Honor Bound (8 page)

"She should have had a guard," Volgo
said.

"Yes, you made that opinion known."
Rhendish folded his hands on the table and leaned over them.
"Perhaps you recall the young dwarf who was a guest for a brief
time."

"I do."

"And you might also recall that no
dwarf was sighted during the attack on Muldonny's fortress. What
would you deduce from this?"

Volgo's jaw worked as if he were
chewing some unpleasant morsel. "If the dwarf wasn't in that fight,
he's probably still around somewhere. The elf might try to make
contact."

"That is my hope, yes. Have you been
able to confirm the fate of the others? The thief, the
fairy?"

The fighter shifted his big frame
uneasily and raised his hand to his forehead. He tapped himself
between the eyes three times, a warding against the fey.

Rhendish suppressed a sigh. Whatever
Volgo's accomplishments as a fighter and commander might be, he was
as unschooled and superstitious as any Kronhus goatherd.

"I have men out looking, people
talking to the fisherfolk," the captain said. "No bodies have
washed ashore or been pulled from the sea. I'm fairly confident the
fisherfolk are telling the truth on this score. But if the Fox and
his fairy survived, chances are no one will have much to
say."

Rhendish nodded in reluctant
agreement. For some inexplicable reason, the young thief had become
something of a folk hero. As for the fairy, the people of Sevrin
were hesitant to speak of the fey for fear of drawing their
attention. Apparently dead fairies were considered a safer topic of
conversation, for dozens of people had reported seeing a winged
girl fall from the sky, bloody and bristling with
arrows.

But most people did not know how
very difficult fairies were to kill.

A soft chime from the hall below
announced the arrival of a messenger. Rhendish reached for a brass
bell and rang it, indicating that the servants should send the man
up.

Volgo rose to leave. He reached the
door just as a young man skidded into the room. The big man seized
his shoulders.

"Steady on, lad."

The youth twisted out of Volgo's
grasp and dropped to one knee. "He's dead, my lord," he blurted
out. "Tymion is dead. He was murdered not long after dawn. I came
straight here on the fastest boat I could find, soon as I could get
away."

Rhendish motioned for Volgo to stay
and waved the messenger to his feet. "Tell me."

"They found him in the observatory,
my lord, his own dagger sticking out of his chest."

Volgo scoffed. "How do they know it
was murder? The man was half mad. He probably stabbed himself while
practicing for one of his plays and with his dying breath
proclaimed it a fine performance."

The youth sent a sulky look in
Volgo's direction. "The dagger wasn't what killed him. It was put
in after."

"And you know this how?"

"I was there when they carried him
out of the observatory. The wound went straight through him, like
he was arrow-shot. No man can shoot his own self."

A chill shimmered down Rhendish's
spine. Years fell away, and he saw in his mind's eye a much younger
Tymion, brave and foolish enough to face down a sorcerer with
nothing but a crossbow.

"What are people saying about the
attack?"

"They
say
the City Fox did for Tymion, just
like he did for Muldonny."

"The thief is dead," Volgo
said.

"Well, that might be so," the young
man said, "but it seems there's plenty willing to pick up where he
left off. Before dawn, some men sailed in from Hearthstone. There
was maybe a score of them, all with hair as red as a bowl of
berries. I heard tell they all stayed in Nightport, strutting round
and drinking and singing and getting into small mischief of one
sort or another, but that can't be so. One of them got into
Tymion's keep and took down three of the guards. That one got away
clean, but there was another found on the shore by the keep,
trussed up like a roasted goose."

"So the first man must have killed
Tymion before he escaped."

"That's what people will think, my
lord, not knowing what we know."

Rhendish did not care for the
conspiratorial gleam in the messenger's eyes. "And what, exactly,
do 'we' know?"

"One of Tymion's own clockwork
guards did for him."

Rhendish resisted the urge to
massage his aching temples. This was a most unwelcome development.
The adept of Kronhus had been an astronomer, not an artificer, and
he had little interest in clockwork. His few clockwork guards had
come from Rhendish's workshops.

"You sound very sure of that. I
wonder why."

In response, the young man held out
a round metal box.

Rhendish snatched it from his hand
and held it up to the light. Yes, the device was his, designed to
seize control of a clockwork device.

"Where did you get this?" he
snarled.

The youth shifted from one foot to
another, but he managed to hold Rhendish's gaze. "I was told to
clean the room. This had rolled under the astrolabe table. The
metal's bright and new-looking, not like the rest of the
guard."

"What makes you think it was part of
the guard?"

"I never thought it was," he said.
"That's my whole point. I wouldn't have put the two together but
for the sap on the back of it. When I was hauling off the metal
guard, I found more of that sap on one side of its helmet. That got
me to thinking. I pried open the box and found gears within. Small,
fine work, the likes of which come only from Heartstone. So I hid
it away, not wanting anyone to wonder where it came from . . . or
what it was meant to do."

Rhendish glanced at Volgo. The
captain gave an almost imperceptible nod and took several silent
steps toward the servant.

"And what did you hope to gain from
this act of discretion?"

The youth squared his shoulders.
"For near on two years now, I've been your eyes and ears in
Tymion's keep. The money's good, but I'm a servant for all that. If
a man's to move up in Sevrin,
really
move up, alchemy's the path to
take. I'm willing to start as an apprentice."

Behind him, Volgo cast his eyes
skyward and shook his head in disbelief.

"My apprentices are well schooled
before they enter my employ. They must pass rigorous tests before
they are even considered for acceptance." Rhendish lifted one brow.
"Then there's the not inconsiderable matter of an apprentice
fee."

