The Folly of the World (47 page)

“The militia, of course,” said Braem. “But we both know
who’s feeding the orders, don’t we?
They
are, who else? It’s like this…”

Sander had been a breath away from snapping Braem’s neck at the mention of impostors uprooting real nobles, but then Braem saved himself by saying he didn’t suspect Sander. Then Braem had mentioned the murdered kids, and for a minute Sander thought Braem might be telling the truth, that Simon’s reporting the dead kids in the meer turned out to be every bit as bad an idea as Sander had thought, with the lazy militia blaming Simon… but this was just spooky, all this talk of conspiracies, eels, and sundry craziness.

A different Sander might have taken the bait, might have been intrigued by what Braem was ranting about, but Sander was a goddamn graaf, and not a fool one at that. Yet Braem clearly thought he was the sort of nutter who’d buy into inscrutably complicated plots and—

Despite his intention to play it cool, Sander groaned. Simon had betrayed him.

There. Braem was still talking and talking, feeding out his overly complicated line about the militia having arrested Simon, but Sander was no longer listening to his lies, instead turning everything over in his mind. It all fit now, and Sander felt his heart sink at the treachery. Simon wasn’t locked up in the gatehouse, he was the plaguebitch who’d been tailing Sander, like as not the same plaguebitch skulking outside Jo’s window all those months back. Like every good lie, there was a grain of truth in Braem’s tale, and the honest kernel here was that the headless kids were planted out there to blame Sander, to get him hanged for murder so his enemies could steal his title and house… Ruthless. Simon had been the one to find the girl, after all, and had called Sander over—he must have thought himself so cunning to plant her out there, to act disgusted by what he’d found.

But Sander had been too sly to report finding the dead girl, or to go out and have a look at the second corpse Simon had told
him about, and so the Gruyeres were running a different game now—get Sander to the gatehouse, where some bought militiamen were ready to throw chains on his gullible ass and then execute him as a child-killer.

Not a bad plan, Sander had to admit. The more he thought about it, ignoring Braem’s prattling about eely Hooks and honest Cods and the murdered children, the more Sander realized that Hobbe had no doubt played a hand in the setup—these greedy Gruyeres would roll over and do whatever the count ordered, so long as they had their precious inheritance restored. And after all Sander had done for Simon, too…

“So that’s the long and the short of it,” said Braem, stamping his feet and making a big show of rubbing his hands in his eagerness to be off again. Giving the second man, who yeah, sad to say, was probably Simon, time to circle around to the other end of the alley. Would Simon reveal himself, or was he going to hang back, thinking himself unseen, until they reached the gatehouse? Sure, that was it—if Sander told Braem to fuck off and tried to break away, then Simon would jump in, and they’d cut him down. A dead child-killer was even better than one who’d protest his innocence, after all, and—

Lizzy. Mother of Christ in all her pregnant glory.

The thought of dead kids had brought to mind a certain young woman’s bloody cloak, and Sander felt his disappointment in Simon’s betrayal turn to something harder. One of these two assholes had mistaken her for Jo and murdered her, or maybe they’d sought to have a third headless corpse to hang on Sander’s stoop. Hell, maybe she was just tending house at Voorstraat when they’d broken in, meaning to have a sip of Sander’s wine while he was off at war, and they’d needed to keep her quiet. That would be just like these Gruyere fuckers, too impatient to wait until they’d gotten Sander hanged for crimes he didn’t commit before sticking their grubby hands into his pie…

And what of the other two kids, the ones without heads? Had
Braem lured them into an alley like this one and hacked them up for the sole purpose of framing Sander?

Had Simon?

“Jan,
please
,” said Braem. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? We have to go, now, we have to free Simon! I have a friend at the gatehouse who will take him out the side, onto the dock, and once he’s in the boat, we can all go to see my friends.
Our
friends.”

Some plan! Braem was even dafter than Sander had previously suspected if he thought a scheme like that would appeal to Graaf Tieselen—yes, yes, Braem, let’s go see your mysterious friends this very night, all because of some mad story you’ve spun that’s too stupid to even make sense of. That they would think him to be so utterly foolish, so utterly mad, as to fall for such a line… but that was all right. They’d underestimated him, to say the least, and he tried not to grin as he at last resumed walking, letting Braem lead him through the dark alley.

