But I waited. What if I was wrong, as I had thought before? What if I let those things through? I somehow told myself that it could not be. An evil thing, like the rose window, must be destroyed. Only good could come from destroying it. Perhaps it could even free Pheslan from whatever held him. If indeed he still lived.
I spent the rest of yesterday at the bottom of the ladder, which I had never moved from its spot below the window. I looked up, but all day long, I saw only the blue-green stained glass. No movement, no shadows, nothing. Somehow, my indecision still prevented me from climbing to even the first rung.
So after so many hours of arguing with myself, pushed farther past exhaustion than I have ever been, I began writing this manuscript on the nightstand in my bedchamber.
On these few sheets of parchment, penned throughout the night, I have put my story. Now, as I finish, I prepare myself to climb that ladder. I will smash the rose window, and destroy every last shard. If I am right, and the evil is over, I will return here to this manuscript and throw these pages into the fire so that none shall ever learn of these horrible events. But if I am wrong, you are reading this now. If that is the case perhaps you-whoever you are-will know what can be done and right my wrongs.
I am ready.
The Club Rules
“I didn’t do it,” the butler said blandly.
The dozen people lining the entry hail of the Stalwart’s Club remained unmoved, dauntingly so. Their hard, silent stares revealed that they had already convicted the servant, if only in their minds. Even so, the emotions displayed on those faces were oddly muted-displeasure rather than anger, annoyance instead of outrage. It was hardly what one would expect from a crowd confronting the man accused of murdering one of their own. The butler, though, was not surprised. The Stalwarts could be a bloodless lot, especially when the matter before them was anything less esoteric than the smithing techniques of long-extinct dwarf clans or the proper table wine to serve with blackened Sword Coast devilfish.
“I don’t think they believe you, Uther,” said the burly guardsman who had a firm grip on the butler’s arm. “I don’t neither.”
“Either,” the accused man corrected. At the guardsman’s blank look, Uther explained, “‘Don’t neither’ is a double negative.”
“That sort of talk only proves you’re smart enough to do a crime like this,” the guardsman said, tightening his grip. “You already look the part.”
The latter comment was as pointless as the supposed restraining hold the soldier had on the servant. A misfired spell had left Uther with a visage that could only be described as demonic. His skin had been blasted to leathery toughness and a sooty crimson hue. Small but noticeable fangs protruded over his dark lips. The pair of twisted horns atop his head were not only impressive, but as sharp as any assassin’s blade. His physique was equally daunting. Had he wished it, Uther could have shaken off the guard with the merest shrug and shattered the manacles around his wrists with one flex.
“There’s only one thing that’!! save you now,” the guardsman noted as he led Uther through the door. “A good attorney.”
“A clever oxymoron,” Uther said, narrowing his slitted yellow eyes. The resulting expression was an odd mixture of humor and anger. “And they say the city watch attracts only dullards.”
The small knot of children always loitering before the Stalwarts Club broke into a chorus of taunts when Uther stepped outside. He regularly chased the urchins away, as they were wont to pick the pockets of any clubman drunk enough or foolish enough to give them the opportunity. For their part, the children harassed the butler whenever the chance arose, tying sticks to their heads as mock horns and feigning horror at his grim features. But the conflict had long ago become a game between the ragged children and the servant. So when they saw the manacles on Uther’s wrists, they swallowed their quips and gawked in forlorn silence.
One of the boys, a puny but bold child near the back of the knot, hefted a loose piece of paving stone and mentally targeted the soldier’s skull, which was unprotected by a helmet or even hair. He cocked his arm back to throw, but a gentle hand stayed the assault. The boy yelped in surprise. Few men were stealthy enough to sneak up on the streetwise group and not alert any of them.
Artus Cimber, however, had once roamed the same hopeless alleys and burrowed for safety in the same abandoned hovels those urchins now called home. His years as a world traveler had honed the survival skills he’d gained there-and tempered them with a bit of wisdom besides.
“That’ll only make things worse,” Artus said. He took the would-be missile from the boy’s fingers and let it drop.
The clatter of stone on stone drew an angry look from the guardsman. “What’s going-?” When he saw the man standing among the children, he cut his words short and shook his head. “Cimber. Still hanging about in the gutter, I see. Shouldn’t you find some friends your own age?”
“I keep making them, Orsini, but you keep arresting them.” As Artus started across the muddy, cobbled way, he asked facetiously, “What’s he supposed to have done, let the wrong opera cape get wrinkled in the cloak room?”
“He’s done the only crime that matters,” was all Orsini said.
The reply made Artus stutter a step. He’d known Sergeant Orsini since his own days on the street. The man had a surprisingly flexible view of the law for a Purple Dragon as the king’s most redoubtable soldiers were known. Orsini had let many a thief escape detention, so long as their need was obvious and their crime motivated by survival, not greed. But there was a single offense the soldier took seriously: murder. He pursued men and women accused of that particular crime with a passion that bordered on blind fury. It was almost as if each murder were somehow a personal attack on him.
“I stand accused of slaughtering the inestimable Count Leonska,” Uther confirmed.
“It’s about time someone got around to that,” Artus muttered. Then, more loudly, he asked, “Why do they think you beat the count’s other ‘admirers’ to the deed?”
Uther arched one wickedly pointed brow. “Because I am the butler, and the Stalwarts’ library contains one too many Thayan murder mystery. It’s happened at last-I am reduced to a clichй. They should all be very proud of themselves.”
“You left out the fact that you were the first person on the scene of the murder,” Orsini added. His voice was harsh, his whole body tense. “And half the club had previously heard you threaten Count Leonska’s life.”
The details Uther offered in reply were directed at Artus, not the guardsman. “One of the winged monkeys had escaped from the library,” he said. “I was pursuing the creature through the back halls, hoping to recapture it before Lady Elynna’s leopard caught its scent. During that endeavor I chanced upon the sounds of a disturbance in one of the rooms. When the door was eventually unlocked, in front of another witness.” The butler placed obvious emphasis on this fact, but Sergeant Orsini didn’t react in the slightest “The count’s body was discovered… in a rather unpleasant state.”
Uther did not bother to explain his threat on Leonska’s life. There was no need. Artus had been in the Stalwarts’ game room the day the count, using methods he’d perfected in his years as a mean-spirited drunkard, provoked a very public and frighteningly angry reaction from Uther. It was rare for the servant to rise to any bait dangled before him by a clubman-so rare that the incident remained vivid in the minds of everyone who’d witnessed it.
“Well,” Artus said after a moment, “we shouldn’t have too much trouble clearing you.”
“Am I to conclude from your use of the plural that you will help prove my innocence?”