Bin Yousif laughed bitterly. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. I've taken roads walked alone, have secrets unshared. Still, if I'm gone, what do I care?
"Well, I've hoarded a trick or two, like a miser. Guess it's time to spend them."
Mocker, still trying to detect something in the darkness, was startled by a sudden wail from a few feet away. "Haroun?"
The answer was a moan of fear. The darkness faded.
Haroun was gone. Always, in recent years, it had been that way. There was no more closeness, no shared truth between them. Yet Haroun continued presuming on friendships formed in younger days.
The sounds of distress continued. Mocker pushed into the dying darkness.
He found an old beggar barely this side of death. "Demons," the man mumbled. "Possessed by demons."
Mocker shuddered, frowned. Haroun had found him, but he hadn't found Haroun. From somewhere else, anywhere, by sorcery, bin Yousif had spoken through the old man. So. His old friend had been studying the dark arts.
With the best of intentions, no doubt. But Haroun's character...
The appearance of several soldiers at the street exit, drawn by the beggar's wails, made Mocker take to his heels.
Very dissatisfactory, he thought, his robes flying. The trip had been a waste. He should abandon everything and return to Nepanthe.
iii) The night visitors
Operating armies in winter, even on Kavelin's small scales, presented almost insuperable problems. Bragi crossed the Spehe with rations for ten days. That he entered the Gudbrandsdal was more to take advantage of game than to come at Forbeck unexpected.
He passed through the forest slowly, pursuing routes previously marked by the Marena Dimura, his men scattering to hunt. Two days passed before he allowed his patrols beyond the forest's eastern verge.
The loyalties of the Forbeck nobility seemed proportional to distance from Vorgreberg. They encountered resistance only beyond Fahrig. The Nordmen there supported the Captal's pretender.
Blackfang's Trolledyngjans, who found the winter mild, whooped from town to castle.
After three weeks, Ragnarson passed command to Blackfang and returned to Vorgreberg.
Little had happened in his absence. An assassin, of the Harish Cult of Hammad al Nakir, had been caught climbing the castle wall. He had committed suicide before he could be questioned. Three ministers had been thrown in the dungeon. Her Majesty had coped.
He saw her briefly before retiring. She was haggard.
Deep in the night a daydream came true, something he had both wanted and feared.
At a touch he suddenly sat upright in darkness. His candle was out. He grabbed for the dagger beside it.
A hand pushed against his chest. A woman's hand. "What?..."he rumbled.
A barely audible "Shh!" He lay back. Fabric rustled as clothing fell. Long, slim nakedness slid in beside him. Arms surrounded him. Small, firm breasts pressed against his chest. Hungry lips found his...
Next morning he was still unsure it hadn't been a dream. There was no evidence save his own satiation. And the Queen seemed unchanged.
Had it been someone else? Her maidservant, Maighen, whose flirting eyes had long made her willingness evident? But Maighen was a plumpish Wesson with breasts like pillows.
Each night the mystery compounded itself, though she came earlier and earlier and stayed longer and longer.
The day Haaken sent word of the surrender of the last rebels in Forbeck, Gjerdrum asked, "What're you doing nights, anyway?"
Ragnarson flashed a guilty look. "A lot of worrying. How do you beat sorcery without sorcery?"
Gjerdrum shrugged.
All questions had their answers. Sometimes they weren't pleasant; sometimes the circumstances of resolution were distressing.
The latter was the case the night Bragi unraveled the mystery of his lover's identity.
The first scream barely penetrated his passion. The second, cut off, grabbed like the hand of a clawed demon.
It had come from the Queen's chambers.
He grabbed his weapons and, naked, charged up the corridor.
The guards before the Queen's door lay in a heap. Blood trickled over the edge of the balcony to the floor below.
Ragnarson hit the door, broke the lock, charged through. He roared into the Royal bedchamber in time to seize a man trying to force himself through a window. He clapped the man's temple, knocked him out.
Ragnarson turned to the Queen's bed. Maighen. And over her now, clenched fist at her mouth, the Queen herself, naked. A dagger protruded from Maighen's throat.
Despite the situation, his eyes roamed a body he had known only by touch. She reddened.
"Get something on," he ordered. He grabbed a blanket, tied it around his waist, returned to Maighen.
There was no hope.
Gjerdrum and three guardsmen entered.
"Get those doors closed," Ragnarson ordered. "Don't let anyone in. Or out. You men. Watch that fellow over there. Gjerdrum, get the city gates closed. No one in or out till 1 give the word."
It looked, he thought, as if Maighen had been sleeping in the Queen's bed and the assassin had tried to smother her. She had fought free, screamed, and had taken a panicky dagger.
Turning again, he found Gjerdrum still there. "I thought I told you... Wait! Gjerdrum, don't let it out who died. Let them think it was Her Highness. Let's see who tries to profit. But do mention that we've caught the killer."
Gjerdrum frowned, nodded, departed.
"You men," Ragnarson told the guardsmen, "are going to be out of circulation a while. I don't want you talking to anyone. Understand?" Nods. "All right. You, watch the door. No one gets in. No one." Turning to the Queen, softly, "Slip back to my quarters. Stay out of sight."
"What do you mean?"
"You know perfectly well. There's a passage you use, else those two in the corridor would've spread tales. Be a good girl and scoot."
The assassin came round. He was a Wesson barely old enough to sport a beard. An amateur who had panicked, and who was now eager to cooperate.
But he didn't know who had hired him, though he provided a weak description of the interlocuter.
Bragi promised him that, if he helped trap his principal, he would be allowed to go into exile.
The youth knew but one thing for certain. He had been hired by Nordmen.
Ragnarson jumped to a conclusion. "If they know we've got you, they'll try to kill you..."
"Bait?"
"Exactly."
"But..."
"Your alternative is a date with the headsman."
iv) The worms within
There were four men in the cell with the assassin. Two were genuine prisoners. One was a spy who had been set to watch them. The last was Rolf Preshka.
Rumors of the Queen's murder had run like hares before hounds, threatening to undo all that had been won. Heads leaned together, plotting...
Virtually no one would accept the succession of Crown Prince Gaia-Lange, who had been removed to safety with his grandfather in Sacuescu.
Ragnarson expected the assassin's employers to move swiftly. He wasn't disappointed. Just before dawn three men stole to the cell where Rolf and the youth lay. One was the night turnkey. A soldier and a Nordmen accompanied him.
Rolf controlled a cough as a key squeaked in the lock. He didn't think they could be handled. They were healthy, armed, and Bragi wanted them alive.
But Bragi was nearby. Using information he had bullied from the Queen, he had brought the guardsmen from her chambers to the turnkey's office by secret ways. He had watched the soldier and Nordmen come to the turnkey, had seen gold change hands. Now, hearing the distance-muted rattle of keys, he led the guardsmen through a hidden door.
Weapons clashed in the gloom below. Bragi signed two men thither, left the third to hold the dungeon door.
Reaching the cell, he thundered, "Give it up, you."