The Monster War: A Tale of the Kings' Blades Read online

  The woman’s customary pout twisted into an expression of surprise. She said something to her companion, who offered his arm to lead her over to Emerald. Her voluminous scarlet gown was too heavy for such weather and much too grand for traveling the dusty roads of Chivial. Under a floppy bonnet, her face was shiny with sweat, and her efforts to smile produced a bizarre leer. The steady scream of her amulet was even shriller than Emerald remembered.

  “Fancy meeting you here, child! The spirits of chance keep throwing us together! Is this not good fortune?”

  That would depend on one’s point of view. Plank walls would not keep out magic, so Emerald was in for a wretched night if the inn-keeper had assigned this woman a room near hers.

  “The pleasure is mine, mistress.”

  The woman simpered. “Just an hour ago I was telling Doctor Skuldigger your theory that there could be no such thing as a good luck charm. Wasn’t I, Doctor? And now see how my amulet has brought us both good fortune!”

  “Perhaps it has.” Emerald reminded herself that earth people never lost their tempers. That sorcerous racket had nothing to do with luck. She always heard spirits of chance as a thin dry rattle like dead leaves in the wind—or like dice being rolled. She could not guess the purpose of this discordant whistle, only that it twisted every nerve in her body.

  “Your lack of faith surprises me.” The man had the saddest face she had ever seen, its flesh hanging in folds like a bloodhound’s under silver eyebrows. The sword he wore was merely the badge of a gentleman; at his age he would not be expected to use it. His hair was hidden by a wide-brimmed hat, and his expensive, heavily padded doublet and jerkin made his torso seem bulkier than it possibly could be. His spindly shanks could not fill his silken hose, although he stood straight enough. He uttered a sad moaning noise, “Aw? Wherever did you get such a notion?”

  None of his business! “From my dear, late grandmother. A White Sister told her so, many years ago.”

  “Perhaps it was true in her day, but sorcery has made great advances in the last twenty or thirty years.” Doctor Skuldigger’s voice was as melancholy as his face, a deep groan. “Aw?” he moaned again. “Adepts now can separate the chance elementals, binding the favorable and dispersing the unfavorable.” He waited courteously for her to comment. His eyes were bright enough, but the lower lids had sagged to reveal their red lining. Emerald found the effect so repulsive that she had difficulty looking at him.

  “I thank you for correcting me, sir. Are you a practitioner of the arts magical?” If he was, then he must be one of the rogues the King had sworn to suppress, because he was talking nonsense. She could not tell whether he was merely ignorant or deliberately lying—the most skilled mother in the Companionship would have had difficulty detecting a death taint under the shrill screech of the woman’s spell.

  “Aw? Merely a doctor of natural philosophy.”

  “A scholar of international repute!” said the woman. “I am Mistress Murther.”

  Emerald curtseyed, as she was expected to. She had still not decided what name she would use in future. “Lucy” she detested. “Emerald Pillow” sounded absurd. And what title could she claim? In her father’s day she had been Mistress Lucy of Peachyard. Now she was old enough to style herself Mistress Pillow. Alas, her present threadbare garments would allow her no such grandeur. “I am Emerald, may it please you, mistress.”

  She was bitterly aware that in the robes of a White Sister she would have outranked both Murther and Skuldigger handily. They would not have dared address her without first sending a servant to ask her permission.

  “And what brings you to Three Roads, Emerald?” Mistress Murther inquired as sweetly as could anyone whose mouth was shaped like hers. All the screaming bad temper of their first meeting was now forgotten, apparently.

  “I am on my way home.”

  “Way home to where, Emerald?”

  “Newhurst, mistress.”

  Murther beamed. “Well! Did I not say that our encounter must be good fortune? I happen to be on my way to Grandon, and Doctor Skuldigger will accompany me only as far as Kysbury. Newbury is close by my road. I will let you ride in my coach, because any company is better than none. You will enjoy learning how the gentry travel.”

  “No!” The unexpectedness of this offer had sent presentiments of danger prickling all the way up Emerald’s backbone. “I mean, I couldn’t possibly impose on you like that, mistress…very kind…other arrangements with my friends.” She had walked into a trap. She was not sure what sort of trap, but the sensation of a gate falling behind her was unmistakable. Snap!

