Genevieve continued heading south, in the direction of the capital and the king’s court. She knew where Altfor would be heading, and that would also be the place where her child would be able to grow up safely. The court moved regularly, as all kings’ courts did, but she was determined that she would find it, and everything that went with it.
“It’s not so far now,” Genevieve told herself. After all the time she’d spent walking, she had to be close by now. Even so, there was no sign of the capital in the distance.
There was an inn, sitting behind a small section of walls at a crossroads, with several buildings clustered within so that it was more like a small settlement than an inn. Just the sight of it was enough to remind Genevieve of how exhausted she was. She had little coin, and if anyone recognized her then she would be in danger, but she couldn’t just pass by an opportunity to rest like this.
She headed for the inn. Perhaps it was even good that she had found it, because she would be able to find where the king and his court were currently lodged. It was foolish to expect a king to stay in one spot, when the size of his court would quickly eat its way through a palace or country residence’s supplies.
Now that she was closer to the inn, Genevieve could see brightly colored wagons that spoke of the presence of players and entertainers. Genevieve could remember people like that coming to her village once, and how delighted she had been to hear the songs and see the performances. The prospect of it made her hurry on toward the inn.
When she reached it, Genevieve could hear the music within, and see a man just outside juggling with a series of apples to the delight of a couple of local children. Inside, she could see that the inn was packed with people, most of whom were currently laughing at a man and a woman who were up on a makeshift stage, apparently each trying to deliver a serious soliloquy, but without noticing the other, so that their efforts turned it into comedy as they narrowly missed walking into one another and appeared to finish one another’s sentences.
Genevieve watched all of it, but pulled the hood of her cloak up to be certain that she wouldn’t be recognized. She suspected that not everyone would be as kind as the two crofters had been if they realized who Genevieve was. This far south, they were well out of Altfor’s lands, but feelings for a noble out on her own, and whose husband had burned so much, would still be raw. She started to make her way toward the bar, careful not to jostle anyone as she went, and not wanting to cause trouble.
She was halfway there when she saw the figure standing not far from the stage, hood up and eyes covered as if he were blind. He could wear all the disguises he wanted, but Genevieve’s heart still felt as though it stopped when she saw him. She would recognize her so-called husband anywhere.
He was wandering the crowd, holding out a hat to collect coins for the performance as he shuffled there. Genevieve had the feeling that Altfor was also keeping an eye on the crowd, watching for anything that might pose a threat to the players. Genevieve didn’t know how the former duke’s son had come to sign on as protection for a bunch of players, but that was exactly what it looked like had happened.
Without thinking about it, Genevieve started stalking Altfor through the room, her hand tightening instinctively on the hilt of her eating knife. She slipped into the spaces he left, watching him, trying to pick out a moment when she would be able to step up to him and cut his throat.
“All this way to kill you,” Genevieve whispered, “and you’re right there.”
Genevieve hated Altfor, wanted him dead almost as much as anything else in the world. The fact that he was here seemed like a gift sent by fate, and the kind of thing that she couldn’t turn down. Even so, as she followed him like that, Genevieve found herself faced with one problem…
She wasn’t sure that she could do it.
A part of that was the physical difficulty of it. As easy as it looked to just step up to her husband and stab him, Genevieve knew there was more to violence than that. If Altfor saw her coming, then she would be fighting a trained warrior armed with a sword. If she struck and Altfor survived the first blow, Genevieve would be fighting him hand to hand, and she already knew that he was stronger than her.
Another part of it was simply that, whatever else he was, Altfor was the father of her child. He was her husband. Genevieve wasn’t sure she could just walk up and stab anyone, let alone someone who was all of those things.
She tried making herself do it anyway, gripping the knife harder and harder until her knuckles turned white, telling herself that this breath, or the next, she would step forward and deliver the blow that mattered.
She didn’t, though, even though Altfor was still there, standing with his back to her, an easy target.
“How am I supposed to kill him if I can’t stab him?” Genevieve asked herself.
This had been part of the plan with Sheila—that Genevieve would bring her sister back when the deed was to be done so that they could be certain that it would be done. Right now though, Genevieve was alone in the inn, and she couldn’t even pull the hood of her cloak down for fear that someone might recognize her…
The idea settled into her brain slowly, as Genevieve thought about all the hatred that she had experienced on her way this far south. These might not be Altfor’s lands, but there had to be a reason he was disguised, didn’t there? Genevieve couldn’t imagine anyone liking Altfor if they knew who he was, and there were enough drunks in the crowd that it might work. It was just a question of deciding how to do it without putting herself in danger.
Genevieve looked around the crowd, listening to them, trying to find someone suitable. People talked in voices loud and low, about everything from crops to battles, to the play still taking place at the front of the inn to the chances of King Carris going north. It took a minute or two before she found the man she wanted, seated and already drunk, large and tough looking, a sword strapped to his waist.
He was talking about the north. “Aye, we’d do worse than to go up there to join with them,” he said. “That Royce, he’s a one who has the interests of ordinary folk in mind.”
“Ordinary folk,” another man snorted. “He’s calling himself king.”
“But nothing like the duke who went before him,” the big man said.
“You want to be careful, Hobb. The wrong person hears this and they might think that you mean treason.”
The big man stood. “Treason? And it’s no crime to do all that the duke and his son did up there? They burned villages, Laris, burned them with the people still in. They slaughtered people. I’ve a distant cousin used to be up that way, and they put his head on a spike for no reason at all.”
“Probably all that poaching he used to—”
“For no reason at all!” the big man bellowed, and then looked around at the people staring at him. “I’m going outside.”
