The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) (29 page)

Events became headier, less structured from there. It wasn’t so much the drinks, for there wasn’t all that much indulgence in that, but the rest pressed in so eagerly.

Partway through the meal
, a string of varied candles were initiated down the fountain stream, well-timed with the general arrival of the main plate that their party had requested. That was the moment Ian instantly knew he would remember most about the meal. Not entirely sure how it happened at that particular moment, it framed their laughter in a warm, passing way. He mostly saw the others, their animated faces from where he sat, but it was in the glance he was able to snatch of Elizabeth, the light soft on the cascades of her hair and her eyes bright that made the moment seem different. And in hindsight, of course, it was a fitting epitome to the meal.

He had never seen food like this.
Neither in variety, quality, or amount. The first dishes that began to trickle by were lighter, seasoned bits of glazed meats, ornate arrangements of exotic-looking fruits. Those were quickly succeeded by finer meats, of differing calibers and dispositions. Food was a topic he never had been overly inclined to follow, so Elizabeth did her best to give a running commentary. There was so much to try, and there was a tangible pressure to try at least most of it at least a little. This was all probably mutually encouraged by the rest of their company and the people all around him.

Rory was a
mild wonder, as Ian had noticed before that he was capable of a lot of eating. But it astounded Ian that Rory wasn’t far worse off than he was given his capacities and his proneness for filling them.

“What—what is that?” Ian asked, trying to clear his mouth before speaking, but not quite succeeding, belatedly trying to cover it with his hand.

Elizabeth was laughing as they watched it float by. “I don’t know, but it looks good. You had better—”

“—grab it,” Ian agreed as he reached for his p
uller-stick thing. “Wait, wait—”

She was laughing. Not a lot, and it wasn’t really giggling, or any other sort of distinctly feminine expressions of humor, but it was definitely occurring, and far more freely than Ian had
ever heard yet, or maybe had thought to ever hear.

Barely succeeding in
acquiring the latest delicacy, he brought it between them.

“It looks different from this close,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes, it does,” Ian said, “but it’s here—how does that go again?”

“
Comme déchet est à la pitié,” Elizabeth answered. “To waste is to pity.”

They had been hearing that phrase a lot, all down the table and behind them where a lesser congregation was hard at work.

“Would you like some of this, Williams?” Ian asked, and obliged his overwhelmed-looking second with a couple of ladles full of the dish before setting it back out to sea. “Any sight of an end yet?”

“No
t yet,” Elizabeth said, peering down. “This is quite good though, have some of this.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ian said, hol
ding his hand to his stomach, “I should start to slow down. But those do look good, what are—”

“
Candied truffles,” Elizabeth said, taking his fork and holding one up to his mouth, “with some sort of watery fruit … in the middle …”

Ian obliged her, nodding in approval as the chocolate melted on his tongue, running into the lighter liquid at its core. Holding it for a moment, he savored the play of the chocolate slowly oozing off before biting into the fruit, which was surprisingly tart.

“Very good,” he nodded again, though the surprise was beginning to wear off, as he’d already had far better at least half a dozen times since they’d begun. He wondered at what it would be like to eat like this every day.

Sinking back into his seat,
Ian craned his head back up at the ceiling, which was all aglow with the last bits of twilight and the beginning of the nightscape. He couldn’t quite be sure if the heavens were perhaps a little embellished, but the cool air inside the hall, which he still hadn’t quite gotten used to, made for an excellent atmosphere to muse on such things. The belly full of successful gastronomy only added the edge.

“Another cake!” he heard Brodie say from the other side of the table.

Glancing down, Ian saw that the report was true. This one was merely another step higher in size and complexity in the ongoing progression that had floated by them. People were also moving more between the tables now, being more prone to get up and return. Some attempts at orderly dancing were taking place around the tables to the music, but Ian could see that was quickly bound for gradual disorder. Spirits were piqued in general, and more was the only direction to go.

