The Sword-Edged blonde

FOUR

We crossed the Gusay, which put us back in Muscodia, and headed north. We traveled the length of Casselward and, at last, entered Arentia in the middle of the night.

The Hornfisher River had been unaffected by the rains to the south. We used a small raft hidden beneath a well-built camouflaged shed that was also stocked with many other things a secret agent like Sir Mike might need.

All kings and queens employed people like him, and they all denied it publicly. But power wasn’t a gift for life, and to hang onto it, sometimes nasty things needed to be done. The best men (and often women) for these jobs never looked the part, and Anders certainly didn’t. He laughed easily, talked a lot, and seemed content to let me make decisions about things like places to camp. There was an iron quality to him, though, that I sensed would be quite willing to knock me over the head and bring me to Arentia trussed and thrown across my saddle if I gave him too much grief.

We guided the horses onto the raft and poled it across the Hornfisher. The looming shore had thick forest down to the waterline, and I wondered if there was room to land even this tiny vessel. The dock, when we touched it, was actually disguised as a pile of driftwood, and only when I stepped onto it did I realize it was solidly anchored to the river bottom.

I don’t know what I expected to happen when I set foot on Arentian soil again-maybe for it to burst into flames beneath my feet or something-but of course it was just dirt, like any other dirt.

We pulled the raft out of the water, tucked it into a depression dug for it and covered it with leaves. Then, leading our horses, we weaved through the trees until at last we hit a trail. I’d have had a hard time following the path in broad daylight, let alone at night, but Anders worked from memory and landmarks I didn’t bother to try to map out.

As we led our horses down the narrow trail through the woods, Anders asked, “Feel strange to be home?”

“This ain’t my home,” I muttered.

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” He seemed genuinely contrite. “I didn’t mean to bring up-”

“Do you hear that?” I snapped, and when he stopped to listen I pushed past him. He didn’t say anything else for a long time.

By sunrise we’d emerged from the woods onto a wide highway that led eventually to Arentia City. These roads were Arentia’s pride, layered with flat, smooth stone dredged from the Hornfisher and other rivers. Creating them had been a tedious process that almost led to a revolution against then-King Hugh II; his insistence on good infrastructure earned him the nickname “Highway Hugh,” and of course the roads themselves became “Hughways.” But once completed, everyone suddenly realized the advantage they gave: they didn’t become impassable muddy tracks after each heavy rain, and trade between towns became so easy that within a generation Arentia went from a cesspool not unlike Muscodia to the thriving center of commerce it was now.

At least, that’s what they taught us in school. What they left out, naturally, was that the roads were built by press gangs of Fechinians who, after they’d done their jobs, mysteriously died of a disease that left marks almost identical to sword wounds. This massacre was quietly swept under the tapestry, and when Hugh III ascended to the throne two centuries ago, all mention of it was expunged from the official history books. Only the diligence of the Society of Scribes, who made copies of everything, kept the memory alive in their hidden archives.

It was a glorious spring day, and everything seemed to be in bloom beneath the wide blue sky. Everyone we passed, whether farmer, trader or soldier, waved or said something friendly. Children laughed, dogs barked. Birds sang. My mood grew more and more foul.

Suddenly I noticed that the road beneath us was not one of the original Hughways, but a new construction; the rocks were a completely different color. “Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t the road used to turn right here and go all the way around old Hogenson’s place?” I asked.

“They’ve built a whole new series of roads,” Anders explained. “The king bought rights-of-way across some of the big landholdings to cut travel time down, and trade picked up a lot as a result.”

“Huh.” That explained all the traffic, although not how the king had managed to sweet-talk the various big shots into something that gave the appearance of patriotism. Arentian nobles weren’t known for being altruistic, and old Baron Hogenson was especially self-absorbed.

As we traveled, I learned that young Sir Michael was the eldest son and namesake of an army general who’d earned his rank the hard way, protecting the border Arentia shared with San Travis to the west. Mike junior attended military school and then took a commission in the regular army. Since Arentia wasn’t at war with anyone he found the distinct lack of action mind-numbing, until a superior suggested he apply for the special operations branch. The screening process alone took three months. His tests included being tossed naked from a ship off the coast of Romeria with orders to retrieve a certain piece of jewelry from a nobleman’s house and return with it by a given date. He’d done so by convincing the scullery maid’s young daughter that he was a merman, and she hid him long enough for him to learn the layout of the house and acquire the jewelry. He even sculpted a copy from melted sugar to give himself more time, and arrived back in Arentia three days early. He seemed very proud of this, and if it was all true, he had a right to be. I’d been to Romeria a few times, and it was a cold, ragged, lawless place where strangers weren’t welcome and thieves were routinely blinded.