  Murther turned away quickly, as if to hide a smirk of satisfaction. “Come, Doctor. I should know better than to expect courtesy from the lower orders.” She swept away with her red skirts brushing the dust and her bejeweled hand still resting on Skuldigger’s arm. The ghastly sorcerous whistle faded as she moved out of range.

  Emerald stared after her, struggling to understand her own unease. She had refused the offer too abruptly, but why had that been such a blunder? For all Murther knew, she was traveling with seven brothers and six grandparents—for all Murther should know, that is. If she had other information, then she must be another accomplice in the obscure Oakendown plot. She might have seen Emerald on the road, bouncing along in a farmer’s wagon with only a boy for company; in that case her poxy chestnut mares ought to have reached Three Roads first, but the spectacular coach had not been parked in the yard when Wart and Emerald arrived.

  Just what was going on?

  11

  Bad News

  “THAT ENDS TODAY’S CONCERT, MY LORDS AND ladies.” Wart sprang to his feet, archlute and all. The sun was setting, and Honest Will Hobbs would charge for every candle stub. “We thank you for honoring us with your attention, and I do believe that your generosity has provided almost enough to buy every one of these young nightingales a real meal in the commons this evening. From the look of them, it is a treat long overdue. I rashly promised it to them and I shall have to dig deep in my own pouch if the tariff exceeds the take. You, Ginger, take the hat around and see if some—Ah, thank you, mistress! And you, your honor…”

  As the audience dispersed, Wart turned to Emerald, grinning happily. “Haven’t sung for my supper in years! Even if I don’t get to eat any of it.”

  “Why did you bother?” She fell into step beside him as he headed for the main lodging, closely convoyed by the choir. They were anxious to see if he would be true to his word. She was determined to get some truth out of him.

  He shrugged. “I suspect Honest Will feeds them the plate scrapings, and not much of those. I’ve been hungry in my time. Who were your friends?”

  She smiled to hide her anger. “I’ll tell you when you stop lying to me.”

  Wart turned to the boy he’d named Ginger and held out a hand to get his hat back. “How much did we make?” He scooped out the coins. “That should do it. Off you go, all of you. Tell Honest Will you’re eating at my expense tonight. He knows I’m good for it. You, Freckles, wait a moment.” As the rest of the boys vanished in the direction of the kitchens, he said, “What do you know about the lady and gentleman who were talking to Mistress Emerald here a little while ago?”

  Freckles looked worried. “Not much, y’r honor. She ’rived in that coach soon after you did. He and ’nother lady came in just after, but their coach left right away.”

  Wart shot Emerald a cryptic look. “Well, that’s a start. Who’s the other lady?”

  “Just a lady.” The boy scratched his tangled mop. “Haven’t seen her since she got here.”

  “Not your fault. I’d guess that for a groat you could find out their names for me, couldn’t you? And maybe other stuff too?”

  Freckles nodded so eagerly that he almost shook a few off. “Yes, sir, y’r honor! I’ll ask. I seen the gentleman around before with the Marshal.”

  Wart stumbled over a rut and recovered. “Which marshal is that?” His voice had risen half an octav
e.

  “Marshal Thrusk, y’r honor—Baron Grim-shank’s man from Firnesse.” He looked curiously at Wart and muttered, “’E’s a rough sort, y’r honor.”

  “Yes. Yes, I know he is. So you be careful.”

  Wart stopped, only a few feet from the door now, and watched as his young spy ran off. He had lost color. Emerald found his pallor strangely worrying. She had assumed that Murther and Skuldigger—if those were their real names—were in league with Wart—if that was his—and thus with Mother Superior. If there were two factions involved, then she had some rethinking to do.

  “Thrusk can’t hurt you here,” she said.

