Clandestine Circle

Chapter Twenty

The party of red-clad guards rode through the city gates just as the merchant guild’s clock rang five. The city guards at the gate saluted their commander and waved the group through. They were past the Souk Bazaar and had made the turn on the road to the Governor’s Palace and the temple of the mystics when a clatter of hoofbeats caught their attention. Lord Bight, mounted on his sorrel, came trotting down the road at the head of a troop of heavily armed Governor’s Guards. He saw Commander Durne and rose in his stirrups.

“I’ve had a report that the Dark Knights are going to raid into the northern Vale tonight,” he shouted. “Bring your men and come with me.”

Linsha automatically reined Windcatcher around to follow the commander, but he stopped his horse in front of her. “Not this time, squire,” Durne said. “One injury a day is our limit. Escort Mica back to the temple, then return to the barracks and get some rest. There will he other times.”

Linsha turned to Lord Bight to appeal the decision, but he took one look at her bloodied shirt and snapped, “Obey your orders.” Then he wheeled his horse away, and the company cantered after him along the road to the east.

Linsha watched them go. Although she loved a good fight against the Knights of Takhisis, she felt like a limp rag tonight. Commander Durne was probably right to send her back. She wouldn’t be much use to them. Reluctantly she turned and followed the dwarf.

The healer paid no attention to the absence of the other guards or to Linsha’s continued presence. He rode on toward the temple, humming to himself and staring at something only he could see between his horse’s ears.

At the fork of the road leading to the temple, he turned in his saddle and said, “You don’t have to trail me up to the temple. I think I can find my way from here.”

Linsha ignored his sarcasm. “I was told to escort you to the temple. I will escort you.”

His lips pulled down in an irritated frown, but he said nothing more. They rode in silence through the trees and up the hill to the green lawns of the temple grounds. Mica didn’t bother to say good-bye or invite her in. He simply reined his horse in the direction of the temple stables and left her behind.

Linsha glared after him. If there was anyone in Lord Bight’s court who should be the Dark Knight spy simply by measure of his unpleasant attitude, it should be that dwarf! She hoped Lord Bight or Commander Durne would find something else for her to do tomorrow besides help the ungrateful lout.

Rather than backtrack the way she came, she decided to take the trail through the woods that Lord Bight had showed her the night they entered the passages under the city. Wearily she turned Windcatcher down the hill and toward the trail to the palace. The mare’s hooves stepped soundlessly on the thick grass of the lawn. The light of early evening was gold and hazy around them. She found the trail easily enough and reined the horse into the long shadows under the trees. The woods lay still around her, for there was no wind to stir the leaves.

An owl hooted a long, angry cry in the trees ahead.

Linsha started upright in her saddle. Owls did not usually call in daylight. If there was one out in these woods, then it could only be… The lady Knight dug her heels into the mare’s sides. Windcatcher sprang forward.

“Varia!” Linsha called. The owl cried again, a long, shivering note of anger and sadness.

Windcatcher cantered down the trail between the trees and through the undergrowth.

A brown shape swooped out of a large sycamore and soared by Linsha’s head, wailing softly. “Linsha, I hoped you would come this way. Follow me!” the owl cried. She banked to the right, away from the path and toward a copse of smaller, denser pine. Linsha had to slow the horse to a walk in the thick growth of vines, shrubs, and small trees. When she reached the copse, she had to dismount and tie the mare to a tree limb, then continue on foot. She pushed into the thick stand, and the dark evergreens closed in around her.

“There, under that young pine. Do you see him?” Varia directed her.

Linsha shoved a branch out of her face and came into a slight clearing in the middle of the pine trees. Evening sunlight barely penetrated the heavy growth and the deep shadows that cloaked the forest floor, but there was just enough light to gleam on a patch of bright red, a red that had no place among the stand of trees. Linsha hurried forward. She came to two black boots lying among the crushed grass. Her gaze followed the boots up to the red breeches trimmed in black and the red tunic of a Governor’s Guard. A man lay on his belly in the shade of the pines, a man who looked unnaturally still.

Linsha took in his dark blond hair and strong build, but she didn’t recognize him until she rolled him over and saw his face. “Captain Dewald,” she gasped. Commander Durne’s lieutenant stared up at the sky with clouded, sightless eyes.

