Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series (24 page)

But not for long, another person slipping
into John's chamber, this time through the doorway leading to
Platinia's room.

Sidling along the wall, the second figure
reached the dresser where John had put his next day's clothing.
There, guided by the hall light's glow under the door, the phantom
sifted through John's garments.

Found ... John's knife ... slipped it from
its leather sheath with a nearly imperceptible sigh.

On cat feet, the person approached John's
bed.

And waited.

Until John rolled over on his back again, the
ghost figure raising the dagger and plunging it in the center of
John's chest, John's shriek of agony echoing through the room, the
halls, the inn, the sound covering the assassin's retreat through
the open portal into Platinia's room!

Horribly awake, John clutched his chest! In
torment, managed to fumble out the knife!

Around the bright ring of pain, John was
aware of shouting and that there was light and noise and ...
people.

Saw, from a receding distance, the worried
face of Platinia hovering above him, behind her, taller blurs of
faces in the magic flames of many torches, their lights smothered
by shadows crawling toward him from the corners of the room
.........

It was John's first visit to the "war room"
since the assassination attempt, the army doctor, Quezy, sitting
nervously by his side, Quezy a fussy little man. Bald, with bushy
throat whiskers. A doctor? Or, in this backward place, was he more
a barber-surgeon?

Thank God that bleeding the patient had not
taken hold here as the quickest way to reduce fever! (Of course, in
the daylight magic of this environment, there was no infection to
produce fever, causing John to wonder if he'd have survived a
similar attack in his own world.)

It was not until the second day after he'd
been stabbed that John was "with it" enough to look at his chest,
John was still chewing a pain deadening plant -- the doses looking
suspiciously like poppy buds.

While everyone in John's immediate "family"
was assuring him his life hung by a thread, John was going to live,
the knife strike not compromising vital organs.

John had been most fortunate, Quezy
maintained, that the knife had a wide blade. And that the would-be
assassin was holding the blade vertically to John's body, the blade
jamming between two ribs rather than slipping between them into
John's heart. (John realized he'd been lucky. He just didn't want
to admit it.) In addition, it had been fortunate that John had been
stabbed in a light gravity band. In heavier gravity, he'd probably
still be flat on his back.

Having a small pillow under his robe to hug
to his bandaged chest if he had to cough, John was ready to start
his first, after attack, meeting.

They were all seated at the table when he'd
arrived. Coluth. Golden. Gagar. Platinia. Zwicia. And Robin. The
Army and Navy Heads and their Seconds were also in their accustomed
places around the table. In short, everyone who had ready access to
John's room in the dead of night.

First things first. "Any bright ideas about
who tried to eliminate me?" Everyone around the rough-hewed table
hung his head. Except for Zwicia-in-lavender-robe -- who had
probably not understood the question. "No thoughts at all?"

Though Coluth cleared his throat to speak,
Robin got in ahead of him. "It is my belief that it was the
Malachite Army Head," the old man purred in his unctuous voice.
"The very same that you released, sir. Leet. Trailing after us."
John didn't mind receiving respect from those around him. It was
just that old man Robin overdid the obsequious bit to the point of
satire.

"And why do you think it was Leet?"

"He is Malachite. Already almost here, he had
only to follow the rest of the way." John wondered if Robin knew
that Golden was also a Malachite? Was certain, closed-mouthed as
Golden was, that Robin knew nothing of Golden's intent to be King
of Malachite one day. "Also, because he had but one arm," Robin
continued. "Was weak. The blow that was struck was a feeble
one."

"It seems to me that a man denied the use of
one arm strengthens the other by way of compensation."

"He was also old."

"So are you," John said, Robin shutting his
mouth like a snapping turtle biting at an offending stick. Though
normally suffering fools gladly -- John was a college instructor
after all -- John was too weak to pursue silly avenues of thought.
In addition to John's appraisal of Leet as a man of honor, there
was little chance of the one-armed Army Head sneaking past
Stil-de-grain's checkpoints.

