I trust, if an old man’s joy leaks out and splashes around.” He blinked tears from his eyes as he looked Kethol up and down, and nodded, approvingly.

“Filled out a little, you finally did,” he said. “Always thought you were too skinny.”

He waited for Kethol to say something.

“It’s good to see you, too, Thirien,” he said. “It has been a long time.”

That, at least, wasn’t a lie — forever was a long time, after all, and Kethol hadn’t met the captain when he had visited the Residence once before as himself, in his own flesh.

“That it has, boy, that it has.” Thirien beckoned to a pair of soldiers over at the gate. “Well, what are you clods waiting for? Take the baron’s horses and see that they’re properly curried and fed, if you please.”

He clapped a hand to Kethol’s shoulder. “Let’s get you settled in, shall we?”

***

Kethol finished lacing the linen vest tightly over the blousy white shirt, then stooped to put on his boots.

The old cedar wardrobe that stood against the north wall of Forinel’s — of
his
bedroom, of
his
bedroom — was far too large to fit through the door, and had certainly been built in place by a long-dead carpenter. Large as it was, it was still utterly crammed full of clothes, and Elda, the fat housekeeper (did any noble ever have a skinny housekeeper?), had told him that most of his clothes were still in storage, carefully sealed in chests in what had been his childhood bedroom.

He didn’t press the matter further — but, at least, he knew when he found a room filled with chests and chests of tunics and jerkins, he would know where his childhood bedroom had been.

There was far too much here to choose from, so Kethol had made it simple: a plain white shirt and black linen vest, over trousers and calf-high black boots.

He flexed his feet in the boots. They were a little stiff from years of lack of use, but they had been oiled and polished on a regular basis, and it wouldn’t take him long to break them in.

They definitely did need breaking in — from the look of the soles, they couldn’t have been worn more that a few times, and there were other shoes and boots in the wardrobe that seemed to never have been worn, or, more likely, had been perfectly restored by the same cobbler who had made them in the first place.

These did fit his feet — even though those feet were slightly smaller than they should have been.

The boots really shouldn’t have felt so tight, so constricting.

It wasn’t the boots. The whole bedroom suite felt smaller than it should have, what with the way that it was built up against the outer wall of the keep, with nothing but a pair of barred windows letting in the late-afternoon sun.

He pushed his way through the silken netting to lie back on the too-soft bed, reflexively checked to see that the hilt of his sword was within reach, and let himself sigh. His shoulders were tight, and his neck could barely move.

Everything should have been fine. Wonderful, even.

He had had the Residence staff presented to him, from the fat old housekeeper to the hostler’s infant children — twin daughters; very cute — and all except the youngest of the children had breathed a visible sigh of relief when he had announced, as Leria had coached him to, that he had no intention of “making any changes,” which was a noble’s way of saying that they could all stay on.

Yes, they had served Elanee, but it was not their fault that she had attempted a very curious sort of rebellion, and neither Kethol nor Forinel — whoever he was — had any intention of turning out a couple of dozen men, women, and children with nothing but the clothes on their backs and whatever they could steal at the last moment.

A tray of snacks had been brought to his room, and while Erenor had insisted on testing it for poison — Erenor thought that everybody else thought the way he did, perhaps, or, more likely, he simply mistrusted everybody as a matter of policy — the wizard had ruled the food safe, and it was definitely tasty. He had filled up enough on the meatrolls and the very garlicky sausage that he barely touched the turnip compote, and had only eaten half of the pork pie.

Finished with his meal, he had used the garderobe in the washroom off his bedroom that was dedicated to that purpose — both his station and his having a room up against the wall had their virtues — and then he had made a sketchy bath in the washbasin, and now he was dressed, and the right thing to do would be to go downstairs and pretend to refamiliarize himself with the Residence, from the dungeon to the attic.

It would be easy to justify, Leria had explained. A few words about how he had been gone so long, and had missed every room, every mural and tapestry, every stick of furniture. Nobody would believe that, but that was the best part of it: everybody would think that he was trying to see what had disappeared in his absence.

He was looking forward only to part of it: he should be able to find a good bow in the armory.

Sometimes, he thought that giving up his own laminated longbow was the hardest part of all this — he had had to; there were too many people who would have recognized it as Kethol’s — although that was silly, from the point of view of a noble.

It was just a bow, after all. That was the way Forinel would have thought of it. For Kethol, it had cost half a year’s wages, and it had suited him perfectly, and he doubted that he could find its like here.

