Paladin's Prize (Age of Heroes, Book 1) (30 page)

To their amazement, however, after all the trouble they had gone to get there, the knights’ training yard was empty but for three bored-looking squires, each about twenty years old.

The first was grooming a large black warhorse, the second was oiling a suit of armor, and the third was sharpening swords. All three big, strapping lads looked extremely annoyed and put upon.

The one sitting on a long, rough-hewn table polishing armor was the first to notice them. His jaw dropped the moment he set eyes on Thaydor. He jumped out of his seat and pointed in astonishment.

“Look!” he cried to his companions.

The other two did just that as Thaydor sauntered warily into the sunny training yard. “Gentlemen,” he said.

“Sir!” The boys abandoned their tasks and came rushing over to him, their eyes wide and brimming with instant hero worship.

“Sir Thaydor!”

“You’re alive!”

“I knew it! Didn’t I tell you, Kai?”

“They said you were an outlaw!”

“But we didn’t believe it.”

“No, not for a minute.”

“We knew that was nonsense,” the first shoved in. “We all said so.”

“But some folk were claiming you were dead!”

“Are you all right?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Can we help?”

“Er, thank you, gentlemen,” Thaydor said, looking a little overwhelmed at all three gushing over him at once. “I appreciate the kind words. And you might be…?”

The squires introduced themselves as Jeremy, Petra, and Kai, which, he informed them, was short of Karolus. They were brave, educated boys from good families, with big dreams of derring-do, Wrynne mused.
Just like Eadric.

No wonder their brimming enthusiasm seemed to pain Thaydor. But for their part, they obviously worshiped the great paladin, outlaw or no.

“We should warn you, sir, if Sir Reynulf sees you—” Petra started.

“He’s the new royal champion!” Kai broke in.

“Can’t I talk for once?” Jeremy demanded. “I was just about to tell him that!”

“Is Reynulf here?” Thaydor prompted, barely showing his impatience.

“No, sir,” Jeremy forced out before his friends could answer.

“Ho! Aren’t you that famous bard?” Kai suddenly asked Jonty in excitement.

“Never mind him,” Thaydor ordered. “Where are all the other knights? I need to talk to them. Where is everybody?”

The boys exchanged reluctant glances.

“Well?” Thaydor prompted.

Wrynne noticed that all three lads had started blushing.

“Um…”

“I’m waiting.” Thaydor arched a brow.

“Er, well, it’s just…they’ve gone to Fonja, sir.”

“To see their lady friends.”

“I wouldn’t call them ladies,” Kai mumbled.

Thaydor stared at them incredulously. “You must be mistaken. It’s the middle of the day.”

“No, sir. The king said it was all right for them to go as often as they liked. To, er, worship the pink goddess. Now that everything’s…changed,” Petra said with some dismay.

The other two looked sheepish on behalf of their masters and lowered their heads.

“Fonja?” Thaydor echoed with thunder gathering in his voice. “They’re off rogering harlots when the kingdom’s on the verge of falling apart?”

“Thaydor,” Wrynne said softly.

Blue fire flared in his eyes, and he suddenly looked like he might put his fist through the nearest stone wall. He pivoted, his wide shoulders bristling, and marched toward the archway. “Let’s go.”

“C-can we come with you, sir?” Jeremy asked eagerly.

Thaydor paused, his face hard. “I don’t advise it. Helping me could cost you your heads.”

Jeremy planted his fists on his waist. “We’re not afraid!”

“Please, sir! Let us do something useful! We’ve had loads of training!” Petra begged.

“We can’t just stay here doing chores all day,” said Kai.

“Tending armor is useful. So is sharpening blades and caring for horses,” Thaydor replied. “It’s better than spending the middle of the
day in a bloody brothel
!”

Everybody present flinched a little at his rare outburst.

The boys looked at one another and blanched, and then turned to Thaydor in a conciliatory fashion.

“Perhaps we can help, sir. If there’s some
other
mission we could carry out for you in the meanwhile—”

“Oh, yes, please! You need help, surely, sir. If it’s just you and the lady and the bard—”

“You need knights!” Petra insisted.

“And since our masters are…indisposed,” Kai added with admirable delicacy.

