Rift in the Races (62 page)

“Is it true?” Orli asked. “Did they confirm it?” She tried to collect herself as she stepped out into the room.

The woman had been about to beam a sunny greeting at Orli, an offer of coffee and nourishment, but she stopped abruptly and looked at the floor. “I’m sorry, miss. It’s true. The sheriff and his men verified it yesterday.”

Orli went to the couch and snatched the paper up from where the woman had just put it aside. She read the headline again then scanned through the article.

…
found dead, believed well over three weeks … teeth marks on the bones confirm it was the savage work of orcs … evidence that the Earth fleet officer and heroine of the Hostile War, Ensign Orli Pewter, were found on scene, but none of the bones at the site were hers according to diviner guildmaster, Cypher Meste, who
…

She stopped reading and looked back up at the chambermaid. The woman gave her a consoling look, the water in her eyes conveying the depth of her sympathy. “He was a great man. The greatest man in a millennium. And just like that, done by orcs. Who’d have thought it in these modern times?”

Orli’s knees failed her and she sank into the sofa, her face falling into her hands, her worst fears confirmed. Denial had served her during her ordeal. And hope. But now it was true. She couldn’t believe Tytamon could really be dead. Surely he had some kind of magical device. Some enchantment on his robes. An amulet. Something to prevent a death that was as beneath him as any imaginable. A man like that should not be felled by thieves, by a rogue woman working in a dump, stabbed in the back. Such injustice should not be allowed in a fair universe.

She wept for several long minutes. The chambermaid moved to sit beside her, placing one arm around her and patting her on the shoulder. “I know, miss. I’m sorry.”

When the wave of grief subsided to a point where she could speak, Orli protested what she’d read, what the chambermaid had said. “It wasn’t orcs,” Orli corrected. “It was a man. Black Sander. The antiquities dealer. He murdered Tytamon, he and his accomplice at the store in Leekant. We have to tell the Queen.”

Orli started to rise, but the woman stayed her with the hand she’d been comforting her with. “All in good time, miss. Get your strength back first.”

Orli tried to get up again, “We have to tell them now.”

The woman applied more pressure, once again pushing Orli down on the couch. “Miss Pewter, please. Lord Thoroughgood will tell them right away. But not until after you have breakfast. You haven’t had a bite in two days.”

“Two days?”

“Yes. Two days. You’ve been asleep since they brought you here.”

“Why Lord Thoroughgood? Is he here? If he is, he has to do something about Black Sander.” She started to rattle off everything that had happened to her, the wave of it suddenly rising in her and flowing out in a great torrent.

The chambermaid hushed her to silence. “Lord Thoroughgood will be up shortly. He’s been checking in on you nearly every hour since you arrived.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re at Northfork Manor, my lord’s house, Miss Orli. You are Lord Thoroughgood’s guest.”

“How?”

“He rescued you,” she said simply.

“That was Thadius?”

The chambermaid smiled, almost motherly. “Indeed it was. He’s a brave man, isn’t he?”

“How did he find me?”

“Miss Orli, please. Come sit down and eat something. You’ll have time enough for answers after you get a bit of strength. Lord Thoroughgood will fill you in on everything you’ve missed these last few days. But first, please eat something. I’ll lose my situation here if I don’t finish getting you nursed back to health, and that includes getting something in your stomach. Don’t make a homeless woman of me, I beg of you.”

Orli, bewildered by the whirlwind of her circumstance, pulled up the bottom of her nightgown seeking to verify the degree of this reality. The wound on the back of her calf was gone. Not the least trace of a scar.

“Did Doctor Leopold come?” she asked.

“No. That was Lord Thoroughgood’s personal physician. Only the best for guests of Northfork.”

“Well, I—”

“Miss Orli. Please, no more questions. Come sit down and have something to eat.” She had risen and was now tugging gently at Orli’s arm. “Just a few bites. I’ll send someone for Lord Thoroughgood straight away, but please, eat something, for Mercy’s sake.”

