Fool’s Assassin

She is. I’m on my way down. Revel is on watch on her door, but I’d like you or one of the boys to take his place.

Me. I’ll make my excuses and be right up. A heartbeat’s pause, then, fiercely, Find who did this!

I intend to.

I think she took satisfaction in my cold assurance.

I moved swiftly through the corridors of Withywoods, every sense alert. I was not surprised when I rounded a corner and found Riddle waiting for me. ‘Anything?’ I asked him.

‘Nettle’s gone up to her mother’s room.’ He glanced past me. ‘You know that you were probably the target in some way.’

‘Perhaps. Or the messenger herself, or the message she bore, or someone seeking to do injury to whoever sent the message by delaying or destroying it.’

We were moving swiftly together, trotting side by side like wolves on a trail.

I loved this.

The thought ambushed me and I almost stumbled. I loved this? Hunting someone who had attacked someone else in the sanctity of my own home? Why would I love that?

We always loved the hunt. An ancient echo of the wolf I had been and the wolf who was still with me. The hunt for meat is best, but any hunt is always the hunt, and one is never more alive than during the hunt.

‘And I am alive.’

Riddle shot me a questioning glance but instead of asking a question, he gave me information. ‘Revel himself took the food and tea to the messenger. The two pages who were on the front door recall admitting her. She came on foot, and one says that she seemed to come from behind the stable rather than up the carriageway. No one else saw her, though of course the kitchen staff recall making up a tray for her. I haven’t had a chance to go out to the stables and see what they know there.’

I glanced down at myself. I was scarcely dressed to appear before our guests. ‘I’ll do that now,’ I said. ‘Alert the boys.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s their home, Riddle. And they are not really boys any more. They’ve been talking of leaving for the last three months. In spring, I think they’ll fly.’

‘And you have no one else to trust. Tom. When this is over, we are going to talk again. You need a few house soldiers, a few men who can be brutes when the situation calls for it, but can open a door and serve wine to a guest as well.’

‘We’ll talk later,’ I agreed, but grudgingly. It wasn’t the first time he had pointed out to me that I should have some sort of house guard for Withywoods. I resisted the idea. I was no longer an assassin, living to guard my king and carry out his quiet work. I was a respectable land-holder, a man of grapes and sheep now, a man of ploughs and shears, not knives and swords. And there was, I had to admit, my conceit that I could always protect my own household against whatever limited threats might find their way to my door.

But I hadn’t tonight.

I left Riddle and trotted through the halls on my way to the stables. There was, I told myself, truly no indication that whatever bloodshed there had been was deadly. Nor did it have to be related to me or to my own. Perhaps the messenger had enemies of her own who had followed her. I reached a servants’ entrance, pushed open the heavy door and dashed across the snowy courtyard to the stable door. Even in that brief run, I had snow down the back of my neck and in my mouth. I slid back the bar on the stable doors and pushed one open just enough to slip in.

Inside was the warmth of stabled animals, the pleasant smell of horses and soft light from a shielded lantern on a hook. In response to my entrance, Tallman was already hobbling toward me. His son, Tallerman, supervised most of the work of the stables now, but Tallman still considered himself in charge. On days when there was a great deal of coming and going, as there was tonight, he rigorously controlled which animals were stabled where. He had strong feelings about teams left standing all evening in harness. He peered at me through the gloom of the stable and then gave a start as he recognized me. ‘Holder Tom!’ he cried in his cracking voice. ‘Shouldn’t you be dancing with the fine folk in the great hall?’

Like many another oldster, his years had diminished his regard for the differences in our status. Or perhaps it was that he’d seen that I could shovel out a stall with the best of men, and he therefore respected me as an equal. ‘Soon enough,’ I replied. ‘The dancing will go on to dawn, you know. But I thought I would wander out here and be sure all is well in the stable in such a storm.’

‘All’s well here. This barn was built sturdy two decades ago, and it’ll stand for a dozen more, I reckon.’

I nodded. ‘Steward Revel tells me that you had visitors here tonight, ones that made you uneasy.’

His querying look changed to a scowl. ‘Yes. If you act like a horse thief, I’ll speak to you like you’re a horse thief. Don’t come prying and peeking around my stables and then tell me you’re a minstrel. They were no more minstrels than Copper there is a pony. They didn’t smell right to me, and I took them right up to the door.’ He peered at me. ‘That Revel fellow was supposed to warn you. You didn’t let them in, did you?’

Hard to admit it. I nodded once. ‘It’s Winterfest. I let everyone in.’ I cleared my throat at his lowering stare. ‘Before that. Did you notice anyone else here at the stables, anyone odd?’

‘You mean that foreign girl?’

I nodded.

‘Only her. She came in here like she thought it was the house. “I need to speak to the master,” she told one of the hands, so he brought her to me, thinking she wanted me. But she looked at me and said, “No, the master with the crooked nose and the badger’s hair.” So, begging your pardon, we knew she meant you and sent her up to the house.’