Anders had two younger brothers, also in military school, and a sister who still lived at home. Because of the nature of his work, his brothers believed he’d actually been drummed out of the service and now worked as a kind of liaison with merchants who sold things to the military. Once they reached a high enough rank they could learn the truth, and he anticipated that day with intense glee. “Cornel, especially, loves giving me hell when we’re home together at the holidays,” he practically giggled. “I can’t wait to tell him that while he was learning to turn left on command, I was out sabotaging Ashatana’s naval construction yards.”

“Should you be telling me that?” I asked.

He laughed. “I think, given your status in Arentia, it’s safe to tell you anything.”

“My status isn’t quite what you think it is,” I said.

“Not to dispute you, but your status is whatever the king tells me it is. And after what he told me, I don’t have any worries about you keeping state secrets.”

There seemed no point in contradicting him further, so I let it go. The conversation (monologue, really) next turned to his romantic life. He was unmarried, although there was a certain young lady in Arentia City on whom he had his eye. Her name was Rachel, she had long dark hair and a bosom of surpassing perkiness. I gathered she was also quite intelligent, and had goals for her life beyond simply marrying some man who’d keep her fed and pregnant. Anders approved of this, and encouraged her education and training as an architect.

“She’s really good; I wish I could tell her more about my own job, because there are times I know she could help. That little shack where we got the raft? I sort of tricked her into designing it for me. I told her I needed a place to store trade goods where no one could find them, and after I gave her a map of the area, she designed the thing so that it worked with the forest to provide camouflage. Pretty smart, huh? There’s nobody in special ops who could’ve figured that out, that’s for sure.”

He continued telling me about Rachel, how they’d met at an art exhibition in Arentia City, and carefully implied that their first date ended the way boys always hope they will. This didn’t give him a bad opinion of her, though; just the opposite. Her willingness to act on impulse was apparently one of her best qualities.

But solemnizing the relationship was on indefinite hold. “It wouldn’t really be fair to marry her while I was in such a dangerous job, would it?”

“I ain’t the guy to ask.”

“Never been married?”

“Nope.” He was just trying to be friendly, I reminded myself. “Never was lucky enough to find a girl like your Rachel.”

“She’s a jewel, all right. Whenever I have doubts about my job, I remember that I’m doing all I can to keep her and her family safe. That’s all the encouragement I need.”

We stopped in Mahaleela for the night. The town was pretty much the same as I remembered it-one long central road with an inexplicable right angle in the middle of it. The Serpent’s Toe Tavern and Inn was the best accommodation in town, and the desk clerk certainly fawned enough over Anders when the boy flashed his money bag. We sent our horses to the stable, dropped our saddle bags in the room and went downstairs to eat.

Perched on the main road like it was, the Serpent’s Toe catered to a more varied clientele than the regular taverns. Single adult travelers and wealthy families both stopped there, and it dealt with this dichotomy by dichotomizing itself. The main room, where you could get dinner and warm yourself by the fire, was designed to be acceptable to prudish parents: the barmaids wore necklines to their chins, the ale served with dinner was frighteningly watered down, and there were even wet nurses available if the parents didn’t bring their own. Off to one side was the true tavern where you could ogle the girls’ cleavage and arrange for an evening’s companionship while you drank yourself idiotic on the real stuff. It was an interesting approach to attracting customers, but judging from the crowd in the dining room, it worked.

One family, a Mishicot livestock trader with two wives and a half-dozen kids, occupied a corner table. The kids, as Mishicotian children tended to be, were regimented little mechanicals who lifted their spoons in unison under the watchful eye of their mothers. This kind of iron-fisted parenting was necessary when you might have twenty kids in a household. The younger of the wives, a shapely blonde with dark circles under her eyes, nursed a fussy infant and stared blankly into space. Each time the baby made a particularly loud noise, the other wife, dark-haired and portly, would shoot the blonde a disapproving look. Through all this the head of the household ate ravenously, ignoring everything around him. He was tall and handsome, and scanned the other women in the room with the same rapacious gaze so many Mishicotian merchants possessed. In Mishicot a man measured success by wives and children, and he was clearly on his way up the ladder.