Wrynne raised a brow at her husband. His lips flattened into a guarded line.

“How are you at stealth?” he asked, seemingly in spite of himself.

“Excellent! Especially Petra,” Jeremy said, gesturing at his friend.

“All right, then,” Thaydor conceded after a moment. “There is a house in French Square.”

Wrynne’s eyes widened hopefully.

“I need to know if it’s being watched, by how many men, and from what vantage points. My lady, describe your father’s house to our spies here.”

“Spies? Yes!” Kai and Petra bumped forearms in victory while Jeremy nearly leaped into the air, fists clenched with glee.

“Very stealthy,” Jonty murmured, folding his arms across his chest. He shook his head.

But the lads were too thrilled to be able to hide their jubilation at this assignment from the greatest knight in the realm.

“Are you sure about this?” Wrynne asked him.

Thaydor looked them over with a well-trained eye of a seasoned leader. “They can do it…I think.”

“Oh, we can, sir! Certainly!”

“It’s easy!”

“Which house on French Square do you want us to watch?”

“Wrynne, what’s the house number?”

“There isn’t one. It faces south,” she told them, homesickness tugging at her heart as she described her childhood home. “A large, timber-framed house with stained glass in the shape of a hammer in the front bay window. The upper floor overhangs the street, with flower baskets hanging from the posts underneath. It’s the home of the Baron du Mere.”

“Have you got all that?” Thaydor asked.

The boys nodded eagerly.

“Good. Go there and get into position around the baron’s house, and I will meet you there shortly. Take no action yourselves, but when I arrive, you’ll let me know what you’ve found out. I’ll handle things from there.”

“Wait,
you’re
going to my family’s house?” Wrynne asked Thaydor, holding her breath with hope.

He shrugged. “I think a short visit may be all right, provided our spies do their job properly.”

“Oh, we will, sir!” Petra said while Wrynne gazed gratefully at her husband and mouthed a silent
Thank you.

“You can count on us, sir!” Kai vaunted.

“Good. We’ll see you there,” Thaydor replied. “Now, go.”

The boys scrambled to carry out their assignment, quickly arming themselves with discreet daggers quite at odds with their grins.

“Are all baby knights that eager to get killed?” Jonty inquired after the trio had rushed off on their mission.

Thaydor sighed. “You have no idea.”

From there, they set out through the city, hiding their faces in the shadow of their hoods, until they came to Temple Row. Along the broad, treelined avenue, all the main religions of Veraidel were represented. The massive Ilian cathedral with its Gothic spires and rose windows sat at the head of the table, as it were, holding pride of place at the far end of the road. Opposite it, the Greek-style Argent Temple to Efrena gleamed in white marble, domed and pillared. All along the boulevard in between were smaller shrines dedicated to less popular deities believed to rule over all sorts of random things.

Midway down the street, two large temples sat across from each other like partners in a dance: the Red Temple of Xoltheus, granite and austere, and the so-called Beehive building, dedicated to Fonja.

Wrynne had heard her builder father marvel many times over the strange, honeycombed architecture of the latter. The hive-like design had been chosen because the honeybee was a totem animal of the pink goddess.

More like a hornet’s nest, if you ask me,
Mother would usually respond, while Wrynne’s brothers would snicker over the mention of the place.
They deserve to get stung for what goes on in there. Humph!

After dismounting in an out-of-the-way corner of the Beehive grounds, the three of them kept to the shadows of a pretty copse of trees. Whatever Thaydor planned to do in there, he said it wouldn’t take long. Wrynne gladly agreed to wait outside with Jonty, though the bard protested at missing out on seeing all the scantily clad harlots.

“If the king’s men show up, Wrynne, you get out of here, but Jonty, come get me. As Paladin of Ilios, this is the last place I want to get arrested. It would only shame the church. If we should end up getting separated for any reason—”

“Separated?” Wrynne asked anxiously, the oracle’s warning echoing in her mind.

“We’ll plan to meet up again on that lookout ridge in the foothills. Remember? Where we paused before entering the city?”

“Aye, I remember,” Jonty said with a sigh of weary disappointment.

Wrynne stared up at her husband’s hard, handsome face. “I don’t want to be separated from you.”

