Thief's War: A Knight and Rogue Novel (22 page)

To my surprise, Jack came up and stood beside me.

“The Rose doesn’t think a dozen guards are sufficient to keep an eye on me?”

“After you were angling to get here so obviously? No, he doesn’t. I’m here to remind you that if you make too much trouble Fisk will be the one who pays the price. Well, he’ll be the second person to pay.”

The indifference in his voice nettled me. “And how is Fisk? He’s not dead.” I touched the collar, concealed beneath the collars of my shirt and coat. “But ‘twould be nice to know he’s not chained to some dungeon wall.”

“Fisk is doubtless scheming away, even as we speak. It won’t get him anywhere, but it keeps him happy so I don’t try to stop him.”

“You must have been a very bad teacher, to be so sure his schemes will be fruitless.”

I had hoped to touch Jack on the raw, but he only smiled absently. A squad of stablemen where walking over the final yards of the track, tossing out any stones they found. The course master, who owned the estate, was arguing about something with the judges near the finish line.

If the Rose’s bought riders did their job, when the horses passed us ’twould be Red Thorn in the lead, while the others tried to hold back their mounts but still make it look like a race.

Chant is a destrier, not a racer, but I couldn’t help wishing myself in the saddle on so fine a day—even in a fixed race, and one I couldn’t win even if ’twas honest.

I wondered how Chant and Tipple were faring in our landlady’s care for so long. Had the orphans been able to keep True? Or had they taken the dog back to her, as well? Fisk would be paying for their keep, but the animals were so much a part of our roving life I couldn’t help but miss them.

Though not as much as I missed Fisk.

“How could you?” I asked Jack. “How could you betray him into such a deadly trap?”

That got his attention. “Like you’ve never taken Fisk into danger?”

“Nothing so perilous as…” Several inconvenient memories surfaced. “Well, I never involved him in anything against his will! If he went into danger with me he did so in full knowledge, by his own choice.”

“If he’d just let go of you, he wouldn’t be in danger.” Jack sounded more exasperated than repentant. “Or I should say, when he lets go of you he won’t be.”

I stared at him. “I thought you knew Fisk. His ethics may fall short, by some folk’s measure, but he’s utterly loyal to those he cares about. He won’t abandon me. Ever.”

“Then I still have something to teach him,” Jack said. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t…ah, it’s beginning.”

The horses were led out to the course. Grooms clad in household livery held their lead reins, and the riders wore ribbons in household colors around their arms.

I saw at once that the orphans had failed to get the laudanum into Red Thorn’s feed. The big chestnut pranced his way to the starting line, ears pricked, eager to run. I thought for a moment the whole scheme had failed…until I saw his rider sway in the saddle.

Others had seen it too. Roseman himself came onto the course. The crowd had gone so quiet we could hear him protesting that his rider was sick, clearly sick, and he should be allowed to replace him.

Jack cast a curious glance my way, but I ignored it. Having been under the eyes of Roseman’s guards from the time we left the house might have been uncomfortable, but it had its advantages.

We all heard the course master say that the owners had agreed that no rider could be substituted after the fifth day before the race. Master Roseman had insisted on that rule. Did Master Roseman wish to withdraw his horse?

The Rose cast a fearful scowl at his rider, sagging in the saddle, and declined to withdraw.

I had been hoping he’d accept, and let the man get to a healer. How much laudanum had the orphans dosed him with? Surely not the half-bottle I’d recommend for the horse, or he’d be dead by now!

Whatever his rider’s state, Red Thorn was ready to run. The horses gathered at the line, the flag went down, and they all burst forward in a mass of bouncing rumps and flying clods of grass and mud.

The rider seemed a bit steadier in the saddle, as the pack galloped into a dip and out of our sight. I hoped he’d be able to stay in the saddle—I didn’t want his death on my conscience, even if his survival meant the Rose might win.

The horses were out of sight for several minutes and the crowd relaxed, moving around and speculating about who’d be in the lead when they returned. Scramble and Morning Thunder were held to be the fastest, but a few people murmured that Red Thorn might have “advantages.”

“I don’t know how you did it,” Jack murmured. “And that’s impressive.”

“How could I have done anything? I’ve been under constant watch since before we arrived here.”

“Which means you have a confederate.”

I snorted. “Or more likely, that Roseman has more enemies than just me.”

Jack shrugged, but he was still watching me when the horses galloped back into view, on the far side of the pastures, and a chorus of groans and cheers greeted them.

Red Thorn was in the lead, running at an easier gallop than you’d expect in a race. But the others were all many lengths behind, and despite his slack pace, that lead widened.

Stillness spread through the crowd, broken by angry muttering as it became clear that the other riders must be holding back deliberately.

I knew what was happening, for horses like to run together, not away from their fellows. They can be competitive, and try to outrun others, but they don’t like to leave them too far behind.

And Red Thorn’s rider was too befuddled by drugs to insist that his horse run full out.

The chestnut stallion was only loping in the final stretch, and the others were over twenty lengths behind him, when the reins fell from his rider’s hands, and the man toppled from the saddle.

Because I’d been half-expecting it, I was moving before anyone else, leaping over the rope and sprinting toward him. He squirmed feebly, so at least he wasn’t dead.

Red Thorn, confused, trotted back to sniff at the rider who was behaving so strangely.

Then, as I’d known they would, the other riders realized that with Roseman’s horse clearly out of the race, they were free to try to win.

I didn’t look up as the thunder of hoofbeats erupted. No time to carry the fallen man out of harm’s way, for the whole herd would be on us in seconds. Magic boiled up within me as I snatched Red Thorn’s reins, and pulled him between his rider and the pounding hooves that rushed toward us.

I channeled that molten flood of power through my animal handling gift, into a single thought with all my will behind it: Stand.

