Gregory Keyes - The Charnel Prince

Leoff blinked. “I—it just seemed the right thing to do, lady.”

She stared at him, then gave a weary little laugh and before he could react, bent and kissed him gently on the lips. Then she straightened. “Mery’s back in the hall. I’ll send her in.”

He waited, stunned, wondering what had just happened.

Mery came straight to his arms when he saw her, a far cry from the days when she’d hidden in his cabinets.

“How was staying with Gilmer?” he asked her. “Did you enjoy that?”

“He was something of a grump,” Mery allowed, “but he was as nice to me as he could be, I suppose. This one time, we went to the village . . .” He listened as she told him about some adventure of hers, but despite the fact that he was overjoyed to see her, the melody was stuck in his head again, and as she spoke, he began playing at it, the missing notes taunting him like an infuriating itch he couldn’t scratch.

Mery smiled. “That’s pretty,” she said. “May I try it?”

“Of course,” he said. “It’s not finished . . .”

He listened helplessly as she played it—perfectly, of course, but still just as incomplete as his version.

“That’s not quite right, is it?” Mery said.

He stared at her. “No, it’s not,” he said at last.

“What if—?” She glanced up at him, then put her tongue in her cheek, placed her hands on the keys, and pushed them down.

Leoff gasped, absolutely stunned. “Of course,” he murmured. “Saint Oimo, of course.”

“That was better?” Mery queried.

“You know it was,” he said, mussing her hair.

She nodded.

He reached over and gently touched the keys, then did what she’d done—instead of sounding the notes singly as a melody, he played them together, as a chord.

“That’s perfect,” he sighed, as the harmony faded. “Now it’s perfect.”

Cazio coughed and spit. Through pain-blurred vision he saw bloody spackles appear on the leaves as his head thumped against the ground, and he had an odd sensation of weightlessness, so that for a moment he wondered if he’d been beheaded, instead of struck by the back of a fist.

He briefly considered continuing to lie there, but instead he painfully flopped back to a sitting position—difficult to do with both hands and feet tightly bound.

He lifted his eyes to again regard the man who had struck him. Without his face-concealing helm, the knight looked young—only a few years older than Cazio, perhaps twenty-three or so. His eyes were something between green and brown, and his hair was the color of the dust of the Tero Mefio—not the copper red of Anne’s hair, but a paler and weaker sort of ruddy.

“I apologize,” Cazio said, feeling with his tongue to see if any of his teeth were broken. “I cannot imagine why I called you an honorless, cowardly gelding. How foolish I feel now that you have proved me wrong. But doing is more effective than words, as they say, and nothing proves bravery better than striking a man who is bound and unarmed—unless, perhaps, it is the murder of a woman.”

The man squatted next to him, grabbed him by his hair, and pulled his head back. “Why can’t you shut up?” he asked in thickly accented Vitellian. “By all the ansu together, why can’t you just learn to keep your mouth closed?” He looked over at z’Acatto. “Has he always been this way?”

“Yes,” z’Acatto answered blandly. “Since the day he was born. But you have to admit, he does have a point. That’s why you hit him, because it’s so frustrating when he’s right.”

“I hit him,” the man said, “because I told him to be quiet.”

“Then put a gag in his mouth and spare us all,” z’Acatto said. “You the embarrassment, and him the beatings.”

“Better yet,” Cazio said, pulling his face toward his enemy’s, even at the expense of losing some hair, “why don’t you untie me and give me my sword? How is it that even though you cannot die, you fear to fight me?”

“Are you a knight?” the man asked.

“I am not,” Cazio replied. “But I am Cazio Pachiomadio da Chiovattio, ennobled by birth. What father raised you, who will not fight when he is challenged?”

“My name is Euric Wardhilmson, and my father was Wardhilm Gauthson af Flozubaurg,” the man answered, “knight and lord. And no son of his need favor any ragtag ruffian like you with an honorable duel.” He pushed Cazio’s head back farther, and then released it. “In any event, my men and I have been forbidden from dueling.”

“That’s very convenient,” Cazio said.

“No more convenient than noticing hundscheit in time to step over it,” the knight replied with a nasty smile. “Anyway, it hardly looks like you defeated Sir Alharyi in a duel. It looked more as if someone dropped stones on him from above, then cut his head off while he was down.”

“That would be the gentleman in the gilded armor, back near the coven Saint Cer? The one covered with the murder-blood of the holy sisters? The one who attacked me in the company of another and with the aid of the Lords of Darkness?”

“He was a holy man,” Euric said. “Do not speak ill of him. And if you must know, I am not ansu-blessed as he was. Only one of us at a time is given that honor, and Hrothwulf was the chosen.” He nodded toward another of his captors, a man with hair as black as coal but with skin so fair his cheeks were pink, like a baby’s.

“Well, send him over. I’ll fight him—again, I mean. I’ll sit him down on his ass a second time.”

“I’m starting to like the old man’s suggestion of a gag,” Euric said.

“You haven’t gagged me since I’ve been your captive,” Cazio said. “I don’t imagine you will now.”

Euric smiled. “True. It’s much more satisfying to show you how completely your words don’t bother me.”

“Which is why you struck me, I suppose,” Cazio said.

“No, that was just for the pleasure of it,” Euric countered.

“Don’t make a fool of yourself, lad,” z’Acatto said. “You let him talk because you’re hoping he’ll get you mad enough to untie him. You want to fight him as much as he wants to fight you.”

“Well,” Euric allowed, “I would like to see how he thinks he could beat me with that little sewing-needle of his, yes,” Euric said. “But I’m on a holy mission. I can’t think of myself when my task comes first.”

“There’s nothing holy about chasing two young girls all over creation,” z’Acatto grunted.

“That’s done with,” Euric said, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. “Didn’t you know? We found them just after we caught you. In fact, Hrothwulf thinks you killed them.”

“Killed them?” Cazio blurted. “What are you talking about?”

“They had their throats slit, both of them, just over the hill from where we caught you. There were already ravens pecking at their carcasses. That’s how Auland got hurt.”

Cazio stared at him. “What, the fellow who lost his eyes? The one that died of blood poisoning before the day was even up? You really think a raven did that to him?”

“I saw it myself,” Euric said. But he looked strange, as if somehow he doubted what he was saying.

“Although—” He broke off. “No. I saw them. Their heads were nearly off.”

“You’re lying,” Cazio said. The girls had just gone over the hill to answer nature’s call. He’d only taken his eyes off them for a few minutes. Still, he pictured the girls, brigand’s grins cut in their throats, and suddenly felt a wave of nausea.

“You sons of whores,” he swore. “You get of distempered dogs. I’ll kill every last one of you.”

“No,” Euric said. “You’d be dead already, if we didn’t need a swordsman. But the old man will do, I think, if you’re so very impatient to meet Ansu Halja. Rest assured, you will die, and it won’t be pleasant, so take this time to pray to the ansu you pray to.”