Alex Bledsoe - Dark Jenny

“As anyone who’s ever hosted him knows, Tommy has a taste for apples,” Jennifer said with a smile. “The first thing he always asks is, ‘How may I serve you, Your Majesty?’ followed almost immediately by, ‘Are there any apples about?’”

There was polite laughter at this.

“Tonight, in his honor we have apples that I picked myself in the royal orchard and brought personally from the palace, so that everyone, including Thomas, might truly know the esteem in which he’s held.” The girl knelt before the queen, who selected an apple and motioned for the honored knight to step forward.

Gillian was roughly the same age as the queen, with long black hair pulled back in a ponytail and the kind of solid, square build that served well in battle. As she handed him the apple, there was a moment of grim, serious eye contact completely at odds with the frivolous situation. It reminded me of the uneasiness I’d noticed earlier in the other knights. Then he lifted the apple to his mouth.

Just before he bit into it, a ragged cry of pain filled the room. The young knight who’d earlier snatched the apple from the tray fell forward onto the stone floor with a wet, painful smack. He immediately went into violent convulsions.

With cries of horror, the demure lords and ladies bravely scurried away from him. The veteran knights, as such men will, immediately drew their weapons and looked for the next threat rather than aiding the victim of the last one. Most of the new soldiers followed suit, although several just froze.

I pushed through the crowd in time to see the young knight stop thrashing and lie completely still in that final, unmistakable way. His eyes were wide-open, and his tongue stuck out between his teeth.

I knelt beside the man-hell, a boy, with a beard that was no more than a few ambitious wisps and a neck still dotted with pimples. Black foam oozed from between his clenched teeth, and his body had already so swelled so much that his thin show armor could barely contain him. His hand still clutched the apple.

I pried the piece of fruit from his fingers, careful to use a handkerchief so I wouldn’t touch it, and sniffed. Under the normal juice smell was the distinctive pungent odor I expected. Poison.

In the silence, a voice I instantly recognized called out, “That man killed a knight!”

I looked up sharply. Between the pale faces at the front of the crowd, Lord Astamore glared at me with a mean, triumphal grin. “He slipped him some poison! I saw it! Don’t let him get away!”

“He’s a murderer!” another man cried.

“Yes, I saw it, too!” chimed in a third voice

“Now, wait a-,” I started to protest, but suddenly strong hands grabbed my arms and yanked me to my feet. Two Knights of the Double Tarn held me between them, and from the looks on their faces I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I wore no sword, and the knife I always carried in my boot might as well have been on the moon for all the good it could do me.

Then a third knight, bigger and older than the rest, approached me. I decided he deserved all my attention. He held out his hand for the apple. “I’ll take that.” He wrapped the handkerchief around it and put it in a pocket. “And who are you?”

Murder was too serious for aliases. “I’m Edward LaCrosse.”

“There’s no LaCrosse on the guest list.”

“You know every name by heart?”

“Yes.” He said it with such certainty I couldn’t doubt him. “So what are you doing here?”

“Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, apparently.”

“I’ll decide that.”

Lord DeGrandis lumbered out of the crowd. His red face contrasted sharply with the yellow frills at his neck. “Why are you standing there? Execute this man!”

“No one’s getting executed,” the older knight said, “until I get answers.”

“This is my castle, Sir Robert,” DeGrandis boomed.

Sir Robert faced him steadily. “Then give some orders.”

With a wave of his hand, DeGrandis said, “Execute this man!”

The knights holding me neither moved nor responded.

“Did you hear me?” DeGrandis said. It came out high, whiny, and desperate. “I’m the chancellor of this training school, the lord of this castle, and I gave you an order!”

“Did you hear anything?” the man holding my right arm said.

“Just a big yellow fly buzzing around,” the other responded. Neither smiled.

To my handlers Robert said, “Secure this gentleman in one of the serving rooms. I’ll speak to him in more detail shortly.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” I said as they pulled me away. “You know this kid was already dead when I got to him, right?”

“I know he’s dead now, ” Robert said, then turned to the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, I ask that you remain calm. No one’s leaving the hall until we know more about what happened, so I suggest you take advantage of the free food and drink.”

Trying to take on a roomful of Knights of the Double Tarn would be efficiently fatal, so I let them drag me away without a fight. The knights handed me over to a pair of the newly minted soldiers, whose grip was no less formidable. “Take him into a side room and sit on him,” one veteran said. “Sir Robert will be along shortly to question him.”

“Yes, sir,” the first soldier replied, and they quickly hustled me out of the hall. Great, I thought, a whole new irony: in trying to help a stranger, I’d fallen into the middle of something deadly here in Grand Bruan, where I knew no one and had no resources at all. Who was laughing now?

My keepers slammed me down so hard the wooden chair cracked from the impact. “Sit there and be quiet,” one of them snarled. He’d clearly perfected it in a mirror and would need a lot more practice before it had the desired effect. Given my circumstances, though, I didn’t point that out.

They’d taken me to a tiny room outside the main hall. I was far enough away that I heard nothing except the breathing of my minders, the occasional pop from the torch outside the door, and my own thundering heart. It wasn’t a cell, though; it was filled with wooden crates, box-laden shelves, and the distinctive odor of disuse. Most castles were full of forgotten rooms like this, and I was grateful it wasn’t a fully equipped interrogation chamber. Maybe it was all there was: had the castle been so thoroughly decommissioned for peacetime training that no prison cells remained?

“Hold out your arms,” the other one said. He produced a pair of elaborately engraved manacles. A few links of chain attached each wrist cuff to a thick metal disk the size of a saucer. He snapped the manacles around my wrists.

My guards seemed to think pitching me into the chair and cuffing me meant I could no longer hear them talk. “Did you see the look on his face?” the taller man asked his friend. “He was spitting up black foam. Black foam.”

“I know,” his compatriot agreed. He had short sandy hair and was missing half his left earlobe. His voice shook a little.

“And did you see the look on the queen’s face?” the other said. He had one of those high, insinuating voices that seemed naturally suited to gossip. “She was aiming for Gillian.”

“No, man, I don’t believe that. She’s the queen.”

“She’s also a woman, and they’re a hell of a lot meaner than men. That fancy headband doesn’t make her any less female.”

“Don’t let Kay hear you say that,” the first soldier whispered urgently. “You’ll have us both peeling potatoes for a week.”

“Look, you stand guard here. I’m going back upstairs.”

“Me? Why do I have to stay?”

“Because I have seniority.”

“A week and a half is not seniority.”