Our waitress, far too young for me but just about right for Anders, brought us drinks and bread. The menu was scrawled in chalk on a board on one wall. As we studied the fare, I caught the voices of two tradesmen at the table behind me.

“… worst domestic scandal we’ve ever had.”

“It’s not a scandal, it’s just the inevitable result of dealing with women.”

“You’re too cynical. My wife isn’t so bad. Certainly not a child-killer.”

“Well, you know the government’s not telling us everything. I hear that she’s a moon priestess; I bet it was all part of some spell.”

“To do what? She married the king of Arentia, she’s the most powerful woman in the country now. What more did she need?” His voice dropped. “I bet there’s another man involved, and the king found out it wasn’t his child. This is just his way of saving face.”

“I just know that I don’t believe they’re being straight with us.”

“This king isn’t like that. He doesn’t hide in his castle behind guards and soldiers, he’s never had a scandal, and he’s never been caught in a public lie.”

“Maybe he’s just better at hiding it than his father was.”

That tied in with the message Anders had given me, and I began to understand its urgency. After we ate, I excused myself and went into the tavern for a nightcap. I couldn’t imagine sleeping in Arentia while sober.

The tavern was half the size of the dining hall, lit with a few oil lamps and the smoldering fireplace. But the nearest waitress wore a blouse so low-cut the brown circles around her nipples poked above the hem, and the slit up her thigh went nearly to her waist. She tossed her hair as she turned and gave me the kind of professional smile that promised many pleasant surprises, if my money pouch was heavy enough. Then she looked me up and down the way a butcher might appraise a steer.

“Hi, handsome,” she said. She held her tray with one hand and put the other on her hip, which emphasized her narrow waist. “Like a table?”

“No, thanks, I’ll just sit at the bar.”

“Your loss,” she said with a mischievous wink. For a moment I considered that it really might be. I felt too old, though, to need her kind of distraction.

One thing I hadn’t expected was how weird it was to hear so many Arentian accents. My own had faded into a kind of neutral regional one, but I was slipping back into it with each word I spoke. Usually if I heard someone say “loss,” or “coin,” or any of those words that really emphasized the way Arentians talk, it would be a novelty. In Arentia, of course, everyone spoke that way, and it inexplicably made me nervous.

I sat at the bar. It took my eyes a while to adjust to the dimness. I saw a half-dozen fellow patrons, four clustered around a single table, one at a table by himself and one at the far end of the bar. They were from all over: Suamico, Trego, Winneconne. The other guy at the bar had a tattoo on his arm marking him as a wizard from Colfax, even though he wore neither the robe of his calling nor the insignia ring. Either he was incognito and just not very good at it, or he’d broken their vow of chastity and been formally derobed. I suspected the latter, given the speed with which he put away the ale. Poor bastard, that’s what he gets for signing up with a group of men who decried sex as the world’s greatest evil. The moon priestesses, now, they had the right idea.

The woman behind the counter, a tall, cool blonde with a scar along her jaw that somehow made her more attractive, served me without a smile. I downed it in one swallow, asked for a refill and prompted, “Pretty bad about the queen, ain’t it?”

“Shit happens,” she said as she poured. She wasn’t going to make this easy.

“I’ve been out of the country for a few years. What’s this Queen Rhiannon like?”

“Blonde, blue-eyed, gorgeous,” she said, as if reciting the ingredients of a recipe. “Sings like a bird, dances like the wind. Can heal the sick, raise the dead, make the young men talk right out of their heads. Or so they say.”

“She’s a healer?”

She looked at me with disdain and blew a strand of hair from her face. “That’s exaggeration for effect. Sarcasm, I think they call it.”

I raised my drink. “Here’s to ‘they.’ ” After I took a sip, I asked, “You believe she did it?”

She leaned her hands on the bar and fixed me with her best no-nonsense stare. “I don’t care, mister. I thought King Philip was doing a bang-up job before she came along, and if she made him happy, I was happy. Now I just wish we still had a death penalty, because the bitch deserves to hang.”

That pretty much ended the conversation. I finished my drink and went upstairs, where Anders was already asleep, fully dressed. His sword lay on the floor atop its scabbard, and a dagger handle peeked out from beneath his pillow. I took off my shirt and boots, washed my face in the basin, then dropped off asleep from trail exhaustion more than peace of mind. I dreamed of screams and fire.