  Wart looked at her disbelievingly and licked his lips. “He could, you know! Death and flames! He could ride in here with a dozen men at his back and do anything he liked. Grimshank may be only a baron, not a duke, but who’s going to bring his henchmen to justice if one unknown youth dies in a drunken brawl? This is absolutely the worst thing that could have happened, the one thing we—he won’t know my name if he hears it,” he muttered, as if speaking only to himself. “He might not remember my face—spirits, it’s been four years! But the poxy lute will remind him. Flames and death!”

  “Four years ago? Getting our stories a little confused, aren’t we? You told me you were thirteen then.”

  “Almost thirteen…” Wart’s puzzled frown turned into a fierce scowl. “I’m a month older than you are!”

  “Oh!” He wasn’t lying. Boys matured later than girls, of course, but he certainly didn’t look more than a tall twelve or thirteen. “And just how do you know my age, Master Wart?”

  “I’m a good guesser. Let’s go in and eat while there’s still something there to gnaw on.”

  “No.” At the end of a hard day, her resentment boiled over. “You are lying to me now. You have lied to me several times, and you have certainly not told me the whole truth of who you are and why or where you are taking me and who put you up to it. Now I’m going to ask some questions and you are going to answer them, or I shall go straight to Mistress Murther and tell her I shall be delighted to accept her offer of a ride in her coach.”

  Wart screwed up his eyes for a moment as if resisting a twinge of pain. Then he snarled at her. “No, I will not answer your questions. But you obviously know when I’m lying, so I’ll tell you two things. One is that I’m the best protection you have got or can get, and the other is that you are in truly terrible danger. So you’d better just trust me. Now let’s go in and eat.”

  “I’m in danger?” Emerald yelled, “and you won’t tell me why or how or who? That is the most arrogant, insufferable—”

  “It’s too late,” Wart said miserably. “Telling you would make the danger much worse, believe me. And if Thrusk and Grimshank turn out to be involved, that is sheer disaster. Everything will fall apart.”

  12

  Good Offer

  THE COMMONS HAD BEEN AN ECHOING BARN even when almost empty and would be unbearably noisy any evening, with wagoners and drovers all shouting for service from the over-worked staff. Now it had been invaded by thirty skinny, hungry boys, shrilly clamoring for what they regarded as their due—the choir had doubled in size on the way in. Wart pushed his way into the riot to find out who was cheating whom.

  Still seething, Emerald headed across to the gentles’ dining room where best board was provided. This was a much smaller chamber with a single long table flanked on either side by benches and bearing two glimmering candles to brighten the evening shadows. The dozen or so guests already present were almost all men, and she paused in the doorway while trying to decide whether she should go in or wait for Wart. No doubt delicious odors were wafting from the loaded platters the hurrying servant wenches were delivering, but after a whole day in the wagon she could smell nothing except garlic. The cloying stench of glamours was not a real odor, of course, any more real than the rattling of good luck charms was a real sound. She could detect a faint screech from Mistress Murther’s sorcery and see the lady in question sitting alone at the far end. King Ambrose would be having much less trouble suppressing the elementaries if fewer people were deceived by such quackery.

  “Aw?” The melancholy noise right at her shoulder made her jump.

  “Doctor Skuldigger!”

  “Emerald?” Skuldigger attempted to smile at her, although with his spaniel eyes the result was gruesome. “Forgive my prying. My associate, Mistress Murther, is convinced that the reason you shun her is that you can detect sorcery and her good luck charm distresses you.”

  That was certainly part of it. “I am sorry if I gave offense. I have promised to drop in on an elderly aunt and stay some days with her.”

  “Aw?” He raised his silvery brows in surprise. “Then you cannot in fact detect sorcery as the White Sisters can?”

  Wart’s dire warnings rang in her head. “If I were a White Sister, Doctor, then I would not be traveling in my present style.”

  He sighed. He could not have looked sadder had he witnessed his entire family dying of some terrible disease. “Of course. Your sorrows are your own business and I should not meddle. However, pray grant me a moment to explain. You met Mistress Murther in Oakendown, yes?

  “We are anxious to obtain the services of a Sister, and I am sure that you know how much in demand they are these days. We explained that our patron, a most distinguished member of the nobility, is grievously worried that he may be the victim of a curse planted upon him by unscrupulous enemies. Aw? We offered to pay a substantial sum—a very substantial sum, I should add—for a Sister to come and inspect his residence. It may be that there is nothing to this tale and then she would find no hex, aw? But success or failure would not affect the payment of the money.” He blinked his droopy eyes at Emerald.