“
Kanters, and Williams, when you’re done with that—” Brodie was calling to him as he slid the cake over their way, “you’ve got to try this one. It explodes—no, it does! It explodes in your mouth. Be a chap, try a little.”

And he did,
had to, of course. It was some sort of imaginative concoction of sugar and cream, but afterwards he had to thoroughly rinse his mouth to drown out its aftertaste.

And the next item
was of course a serious duty to try, and the next, and the next. His innate sense of restraint and his aching stomach seemed silly in such times and company. What did it matter if the sugar began to taste increasingly excessive, the liquids all the same? He would only get one chance to enjoy himself like this, and he was. While he definitely didn’t feel like he was having as much fun as the others were with their palates, he was definitely winning at holding the conversation.

Kieran had been more reserved since his
stick comment, so it wasn’t even as much of a challenge as usual—not that it usually was either.

“And where do you think all these people are from?” Ian asked Elizabeth.

“We were told that many of them come from Carciti,” Elizabeth said, “some of them on business, and some of them work for Lord Beaumont. Some of them also work as liaisons for the Bevish governments, but it sounds like many of those spend more time here than in Carciti.”

Ian nodded. “It’s a lively bunch.”

“My poor father,” Elizabeth Wester said calmly, looking down the table to where Ian could only get glimpses of the two lords, “he does not enjoy these functions. Especially not like my mother.”

“Is she staying on Gower?” Ian asked carefully, trying not to sound intrusive.

“Oh, no,” Elizabeth said, “of course not. She stays most of the time when my father is there, but she would always far rather be in Wilome.” She leaned in close to Ian and lowered her voice with a low smile. “And it is best not to say, but she does have an idle fancy for Orlies and its allures, much to my father’s chagrin.”

Ian only smiled back, noticing that Kieran was watching them intently. Raising his glass, he met it against Elizabeth’s.

“To Derfi,” Ian said, “and all of its wonders.”

“To Derfi,” she answered, her eyes smirking.

The next half hour passed in more of a lull, as more people got up and returned. Ian led their party up as well to stretch their legs. To his surprise, he found that he was much fuller than he had realized, that his stomach hurt whenever he tried to turn. He also wasn’t quite as steady on his feet as he would’ve guessed, the more gradual pace of the evening having quietly taken its effects.

Moving about with the others, it was also good to get outside of the din of the conversation radiating around the tables. Looking, listening at them now, it was easier to see just how excessive their dispositions were, their consumptions. Feeling a little guilty that he had taken so much, he knew at least that it was only for one night.

“Milady,” Kieran was saying, “what is that perfume? It’s absolutely wonderful.”

“Oh, yes?” the margrave’s daughter smiled. “I believe the ladies called it
douce dame rose
.”

“Ah,” Kieran said.

“Oleander,” Elizabeth said, “I believe that is what it would translate to.”

“O-lie-man-der-man—”
Brodie tried, humorously. “I think the Dervish one is easier to remember.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said simply.

Ian frowned, looking over at her. He had been watching the musicians, wondering if they actually cost more than the meal to employ, but something in her tone caught his attention. No one else seemed to, but then again, none of them were overly attentive either.

Ian realized she laughed
at Brodie’s jokes. But that was nearly all.

“I’ll be back shortly,”
Ian said, deciding it was an appropriate enough time.

Stepping back over the stone floor, up the
steps, past the bits of lively spirited guests, he waved off one of the Dervish servants that made a motion to him, offering what looked to be some other vintage wine, then he pressed through one of the smaller entrances, onto the plush crimson carpet, between the marble pillars and lengthy portraits, around a corner staffed by immaculate ceremonial guards, under a hedge of smoke issuing from an alcove of laughing gentlemen, through and over and into a place where the expensive music couldn’t quite touch—Ian tried to come back to himself.

His trajectory re
mained practical, however, as he began trailing a pair of men who looked to be on a similar direction. Slowing his pace a little, Ian took a series of long, measuring breaths. As wonderful, as generous as all this was, he realized he really did not like it. The only consolation was that it was a rare opportunity, and it was only for one night.

