The High King's Tomb (18 page)

“Yes, I’m fine, thank you. I will go back to sleep now.”

“Would you like company?”

“Would I like
what?
”

“I could help keep you warm.”

Then it dawned on Karigan—the luxurious inn, Silva’s elegance, the noises she was beginning to discern creeping through the walls of adjacent rooms…The ferry master had brought her to a brothel.

“N–no, thank you,” Karigan stammered, overcome by the urge to pull the comforter over her head. “I am quite warm.”

“Are you now,” the woman said softly.

“She’s not interested, Trude,” said one of the women in the doorway.

“If you change your mind, I’m in room twelve.” Trudy stood and left with her companions, closing the door behind them.

A brothel! Well, it explained the one dream, which was beginning to fade away, though it left her with a strong sense of longing.

If her aunts and father ever heard of this, they’d be scandalized. One did not stay at brothels. One did not even go near brothels. That was, at least, the law as handed down by her aunts. Aunt Stace would have a heart attack if she found out!

And Karigan had been
propositioned.
Now she did pull the comforter over her head. “Company” might warm her, but the only “company” she desired was a man miles away in a castle, a man never destined to be hers.

She drifted back into sleep, wishing for some reason, it was summer.

In the morning, Rona, a matron in her grandmotherly years, and obviously not one of the “ladies” who served the brothel’s clients, dragged an oversized hip bath into Karigan’s room and filled it with steaming water from a kettle.

“You take a bath like a good girl,” she said, “then come on down for breakfast. I’ll leave you to it.”

After the door closed behind Rona, Karigan slipped into the bath with a sigh. She decided she must find alternate lodging as soon as possible. It didn’t look good for a servant of the king to bide her time in a brothel, no matter how fine the establishment, and no matter her reasons for her being there. It was just plain inappropriate.

Her aunts would agree. She remembered accompanying them on a shopping trip to a mercantile that shared the same street with a couple of brothels, although she was young at the time and didn’t know what they were. Her aunts had held her hands tight, and when she’d expressed admiration for the “pretty ladies” she saw, Aunt Stace had slapped her, explaining how those “pretty ladies” lived.

Karigan had never been slapped before, and even now she touched her cheek as though all these years later it still stung. She’d been horrified by the things her aunts told her. How could one sell her most precious commodity—her body, her
self
—for currency?

For her aunts, it was a matter of immorality. They had been raised, like her father, on Black Island, where there were no brothels, only a tight-knit community that honored the gods with hard work and attention to family. There was no tolerance outside the islanders’ strict mind-set of right and wrong—one of the reasons her father had fled the island. He’d felt stifled, trapped.

Yet, when her aunts also left to join her father in Corsa, they brought with them their islander attitudes, and after Kariny’s death, they had much influence on Karigan’s up-bringing. They could be doting and playful, but also stern and disapproving, imposing their rigid ways on her. Fortunately her father’s more indulgent nature had lent some balance to her childhood.

She lathered fragrant lemon soap on her arm, watching steam rise off her skin. After the incident with Aunt Stace, she’d given brothels little thought. They were usually located in neighborhoods into which she rarely ventured, kept out of sight, really, and out of mind. While brothels weren’t banned in most towns in Sacoridia, they weren’t exactly condoned, either, particularly by the more “upright” citizens of her aunts’ disposition.

Some brothels purchased textiles directly from Clan G’ladheon, but for Karigan they were only names recorded in her father’s ledgers. They were treated as any other customer so long as they had the currency to pay for their goods.

And yet…she could never imagine selling her body, giving away its mysteries to anyone less than the right man, one whom she loved, and one who returned that love, and most certainly not in exchange for currency. She couldn’t even give herself over to the casual pairings some of her fellow Riders engaged in, whether among themselves or along the road. Their work was dangerous and often solitary, and she couldn’t blame them for seeking companionship where they could find it, fulfilling very human needs. In fact, she’d been tempted herself by more than one offer…

Still, while Karigan’s own urges were alive and well, they were overridden by her desire for a relationship of deep trust and respect, one that transcended baser needs. She remembered how her mother and father cherished one another, and though Kariny died when Karigan was young, she recalled the tenderness between her parents, the soft touches, the wordplay—even if she hadn’t understood it all back then—and the way they gazed at one another. This lesson left an even more indelible impression upon her than Aunt Stace’s slap, and it was the standard by which she measured her own life. How could anyone desire anything less?