Hobb set off toward the door, and Genevieve saw her chance. Timing her walk across the inn as carefully as she could, she put herself in the big man’s path, looking as frightened as she could.
“Watch where you’re going,” he said as he bumped into her. He looked down at Genevieve, and for a moment she wondered if she had done the wrong thing by putting herself in the path of someone so big and so drunk.
“I… I’m sorry,” she stammered out, trying to think of how to say it. “It’s just… did you see him?”
“See who?” Hobb demanded.
“Please, not so loud,” Genevieve said, letting more fear into her voice. “He mustn’t know that I’m here. I… I’m from one of the villages he burned.”
That caught the big man’s attention.
“That who burned?” Hobb asked.
Genevieve pointed as discreetly as she could in Altfor’s direction. “That… that is Altfor, the son of the old duke to the north. He murdered everyone.”
Hobb looked drunkenly from her to Altfor and back again. “You’re sure?”
“I will never forget his face for the things that he has done,” Genevieve promised the big man.
That seemed to be enough for him as, already reaching for his sword, Hobb set off across the inn.
“Duke Altfor!” he bellowed. “I see you there. I know it’s you!”
Genevieve suspected that the sensible thing to do then would be to leave, but she didn’t. She hung back in the crowd instead, keeping out of sight, making sure that Altfor wouldn’t see her face. It gave her a perfect view as her husband turned to the big man and looked him straight in the eye in spite of his supposed blindness.
“You’re a poor actor, Altfor,” Genevieve whispered to herself.
“I don’t know who you are,” Altfor proclaimed, “but I’m not this man you think I am. Now leave me be!”
He didn’t say the word “peasant,” but it was so clear from his tone that he might as well have shouted it. Even the way he spoke marked Altfor out as noble. Hobb might have been drunk, but even he picked up on him.
“You are him!” the big man said. “You’re Altfor, the one who killed all those people.”
“People who were mine to kill!” Altfor snapped back, obviously deciding that he had no chance of continuing the deception. He drew a sword, and the blade shone in the light filtering in through the windows.
Hobb drew his own blade, and Genevieve cheered him silently. He swung a blow that looked as though it could have felled a tree, and Altfor danced back.
In that moment, Genevieve realized that whatever else he was, her husband was still a noble, with all the training that came with it. Hobb’s blows were powerful and true, but Altfor had the skill to deflect and to dodge, even though he looked as frightened as a rabbit while he was doing it.
Then Altfor struck back, and all but severed Hobb’s head from his shoulders.
Perhaps on another day, that would have made the room go silent, but now it burst into motion, with a dozen or more men reaching for blades. Genevieve heard some shouting about Altfor’s villainy, others declaring their loyalty to the king and their support, and a few of the players looking as though they didn’t know which side to fight on. A young man with a long knife stepped in to defend Altfor, and another man hit him. A man who looked like a former soldier ran at Altfor, and Altfor ducked, thrusting through him.
Genevieve ducked back toward the wall. A man loomed up over her, and she cried out as he lifted a blade. Then someone barreled into him from the side, knocking him out of the way. Genevieve pressed her way out of the fight, keeping her eyes on Altfor as he fought his way toward the door.
A man hit Altfor with a club, and he staggered, but cut back.
“Come on,” Genevieve muttered, as more men went at Altfor. “One of you can do it.”
They went for him with clubs and knives, swords that looked as though they’d seen plenty of use and hammers that had probably seen more. With each blow that fell toward her husband, Genevieve found herself hoping it would be the one to connect and kill him, but each time, Altfor found a way to survive.
He ducked under a sword blow, cut back, rolled out of the way of a kicking boot, and parried another stroke. Genevieve felt sure he shouldn’t have been able to survive such an onslaught, but somehow he did. If another man had managed it, Genevieve might almost have thought of it as heroic, but with Altfor, it merely seemed like a rat running from a fire while everyone else burned.
Of course, he hadn’t been the one to start this particular conflagration of blows. Genevieve cursed the fact that she hadn’t thought of the way this might turn out, and started to make her way along the edges of the inn, looking for a back door. She found it, opened it, and slipped out.
She slipped behind the wheel of one of the wagons there, keeping out of sight and waiting to see whether Altfor would come out under his own power or in pieces.
When he did come out, it was at speed, almost as if someone had thrown him from the door. The young player from before followed him, slamming the door behind him as if it were a bulwark to hold back the tide of people.
“You tricked us,” the young man said.
“Turn around and walk away, Colm,” Altfor replied. That caught Genevieve a little by surprise. It wasn’t like her husband to give anyone a warning.
“We took you in; we even asked you if you’d had any part in the burnings, and you lied to us. You fooled us.”
He took a step toward Altfor, a hand on his sword, and that was his mistake. Colm probably thought that Altfor was a bully who would back down, but Genevieve knew just how deeply the streak of violence ran in him.
Altfor’s sword thrust quickly, sharply, and straight into Colm’s chest. The young man looked at him for a moment in obvious shock, his mouth opening and closing as if he might say something, and then toppled silently to the ground. Altfor hurried over to a horse, mounted it, and heeled it forward out of the inn’s compound.
Through her guilt at the pain she had just caused, Genevieve considered her options. She wasn’t sure that she had any. There was nothing she could do for the young man who lay on the ground, because his eyes were already glazed over in death. She still couldn’t bring herself to stab Altfor, and in any case, the fight in the inn had only served to remind her of just how dangerous he was.
All she could do was go over to another of the horses and mount it, following in the direction that Altfor had gone and hoping that somewhere along the road, there would be a chance to do this better.
Maybe then, finally, her husband would die.