The Folly of the World (51 page)

“Shit,” Sander muttered, his foot sinking in a pothole and saturating his boot with ice water. This was just what they needed—all his old suspicions coming back, and with a vengeance. People couldn’t walk the street now without Sander’s thinking they were after him?

“Sander,” Jo said, her voice scratchy from the puking. “I didn’t listen to you.”

Some surprise, that, but what in particular? “How’s that?”

“I went out yesterday, tried to see Simon.” She looked as though she might spew again at any moment. “After, I started doing it again. I’m going mad.”

“No, you’re not,” said Sander, trying not to lose his temper with her. Do that, and he’d never get the truth out of her. “You went to see Simon, then what?”

“I’m doing it now,” Jo gagged, as if the words were noxious. “Happened after I saw Simon, and it’s happening now. Dreaming while I’m awake.”

Brisker than the wet boot, that. He tried to steer her along faster, taking them to where an alley ran over to Buddingh’ Plein—it was the opposite of the way home, but if they were being followed he wanted to throw whoever was after them. The only time she’d claimed to see something that wasn’t real was in regards to a creeper outside her window, but what he hadn’t told her then and wouldn’t now was that he didn’t think she’d been dreaming, awake or otherwise; he’d just told her that to put her at ease. What the hell had she seen here, and yesterday, apparently, to put her in this state? What was wrong with her? Was the madness he had suffered after escaping Sneek returned, and catching?

“Seeing things that ought not to be there, you mean?” said Sander, tugging her into the alley and quickening their pace as they wove around heaps of filth and debris. Militia ought to stave in some heads, goddamn peasants cluttering up the thoroughfare with stinking sacks of garbage and piles of broken roofing
and all. “It’ll pass, Jo, it will, just lean on me and don’t let it get to you. Pretty normal, when you’re sick.”

“Thank God…” she said, her voice so small they near-drowned it completely with their splashing through the snowmelt. Maybe not just theirs, but he wouldn’t look, he weren’t so green as that. Another alley T-boned this one, cutting between two dilapidated houses, and Sander took it, dragging her after him.

“Dead quiet, Jo,” he whispered, pushing her forward and flattening himself against a wall. “This goes queer, you run home and…”

And what? If something happened to him, what was she supposed to do? Hobbe had talked a lot about marrying her off, but she hadn’t wanted that, so Sander had never pushed it. Should have, maybe. Would Hobbe try to get rid of her once Sander was gone? Could he afford not to? Jo was harder than Sander was, no way she’d do Hobbe’s bidding, the little idiot…

Someone was coming quick now, splashing along, back the way they’d come. Not trying to be quiet, trying to catch up. Glory’s End called to him, but it was too late to get her out without making noise or maybe flapping his elbow ’round the corner, spoiling the ambush—shouldn’t have been worrying about the girl at a time like this. Come to that, he shouldn’t have gotten fat, gotten sloppy, gotten old. Right, and the sun shouldn’t rise on a cloudy day for fear of getting rained on. The wet footsteps didn’t slow as they reached the corner, and Sander sprang.

His eyes were at the man’s chest and shoulders, seeing where his arms were, seeing what he was holding. Nothing in the left, but a dagger in the right, tucked half-under his cloak. That was good. Meant Sander had his man, all right, didn’t have to go easy. Of course, it would’ve been better if the cunt had been holding a sword—harder to get stuck with a sword this close up, but beggar’s choices and all. Sander’s right hand was on the man’s wrist even as the dagger was coming up. Got you, Sander thought,
got you
. Crushing the knife arm into the man’s chest,
Sander rabbit-punched the back of his hand. The man dropped the dagger. Perfect.

Jo screamed. Shit. Should’ve known there would be more, but checking on her would mean looking away from the cunt he was currently driving into the alley wall with all his strength. He had the one hand pinned to the man’s chest and felt a sudden chill at not knowing what the other was doing, but then it was punching at Sander’s stomach and he relaxed—punch away, little man, so long as there weren’t nothing sharp to go with it. Just as he slammed the thug into the side of the building, Sander finally got ahold of the asshole’s other wrist, arresting his weak blows. The same thug who’d followed them from the poffertjes stall, like as not, and Sander reared his head back to butt this bastard into nightmareland. Before he could slam his forehead into the bridge of the goon’s nose, however, Sander caught sight of brown hair, brown eyes, and stumbled back, wringing his hands like a man realizing the rope he’d just picked up was actually a live snake.