Reluctantly, Orli got up and went to the long table near the window. It was lined with silver trays, each with a rounded silver cover atop which stood carved silver finials depicting the nature of the contents beneath, be they fruit, vegetable or creature’s flesh. She pulled a few off, looking inside, trying to find an appetite. She grabbed a silver stag and lifted the lid. The sausages did smell good. As did the coffee in the silver samovar. There were some finely made crepes in a steam-warmed tray next to bowls of blackberries, strawberries and a variety of bright blue berries called frostberries that looked like strawberries but were unique to Prosperion. She’d had them once at Calico Castle. They were wonderfully sweet, and cold of their own internal chemistry, ice-cold, like a frozen drink, a slush right off the vine.

Perhaps she could eat a little.

“All right,” she said at length. “Just a few bites.”

By the time the chambermaid had stuck her head out through the double doors and whispered to one of the men outside, Orli had already heaped several strips of bacon, two sausage links and three frostberry-covered crepes onto her plate. It was all gone in under a quarter of an hour.

Chapter 44

T
hadius swept into the room like graciousness incarnate a few moments after Orli was properly dressed. The chambermaid had stuffed Orli into a gown nearly as elaborate as the one she’d worn to the Royal Earth Ball. The woman was ruthless in her attendance, yanking and pulling as she cinched the corset tight—so tight Orli suddenly felt sympathy for magnetic coils—and then she commenced to cage Orli from the waist down in a bell-shaped basket of whalebone, burying her under layer after layer of rich and heavy fabric as if she were making Orli into another bed. When she had Orli properly heaped and draped in fabric, she was even so bold as to simply reach down into Orli’s bodice and manfully adjust her cleavage to optimal display with a grip that was effective, certainly, but well shy of gentle.

“Ah, Orli, my dear, you look simply divine,” cooed Thadius upon entering the spacious sitting room. “Such a marvelous creature you are, stunning in every last detail.”

“Thank you, Lord Thoroughgood,” she said, feeling awkward in the heavy gown and yet somehow compelled by the nature of it, and in keeping with the atmosphere of the house, to try a curtsey.

“Oh, now stop,” he said. “We’ll have none of that. You may call me Thad, like all my friends do, and there’s no need of any of the rest. I think we’re past all that now, don’t you?”

She blinked up at him, at a loss.

He smiled down on her, all grace and manicured masculinity. He grinned as he sensed her nervousness, straightened himself and turned his head slightly toward the window so that the light might strike his chiseled profile just right. A hand went up and, as his fingers ran through the glossy richness of his dark hair, the cloud-filtered sunlight glinted splendidly off the gemstones set into the wide gold rings he wore on his index and little fingers.

He shook his head at the moment his fingers had reached the velvet band that bound his luxurious locks at the back of his head, the tail of it shaking resplendently in the light as if it were a shimmering mass of silken thread.

“So, how do you feel?” he asked after giving her a chance to appreciate the wealth of his good looks in the light of her recent experience. “I expect you’ve had quite an ordeal.”

“I have,” she said. “And thank you for coming for me. To be honest, I thought it was game-over for me given that the fleet is gone and Altin is in amnio.”

“Indeed,” he said, sounding a bit irritated. “Although, I expect Altin would have been little enough help in Murdoc Bay.”

She frowned, but let it go. “Lord—Thad, you have to get word to the Queen. It wasn’t the orcs that got Tytamon. Tytamon was murdered by a man called Black Sander, an antiquities dealer. He’s a heartless and horrible human being. Tytamon was killed in cold blood. They stabbed him in the back—or his helper did, a fat, red-headed woman who works in the pawnshop in the blank part of Leekant.” She was speaking very fast by the time she got through it all, desperation fueling the pace of her words to rocket speeds.

“Easy, my dear,” he said. “Slow down and breathe. No sense getting ourselves all worked up.” He came toward her, his stride even, his black boots polished to a gleaming shine. “Black Sander, you say?”

She nodded. “He killed Tytamon, or had him killed. We were in a barn somewhere for a while. I think he actually fed Tytamon to … to …” She couldn’t say it.

“To what?”