Thaydor cupped her cheek for a fleeting moment with a tender smile, even amid his wrath at the knights. “Don’t worry, my love. It’s only a contingency plan. It won’t happen. I’ll be right back. Trust me. This won’t take long.”

“It usually doesn’t, with those girls.”

“Jonty!” Wrynne reprimanded.

“What? They
are
the experts.”

Thaydor rolled his eyes.

“Those women are vile,” Wrynne informed the bard.

“But who are we to judge, Sister?” He flashed a wicked grin, then looked ruefully at Thaydor. “Well, run along, then. Go and bash some heads. We’ll be waiting.”

“On your best behavior, I trust.”

“Whatever that is,” the bard replied. “But let the record note I pronounce this denial of my starved eyes cruelly unfair.”

“Oh, stop pouting, you’ll live,” Wrynne chided as Thaydor took leave of them, shaking his head as he stalked toward the entrance of the place to deal with the absent knights.

“Easy for you to say! You haven’t been locked up in prison for the past month.” As they sat down to wait on the low wall around the trees, he took a large bite of an apple he had swiped from an orchard they had passed on the way to the city. “You two holier-than-thous have each other at night. All I’ve got is Mistress Hand.”

“Jonathan Maguire!” She sat down next to him, wide-eyed and blushing. “You’d better not let my husband hear you say such things in front of me. He’ll chop you into chicken feed.”

The bard let out a rascally chuckle. “Ah, don’t worry, my dear. Got to say, I admire you for not bein’ jealous of him goin’ in there.”

“Jealous?” she echoed in surprise.

“But why should you be? That place might be full of naked ladies—well, not
ladies
—but if any man’s impervious to a right seething cauldron of temptation, it would be your paladin.”

Wrynne just looked at him, taken aback.

It hadn’t even crossed her mind to doubt her husband.

Then she scowled. “You’re teasing me, you blackguard.”

Jonty chuckled, then offered her a bit of his fruit. “Apple, dear heart?”

“No, thank you, devil.” But after a moment of trying, she could not hold her tongue. “You don’t know him at all, Jonty. Thaydor could never be tempted by the likes of those harlots.”

“Of course not,” he agreed, his green eyes dancing with wicked amusement.

“He’s too good for that.”

Besides
,
he’s
mine
.

That part, however, she did not say aloud. Instead, rather pouting now, she turned and glared at the Beehive’s rounded, gold-toned doors, through which her wildly desirable husband had just disappeared.

Suddenly, every second that passed began to feel like an hour, and to her annoyance, she found herself sulking. She got up and paced, arms folded across her chest. She fidgeted impatiently, waiting for him to return.

This is stupid.

She plopped back down onto her seat again and gave Jonty a stern look. “He would never.”

“Of course not. I agree with you completely.”

“Stop it!”

“Stop what? I’m just sitting here!” he exclaimed with an innocent look.

“Stop smiling,” she cried.

“Oh, relax.” He relented with a lazy grin, lying back on the wall. “He’s besotted with ye. It’s disgustin’, really.”

“Dashed right, he is!”

Humph.
She decided she would just have to remind him tonight to whom he belonged.
Provided we’re not in jail by then.

* * *

The place stank of incense, but even that cloying perfume was not strong enough to mask the rank smell of stale, drunken sex that filled the place. Thaydor looked around in wary scorn as he stalked across the dimly lit space of the round, soaring entrance hall of the Beehive. The ceiling rose into a shadowed dome high above him, while the sloped walls on all sides were honeycombed with dark alcoves where visitors would be received by the temple prostitutes.

These guest chambers could only be reached by the spindly, winding walkways that wove and spiraled along the walls, like paths made by insects. They looked treacherous. The place
was
treacherous as far as he was concerned—a sticky-sweet trap. No windows let in natural light. Instead, by the intimate glow of candles, it was impossible to tell if it was night or day. There were powerful drugs and powders on offer, potions and wine, baths and music, whips and bindings and perverse toys, and many other things to make men mindless and weak.

One of the wild-haired, kohl-eyed priestesses prowled toward him from across the open space, wearing nothing but a few strands of beads, a couple of ribbons, and strange, tall, complicated boots. “Welcome—”