The Lost Stories (33 page)

“So you think it was suicide?” Desmond asked him.

Will pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I think it looks like suicide. But I don't like the fact that there was no note. I think I'll ask around the village and see if anyone's heard of these two Toscans.” He tapped the breast of his jacket where the small piece of paper lay.

“I remember them,” Jenny said. “They had dinner here twice while they were in the village. They had a room at the inn but said they preferred my cooking.”

“Most people do,” Will said, and she smiled at the compliment.

“A girl does what she can.”

“Any idea what they were doing in the village?” Will asked.

Jenny shook her head. “I don't ask people their business. Just what they want to eat. They might know at the inn, of course,” she added.

Will nodded. “That's the next place I'll ask.”

Making a small farewell gesture to his old friend, Will trudged up the main street of Wensley Village to the inn—one of the few two-story structures in the high street. It was late morning and the innkeeper, Joel, was resting in a back room before the lunchtime rush started. His assistant scurried off to fetch him at Will's request. Will suppressed a smile. Even after all these years, he was still surprised at the way ordinary folk—people he had known all his life—leapt to do his bidding. He assumed it was a result of the aura of mystery and power that surrounded the Ranger Corps. He was unaware that in his case, and with his reputation, that aura was intensified many times over.

Joel emerged from the back room. His hair was disheveled and he was buckling a wide belt around his equally wide waist. Will guessed he had been snoozing. He shrugged mentally. Why not, he thought. Innkeepers kept late hours, often tending to the needs of their clientele till the wee hours of the morning. It was good sense to catch up on sleep whenever a chance offered itself.

Joel snapped his fingers at the taproom servant and ordered fresh coffee. He knew how fond the young Ranger was of the beverage. They sat at one of the pine tables in the taproom. Its planks had been rough sawn originally, but years of service in the inn, with elbows, tankards, plates and sometimes heads rubbing on it, had rendered the wood smooth and slick.

“What can I do for you, Ranger Will?” he asked after they had exchanged pleasantries. Will glanced up as the servant placed a mug of coffee in front of him. He spooned honey into it and sipped. Then he leaned back with a sigh of satisfaction.

“Your coffee is still the best in the village, Joel,” he said. “I know Jenny would love to find out where you source your beans.”

Joel smiled. “I'm sure she would. But I keep my supplier secret. There aren't too many ways I can best Jenny's restaurant, but my coffee is one of them.”

Will knew that Joel traveled some distance from the village each month to meet the trader who supplied his coffee beans. The man's identity, and the blend of beans, was a strictly guarded trade secret. Once, years earlier, Will had toyed with the idea of trailing him and revealing the coffee merchant's identity to Jenny. But he decided that it wouldn't be fair to use his skills against the innkeeper. If Jenny wanted to track him, well and good. He realized that Joel was still waiting for an answer to his question.

“You had two guests here a few days ago,” he said. “Toscans, I believe.”

Joel nodded immediately. “That's right. Wool buyers, they were. Signore Mordon and Seraf-something-or-other.”

“Mordini and Serafino,” Will corrected him, and Joel continued his nodding.

“Yes. That'd be them. I can never remember foreign names too well.”

“And they were Toscans?”

“They certainly sounded like it. It's a pretty obvious accent, after all.”

Will's eyes narrowed. The Toscan accent was a broad one, and easily recognized. Which made it all the easier for a non-Toscan to mimic, he thought.

“And you say they were wool buyers,” he queried.

Joel allowed himself a smile. “Actually, they said it. I was just repeating it. Why do you ask? Have they been up to no good?”

Will ignored the question as he stood, deep in thought. “Did they do any trading?” he asked finally.

Joel shrugged, his face blank. “I wouldn't know. I suppose Barret would be the one to answer that.”

Barret was the largest wool broker in the village. Most of the farmers from the surrounding area sent their wool to him for sale. He did the trading and kept a commission on each sale.

“So he would. I'll ask him,” Will said.

But when he asked the wool broker, he met another blank.

“They never approached me, Ranger,” Barret said. “I met them in the tavern once, and Joel told me they were in the wool business. But I never heard from them. Don't know why. Maybe my stock's not good enough.” He sounded miffed by the fact that he'd been ignored. He half suspected that the Toscan buyers had found a better price from one of the smaller brokers in an outlying hamlet. If that were the case, he would have liked the chance to haggle a little. Barret disliked losing business.

Frowning, Will made his way back to the inn. The lunch trade was now in full swing and the taproom was three-quarters full. He caught Joel's eye and beckoned him over.

“About those Toscans,” he said. “Have you re-let their room since they left?”

Joel shook his head. “No. Business has been slow this past week. We changed the linen and made the beds. And Anna would have swept it out, of course. Did you want to look around in there?”

“If you don't mind,” Will said.

Joel crossed to the bar and unhooked a key from the rack on the wall.

“Up the stairs and second room on the right,” he said. “But I'm pretty sure they left nothing behind.”

He was right. The room was tidy and empty. There was no sign that it had been occupied by two men a few days previously. Or was there? Will sniffed the air experimentally. The window had been kept closed and there was a faint trace of . . . something in the room. Something familiar. A slightly sweet smell. Not unpleasant. It was only the barest vestige of a scent and it was difficult to place it. He moved around the room, testing the air in different spots. In some spots, he couldn't pick it up at all. It was most obvious by the beds.

