“Tell them that the threats they face are worse than they know. That war threatens. And to show them I know the things I speak of, I will tell them what happened to the Prince of Settland’s daughter and her blue dower- stone, and why the merchant’s nephew was spared. You must use just the words I will tell you.”
Tinwright nodded, writing happily as Gil stuttered out his message. He had earned a magnificent wage for the simplest of tasks. No one would take this dream-born nonsense seriously, least of all the royal family.
When he had finished he gave the potboy the letter and bade him goodbye—Gil was going to take it himself to the great keep and give it to the prince and princess, he said, although Tinwright knew the poor fool would get no farther than an amused or irritated guardsman at the Raven’s Gate. As the potboy’s descending footfalls sounded on the stairs, Tinwright lay back on his bed to think of all the ways he would spend his money. His head no longer ached. Life had suddenly become very good.
Gil did not return to the Quiller’s Mint that afternoon. Tinwright was arrested by the royal guard an hour before sunset, with ink stains on his fingers and his gold still unspent.
22. A Royal Appointment
WITHOUT NAMES:
Hard as stone beneath the ground
Buzzing like wasps
Twining like roots, like serpents
At least, Matty Tinwright reflected, they hadn’t put him in chains, but nothing else about the experience had been very pleasant at all. He had almost pissed himself when the guards arrived at the Mint to arrest him. Then, seeing the castle’s stronghold for the first time, smelling the dank, ancient stones and the various scents of miserable, confined humanity, he had nearly done it again. It was one thing to write couplets about the sufferings of Penkal’s Silas in the fortress of the cruel Yellow Knight, but the actuality of a dungeon was far more unsettling than he had imagined.
He let out a sigh, then worried that it might sound like a complaint. He didn’t want these very large guards with their big, callused hands and scowling faces to be angry with him. Two of them were sitting on a low bench talking while a third stood only a few yards away on his other side, pike in hand. This was the one who was making him most uncomfortable, he kept looking at Tinwright as though he was hoping the prisoner would make an attempt to escape so he could spit him like broiled hare on a sharpened stick.
But the poet wasn’t going to move. His mind was fixed on passivity like a compass needle pointing north.
From where he sat he could see the potboy Gil slouching on the floor on the far side of the guards’ table. Tinwright hoped it was a good sign that there were three guards between Gil and the door and only one for him, that it meant they thought Gil was the true miscreant. Not that the potboy looked any more likely than the poet to attempt escape. His thin face was blank and he stared at an empty spot on the opposite wall as though he were someone’s befuddled grandfather left at the market by accident.
The guard who had been giving Tinwright unpleasant looks took a few steps toward him, mail clinking, until he stood just over him. The man carefully—but not
“I saw you in the Badger’s Boots,” the guard said. Painfully conscious of the pike planted between his thighs like a conqueror’s flag, Tinwright was momentarily bewildered, thinking that he had been accused of stealing the footwear of some guard-troop mascot. “Did you hear me, little man?'
Suddenly, his wits began to work again. The man was talking about a tavern by the Basilisk Gate that Tinwright had visited a few times, usually in the bibulous company of the playwright Nevin Hewney. “No, sir, you mistake me,” he said with all the honesty he could feign. “I have never passed the door I am a partisan of the Quiller’s Mint in Squeakstep Alley. A fellow like yourself would not know the Mint, of course—it is a low; low place.”
The guard smirked. He was young, but already with a sizable belly on him and a doughy, unpleasant face. “You took my woman away from me. Told her she would enjoy being with a clever fox like you more than the pig who was squiring her.”
“I’m sure you’re wrong, good sir.”
“You said she had breasts like fine white cake and an arse like a pomegranate.”
“No, a peach, surely,” said Tinwright, remembering how drunk he had been that night and horrified to think he might have employed a simile as clumsily unlovely as “pomegranate.” A moment later he clapped a hand over his mouth in horror, but it was too late. His unruly tongue had betrayed him again.
The guard favored him with a gap-toothed grin that the poet felt sure did not have much to do with concern for his well-being or appreciation for an adept bit of flirtation. The guard leaned close and reached out with his thick fingers, then took Tinwright’s nose and twisted it, hanging on until the poet let out a terrified squeak of pain. The guard bent until his cheese-stinking maw was only a finger’s breadth away, which meant there was one small benefit of Tinwright’s nose being at this moment so agonizingly crimped shut. “If the lord constable doesn’t want your head off—and if he does, I’ll be first in line for the chore—then I’ll be over to see you at Quiller’s Mint, and soon. I’ll cut some bits off you,”—he gave the nose another twist for emphasis,”—and then we’ll see how the ladies like you.”
The door to the stronghold rattled open. The guard let go of Tinwright’s snout and straightened up, but not before giving it a last cruel tweak. Tinwright was left with tears welling in his eyes and a feeling like someone had set fire to the center of his face.
“Perin’s smallclothes, is the swindler crying?” a voice boomed from just above him. “Are there no true men left in this kingdom who are not soldiers? Are all the rest just pimps and coney-catchers and womanish weepers like this one?” The vast shape of Lord Constable Avin Brone loomed over him, his beard a gray-black thundercloud. “Are you grizzling because of your crimes against the crown, man? That may help you with the Trigonate priests, but not with me.”
Tinwright blinked away the tears. “No, my lord, sire, I am guilty of nothing.” “Then why are you blubbing?”
Somehow Tinwright did not think it would be a good idea to mention what the guard had done. That might turn the beating the man intended to give him into something more likely to prove fatal. “I… I have a catarrh, sire. It strikes me like this, sometime. This damp air…” He waved his hand to indicate the surroundings, but then had another moment of panic. “Not that I have any complaint against the place, sire. I have been excellently well treated.” He was babbling now. Tinwright had never seen Brone from closer than a stone’s throw: the fellow looked as though he could crush a poet’s skull with one meaty hand. “The walls are very sturdy, my lord, the floor well- made.”
“I suspect someone struck you,” said the lord constable. “If you don’t shut your mouth now, I will probably do it again myself.” He turned to one of the royal guards who had risen from the bench. “I’m taking both prisoners.” He waved to one of the pair of soldiers whom he had left waiting by the stronghold door; both wore the livery of Landsend, Brone’s own fiefdom. “Fetch this pair along,” he told his man. “Beat them if you have to.”
The stronghold guard looked a little surprised. “Do… are the prince and princess… ?” “Of course they know,” Brone growled. “Who do you think has bid me bring them out?” “Ah. Yes. Very good, my lord.”
Tinwright scrambled to his feet. He was determined to go without trouble. He did not want to be hurt anymore, and he certainly did not want the huge and frightening lord constable to get any angrier.
Despite his terror,Tinwright couldn’t help but be surprised when Brone and the two soldiers took them a long, winding way through the back of the great hall and at last into a small but beautifully appointed chapel. One
