King's Shield (28 page)

“Spying,” Mardric said softly, “means idle listening, waiting, talking in order to provoke more talk. It means smiling. It means flattering. The fun part is the seducing. My sister,” he said gently, “has a very important one by the prick right now.” He waited, and when she didn’t answer, he went on, “And then, all at once, when they are relaxed, you strike.” He dusted his fingertips together. “Gone!” And dropped his hands. “Your information is correct. We had an eyewitness see Elgar on the royal road. He followed him to their city and stayed long enough to see their mighty garrison preparing for imminent departure. My witness just reached us yesterday.”

Zek came back in, stamping mud off his feet. Mardric looked a question. Zek waggled his hands.

The guild mistress tried to find a response—disbelief—attack—anything to fend off the sense of menace exuding from these men she’d considered fools.

“Elgar the Fox is, no doubt, on his way with an army,” Mardric said. “He will fight the Venn, and who knows, maybe he’ll even win, because the Venn are not going to get any help from Olarans or Idayagans. We’re here to make sure of that.”

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“Because you decided what was best for everyone.” Mardric’s voice sharpened. “You worked against us as well as against the Marlovans. Well, just so you know. The Marlovans can win, but it won’t do them much good because their king will be dead. He has no heir, which means that if they beat the Venn they’ll be fighting each other for their throne. And they’ll leave us alone. If they don’t win, they’ll fight the Venn to the last man, and still leave us alone.”

She said poisonously, “Who is going to kill their king?
You?
”

“I’ve had plenty of practice of late, dispatching all the Venn spies I just mentioned. Spies we spent years locating. And watching. Talking to. Seducing, even, until one day—one night, actually—on the pillow, one let something slip: the invasion everyone has talked about for years is happening right now.”

She licked her dry lips. “But—”

Mardric lifted a hand, turned over. “Strange. We say ‘he has blood on his hands’ but mine are clean. That is, blood washes off. Blood causes guilt only when you feel guilty. I have to confess I really enjoyed killing those spies. Most put up a good fight. I like that in a relationship.” His teeth showed. “Even one as brief as these must be.”

“I did everything I did to protect Lindeth,” she stated, now trembling all over, and no longer trying to hide it.

Zek and the ironmonger had stepped closer, both with closed faces, neither letting his gaze touch hers.

“No, you did everything you did to make money, and gain secret authority, and oh, yes, to strike at the Marlovans, but your strike wasn’t an important enough reason for you to share information with us. Well, despite you, the Venn are no longer getting help. From anyone.” He glanced away, grimacing. “And while I enjoy fighting tough young men who’ve been trained to kill people like me—” His hand flicked out in a gesture that she didn’t understand until the garrote had whipped round her skinny old neck.

The ironmonger’s muscles bunched.

“—I take no pleasure in killing old women,” Mardric finished on a sigh. “Thanks, Retham. I hated her, she hated me, a good cordial hate can make these things bearable. But—”

He shook his head as the ironmonger laid the old woman’s lifeless body down. She was unexpectedly light, little more than skin and bone.

“Leave them for the Marlovans to find,” Mardric said, grimacing again. Despite his words, the impact was a gut churning with remorse, and even a little thrill of fear.

You lived your daily life, you even fought for it occasionally, while managing to forget the fact that you could not Disappear anyone whose death you participated in.

You could go away. You could lie about it. But you could only Disappear someone you had not killed and even then, you could not do it alone, but would be compelled to talk about it unless the Disappearance was before witnesses. Rules so inescapable that some lands formed rituals around them.

That argued for . . .
someone
watching, did it not? Except who? And why those rules, though those three could leave, and—“No one will believe she could stab him, so let’s spread the word the Marlovans did it.”

Zek rubbed his jaw. That was his specialty: rumors. “But the Marlovans always account for one another,” he said. “I mean, they always know where they are. Patrols and the like.”

“True. But we don’t care what they think. People believe what they want to believe. Spread the rumor. Get the Marlovans tied up in a useless investigation of their own people, and by the time they sort it out, everyone in Lindeth will believe that the Marlovans killed an old woman for her money. Got her belt pouch? Good. Same with this fellow.”

Mardric picked up his cloak, holding it by a finger, where it gently swung. “Meanwhile, I have an army to find.” He smiled. “The nice thing about armies is, they can’t hide.”

Mardric tossed the bag of coins on his hand, then pulled his cloak on and they departed. The dead were left to the sound of slowing drips, and the widening light from the sun reappearing between parting clouds.

Chapter Twenty-five

The first balmy night of the journey, the Marlovans’ drums rattled and tumbled in the familiar galloping rhythms as voices rose, fell, shouted in strict cadence, then broke into laughter.

