The Death of Dulgath (43 page)

He studied Nysa as she lay on the stone floor. Such smooth skin, lovely cheeks, flowing hair, and that narrow waist. Even pale with death and splattered with dried blood, she was beautiful. Normally he couldn’t stare, wouldn’t dare ogle the countess, but nothing stopped him now.

Her breasts, normally something he would be eager to inspect, repelled him. He refused to look at the wound, that dark ugly depression near where her hands were folded. Christopher wasn’t squeamish, but that hole in her chest was disturbing.

What a waste.

He sighed. “Looks like I raced all this way for nothing. I’m too late. She’s already dead.”

“No. I’m not.” Lady Dulgath’s eyes opened slowly, as if they weighed many pounds.

Christopher stepped back, squeezing the handle of his sword.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Lady Dulgath said. Her voice sounded calm, relaxed, but he noted a strange reediness. She spoke as if from a hollow place, with a breathless quality that—in another time and place—might have been interpreted as seductive. “I was hoping you’d get here soon.”

“You—you knew I was coming?” Christopher glanced at Augustine as if the abbot were guilty of something, but Fawkes didn’t know what that might be.

“Of course,” Lady Dulgath said in her strangely normal, nearly lighthearted tone, the odd, airy flutter still present in her words.

Christopher didn’t like that sound, that queer hum like blowing across the mouth of a bottle.

“I invited you,” Nysa said.

Behind him, Christopher heard the door jiggle and a thump as someone threw themselves against it.

Good luck with that, Knox. The door is six inches of oak.

“You didn’t invite me. You ran here thinking you could get away, trying to find help.”

“I told Hadrian where to take me—right in front of you,” she said. “I knew you’d hear and come to help.”

Christopher laughed. He liked the sound of it, how it filled the little room and pushed back against that windy voice that didn’t sound the least bit normal. “You misunderstand, milady. I’m not here to help you; I’m here to kill you.”

“I know.” Came the words in that same awful voice.

Christopher knew something was wrong, something absolutely unnatural about her. The sound raised the hairs on his arms.

“In case you’re wondering why I chose you, it’s because you killed Sherwood. I like to think his murder will be seen as justification. I want to believe that my decision is as coolly reached and as pure as that, but I can’t deny that I do hate you, Christopher Fawkes. I saw his painting only after it was too late. I hate you for depriving me of the chance to speak to him about it. The gods know you deserve to die. I just wanted you to know that what you did to Sherwood made this easier.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m so glad you got here while I could still move these fingers and speak through this mouth. I didn’t come here for help, Christopher,” she said with a terrible, pitying tone. “I came here so there wouldn’t be any witnesses. Tell me, Lord Fawkes, do you know what
Miralyith
means? In Fhrey—what you call
elvish
—it means Artist. You killed the wrong one.”

Chapter Twenty-Four
A Need to Kill

Hadrian was desperate.

Royce was left muttering
That doesn’t make sense. It should have worked,
over and over as if reason, combined with repetition, could convince the door to open. He’d shown Hadrian how to use his dagger between the door and its jamb to catch and flip the bolt. The gap was wide enough and Hadrian had felt something rise and fall away. Royce examined the door and confirmed that the bolt had been removed. And yet, the door still refused to open.

Thoughts of Scarlett bleeding to death on a muddy path while crying out
You promised to come back
finally drove Hadrian to recklessness. He threw himself against the door, and nearly blacked out from the pain.

“That wasn’t very smart,” Royce said when Hadrian slumped to the floor, and wrapped his arms around his body.

“We have to get in…” Hadrian took a gasp of air, just a sip. Inflating his lungs pushed his ribs out and made his body shudder in agony. “Scarlett is dying…”

Royce gave the unrelenting wood a frustrated kick, which the door didn’t acknowledge in the slightest; it didn’t even rattle against the frame. “It doesn’t make sense! It should open. You lifted the bolt. It’s gone. That should have work—”

“Stop saying that! Stop arguing with the door and just open it!”

“It. Won’t. Let. Me!” Royce kicked the door again. “The brace is gone. You felt it. I heard it.”

“Is there another? A second bolt?”

“No, there was only the one, and now it’s gone.”

“Then what’s keeping it closed?”

“Damned if I know!”

“Wait—” Hadrian felt suddenly and mortally stupid. “Does it—oh, by Mar! Does it
pull
open?”

Royce looked at him, and for a fleeting moment Hadrian saw the shadow of shock, almost horror, at the thought. Then it vanished. “No!” he snapped, but he gave the door’s handle a pull to be sure.

“Then what’s stopping it?”

Royce shook his head. “Braced by something. Something I can’t see by looking around the edges.”

“Something strong.” Hadrian rubbed his shoulder and resumed breathing normally, or as normally as a man with cracked ribs could without wincing. “It didn’t give even a little when I hit it. It’s like a wall of stone.”

Royce slapped his back against the door and slid down. He looked sick, and Hadrian was sure his partner’s face mirrored his own. They had failed. Nysa Dulgath and Scarlett Dodge were dead or would be soon.

I shouldn’t have left her,
Hadrian thought.
I shouldn’t have let her die alone in the rain and mud. But if I hadn’t, Royce might be dead, too.

“Too late anyway,” Royce said in a bitter tone, looking at his own hands as if they had disappointed him. “Fawkes has finished the job by now. Killed her and the abbot. When you visited, did you go in there?”

Hadrian nodded.

“Any other way in?”