"I have the assurance of the guards," Nator
put in, "that, on that infamous night, no one entered or exited the
inn after down-light." As conscientious as the Army Head had been
about following John's orders, John believed him.

The unmistakable conclusion? That the
assassination attempt was an inside job.

Spending considerable convalescent time
thinking about the attack, John had considered -- then discarded --
the inn's personnel as suspects. Even if one of them might have
hallucinated a reason for an attempt on John's life, John didn't
think anyone working at the inn had the courage to assault a
Mage.

No. The only people likely to have known the
location of John's room on the second floor were the people seated
around this very table.

One of his own people. But who?

Golden? Maybe. Though the young man had a lot
of earlier, better chances to take John out.

Coluth? Jealous of John's superior authority?
Unthinkable.

Philelph, Coluth's Second? Fanatically
devoted to the captain, Philelph would die rather than do something
that could get Coluth in trouble.

The Army Head or his Second? Perhaps.
Ambitious soldiers were sometimes interested in speeding up
promotion by eliminating those above them in the hierarchy. But ...
aspiring to replace John as Mage? Surely, that exaltation was
beyond the dreams of even the most megalomaniacal of officers.

Robin? Unlikely, since John was the old man's
ticket home.

Zwicia?

Platinia?

Both had opportunities to assassinate John
long before this.

One of the guards? Surely, a man familiar
with arms would have made a better job of it.

What it came down to was: no suspect. The
scariest of all possibilities!

Still a secret -- from everyone except the
assassin -- was the theft of John's fake Mage-crystal.

John smiled to himself, the others at the
table waiting patiently for him to restart the meeting. It had to
have been a nasty surprise to the thief to find that the "crystal"
he'd stolen was a reproduction.

But .... back to the problem at hand.

"The assassin's access to me," John
continued, his voice already beginning to tire, "leads me to
believe he is someone in this room."

Dead silence.

"So what are we going to do to prevent
another attempt on my life?"

There was a sudden babble of talk. "One at a
time!" At that command, the others shushed like naughty children.
"Gagar."

"I could train a messenger bird to fly to me
if a stranger were to approach you, great Mage."

"And if the assassin is you ...?"

"But ...." The man sputtered to a halt, his
nose bobbing like a pecking chicken.

"I will double the guard," said Nator
resolutely.

"Guards didn't do much of a job on the night
of the attack," John replied dryly. "I'm not sure I'd live through
twice as much of that kind of help." The Army Head sagged in his
chair. "Putting men outside my door at night might help, though,"
John said. Unless you are the assassin, John couldn't help but
conjecture -- a thought John kept to himself.

I could be your protection," Coluth said.
"Surely you don't suspect me of ..."

John cut his old friend off with a feeble
wave. "You're too valuable arranging the overall defense. The plain
truth is that I can't spare any of you to nursemaid me." A slight
exaggeration. He could spare Zwicia -- for all the good that
....

As if the old women were aware he was
thinking about her, the Weird spoke. "'Tol you. 'Tol you. No knif'.
Zwicia 'tol you. No knif'."

"What was that again?" John asked.
Understanding Zwicia was difficult, even when her mental "train"
appeared to be on track.

"In'a Cr'stal. See in'a Cr'stal."

"You saw something in your crystal?"

"Knif'. See Knif'."

Without further explanation, Zwicia screamed,
a scream that unnerved General Nator, who scrambled to his feet,
sword smoothly in hand! Forsk, Nator's Second, also jumped up,
jerking out his sword and whirling the other way to guard Nator's
back.

Seeing his army colleagues draw their
weapons, Coluth was up and bolting around the table to throw
himself between John and possible treachery, Philelph dashing after
Coluth, glancing about wildly for something he could use to defend
the Navy Head.

Gagar, the bird man, looked ruffled. Which
was how a bird man should look when startled.

Golden ... sat.

Platinia ... sat.

Zwicia continued to scream.