She sank beneath the water to wet her hair, and reemerged longing for the kind of love her parents had shared. The way her life was going, however, she feared it might be something she was never destined to experience.

When Karigan finished her bath, she found her uniform laid out for her, clean and dry, and she dressed. Still exhausted from her ordeal in the Grandgent and desiring nothing other than to crawl back into bed, she needed to find out how Fergal fared through the night.

She hurried down the corridor and found Rona at the bottom of the stairs, smiling as if she found something about Karigan amusing.

“I hear Trudy looked after you during the night,” she said.

“
What?
No, no. She looked
in.
Not after.”

Rona chuckled. “We do try to look after our guests. Cetchum is breaking his fast in the kitchen. You should join him.”

“Cetchum?”

“Yes, dearie, the ferry master. My husband.”

Oh, so that explained why she ended up
here.
Karigan entered the kitchen and found him tucking into ham and eggs while Silva sat with him looking as regal and perfect as the previous evening. She sipped on a brew that smelled like kauv.

“Come, Karigan, dear,” Silva said, “and join us for breakfast.”

Hesitantly, Karigan sat at the table across from Silva. “Morning,” she said.

Cetchum grunted as he looked her over. “Weeell, yer looking a sight better, sir.”

Karigan pinched her eyebrows together, and glanced at Silva who smiled and shrugged. Apparently calling her “sir” was an accepted eccentricity on Cetchum’s part.

A cook set a plate of eggs and ham before Karigan, as well as a loaf of bread just drawn from the oven. Cetchum pushed a pot of creamy butter toward her.

Karigan, however, couldn’t eat until she heard about Fergal. “How is Rider Duff?” she asked.

“The lad is fine,” Cetchum said, maneuvering a mouthful of eggs around his words. “Or will be. Needs his rest, so says Mender Gills.”

Karigan closed her eyes in relief. Relief that she would not have to return Fergal’s body back to Sacor City.

“The young man will be transferred here for the duration,” Silva said.

“Here?”
Karigan had not meant to sound so expressive, but she sensed that bringing Fergal into a brothel was like dropping a candle in a hay barn. At Silva’s raised eyebrow, she said, “Uh, I am sure your rates are steep for those on king’s business.”

“Perhaps.” Silva sipped from her cup, and her gaze unnerved Karigan. “You are of Clan G’ladheon, are you not?”

Karigan nodded, wondering what this had to do with anything.

Silva smiled. “Stevic’s daughter, I daresay, though you must favor your mother.”

“You know my father?” Karigan did not like where this conversation was leading.

Silva’s smile deepened. “He is a most generous friend and patron. I am housing you and the young man at no expense as a favor to Stevic. That saves explaining to your superiors why you spent the night in a brothel, does it not? It would appear inappropriate, I would guess, for the madam of a brothel to present a Rider seal at tax time for reimbursement.”

“My father?”
was all Karigan could say, appalled. How in the world did he know Silva? What was he doing visiting a brothel? Well, she knew
what,
but
why?
She knew
why,
too, but–but—
her father?

“You are mistaken,” Karigan said, certain of Silva’s error, certain of what she knew of her father. He would never patronize a brothel.

“No, dear, I am not. I hold Stevic in high esteem, and he conducts a good deal of clan business from here.”

A blackness flooded Karigan’s vision. “No,” she whispered. Everything she believed and thought she knew was cast into oblivion; the world was falling out from beneath her.

How could her father betray her this way? Dishonor the memory of her mother? She believed the love between her parents pure and true; thought he’d never remarried or seriously courted another woman because his love for Kariny was singular and infinite. It seemed, however, he’d been
buying
his pleasure elsewhere.
Here.
How could he…how could he consort with whores? Had his life with Kariny been a lie?

Suddenly, her father was a stranger to her.

To her disgust, tears flowed down her cheeks. She swiped them away. Everything good she thought her father stood for was false.

Silva watched her with a placid expression on her face. “Never doubt your father, dear. No matter what you may be thinking of him right now, he is a good man and I owe him much. I don’t allow just anyone into my house, either, you know; it’s very exclusive, and not all the entertainment my guests partake in is what you’re thinking.” When Karigan said nothing, she continued, “I know of your father’s life, of how he tried to raise you in the absence of Kariny—”

“Do
not
invoke my mother’s name,” Karigan said in a hoarse whisper. “Not in this place.”

