"A skilled swordsman to have kept Throdus at bay so long," the third courtier nervously added. He was a thin stick topped by droopy ringlets.
The other two looked at the evidence for this new judgment. "Quite formidable…"
"And he forced Throdus to retreat."
As they spoke, the trio slowly bunched together, back to back to back. They eyed corners, flowing arras, even snarled lumps of linen with a newfound fear.
"Maybe he's dead."
"No blood though."
"He might have run away."
"True…" The six-legged knot blindly edged toward the door.
"Might have."
"He could have bribed the guard," the stick man brilliantly deduced.
Pinch stifled a laugh, and the urge to come roaring out of his shadow and send the lot scurrying back around Throdus's legs like yipping little pups.
"Of course. He knew someone would be coming!"
"Like us."
"We should sound the alarm," the fat one dutifully suggested.
"And let the guards hunt him!" The handsome one seized upon the idea.
"It would be the right thing," agreed the stick-pole man.
The clot backed to the door and jammed, none of the trio willing to break rank to let the others through. As they hovered there, unwilling to go forward, unable to go back, a shadow fell on them from behind.
"WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?" thundered Cleedis in his best military voice. The trio-as-one sundered itself in terror and blindly darted through the doorway as the old commander shouldered through them, batting his way clear with his cane.
As soon as he was inside, the white-haired chamberlain closed the door and planted the cane in front of him, leaning heavily on it as though it were a tent pole.
"You can come out now," he said like a man trying to coax a beast from a thicket, addressing the air that filled the light and dark between them. "I know you've popped yourself into some corner waiting for an unguarded moment to strike. Well, if you mean to do that to me, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction. If you want to fight me, Janol, you'll have to come and get me."
"I'd never fight you, Lord Cleedis," Pinch flattered as he stepped into view.
The old man squinted his weak eyes to be sure of what he was seeing. "Lies and pissing-poor ones at that. I'd kill you given half a reason, Janol, and I suspect you'd do it for even less."
"Killing always has a reason. If I do any less, I'm a beast." The rogue tucked the daggers in his belt and spread his arms to prove that he was unarmed. White arms spanned from his hairy dark chest, a heart eaten by shadow.
"Philosophy from a scoundrel. There is no end of wonders in the world."
"There are. I came back here."
"And dammit, what happened? I hear you brawled with Throdus."
Pinch didn't deny a word of it. He scoured the chaos of clothing for a clean doublet. "He's a jackanapes ass. Let's say he was checking the prancer's teeth when it bit him."
"And then?"
"And then nothing," came the muffled answer as the regulator pulled on an undershirt. Pinch wasn't about to mention the strange voice, not until he'd had a chance to learn more. These walls for one-he wanted to check them much more carefully.
"What did he ask?" Seeing that he was being ignored, the chamberlain lumbered to a chair and settled down.
The rogue turned his attention to the washstand. "Just as much as it pleased me to inform him."
"And what did you inform?"
"Everything, the lay of it all." The regulator ambled back into the salon, drying one ear with a towel. "Which is to say, nothing. The minstrel can't play the tune without an instrument.
"I've been thinking that now is the time to inform me, Lord High Chamberlain."
Half-dressed, Pinch stood over the seated chamberlain and let one hand stray to the daggers in his belt.
It was a tribute to the old man's years of soldiering that he looked his adversary square and firm and never once flinched. The implied threat didn't faze him; either the chamberlain had made peace with death long ago or he was canny enough to know the rogue's bluff.
"Not yet. Soon."
Sensing the determination of the rock against the rain, the rogue relented. "Anon it is, but if you don't give good words on it soon, I'll have a grievance with you, Lord Cleedis." He stepped back, a signal that the threat was naught. "Just remember, a grievance is good enough reason for killing."
The old man scowled with irritation, not exactly the reaction Pinch expected from such a promise. "Morality gets in the way. Better to just kill and be done with it. Don't think-a proper soldier knows that. You would have learned that if you'd stayed."
"Just as long as I killed in Manferic's name?"
Cleedis shrugged off the question as no matter, "It's a warrior's duty." The cane clawed the floor as the old man got to his feet, stooped back bent under the load of bloody decades of duty. "Killing's just another task."
"Then I choose to kill for my own name." The rogue frowned darkly at the figure he saw in the salon's mirror.
The chamberlain possessed a voice he seldom used anymore, a voice ill-suited to the sycophantic parasitism of court and embassy halls. It was a voice he'd learned long ago on the back of a horse, when every choice confronted death, a voice that made wiser men jump into the fire he chose. He used it now, but it was something that had long ago shriveled unused, no better than a rusted watch-spring on an ancient clock
"Stow your rubbish. A true killer makes no idle threats." The sense was there in what he gargled but the conviction was gone. "You'll wait your time with patience, and when the time's right you'll learn your job."
"I didn't come here to be your lap-boy," Pinch spat venomously.
"And it wasn't my idea to fetch you."
In his brain, the regulator seized on the statement. It was the first proof he'd been given that another mind stood behind the chamberlain's. His impulsive side, normally given to boozing and women, wanted to blurt out the question. Who had given the word? In moments like this, though, Pinch's cool heartlessness took hold. Calculating the reactions, he said nothing. The information would come to him, slowly and with time.
He made no show of noticing the old man's slip.
The door hinges creaked. "By this afternoon, I think."
And then he was alone.
A short while later, a shadow of wine-red velvet and white lace slipped past the bored guard beyond the door.
The salt-and-pepper-haired ghost padded through carpeted hallways, just slipping into dark doorways as stewards and ladies hurried by. They were blinded from the stranger's presence by their duties. Guards protected doorways, ignoring the arched halls behind them.
Pinch stayed to the darkest hallways, stuffed with their out-of-fashion trophy heads, past the servant quarters, along long avenues of interconnected halls. From the open windows that looked out over the courtyard where a squad of trainees drilled came the whiff of roasted sulfur and animal dung.
Trainees, he thought as he caught glimpses of the recruits bungling their drill. By rights, only the elite served here, but these amateurs bore the crest of Prince Vargo. These men were hasty recruits brought in as fodder to strengthen one princeling's hand. So it's come to this, each prince dredging the city for his own personal guard.
In the western wing, the search ended at a trio of guarded doors. That amused Pinch-the hopeless thought that his underlings would be challenged by a stand of overtrained watchmen. In this he was sure Cleedis or whoever was just naive; believing that only he was the threat, they underestimated the others.