‘So what’s your name?’ he asked as he followed her into his bathing chamber, admiring her nearly-flawless body as she proceeded him into the bathing chamber. Her soft curves belied a toughness he had personally honed over the years. Of all his agents, she was not only one of the best at getting information, she was as hard to kill as a cockroach. A childhood with the Mockers of Krondor had trained her in ways few not born on the street could begin to imagine. He had never asked her to play the role of assassin, but he suspected she would do so without question and very effectively.
She opened the door and moved aside so he could step into a warm tub of water in the middle of a room. ‘I’m called Anne right now.’
He settled into the still-warm tub and gave a satisfied sigh. Many times in his life his chosen role had required him to go days, weeks even, without being properly clean. He sat back as Anne poured a jug of warm water over his head and began shampooing vigorously. ‘Weren’t you Anne in …?’
‘Salador,’ she supplied.
‘So, what do we know?’ he asked.
Leaning over the edge of the tub, Anne said, ‘I’ve been here about a month, since I got your message in Krondor. I’ve found nothing substantial, but this palace is awash with rumours.’
‘It’s the palace. There are always rumours.’
‘Yes, but as you taught me,’ she said scrubbing his back, ‘there are rumours and there are rumours.’
‘I don’t have time to sift through rumours. If you can’t tell me what you know, tell me what you think.’
Leaning over to scrub his chest from behind, her face near his ear, she whispered, ‘Sir William Alcorn is putting those loyal to him, or at least in his debt, into key positions and the King seems to have no objection. Your grandfather most certainly did.’
‘And you think this has something to do with my grandfather’s health?’
‘Hard to say, Jim,’ she said as she draped her arms around his neck. ‘I’ve nosed around as much as I can and the healing priests and chirurgeons all seem above suspicion. Maybe one of them might be working for someone trying to get your grandfather out of the way, but the others would have likely found some hint of magic or poison.
‘He is an old man, Jim.’
‘He’s the only family I have left, or at least the only family left that still speaks to me.’
She shrugged. As an orphan she had even less family, but over the years she had come to appreciate that the topic of Jim’s family was only under discussion when he brought it up. She knew there had been many difficulties between Jim and his father, his Uncle Dasher, and his cousin Richard. Some of it was political, for reasons Jim never mentioned, and some of it was family history, for reasons even more obscure. But she had been around Lord James long enough to read his moods. ‘You’re really worried, aren’t you?’
‘I am.’
‘I have a theory should you wish to hear it.’
‘Go on.’
‘I believe your grandfather may have been poisoned, but not to the extent of trying to kill him.’
Jim was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Keep him out of the way, but not raise suspicion by a death?’
‘He’s been too ill to be an effective counter to Sir William Alcorn’s shenanigans for over two weeks.’ She paused, then said, ‘He’s very clever, our Sir William, and very deft. It’s as if he has everything slowly moving until he’s poised, then suddenly-,’ she clapped her hands together, ‘-he’s moved two or three people around before anyone can mount an objection. Moreover, even before your grandfather took ill, his influence had grown. His relationship with the King, going back to when they were young soldiers together …’ She let the thought run out, and shrugged. Both knew that the ‘simple’ court knight had become the most powerful man in the Kingdom, usurping the position held by Jim’s grandfather. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.
Before he could answer, the door in the other room opened and someone came in. Anne leapt into the tub with Jim with a squeal of laughter, splashing water over the floor.
Jim looked up to see a soldier standing inside his quarters looking embarrassed. ‘Sorry sir, but I knocked and you didn’t answer.’
Feigning annoyance, Jim said, ‘Can’t you see I’m occupied?’
‘It’s your grandfather, sir. He’s awake and asking for you.’
Jim made a show of forcing Anne off him, grabbed a towel and saw the guard trying very hard not to watch Anne as she climbed out of the tub. Whoever he might report to would hear only a sordid narration of a bored noble and a maid of easy virtue, nothing out of the ordinary in the palace.
Jim dressed quickly, tossing a look over his shoulder to Anne. ‘Be on your way, girl. Perhaps I’ll have time for you tonight.’
‘Sir,’ she said as if annoyed yet hopeful. She knew that meant she was to find him tonight so they could compare notes on what he had learned.
He dressed quickly and followed the guard to his grandfather’s apartment where Sergeant Mallory was back at his post. ‘Sir,’ he said with a quick salute as two guards opened the doors into his grandfather’s apartment.
Propped up in his large bed, James Jamison, second of that name to hold the title of Duke of Rillanon, beckoned for his grandson to come closer. No one needed to say anything; Jim took one look at the old man and knew he was near death. He walked to the bedside and leaned over, kissing his grandfather’s forehead.
‘Good to see you, lad,’ whispered the old man.
‘Good to see you, Grandfather.’
‘Now,’ he said patting the bed beside him, ‘sit down and shut up. There’s a lot I need to tell you and not much time.’
Jim sat down and waited for his grandfather to tell him something vital.
It was a shaken James Jamison who left his grandfather’s quarters an hour later. Even those who knew him well might not see any outward sign, but inside Jim was as near to a state of panic as he had been in his entire life. His world was coming apart at the seams.
Jim was the eyes and ears of the Kingdom, the trader in secrets and hidden truths, but his grandfather had command of the Congress of Lords and knew the temper of the nobility of the two realms, from the Duchy of Ran to the Far Coast. Between the two of them they had pieced together a puzzle that had been baffling them both for more than a year prior to the outbreak of war between Kesh and the Kingdom.
Politics was more the province of his grandfather. His late uncle, Dasher, likewise had been a political animal. Jim’s father had been much more like his great grandfather, Arutha, son of the first James, a gifted administrator, bright and likable, but otherwise not especially remarkable. And his cousin Richard was a soldier with all the noble and annoying traits that required. One thing about Richard, Jim knew, was that he might currently be one of the few soldiers he could rely on, and that he commanded the Prince’s Army in Krondor, which might prove vital before all was said and done.
Not all Jamesons were suited to governance; most were gifted in whatever role life provided, but only Jim had developed the same lethal set of skills and the cold nerve to use them in service to the Crown that his namesake, the original James, Jimmy the Hand, had enjoyed. And now it looked as if he was going to need every shred of talent he possessed as well as every bitter experience, harsh lesson, and the famous Jameson luck to thwart what was now clearly shaping up to be a bid to seize the crown of the Kingdom of the Isles.
While he had been busy trying to uncover who had been subverting or killing off his operatives and why Kesh was moving towards the Kingdom, someone else had been busy plotting a coup d’etat and from what his grandfather had said, they were close to ready.
James stopped as he reached the major hallway bisecting the palace. Ahead were his own quarters and those of other royal retainers and functionaries, while to the right were offices and the guards’ quarters to either side of the entrance to the royal wing, containing the great hall, the King’s apartments and the living quarters of the household staff. To the left was the grand entrance and steps down to the palace’s marshalling yard.
In as many years as he could remember, this was the first time Jim Dasher, Lord Jameson, had no idea where to go next. He knew that he must be in the palace for at least another night and day, but after that?
His network of agents was compromised; yet he had been almost arrogant in his certainty of his own cleverness in taking what his grandfather had begun, grafting onto it his great uncle’s Mockers. He had spent years successfully infiltrating every stratum of Kingdom society and not a little of Kesh, Queg, and the Free Cities in the