I dropped my hand from where I’d touched the bridge of my nose and the old break there. This was just getting odder and odder. A vanished messenger who had come seeking me with only a description rather than my name. ‘That’s all?’ I asked.

He frowned thoughtfully. ‘Yes. Unless you want to hear about Merchant Cottleby trying to get me to stable his horses here when both have signs of mange. Poor creatures. I put them under shelter in the woodshed, but they’re not getting anywhere near our stock. And if his driver wants to complain, I’ll tell him what I think of his horsemanship.’ He looked at me fiercely as if I might challenge his wisdom.

I smiled at him. ‘A small kindness, Tallman, for the horses’ sake. Pack them up some of the liniment you make.’

He stared at me a moment, then gave a short nod. ‘Could do that. Not the beasts’ fault they’re ill cared for.’

I started to leave, then turned back. ‘Tallman. How long between the time the girl arrived and the three you took for horse thieves?’

He lifted his gaunt shoulders and then let them fall. ‘She came before Caul Toely arrived. Then came that tailor fellow, and the Willow sisters on those matched ponies of theirs. Those ladies never ride in a carriage, do they? Then the Cooper boys and their mother, and …’

I dared to interrupt him. ‘Tallman. Do you think they were following her?’

He stopped. I waited impatiently as he weighed what he knew. Then he nodded, his mouth tight. ‘I should have puzzled that out for myself. Same sort of boots, and they came right to the barn and were trying to peek in. Not looking for horses to steal, but following that girl.’ His eyes met mine angrily. ‘They hurt her?’

‘I don’t know, Tallman. She’s gone. I’m going to go see if those three are still here.’

‘You do that. If they aren’t there, they can’t be far, in this weather. You want I should send a lad to Stocker’s Holding, ask to borrow their tracking dogs?’ He shook his head and added sourly, ‘I’ve said many a time, it wouldn’t hurt us to have our own hunting pack.’

‘Thank you, Tallman, but no dogs. The way the snow is coming down, I doubt there’s any trail to follow.’

‘You change your mind, Tom, you let me know. I can have my son go fetch those hounds in a heartbeat. And—’And now he was calling after me as I beat a retreat. ‘If you come to your senses about keeping our own dogs, you let me know! I know a great bitch, will have her pups by spring! You just let me know!’

‘Later, Tallman!’ I shouted the words back to him, and got a mouthful of snow for my trouble. The snow was still coming down and the wind was rising. I suddenly felt certain that those I sought were still within Withywoods. No one would be desperate enough to try to flee during this storm. I reached for Nettle. Is all still well with your mother?

I left her sleeping, with Hearth sitting in a chair by her fire. I told him to latch the door behind me, and I heard him do it. I’m with Riddle and Just, and our guests. We have discovered nothing out of the ordinary. There is no sign of the messenger.

Dead? Fled? Hiding within Withywoods? It had to be one of the three. There were three minstrels who came late. Two men and a woman. Web seemed unsettled by them. Are they still among our guests? I pictured them for her in my mind.

I saw them earlier. But they did not look like musicians to me, nor behave like them. They gave no indication of wanting a turn on the dais.

Send Just to me, please. We’re going to do a quick search of the unoccupied wings. And let me know if you and Riddle find the three strangers.

Just and I divided Withywoods and went room to room, looking for any sign of intrusion in the unoccupied areas of the manor. It was not an easy task in the rambling old manor, and I relied on my Wit as much as my eyes to tell me if a room was truly empty. Nettle and Riddle found no sign of the three strangers, and when she asked our other guests if they had seen them, the responses were so conflicting as to be useless. Even our servants, who sometimes irritated me with the close attention they paid to family doings, had nothing to report. The three and the messenger were as gone as if they had never visited us at all.

Toward the small hours of the morning, when our guests were sated with food and music and were departing for their homes or seeking the chambers we had offered them, I called off the search. Riddle and the lads joined Revel in seeing that all the outside doors were secured for the night, and then made a quiet patrol of that part of the manor where we had housed our guests. While they were doing that, I resolved to slip off to my private den in the West Wing. From there I could access a spy-network that only Patience, Molly and I knew existed. It was my low intention that I would wander it tonight and peer in on our sleeping guests to see if anyone had offered the strangers shelter in their rooms.

Such was my intent. But when I reached the doors of my study, the hackles on my neck rose. Even before I touched the door handle, I knew it was not quite latched. And yet I recalled clearly that I had shut the door behind me before I had followed Revel to join Riddle. Someone had been here since I last left it.

I drew my knife before I eased the door open. The interior of the room was dim, the candles guttering out and the fire subsiding. I stood for a time, exploring the room with my senses. There was no one inside the room, my Wit said, but I recalled that earlier the strangers had been almost transparent to Web, a man with a much more finely tuned magic than I possessed. And so I stood, ears pricked and waited. But it was what I smelled made me angry. Blood. In my den.