She set her jaw and drew in the breath she needed to push the statement out. “He fed Tytamon’s body to his pigs. He said as much. And the newspaper confirms—well, it assumes that it was orcs, but I know better. I heard him tell his man, Belor. It was all a setup to hide the truth.”

Thadius turned a skeptical expression to the chambermaid, but it vanished when he looked back at Orli. “You’ve had a rough time of it,” he said. “We need to get you some rest.”

“Don’t you dare,” she said, leaping up, instantly furious. “Black Sander fed Tytamon to his pigs, and he threw the bones out in the mountains like trash. I was there when he did it. I watched through the cage. They cut my hair and threw it down there too, along with my flashlight and a magazine from my gun belt. If you don’t believe me, go talk to the detective—or whatever you call them here—and ask him what they found at the scene. Ask him if there wasn’t a broken flashlight and an ammo clip. And chunks of my hair. And strips of my uniform too. Exactly enough to cover one leg because that’s all they cut. It will be bloody because they dipped it in a cut on my leg.” She raised the back of her skirt, making an awkward job of it due to the clunky hoopskirt, and tried to show the back of her calf as proof, but she couldn’t get to it through all the underskirts to show the wound. Which she’d already forgotten had been healed by the house physician anyway.

“My dear girl, slow down. You’re going to undo all the rest and healing you’ve received.” He was very calm as he moved back to the window, parting the curtain from the window frame and staring outside absently. “But I can tell you are convinced of the truth of this, so I will get word to the sheriff and the constables in Crown and Leekant both. Will that make you happy?”

“You have to tell the Queen.”

“This is the sort of criminal matter that is better handled by law enforcement, my dear. The Queen can’t be bothered with trifles like kidnappings and run-of-the-mill murders. She’s got a war on her hands. Two actually.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” It exploded out of her, the words entirely out of keeping with her attire.

“Well!” he said indignantly. “You have a mouth like a sailor, Miss Pewter. And somehow I expected a bit more gratitude.” He turned to go, stopping at the door to add, “I’ll be back when you are in better spirits. Get some rest.”

“Tell the goddamn Queen.”

He left.

The chambermaid came to her and put a warm hand on her arm. “Miss Pewter, please. You mustn’t upset yourself. You really have had a serious trauma. You need to rest.”

“What I need,” she said, her teeth clenched as she jerked her wrist out of the woman’s grasp, “is to get word to the Queen that a thousand-year-old man has been ruthlessly murdered and discarded like the scraps from last night’s dinner and that, apparently, nobody in this fucking house seems to give a shit.”

“Miss Pewter ….” She tried to take Orli by the arm again.

“Stop touching me!” Orli shouted at her, and again she yanked away from the woman’s reaching hand. She began tugging at the fabric of the dress, slowly at first, but then more feverishly, wrenching and twisting, trying to pull the first layer of it off over her head. “Get me out of this goddamn thing.”

“Wait, Miss Pewter. Stop. Please.” The woman made a fuss of trying to push the cloth back down. “You’ll ruin it.”

“I’m going to rip it to shreds if you don’t get it off of me. I swear to God I will. Get it off or I cut it off.” She went to the table and pulled a knife from the tray of silverware. A butter knife. No point. No edge. But she raised it just the same. “Get it off. Now!”

“But Miss Pewter, we had to burn what you had on. It was simply awful. There’s nothing else for you to wear.”

“Get me something. Anything. Some riding pants. Gardening gear. Men’s clothes, I don’t care. Just do it.”

“Miss Pewter.”

“I said get me some fucking clothes.” Orli’s face was red, her blood boiling. She jabbed the knife at the fabric, but of course it couldn’t cut through the cloth. She tried again. Still nothing. She spun and snatched a fork instead.

“Miss Pewter!”

The fork went into the gown, plunged straight through several layers of the rich skirts. She stabbed at it again, furiously, venting the rage and wrath and fear and horror of three long weeks of torment and terror. She kept stabbing, tearing away the shredded silks and mangled lace, peeling off tattered strips and hurling them away until the whole front of it was ruined and the whalebone lattice showed through.