Hadrian gave him a look. “Do you think I would have bounced off the door if there was?”

Royce shrugged. “You were the one who asked if the door opened out, remember?”

“No, there’s no other exit. It’s a tomb. At least Fawkes won’t get away,” Hadrian said. “And you’ll hear no arguments from me this time. You can use whichever weapon of mine you want, and kill him any way you like. I’ll even watch. The bastard didn’t just kill Nysa, he—”

The door opened.

Royce, who’d been resting with his back against it, jumped up in alarm. It hadn’t been pulled wide, but merely swung inward in response to the slight weight Royce had placed on it.

“What’d you do?” Hadrian asked, stunned.

“Nothing,” Royce said, glaring at the tiny gap between the frame and the door.

“Take this.” Hadrian got to his feet and held out his short blade.

Royce took it with his left hand, then shoved the door inward with his foot.

The scene inside was mostly the same as Hadrian had witnessed days before. The slanted shaft of sunlight illuminated the chest within the small stone tomb. The differences were Nysa Dulgath, who lay beside the box, her hands folded neatly on her chest, and Lord Fawkes, who stood over her body with a sword in his hand.

The door announced their entrance with a creak of its hinges. Pressing down on the left heel of his shoe, Fawkes spun upon it like a child’s top, facing them.

“Do it, Royce,” Hadrian said. “This is one job that needs to end with a killing.”

“No!” Abbot Augustine came around the chest, shaking both hands to get their attention.

Hadrian held up his own hand, warning the abbot to stop. “We aren’t going to hurt you—just His Lordship.”

“You don’t need to kill him,” Augustine said.

“Need?” Hadrian said. Fawkes had plotted against and murdered Lady Dulgath, not to mention beating and selling them to slavers.
Need
had nothing to do with it. Hadrian thought of Ralph and wondered whether Royce was rubbing off on him.

Royce didn’t move. He stood holding Hadrian’s sword, staring at the lord.

Fawkes tossed his own sword away, letting it clang on the floor.

Surrendering?
Hadrian thought.
He has no idea who he’s dealing with. Royce doesn’t care about such things.

In the three years they’d worked together, Hadrian had learned that Royce refused to abide people like Fawkes. Pragmatic in most ways, Royce never allowed a man or woman to live who had crossed him. While he would never label it as an excuse, his
reasoning
was that leaving enemies breathing was the sort of careless behavior that came back to haunt and possibly kill. In Royce’s line of work, staying his hand was just sloppy.

Hadrian had his own theory. Violence always came from somewhere. Most often its origin was taught, handed down as an heirloom from one generation to the next or a gift presented from close friends. That sort of mean streak became part of a person’s character and displayed itself through insults and unwarranted cruelty. The other sort was violence born of necessity. Beat a dog long enough and it bites and will continue to bite anyone and everyone, in an act of perceived self-preservation.

Hadrian had known men who had suffered insults all their lives due to their size, name, appearance, or birthplace. These were the first into battle and the last ones out. They couldn’t walk away from even a casual slight and needed to prove themselves to any detractors. These were men who expected the worst of everyone. Royce was a step beyond that.
People
hadn’t merely belittled or slighted Royce—
the world
had tried, with strong prejudice, to erase him. Hadrian still didn’t know the whole story, but he knew enough to believe Royce might have been a show dog that, through cruelty, had learned to be more than mean—he’d taught himself to survive through the precise application of malice. For this reason, Hadrian found it odd that Royce hesitated.

“Go on,” he urged. He held a strong belief that Fawkes didn’t deserve even a single additional breath.

Fawkes stared at Royce in a manner that—if the lord had any clue about the thief’s history and temperament—would have been brave. Then he let out an almost impatient huff, folded his arms roughly, and shifted his weight first to his left, then his right hip.

Seeing this, Royce lowered the short sword, letting it hang against his thigh.

“Royce?” Hadrian asked, stunned.

He didn’t reply. Instead, Royce glanced down at the body of Nysa Dulgath, then over at Fawkes.

“Are you going to kill him or not?” Hadrian asked.

“No—no, I’m not.”

“Fine.” Hadrian pulled his bastard sword. “Then I will.”

“No!” Royce stepped between them.

“What’s wrong with you? That bastard killed Lady Dulgath, tried to kill us, and…and Scarlett is probably dead by now. Because of him, there’s no way to save her—if there even was a chance to begin with.”

Hadrian wanted to believe the tall tales…that the stupid cloth in the box was more than just an old rag; that it really never rained in Dulgath in the daytime. He wanted to believe it all, because then Scarlett—

“Scarlett Dodge is hurt?” Fawkes asked, almost as if he cared.

“Congratulations. You managed to kill one of us,” Hadrian said.

“Where is she?” Lord Fawkes asked with a strange urgency.

“Still on the path where you fought us. Has to be dead by now. Probably—”

“Take me to her!”

“Right after I kill you.”

“I can help.” Fawkes turned to the abbot and said, “Augustine, gather the monks. I’ll need to speak to all of you when I return.”

“Of course,” the abbot said, and bowed to the lord.

Fawkes turned back and stared at Hadrian with intense eyes. “If you care for Scarlett, take me to her.”

“Do as he says,” Royce told him.

“What?”

“I’m serious. I really think he can help her.”

“This is…” Hadrian didn’t have an answer. Still, he sheathed his weapon. Opposites Day had stopped being funny a long time ago.

The storm had passed, the rain had stopped, and the clouds were breaking up, revealing a setting sun that stained the sky a bloody red.