Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (4 page)

Their swords were peacebonded, as all bladed weapons over four inches long had to be inside the city wall of Corvallis, which meant a length of lead wire and a crimped seal wrapped around the guard and sheath. You could pull it apart with a quick jerk, but you'd better have a very good reason for doing that.

Sionnach just clenched fists like small kegs and scowled; he was a mountain of a man with a burst-mattress brown beard tied in two plaits dangling down his plaid, and looked as if he could twist horseshoes straight with his bare hands anyway, which in fact she'd seen him do as a joke at a Lugnasadh festival. His nickname was
Sionnach Tréan
, Strong Fox.

“This isn't some goddamned fief full of serfs, northerner,” the young man said to Heuradys.

Which was a little unfair, since serfdom had been abolished in the north-realm after the Protector's War, before anyone involved here had been born. On the other hand, the man had probably never
been
to the Protectorate, and had a mental picture of it based on old stereotypes, which had been exaggerated even in her grandfather's day. Most people didn't travel much. Plus he was flushed and weaving a little. Dean's Downfall could sneak up on you unawares. Alcohol removed inhibitions, which turned the passively imbecilic into the all-too-active moronic.

“You can't go around bullying and molesting anyone you please here. Stay away from Shelly . . . from my girlfriend!”

Heuradys ate the forkful of pie, looked at the rest and sighed. When she spoke her tone was as reasonable as you could be when you had to half-bellow. It was difficult not to sound angry when you shouted.

“Goodman, nothing would make me happier than staying away from her. She tried to hit
me
. After I declined to meet her when the Hopping Toad closes to . . . ah . . .
become better acquainted
, she said.”

“You lie!” the man blurted.

Then he looked a little apprehensive as well as very angry and slightly drunk. Giving a knight the lie direct was a killing matter in the Protectorate; for that matter, calling someone a liar was pretty serious in most places. You couldn't live like a human being without your reputation, and letting it be put in doubt by unchallenged slander was intolerable. Corvallis was a little different, being a great city with upward of forty thousand people, where a bit less depended on face-to-face dealings and reputation and trust and rather more on formal contracts. But Corvallis was also an urban island in a rural world, and he knew he'd gone too far.

The law of the city-state might forbid dueling, but even here a magistrate probably wouldn't do anything beyond levying a modest fine if Heuradys simply beat the stuffing out of someone who called her a liar to her face. As long as no killing or crippling was involved, of course, since this was a painfully law-abiding and peaceable town on the whole.

Heuradys rose to her feet. She was an inch taller than the young man, whose eyes widened as he realized it. He was probably thirty pounds heavier but she moved like a cougar and suddenly looked as dangerous as one, as the last trace of lazy good humor fled from her face. He had the height and heft and beef for a pikeman, certainly, and if he had any war-training it would be how to march in step while carrying a pike. Not the intensive study of generalized mayhem that a knightly family's resources and tradition gave their children.

“Excuse me, goodman, but what was that you said?” she enquired politely. “It's very noisy in here. I probably misheard you?”

Ah, most excellent, Herry—you've given him a path to retreat. My parents are
not
going to be happy if there's a sordid drunken brawl over a barmaid . . . regardless of who's in the right or was actually drunk.

“I said I believe Sherry, not you!” the man said, not notably backing down.

Which was gallant, or gallantly inebriated, but stupid. There were times when she suspected that men suffered a brain shutdown when their voices broke and didn't start it up again until they passed thirty, like millwork with a crowbar shoved into the gears. Throw in booze or jealousy, and you had a bonfire on legs.

“Then you're thinking with your dick,” Heuradys said crisply.

She reached out with deceptive casualness and gave his nose an emphatic tweak.

“Which isn't what it's for,” she added. “Go away and sober up, you silly person, before you get blood on my good shirt.”

