Alex Bledsoe - Dark Jenny

“Where’s the queen?” Hoel said, puzzled. “We have a message for her-”

“Shut up,” Agravaine warned. Then he glared at me and said, “Well, if it isn’t the asshole.” His nose was huge by now, swollen and crusted with blood at the nostrils, so that his words came out as Ip it ibn’t the asshobe.

I looked around. The moonlight provided plenty of illumination and confirmed that not a single weapon-size object lay within reach. I had the emergency knife in my right boot, but with my useless hand and the manacles, I’d never get it out quickly. I was screwed.

“We have business to finish, and this is as good a place as any,” Agravaine said as he approached. His distorted voice would’ve been comical in any other situation. “You killed Sam and want to pin it on the queen. Now we’ll show you what happens to people who mess with the Knights of the Double Tarn.” He stepped right up to me, fearless because of his backup. He pushed me in the chest like a schoolyard bully.

My rage flared. Well, hell, I thought. If I’m going down, I’ll go down swinging. And then once more I punched him in the face with every bit of my strength. And like a moron, I instinctively used my right hand again.

This time the sound was like two bags of muddy gravel crashing together, and if the fresh pain that shot up my arm was any indication, it must’ve been agony for Agravaine. He let out a shriek and stumbled backward, his hands clutching his face. I won’t comment on the sound I made as my fingers gave way like a bundle of dry twigs.

My punching hand was now officially out of commission, although I used my forearm to block the handle of the spiked club Cador swung at my head. Where the hell had that come from? I kicked Cador in the balls, just before Hoel sucker punched me in the kidney. I fell to my knees but had time to sweep Hoel’s legs out from under him with the manacle chain. He landed on his back and his head struck the ground, hard. He was out.

Before I could capitalize on this, Agravaine roared out of the dark, blood streaming down his face, and hit me with his whole body. The impact knocked me flat, and he jumped on my chest. Moonlight twinkled on his dagger as he raised it high over me. “I’ll cut your fucking heart out!” he yelled.

Then he felt my knife under his chin. Drawing it left-handed and with my hands cuffed had not been easy, but I was highly motivated. He froze; his arm was raised to strike, but there was no way he could sweep it down into my chest before I buried my own knife in his neck. If I died, we died.

Blood from his nose dripped on my face. The only sound was our mutually labored breathing and, for me, the cacophony of my heart.

“Who goes first?” I asked. I hoped it sounded more like a cool whispered threat than a panicky gasp, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

One of the other knights moaned. Neither of us dared glance away to see who. I couldn’t make out Agravaine’s eyes clearly, but I knew the dark rage and arrogance in them warred with the realities of his situation.

“Hello?” a male voice called from upstairs inside the secret passage.

“Someone’s coming,” Cador said in a pained squeak.

Agravaine slowly rose. I sat up with him and kept my knife under his chin. As soon as I could get my feet under me, I scrambled backward out of range, trying to look as if I always held my knife left-handed. Cador lifted the unconscious Hoel onto his shoulders, and Agravaine slipped his blade back out of sight. Without a word they vanished back into the shadows beneath the tree. The hinges of a hidden door creaked.

I backed into the nearest wall and slid to the ground. My hand hurt like my first broken heart. I waited to see what fresh threat would emerge from the secret passage.

It was Thomas Gillian. “Mr. LaCrosse? Are you down here?”

“Yeah.” I slid the knife back into my boot before he appeared from the stairwell. He looked at me with a schoolmaster’s disapproval. I said, “Would you believe I wasn’t really trying to escape?”

“Of course. You gave me your word that you wouldn’t.” If he was being ironic, it was too dry for me to catch. “You seem to be bleeding.”

“I tripped over my new jewelry.”

“I see,” he said, as calmly as if he saw this sort of thing every day. “Are you in any condition to make it back up? Your room is ready.”

“I’ll make it,” I assured him.

We went up the stairs, through the lounge, and crossed the main hall so quickly that the nobles didn’t have time to demand my head. We went through another door, up a second flight of stairs, and down a wide corridor. We were now above the royal chambers; it meant that, unless you were a lizard capable of scaling sheer rock walls, you couldn’t leave your accommodations without passing the queen’s guards below.

Gillian opened the huge wooden door at the end of the hall. “Here you go. I think you’ll find everything in order.”

My hand throbbed with every heartbeat, but I still wondered why Gillian accepted my lame excuse so easily. He couldn’t be that oblivious. He gestured for me to raise my hands and removed the manacles from my wrists. The sense of relief was akin to a burning man’s hitting the water. “Thanks. I’d tip you, but I’m tapped out.”

“Since I’m a Knight of the Double Tarn, that would be considered an attempted bribe. Best you don’t pursue it.”

“Fair enough.”

He nodded and, without another word, left.

They’d given me a small but lavish guest room. The main door was reinforced, and bars protected the windows; I was as safe as if I’d been in prison, and that may have been the plan. But double mattresses and Bob Kay’s promised supply of ale went a long way toward making jail bearable.

I rubbed my wrists, careful with my right one. Numbness had set in, but I knew that wouldn’t last. I wanted to sit down, drink myself stupid, and awaken anywhere but in Grand Bruan. Instead, after washing Agravaine’s blood off my face and eating some of the fresh bread set out for me, I paced the room and methodically studied it. All castle rooms had secrets, whether openings into passageways or peepholes for observation. Royalty liked to keep their enemies, as the saying goes, even closer than their friends, and anything embarrassing about the personal habits of a rival was as good as a freshly edged battle ax. Many treaties had been signed, to the consternation of the general populace, to preserve the dignity of a king with a soft spot for little boys or livestock.

I spotted two peepholes right away and plugged them with pieces of the bread. Then I searched even more closely because those were so obvious, I suspected them as decoys. Sure enough, I found a third hidden ingeniously in the mortar between two wall stones, positioned to give a good view of the entire room, especially the bed. I stuffed the sharp end of a quill into that one, on the off chance a peeper might put out his own eye before he noticed it. I found no hidden seams indicating a secret passage and finally declared the room secure.

The closets and dressers contained clothes that were close enough to my size. I sat on the edge of the huge canopied bed and wrestled my boots off with my good hand. I took off my shirt, soaked Agravaine’s blood out of it in the basin, then hung it up to dry near the fire. I put my trousers neatly between the mattresses, an old bachelor trick to restore the creases. I changed into some comfortably baggy black pants and a nice pullover tunic. All this domestic effort took the last of my energy, so I fell back on the mattress and stared up at the canopy’s design. Like everything else here, it depicted another scene of battle triumph for King Marcus Drake.

I fell asleep staring at it. My own memories of battle easily conjured the appropriate sounds.