If Simon was indeed the man who was tailing him earlier, Sander would do just fine; two on one wasn’t even something he’d take a wager on, it’d be good as thieving… but if they’d hired some other muscle, if there were more men waiting, he might have to think on his feet. The end of the alley was coming up, and Sander slowed again, which agitated Braem.

“Hurry!” said Braem. “They only arrested him because you were out of town. You’re their real target, you’re the one they want to replace with… one of them, one of those—”

“Easy, Braem,” said Sander, growing disconcerted by Braem’s intensity and the unexpected development of having some of his suspicions about the dead kids directly confirmed. Then again, a coating of truth helped sweeten the poison lie, didn’t it? If Simon really was following them, Sander would have to drop any pretense at buying their shit and seize his warehouseman—he could beat the truth out of him, if it came to that.

But then why wait? Giving Braem a final chance to come
clean while they were still alone might save some serious bloodshed, and so Sander said, “Look, you’re full of shit and we both know it. I won’t fall for it, and—”

“I’m not!” protested Braem, glancing to the mouth of the alley, so close, shining like a slice of moon in the darkness. “Please, listen—”

“No,” said Sander, his bile rising at this caitiff’s denial in the face of an outright calling of his bullshit. “You listen, Braem—I don’t care if that ponce Hobbe put you up to this or if you two set it up yourselves, but if anything’s happened to Lijsbet, then you and Simon—”

“Who? Never mind, it’s not important, what’s important is that we get Simon free—he was never involved, it was all me,” said Braem, his cheeks going dark as the shadows, and Sander felt relief flow through him to hear the admission of guilt. Braem’s voice rose to a desperate cry as he grabbed Sander’s arm and tried to pull him out of the alley. “They
showed
me things, when they caught me, they told me things and
showed
me things, and I still haven’t reported in. I knew they were watching her house and I dared not call attention, but we have to stop them, we have to—”

“Shut it,” Sander growled, realizing that Braem’s shouting must be some signal, that he was muffling the footsteps coming from behind them down the black alley, or from the street ahead. “Shut it,
now
!”

“You don’t trust me, that’s fair, but you trust Simon, so let’s go to him! Now! If you want to protect yourself and Jolanda, Sander—” Sander went cold as the dead at the use of his real name, and Braem froze in mid-sentence, presumably seeing something in Sander’s expression that knocked him clean off his bluff. The shoulder of a figure waiting for them at the end of the narrow passage appeared around the corner, then ducked back. The obviousness of the ambush was simply pitiable, but that didn’t stop a hot burst of excitement from flooding Sander’s
heart.
Finally
, a part of him thought, and the rest had to agree as Braem went on, “That’s right, I know everything, and so do you, don’t you? About what happens when Sander is unmasked for—”

Sander tightened his hand around Braem’s fingers and yanked him backward, the traitor’s feet slipping on a patch of ice and sending him sprawling onto his back. Sander let go of Braem’s hand as soon as the man lost his footing, and before Braem could move or even squeal, Sander raised a foot and stomped his throat. There was a wet cracking noise and ebon liquid ejaculated out of Braem’s mouth, then a shrill, high-pitched whine began to rise from his ruined throat. Sander gave him another stomp, relieved he’d left on his heavy boots instead of changing into something dry but lighter, and Braem went quiet.

The assassin, be he Simon or simply some hired thug, must not have heard, for nobody appeared in the mouth of the alley. Perfect. Sander knelt and drew Braem’s sword. Sander’s sword. He had her now, his pounding heart finally convincing his skeptical mind—it was her. His cold-numb hand instantly warmed at the touch of Glory’s End, and a smile crossed Sander’s face as he advanced. He should go back the way he’d come, try to lose whoever it was waiting for him out there, but his fury at Simon’s betrayal was burning through his arms, his legs—Braem was one thing, that was to be expected, especially since Braem was the older brother and thus had more to gain, just as he’d had more to lose when Sander and Jo usurped the Gruyeres. But to have Simon use Sander in such a craven fashion, to know that the friend for whom he’d made the finest cloak in the land had killed children just to get some dirty groots… it would not stand.