But why
did it feel so gross beneath his gut, he asked himself as he ran his finger along the curvy stone pattern on the wall.

It was indeed wonderful
accommodations, hospitality.

He bowed his head to the left, then the right as he watched the sw
irling patterns in the carpet that his feet stepped past.

Stifling.
That was the only word that kept coming to mind. It was a generous opportunity, with so much opulence shed on their behalf, but it also didn’t mean anything. It was a waste of resources. And aside from a few memories, his condition would hardly have been any better tonight if he would have had a filling but meager supper of meat and potatoes and an average night’s rest on his cloak.

He ran
his hands over his shoulders, not used to the weightlessness his shoulders insisted on feeling in the absence of his watcher’s cloak. It was an almost self-conscious feeling, not that there were any odds of any Dervish men here wanting to take a shot at him from behind.

Ian
reached what had all the credentials of a lavatory door and decided that his feelings would have been much different if there had been other men that he could have met and talked to. It seemed like that was the primary purpose of such events as this, and as it was, despite being full of more expensive things than a month’s worth of his pay could probably buy, he felt empty, hollow.

But it could be worse,
Ian thought with a smile as he stepped into the lavish lavatory. There was much to admire, to be thankful for in an evening like this.

Stepping around a guard that w
as on his way out, Ian’s step hitched at the sound of a composed kind of gagging. He was just thinking that something must be wrong when another small congregation of them came. But upon seeing it, as he turned the corner to find a line of Dervish gentlemen in various stages of readjusting their dinners, Ian found such thankful sentiments to be suddenly much more difficult to hold.

“Is not My word like a fire?” says the Lord. “And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?”

—Jeremiah 23:29

He had no thought of sleep on his bed. The ceiling of their room was fortunately of an endlessly elaborate network of tumultuous swirls—much like everything else in the chateau, so it gave something for his eyes to trace over in the dark without growing too bored.

He wasn’t really restless, but falling asleep didn’t seem all that reasonable either. The others didn’t seem to have the same disposition, though the captain had
only just recently returned and hadn’t immediately fallen asleep.

Ian’s
mind drifted from the things Elizabeth’s hair did with the light to distractedly attempting his jump-click exercises. It was getting increasingly difficult, and he found himself starting to confuse or outright misplace some of the early jump-clicks he had thought he’d had a permanent grasp of.

His thoughts had
no ultimate goal, which was probably why he felt no consternation at their lack of progress. They weren’t necessarily happy thoughts, but all the bits of non-happiness weren’t exactly all that ambitious either.

Ian
didn’t start, or even really register the jump-click at first. He’d put his yeoman over with his other things on the table beside his bed not long before. But after several seconds, he looked over to where its indicator light had already faded. After chewing his lip for several more seconds, he quietly eased himself up and out of the bed and picked up his yeoman. Pulling up the yeoman’s memory, he found the simple jump-click it had picked up.

“Come.”

Peering back over his shoulder at the others, Ian couldn’t think of any routine explanations why anyone in their party would use their yeoman here within the chateau. Doing a little more investigation into the transmission, he saw that it had been a general, unsecured message. It had come from a location lower and to the northwest of their room. It was of legitimate Bevish origin, the kind of transmission that was only used by rangers in the Over Guard. And no follow up had come, which such leading transmissions were required to give.

Pondering for just a moment more,
Ian quickly pulled on his clothes, even before he had made up his mind to go.

Luckily
, he was able to move through and out of their room without much noise, the somewhat old-fashioned door being the most tedious element to handle. But, he thought as he finally made it into the softly lit hallway without any apparent notice, if there had been no follow-up on a general channel, then it had to of been a mistake.

Quickly moving down the hallway
in his stocking feet, Ian cast one last look over his shoulder to make sure he saw no sign of movement from their rooms. Continuing on and reaching a junction, he carefully peered around the corner, but that hallway was deserted as well.

At this point
, it became less straightforward. Calling up the location of the transmission again, his yeoman could only give him a very general vicinity in this general direction, and there hadn’t been any further indicators, and no other yeomans were showing up.

