"This month, likely!" Turran grumbled. "I wish he'd tell somebody when he leaves. Thank you, Sergeant. You can go."
Blackfang bowed, took a last awed look at the chamber, made his retreat.
"Nepanthe, will you waken your friend?"
Fingernail in the ribs! Bane of pleasantly dreaming men since the dawn of time. Curses heartfelt and black, also an ancient custom. Saltimbanco erupted into reality.
"Ridyeh sent a message," Turran told them, scowling. "He says our friend bin Yousif turned up in Iwa Skolovda ten days ago. There were several killings afterwards. He vanished, reappeared in Prost Kamenets, and there were more murders there. Later, he was seen at the Red Hart Inn in Itaskia, where he passed out gold like it was water. How he managed to come by it so quick is something I'd like to know. Then he disappeared. There were another dozen murders that night. And every victim, in Iwa Skolovda, Prost Kamenets, and Itaskia, was one of Valther's spies."
"What?" Valther jumped up, enraged. "How?..."
"I don't know," Turran growled. "He must've gotten a list. I'll figure it out if I have to put everybody in the castle to the question."
"I do keep records," Valther murmured. "Who's where."
"Oh? That's not very bright, is it? You're supposed to be the spy... What the hell did you think you were doing?"
Valther ignored his brother's ire. "Why would he be desperate to keep us from backtracking him? He's out free."
"Simple," said Nepanthe. "He's not. He's covering someone else. Whoever got him the list."
"Ah..."
Saltimbanco began sweating. The wolves were closing in. He had to distract them...
Turran asked, "Valt, who could've gotten to your papers?"
"Anybody. Anytime. I don't lock my door. Never thought there was any need to. Anybody who had the time could've made a duplicate list."
"Well, damn it, start locking your door."
"Famous case of locking barn door after horse is fled," Saltimbanco observed. "Great Lords, Lady, how many people in castle read .and write?" He had found his diversion. He would set them to chasing shadows. "Start interviewing them huh? But we don't mention treachery. Maybe if not scared, traitor makes mistake. Maybe we plant new list. Not knowing everybody watching for him, he maybe does treasonous task again. Pounce! We get him! Hai! Big hanging party! Everybody turns out, much wine, much song, this humble one is hero for thinking of plan, has very good time..."
"Good idea," said Turran. "But no hanging. I'll want to question the man. Brock, tomorrow I want you to ask for men who can read and write. Say we've got some clerical work to do. Offer bonuses so they'll all turn out. We can watch whoever responds. Now, for the bad half of Ridyeh's message."
"You mean there's more, and worse?" Valther asked.
"Yes. Iwa Skolovda and Dvar have formed an alliance. They're raising a mercenary army to attack Ravenkrak. They raised standard two weeks ago, and already they've gathered five thousand men. Remarkable, don't you think? Especially considering that most of these mercenaries are southerners, up from Libiannin, Hellin Daimiel, and the Lesser Kingdoms. And their officers are Guildsmen."
"Sounds like High Crag knew something ahead of time," said Valther. "They'd actually march against Ravenkrak? How'1I they find us?"
"Our friend Haroun again. He'll have command. Ridyeh says he visited the Kings when he was in Iwa Skolovda and Dvar."
"But they can't hope to take Ravenkrak..."
"They don't know that. And we're terribly undermanned. But that doesn't worry me much. What does is why all that fuss is being made. Consider. Haroun bin Yousif is a man with a mission and a lot of talent. Between politicking, harassing El Murid, and advising the Itaskian General Staff, he's been living twenty-five-hour days. Though in luxury, to be sure."
"Why," Valther mused, "would a man give up doing exactly what he wants in order to organize hill tribesmen?"
"That's what I'm trying to get at. More, why, after he'd chased Nepanthe out of Iwa Skolovda, did he prematurely scatter them?" Fewer than fifty tribesmen had fallen into the trap Turran had set for bin Yousif.
"He'd finished his job."
"Check. Somebody wanted us out of Iwa Skolovda. Enough to meet the outrageous price bin Yousif would have demanded for the job. And it wasn't the Iwa Skolovdan Royalists. Remember, he was at work in the hills before we took over."
"Foreknowledge," Brock grumbled. "Necromancy." He looked like he had just bitten into a crabapple. "The Star Rider getting even?"
"Possibly. But to the main curiosity. His killing spies while his army fore-recruited gathers. Why?"
"Something big is going on," Valther averred.
"Brilliant. And it's something we didn't anticipate when we went to the flatlands. Something that started earlier and we didn't notice. What?"
Turran spoke in a manner suggesting that his discourse was rhetorical till that final, plaintive "What?" Then it was clear that he was mystified too.
"We'd better sit back and wait till we find out," Valther said. "We can hold out here as long as we have the Horn." Murmuring, he added, "It must be him. Trying to get it back."
"That's the plan. We're undermanned, but I doubt that they can get to us. If we can hold them off till winter, we'll whip them. They'll be trapped by the weather, at the end of precarious supply lines. I imagine they'll pull out with the first snow and fall apart as soon as they hit the flatlands. Neither Iwa Skolovda nor Dvar can afford to keep them together. They don't have the credit."
"And next summer can see us down in their territory again, against weaker opposition," Valther mused.
"Sounds good, anyway," Brock grumbled. "But I wish we had a better idea of what's going on."
"You," Turran told him, "I'm making siegemaster. Make this stonepile impregnable. Now, let's tell the others. Be cheerful, make it a joke. Laugh because somebody is fool enough to come after us."
Turran and his brothers went to the Great Hall, where they announced the forthcoming siege.
Saltimbanco and Nepanthe wandered through chilly hallways till they reached her quarters in the Bell Tower. Nepanthe settled onto a stool before a large frame and resumed work on her embroideries. Saltimbanco dumped his bulk into the comfort of a large, goosedown-stuffed chair facing the fireplace. Nepanthe's serving girl brought mulled wine, then disappeared.
Nepanthe's sitting room, perhaps the most comfortable in all Ravenkrak, was filled with womanly things. An abandoned summer frock hung in a corner, forgotten; a hastily discarded lace rebosa lay across one end of a vanity cluttered with cosmetics she seldom used. The rugs on the floors, the tapestries on the walls, the very scents in the air, all bespoke occupation by a woman.
It was a room of sleepy comfort, so peaceful and quiet that Saltimbanco couldn't remain awake. A scant five minutes after arriving, he lapsed into gentle snoring.
Leaving her embroidery to brush her hair, Nepanthe gave her guest a look which would have surprised her had she known she wore it, and wondered about him. He seemed to have sprung into existence fully grown, sometime shortly before having entered Iwa Skolovda.
Past? Did Saltimbanco have one? Indeed, though few men would have taken pride in it, had it been theirs.
His earliest memories were of a picaresque youth spent in company with a blind, alcoholic sadhu (source of much of the misinformation integral to his present act-that holy man had been a thorough fraud) wandering between Argon, Necremnos, and Throyes, with occasional forays into Matayanga. That sadhu early inspired in him a powerful loathing for honest work, and, from the blind man and others into whose company their travels had led them, he had obtained an intimate knowledge of pickpocketry, sleight-of-hand, ventriloquism, and all the mummery he now used to lend credence to his claims to magical powers.