Swordpoint (14 page)

Richard enjoyed the clear path the duchess's footman commanded for them out of the theatre. It would be pleasant to live in a world without crowds. At the door of her carriage she stopped and took a basket from her maid, rummaged in it and handed him a packet wrapped in a linen napkin. Bowing, he heard the swish of her skirts as she was handed up into the carriage. Then he left quickly, before any other of the departing nobles might claim his company. He did note that the Hallidays' phoenix-crested carriage had a door that locked from the inside.

The packet contained the little iced cakes he had forgotten to ask for. He wondered if they meant something; but determined to save them intact for Alec.

There was no sign of his friend's having been home to their lodgings. Probably off losing his last brass minnow at Rosalie's. Richard hoped he wasn't staking his rings. He decided to go down there and get some dinner.

The cooking fire was high; it was hot as the inferno in the little tavern, though fortunately not so dry. Rosalie wanted to hear all about the play; and because she was an old friend he told her. Lucie wanted to know about the heroine's costume; but he never could remember clothes. News of his visit with the duchess didn't seem to have leaked down yet.

Some men came in and looked at him curiously, as though afraid his bad luck might be fresh enough to rub off on them. They settled down in a corner to eat and play cards. Eventually another man joined them, sporting a kerchief full of stolen goods he was attempting to sell quickly.

'Here,' called Rosalie, 'let's see those things.'

She was admiring an enamel comb, letting Lucie twine it in her hair, when Richard saw the gold ring among the tangle of chains and gew-gaws. Yellow gold, with a red rose.

'Where did you get this?' he asked the man calmly.

'Trade secret.' The man laid a finger along the side of his nose. 'Do you want it?'

'It's mine.'

'Not any more, boy.'

'Tell me where you got it,' St Vier said, a weary edge to his voice. 'It isn't worth fighting over.'

The man swore. 'Swordsmen.' But he gave in. 'Some guy passed it on to me, down at the docks. Another swordsman, not Riverside though. Still a sight more civil than you, honey. He just wanted the money for it; I didn't ask any questions. What's the matter, you get robbed when you went out without your sword?'

'I don't get robbed.'

Taking a cautious step back, the man mocked, 'You're plenty sure of yourself. I bet you're St Vier or something, right?'

'I am St Vier,' Richard said quietly. At his side, Rosalie nodded. 'When did you get the ring?'

'Not long - hey, look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean -'

'Just tell me when you got it.'

'Not long ago. I came straight here. You'll never find him, though, not now.'

'I'll find him,' Richard said.

Chapter XV

During the long carriage ride Lord Horn had the leisure to examine his feelings minutely. They were, on the whole, pleasant feelings. Throughout the play he had barely paid heed to the stage, so pleased was he with the events unfolding from his own private gallery. He felt like a playwright, only he had not had to go to the trouble of inventing his characters: Lord Michael Godwin, blissfully young and arrogant, all the more lovely because his days under the sun were now numbered... Horn had thought of sending him a trenchant note; but a distinguished silence had seemed the most dignified ... the swordsman St Vier, that fashionable paragon... in the sunlight, in the great public space, he too had looked young, his detachment a mere defence. Horn had enjoyed looking at the dangerous man and thinking how helpless he was about to feel.

The coach pulled up at last at the door of the empty hunting lodge. There were still some people left who owed him favours. St Vier's young man should have arrived here over an hour ago. Horn had stayed for the end of the play. He should find the boy chained in the empty buttery. Ferris's woman had said he couldn't fight, but these Riversiders knew all kinds of tricks, and how could you be sure that St Vier hadn't passed some on to him?

Up here in the hills, the spring was still chilly. Horn kept his cloak on and went straight to the buttery. A small sliding panel in the door, some watchman's convenience, had been left open. He could look through it without being seen, and he did.

The young man was lounging upright in his chains, making them look faintly ridiculous as he leaned against the wall. His hands were lax, long and useless-looking. They were covered with rings, and there was gold at his throat. His dress was strangely at odds: the jewels, good boots and shirt, under a jacket with narrow shoulders and too-short sleeves whose cut was a good five seasons old. His breeches, which no longer matched his jacket, had a piece of braid coming off them. And then there was his cascade of hair. In the candlelight he had been left with, it glowed chestnut and sable, heavy and thick as poured cream.

Some black cloth was folded behind his head to keep it from the wall. He was looking abstractedly across at the candle, head slightly tilted, his eyes veiled.

Lord Horn examined the face of St Vier's lover. His nose was long, flat-planed like a ritual painting's. High cheekbones, wide-set so that the eyes above them looked slanted from this angle. The hair pulled back from his high forehead made his face look even longer. Horn's eyes rested on the mouth, almost too wide for the narrow face. Even in repose, the flat lips looked mocking and sensual.

He unlocked the door and stepped inside. At the sound the young man raised his head like a deer scenting the wind. His eyes were vivid green, and open preternaturally wide; they held Lord Horn in frozen fascination, so that his first words were not at all what he'd planned.

'Who are you?'

'Your prisoner, I am told.' The wide gaze did not falter, but Horn saw that the skin around his eyes was drawn tight with tension. 'Are you going to kill me?'