Not that he had anything better to do,
Ian thought as he hurried to the balcony he had walked to earlier that evening. And the worse that could happen was getting caught by the Dervish, which should only earn him a scolding from them and his captain, though he was probably due for that anyway. It had been at least a full day since his last from the captain.

It was dark out on the balcony, with the evening air
calm and full of insect noise and distant birds. In the distance, he could see lights and some movement along the perimeter of the chateau’s walls. Evidently, there were guards for defending the outsides of the chateau, but not as much for the inside.

Leaning over the edge and stilling his somewhat elevated excitement, he listened hard for as long as he could hold his breath.

Failing to hear anything, he was about to pull himself back up when a brief reflection caught his eye.

It had been fleeting and almost above what he could see of the first floor
from underneath the bottom of the balcony. Rolling himself further over the railing edge again on his stomach, Ian watched for as long as he could hold that position. But there was nothing further. After he had pulled himself back and looked around, he decided that he didn’t have much else to go on.

He tried not to narrow the situation down in his mind as he made his way to the nearest stairwell and crept down to the first floor. It felt like the longe
r he could prolong the question the better, though he found himself already drawing to the bottom of the short list of explanations.

The hallway he exited into was
all hardwood floors and had a more echoing feel. This necessitated taking more care in his footsteps, though he tried to keep up his pace and keep a sharp ear out as well. How well he managed all three of these contrasting aims was up for debate. But the halls were dark and deserted, and he covered a healthy amount of ground.

He quickly passed where he estimated the reflection must have come from without noting anything.
He had certain sense of confidence that he didn’t have to look too hard into the shadows, as he suspected whoever he was pursuing had to have some sort of reason for being out at this hour, and they would have to take some care and hopefully a little bit of light to reach it. And the whoever had to be at least two whoevers, hence the transmission.

How many more could there be? No—he tried to wipe that from his mind
. He’d find out soon enough. In fact—

He heard
a soft clicking sound, and he skidded to an abrupt stop. Holding his breath again, he spun toward the small hallway he’d just dismissed and passed. Not receiving any follow-up, he pursed his lips and carefully made his way to the corner to peer down into it. It was nearly pitch black, not having the benefit of the nearby courtyard windows that parts of this hallway did.

Experiencing
doubt at whether he had actually heard anything, Ian began internally debating whether he should talk himself out of the notion that he had. But then he caught the faintest shifting of shadows near the opposite end of the hallway. Faint, but definite.

He began again, far more slowly, surely now. There was just enough he could make out in the darkness to keep an idea of the hall’s dimensions. He knew
he had no cause for having brought any sort of weapon, and indeed, it would have no doubt only made things worse. But he couldn’t help the uncomfortable feeling that tried to assure him that he should have.

Nearing the end of the hallway,
he saw another shift in the darkness. This time he could see that it came from some sort of indirect illumination from the hallway to the right in the upcoming tee-section. Making sure to even out his breath, Ian put himself against the corner and eased his eyes around it.

A
nother long hallway lay beyond, from what he could tell, and another opening was in the left wall not far from him. And it was from this opening that he could see the bobbing, flickering light.

He took a quick chance and rushed to the next corner, already able to hear the whispers before he put his back against his last corner
. The weak bits of light played across the hall’s opposite wall.

“—is it?” Ian could j
ust make out a low voice saying, accompanied by a clinking sound.

“If you don’t know, then it must be
—”

Ian sighed, more dramatically than he had intended, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t change
things.

He was still contemplating what his entrance should be like when he turned the corner and took it, trying not to clench his jaw.

“Wait—” one of the two dark outlines hissed—Brodie, Ian thought.

“Who’s there?
” Ian called out, regardless.

T
wo lights quickly wheeled into Ian’s face.

“
Kanters?” Kieran asked, sounding surprised, irritated. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s a funny question,” Ian said, “without a
very funny answer.”