The Corvallan howled and clapped his hands to his face in reflex as red leaked between his fingers; knight training with long sword and heavy shield made your hands
strong
. Heads were turning as he roared, wound up and swung a wild haymaker—few could have heard what went on, but that was body language loud enough to catch the eye and carry over the white waterfall blur of sound. Most of those who'd noticed just looked, mugs and forks and spoons suspended; others bolted out the door, surged backward or came forward depending on the degree of their curiosity, boldness, sobriety or taste in entertainment.

Some people
liked
brawls. As her mother was fond of saying, whatever happened to the wheat or barley there was never a failure in the annual crop of fools.

She saw two men who looked as if they were members of the northern Guild Merchant glance at each other and then pour the last of their bottles of wine into their glasses and gulp them down . . . before they grasped the bottles by the necks and held them down by their sides, inconspicuously ready to leap up and whack heads. They might or might not dislike the aristocracy at home, and might or might not consider a shindy in a pub fun, but they'd probably pitch in regardless to keep a fellow Portlander from being mobbed. Órlaith felt a stab of dismay, like a splash of cold water in the gut.

Oh, Mom and Da will
so
not appreciate a sordid brawl that turns into a mass punch-up over who was born where, with me taking sides since I'm certainly not going to leave Herry in the lurch, that they assuredly will not. And someone might get really hurt if that happens. There are enough old quarrels in Montival as it is, sure.

Heuradys swayed aside and ducked slightly, and the punch slid over her head. Órlaith wasn't worried about Heuradys d'Ath
losing
a fight with a single half-drunken tavern bruiser. The duck continued as she sank into a twist and then uncoiled into a blow with doubled knuckles up under the young man's short ribs, putting the strength of gut and legs as much as arm and shoulder behind the pile driver impact. The whole process took about a second and a half, and ended in an audible meaty thud.

Nicely done,
Órlaith thought; you had to be an expert yourself to see how elegantly it had been managed.

“Urk!”

He started to double over. That turned into a pitch backward as Heuradys heel-hooked him, combining it with a shoulder-thump that sent him turning and falling facedown into the arms of his friends.

Thus neatly immobilizing them all, and making a brawl less likely, so.
Very
nice, Herry.

Their shouts turned to cries of disgust as he began to vomit copiously. Órlaith started to smile in relief despite the sharp acidic stink; there was something inherently comic about a man throwing up . . . on someone else. His friends, or acquaintances, dropped him to the sawdust-strewn brick floor with a limp thump. For a fraction of a second she thought the whole thing was about to teeter over into fits of laughter, as folk relaxed and grins spread.

Then the server leapt screeching over the man, throwing herself at Heuradys with clawed hands outstretched like an illustration from a book dedicated to proving men had no monopoly on folly. While she was still in the air the light went out as someone threw a tankard of beer at the nearest gaslamp. In the same instant there was a
c-thuk
sound, exactly what you'd expect from a hard head-butt.

Órlaith surged up, ready to vault over the table and come down beside Heuradys. It wasn't completely dark, the fire still cast a red glow and the more distant lamps were still on, but that was mostly blocked by people who'd also leapt to their feet. There was a confused buffeting and thrashing, and things bumped into her. A bottle crashed somewhere, there was a clang of pewter plates hitting the floor, and the noise rose from its temporary lull to a crescendo. Arms closed around her like winch-drawn cables, and she nearly stamped a heel down to break bones in a foot before she realized it was Strong Fox.

He swung her hundred and fifty pounds around as easily as if she were a moss-stuffed doll, putting his own broad back between her and any danger.

“Let me go, you great ungainly
bachlach
!” she shouted.

She heard Herry calling the war-cry of her House:
“D'Ath! D'Ath!”

Which sounded exactly like
Death!
when you yelled it, which was pretty much the point.

She struggled frantically. It was futile, as long as she couldn't do anything really harmful to him; Sionnach weighed more than twice what she did, every inch of it muscle when it wasn't massive bones. And his oath was to her father, not her; where her wishes clashed with the High King's orders, there was no contest at all. There was another sound, a panting grunt and a crunch, which was probably Dobharchú slugging someone with her knucks.

Then light flared up, from a Tillman lamp raised high in the hand of one of the Montoyas.

