To Ride Hell’s Chasm. Janny Wurts
You can call your oafish officers to heel. They won’t find anything useful tossing through everyone’s closets.’
Belatedly Collain Herald announced, ‘Court worthies, your Majesty, the Lady Bertarra.’
‘The late queen’s niece,’ Taskin murmured, for the garrison captain’s benefit. ‘A shrew, and intelligent. She’s worth a spy’s insights and ten berserk soldiers, and the guards I have posted at the king’s doorway are loyal as mountain bedrock.’
Mykkael regarded the paragon in question, a plump, beringed matron who bore down upon the royal dais, her intrepid form hung with jewellery and a self-righteous billow of ribbon and saffron taffeta.
‘Best we beat a tactical retreat,’ Taskin suggested.
Mykkael almost smiled. ‘Her flaying tongue’s a menace?’
Taskin returned the barest shrug of straitlaced shoulders. ‘I’d have the report on the closets from my duty sergeant without the shrill opinion and abuse.’
But withdrawal came too late. The matron surged abreast, and rocked to a glittering stop in a scented cloud of mint. Mykkael received the close-up impression of a round suet face, coils of pale hair pinned with jade combs, and blue eyes sharp and bright as the point on an awl.
No spirit to honey her opinions, Bertarra attacked the obvious target, first. ‘You’re a darkling southerner,’ she accused. ‘Some say you’re good. I don’t believe them. Or what would you be doing here, standing empty-handed?’ Her glance shifted, undaunted, to rake over the immaculate commander of the palace guard. A plump hand arose, tinkling with bracelets, and deployed a jabbing finger. ‘Our Anja’s no hoyden, to be sneaking into wardrobes! Shame on you, for acting as though she’s no more than a girl, and a simpleton!’
Taskin said, frigid, ‘The closets were searched at her brother the crown prince’s insistence. Do you think of his Highness as a boy, and a simpleton?’
Bertarra sniffed. ‘Since when has a title been proof of intelligence? Prince Kailen will be drunken and whoring by morning. Simplistic, male adolescent behaviour, should that earn my applause?’ Her ample chin hoisted a haughty notch higher. ‘His Highness is a layabout who thinks with the brainless, stiff prod in his breeches. All men act the same. Here, our princess has been kidnapped by enemies, and not a sword-bearing soldier among you has the guts in his belly to muster!’
‘Who’s prodding, now?’ Taskin grasped that perfumed, accusatory finger, turned it with charm, and kissed the palm with flawless diplomacy. ‘Lady Bertarra, if you think you can stand between any grown man and his pleasures, you are quite free to curb the excesses of your kin with no help from my men-at-arms.’ He bowed over her hand, his dry smile lined with teeth. ‘As to enemies of the realm, give me names. I am his Majesty’s sword. In her Grace’s defence, I will kill them.’
Yet like the horned cow, the woman seized the last word. She slipped from Taskin’s grasp and fixed again on Mykkael, silent and stilled to one side. ‘That’s why you brought this one? To sweep our sewers for two-legged rats? What did you promise for his compensation? A well-set marriage to raise his mean standing?’
Mykkael’s slow, deep laughter began in his belly, then erupted. ‘Now, that certainly would not be thinking with my man’s parts.’ His dismissive glance encompassed the jewellery, then the cascade of ruffled yellow skirt. ‘A sick shame, don’t you think, to dull a night’s lust stripping off all that useless decoration? And, from some pale Highgate woman, who’s likely to be nothing but fumbling inexperience underneath? That should require an endowment of land as incentive to shoulder the bother.’
Bertarra’s mouth opened; snapped shut. She quickly rebounded from stonewalled shock. ‘Crude creature. Prove your mettle. Find our Anja and bring her home safely’
A gusty flounce of marigold silk, and the matron moved on to upbraid someone else on the dais. Taskin resumed his interrupted course, his stride as sharp as any spoken order that the garrison captain was expected to follow. A pause at the door saw the guard rearranged. Two men-at-arms were asked to stand inside, in direct view of the royal person. The petty officer was dispatched elsewhere, bearing the commander’s instructions.
That man angled his greater size and weight to jostle past Mykkael, standing withdrawn to one side. Taskin just caught the garrison captain’s blurred move in reaction, an attack form begun, then arrested, too fast for the trained eye to follow. The ex-mercenary had already resettled his stance, when the commander’s viper-quick reach caught the tall guardsman’s wrist, and wrenched him back to a standstill.
‘You give that one distance,’ he cracked in rebuke. ‘I won’t forgive you a broken bone because you’re careless on duty.’
The huge guardsman reddened.
Taskin cut off the flood of excuses. ‘Not armed,’ he agreed. ‘Still lethal. Blowhard assumptions like that get you killed. Now carry on.’
Then, as though such a shaming display was routine, he finished his rapid instructions. ‘I want to know who comes and who goes in my absence. If Bertarra leaves, or the seneschal returns, detail someone to fetch me.’
Moved off again, Mykkael’s limp dragging after, the commander turned down a side corridor and whipped open the door to the closet chamber furnished for the king’s private audiences. ‘Sit,’ he said, brisk, then rummaged through an ivory-inlaid escritoire for a striker to brighten the sconces. ‘My man was a fool. Please accept my apology.’
Confronted by a marble-top table, and gold-leafed, lion-foot chairs, Mykkael eyed the plush velvet seat he was offered. The scents he brought with him, of oiled steel, uncouth liniment, and greased leather, made strident war with the genteel perfumes of beeswax, citrus polish and patchouli. Since he saw no other option, he did as he was told; arranged his game leg, and perched.
Taskin chose a chair opposite, his squared shoulders and resplendent court appointments nothing short of imperial. His subordinate was dealt the same unflinching survey just given to his royal guards. ‘I’d heard you had studied barqui’ino, but not the name of the master who trained you.’
Mykkael seemed less relaxed than tightly coiled, under the strap of his empty shoulder scabbard. ‘There were only two living when I earned my accolade,’ he admitted, his shadowed gaze regarding his rough hands, rested loose on the table before him. ‘Both were my teachers, an awkwardness no one admits.’
‘They both disowned you?’ said Taskin, surprised.
Mykkael’s sardonic smile split his face, there and gone like midsummer lightning. ‘A northern man might say as much.’
‘A vast oversimplification,’ Taskin surmised. ‘A stickler might ask you to explain. I will not.’ With startling brevity, he cut to the chase. ‘Our princess is in trouble. What do you need?’
As close as he came to being shocked off balance, Mykkael spread his fingers, lined by the shine of old scars. He delivered the gist. ‘A boy runner, for a start, to ask my watch at the Middlegate to keep a list of who comes and goes. Next, I don’t know what her Grace looks like, up close. A view of her face, if she sat for a portrait, could be sent on loan to the barracks.’ He sucked a slow breath, then broached the unpopular subject dead last. ‘An endowment for bribes, and extra pay shares for men whose extended duties keep them from spending due time with their families.’
‘I expected you’d ask that.’ Taskin was brusquely dismissive. ‘The requisition to draw funds from the treasury is already set in motion. As to your runner, he’s not needed. My sentries at the Highgate record all traffic to and from the palace precinct. They’ll supply names until you can rearrange the Middlegate security to your satisfaction. As more thoughts arise, you’ll send me the list.’ Then, with a subject shift that rocked for its tactical perception, ‘Now, how do you think your resource can help me?’
Thinking fast, Mykkael closed his fingers. ‘If the Prince of Devall has foreigners in his retinue, I’d like permission to question them.’
Taskin