I immediately went outside; I damn sure didn’t want to overhear anything. The horses raised their heads from the trough. They were still hitched to the wagon so I let them loose to graze in the clearing. I climbed onto the wagon’s seat. The sun was almost directly overhead, and I put on Jenny’s discarded hat against it.
Kern said I knew all the players and the pieces. So I sorted them in my mind. If Megan Drake was truly stage-managing things from off the island to avenge both her mother and her sisterhood, as well as take out the lover who once jilted her, she had to have agents in the king’s inner circle. Her son, Ted Medraft, was one, but he was nowhere near Nodlon when Sam Patrice died. Medraft pulled Agravaine’s strings, though, and Agravaine had been there. Yet how could he have done it? If he’d been around the apples, someone would have seen him. So if he did it, he’d have to use an agent as well. That was a lot of fingers pulling a lot of strings, and the puppets could easily get tangled.
This all assumed Marcus was the ultimate target, and that it wasn’t just a simple murder plot gone wrong.
And how did the absurdity of two identical Jennifers, one light and one dark, fit in? And what if this was all about the Jennifers and had nothing to do with Marcus?
No, that didn’t work, either. They hadn’t tried to hurt or kill Jennifer, they’d tried to publicly embarrass her, something that could’ve been accomplished much more easily by revealing the prenuptial switcheroo. So that secret, so far, was still safe. So it had to be a plot to get at the king through his queen.
But wait: Megan Drake was a moon priestess, just like the queen. I knew nothing of their order’s rules, but this kind of betrayal seemed uncharacteristic of the ones I’d known elsewhere. Unless-that word cropped up a lot- Megan Drake had gone against her sisterhood in her quest for revenge.
And beneath all this confusion, literally, was the unmarked body of an innocent young woman who’d been beaten to pieces hours before. Among my various chains of improbabilities, that was my lone impossibility.
Unless…
And I got it. Again literally, it had been right in front of me all along. At one point even close enough to touch.
Then I heard the whinny and rattle of approaching riders.
TWENTY-THREE
Through the trees I saw movement on the road that led only here: three men on horseback. In a moment they’d reach the clearing, and I sat in plain view. I had no time to make it to the cottage, where my sword still leaned against the wall, so I threw myself flat in the bed of the wagon. I pulled the hat over my face and crossed my ankles so that if they did see me, they might think I was some sleeping farmer. Since I still wore expensive, if dusty and wrinkled, court clothes, it was one of my weaker disguises.
None of the riders spoke as they approached. Their spurs jingled, and leather armor creaked. I expected to hear Tom Gillian’s voice saying I’d missed my deadline, and he was here to collect my head. I hoped I’d have time to explain.
One of the three dismounted, groaned as if he’d been in the saddle a long time, and said, “Now what?”
A familiar distorted voice replied, “Sped out. Ib dey try anything, kill dem.”
I felt a huge rush of relief that it wasn’t Gillian. I hadn’t realized how truly scared of him I was until then.
“But Kern’s a wizard,” said a voice I now recognized as Cador’s. “He probably already knows we’re coming. He probably knows why we’re coming.”
“Don’ be a candy ass,” Agravaine snapped. “He’s juss an obe man. He’s gop as much ‘magic’ as I hab in my ass.”
Hoel, the one who’d dismounted, yelled, “Hey, Cameron Kern! Come out in the name of King Marcus Drake, and bring the man LaCrosse with you!”
I risked lifting the hat’s brim. I couldn’t see them over the side of the wagon.
When there was no reply, Agravaine said, “Ty abain.”
“Cameron Kern, this is Sir Vincent Hoel of the Knights of the Double Tarn! I order you and LaCrosse to appear in the name of the king!”
At last the cottage door squeaked open. Cador gasped, “Shit!”
“The cave isn’t open today,” Amelia said. Her sheer presence froze the three knights in their tracks. “Hold on and I’ll get you free tokens for your trouble.”
Another pair of boots hit the ground. Careful not to make the wagon squeak, I rose enough to see that Agravaine now stood beside Hoel, both of them in front of Amelia. Agravaine looked even more squat and dwarfish with her towering over him, her robe cinched tight against her showstopping form.
“Whez Kamera Kerr?” Agravaine demanded.
She scratched the side of her head and frowned, as if thinking was a real effort. “Who?”
“Kerr, Kamera Kerr!”
“I can’t understand you,” she said sincerely.
With no warning he punched her. Hard. In the face, just as I’d punched him. He had to raise on tiptoe to do it. It knocked her back into the house, and I heard her big body thud to the floor.
Hoel and Cador laughed. “Damn, that’s a big bitch,” Cador said.
“Get between those legs, she’d snap you in half,” agreed Hoel. “You can have her first.”
“Only if she’s tied down safe,” Cador said, laughing.
“Kerr!” Agravaine yelled again. “Geb your ass oub heb!”
They still hadn’t noticed me. Kern stepped past Amelia and emerged into the sunlight completely naked, his portly body as white as his hair. It had the desired effect of catching the three knights off guard. “David Agravaine,” Kern said flatly, fists on his hips. “Still punching women, I see.”
“Shut ub. Where is he?”
He scowled. “What’s the matter with your nose?”
“Fubbett my nobe. Where is dat son of a bid?”
He glanced over his shoulder, where Amelia sat catching the blood from her nose with a pillow. “‘Bid’? What is a ‘bid’?”
Agravaine was almost hopping with anger now, and he whipped out his sword with a furious flourish. “Donb you fub with me, Kerr!”
Kern laughed and crossed his arms above his belly. “I’m sorry, first you punch an unarmed woman, then you draw a sword on a naked man? You’ve always been crazy, Agravaine, but now you’re really losing it.”
Agravaine swung the sword at Kern’s head, but the old man simply leaned back to dodge it. The momentum made Agravaine spin in place and almost fall. Cador chuckled.
Kern risked a glance in my direction. He was clearly buying time for me to stage a rescue. I wished I had his confidence in my abilities.
I looked around the wagon bed for anything that might help. I saw an old apple core and carefully picked it up. If I could add to the confusion, I might be able to contribute something useful. But I’d have to use my left hand. I lined up on Cador, the only one still in the saddle, and threw the apple as hard as I could at the horse’s rump.
The horse immediately tried to rear and spun in place as Cador fought for control. “Whoa!” he cried. “What the hell?”
Everyone turned to me, and I had only a moment to think. In my Lord Huckleberry voice I said, “What is the meaning of all this ballyhoo? Can’t a man take his morning nap in peace?”
Agravaine and Hoel exchanged a puzzled look. As I hoped, they didn’t recognize me at first without my beard. I hopped daintily from the wagon, tucked my cast behind my back, and brushed at the dust on my clothes with my good hand. “My goodness, men hitting women, old men in the altogether, and three Knights of the Double Tarn in the midst of it? King Marcus will not be pleased, I assure you. Oh, it will drive him to a royal tizzy!”
Kern played it perfectly, drawing their attention back to him as I minced closer. He said, “I’m going back to bed, Agravaine, after I tend to my girlfriend’s nose. If you want to talk like a human being, come back tomorrow