Tau was still ambivalent about staying with this army in which he had no real place. The reason for the ambivalence was not only unspoken but unacknowledged. Tau sensed danger—and unfortunately, he had discovered a taste for danger these past few years.

Maybe it was time to find out if he had a place with Inda.

His chance arrived unexpectedly when the halt signal sounded while the sun was relatively high in the sky.

The usual orderly commotion followed, orders shouted up and down the disintegrating lines for horses to be led to the river. Evred rode back to talk to the lower-ranking captains.

Tau edged his mount up to Inda’s. The horses lipped each another, snorting and tossing their heads.

“What’s wrong?” Tau asked. “Why did we stop?”

Inda turned his way, brown eyes wide. “It’s not a stop, it’s a halt. We’re going to break out the battle flags and ride properly into Cherry-Stripe’s.”

“Properly? What does that mean?”

Inda rubbed the old scar on his jaw, long gone white. “When we flashed sails, what did it mean?”

“To whom? To Kodl, it meant showing off. Strut,” Tau said.

“Did
you
think it was just strut?”

“Not when we did it. We were making a gesture.”

“Right.” Inda snorted a laugh. “So riding in at the gallop, banners flying, is kind of like we flash sails all at once, instead of sensibly handling ’em as needed. Every man here—though they won’t say it out loud—wants to be seen riding in like in the ballads, banners snapping, horns blaring. And if—” His smile thinned. “Whether we win or lose, in the local songs, anyway, that ride will be a whole verse.” He tipped his chin eastward. “Lay you any wager someone will be on the walls, paper in hand, to scribble down who was where in line, how many banners, and what color horse the king rode.”

Tau laughed.

Inda turned his palms up. “Everybody likes to strut. Just depends on how they do it.”

“We” flash sails.
So Inda had not completely turned his back on his years at sea.

Tau did a quick scan. Evred was still talking to a group of captains. Signi had taken her mount to the riverside, thoughtfully keeping within view of her discreet guards as always. He was alone with Inda, with as much privacy as they were ever going to get. “Inda, do you need me along on this endeavor of yours?”

Inda slewed around, shading his eyes from the sun resting just above the hazy western hills at the edge of the vast plain. “Tau,” he said, exasperated. “I never could figure out what you were thinking. Do you want to stay, or not?”

“All things considered, I do. But I could as well do something else. Anything else. If you don’t see a purpose for me being here.” That wasn’t getting him anywhere. “What do you want from me, Inda?”

Inda’s eyes were honey-colored in the strong late afternoon light. His body shifted as his horse thrust her weight from one hip to the other, but his gaze stayed steady, his smile fading. “What I want . . . I got what I want. I think I got what I want. I got my name back,” Inda said, low as a breath. “Seemed easy as that. But right after it, Evred hands me this war to command. To him it makes sense—he never expected to be king. Didn’t train for it. But it happened, so he got to work. So I come home and he gives me a command I didn’t train for. But he expects me to get right to work, just like he did.”

“As a trade for your name?”

Inda flapped a hand as though shooing a troublesome insect. “No, no, I said it wrong. It’s a
part
of my name, see? With my name comes all the duties. D’you see it?”

“I think I do.” Indeed, Tau felt that a window had opened where he’d once perceived a wall.

“Good. Because I just don’t understand people and their reasons for doing things, not the way you do. I can sometimes hear things in their voices . . .” Inda made a quick, warding motion. “Here they come. Something’s happening. Look, Tau, I don’t blame Jeje for scouting off. I wouldn’t blame you if you did. But if you will, stay. I need you to help me see . . . what I might miss.”

Evred and the others stopped just a few paces away, all peering toward the east.

Tau then asked a question he hadn’t meant to: “Do you think you can win?”

Inda snorted his breath out again. “I don’t know.” He flicked a glance at the others, still busy. “Tau, we’re too slow. That is, not just the travel. We should be in the field every day, dawn to dusk, training. Like the Venn were last year. Not doing it just at dawn and sundown, while in between mud, rain, and bad wagons slow us down.” He snapped his fingers against his thigh, then said, “We
have
to get to the pass.” He lifted his hand, rough-palmed, scarred on top.

“I don’t suppose they will be surprised that we found out about their surprise attack,” Tau said, watching as Evred laid his horse’s rein against its neck. The animal turned; all the horses turned.

Inda’s expression was rarely sardonic, which made it the more startling when he lifted a brow and quirked the corners of his mouth. “Durasnir isn’t that stupid.” He swiped his hand over his head. “He’ll expect us to be as surprised as we expected Marshig to be.”

He spoke low-voiced; Tau had a heartbeat’s time to see the king’s hazel gaze flick between Inda and himself before they were surrounded by the group, including a scout, everyone talking at once. Inda and Tau picked out the words “east road . . . riders . . . horns.”

“Here they come,” Evred said.

In the distance a horn blared a single triplet, over and over.