“What happened to him?” she asked the owl as she knelt beside the body.

“I don’t know,” Varia hooted. “I came to the woods, hoping to meet you. While I waited, I did a little hunting and there I found him. He has been here a while, for ants have already discovered him.”

Linsha pulled her hands away and used only her eyes to examine the body. She tried to disregard the lines of ants that crawled around his open eyes, nose, and mouth. “Oh, wait. There.” She pointed to a dark stain and two small rips on the chest of his tunic. “He’s been stabbed twice, by a stiletto, I’d wager, but there’s no blood on the ground. He was probably killed somewhere else and dumped here. No one but an owl could have found him in this undergrowth.”

Varia sat on a branch close by and craned her neck to see the man clearly. “Linsha, I know this man,” she said.

“Really. How?”

“I have seen him with Lady Annian.”

Linsha’s anger boiled up. “What? He’s a Knight?”

“No, no,” the owl hastened to reassure her. “I think he’s only a paid informant. I have seen him with Lady Annian in the streets. Enjoying the taverns… and things. I think he was her contact in the court.”

“She knew I was joining the guards. Why didn’t she tell me?” Linsha said furiously.

“Maybe she didn’t want to jeopardize his safety by putting him in contact with you. He wasn’t a trained Knight, remember.”

“I’d say his safety has been jeopardized with or without me.” She brushed the ants off Captain Dewald’s face and closed his eyes. Not that the closed lids would stop the ants and flies for long, but it seemed a respectful thing to do. “I wonder who caught up with him, and why.”

Varia fluffed out her feathers and hooted softly. “I will tell Lady Karine tonight. She can tell Annian. The news will grieve her.” She sidestepped along the branch until the limb drooped under weight, bringing her close to Linsha. “Tell me what happened to you.”

“Looters,” Linsha sighed. “One caught me with a knife.” She rubbed a finger over Varia’s brown and white barred wing.

The owl hopped gently onto Linsha’s wrist. “I am glad you were not seriously hurt. A healer closed the wound?”

“Mica. He and I were collecting records to take to the temple.”

“Ah, the grumpy dwarf.”

Linsha’s face became thoughtful. “Commander Durne said something to me that I thought was strange. He told me to watch my back around Mica, that Lord Bight doesn’t trust him.”

“Doesn’t trust his own healer?” Varia repeated dubiously.

“Yes.” She pursed her lips. “Keep a watch on Mica when you can. If you see him leave the temple at odd hours or do something out of character, let me know.”

“As you wish. What are you going to do about him?”

“Mica?”

“No. The captain.”

Linsha sat back on her heels and said, “I can’t lift him onto Windcatcher alone. He’s too big. I’ll have to report this. Commander Durne may want to see this place before they move the body.”

She carefully rolled his body back the way she had found him. Feeling tired to the bone, she climbed to her feet and, still carrying Varia, returned to her horse.

“You came out to meet me,” Linsha remembered. “Was there something else you wanted to tell me?”

Varia bobbed her head. “Lord Bight heard from one of his spies that the Dark Knights are going to raid the farms again. He took off like an avenging dragon with most of his men.”

“I saw them on our way back. Commander Durne wouldn’t let me go with them.”

“He cares about you. I suppose that is one thing I like about him.”

“You don’t like him?”

The owl turned huge eyes on her. “I did not say that.”

“But you don’t like him,” Linsha persisted.

“I do not know him well enough to decide,” Varia replied. “But I do not trust him. I cannot see past his facade, and that bothers me.”

It disturbed Linsha, too. Varia was a superb judge of character and preferred to spend her time with creatures who were generally good. If Varia couldn’t look past Ian Durne’s social masks to read the makeup of his character within, she would never come to like him. It bothered her also that Durne shielded himself so well that even Varia’s perceptions couldn’t sense him. What did he have to hide?

She tucked the thought away in her memory for later and led Windcatcher back to the trail. “I will come to the barn tonight if there’s time.”

With, a powerful thrust, the owl launched herself off Linsha’s arm and winged into the trees. “Until then,” she called and was gone, a whisper on the wind.

Heavy of heart, Linsha rode to the palace and reported to the officer of the watch. The lieutenant’s face paled, and his hand worked, open and shut, on the pommel of his sword while he shouted orders and organized a squad to investigate the murder.

