“You can’t be serious!”
“Not about the reason, but I am about killing him. Once that’s done, I’ll have won the war and won’t be needed here anymore. I’m going downstairs now to get a crossbow. If you’re serious about wanting to come with me, then I’ll be very happy to have you along. I suggest you change into more appropriate clothes.”
He closed the door quietly behind him.
Lord have mercy! Killing priests? How had Marek gotten himself into this? But what sort of priest led men- at-arms on a raid to kill other men?
He wandered to the bed and looked over the heap of clothes. Branka’s needlewomen had made him his Franciscan robe, which he thought of as his friar disguise, and also a set of garments suitable for an esquire. He planned to be a friar until his tonsure grew in, but that was hardly a suitable guise for a swordsman assassin. Preparing to strip, he untied the first of the three knots that bound a friar’s girdle, symbolizing poverty, chastity, and obedience.
A voice behind him said, “May the Lord be with you, Brother.”
He turned so fast that he lost his balance, tripped on a discarded boot, and toppled back onto the bed. Sunk in the mattress, he stared up in horror at the two men standing over him, their heads wreathed in the shining nimbus of sanctity. One was Brother Lodnicka, his master from Koupel. The other, even worse, was a tall, skeletal man of around fifty, with a silver fringe around his tonsure; he wore the Dominican garb of a black cloak over a white habit. Even after five years he was easily remembered as Father Azuolas.
Marek opened his mouth to scream. His tongue was seized by invisible fingers and dragged out between his teeth, as if he were a horse being immobilized by a farrier. He could not call on his Voices for help.
Azuolas had a smile to breed nightmares. “We grew tired of waiting for your return, my son.”
“You were supposed to come back and tell us when you found Wulfgang.” Lodnicka was shorter and older, but massive and still immensely powerful, as Marek had learned under the lash. He had been a quarryman until the Church detected his talent and recruited him.
“Did you find him, Marek?” the monk asked.
Marek shook his head and then nodded.
“He seems a little confused, Brother,” Azuolas said. “Does this bother you, my son?”
Marek’s tongue was yanked painfully hard. He nodded and made urgent noises.
“Of course we are not permitted to use violence except in self-defense, but gentle restraint is permissible. Indeed, I seem to recall that you had to be restrained a few times when we first met, some years ago. Ah, you remember also. I must warn you that resistance may be dangerous, although hurting you is not my desire or intent. So I shall give you back your tongue, but you must promise not to call on your Voices. Agreed?”
Marek nodded, having no choice. His tongue was released.
“Now, who was that young man who left here a few moments ago, the one you addressed as ‘Wulf’?”
Marek swallowed a few times. Standing, or even sitting upright, he would not feel so vulnerable as he did engulfed in the soft feather mattress, helplessly tipped back on his elbows. “My brother Wulfgang, Father.”
Any minute Wulf would walk in and be taken by surprise. He would be rendered powerless and dragged off to be tried for Satanism.
“And you and your brother were planning to go and murder a certain Father Vilhelmas. How would you rate this as a sin, my son? Venial or mortal?”
How did they know this? Marek had been a fool to think he could outwit the Church. “Justice, Father. He is a Speaker and a traitor to his king. He murdered the previous count and-”
“But this is not your concern. If you have reason to suspect him of wrongdoing, then your correct course is to report him to Brother Lodnicka. Instead you plot murder? You see how quickly you are perverted when you speak with the devil, Marek?”
“Vilhelmas is a schismatic, of the Orthodox Rite!”
Azuolas barely shrugged. “He is misguided, then, but that will be charged against his soul, not yours. We may have arrived just in time to save you from an eternity in the fires of hell, my son. Brother, you brought the bridles?”
“Yes, Father.” The monk produced two iron contraptions he had been holding behind his back.
The friar held up a hand to stay him. “Some more questions first. When Wulfgang came to Koupel on Sunday, Marek, I understand that he did not display a nimbus. Is that correct?”
“Yes, Father.” Marek struggled off the bed so he could stand erect, but he still had to look up to the two men. Azuolas moved closer to the door, as if to cut off any attempt to escape.
“And does he now? Have a nimbus, I mean?”
Marek said. “No, Father.”
“You are certain of that?” the Dominican demanded suspiciously. “I have your oath on it?”
How much had he seen?
“Yes, Father. He glows when he calls on Satan to perform his black arts, that is all. Not otherwise.” Now Marek was a perjurer, but they couldn’t do anything to him much worse than what they were planning already.
“So he is still no more than a Four or Five, as that listing was explained to you?”
“Yes, Father.” Fours or Fives were obviously much less dangerous than whatever Wulf was now.
“So why did you not come back to Koupel and report?” the monk asked angrily. “As you were instructed to do and swore you would?”
The longer Marek could spin out the conversation, the better the chance that he would still be able to do some good in the struggle when Wulf returned. “When I got here my brother healed my back, and I couldn’t face the pain that the journey would cause me.”
Lodnicka smiled, showing long yellow teeth. “You have worse to face than that now, Brother Marek. I may gag him, Father?”
“Go ahead. And hurry. We must be ready for the other child of Satan when he returns.”
Lodnicka dropped one of the iron bridles on the floor and held out the other. “Put it on, Brother. You know how. It isn’t hard.”
Yes, Marek knew how. On occasion he had spent days at a time locked in one of the horrible things, for penance, unable to call on his Voices for help. He had nightmares about them sometimes.
“No!” he said. “Please not. I promise I won’t Speak.”
But the monk just smiled, and Marek’s hands took the contraption and raised it to his face without any instructions from him. Even when the metal pressed against his lips he did not resist, for then there would be a struggle for control and the bridle might break his teeth. He opened his mouth to accept the clumsy and foul-tasting tongue plate. He was a puppet, being moved by Lodnicka. His hands pulled the clasps around to the back of his head, and his feet turned him around so that the monk could close the hasp.
The click of the padlock was followed at once by a stunning explosion. Father Azuolas hurled himself onto the bed, facedown. Marek stared in bewilderment at the red foam spurting from a hole in the Dominican’s back, the surging bloodstain spreading over his clothes. Brother Lodnicka uttered a roar of fury and whirled around to meet Wulf’s attack.
CHAPTER 32
Wulf had worked hard to seem to enjoy the banquet. To sulk or mope would have been unthinkable, giving Anton cause to gloat and increasing Madlenka’s distress. He had shared one wistful smile with her at the beginning to show that he felt no bitterness, and since then he never once looked at her, or even at Otto, who was sitting between them.
Dali Notivova proved to be good company, once he had been tactfully assured that none of the Magnuses would try to take his new title away from him. He had a couple of years’ mercenary experience, which he was willing to share in exchange for some well-edited stories of the new count’s youth. So the talk was good, with a bit of effort. The food was indifferent. The beer was weak and had absolutely no effect on a man whose beloved had been forced into marriage with another. Wulf thought he could have drunk a barrel of it and stayed both sober and somber.