Behind him Jo had stopped screaming, her breath coming in stuttering gasps, and Sander bumped into her as he backed away from the handsome man. Sander pushed her down the alley without turning, trying to find something to say. The man pulled his hood the rest of the way off as he advanced on them, rubbing the back of his head where it had connected with the wall.

“Good to see you, too,” said Jan, smiling at them from the shadows of the alley.

“Run,” Sander finally managed, spinning away from the ghost or devil or whatever blighted thing had crawled from their past to torment them. Jo couldn’t look away from the phantom, and Sander scooped her up as he broke into a run. She weighed hardly anything—certainly less than guilt.

“See you soon!” the specter called after them as they flew from the dim alley into the blinding sunlight. “Soon!”

T
his must be how Sander felt all the time, Jolanda thought as they both pretended to have an appetite at supper. Or how he used to feel, anyway—ever since becoming graaf, he’d seemed progressively saner. When she’d seen Jan watching her from the crowd in the square that morning, the effect had been immediate, visceral—she was frankly surprised she hadn’t pissed herself, but now, hours later, it wasn’t any better. No, it was worse, much worse, she and Sander occasionally darting glances at one another over their herring, only to pretend they hadn’t made eye contact. Even Lansloet and Drimmelin seemed concerned by the strangeness of their behavior.

They had hid in the Great Church, which was perpetually under construction, until a carpenter ran them off, whereupon Sander had led them on a frantic race to the harbor. When they’d set out that morning he’d brought only enough coin for their poffertjes, however, and their own small rowboat was currently engaged in ferrying out to the warehouse the man Laurent, in Sander’s absence, had hired to replace the incarcerated Simon.

After Sander nearly assaulted the third boatman who laughed at his offer of a promissory note in lieu of money, Jolanda finally convinced him to go home. He’d insisted they only run in to get money for the crossing, but once they were inside, he showed no interest in leaving—perhaps it was his returned suit of plate that convinced him to stay, Von Wasser having had it delivered while Jolanda and Sander were paying Primm a visit. Sander suited up right there in the parlor, and the weight of it seemed to somewhat
squash his panic. He sat down in front of the fireplace with his sword across his knees, a bottle in one hand and a poker in the other.

Lijsbet was out, having asked and received permission to babysit her nephews that evening, and without anyone to confide in even if she’d been of a mind to, Jolanda retreated to her bedroom. Rather than hiding under her covers, as she had fully intended when running up the stairs, she paced the small room, fingers unfurling and curling faster than her eye could follow. They had both seen Jan—that couldn’t have been a dream… Could it? You couldn’t share a waking dream any more than you could the regular kind… Could you? Jan, stalking them through the streets of Dordrecht, showing up just after everything soured with Wurfbain, just after Simon was accused of murder…

She tried to make sense of it all, but each time she seemed on the cusp of revelation, the memory of Jan’s mangled corpse lying in the bottom of a rowboat rose up to distract her with its horrific certainty—no man could recover from such wounds. If it were possible that he could, then anything could happen, even the other things she’d seen in the flooded Tieselen house, things she had rejected so thoroughly as to put them entirely from her mind, except for the odd nightmare. There was a reason she hadn’t been able to bring herself to eat eel since that fateful day…

Eventually both nervous nobles relented to Lansloet’s quiet insistence that they come to supper, though Sander wouldn’t take off his armor, and Jolanda put on hers before joining him. Her embroidered suit of brigandine and plain leather might not look as impressive as his plate and chain, but it was a hell of a lot more comfortable at the high table.

“An impostor,” Sander finally said. She nodded enthusiastically. “A con, is what it is. Someone trying to… chisel something.”

“Wurfbain’s doing,” Jolanda suggested. “He knew Jan from before, didn’t he? And he’d know how we’d react to seeing him again.”

“Of course Hobbe did it, of course,” Sander nodded so vigorously his visor slipped down and he had to knock it back up. It was the first time she’d seen him actually wear the ridiculous helmet that went with his armor. “Who else, though?”

“Primm?” Jolanda suggested. “He was worried, too worried, when we talked. He’s hiding something.”

“Maybe, sure, but I meant who is… the impostor?”

