“Where are you taking me, Your Grace? Or is it a secret?”
“A state secret, you could say. But for now keep quiet and be patient. Don’t make me angry.”
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace, but what will happen if I make you angry?”
The darkness had made me talkative and sharpened my tongue.
“If you don’t come to an agreement with the man we’re going to see, then you’ll find yourself in my hands. . . . And I’ll be angry.”
I decided it was better to be patient and say nothing for a while. It would be no problem for me to jump out of the carriage that was dashing through the streets and try to escape. I would have a few precious moments before the guards realized what had happened. But I didn’t really want to risk playing tag with crossbow bolts.
Meanwhile the carriage was bowling through the city at an excellent speed. The driver was evidently very skillful and he did not wish to spare the carriage, the horses, or the passengers. Now my entire backside took a battering on the potholes. But the baron wasn’t complaining. That must mean there was a good reason for all the hurry, and I gritted my teeth and tried to sit up straight when we heeled over on the bends. Actually, just once I did allow myself the pleasure of giving way, allowing inertia to throw me against Frago, and lifting the purse off his belt. I must say there wasn’t much in it, though.
Eventually we arrived. I was taken out and handed over to some men who took a tight grip on my elbows. Then they led me off somewhere. There was nothing I could do but move my feet, stumbling every time there were steps up or down.
All the time the baron was snorting behind me. Corridors, stairways, rooms, halls. Sounds. My feet walked across a bare stone floor, raising a hollow, resonant echo from the slabs of Isilian marble; they stamped across squeaking wooden floorboards. I had long ago lost count of the number of steps and stairways and bends in the countless corridors of the huge building through which I was being led. Torches hissed and sputtered close to my ear; sometimes we met someone as we walked along, but I could hear them hastily move aside, making way for us.
Finally a door opened and I felt the dense pile of a carpet under my feet. Without seeing it, I couldn’t say how much it was worth, but it had probably been made in the Sultanate, and that certainly meant a fair amount of money.
“Remove his blindfold.”
Frago, who was standing behind me, removed the damned rag from my eyes. For a brief moment I squeezed them shut against the bright light coming from a fireplace and dozens of candles and torches burning in the small room.
Then I studied the room critically, evaluating at a glance the Sultanate carpets, the candlesticks, the costly furniture made of timber found in the Forests of I’alyala, right beside the Crest of the World, the complete set of knight’s armor made by dwarf master craftsmen, which was standing in the farthest corner of the room. Not to mention the goblets and the tableware, which I think were all made of gold. Mmm. I could really cut loose if only I could have this place to myself for just a few minutes.
Only instead of one person, I saw several.
The little old man sitting in an armchair beside the hearth, muffled in a thick woolen blanket, was clutching a silvery staff encrusted with ivory in his right hand. A magician, as far as I could judge. An archmagician, in fact, bearing in mind that his staff bore four silver rings of rank. Or even more precisely, a master, since he had a small black bird sitting on the top of his staff instead of the usual stone.
The old man appeared small and puny. He looked like an old, fragile hazelnut, and he was shuddering in annoyance, as if the heat from the fireplace right beside him could not warm his ancient bones. It seemed that if you just prodded the magician with your finger, or a strong wind blew on him, he would simply fall to pieces.
A deceptive impression. A none-too-pleasant end lay in store for anyone who prodded Artsivus, archmagician and master, the head of the Order of Magicians. This man was one of the most influential figures in the kingdom and the king’s first adviser, although many, seeing the puny old man for the first time, might have doubts about the soundness of his reason.
The person sitting in the armchair opposite Artsivus and elegantly cradling a goblet of white wine was a woman, wearing the very expensive, magnificent, lightblue dress of a female inhabitant of Mirangrad. A rather risky choice of garment in our kingdom, especially since the war with Miranueh had not actually ended, but was only lying dormant for the time being while the two sides recovered from the bloody battles that had broken off five years earlier. Miranuehans are liked no better than the Nameless One in Avendoom, but I could see that the lady was not concerned about that.
The female stranger’s face was covered by a veil that completely concealed it from my curious gaze. And those golden eyes, though covered by the veil, still sparkled. Amazing. I had encountered this unknown noblewoman two days earlier, on that memorable night when I had a little job to do in Duke Patin’s town house. Judging from her jewelry, she must be the same woman who had ridden along the narrow street, surrounded by the king’s personal guards.
Standing by the wall was a man armed with a sword of Canian forge-work. This gentleman examined my humble person with disdainful curiosity, as if what he was looking at were, in the very best case, a rat. Although it was he who was the Rat. That was what his foes called him. Count Alistan Markauz, captain of the king’s personal guards, who had chosen a gray rat as his crest. He could always be recognized from his heavy knightly armor with the rodent’s head engraved on the breastplates and the helmet, which itself was in the form of a rat’s head. Vicious tongues had it that the Rat even slept and washed in his armor, but I believe this assertion was not entirely correct.
Alistan was the finest swordsman of the kingdom, the rock on which our most dear king relied. He was the head of the security service and a man of honor, defined in terms that only he understood, who hated and exterminated all who plotted evil against his glorious lord. His whole life was military routine, skirmishes with ogres and giants beside the Lonely Giant fortress, war with the orcs of Zagraba, and a couple of border wars with Miranueh when their king felt like moving on to bigger things after a few skirmishes with the western clans of the Zagraban orcs.
Having survived all these battles, Alistan Markauz had become the man he was at that moment—the king’s right arm and a bulwark of the throne. The soldier looked at me with his steely gray eyes, chewing on his luxuriant, dangling mustache, styled in the manner of the inhabitants of Lowland. I responded to his narrow-eyed gaze with a sour look and transferred my attention to the fourth person in the room.