When they were ready, Linsha led them back to the captain’s body and explained how her normally staid mare had bolted from a snake and charged into the undergrowth close enough to the grove of pine for Linsha to catch a glimpse of red.

The lieutenant, a stranger to her, eyed her suspiciously, paying special attention to her bloody shirt. She told him about her duty in the harbor district and the run-in with the looters. She suggested he talk to Mica and Commander Durne.

Still, the lieutenant took no chances of making a mistake in this murder of one of their own. He ordered Linsha to stand by until Lord Bight returned, then he posted guards by the body and Linsha and sent to the temple for Mica.

The dwarf, he was informed, had gone back to the city and was not available.

When she heard this, Linsha clenched her teeth and suppressed the oaths she wanted to utter. Maybe Varia had seen him and was following.

The nearly full moon rose and sailed placidly to its zenith before Lord Bight and his men returned from the farmlands in the vale. They rode slowly, bringing many wounded and three riderless horses with them. The officer of the watch met them at the front gate. He quaked inside, seeing Lord Bight was already in a towering rage, but he stood straight and delivered his bad news.

The lord governor reined his horse aside and rode down the hill without a word. Commander Durne waved the company on, then he and a squad trotted after Lord Bight into the trees and followed the flickering light of torches to the copse of pine and the body of Captain Dewald.

“Oh, no,” Durne breathed. He threw himself off his horse and knelt beside the body of his friend and aide. He bowed his head and covered his eyes with his gloved hand. Lord Bight squatted down on the other side of the body and, like Linsha, brushed away the ants and flies from Dewald’s face. After a moment Durne collected himself and, with Lord Bight’s help, tipped the captain’s body over. Together they examined it as thoroughly as they could in the light of torches.

“Who found the body?” Lord Bight demanded.

One of the guards pointed to Linsha, who sat under a nearby tree with two more guards in close attendance.

“Why are you under guard?” Commander Durne sprang to his feet and strode to her.

She stared up at him in weary resignation. “The officer of the watch didn’t like the stains on my shirt. He was just trying to be careful.”

“You may release her,” he ordered, and the two guardsmen saluted and moved away.

Once again she explained how she had found Dewald’s body on her way back to the palace. Lord Bight listened carefully, although his eyes burned with an inward fury that Linsha sensed had little to do with this incident. Commander Durne studied the ground around the body, noted the lack of blood and the drag marks in the grass, and came to the same conclusion Linsha had.

“He was killed somewhere else and dumped here,” he told the lord governor.

Lord Bight merely nodded, containing his anger like a volcano about to erupt.

Silently the company of guards gathered around their fallen comrade. They laid the captain’s body on a litter and escorted him through the veil of silver moonlight to the palace on the hill. There they wrapped him in a linen shroud, placed him on a bier, and set him to rest in the great hall until his burial in the morning. Guards stood at his head and feet, and his sword rested at his side. Commander Durne knelt by the bier for a long while, his head bowed and his hands resting on the shrouded arm of the dead.

Linsha, meanwhile, found herself free at last to seek her rest. After feeding and rubbing down Windcatcher, she retrieved a loose caftan robe from her quarters and made her way to the garden bathhouse. The courtyard was quiet, and the few men that were about were subdued and grim. She knew the foray that night had been a disaster, but no one had given her the details and she hadn’t asked. It seemed too much to face on top of the untimely death of Captain Dewald.

In the bathhouse, she handed over her bloody tunic and shirt to the ever-present attendant, who merely shook her head at Linsha’s carelessness with uniforms and bore them away.

Linsha’s bath was prolonged and delightful. When at last she was finished, her skin was wrinkled and scrubbed clean and her muscles no longer ached. She pulled the caftan robe over her head and walked outdoors, barefoot and dripping wet. A passing breeze drifted through a trellis of twining moonflowers, bringing a delicious scent to the night. She wandered along the paths in the back garden beside clumps of gardenias, peonies, and hibiscus. The wind cooled her wet skin and stirred her damp curls.

