Chapter 37 #3
Rue’s diamond had emptied the strongbox of the gemsmith, and even with a smaller, less finely cut ruby added into the exchange, the man had still come away with a bargain the like of which he’d never seen.
The price hadn’t surprised Rue. The diamond had once hung on the forehead of the Taveen empress as part of a constellation set in white gold, and even with the woman’s fatal transgressions it would have stayed in that dynasty for generations.
Power, however, not only corrupts souls but clouds judgement, and the dynasty had ended on that day of retribution as the empress’s sons sought to debate with a Kindness rather than wrestle over the inheritance she had delivered into their laps.
Baron Mancer’s castle, a single large keep, crouched at the centre of the city, its walls of undressed stone rubbing elbows with works of architecture in which every modern sensibility found expression in arch and column and portico.
The castle, however, had remained as a brutal reminder of times when neighbours might smile and make nice but should never once turn their backs.
An uncompromising pile of bedrock that might resist even a Kindness’s wrath.
If King Handelf had taken heed of that reminder, then the armies of his grandson, Sunder, might not have invaded from Abrona twenty years ago and stolen his kingdom from him.
Staring up at the walls, Rue found she had company. Sharp had moved in beside her and was studying the ancient blocks of stone. “We don’t have to climb?”
“No, dear.” Rue’s climbing days were behind her. The days when her lean form could hang from fingertips dug into a crevice seemed a dream now.
“Will this baron be enough for you?” Sharp asked. Sharp, who never had enough of anything, vengeance or violence, laughter or lovers.
“I think so.” In truth Rue hadn’t anything else to do.
She feared success as much as failure. If she tore out the baron’s heart, what then?
She would be alone with herself once more.
“The debt will be settled.” That was the Kindnesses’ way.
There had to be an end, a bill that could be paid.
If for no reason other than to free them up to punish the next crime.
“It had better be. You know who would be next.” And in her moment of clarity, Sharp had cut to the truth of it.
There was a hand behind Baron Mancer, and that hand belonged to Sunder.
The same Sunder that they had challenged at the height of their powers.
The same Sunder in whose path the Morrigan had attempted to set Rue once again.
There was a time when Rue had found the emperor-to-be so familiar that she had been convinced her brother Strong had been stolen from Sunder’s family.
She had wondered if somehow Mother and Father had managed to take a royal child from its golden crib.
To what end they would then poison and torture him, she couldn’t say at the time, but there seemed a real possibility that Strong could be Sunder’s true brother, perhaps even his twin, for they had surely been born in the same year.
“We won’t be calling on the emperor, Sharp dear.” Rue felt the tension leave her friend, and perhaps the clarity too, as the old woman slumped and turned away from the wall.
Rue had many reasons not to pursue Sunder.
The suicide that taking on the baron was, was as glorious or perhaps inglorious an end as she desired or deserved.
Even under the Creed, Sunder’s hands could be considered clean where Jayne’s and Ambeth’s deaths were concerned.
Indeed, all of Pye was beneath his notice.
He gave the direction of travel, but the baron chose the methods, and the baron’s minions executed the plan.
As important as any of those reasons, though, was that Rue did not like to be pushed, or steered, or told.
She had had her fill of those things in the Academy and before that in the mansion.
The Furies, whose poison burned in her veins, and the Morrigan were just two faces of a coin of very many sides.
The bitch goddess was that coin. She whose hands were never still, spinning so many webs, trimming the cords of fate, weaving a tapestry on her loom wherein all stories were told.
Rue didn’t know if she could beat the goddess, but with death just a step away, she might yet turn from the paths laid out for her.
Win or lose, though, she would make the three-faced one, maiden, mother, or crone, work for it.
The last reason for leaving Sunder alone, and not the least, was that the man scared her.
Sharp allowed herself to be towed towards the main entrance, where portcullis teeth fringed a stone arch wide enough for wagons to pass each other without scraping the stonework. As the shadow of the walls fell upon Rue she felt a familiar ache.
“He has a sorcerer.”
“Damping shield. Quite strong,” Sharp said in a rare moment of clarity.
“It’s been a while since I felt one.”
“One what?” Sharp frowned as if Rue had made an improper suggestion, then looked behind her as if someone might have pinned a tail on her.
Rue shook her head. Most of the nobility had employed a sorcerer back in her day, and she had in her arrogance imagined that they were trying to save themselves from the justice of the Kindnesses.