"I proved myself in different ways,"
the servant said stubbornly, "and what I know has got to be worth
an apprentice fee and more."

Rhendish nodded, but not to the
servant.

Volgo reached over the youth's
shoulder and seized his chin. A quick twist, a crack of bone, and
the would-be blackmailer died before his smug little grin could
fade.

The captain let the body drop to the
carpet. "Too clever to live, that boy."

"Don't be an idiot," Rhendish
snapped. "
Think
,
man! How many times have you seen a clockwork warrior shoot a
crossbow?"

"Not once. They're not built for
it." His brow furrowed. "A crossbow? Why do you think it was a
crossbow?"

"Never mind that. It was a man, not
a machine, that shot Tymion. If he could breach the adept's
defenses and get close enough to shoot, why bother turning a
clockwork guard against him?"

"If you'd ever crossed swords with
one of those things, you wouldn't ask," Volgo said. "I'd rather
fight beside one than against it."

Rhendish conceded the point with an
impatient shrug. "There's more to it than that. The battalion of
imitation Foxes was a diversion. A deliberately clumsy diversion
designed to make people look around for something more. The use of
clockwork was meant to incriminate me. Whoever killed Tymion meant
to destroy not one adept, but two."

The captain gazed off into the
distance for a long moment. "If that's true, there may be other
attempts. I'll double the guard. It wouldn't hurt to round up the
reds, either."

"Do it. The fools who invaded
Kronhus might have been used in ways they didn't expect, but the
fact remains that they were willing to be used."

Volgo inclined his head in a short
bow and strode from the room, leaving Rhendish standing in a
whirlwind of troubled thoughts.

He shook them off and reached for a
book placed high on a shelf. Inside was a single metal page upon
which was etched a map of Sevrinspire. He thumbed a tiny lever and
a pinprick of blue light appeared along a street not far from where
he stood.

The adept hurried from the room,
beckoning for a pair of his human guards to follow.

He might not be able to control the
elf as he once had, but he could damn well find her.

Honor lay on her belly on the wine
cellar's cold stone wall, using the green witch's knife to scratch
runes onto the stone wall. Dwarves left messages on the lowest part
of a tunnel wall. If Delgar was still on Sevrin, he might find this
message in time to save Fox's life.
If
he passed through this room on his
underground travels.
If
he thought to check this particular wall for
messages.

If, if, and if again.

She rolled into a sitting position
and tucked the knife between two dusty wine bottles. Rhendish's men
wouldn't let her keep it, and if they saw the dulled blade they
might wonder what she'd been doing with it.

She pulled her knees up to her
chest, wrapped her arms around them, and waited.

There was nothing else to do. The
door at the end of the tunnel leading from Keefin's cottage had
opened into this wine cellar. It had closed behind Honor so
completely that she couldn't find its outlines, much less open it.
She'd examined every inch of the chamber, but the only apparent
exit was a stout oak door, which unfortunately was bolted on the
outside.

She heard, with decidedly mixed
feelings, the thump of booted feet on the cellar stairs. The bolt
opened with a sharp crack that reminded her of ice-heavy branches
shattering in a winter wind. The door swung open, and she lifted
one hand to shield her eyes from the sudden flare of
torchlight.

Rhendish stood in the doorway,
flanked by armed guards. He lifted one eyebrow, like a parent
waiting for a misbehaving child to confess.

She rose to her feet. "After the
metal is removed, I will work for you for a year and a day. That is
our agreement. I'm bound by honor to fulfill it."

"And I've no reason whatsoever to
doubt your honor," he said in a voice utterly devoid of expression.
"Even so, I don't suppose you'd care to explain why you are locked
in a tavern wine cellar?"

"Not really."

Rhendish waited.

"It's a sordid tale of debauchery
and betrayal," Honor said in a tone that, if possible, was even
flatter than his.

To her surprise, the adept's lips
twitched. "Perhaps another time. We should return to the manor and
continue our work." His gaze skimmed over an empty wine rack.
"Unless, of course, you're still thirsty?"

His brand of humor felt familiar,
almost elfin. So she did what she would have done among her own
kind: She picked up two bottles, handed them to the guards, and
swept past them to the cellar stairs.

As she climbed toward relative
freedom, she took satisfaction in imagining the look on Rhendish's
face when he learned she'd chosen the two most expensive bottles in
the cellar.

A minor revenge, but until she was
released from her bonds and her vow, it would have to
do.

* * *

The return from Kronhus to
Heartstone took hours longer than it might have, had Fox and his
small band been able to sail directly into the Sevrinspire port.
They returned the fishing boat to the cove and slipped into the
forest beyond the fishing village. A small cave hidden in the roots
of a fallen tree led into what Delgar called a walking tunnel: a
straight passage built for speedy travel. Of course, Fox had
learned years ago that dwarven notions of "straight" bore a
distinct resemblance to a drunken spider's web. But even the most
convoluted trail eventually ends. By Fox's estimation, they reached
the Fox Den around nightfall.

They stumbled into the mirror room.
A woodland scene played across the silvered glass, a small vale
surrounding a mist-shrouded pool. Vishni gave the scene a wave and
collapsed onto a settee with a happy groan. Avidan walked over to
the mirror and stood in silence as he gazed at the scene. He
reached out a tentative hand and jolted back when his fingers
touched the glass.

Fox nudged Delgar and tipped his
head toward the alchemist. "What do you suppose that's
about?"