"Zwicia," John cried, more fearful of being
crushed in the melee than of assassination, "shut up!"

As if he'd wrung her scrawny neck, the old
woman stopped in mid-scream.

The ersatz crisis over, John waved everyone
back to his place at the table, the army men scabbarding their
swords, looking smug at having responded so quickly to an apparent
threat.

Which brought John back to Zwicia, the old
Weird continuing to be the wild card in the deck. Thinking back, it
did seem to John that Zwicia had screamed every time she'd seen a
drawn knife. Every time, in fact, she'd heard the word. "You
foresaw this would happen, Zwicia?" John said, everyone again in
place. "The assassination attempt was revealed to you in your
crystal?"

Zwicia nodded.

"And you didn't warn me!?"

"Me warn. Me say, no knif'!"

"Yes, so you did." A warning, like Zwicia
herself, incomprehensible.

"And what else did you see that's going to
happen to me?"

To that, the old woman fluttered her hands.
Began to mumble to herself.

Too bad. If ever John needed a quick peek
into the future, it was now. "That's all right, Zwicia. I don't
need your help. I know how to solve this problem."

If someone around the table interpreted this
to mean that John was on the verge of identifying the assassin, let
him sweat!

"Meanwhile, we've got our military situation
to get squared away." Drained of oxygen, John took a quick, sharply
painful breath.

"Still of top priority," John continued in a
voice he hoped sounded stronger to the rest of them than it did to
him, "is defense of the Claws." Coluth nodded. "And while the Navy
is doing that," John continued, turning to address the Army Head
down the right side of the table, "I want you to set up catapults
on the heights along each of the claws. Stake them into fixed
positions. Have each throw a few rocks so you know where the rocks
will land. Then, should enemy ships row into range, rock 'em.
Knowing where the rocks will fall makes this a can't miss deal."
Light dawned in Nator's eyes.

"I will do that, sir. Unconventional, but
..."

"Effective." Exhaustion was making John
impatient. "I'm also going to require something else. Or I should
say, someone else. Since it's a good bet that a person seated at
this table was in on the plot to kill me ...." John let that sink
in again as he eyed each in turn, "I'll need a new security chief.
For now, the man I want is the soldier who brought me into camp. I
don't remember his name, but he was the officer in charge of the
first barricade I ran into on this side of the Mage Mountains of
Realgar."

The Army Head turned to his Head Second.
"That would be your perimeter security."

"Yes," said the young Second, lost in
thought. He turned his pale eyes to John at the table's end. "Did
you say the first barricade?"

"Right."

"That would be Whar."

"He's the one," John said, remembering. "How
soon can you get this Whar back here?"

"By late this afternoon."

John paused to think of the proper segue from
talk to action. "Other than the little matter of an attempt on my
life, is everything running smoothly? The catapults can be hauled
into position. Test fired?"

"Soon," the Head Second said positively.

"I want to be ready for a Malachite attack no
later than next week." Nothing like an irritated Mage to motivate
action, all the brass nodding their solemn pledges.

"For the rest of today, I'll need a squad of
soldiers to be with me at all times. I'll do the picking."

Suddenly, John was exhausted, his wound
throbbing. Leaning forward to conceal what he was doing, John
hugged the pillow to his chest to deaden the pain, hoping that,
since the pillow was under his robe, no one would notice.

His plans finalized, John dismissed the
others, all squeaking back their chairs, standing, the military men
saluting, exiting the barren, table-dominated room, the civilians
following, Zwicia getting in the way, Robin looking peeved at being
sent packing. Platinia slipped out. Golden -- his limp gone -- the
last to leave, turning to drag shut the heavy, timber door.

Leaving John alone to think grim
thoughts.

Like how losing the crystal -- counterfeit
though it was -- had changed John's situation radically. Before the
theft, he'd been able to fall back on the crystal; show it to prove
he was the Mage; use it to threaten people with its power. Trying
to play the part of Mage without at least a pretend crystal, was
another proposition entirely.