CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #3
I hadn’t forced her to my bed for weeks now.
Not since that bitch Elenora had warned me to stay away from the little twat.
Elenora. I thought about the woman behind the name as I walked.
She’d appeared in Arthur’s court with no lineage anyone could verify but a face that made men forget to ask questions.
Within a season, she’d inserted herself into conversations she had no business being part of, including mine.
She’d pulled Elsbeth out from under me with a few well-placed words and a smile that had the quality of a door closing in your face.
And that was the last I’d seen of her. She hadn’t been in Camelot for weeks now.
Not that I missed her; I most certainly did not.
In fact, I hoped, briefly and without particular heat, that she’d pushed someone less patient than me and found out what that cost.
There were any number of men in court who could make a person disappear without leaving a body worth finding.
It was a pleasant thought, but one I didn’t dwell on. I supposed I could have summoned Elsbeth to my bed again, now that Elenora was hopefully dead, but I found I’d lost my interest in Elsbeth. No, my sights were now set on Guinevere, for she was the comeliest woman in this castle.
But thoughts of Guinevere would have to wait.
At the moment, my thoughts were overwhelmed with the need to locate Elsbeth, and quickly.
I needed her before Lance returned from the Severn border.
More specifically, I required her magic, because magic could read objects.
As long as you knew how, and Elsbeth knew how.
More importantly, she knew how to keep her mouth shut when keeping it shut was in her best interest.
The inventory was progressing well, I decided.
-KAY-
The report sat on my desk for three minutes before I read it.
I made myself wait. Impatience was a weakness I’d noted in myself long ago with the awareness of a man who’d learned that his own flaws were the most dangerous ones to ignore.
Then I read it. Yes, of course, Elsbeth had already delivered the information within the report to me by mouth, but the written word held much more sway than the spoken one ever could. I couldn’t take a rumor to the king, but I could take a professionally written report.
It was no big surprise that the substance on the tunic carried Lance’s signature.
And, of course, the tunic itself came back as belonging to Lioran.
It was as I’d expected. Now, a knight’s cum-stained tunic wasn’t proof of disorderly conduct beyond the stealing of the item and the desecrating of it.
But it was a step in the right direction.
It was enough to raise eyebrows and, more importantly, questions.
No, it wasn’t conclusive. Any competent advocate could argue the point into dust.
A dozen alternative explanations existed, and I could construct each one faster than a magistrate could reach for his pen.
But I didn’t need a magistrate.
I leaned back and allowed the silence of the room to wash over me. The flames had flickered out. Down the hallway, the soft opening and closing of a door echoed through the halls as though whispered among conspirators.
The signature of Lance was on the tunic.
With all that I knew about when Guinevere had first arrived at Camelot, the proximity she’d shared as Lioran with Lance, and Lance’s actions after The Hunt Trial, I’d seen a pattern beginning to emerge.
Now, that pattern wasn’t solid proof yet.
It was only a shadow of something pressed into the wax before the wax had set.
But it was enough.
I replaced the tunic in Lance’s chest later the same evening, at a time when the castle was so silent that my footsteps were the only sounds in the halls.
I’d wrapped the tunic in the oilcloth with the utmost diligence, recreating the exact alignment of the package within Lance’s chest.
After closing the lid, I stood still in the darkness of his bedchamber for a few moments.
Lance would return in the morning. He’d move through this space the way he always moved through it, with that particular brand of unconscious authority that men like him carried in their shoulders.
He’d sit. He’d drink whatever he poured for himself.
He’d lie down in his bed and stare at the ceiling the way men stared at ceilings when they were trying to forget.
And the tunic would sit three feet from his head, wrapped in its oilcloth, preserved and waiting just as it always had been.
He had no idea the weight had already been taken; that I’d already turned it over in my hands, assessed its market value, identified exactly how much it would buy and from whom and under what conditions.
He’d go on carrying the awareness of the stained tunic the way men carried things they believed were private: alone.
I was practiced in the understanding that every wound had a moment of maximum leverage: too early and the pressure dispersed; too late and the thing drained on its own, leaving nothing useful behind.
Lance’s moment wasn’t now, but it was coming, and I had a feeling it would arrive soon. When it did, I’d be ready.
I let myself out of his quarters and pulled the door shut behind me without a sound.