“So,” he said to himself, a little vexed, “we have two Toscan wool buyers who don't buy wool and leave a faint perfume behind in their room. How curious.”

He walked slowly downstairs, deep in thought, and returned the key to the rack. He waved farewell to Joel and stepped out into the afternoon sunlight. If only he could identify that smell, he thought. He was sure it was a familiar one. But the more he tried to place it, the farther the answer seemed to slip from his grasp.

It wasn't until that evening that he realized what it was.

He was braiding a new bowstring. He'd noticed some slight fraying on the one currently on his bow and thought it better to replace it before it deteriorated further.

He finished forming the loops at either end, securing them with wound thread. Then he reached into his tool kit for a lump of beeswax to finish the job and bind the individual threads that made the string into one cohesive whole. As he began to rub the wax along the string, and small flakes of wax fell off onto the floor, the pleasantly sweet smell struck his nostrils.

Beeswax! That's what he'd noticed in the room. It was used by archers to strengthen and waterproof their bowstrings. And used on crossbow strings as well.

His mind had been probing a suspicion that the Toscans were not Toscans at all, but were from a neighboring city-state where the inhabitants spoke with a similar accent. It was a difficult accent to conceal, and so the best way for the two strangers to hide their identities might have been to assume a similar accent and pose as Toscans.

Instead of Genovesans.

He couldn't have said why he had been thinking about Genovesans since he'd heard of the presence of two foreigners in the village—and found their names scrawled on Robard's sketch. Serafino and

Mordini could just as easily be Genovesan names as Toscan, and the average Araluen wouldn't know the difference between the two.

Robard had died suspiciously. Perhaps his death had been suicide, but Will wasn't convinced. And it seemed that his death was due to poisoning—a skill the Genovesan assassins were expert in. Years of training with Halt had led Will not to simply accept what seemed to be the obvious when there were circumstances out of the ordinary. As Halt had drummed into him on many occasions:
Better to suspect something and find nothing than suspect nothing and find something.

“So,” he said aloud, “if they are Genovesans, what are they doing here?” Ebony raised her head at the sound of his voice. Then, realizing he wasn't talking to her, she let her head fall again with a sigh of contentment.

The most likely answer was that they were in Wensley to plan an assassination. That was what Genovesans did, more often than not. They were professional assassins whose weapons included the crossbow, a multiplicity of razor-sharp daggers and—last but by no means least—poisons in a variety of forms.

“Maybe they're after me and Halt,” he mused to Ebony.

The dog looked at him, moving only her eyes. Then she thumped her tail once on the floor.

“Who's after me now?” asked a voice behind him, and he turned to see Halt grinning at him. Rangers loved to surprise each other with their silent movement and concealment skills. Usually, Will was hard to catch off guard, but tonight he was preoccupied with thoughts of the mysterious foreigners.

Halt was muddy and tired after a long day in the saddle, trailing the mail coach—to no avail, as it turned out. He had stopped by the cabin to draft a report of the day's activities while they were still fresh in his mind. Then he was heading for a hot bath, followed by dinner with Pauline.

Quickly, Will laid out his suspicions. Halt listened, frowning.

“It's quite a leap to have two Toscan wool merchants turn into two Genovesan assassins—all on the strength of a little beeswax,” he said when his former apprentice had finished.

“Except they didn't buy any wool, and their names were in Robard's room. And he died by poisoning,” Will added.

“That's true,” Halt conceded. “Any idea where they are now?”

Will shook his head. “Nobody knew where they were heading. Mind you, they could be camped in the forest somewhere close by.”

“What makes you think that you and I might be their targets?” Halt asked.

“I don't really,” Will said. “It was just conjecture. Who else here do they have reason to hate?”

Some time previously, in Hibernia, and then in the north of Araluen, the two Rangers had clashed with three Genovesan mercenaries. The result had been three dead assassins, although Halt had nearly lost his life in the process. But Halt waved the idea of revenge away.

“It's not a matter of who
they
hate,” he said, with his usual disregard for grammar. “That's not their style. They kill for money, not for revenge. You have to find a target someone else hates—someone who's paid them.”

There was a short silence as they mulled over the situation. Then, seeing that no answer seemed likely to spring to mind, Will asked about Halt's activities.

“Nothing,” the gray-bearded Ranger said in disgust. “I trailed that coach for miles, through rivers, through valleys. It poured rain for two hours and I got soaked. And never a sign of bandits.”

“Maybe they saw you,” Will said, and was rewarded with an icy glare from his mentor. When a Ranger didn't wish to be seen, he wasn't. “Sorry,” Will added meekly. “When's the next trip?”

“Ten days,” Halt said. “And it's a long one. I might not make it back for the wedding.”

“Pauline won't like that.” Will grinned and Halt glared at him.

“She has already made that abundantly clear,” he said. “Made any progress on that speech?”

Will scowled. “I've been a bit tied up lately. I'll get to it.”

Halt raised an eyebrow. “Time's passing every day,” he said mildly.

The wedding would happen within the month. Already, dignitaries were beginning to arrive at Redmont.

“Why isn't the wedding being held at Castle Araluen?” Will asked. He'd been wondering about that for some time.

“Officially, the dining hall there is being refurbished and won't be ready in time. Also, Evanlyn feels that the whole affair will be more informal and friendly here.
A little less magnificent
was the term she used. Unofficially, Duncan liked the idea of having Jenny and Master Chubb do the catering.”