Sander leapt out into the street, the point of Glory’s End already jabbing at where he had seen the shadowy figure lurking. There was no one there. Looking up and down Wijnstraat, he saw nothing but white snow gusting through black night, the stuff coming down so thickly that what firelight might have come
from the upper-story windows failed to reach the cobbles. There were footprints in the powder, however, and he followed them half a block before he heard voices ahead, militiamen singing the same ruddy song they always did on especially cold nights when they didn’t want the bother of dealing with troublemakers and preferred to warn them off with their off-key caterwauling rather than risk catching any crooks unawares.

Shit on all the saints. Sander quickly doubled back the way he’d come, but didn’t let himself run, staying to the shadows on the southern side of the street. The Graaf Jan Tieselen had fluttered off to roost on some quiet rooftop far above murder and betrayal, and down here in the streets the old Sander did what he did best—he fled, taking a surreptitious route to shake any pursuers. Cutting up ’S Heer Boeijenstraat, he was almost to Grote Markt Square when he heard the squeak of a boot stepping in a snowdrift he’d just passed. Excellent. Never looking over his shoulder, he crossed the empty square, entering the alley to De Waag. As soon as the alley’s shadow fell over him, he stepped into an alcove where the wide corner building met its narrower neighbor. He waited there for a good long while, the sweat beginning to freeze in his whiskers and eyelashes, but no pursuer appeared.

Keeping to the wall, he crept the few paces back to the square and peered into the snowy clearing. Nothing but the statue in the snow, and—

Sander’s balls shot up into his guts, was how he’d describe the awful, icy sensation that came with his remembering that there wasn’t no damn statue in Grote Markt. Some cunt was standing stock-still in the snow, and Sander got the shivers something bad that the figure was staring right at him. Right, time to sort out Simon or whatever goon the Gruyeres had hired to—

But before Sander could step from the mouth of the avenue and confront his pursuer, the man suddenly raised an arm over his head and hopped in place, violently cocking his head to the
side as he did. Then he began to shudder, and through the flurries billowing down, Sander could make out teeth flashing wet and white and shiny as the snow between them.

The man was pantomiming being hanged.

That was goddamn
sinister
, was what that was. Sander found himself backing away along the alley wall until he could no longer make out the edge of the square, and then he turned and fled down De Waag, toward the sanctuary of his manse.

A spooky cackle echoing behind Sander might have somehow made it better, would have let him know someone was fucking with him, but the silence that enveloped him as he at last stood panting on his doorstep was like the quiet of being underground. Of being underwater. Giving the street a final glance, he thought he might have seen a silhouette walking down the lane toward him, but he didn’t give it a second look, instead banging on the door for the two or three beats it took for Lansloet to flip the peephole open, and then the door. Staggering in and nearly bowling the old servant over, Glory’s End still gripped in his trembling hand, Sander kicked the door shut and threw the bolt. He put his frosty brow to the hard wood and closed his eyes, trying to still the painful throbbing in his chest, behind his eyes. Home.

Wait, Lansloet? Where the fuck was Jo? Sander spun around, ready to hew the traitorous servant to the spine, when he saw two figures backlit in the doorway to the parlor. He dropped the sword with a cry. The weapon clattered on the ground, and Lansloet hurried wordlessly back down the hall to the kitchen, from whence the aroma of cooking goose wafted like a pungent belch.

Lizzy was standing beside Jo in the mouth of the parlor, close enough that he could reach out and touch the maid. Both women looked scared, but sure, that might have had something to do with Sander’s appearance, for the first words out of Jo’s mouth were, “Good God, what’s happened?”

Sander just stared at Lizzy, at Jo. This was… good. Very good. Sander laughed, a somewhat maniacal laugh, admittedly, but a laugh nonetheless. When he could speak again, he said, “Nothing. Misunderstanding, was all.”

“My lord, I have terrible news,” said Lizzy breathlessly, as though she’d been the one harried from pillar to post across a snowy city. This only brought on another laughing fit. Jo was looking frightened for him, Lizzy was looking frightened
of
him. He got himself back under control—what in all the angels’ blessings was wrong with him, laughing at a time like this?