Horn ignored the question, and noted how the face went paler. 'Your name?' he demanded.

'It's Alec.' The boy wet his lips. 'May I have some water?'

'Later. And your surname?'

He shook his head. 'I don't have any.'

'Your father's name, then.'

'Nobody wants me....' The mobile lips turned down mournfully, while above them the wild eyes glittered. 'And who are you?'

'I am Lord Horn.' He forgave the impertinence because it had put him back on the track of his planned opening.

'Oh,' said his prisoner. 'You're Horn, are you?'

'Yes,' said Horn. 'I am indeed. My - friends tell me you're a scholar. Is that so?'

'No!' The syllable exploded with sudden vehemence.

'But you can write?'

'Of course I can write.'

'Fine. I have paper and pen outside. You will write a letter to St Vier telling him that you are in my hands, and that when he has performed the job I have asked him to, you will he sent back to him. Unharmed.'

You would expect the fellow to relax. If he'd thought he had been abducted by a mere thug, he knew better now. But his voice was still thin, high and breathy with fear. 'Of course. What a tidy plan. And who will you have read it to him?'

'He can read it himself,' Horn snapped. He found his hostage's responses unnerving: they walked the knife's edge between frivolity and terror.

'He can't read. I read them for him.'

Lord Horn bit his cheek to keep from swearing. The situation seemed to be eluding him. He grasped at his proper authority. 'Write it anyway.'

'But don't you see,' the boy said impatiently, 'I can't!'

'Are you ill? Have you lost the faculty of your eyes and hands? Or are you just too stupid to realise what predicament you are in?"

The boy went even paler. 'What are you going to do to me?'

'Nothing,' Horn exploded, 'if you'll just stop arguing and do as I tell you!'

St Vier's lover licked his lips. 'I don't want to be hurt,' he said with soft desperation. 'But you have to see how stupid it is to write him a letter.'

Horn stepped back, as though his prisoner's insolence were a fire too hot to bear. 'Do you hear what you are saying?' he demanded. 'Are you making me conditions?'

'No - no - ' the boy said desperately. 'I'm just trying to explain. Can't you understand anything I'm telling you? Richard St Vier,' he continued hurriedly, before Horn could object, 'he isn't going to want to let anyone else see a letter with - a letter like that. He doesn't like other people knowing his business. Anyone who reads it to him would know what your demands are, and then if he meets them, they'll know that he gave in to you. He can't have that. It's - it's his honour. So even if I write you the stupid letter, it's no good. You may,' here the pale lips flattened in the ghost of a smile, 'be stuck with me.'

'Oh, I doubt that,' the nobleman answered, smiling creamily.

The boy must be bluffing, playing for time. Perhaps he expected St Vier to come riding up at the head of a band of cutthroats, storm the house, lift him to the saddlebow and ride off into the night.... 'He seems to be very fond of you. I'm sure he is eager to get you back.'

The green eyes were staring frankly at him, at his leg. Before he could stop himself, Horn glanced down. His own fingers were curling and uncurling against the fabric. 'It must be done quickly,' he said, clenching his hand into a fist at his side, and thrusting his face almost into his prisoner's. 'I cannot waste time while he looks for you. I want the job done. Then he can have you back, for whatever he wants you for.'

'What do you think he wants me for?' The thin voice was taut with desperation. 'He can get others for that - whoever he wants. You've made a mistake.'

'No mistake,' Horn said, certain at last.

'Do you want money?' the boy said breathlessly. 'I can get some, if that's what you want.'

Lord Horn stepped back, awash in the fumes of power, poignant as pleasure. He would have what he wanted of the swordsman, and the swordsman's lover would provide him with another feast entire. His fear was strong wine, a sop to Horn's pride.

'No money,' Horn snarled. I'll have what St Vier has.'

The young man flinched, his hand raised in an oddly virginal gesture of defence. Horn's teeth showed in response. He knew that game from his own pretty-boy days, the titillation and the fear combined....

For a moment, a trick of the light, he saw Lord Michael's features in the young man's face. He wouldn't dare set Godwin of Amberleigh's son in chains... but if he could! Michael Godwin would not have the chance to refuse Lord Horn again. Godwin and St Vier, with their blithe rejections! He, himself, Lindley, Lord Horn, had money; he had position; he knew what it was to have the town at his feet, men and women begging for a letter, for a ribbon, for the touch of his mouth__.

It occurred to him that if St Vier hadn't written him that letter, that short, insulting note of refusal, then someone else must have. That dark, eccentric hand might belong to the man before him. He would find out shortly.

'Why should I not want what St Vier wants?' he continued. 'He will not accept money when it runs counter to his desires. Such is his honour,' Horn said drily. 'Why should you expect less of me?'

'I can't help it,' Alec said pathetically.

'Write the letter,' snapped Horn.

'It won't do any good,' Alec answered. His eyes were staring wide as though they would speak for him. His hands strained against their bonds.

Horn saw them, and saw something else. 'That ring.' It was a ruby, tremendously long and thin, square-cut, set in white gold, flanked at the band with little diamonds. It rode the long hand like a familiar, a fire-beast, large and cold and alive. 'Give it to me.'

