I found my master waiting at the portcullis to the Low Tower, chatting with the highguard there as if they were old friends.
“Girton,” she said. “It seems I have become the mistress of your wardrobe.” The guard passed over a neatly wrapped package of clothes to her. “I think you should wash these before wearing them. They are wrapped in rags and stink of corpses. Have you visited the washhouse?”
“No, Master,” I said. “Not the Low Tower’s.”
“We should go then,” she said, passing me the package. “It will be quiet at this hour.”
The washroom was a stone room full of large wooden barrels. During the day there was a huge fire burning in the grate to heat water: nothing but ashes and a few embers now, but the room was stifling. I unwrapped my clothes from the corpse rags that held them.
“I saved some corpsers, they were good people. The Children would have killed them if I had not intervened.” I expected her to chastise me. She had always been more for standing aside than intervening, at heart she remained an assassin where I had long ago become something else. Something between assassin and warrior, someone who had no real place in this world. She put her hand on my arm.
“You are right. They are good people,” she said. Her grip tightened briefly and then she let go, limping over to throw the clothes into a tub. My armoured undershirt she had put to one side by a bucket of sand. I sat on the stone shelf and began to scrub at it as my master pounded my clothes with a wooden stick.
“Darsese caused the souring below Ceadoc,” I said.
“Darsese?” The pounding stopped. “High King Darsese?”
“Yes.” I told her what Govva had said to me.
“They are sure it was what the cured said? Darsese?”
“Absolutely, and it fits with what Gamelon told me of the menageries. Arketh sculpted the people there into horrors, but Darsese must have used his magic to keep them alive.” I hooked a tub of dirty cooking fat with my foot and dragged it toward me. “Without him to do that Arketh can make no more of her horrors. I think that is why she leads them.”
“Leads them?”
“Yes, she says she remains a loyalist. She was there.”
“I don’t know what I struggle with more,” she said. “That Arketh cares who sends her victims, that Darsese was a sorcerer or that he would do something as selfless as cure the Tired Lands. He has never struck me as the sort of man that cared anything for others.”
“I thought the same, but what use in being high king if there is no one to rule?” I said, picking up the fat and smearing it over my armour to guard against rust.
“There is that, I suppose,” she said, and continued to agitate the clothes in the tub.
“Do you think they are right?”
“Right?”
“That Darsese still lives, somewhere?”
“There is no way that a magical working of that size could be hidden,” she said, and she began to beat the clothes harder. “He lived in a castle full of fanatics dedicated to wiping out magic.”
“I did not get the feeling Fureth was a fanatic,” I said. “He seemed more interested in power than magic.”
“Even if Fureth is not a fanatic, he leads men that are, and if we imagine Darsese was a sorcerer there are limits to what Fureth could hide without exposing himself. Where do these people think Darsese is, anyway?”
“They were a bit less sure of that.”
“I bet they were.”
We were quiet then, while we thought about it and went about our respective tasks.
“I also found out, Master, that there are no wise women in Ceadoc. Even those who dealt in herbs were picked up by the Landsmen long ago.”
She was picking out clothes from the soapy water and taking them to rinse. She dropped them in the clean water with a splash, soaking herself.
“Blue Watta’s eyes,” she spat. “Do you think that guard lied to us?”
I thought for a moment.
“No. I do not. She was scared. She believed what she said.”
“Aye, I thought that also.”
“So Berisa Marrel wanted the key for something else.”
“What though, Girton?”
“A lover, maybe? Someone in the town? If Marrel could not supply an heir maybe she looked elsewhere?”
“Do you believe that?” she asked. I thought of all I had seen of Berisa Marrel and the way she had been around her husband.
“No. No, I do not. He may have been twice her age but she seemed devoted to him.”
“Seemed,” said my master. “But I agree. She did not strike me as one unhappy with her lot in life.”
“Maybe she pursued a vendetta without her husband’s knowledge?”
“That is possible.”