Everyone froze, even the people who were lifting stools or bottles over their heads; one man stood single-footed, with the other drawn back to deliver a really satisfying kick to a set of prostrate ribs. Heuradys was leaning back against the table, her nose dripping blood. The waitress named Shelly was lying at her feet, with a knife protruding from her back just beside her left shoulder blade. As they watched she gave one last twitch and went limp, and nobody who knew practical anatomy doubted for an instant what nine inches of razor-edged steel was going to do when it was put
there
. The young man who'd tried to punch Heuradys crawled forward, vomit still streaking his beard but tears running down into it.

“Shelly!” he said, and began to sob, raw racking open-mouthed sounds. “Oh, Shelly, don't be dead! Please!”

Everyone was looking at the dagger; it was a double-edged weapon, nine inches in the blade. The d'Ath arms were engraved on one side of the bolster, the Lidless Eye of the PPA on the other, and a ring of rubies set into the silver pommel. It was, without question or doubt, the Associate dagger of one Heuradys d'Ath. Broken lead peacebonding wires dangled from the empty sheath on the belt looped over the back of her chair.

“Police!” a harsh voice shouted from the doorway, and a whistle shrilled. “Nobody move!”

One of the first out of the Hopping Toad must have gone straight for the authorities.

*   *   *

Oh, shit,
Órlaith thought.

Shelly's self-defined boyfriend—he turned out to be called Tom Dayton—was sitting glaring murder at Heuradys, surrounded by his three former tablemates, tears still trickling down his somewhat cleaner face. Occasionally it would contort with overwhelming grief; she would have felt more sorry for him if he hadn't been trying to pin a murder on her best friend.

Could he have done it himself?
she wondered.
That's real sorrow, but it wouldn't be the first time a jealous man went insane. And he may have thought the former Shelly was his girlfriend, but I suspect she had a different view of the matter, so.

The possibly-friends had tried to sidle out but the constables had at least listened to Órlaith long enough to put a stop to that; two of the blue-uniformed peace officers were standing at the door with their catchpoles making an X across it and more were at the kitchen doors, the rear entrance, and the stairs to the upper story of the tavern.

Heuradys was holding a wet cloth full of ice to her nose. There was a constable right next to her, too, though she hadn't been formally arrested or cuffed yet.

And Police Chief Simon Terwen was stooping over the body, leaning on a chair to avoid stepping in the blood whose raw metallic stink filled the air, dictating technical-sounding details to an assistant who took them down in shorthand on a ring-bound pad. There was a modest pool of it around the dead girl's head, but not the flood there would have been from a slit throat or cut-open belly. A photographer had taken a picture with a flash of magnesium powder as well as a sketch-artist dashing off several more; Corvallis had all the latest and best, including a ceremonial barrier of yellow linen ribbons to keep the curious out of a crime scene. He turned and looked at them, shrewd blue eyes in a lined face, clean-shaven and with short-cut white hair.

Whoever had run for the police had probably mentioned Órlaith's name; there must be a hundred people or even more in the Corvallis city police force, but its commander had shown up only minutes later. Everything was very quiet now, with the crackling of the fire in the hearth the loudest sound. She looked up and saw brightly interested black eyes peering through the balustrade of the staircase beside the hearth, and then a protesting juvenile yelp as the child was pulled away by one ear.

“I don't think we can rule out foul play,” the policeman said dryly, examining the angle of the knife.

Heuradys made a gurgling sound. Behind her, Otter and Fox looked at each other. Órlaith turned her head and hissed to them:

“No. I'm not in physical danger, so don't even
think
about just rushing me out. The
Ard Rí
wouldn't thank you for that.”

Both bodyguards glanced at each other again; then Otter shrugged and they relaxed. The policeman—he'd been one even
before
the Change, though very junior—acknowledged the byplay with a flick of his eyes.

“It's not the first time I've found members of your families standing over a body scratching their heads,” he said. “Your grandfather Mike Havel, for one, Your Highness. That was just before the Protector's War.”