A Princess of Landover

Still, Ben Holiday suspected the truth and did not trust him. That might have been worrisome had he thought the High Lord could prove anything.

A door opened at the far end of the room, and his scribe, Cordstick, a wisp of a man with a huge mop of bushy hair, came hurrying across the room. “My Lord,” he greeted, bowing low, hair flopping. “We have a problem.”

Laphroig didn’t like problems and didn’t want to hear about them, but he nodded agreeably. “Yes? What is it?”

“We received word from one of our loyal subjects that there was a man—well, not a man, really—but he was asking questions in the town below the castle about you, and he …”

He stopped, as if uncertain where to go next with this. “He was asking questions about your family, my Lord, all of them, including your wife and child.” He swallowed hard. “About their untimely deaths.”

“Get to the point.”

Cordstick nodded quickly. “Well, we thought it best to detain him, my Lord. We knew you would want to question him about his interest in your family, not knowing, of course, what his purpose might be. So we sent guards to take him prisoner and hold him for questioning.”

He stopped again, looking around the room as if help might be found among the suits of armor and racks of sharp weapons. Laphroig rolled his eyes. “Yes, you took him prisoner. And?”

“After we had done so, we discovered he was not a man at all, but a kobold. Why anyone would confide anything in a kobold, I couldn’t say. Perhaps they didn’t, but it was enough, it seemed to me, that he was asking these questions. I thought that holding him was the better choice, if it came to a choice about what to do with him, kobold or not, and …”

Laphroig held up his hand. “You are trying my patience, Cordstick, and I have very little of it to spare this morning. Who is this kobold? Do we know his name?”

Cordstick looked miserable. “We do. Now, after seizing him. It is Bunion. He is the King’s man, a creature of some renown.”

Rhyndweir’s ruler was angry, but not surprised. Of course the High Lord would try to find out what he could now that he knew Laphroig’s intentions regarding his daughter. But that sort of thing couldn’t be allowed. Not even by the King. Not in Laphroig’s own lands.

“There may be unpleasant repercussions from this business, my Lord,” Cordstick ventured. He bit his lip. “Perhaps we should let him go.”

“Perhaps not,” Laphroig answered at once. “Perhaps we should torture him instead and discover the truth behind this intrusion into the affairs of Rhyndweir. Perhaps we should make an example of him so that Ben Holiday will think twice before he sends another of his spies into our territory.”

Then he hesitated, holding up one hand quickly to stay Cordstick’s departure.

Torturing one of the High Lord’s people, he thought suddenly, would in all likelihood complicate his plans for marriage with the High Lord’s daughter. Perhaps discretion was the better part of reprisal in this situation. Yet it galled him that Holiday would feel free to send someone to spy on him in his own barony, no matter what the situation might be. He stewed about it for a moment, thinking that if the kobold simply disappeared—as others who had troubled him had—no blame could attach to him.

“Where is this creature?” he asked his aide.

“Downstairs, in one of the anterooms, safely under guard,” the other replied with a confidence that immediately troubled Laphroig.

“Take me to him,” he ordered. “I’ll decide what to do with him once I’ve seen him for myself.”

Drawing his black robes about him, tilting his head so that his slicked-up black hair cut the air like a shark fin, he swept through the door to the halls beyond, leading the way and forcing Cordstick to hurry to catch up to him. With his scribe barely managing to regain the lead, they ascended from the weapons room to the upper receiving chambers, moving from those reserved for invited guests to those well back and better fortified. Always best to take no chances with those who sought to work mischief in your realm, Laphroig was fond of saying.

But apparently chances had been taken in this case, Rhyndweir’s Lord realized as they approached the holding chamber and saw the door standing ajar. Rushing forward now, the two burst inside and found all four guards hanging by their heels like ornaments from the drapery cords, gagged and bound and weaponless.

Of the kobold, there was no sign.

Laphroig wheeled on a terrified Cordstick. “Call out the guard and find him!” he hissed. “Immediately!”