He was slim and swarthy, wearing a wide-brimmed hat with a long feather in it. It was the Genovesan national headwear, Tennyson knew. The man was dressed completely in tight, body-fitting leather and he had a superior smile on his face. Tennyson was sure that he wore perfume.
`Signor?' the Genovesan asked now.
Tennyson smiled at him and moved towards him, putting an arm around his shoulder. The leader of the Outsiders set great store by touching and laying hands on his followers.
`Luciano, that's your name, isn't it?'
`Si. That is what people call me, signor. Luciano.'
`Let's walk a while then, Luciano." He kept his arm on the smaller man's shoulder and led him away from the tent. Behind him, he was aware of the minstrel finishing a song and the hearty burst of applause from his audience. He scowled momentarily. He would definitely issue that edict tonight at prayers. Then he brought his mind back to the matter at hand and assumed the smile again.
`Well now, my friend, there's something you can do for me.' He paused but the other man said nothing so he continued. 'There's a man called Kelly in my tent right now. An ugly little person with a terrible squint. My servants are feeding him and tending him. He's been a little bruised around the face, poor man.'
`Yes, signor?' Luciano was an experienced mercenary and assassin. He could see through the false concern in Tennyson's voice. There was usually only one reason for an employer to point out a third party to a Genovesan, he knew.
`When he leaves my tent, follow him and wait for a moment when there's no one around.'
`And then what should I do, signor?' But Luciano already knew what Tennyson wanted and a wolfish smile was creasing his face in anticipation.
`Then you should kill him, Luciano. Then you should kill him.'
Luciano's smile broadened, matched by an answering smile on Tennyson's face. The two men looked into each other's eyes and understood each other perfectly.
`Oh, one other thing, Luciano,' Tennyson added as an afterthought. The Genovesan said nothing but arched an eyebrow questioningly.
`You'll find a gold chain on his person. He stole it from me. Bring it back to me when the job's done.'
`It shall be as you say, signor,' Luciano said. And Tennyson, still smiling, nodded in satisfaction.
`I know,' he replied.
Chapter 32
Ferris went white. Horace saw the colour literally drain from his face and his hand went up to his tf in an involuntary gesture of shock. After initially recoiling, the King took control of himself and stepped forward a pace, peering into the face of the grim, grey-bearded man who stood before him.
`Brother?' he said. 'But you can't…' He stopped, then tried to take possession of himself once more, tried to assume an air of dignified mystification. 'My brother is dead. He died many years ago,' he said, the conviction in his voice growing as he spoke. He made a small sign with his right hand and Horace ce heard the large doors behind them open, heard several sets of hurried footsteps on the stone flooring and knew that Sean Carrick and a small group of men at arms had entered the throne room.
He'd been right about the unseen observers, he thought grimly.
`Your majesty, is everything all right?' Sean Carrick asked.
Halt glanced over his shoulder at the group of armed men. He stepped a little closer to Ferris. Instinctively, the King began to back off a corresponding pace. Then he seemed to realise that, by doing so, he was giving Halt the upper hand. He stopped, watching Halt warily. Halt spoke softly so that only his brother and Horace could hear his words.
`If you're frightened, brother, then let Sean stay. He has a right to hear me. But unless you want your men to hear what we're about to discuss – and I don't think you do -send them outside again, where they can see but not listen.'
Ferris looked at him, then at the armed men standing ready by the door. Halt and Horace were both unarmed, he realised, while he was wearing his sword. Sean Carrick was similarly armed and Ferris knew his steward was a more than capable swordsman. That was one of the reasons Sean held the position that he did. Years of guilt and fear, long suppressed, now swam to the surface of his mind. He realised instinctively that he didn't want his soldiers to hear whatever it was that Halt planned to say. He knew it would not show himself in any favourable light. Abruptly, he decided.
`Sean!' he called. 'Dismiss the men to their posts and come stand by me.'
Carrick hesitated and Ferris turned to look directly at him.
`Do it,' he ordered.
Carrick still hesitated another second or two, then nodded to the men. As they turned and trooped out of the room, Sean waited till the doors closed behind them, then strode forward to stand beside the King.
`Uncle,' he said, confirming Halt's earlier suspicion, `what's the trouble? Who is this man?'
He was looking at Halt, frowning. From the relative positions of the three men, Halt and Ferris facing each other, Horace standing a pace or two back, it was obvious now that the Araluan knight was not the leader here, but the follower. And now Sean had that same sense that he'd felt before, that there was something very familiar about the smaller man.
Halt turned to face him.
`Uncle?' he said. 'You'd be Caitlyn's son then?'
Sean nodded. 'What do you know of my mother?' he asked, his tone defensive and a little belligerent. Ferris let out a deep sigh of anguish and turned away, moving to sit on a low bench beside the throne, his head in his hands.
'She was my sister,' Halt told him. 'I'm your uncle too. My name is Halt.'
`NoP Sean rejected the statement vehemently. 'My uncle Halt is dead. He died over twenty years ago!' He looked to the King for confirmation. But Ferris's face remained in his hands and he refused to look up and meet Sean's gaze. He shook his head repeatedly from side to side, as if trying to deny the scene before him. Sean's conviction began to waver and he looked more closely at the small, rather stocky man in the mottled cloak.
The beard was full and covered the face. And the moustache was heavy as well. But if that shaggy mop of hair were drawn back as Ferris's was…
Sean shook his head now. The features were the same. They were more defined in the stranger's face. In Ferris's, they were blurred somewhat by the extra flesh he carried.
A person's features become altered by their actions over their lifetime, he knew. A face is a canvas where the years paint their marks. But if you could strip away the effect of the years from these two faces, remove the excesses, the joys, the pains, the triumphs and disappointments of twenty years or more, then he sensed that they would be identical.
And if you looked beyond the faces to the eyes…
The eyes! They were the same. Yet in one important way, they were different. Ferris, he knew, could never meet your gaze for more than a few seconds at a time. His eyes would slide away from yours uncertainly. That was why Ferris set great store by the fact that people should not gaze directly into the face of a king. But this man's eyes were steady and unwavering. And as Sean Carrick looked into them now, he saw something else, a faint hint of sardonic humour deep behind them.
`Finished looking?' Halt asked him.
Sean stepped back. He wasn't totally convinced, but his mind couldn't ignore the evidence that his eyes were seeing. He turned to Ferris.
`Your majesty?' he said. 'Tell me.'
But the only response from Ferris was a deep groaning sound, and an ineffectual wave of the hand. And in that moment, Sean Carrick knew. A second later, Ferris confirmed it with one word.
`Halt…' he began uncertainly, raising his eyes at last to look at his brother. 'I never meant you any harm. You must believe that.'