“As you wish,” Silva said, “but I do want you to know that I hold your father in high esteem. He helped me in the past, so this house is always open to him when he is in town, and to his kin, as well.” With that, Silva set aside her cup and stood. She walked across the kitchen to leave, but paused by the door. “It saddens me that Stevic’s daughter would think less of him for wanting to seek comfort on a rare occasion even though his wife has been gone all these years. Do not think less of him, Karigan, for he never forgets your mother, and he grieves for her still.” And she left.

Karigan could only stare at her plate with blurry eyes, yellow egg yokes bleeding into the ham steak.

“A great lady, that,” said Cetchum. “Aye, she keeps a goodly house, taking in girls who have lived through the five hells and worse, an’ teachin’ them their letters and figures. They don’ have to stay, and a lot have off and married good gents. And only the most worthy gents come here.” And now he whispered, “Why I’ve seen a lord-governor or two come here. Aye, fair lady Silva is good to all under her roof, including my Rona and me, and especially to the girls who provide the gents with companionship.”

Companionship. Trading in flesh.
An even worse thought occurred to Karigan: there were brothels in almost every major city and town in Sacoridia, and Rhovanny, too. At how many of these was her father a favored “patron”?

Karigan wanted to fling something across the room. Instead, she would seek lodging elsewhere right this moment, someplace where decent folk stayed, and she would pen her father a letter about all this. She stood hastily, and the blood drained from her head. The world went gray and fuzzy.

Next thing she knew, she was on her back on the floor, staring up at the concerned faces of Cetchum, Rona, and Silva.

“Tsk, tsk,” Rona said. “You should’ve et your breakfast, dearie. Still weak from your dunking in the river, too.”

Sweat slithered down the sides of Karigan’s face. All she wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep.

“Get Zem and help her back to her room,” Silva ordered Rona, “and make sure she stays abed and eats this time.”

Trapped,
Karigan thought. She was trapped in a brothel.

B
eryl Spencer stepped out into the corridor, the door to Lord Mirwell’s library closing soundly behind her. She stood there fuming for several moments, feeling thwarted, annoyed, and perhaps worst of all, betrayed.

More maneuvers? He was sending her out on more exercises with the troops? She had just returned from the last set this week past and barely had time to brush the dust off her boots. One field camp blurred into another.

As she stood there in the corridor, she could not erase the image of that pompous son of a goat, Colonel Birch, standing there next to Timas, handing her her new orders. Somehow he had courted favor with Timas, had insinuated himself into the role that should have been hers, of close confidant and aide, first in Timas’ affections; he had outmaneuvered her and she couldn’t figure out how. Now she had become just another military officer with no special standing in the lord-governor’s eyes.

Beryl tried everything to gain Timas’ confidence, from deference, authority, efficiency, and hard work, even to using her femininity, all of which had worked so well on his father. She drew on all the power of her brooch to enhance her special ability to assume a role and convince others she was someone whom she was not, to win him over, but to no avail.

Which naturally made her suspicious.

She struck off down the corridor. Timas didn’t appear to be hiding anything; nothing obvious at least, and he was governing the province well despite his inexperience and difficulties compounded by the failure of crops over the summer, and rather odd magical occurrences, like the fire-breathing snapping turtle they’d found in the keep’s ornamental pond. Yet he kept sending her away.

Getting me out of the way. Why?

She turned a corner of the keep’s corridor, brightly lit for the evening hours. Her stride was crisp, even, and purposeful. Anyone noting her passage would see only the officer, all her medals, buttons, and insignia gleaming on her scarlet shortcoat, her hair severely tied back, and her boot heels sharp on the floor.

Everything about her appearance and carriage was impeccable—it was an image she’d worked hard to cultivate. Most viewed her, as she intended, as a cold, calculating soldier dedicated to the province and its lord-governor. Many of the keep’s denizens and members of Mirwell’s court feared her, as well they should. During old Lord Mirwell’s reign she had been not only his most trusted aide, but his chief interrogator. In the course of her duties, she employed many methods to force confessions of anyone he deemed worthy of his suspicions.

Her boots rapped on the spiraling stone stairs as she descended to the keep’s main level. Despite her reputation, she found herself constantly having to reinforce her role. Returning to Mirwellton after the old lord-governor’s fall had been risky. There were those who suspected she had betrayed him. Otherwise, wouldn’t the king have executed her as well, or at least kept her in prison? Not that anyone would admit they approved of the old lord or his plans to dethrone King Zachary…but it did generate her share of enemies among those who remained secretly loyal to the dead man and his ambitions.