“Braem Gruyere?” She took another long guzzle of wine—it wasn’t doing her anxious stomach any favors, but was taking some of the mystery out of Jan’s reappearance. It hadn’t been him. It
couldn’t
be. “He’s got brown hair and eyes, like Jan, and is pretty enough. And he’s got a reason to help, wanting his house back. That’s it! Wurfbain got some actors or someone to make Braem up, disguise him somehow, make him look—”

“Braem’s dead,” said Sander, not looking so lively himself.

“What?” Jolanda put her glass down, wondering just what else this stupid shitbird had been keeping from her. “When? What—”

“Other night, I went out. Seen him outside the White Horse. Ever notice every town has one? Place with that name, I mean. Easy to draw on a board, I guess.” Sander was staring at nothing, and Jolanda realized he wasn’t calm so much as totally out of his head on fear and drink.

“And what happened to Braem?” she prompted when he didn’t go on, instead idly picking the pale flesh from his fish and dropping it into a flaky pile beside his plate.

“Tried to lead me into a trap. Said spies were after him. Hooks. Said there was a plot. That he’d been in on it, but decided to get out.” Sander blinked, shook his head, and drained his cup.

“And then he was killed? Simon said something about Braem never showing, he must have been planning to help, but somebody killed him before he—”

“No. Aye. I mean, I.
I
killed him. Braem. He was leading me into a trap, so I took him out.”

“What?!” Jolanda couldn’t believe it—despite her counsel to stay clear of the Gruyeres, Sander and Simon had been fast friends following a run-in at the White Horse one night after Sander became graaf. Sander had never warmed to Braem, admittedly, but the idea that he would do in the brother of one of his only friends, and be so nonchalant about it… but then he hadn’t done anything to help free Simon, had he? And Sander had been much closer to Jan than he ever was to Braem, and that hadn’t stopped him from murdering Jan… Jan, who had come back… Jolanda felt dizzy, and like a desperate fish trying to escape a weir trap by wriggling deeper into it, she sipped more wine. It looked like blood.

“—off his head.” Sander had removed his helm and was looking away from her, barely speaking above a whisper. “So I stomped ’em. Other cunt got away. And now he’s trying to scare us. Wurfbain knows what we did, who we are, and he found someone who looks like Jan. Simple.”

“Simple,” Jolanda said numbly, and in the quiet that followed this agreement they clearly heard the groan of the front door swinging open. They waited, neither moving, both listening. Feet padded across creaky wood, then went silent at the worn hallway carpet, and resumed their soft footfalls across the tile. Lansloet appeared from the kitchen, and he looked even less happy than he had about serving his masters in full armor.

“A Sander Himbrecht to see you,” said the servant, as though it were the sort of thing you could just say like it was no big deal. Jolanda looked desperately at Sander, who looked into his empty mug, frowning. “Sir?”

“What the devil, man?!” Sander exploded, hurling the cup against the panels that cordoned off the parlor. “Send him in! He’s always welcome here, isn’t he?! We don’t keep old friends waiting!”

Lansloet narrowed his eyes and nodded, then turned and was away. Sander’s face had gone the color of his wine, and he was
sweating onto his plate. Jolanda wanted to excuse herself, wanted to flee, wanted to at least ask Sander what she should do when the ghost—
no
, she firmly corrected herself, the imposter, when the imposter joined them, for who else could it be? She suddenly imagined a second Sander walking through the door, and laughed. It was a mirthless, shrill sound, like a crow being tortured.

“Mind the rug, sir, there’s been an accident,” came from the other side of the parlor panels, and then the partition opened as Lansloet ushered in their guest. The old servant closed the panels behind the man rather than staying to clean up the broken crockery.

“Well, then,” said Jan Tieselen, looking back and forth between Jolanda and Sander, an amused expression on his winsome face. “This is a little cozier of a reunion, isn’t it?”

“Sander Himbrecht,” said Sander, staggering up and motioning toward a chair set in the middle of the rectangular table that he and Jolanda sat at either end of. In rising, he nearly knocked over his naked sword, which was propped against his seat. “Welcome to my home. I am Graaf Jan Tieselen.”

“Charmed,” said Jan, but he was staring at Jolanda. She should have brought her sword, too, but Drimmelin had convinced her to leave it in the kitchen. She glanced at the door. Jan was pulling out a chair instead of pointing his finger and screaming and erupting in hellfire, so that was something. Maybe it was just a plan to trick them… “How
have
you been, Jo?”