Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

“Just to talk with you—on a matter of business.”

With a shrug Ogwern unbarred the door and opened it a bare crack. Jill heard a grunt as their visitor smashed into it and shoved the enormous innkeep out of his way, then slipped in and slammed the door behind him. He was a tall man but slender, and his dark eyes seemed strangely merry. He smiled, too, a flick of full lips in his swarthy face. He wore an ordinary sort of shirt over his brigga, and it seemed he carried no weapons—but something about the way he stood, his hands half-raised to either side of his waist, made Jill suspect he was well-enough armed under the cloth. She stepped back, half-hidden by shadow, to keep a better watch on his hands.

“You’re a long way from Bardek, my good sir,” Ogwern said.

“I am, at that. I’m looking for a particular gem.”

Ogwern groaned and waved both hands in the air.

“You and half the men in the kingdom, or so it seems. That beastly opal, I suppose you mean.”

“Just that. So you’ve been approached?”

“What’s it to you, good sir?”

The fellow laughed—more of a giggle, really—and flicked one hand. All at once he was holding a long knife with a thin blade, fashioned with a pair of curves in it, so that pulling it out of a wound would cause more damage than the original stick. Ogwern gulped and took a step back.

“There’s been no sign of the opal, none.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Ogwern squeaked and glanced Jill’s way. The stranger looked right at her, then shrugged, utterly ignoring the fact that she was armed. For a moment Jill stood frozen by sheer disbelief, but the stranger took a step toward Ogwern and grabbed for his shirt, his knife at the ready. Jill drew, dropping to a fighting crouch.

“Ogwern! Call the town watch!”

Jill swung up, a flick of her wrist meant to slap the knife from his hand, but with a yelp of honest surprise the stranger danced back. Like dweomer a second knife appeared, the same style as the first, in his left hand. Ogwern ran to the window and threw open the shutters. At the sound the stranger lunged at Jill, then danced to one side, slashing with the knife. When she caught the blade on her sword, he gasped in surprise, but he was strong enough to use his long knife as a parry weapon. With a sweep of his arm he forced her blade down and stabbed in again with a thrust of a long arm.

Jill leaped back just as Ogwern began to scream, “Help! Murder!” at the top of his lungs. Like a trapped animal, the stranger charged. He was no clumsy bandit, but her equal, and he fought in a way she’d never seen before, using the knives alternately to slash and parry. Jill was fighting for her life, the steel ringing, blade on blade, as they danced and dodged around the tiny chamber.

Footsteps came pounding up the stairs. “Open in the gwerbret’s name!”

The stranger made a desperate strike, but for one brief moment his concentration broke. Jill dodged in and cut him hard on the right shoulder, then swung back and up, catching one blade and sailing that knife out of his limp hand. With a yelp the stranger threw himself back against the wall. Jill knocked his second knife free on her back swing just as six wardens, tabarded in red and gold, threw open the door and shoved their way into the room.

“Ah, by the gods, good Cinvan,” Ogwern said. “Never has an honest citizen been gladder to see you than I am.”

“Indeed?” The leader, a stout man with graying dark hair, allowed himself a contemptuous smile. “What is all this? Here, it’s that wretched silver dagger who’s a lass!”

“So I am, and I beg you, take us to the gwerbret straightaway.”

“You needn’t worry on that account,” Cinvan said.

Panting for breath, the stranger leaned against the wall. He laid his left hand over the wound and pressed hard, trying to stanch the blood running down his arm. When he glanced Jill’s way, his eyes burned with rage.

“Stanch that man’s wound,” Cinvan barked. “And disarm the silver dagger, too.”

Jill handed over her sword and dagger to one warden while another started looking around Ogwern’s chamber for a rag. The stranger never took his eyes from her face. All at once he smiled, as if he’d made some decision. He took his hand away from his wound, dragged it across his shirt as if to wipe it, then raised it to his mouth.

“Stop him!” Jill lunged forward.

Too late—he’d swallowed whatever poison it was. Rigid in a half circle he fell back, slammed his head against the wall, then twisted, still tight as a strung bow, and fell to the floor. His heels drummed on the wood; then he lay still, a trickle of bitter-smelling gray foam running from his mouth.

“By all the gods!” Cinvan whispered.

Gouts of sweat running into his jowls, Ogwern lumbered into the bedchamber. They all heard him retching into a chamber pot and let him be. The youngest warden looked as if he wished he could do the same.

“Come along, lads,” Cinvan said, a trifle too loudly. “Two of you carry his body. We’ll hustle our innkeep here along to see his grace.”

“By your leave!” Ogwern returned in trembling indignation. “Is this how an honest citizen gets treated when he’s nobly called the gwerbret’s wardens?”

“Hold your tongue,” Jill hissed. “For your own sake, Ogwern, you’d best pray that his grace can come to the bottom of this little matter.”

Ogwern looked at her, shuddered, then nodded agreement. Jill felt sick. What had he been afraid of, that he would smile when he made up his mind to die?

It was a grisly little procession that filed into the torch-lit guard room behind Blaen’s broch. While Cinvan went to fetch the gwerbret, his men dumped the still-rigid corpse onto a table and made Jill and Ogwern kneel nearby. In a few minutes Blaen strolled in, a goblet of mead in hand. He glanced at the corpse, had a good swallow of the drink, then listened while Cinvan made his report.

“Very well,” Blaen said when he’d done. “Now, silver dagger, what were you doing in the midst of this?”

“Working a hire and naught else, Your Grace.” Jill hesitated; for all that she respected Blaen, as a silver dagger her loyalties lay closer to the local thieves than to this living symbol of the laws. “Ogwern told me that someone had been threatening his life, and he offered me a silver piece to guard him.”

“And why was he threatening you?” Blaen turned to Ogwern.

“Ah, well, Your Grace.” Ogwern wiped his sweaty face on his capacious sleeve. “You see, the original threats came from another man, not this one. I own part of the Red Dragon Inn, and this fellow swore I’d cheated him in the tavern room. So I hired Jill, and lo and behold, this perfect stranger”—he waved one hand at the corpse—“came barging into my chambers saying he’d come to settle the matter of the debt.”

As well he might have, Blaen looked puzzled by this ambiguous little tale.

“The same debt?” the gwerbret said at last.

“I suppose so, Your Grace,” Ogwern said. “I can only assume that this fellow was a friend of the man who swore I cheated him.”

“Hah!” Cinvan snorted. “Robbed him, more like.”

“My good sir!” Ogwern gave him a wounded look. “If he thought he’d been robbed, he would have come to you.”

“True spoken,” Blaen said. “Now, here, you mean the man who had the complaint against you is still at large somewhere?”

“Just that, Your Grace, and truly, I still fear for my fat but precious self. I have witnesses to the threats, Your Grace, all most reliable.”

Blaen considered, sipping the mead while he studied the bluish-gray corpse.

“Well,” his grace said finally. “There’s no doubt that a fellow who carries poison in his shirt is up to no good. On the morrow we’ll have a formal hearing on the matter in my chamber of justice. As for now, Ogwern, you may go. Cinvan, detail a warden to stand guard at his doorway all night. The malover will be about two hours after noon, so bring your witnesses with you.”