Chapter 4 – The Knights of the Brede #6
But he made himself stop early, nevertheless.
He wouldn’t repeat the mistakes he had made on their wedding night, and it was strangely satisfying just to hold her, her head resting in the crook of his shoulder, her silky hair streaming off the side of the bed in the river.
Long after he should have sought his own bed, Remin lay looking at her sleeping face, soft and curving as a flower.
Inexperienced as he was with women, he’d never thought about why maidens were said to be blooming.
Nothing bloomed, in the places he had been.
But his wife did. She was so fresh and so lovely, he hardly knew what to do with her.
What if she wasn’t his enemy? It was far more likely that she was exactly what she seemed to be: a timid girl who had grown up a prisoner, too frightened to speak up for herself but brave enough to raise her voice for a friend.
He liked that about her, very much. As a matter of fact, he had enjoyed almost every moment he had spent with her for days now.
She was so smart, and funny, when she forgot to be shy.
He wanted her to stop being shy with him.
Embracing the soft, warm bundle in his arms, Remin dozed, breathing her sweet scent.
Only a whisper of a sound alerted him. A little past midnight, a shadow eeled its way through the window, cloth rasping against the windowsill, and Remin’s sharp eyes saw the darker shape in the shadows of the bedroom.
It was like a slap of icy air in his face. His sword was by the fire, but he was instantly so angry, he didn’t need it. Rising grimly from the bed, he stalked forward and smashed his arm into the tall wooden poster at the end, snapping it off. Ophele woke with a cry.
“Stay under the covers, wife,” he ordered without looking back. “Close your eyes and don’t open them until I give you leave.”
Reversing the broken poster in his hand, he advanced, angling to put a small worktable between himself and the assassin.
There was the gleam of a blade in their hand, a shortsword, but there were many other, fouler means of murder.
He watched the blade, but he also watched the assassin’s other hand, and the hooded face.
There was one assassin in the Masaron Basin that had actually spat poison at him, like a frilled lizard, and only missed his eyes by chance.
“Miche! Tounot!” he bellowed. One of them should be at his door. “Get someone outside!”
The assassin’s free hand shoved inside their robes and Remin exploded into motion, kicking the edge of the worktable up and twisting his body behind it.
Several sharp metal objects thudded into it as he bulled forward, intending to slam the bastard between the table and the wall, but even if the assassin hadn’t expected to find an awake and furious Remin Grimjaw, they were still quick to fling themselves right back out the window.
Swearing, Remin thrust the table aside and grabbed for their hood.
It tore away, revealing short blond hair, and he whipped the bedpost at it as a parting shot. He couldn’t tell if it landed. The assassin slid down the slate tiled roof and over the side like there weren’t two stories between them and the alley below.
Yanking the shutters closed and noting the broken lock on them, Remin went for his pants. He hated having to face assassins when he was naked.
“Y-Your Grace?” the princess asked from the bed, her voice quivering.
“You can look,” he said shortly. “He’s gone.”
“Who—what…” She yanked the bedcovers up to her neck as Miche burst into the room, followed by Justenin.
“I guess someone decided to try their luck,” Miche said, grim. “Tounot and Ortaire went out the window as soon as you yelled, we’ll know in a minute.”
“I almost got a hand on him,” Remin replied, tossing him the assassin’s hood.
Miche lit a lamp and they inspected Remin’s impromptu shield.
Three short throwing knives were sunk into the worktable, sharp silver steel with black edges on the blades.
All of them knew better than to touch it. The black edge was likely poison.
He glanced at the terrified girl in the bed, pressed against the headboard with her knees drawn up to her chin and one hand covering her mouth.
Was she really frightened? Had she known?
Could there have been some signal passed between her and one of the people she had spoken with that day, the glassblower, the lady at the pastry shop, the seamstress, the tinker?
How had the assassin come unerringly to this room, when Remin ought to have been in another?
Had she pretended to enjoy his affections to keep him here, long enough for the assassin to attempt his task?
“I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to this, Princess,” he said coldly.
The thought that he might have kissed her and let her touch him and moaned his pleasure in her arms after she had arranged for his murder made him burn with hurt and humiliation.
He knew better, but he couldn’t help dreaming that just once, it might be otherwise.
“Your father wants me dead quite badly.”
Her face went as pale as if he’d slapped her.
“Rem, maybe—” Miche began, just as another voice shouted from outside in the alley.
“Rem!” It was Tounot. “You’ll want to see this!”
“Get up and get dressed, Princess,” he ordered. “Juste, guard her. Miche, with me.”
“Oh, b-but, Your Grace—” The princess was white with terror, but he was already shrugging into his shirt as he headed for the door. “The window, w-what if—”
He didn’t hear her. He didn’t have time for her mumbling right now.
Outside in the alley behind the inn, there was a very dead assassin.
The maddening thing about assassins was that they were like a bolt of lightning: impossible to anticipate, impossible to track back to their source.
The dead man was not going to be carrying anything that identified his client.
His knives were simple steel, without decoration or even a maker’s mark.
Remin had been set upon by everything from paid local thugs to—once—a painted journeyman of the Dream Flower Guild.
That was the one that tried to spit poison in his face.
The blond man in the alley had stabbed himself in the heart with a stiletto rather than be captured, which demonstrated considerable dedication to his client.
Bertin had already stripped him naked and was going over his clothing an inch at a time, searching for any concealed pockets.
“Here,” said Tounot, kicking the dead man onto his belly. The moon was as high and full as the tinker had promised, clearly illuminating a tattoo between his shoulder blades, a clock with many spokes and an eye in the center, slit-pupiled and lividly red. “That one’s new to me.”
It was new to Remin, too. It might not mean anything, or it might be another one like the Dream Flower guild, who rubbed dye into their eyelids and lacquered their fingernails.
“Drag him inside,” he said. “Make a copy of that tattoo.”
“Innkeeper won’t be happy.”
“We’ll pay him extra.” Remin scowled. “Though he’s the one with assassins creeping through the windows of his establishment trying to murder guests in their beds. Get Bram to have a quiet word with him. Maybe he knows something.”
“No one’s getting any sleep tonight,” Tounot observed sourly, and gave the dead man a kick on the strength of that alone.
This was Granholme, in the duchy of Firkane, whose duke was fanatically devoted to the Emperor. It would have been surprising if someone hadn’t taken a chance to curry favor by eliminating the perpetual thorn in the Imperial side.
And of course, no one knew anything. The innkeeper threw a small fit about having a dead man sprawled on one of his dining tables, but after Bram explained things, he elected to retire back to his own room, with the courteous request that they knock if they needed anything else.
With no other evident threat, it didn’t seem dangerous enough to warrant leaving town immediately, so Remin sent everyone back to their beds to try and get a few more hours of sleep before sunrise.
He himself sat downstairs, watching as Tounot painstakingly reproduced the tattoo and contemplating the grisly possibility that it might be better just to slice it off and take it with them.
No. It would just curl up and go black. And stink.
It was a silent company that left Granholme later that day, after receiving a very large order of women’s clothing from a yawning Mistress Courcy.
The clothes were packed along with the princess’s books in the supply wagon, though the princess herself showed little interest in either.
She was silent, with red, swollen eyes, and she sat so stiffly in the saddle that Remin wondered if he’d hurt her after all.
The pleasures of the night before felt like a distant dream.
“Are you hurt?” he asked wearily.
She shook her head.
“Do you want wine?” He was going to make a drunkard of her at this rate, but he didn’t know what else to do. She looked hurt.
When he gave her the wineskin, she gulped it down like water.