“Ulric Skakki is a resourceful chap,” Eyvind replied: a truth so obvious, even he could see it. “He got word to me that you were having, ah, difficulties. I was shocked. I truly didn’t believe His Majesty would be so, ah, unaccommodating.”
“Oh, you can’t say that.” Hamnet Thyssen wagged a finger at him. “No, you can’t, by God. After all, here I am – accommodated.”
“Er, yes.” Eyvind Torfinn laughed uneasily. “So you are. But whether you should be. . That, perhaps, is a different question.”
“Sigvat’s got the answer. He says I should.” Count Hamnet sounded more nearly resigned than outraged, which only proved he made a better actor than he’d ever dreamt he could.
“So I discovered,” Eyvind said. “I urged your release – urged it in strong terms, too – but His Majesty was not amenable to reason.”
He sounded surprised that reason couldn’t sway the Raumsdalian Emperor. Reason would have swayed him, and so he believed it should sway everyone. That might have been logical – but it wasn’t reasonable. Gudrid would have known better. Even Count Hamnet knew better.
“Thank you for trying,” he said, and meant it. He couldn’t dislike Eyvind Torfinn, even if the man was – occasionally, no doubt – sleeping with Gudrid. Eyvind’s fondness for her aside, he was a decent man.
“It was my pleasure, my privilege,” he said now. “And Skakki hinted at some remarkable adventures. Ascending to the top of the Glacier. Meeting people who dwelt up there. . . Extraordinary! I wish I could have been with you.”
You had your chance last winter, and you stayed here, Hamnet Thyssen thought. Then he didn’t just think it – he said it out loud. If Eyvind Torfinn didn’t like it, so what? What could he do that Sigvat wasn’t already doing?
The scholarly earl winced. “I am not a young man, Your Grace,” he said stiffly. “I thought myself unequal to another journey up into the wilds so soon after the first, and Gudrid would have been adamantly opposed to setting out again, you know. The travels were a considerable hardship to her.”
Poor thing. She only had Bizogots and warriors from the Rulers to seduce. Hamnet didn’t say that. No one had told him when Gudrid was sleeping with other Raumsdalians, either. He’d had to find out for himself. Earl Eyvind would, too. Or maybe he already knew, and chose to look the other way. Hamnet had wondered about that before. He knew himself to be incapable of it.
Eyvind Torfinn wasn’t lying to him here. He was sure of that. The other noble’s white hair and paunch declared his years. And he seemed to listen to, and to obey, Gudrid as if her fidelity were perfect and unquestioned.
“If you talked to Ulric, you’ll know the Rulers have come south of Sudertorp Lake,” Hamnet said. “You’ll know they’ve smashed the Leaping Lynxes.”
“Yes, he did tell me that.” Eyvind’s voice was troubled. Maybe he’d done his best not to believe it. “It isn’t good news.”
“Too bloody right, it isn’t,” Hamnet Thyssen agreed. “If those bastards aren’t over the border, they will be soon. You saw some of what their sorcery can do. Will we be able to stop them? Will we even be able to slow them down?”
“I have to hope we will, Your Grace,” Eyvind said.
“I’ve had all kinds of hopes,” Hamnet said harshly. “Gudrid’s married to you. Liv is sleeping with Audun Gilli. I’m spending my time in this stinking dungeon. So what the demon is hope worth?”
Eyvind Torfinn lurched back two steps, his face as shocked as if Count Hamnet had slapped him. “I’m – I’m sorry,” he got out after a couple of heartbeats. “Ulric. . . said nothing of your misfortunes with Liv.”
“No, eh? I wonder how often people have accused him of discretion,” Hamnet said. “But he didn’t need to keep his mouth shut. It’s true. Everybody who came down from the Bizogot country with me knows it. It’d be all over the city if people all over the city gave a curse about me.”
“My condolences. Losing one woman is hard. Losing another is much more than twice as hard.” Earl Eyvind’s thoughts marched uncomfortably well with Hamnet’s. The old man sounded as if he spoke from experience. He might well have. He was old enough to have loved and lost any number of times before wedding Gudrid. Did he love her, or was she only an ornament to him? If she was, she was an expensive ornament with a sharp pin.
“Not much I can do about it from here. Not much I can do about anything from here,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “If you have the pull to get me out, Your Splendor, I’m in your debt the rest of my days. And what I owe, I pay. If you know me, you know that’s so.”
“I do know you, and I know that,” Eyvind said. “I don’t want your service, Thyssen. I want you free, to do what you can for the Empire. I am already doing everything I know how to do to get you out. This does not sit well with my wife, but I am doing it nonetheless.” He set his chins and looked as heroic as a peaceable, mild-mannered scholar was ever likely to look.
He would try in spite of what Gudrid thought? How much luck was he likely to have, when Gudrid’s thoughts and those of Sigvat II were so much alike? Hamnet had no idea of the answer, though he doubted the omens were good. He took a step back and bowed to Eyvind. “I thank you, Your Splendor.”
“It’s the least I can do, or try to do,” Eyvind Torfinn answered. “I make no promises, however much I wish I could. God keep you.” He sketched a salute and stepped away from the grate.
The guard who’d told Hamnet he’d come led him away. Hamnet listened to his footfalls even after he was out of sight. Someone out there hadn’t forgotten. God didn’t dole out many miracles. For Hamnet Thyssen, Eyvind’s remembering came closer than most of the things he’d seen.
So Hamnet thought right after Eyvind Torfinn visited him, anyhow. But loaf followed nasty loaf. One jar of stale water replaced another. Guards came into the cell to empty the slop bucket, then left again. The air in the dungeon grew chillier. Hamnet didn’t think it was his imagination; was the Breath of God starting to blow outside?
When the guards lifted the bar and opened the cell door when it wasn’t feeding time, he quivered with fear, though he tried not to show it. Another break in routine. It couldn’t be good news.
“Thyssen!” the lead guard barked.
“Yes, that’s me,” Hamnet agreed.
“Come along,” the guard said.
“Or?” Hamnet asked.
“Or rot in there. No skin off my nose one way or the other.”
Hamnet came. The guards paused in front of Kormak Bersi’s cell, opened it, and got him out, too. “What’s this all about?” the imperial agent asked as he emerged.
“You’ll find out,” the guard snapped. “Now shut your fool mouth and follow me.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “You stink. And so do you, Thyssen.”
“Do I?” Hamnet couldn’t smell himself any more. He hardly noticed the stenches of the dungeon. When he first came here, they’d seemed horrible. You could get used to almost anything.
Hope came to life within him when they left the dungeon by the stairs that had brought him down into it. He hadn’t gone very far before he realized the guards could be taking him and Kormak out to the chopping block. What price hope then?
“Winter’s here,” Kormak remarked even before they came up to ground level. The chill in the air was more obvious now that they drew closer to doors and windows that gave on the outside world.
Instead of the block, the guards brought them to a bathroom that held two copper tubs full of steaming water. “Wash yourselves.” the lead guard growled. “Like I told you, you stink.”
Without a word of argument, Hamnet stripped off the clothes he’d been wearing ever since they threw him into the cell and got into the closer tub. Kormak Bersi was only a heartbeat or two behind him. The soap sitting on a tray on the edge of Hamnet s tub wasn’t perfumed, but it got the filth off him and didn’t sear his skin. Soap alone wouldn’t kill nits, though. He wondered if the guards knew, or cared.