Red Thorn’s body froze in place, as if it had turned to stone. But he turned his head to look at me as the avalanche of heaving flesh pounded toward us…swerved around his huge, solid body and ran past.

Clots of mud pelted me, and covered the rider’s back as the race hurtled by, but that was the only harm we suffered.

I pulled that brimming flood of power back into its well, and sealed it closed. Red Thorn, released from its grip, started to sidle and I let him go to trot after the others.

The crowd was roaring, so someone had won. I was more concerned for the man on the ground beside me.

“Can I get a healer here?”

The man who climbed over the rope to join me was younger than I’d expected, but he seemed competent, checking the rider’s bones and neck before rolling him gently onto his back. Eyes dilated to blackness blinked up at us.

“This man’s been drugged!”

“Do tell.” The Rose’s icy voice came from behind me. He was attended by Jack, most of his guards, the course master, and a number of interested bystanders. His grooms were capturing Red Thorn.

“How could this happen, as protected as this race was supposed to be?” Roseman was talking to the course master, but I still shivered.

Jack’s expression merely thoughtful, though the gaze he turned on me was very sharp.

“The horses were protected,” the man said. “I could hardly keep the riders prisoner. I’ve no idea where your man went before the race, or what he ate. Or drank.”

“He’s not drunk.” The healer’s hands found pulses in the rider’s wrist, throat, behind the knee. “I’d guess it’s laudanum. Something in that family, anyway. And not magica, thank goodness, or he’d be dead.”

“Will he be all right?” the course master asked. “Can you rid him of it?”

“Too late for that,” the healer said. “It absorbs pretty fast, and he clearly took it awhile ago. But his pulse is steady, if a bit depressed. He should be all right. Though it will be days before he’s—”

“Taken how long ago?” Roseman asked. “If anyone saw who drugged him…”

His grooms had brought up the horse. One of them stepped forward.

“Uh…boss?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t think much about it at the time. But we’ve seen several children hanging around, and they didn’t seem to be with any—”

Roseman spun to his guards. “Get them! Bring them to me!”

I turned to go with the others. Jack put his hands in his pockets and said nothing, but his gaze followed me, even as the course master said, “Children? Why would a child try to drug your rider? Or anyone? How could they…”

The guards’ leader ordered our search of the estate. He cast me an annoyed glance—I was one more thing he had to keep an eye on, in the midst of this new task. In the end he assigned me to the group searching the stables, the place I was least likely to escape from. At least, escape unseen. I might have stolen a horse, but I couldn’t go galloping off quietly.

It made no difference to me where I was sent. They would find me.

And I made sure that neither Jack nor anyone else was watching when I finally managed to wander off by myself, searching a long row of stalls and pens where the horses and livestock that belonged to the estate were housed. But the whispered “hey” came, not from an empty stall, but from the rafters above the goat pen.

I looked up and saw Jig, peering down from one of the big beams.

“Don’t look up. Someone might wonder what you’s staring at.”

I looked down. Several bored goats gazed back at me.

“I told you to dose the horse. How much did you give that poor man?”

“Well, we had to guess about that. They was guarding the horse, see? We figured he was about a quarter the horse’s size, so we gave him about an eighth of that little bottle. Couple of big spoons, it was.”

Lianna had taken a single teaspoon of the stuff.

“That horse is seven times his weight. You could have killed the man.” I was hard pressed to keep my voice down, but the fault was mine, putting such a weapon in inexperienced hands. “Did you even consider that?”

“Yah, we thought about it. But he works for the Rose, so we didn’t much care.”

The sincere indifference in that young voice was chilling, but he added, “Will he die?”

“The healer says he should be all right,” I admitted. “But ’twas still a terrible risk. You must promise never…”

I didn’t finish, for ’twas a promise they would either refuse to make, or break whenever they got their hands on one of the Rose’s men.

’Twas then that the thought first occurred to me, but I thrust it aside as ridiculous.

“I’ve got the key,” I told him. “And a note for Fisk as well. I’ll tuck them behind the tack box here, and you can come down and get them when it’s safe.” I slid them into their hiding place as I spoke. I’d kept a careful eye out for Jack, and Roseman’s guards, but ’twould be safer for Jig to wait till the search died down before he descended. “I trust I’ve paid enough for their delivery?”

“That you have, Master Michael. More’n enough. We hurt the Rose good today, didn’t we?”

Hatred brimmed in that simple question. Who was I to deny them their victory?

“Yes, you’ve hurt him badly. Not only did you cost him a lot of money, you revealed to everyone here that this race was rigged for him to win. Whatever reputation he might have had, ’tis now in tatters.”

“Good.”

“Not entirely—he knows you were the ones who did it.”

“Even better,” Jig said.

“Mayhap it feels better to you, but he’s angry enough to do something about it, and he knows where your warehouse is. You’d better clear out of there, for a while. And be extra careful. Promise me.”

“We always are.”

The scrabbling sounds that came from the rafters as he left were no louder than a squirrel might have made.

Roseman and Jack had departed for the country, to attend a race in which the Rose had a horse running. And from the sounds of it, a lot of money riding on the outcome. I only hoped their presence wouldn’t put a crimp in Michael’s plans, and it evidently didn’t—a key, wrapped in a brief note from Michael, found its way into my pocket just five days later.

No luck on the necklace yet,
was all it said, and I cursed his brevity even as my fist clenched around the key. It looked like an ordinary key to me. It’s wards a bit more complex than some, but that was to be expected for an important lock. Where had he found it? Was he sure this was the right one? Of course, Michael could not only sense, but see magic—and how many magica keys could Roseman have? I still wished Michael had written a bit more… But he hadn’t, and I’d now run out of excuses.