She ensured none of these suspicions led to the truth, that no one exposed her real affiliations and compromised her position as an operative of King Zachary’s. Her mission was to keep watch on Timas Mirwell, to make sure he did not follow in the footsteps of his traitorous father.

She entered the main hall. Soldiers saluted her and courtiers spared her a nervous glance before hurrying away. She allowed herself a small, grim smile. If she caught wind of anyone expressing suspicions about her, if she believed they would reveal her true affiliations, her true duty, they quietly disappeared, never to be heard from again.

She was not what one would consider a typical Green Rider.

Beryl contemplated what her next step should be. Timas persisted in assigning her duties that would keep her away, seriously hampering her overriding duty to maintain vigil over him. There were two possibilities: either Timas just didn’t like her, or something else was afoot and he couldn’t trust her. If it were the latter, it meant her mission was compromised. If the mission was compromised, it meant she’d been exposed and was likely in danger, unless they—Colonel Birch and Lord Mirwell—believed her ignorant of their activities and that she continued to give only positive reports to King Zachary.

She must get to the bottom of it while feigning ignorance, but that was bloody hard when they kept sending her away.

Crossing the main hall and starting down a corridor toward her quarters, Beryl was wondering how she might get out of her latest orders when she heard Birch speaking with someone behind her. She turned about and peered back into the main hall. A runner handed him a folded piece of paper. He opened it and glanced at it before folding it back up and dropping it into his pocket. He dismissed the runner and headed toward the keep’s entranceway. Guards hauled open the massive ironbound doors for him, and even before Beryl could feel the draft of chill air against her face, he walked out into the night.

She decided to follow him. If she needed information, this was the way to start: to see what Birch was about. If he and Timas were up to something the king did not approve of, it was her duty to find out about it. And if they were diverting her attention because they knew her real identity and wanted her out of the way, she had to correct the situation.

She paused for several moments before crossing the main hall. The guards opened the great doors once again at her approach, and she strode out onto the front steps. Torches sputtered on either side of her, so she descended the steps to stand in the deeper gloom of the night to allow her eyes time to adjust to the dark. Across the courtyard she could make out Birch receding into the night.

She glanced about to make sure no one was watching and set off across the courtyard with a determined stride, leaving the torchlit entrance behind. Birch was angling toward the stables. Would she have to follow him somewhere on horseback?

The heavy, cool air subdued the world around her. No breeze stirred the treetops, there was no sound of owls hooting or dogs baying in the distance; only her feet crunching on the gravel walkway.

She slowed as she approached the stable, not wishing to give away her presence. There were no lanterns lit within, just the blackened windows gaping at her. At this hour, the horses were quiet inside, dozing or munching on hay. She hoped her own mare, Luna Moth, would not catch wind of her and call out with a whinny as she sometimes did.

Unsure of where Birch had gotten to, Beryl paused and listened. The damp air carried the nearby sound of voices to her. She judged that Birch and whomever he met with were located just on the other side of the stables.

She stepped off the gravel walkway and onto the grass to conceal the sound of her footsteps. Cautiously she inched forward, closer to the building, sticking to the shadows, hardly daring to breathe, all her senses taut.

As she edged toward a corner of the building, the voices grew louder.

“—taking a chance by coming here,” Birch said.

“Don’t think so,” said a man. “I wanted to deliver this myself.”

Beryl peered around the corner. Her eyesight wasn’t the best, and though her specs were tucked in an inner pocket of her shortcoat, she didn’t dare risk the movement to take them out. So she was left squinting in the dark, discerning a figure that must be Birch standing before a horseman in plain leathers and a cloak. He sat his horse like a trained soldier, but if he was someone she knew, the dark and her nearsightedness confounded her ability to identify him.

“You got it then,” Birch said in a pleased murmur.

“Aye, and our thief has agreed to the other assignment as well. He believed our cover story that our ‘employer’ was a nobleman desiring to settle a matter of honor.” The horseman leaned over his horse’s withers to hand Birch a document case.

“Grandmother will be most pleased to see this,” Birch said.

Grandmother?
Beryl wondered. Birch was working with a thief on behalf of his grandmother?

“Thought she would be,” the horseman said. “The thief is good, though he met with some resistance at the museum.” He laughed. “A lady in a dress of all things! She didn’t give him much trouble.”