  “Do continue, Doctor.” She wished Wart would appear. This morbid old man frightened her.

  “Alas, the Sisters are grossly overworked nowadays,” Skuldigger mourned. “Our mission did not prosper. But if you do have this ability, Emerald, I can promise that a patron such as I have described would offer you the same generous terms as he would a qualified Sister. His house is large, but I assure you that you could visit every corner of it in less than a day. Do not fear that your journey would be unduly delayed.”

  He did not seem to be lying, but there was too much minor magic in the room for her to be certain of that. She suspected he was hedging his words most carefully.

  “Who is this noble patron, Doctor?”

  “It would not be advantageous for me to reveal that information at this stage in the proceedings.” Skuldigger groaned. “I can, however, promise you that the honorarium he would be willing to pay—for less than two days’ effort, I stress—would be at least a thousand crowns.”

  Emerald gulped. “That is princely!” She and her mother could live comfortably for two years on that.

  “Indeed, and I will go further. Should you succeed in uncovering such a hex as I have mentioned concealed upon his premises, a wealthy aristocrat such as he would certainly consider a bonus of an additional thousand as fair reward.”

  Spirits! With that kind of incentive in the offing, it would take unusual honesty not to find a hex or two in the attic.

  But…Truly terrible danger Wart had said, and she knew she must choose between them—the brash boy, who had certainly deceived and entrapped her, and this distinguished gentleman with his so-carefully chosen words. Fortunately Wart appeared at her side then, still wrestling the archlute. Youth and old man eyed each other with equal suspicion.

  “I thank you, Doctor,” she said, “for your most generous offer. I beg you to allow me time to consider it in the light of my other obligations.” She bobbed a curtsey.

  Wart offered her his arm—the first gentlemanly gesture she had seen from him. She laid her fingers on it and together they paraded into the dining room.

  13

  A Dangerous Thing

  THE DECISION COULD NOT BE POSTPONED FORever. Next morning, when Emerald emerged fro
m the inn in the mean, clammy light of dawn, she found the yard in predictable chaos, with scores of men and boys trying to harness or saddle at least a hundred horses. She had slept badly, tossing all night, and now was at the end of the line. She must choose. To remain here at Three Roads was not an option, unless she wanted to starve. Lacking a cloak, she shivered in the chill air.

  At the far side of the yard at least a dozen youngsters were determinedly trying to help Wart put Saxon between the shafts. They were getting in one another’s way and making the horse nervous. Closer to hand, Mistress Murther’s grooms and coachman were attending to her team, with her two men-at-arms assisting. The smelly little wagon and the opulent coach could not have presented a greater contrast. Common sense insisted Emerald should grab at Doctor Skuldigger’s fantastic offer. Why was she so suspicious? What seemed a great fortune to her might appear trivial to people who could travel in a coach like that one.

  She had told Wart about that offer, but he had still refused to reveal any more about himself. She remained convinced that he was somehow in league with Mother Superior. Since she had no idea what Mother Superior was up to, that conclusion was hardly helpful. Most of what he had told her had been true. Murther and Skuldigger’s truthfulness she had been unable to judge—which was suspicious in itself. But a thousand crowns was a fortune. It would be salvation to a girl without a penny to her name.

  The coach was closer, so she went to it first. There was no sign of Mistress Murther yet, nor the woebegone Doctor, but perhaps she could gather information from the flunkies—exactly who Murther was, for example, and where she lived. It was the sort of vehicle she would expect only the King or maybe a duke to own. It had real glass windows and the body was slung on leather springs to give a smooth ride. A carriage like that one ought to have its owner’s arms emblazoned on the doors, but even the men’s livery bore no insignia. Very odd! She approached confidently, weaving between horses and men and vehicles, until she was within twenty paces or so of her destination. She stopped suddenly, causing a groom leading a big roan to curse at her and then mutter an apology as he went by.