A damping shield could hide all manner of sins and also made it harder for a Kindness to work any magics they might have.
The sorcerers had of course been part of the largely ineffective defence against those who survived the Academy, but the fact that they remained even now showed that the nobility’s worst enemy had always been the nobility.
A silver coin saw “Lady Mahalla” and her companion past the gates and into the office of the assistant chamberlain, in whose custody a great tome of appointments lay neglected on an implausible acreage of polished oak.
More silver kept the covers closed and saw the old ladies escorted across the courtyard once more to another, larger door.
Senna dropped from the sky as if she’d forgotten she owned wings. She hit Rue’s shoulder with an impact that bird bones were not shaped to absorb, nearly failing to find purchase. Saved narrowly from a further tumble to the flagstones, she cawed loudly.
“Not in my ear!” Rue raised a hand to swat the crow.
“There’s something wrong with the air,” Senna protested.
“Sorcery doesn’t agree with you. That’s all it is.” Rue scowled. The strength of the disruption charms didn’t bode well. She already felt the ache of her wounds. “Shit on me and I’ll wring your neck.”
Senna released a more subdued caw from one end, and nothing from the other. With any luck the sorcerer had laid their enchantments and moved on, returning only periodically to maintain them. With no luck, they’d be here, waiting.
The guardsman assigned to them opened the door and, relinquishing his responsibility to a liveried underling, retreated with a suspicious glance at the crow.
“You can’t bring that bird in here, my lady,” the young woman standing in their way declared.
“Can and will.” Rue pressed a silver crown into her hand.
More bribery saw them through a series of doors, up a flight of stairs, and into another office.
“Visitors, Master Percival.” With this briefest of introductions, the latest servant retreated at speed, closing the door behind him before anyone asked him to explain why he’d delivered two old women into the heart of the keep.
“Lady Sharp Mahalla is here to see Minor Remon.” Rue offered the chamberlain her best smile, keeping her lips together to hide her missing tooth.
“And does Lady Mahalla have an appointment?” The official pretended to consult the book lying open before him on his desk.
Rue, having purchased her way this far, felt that while bribery might still be an option, the depth of the man’s frown seemed to call for a different approach.
“Through there, are they?” Rue looked pointedly at the grand doors to the left of the chamberlain’s reception chamber.
“I’m sorry, madam, but Minor Remon really can’t see anyone without an app—”
Rue leaned forward and dragged the leather-bound tome to her side of the polished desk. She glanced at the exposed pages without bothering to rotate the volume.
“Yes, I see. Quite the oversight.” She shut the book, and the clap of it closing echoed around the vaulted chamber. “Perhaps I need to amend the record.” She straightened, lifting the heavy book.
“Madam! I must insist…”
As Rue walked purposefully around the table, the man, taller, heavier, and younger than her, stood hastily from his well-upholstered chair and backed in the other direction.
“Master Percival.” Rue strove to sound concerned.
“It was Percival, wasn’t it? Yes?” She reached his now-vacant chair.
“I’m just a frail lady in the winter of her years.
” She sat in the chair and set the book down.
“I’ve never used a book to kill anyone.” She took the quill from the inkpot and opened the ledger again. “You’ve nothing to fear from me.”
As Rue started to append Sharp’s name to the appointment list, Master Percival found his voice and at least one of his balls.
“Now listen here!” He returned at speed before pulling up with a sudden yelp.
“Sharp, however, you should fear. I’ve personally witnessed her kill three men and a cow…it was a cow, wasn’t it?”
“Donkey,” Sharp said. She twisted Percival’s arm further up behind his back. “I’m not proud of the donkey.”
“Killed three men and a donkey with a book…Sharp had the book, not the donkey. I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear. And it wasn’t that big a volume. About this size.”
“Iron-bound,” Sharp said as she steered Percival towards the double doors.
“Iron-bound! Yes.” Rue shook her head. “How do you remember that when you can’t remember my name from breakfast to lunch? Or what we’re doing here for longer than it takes me to explain—”
Sharp accelerated Percival across the last few yards, using the allied principles of leverage and pain rather than brute force. She also caused him to bend forward, resulting in him hitting the doors headfirst.
He collapsed immediately, any groan lost in the boom as the doors shook.
“Well! What do you know?” Sharp looked over her shoulder at Rue. “Locked.”