Drawing closer and
squinting his eyes against the relatively harsh light from their yeomans, he was able to catch only a few painful snatches of the area between them. It was necessary, however, and he made sure not to look away. He was able to surmise that the two rangers were standing around a short table with some tall object on it. The little he was able to catch of their faces was hard, scared.

“Can’t sleep?” Brodie asked, in something of a conversational attempt.

“Would you mind not shining that in my eyes?” Ian asked, striving to keep his own voice neutral.

The light on the right—Brodie’s light—wavered a little, but apparently decided to take reassurance in the rigidity of the other light.

Kieran tried to start. “Were you going somewhere in particular—”

“What’s in your hands?” Ian asked.

“Nothing,” Kieran said.

“Fine, what was in your hands?”

“Nothing,” Kieran repeated.

“Don’t lie to me, Anglas,” Ian said.

“There wasn’t—”

“Don’t lie to me, Anglas,
” Ian said again, louder. “It’ll only make things worse.”

“Make what worse?” Kieran
asked, his light drifting down low enough that Ian could see his derision. “Are you going to taddle that we’re out of bed?”

Ian started
toward them again, firmly enough to make sure that they stepped apart a little so he could examine the ornate object in question. Even looking at it hard for a moment, Ian found he couldn’t make out much more of a plausible explanation for it than they had, though he agreed with their conclusion that it looked expensive.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” Kieran said. “You think we were going to take that?”

“Shut up, Anglas,” Ian said, staring down hard at the object. “Would you really be ridiculous enough to do it?”

“You can’t
—”

“Shut up!” Ian whirled on him. “You’d throw everything all to rubbish for—for what?
Some money? Throw the whole company off to look like a bunch of beggars in front of these people?”

There was a long, low pause. “Don’t lecture me, private.”

“I’ll do what’s best.”

“Best?” Kieran asked in disgust. “Is any of all of
this what’s best? Look around you, Kanters. There’s nothing good about this whole place. These are the people we had fight against, and they live out here, filthy rich, with more than they know what to do with. They’re nothing but daft, Dervish robber barons. That’s all. Fine. You know what we were doing. You know everything else evidently. What are you going to do about it?”

“You know what I’m going to do,” Ian said.

“I know what you think you’re going to do,” Kieran said. “But you’ll only talk about it. You’re all talk, Kanters. You won’t tell anyone.”

“You don’t think so?” Ian asked hotly.

“Keep it down,” Brodie hissed at them. “Someone’s going to hear.”

“Wouldn’t that be too bad,” Ian said, deciding that they were stalling too much. Or he was
, he wasn’t sure. They had already admitted to it, he just needed to resolve it now as quickly as possible. “What else have you taken?”

Kieran
stared at him, his expression not entirely discernible in the darkness. For a long moment, Ian didn’t think that he was going to assent, but then Kieran reached around and grimly pulled out something small from his uniform.

“There,” Kieran said tightly. “Does that make you happy,
Kanters? Want to see it?”

“I’m not stupid enough to touch it,” Ian scoffed.

“Then what are you going to do about it?” Kieran asked.

Ian clenched his jaw. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Of course—”

“No, you don’t,” Ian said, raising his voice before he thought about it. He shook his head, feeling his fists clenching
too hard into themselves. “If you had any idea at all, you would have never—oh, but what am I telling you for? You’re obviously too stupid to—”

“What difference does it make?” Kieran hissed back at him. “What difference will it make at all?
Look at this—no one is going to miss it at a place like this. You could feed a whole house for a long time with something like—”

“Oh? Is that what you’re going to do with it?”

“What business is it of yours?” Kieran shot back.

“It’s stealing,” Ian said.

“It’s not stealing as long as it’s from someone—or something that will never need it.”

“Do you think,” Brodie spoke up from behind him, a little more calmly, “that any of these people deserve to have things like this?”

Ian backed away so that he could look at both of them, suddenly finding that he had lost some of his confidence. He stared at Brodie, not so much for his words or his tone, but the quiet, steady way he stared back at Ian.