Michael Sullivan - The Crown Tower

Arcadius glanced at the other boys around them. “Why don’t we go back to my office. This fire is getting a bit too hot now.”

“Did I say-”

Arcadius held up a hand. “We’ll talk more in my office where I only need to be concerned with Sisarus the Squirrel spreading rumors.”

Arcadius was slow on the stairs, holding up the hem of his robes and revealing a pair of matching blue slippers.

Leave the mud on the street!

They reached the professor’s door, where Arcadius stopped and turned to Hadrian. “Do you remember yesterday when I spoke about your father’s dying wish?”

Before Hadrian could reply, the professor swung open the door. Inside, across the room, sat the hooded man.

He sat alone in a corner below the wasp nest and near the reptile cage. Wrapped as always in his black cloak, hood raised so his face was hidden. Still, Hadrian was sure it was him. He looked smaller sitting down, a black puddle or errant shadow, but the garment was unmistakable.

The professor walked in, oblivious to the intruder.

“Professor!” Hadrian rushed past him, drawing both swords. Just having them in his hands made him feel better than he had in days. As much as he disliked what they had accomplished together, they were still the best friends he had.

The hooded man did not move, not even a flinch.

Hadrian positioned himself between Arcadius and the killer. “Professor, you need to get out.”

To his surprise, Arcadius was busy closing and locking the door behind them.

“It’s him,” Hadrian declared in a low tone, pointing with a sword. “The murderer from the barge.”

“Yes, yes. That’s Royce,” Arcadius said. “And you can put the swords down.”

“You know him?”

“Of course, I sent him to escort you here. I told him to look for a man wearing three swords. Not too many of those, and even fewer arriving from Calis. He was supposed to show you the way here.” The professor glared at the hooded man and added in a louder, reproachful tone, “I had expected him to actually greet you and introduce himself like any civilized person would. I was hoping you would get acquainted during the trip here.”

“I got him here alive-that was hard enough,” Royce said.

“You killed those people!” Hadrian shouted now. There was no way he was sheathing his swords, not with the hooded man in the room.

“Yes.” The reply was as casual as if Hadrian had asked about the weather. “Well, that’s overstating-I didn’t kill all of them.”

“Meaning I’m still alive?” Hadrian said. “Is that why you’ve come here? To finish the job? I think you’ll find that’s a mistake.” Hadrian raised his blades and advanced.

“Hadrian! Stop!”

The hooded man did move then, faster than any man Hadrian had ever seen. He scaled the shelving and hoisted himself to the second-story balcony, out of reach. Overhead the owl screeched, and a flustered pigeon batted its wings inside a cage. Hadrian halted more out of surprise at the man’s athleticism than from the professor’s words. He wasn’t sure what he had seen. The man had become a blur of motion.

“Royce isn’t trying to kill you,” Arcadius said.

“He just said so!”

“No, he didn’t. He-”

“If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t be annoying me with your stupidity right now.” Royce’s voice came from above.

“Royce, please!” The professor had his hands up, waving, his voice exasperated.

“Why did you do it?” Hadrian asked. “Why did you kill everyone?”

“To save your life.”

Hadrian wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “What?”

“I had hoped this meeting would begin on a better footing,” the professor said, moving to position himself in front of Hadrian. “But I suppose that was wishful thinking, wasn’t it?”

“Telling me in advance might have helped. Maybe a polite ‘Oh, by the way, we’ll be having morning tea with a murderer’! This man killed three merchants, a woman, a postilion named Andrew, and Farlan the boatman. All of whom-”

“Not the boatman.” The voice-as that was all it really was to Hadrian, a disembodied sound emanating from the darkened depths of the cloak-had a distinct edge. “The woman killed the boatman.”

“The woman? Vivian? Are you insane?”

The very idea made him take a step toward the wrought-iron stairs.

“And why would she do that?” Hadrian shouted to the upper story.

“She told you herself. Farlan was going to have the sheriff investigate.”

“Yeah, investigate you !”

“But I didn’t kill anyone. Well, not anyone in Vernes … well, not recently.”

“And Vivian did?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that?”

“Believe what you want. They knew an investigation would match all the loot in their crates to missing items from the homes of those murdered in Vernes.”

“Wait … their crates? What are you talking about? Are you also accusing the gem merchants of being involved?”

“By Mar, you are slow.” Royce made a noise that might have been laughter. “First Farlan opened his trap about reporting to Malet, and then after they killed him for it, you went and declared your intentions to do the same stupid thing. You painted a target on your back and left it for me to erase.”

“And you couldn’t come up with any better solution than killing everyone?” Arcadius asked, disgusted. “You know how I feel about that.”

“And you know how little I care about how you feel,” Royce replied. “You wanted him here alive-he’s here. Be happy. And if it makes you feel better, I didn’t start it. They came after me. The fat one and the younger one tried to jump me as I was coming out of the forward hold. I guess they didn’t like the idea of me discovering their secret.”

“Or maybe Sebastian and Eugene just thought you were the killer,” Hadrian said. “And attacked you out of fear. You don’t know. You don’t have any evidence to accuse them any more than they had to accuse you.”

“I watched the woman kill the boatman,” Royce said. “She thought everyone was below. She sat next to him, all warm and friendly. Said she was cold-lonely. The boatman was happy for the company. She reached around his head with a knife, and he was still smiling when she slit his throat. She couldn’t get his body in the water-too heavy-so she fetched Samuel and Sebastian for that.

“The way I figure it, she’d done the same to the men in Vernes-got all friendly with them, then cut their throats. The other three did the heavy lifting. Not a bad system.”

There was a pause as Hadrian tried to process this.

You want to tell me what’s really going on?

I don’t understand, Vivian said.

Neither do I-that’s the problem. Your husband wasn’t killed, was he?

He’d known something wasn’t right. A woman who’d just lost her husband wouldn’t be inviting him to her room. And how odd had it been that everyone was so insistent that the hooded man was responsible for everything, despite any real evidence.

After a moment, he sheathed his swords.

“Does that mean he plans to play nice? Can I come down?”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure it’s quite safe now,” Arcadius replied. “Isn’t it, Hadrian?”

He nodded.

Royce descended effortlessly. He still kept his distance and his hood raised, but it was farther back and now Hadrian could see more of his face. His skin was as pale as his nose had suggested, his features were sharp, with distinct planes, eyes cold, calculating.

Hadrian was running the sequence of events through his head. “The barge-how did you make a whole barge disappear?”