Awkward silence prevailed while the two young men packed up their practice blades and left the salon. All the while, their instructor watched Guillot carefully. Gill returned his gaze steadily, but the man was inscrutable. When the door finally closed behind the two students, the man spoke. To Val.
“Who is this?” he asked.
“This is my former lord, Guillot dal Villerauvais.”
“Why did you bring him here?” The lean, somewhat foppish-looking man studied Gill. “I’ve heard of you, sir. I can’t imagine you’ve come for instruction.”
“Do I get an introduction?” Gill said, his temper tickled by the man’s condescending tone.
“Of course. Banneret of the White Hugo dal Ruisseau Noir,” he said, confirming Gill’s assumption of his identity. He gave a curt banneret’s salute, which Gill returned.
“I’m not here for instruction,” Gill said. “I’m here to make a proposal. I think we may be able to help one another.”
Dal Ruisseau Noir cast Val a filthy look, but the lad just shrugged. Gill hoped his new tutor wasn’t one to bear a grudge.
“Really?” he said, then turned a hard gaze on Val. “I worried that I’d made a mistake telling you anything. Who else have you spoken with?”
“I’ve not spoken with anyone,” Val said. “Anyone else.”
“He’s a good lad,” Gill said. “He didn’t tell me anything that would get you in trouble, and spoke only because he knows he can trust me. I’m no friend to the Prince Bishop. You’d not have to ask many questions to find that out.”
Dal Ruisseau Noir nodded slowly. “Your proposal?”
“We both want the same thing. The king back on the throne, and the Prince Bishop gone. I suggest we join forces.”
“Tired of slaying dragons?”
“You’ve heard of me?”
“Everyone has. I’d also heard you were dead.”
“Wishful thinking on the Prince Bishop’s part, I expect,” Gill said.
“Where are you staying?”
“The Wounded Lion.”
Dal Ruisseau Noir smiled at the name. It seemed most Academy graduates had fond memories of the place.
“How many people do you bring to the equation?”
“There are three of us. All competent. A mix of useful skills and knowledge. I’m not going to be any more specific than that for now.”
“That’s reasonable,” dal Ruisseau Noir said. “I’ll take your proposal to my friends. We’ll be in touch.”
The city’s atmosphere felt even more oppressive to Gill, now that he was entering into a conspiracy against the country’s current ruler. Gill had to hand it to Amaury—if the king hadn’t really fallen ill, the Prince Bishop had a lot of nerve. And even more ambition. Perhaps he thought that with the Cup’s power, he could do whatever he liked. It was a frightening thought. Guillot could only hope dal Ruisseau Noir’s people could bring something useful to the party.
When he got back to the Wounded Lion, he updated the others on what had happened. Since he wasn’t sure what to make of dal Ruisseau Noir, he painted as neutral a picture as he could. He’d shown himself to be a poor judge of character before—tending to assume the worst—so he reckoned it was likely that any opinion he formed now would be wrong.
They didn’t have to wait long for an answer. One of the inn’s errand boys knocked on Guillot’s door to let him know he had a visitor. There was always the danger that they had been found out, that the “visitor” was a detachment of the City Watch or, worst-case scenario, a unit of Intelligenciers. Gill didn’t think either was likely, but put his sword belt on before going down, nonetheless.
Dal Ruisseau Noir was waiting for him in the inn’s taproom, alone, when Gill got downstairs. The familiarity of the Wounded Lion was comforting, but today he knew he couldn’t lower his guard.
“I didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Gill said.
Dal Ruisseau Noir gave the innkeeper a knowing nod, and gestured to a table in the corner of the otherwise empty room.
“This is an urgent situation, so my friends made themselves available immediately to discuss your proposal.”
Gill nodded and sat.
“One of my friends was able to fill me in a little more on your history, and also gave me some information on one of your friends, Solène of Bastelle-Loiron. She was in the Prince Bishop’s Order of the Golden Spur for a time, was she not?”
Gill nodded. There was no point in lying—dal Ruisseau Noir already knew the answer.
“Do you know what her role there was?”
That sounded like a genuine question—after all, not all the Spurriers were mages. Gill was glad he had his sword. Dal Ruisseau Noir had introduced himself as a Banneret of the White—if it came to a fight, it wouldn’t be an easy one. “Researcher, I believe. She wasn’t there long.”
“A researcher?”
“To the best of my knowledge. You’d have to ask her for the specifics.”
“I’ll be sure to,” dal Ruisseau Noir said. “The other member of your party, Pharadon—I could find out nothing about him, which is unusual, but no matter.”
Gill shrugged. If confirmation was needed, he now had it. Dal Ruisseau Noir was an Intelligencier. There had always been rumours that the Intelligenciers maintained a network of agents and spies in undercover roles throughout Mirabay, in an effort to spot and head off trouble before it got started. Magic wasn’t the only thing they kept an eye on.
“Pharadon is handy in a fight and has brains to burn. We fought dragons together in the provinces. I trust him in this implicitly.”
Dal Ruisseau Noir looked at him suspiciously.
“I’ll have to take your word on that, for now,” he finally said.
“How very kind of you,” Gill said.
“The king is being confined within the palace at the Prince Bishop’s order, but that’s all we know,” dal Ruisseau Noir said. “The place is locked up pretty tight and our attempts to get in have been rebuffed. If all is as we fear, then I suspect the king will be put to death as soon as the Prince Bishop has things in the palace under control.”
“Do you’ve reason to believe he doesn’t?”
Dal Ruisseau Noir shrugged. “There are a lot of competing factions among the nobility. No man is safe on the throne, tyrant or not. It’ll take him time to pull his supporters into line and put enough of a fright into the rest to keep quiet for the time being.”
“So we need to move fast,” Gill said, glad that the conspirators’ plans were in line with his needs. He wanted to hear the extent of their aims before revealing his own, however, particularly as he was wondering why the Intelligenciers were so willing to ally themselves with relative unknowns. As flattering as it was to consider, Gill very much doubted it was due to his reputation.
“Ideally, yes. I don’t think the king has long to live.”
“And the Prince Bishop? What do you intend for him?”
“For the time being, we couldn’t care less. I’m confident the Prince Bishop will get what’s coming to him. My priority is to get the king to safety, where plans to restore him to the throne can be put into place.”
“Might this not offer the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone?”
“If the chance presents itself, we’d be fools not to take it, but the priority remains to rescue the king. We do not take any risks with his life.”
“Agreed,” Gill said, meaning it. At heart, he was and always would be a servant of the Crown. “What’s your plan to get the king out?”
“We have people in the palace now, trying to determine His Majesty’s location. It’s tricky, as the Prince Bishop has long maintained a network of spies there, but we’ve made progress. I hope to have a location by nightfall. We’ll have to be ready to move quickly.”