A faint splash reached her ears, and she wondered if Shanron had decided to use the bathhouse at this late hour. She hadn’t seen the barbarian woman that day. Maybe Shanron would like some company. But when she walked out from between a corridor of shrubbery into the open place where the reflecting pool sat, she saw it wasn’t Shanron who had come to enjoy the garden. It was Lord Bight. There, in the rectangular stone pool, lay the lord governor of Sanction, reclining in the water and the silver light of the moon’s rays. He stretched out full length, still completely clothed. Only his boots lay on the ground where he had dropped them. His head rested on the stone wall, his hand idly stirred a floating water lily. The small fountain played over his face in a shimmering shower of white droplets.

Fascinated, Linsha walked to the side of the pool and stood studying his face. He didn’t hear her over the splash of the fountain, and since his eyes were closed, he didn’t notice her either. He looked utterly serene. The lines of care and anger were erased from his face, replaced by an aura of contentment and quiet joy that even the gray-white light of the moon couldn’t disguise.

She reached out to touch him, then checked and slowly withdrew her hand. Moments of peace such as this had to be rare for him these days. She didn’t want to disturb it. She turned silently to go.

“You’re not disturbing me,” his deep voice said above the music of the fountain. “Please stay.”

She halted a step away from the pool and smiled down at him. His eyes stayed closed, but he grinned back at her. “What are you doing, Your Excellency?” she had to ask.

“Swimming,” he replied without opening his eyes. “I try to swim every night. It helps me relax. It was too late to go to the harbor tonight, so I came here.”

“Your Excellency, there is a perfectly good bathhouse over there. If you use it, you won’t come out smelling like fish.”

“The bathhouse was occupied. Besides, my excellency likes fish,” he announced. “Fish and water and flowers and moonlight and night wind and beautiful wet women.” He patted the stone rim of the pool, inviting her to sit down.

“I’m not wet anymore,” she teased.

His hand snaked out, snatched the hem of her robe, and pulled hard. With a squawk, she toppled into the pool, sending waves of water and lilies sloshing over the rim. He laughed as she surfaced, soaked and bedecked with pond plants. “Now you are,” he gasped and laughed again.

Linsha swatted him with a handy lily pad. He roared and splashed water at her. They fought their mock battle from one end of the pool to the other until the pool was a mess of plants and mud and the fish were hysterical. At last they staggered out and collapsed, drunk with delight on the grass lawn.

The lord governor sighed and lay on his back. “Thank you, Lynn. I haven’t laughed like that in days.”

“Any time, my lord.” Linsha was surprised to realize she meant it. She had admired and respected Lord Bight for some time. Now she could add the truth that she genuinely liked him, arrogant rascal that he was. “But you don’t need to thank me,” she went on, primly wringing out her robe. “You were the one soaking himself in a fish pond like a decrepit sea elf.”

“Decrepit!” he bellowed. “I’ll show you decrepit.” He lunged to his feet and snatched her before she could run. Throwing her over his shoulder, he marched to the bathhouse and tossed her in the bath, robe and all.

Linsha hadn’t grown up with an older brother for nothing. Shouting a war cry, she boiled out of the water, grabbed his muddy tunic and hauled him in after her. His weight fell on top of her, and for a moment they thrashed intertwined in the water.

Abruptly he pushed away from her and climbed swiftly out of the pool. Panting and dripping, he gazed down at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable in the shadows.

Linsha perceived his withdrawal immediately, and she was flooded with embarrassment and remorse. In the pleasure of the moment, she had let herself forget her adopted place and character. She was not a Lady Knight worthy of his attention. Here she was only Lynn, a squire in his court, and she had no business cavorting with him in the bath.

“Your Excellency,” she said nervously, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.” She groped her way out of the pool across from him and pulled her wet robe closer around her. Her curls lay plastered to her head.

“You didn’t,” he said. “You have reminded me that even lord governors should play once in a while.” He handed her a towel. “It’s late. I still have duties to attend to. Good night, squire.” Still soaking wet, he turned on his heel and strode out of the bathhouse.

Linsha watched him go, worried by the sudden change in his demeanor. Her hand automatically clutched the dragon scale under her wet robe. Had she offended him that badly? All of her pleasure evaporated in a sense of dismay and confusion. She dropped her towel on a rack and said softly, “Good night, my lord.”

Outside in the hot darkness, Linsha walked quickly through the garden toward the barracks. Head down, her thoughts elsewhere, she didn’t see the dark figure detach itself from the garden gate and slide out of sight into the shadows of the courtyard.