Alec clenched his fist on it, helpless and stubborn. 'No.'

Horn lifted his bleached and manicured hand, and slammed it hard across the bound man's face.

Alec screamed. The shrill echoes rang in the stone room, hurting Horn's ears. He dropped his hand and jumped back.

The red marks of Horn's hand, rough as a child's tracing, were rising to the surface of the bound man's skin. He stared owlishly at Horn, not blinking away the water in his eyes.

'I'm a coward,' Alec said. Horn lifted his hand again, to see the young man flinch. 'I'm afraid of being hurt, I told you so. If you hurt me, I'll only scream again.'

'Give me the ring.'

'You're a thief,' Alec said haughtily, his fear pushing him into fury, 'as well as a whore. What do you want with it?'

Horn managed to restrain himself from battering the flat mobile mouth into shapelessness.

'You will do as I say, or you and your Richard are going to be very sorry.'

At the swordsman's name, the strange young man stiffened. 'If you harm me, my lord,' he said, 'it is you who will be sorry.' His chin was up, his long eyes veiled, and his voice dripped breeding and contempt.

'Oho,' said Horn. 'Trying that trick, are you? And whose little bastard are you supposed to be... my lord?'

The boy flinched again, although Horn hadn't raised a finger. 'No one,' he mumbled, hanging his head. 'I'm no one, I'm nothing at all. And I'm glad of it.' He looked suddenly as if he wanted to Spit. 'I am very, very glad of it, if you are the example I'm meant to follow.'

'Insolence!' Horn hissed. Clenching his fist behind his back he said, 'And I suggest you learn to control it, my young nobody. Or I will hurt you very much indeed, and no one will hear you scream.'

'You'll hear,' he said, again unable to stop himself.

'I will stuff your mouth with silk,' Horn answered smoothly. 'I happen to know it's very effective.'

'May I have a drink first?' he asked with proper humility.

'Of course you may,' said Horn. 'I'm not a monster. Behave yourself, do as I say, and we'll see about making you more comfortable.'

Horn pulled the ring off the long finger himself, since the chains didn't allow the boy's hands to meet. Horn wasn't stupid. The boy hadn't wanted to give it up: the ruby must mean something to St Vier.

'I shall write the note myself,' he said, 'and send it with the ring to St Vier at the usual tavern. As soon as the job is done, we'll consider the matter settled.'

'Perhaps,' Alec enquired, 'you will send one of your own rings in earnest?'

Horn looked with pity at the shoddy boy. 'I am a gentleman,' he explained. 'He knows my word is good.'

They let the messenger go, and St Vier was furious.

Rosalie realised that, for all the fights settled under her roof, she had never seen him angry before. His voice wasn't raised, nor his motions unusually abrupt. Those who didn't know him well might not even notice the pallor of his face, or the quiet that hung about him like the silences between thunder. But the pleasant ring of his voice was gone; his speech was flat, without inflection:

'I said anyone. Anyone who came asking for me.' 'It was only a messenger,' said Sam Bonner again, at sweetest. He was getting more conciliatory with each repetition. but he was the only one there with the grape-sodden nerve to say anything at all. There was no knowing with men like St Vier when they would decide to put a stop to all explanation. However, the swordsman remained quiet and still - if you liked that sort of stillness. Rodge and Nimble Willie glanced at each other. The little thief stepped forward. He looked up at St Vier with earnest gravity lining his childish face, and tried again.

'We did stop him, see. He was trying just to drop the packet on the table and run, but Rodge here stopped him. But he didn't know anything, see, not a thing - rabbit-scared he was, and ticklish with his steel; so we just lifted his purse and let him go. Not much in it.'

'You can bet we asked first,' Sam asserted; 'now you know we would.' ('Sam..." Rodge cautioned.) 'But he didn't know a thing. Got that packet third-hand; third-hand, and didn't know a thing.'

Anxiously they watched St Vier break open the wax seal. He flung the paper onto the floor. In his hand was a ruby ring. He stared at it, and they stared too. It was worth a fortune. But it didn't seem to cheer him up. Someone pressed a mug of beer into his free hand; he took it but paid no other notice.

'There's writing on that paper.'

It was Ginnie Vandall, who had gone out looking for him in the other direction. 'I can read,' she said huskily.

Richard picked up the paper, took her elbow and steered her out into the empty yard.

She peered at the note in the morning light. Fortunately it was full of short words. She read, slowly and carefully:

Do the Job for me at once and he will be returned to you right away unharmed.

There was no signature.

The seal on the outside had been blank; inside, handsomely stamped in crimson wax, was the crest he'd seen on the other notes, the ones Alec had laughed at.

'Ah,' said Ginnie. 'That's not so good.' He would have to refuse. She knew that. No swordsman could afford to be blackmailed. He had lost his Alec - not that he wouldn't be better off without the unpleasant scholar in the long run. He'd see it himself in a few days, when it had all blown over. She didn't ask whose crest it was. Someone powerful, who had wanted the best swordsman in the city very badly.