Still, he should get to the tour sooner than later, although he didn’t mind putting it off.

There was a lot to see. The old baron — his father, his father — had had a private library that was apparently famous through Holtun.

Not that that would do Kethol a whole lot of good — he could read Erendra, although not particularly quickly or well, and could make his way through a page of Englits by sounding out the words if nothing else, but the old languages were something that a woodsman’s son had never had any cause or opportunity to learn, and a soldier had neither cause nor time to learn.

Although he would have to, sooner rather than later, at least well enough to pass himself off as literate, if some visiting nobleman were to ask his opinion about a book in the library.

But, instead, he lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. He couldn’t relax, although he tried to. He was in another man’s room, and another man’s bed, wearing another man’s clothes, and he could almost feel the walls closing around him.

There was a knock on the door.

“Yes?”

When the door didn’t open, he got down from the bed, and pushed his way through the silken blackfly netting that surrounded it, careful not to tear it, and walked to the door, opening it.

Leria stood there, smiling. Her long golden hair, slightly darkened and still damp from her own bath, had been pulled back in a simple overhand knot, not the complex braid that she usually favored. An almost preposterously white shift was belted tightly above the hips, falling to mid-thigh, revealing her riding pants, black leather decorated along the seams with silver trim, below.

“Just out of the bath?” He didn’t have any objection, but Leria seemed to spend every spare moment soaking herself in hot water.

She nodded. “I thought I’d bathe before dinner, but Elda says that you don’t plan to sit table this evening.” Did her light tone conceal or reveal disapproval?

“Yes, that’s what I said.” He beckoned her inside, and closed the door behind her. “There’s a problem.” “Oh?”

“I can’t read, anything except a little bit of Englits, and recognize a few Erendra symbols, and maybe a couple of dozen dwarven glyphs, and —”

She touched her finger to his lips. “I already thought of that. That’s just one of the things you’ll have to learn,” she said, smiling, “but I think you’ll find the teacher pleasant company.”

“Teacher?” He frowned. “But if we get somebody to teach me, he’ll know —”

“I will be the teacher,” she said, her smile warm, and not vaguely insulting. “I hope you won’t mind having to spend time with me?”

“No, but —”

“But save that for later, please — we were talking about you not sitting table this evening.”

When the old woman had asked him what time he planned to sit table, he hadn’t known quite what to say. Sit table? The nobility seemed to spend most of their lives just eating and talking and eating with each other, while Kethol had always been used to quickly wolfing down a meal before he had to get out and actually do something.

So he had just pleaded travel weariness, and that had been good enough.

There were advantages to being in charge, even if you were an imposter.

He started to say something, but Leria smiled as she again put a finger to his lips.

“There’s no need to sit table, not tonight — which is why I had her pack us a light dinner, and have had a couple of horses saddled. I thought we’d go for a ride. As you’ll remember, there’s a wonderful riding trail down toward Ulter, through the woods.”

She took his hand and pulled him close, locking her hands behind him, at the small of his back. It was only then that he noticed that her breasts were bound tightly, as though for riding.

The woods?

Her smile and nod were knowing. “We’ll want to be back before it gets dark — it’s not like you’re an accomplished woodsman or something — so let us be going, shall we? Unless, of course, you mind being alone with me.”

How was it that she could tease him and it didn’t bother him? Not even a little.

“To the woods, then.”

***

These woods had far too long been underhunted — game trails crisscrossed the riding trail in a preposterous profusion. If it wasn’t for the wolves, the barony would probably have been knee-deep in deer, and more than waist-deep in rabbit.

He didn’t even have to get down from the back of the overly spirited black gelding that the stableboy had picked out for him in order to spot bear spoor under, as far as he could tell, each and every one of the old oaks that held a beehive, as most of them appeared to.

His mouth watered at the idea of smoking out the bees and sinking his teeth into a fresh honeycomb.

As they cantered down the side of the hill, a covey of grouse exploded out of the bushes beside them, the
fluppeta-fluppeta-fluppeta
as they battered their wings together at least as hard as they beat the air sending him reaching for one of his pistols.

It had been too long since he had been out in the forest. It was embarrassing that he hadn’t even spotted the grouse before he had startled them, although who had been doing most of the startling and who had been doing most of the being startled wasn’t at all obvious.

She laughed, more at him than with him. “I appreciate your concern for my safety, but I don’t think a pack of grouse is very dangerous.”