“I should hope not,” Birch muttered, gazing at the object in his hands. “When does he think he can deliver on his next task?”

“He said it requires some
cultivation
and planning. He doesn’t want to move too quickly, considering the delicacy of the task. I’ll return to ensure everything is carried out.”

Birch grunted. “Good. Anything else?”

Beryl never heard the horseman’s reply. Her nerves jangled when she sensed someone standing behind her. She whirled, her hand on her saber, just in time to see a looming figure swinging at her head with a large rock in its hand. The rock struck her temple and she crashed backward into the stable wall.

Flurries of crackling snow speckled Beryl’s vision while hammers banged on the inside of her skull. At any moment, she thought she might disgorge her guts she felt so ill. Through the blizzard in her vision, she made out three figures gazing down at her.

“This one is no Mirwellian officer,” said a distantly familiar, abrasive voice, “but a Greenie. She betrayed her old lord.”

“I know,” Birch said matter-of-factly. “We’ve been keeping her out of the way till now. She’s had nothing to tell the king.”

“Should we kill her?” asked the horseman.

When Beryl shifted her gaze to look on him, her stomach lurched. She closed her eyes, but the snow still crackled and popped behind her eyelids. If they killed her, at least it would end her misery.

A silence followed as they decided what to do.

“No,” said the rough voice. “We’ll let Grandmother decide.”

Oh, good,
Beryl thought. Grandmother would be kind and gentle. Understanding.

She cracked her eyes open. Starlight gleamed on a sharp hook the gruff-voiced man rubbed against his chin like a finger. She blinked. Yes, it was, in a way, his finger, for he had no hand. Just the hook.

They made her stand. The world reeled and finally she lost the contents of her stomach before passing into unconsciousness.

G
randmother stared at the Mirwellian officer, whom the captain’s men dropped like a sack of sand onto the tent platform before they marched back out into the night. The woman had a frightful lump on her head and was, fortunately for her, quite unconscious. Captain Immerez appeared pleased with himself, even more so than a cat who has caught a very fat mouse.

“So this is the spy you told me about,” Grandmother said.

“Yes,” he replied. “She was Lord Mirwell’s closest aide. Her name’s Beryl Spencer.”

She heard the resentment in his voice. “The old Lord Mirwell, you mean.”

He bristled. “The
only
Lord Mirwell. His son is useless. His father did what he could with the whelp, but all for nothing.”

Grandmother gave Captain Immerez a sidelong glance, hearing much more in his words than he spoke aloud, as she always did whenever they discussed the current Lord Mirwell. He was not only aggrieved that the “whelp” sat in the governor’s chair in Mirwellton, but he represented to Immerez all he had failed to attain. He’d expected to realize a powerful position in the province through his good standing with the old lord-governor, but Tomas Mirwell was dead, and Captain Immerez’s ambitions with him. His bitterness only festered during his two years of hiding. It was, at least in part, what made him malleable to her will. She provided him with a new outlet for his ambition.

Among Captain Immerez’s complaints was that the current lord-governor had not seen fit to follow in the footsteps of his scheming father, had not gone against the will of the king and engaged in bloody little wars so the province could wrap itself in the glory of battle. Instead, he attempted to make his province prosper by emphasizing farming and industry rather than the military. She could not fault the young man for serving his province rather than himself, but it made him untrustworthy to the cause of Second Empire.

“We need these hills to hide in,” Grandmother said, “and young Lord Mirwell’s cooperation has allowed us to do so.”

An ugly sneer crossed the captain’s face. “Without Birch there, he’d go squealing to the king. And I’m sure your little demonstration has helped keep him quiet.”

Colonel Birch was one of her own, born of the true blood of Second Empire, and one who commanded his own following of soldiers within the militia. Not so long ago he’d brought Timas Mirwell to Hawk Hill to meet her and witness a demonstration of her power on some unfortunate beggar the captain’s men dragged off the streets in Mirwellton.

“Whelp couldn’t keep his dinner down.” Captain Immerez’s laughter rasped like rusted iron.

The demonstration had proven effective, but she did not wish to persuade Timas Mirwell entirely with threats. She’d reminded him of the historical alliance between his clan and Mornhavon the Great during the Long War. If he cooperated, she would reward him. She would gift him with King Zachary’s intended, whom all men seemed to desire, if he wished it, or even better, an important role in Second Empire when it conquered Sacoridia.