I stopped rubbing my armour with fat.
“Master,” I said. “If she had hired an assassin to, say, remove Suvander ap Vthyr, for instance. And then that assassin got a better offer …”
“That is not the way we work, Girton.”
“We do not become Heartblades either, Master,” I said. “Much has changed.”
“Torelc below the sea.” She spat on the floor to seal her curse. “I suppose it has. You think she may have employed an assassin and then that assassin silenced her to keep their identity secret?”
“It would make a sort of sense.”
“But how did they kill her, Girton?” She threw the wet clothes against a drying stone to knock moisture from them. “I have thought and thought about the Speartower since we visited, and cannot see a way it was done.” She picked up her crutch. “You will have to hang up the clothes, Girton. It is hard for me to balance to do it.”
I knew my master could balance on one foot for hours on end but she tired quickly now, though she hated to admit it.
“Very well, Master. Then I must sleep or I will fall over.”
“Good idea, Girton. Maybe sleep will bring us some clarity on events.” I hung up the clothes, listening to my master’s slow and steady progress out of the bathhouse. Step, scratch, step, scratch. I wanted more than anything to sleep, the day was quickly catching the night and Rufra would not want me tired. But I still had one task left before I could sleep and it could not wait. I left the washing rooms and sneaked into Ceadoc Castle, moving from room to room like a ghost. My past trips had given me more of an idea of the castle’s geography but I still got lost several times. Once I came close to walking into the chapel of Arnst’s Children, but their cries of worship were so loud it was easy enough to avoid. When I finally found my way to the dungeon I found Saleh, the dungeon keeper.
“Saleh,” I said. “Is Barin with his brother?”
“No, the big man stands guard now. Aydor.”
“May I see him?”
“Aydor? He is hard to miss.”
“No, Boros. I would like to see Boros.”
“He is sick.”
“I would still like to see him.”
Saleh looked sick himself. He knew he should not let me in, but he liked me, I think.
“If his brother finds out …”
“He will not, I promise.” Saleh nodded, glanced around, then handed me the key.
“You must be quick.”
“I will be.”
I stepped down into the dungeon, staying as quiet as possible. Aydor slept against Boros’s door—a good trick, that and I had to wake him.
“I need to see Boros.” He screwed up his eyes, trying to wake, and then nodded. I had known it take over an hour for Aydor to feel capable of speaking when he was woken from sleep. “If anyone finds me in there, you must say you stole the key from Saleh for me.”
“So,” Aydor said, the words came out through a yawn, “Rufra has finally decided you should act.”
“Not yet.”
“There is only one night left after this before the fool’s throne is raised and Boros burns.”
“I know. But I have a plan.”
“Which is?”
“Best you do not know.”
He shrugged.
“Fair enough.”
I slipped into Boros’s cell. It was filthy and I suspected Saleh had not been allowed in, as he at least attempted to keep the cells free of the worst filth. Boros was curled up in one corner, dried blood around his mouth. When he saw me his eyes widened with fear and he tried to push himself even further into his damp corner.
“Boros,” I said. I took a step closer. “I want to get you out.” He stared at me. “But I cannot, do you understand? All will know it was me and they will presume I act for Rufra. Then any chance he has to be high king, to do good, that will end.” Boros stared at the floor. Nodded. I think he had resigned himself to death. I covered the few paces between us and knelt in front of him. When I reached for him he recoiled, then made sure to meet my eye and spat on the floor. “At the least, Boros, I will make sure you are spared the fire.” I leant in close. He could not escape me, there was nowhere for him to go. “But there is another way. Could you bear, Boros, to be tainted by magic if it gave you the chance to escape?”
Again he spat on the floor and turned his head from me, but I had expected nothing else. However, I knew there was one thing Boros wanted more than any other.
“What about if it gave you revenge on your brother?” His head turned back to me and this time he did not spit. There was something in his eyes I did not recognise, something I had not seen there before.
I chose to believe it was hope.