“And how do we explain two corpses before Nysa is dead?” Christopher asked. “Kinda hard for dead men to do the deed. Or are you saying we should wait until after she’s killed? That creates its own problems. First, they’ll want to be paid as soon as their part is done—a payment I don’t have, by the way. And second, they’re not going to hang around afterward. You’ll have to track them down, and pray they don’t say anything before you find them. With my plan, we can scoop them up as soon as they give us the information. No one has to know when they were sent to Manzant. All that’s important is that they were arrested and justice carried out before a formal investigation starts. But corpses decay quickly, especially in this climate, so you’ll have to kill them after Nysa is dead.”
“Let me worry about when, where, and how the two meet their end. I’ll hold up my end,” Knox snapped.
Wells was nodding. “I’ve watched Knox for years, and I trust him in such matters. I’m not saying anything against you, Lord Fawkes, but if my opinion means anything, I’d be more comfortable with the thieves dead rather than locked up.”
Christopher ran a hand over his face, sighing again. “Okay, okay, fine. We’ll do it your way.”
“And Sherwood?” Wells asked.
Christopher raised his hand, patting the air between them. “Trust me. Stow isn’t winning any points with Nysa.”
“Other noble ladies have succumbed to—”
“It’s not a matter of her being noble when he’s not. It’s that he’s human and she’s—Novron knows what—cold as frost in a frozen lake. Point is, he’s not making headway and isn’t likely to. But if it would make you more comfortable, I could make plans for Sherwood of the Endless Canvas and ensure that things are handled as expediently as possible.”
The chamberlain didn’t answer. He took a breath and ran a tongue along his lips as his eyes shifted from one face to the next.
Now was the time for Christopher to set the hook. “You see, you’ve already proven your value, and great things come to people who show such potential. So, Chamberlain, what do you say? Shall we consider you on board? Do you want to continue your rise and expand your horizons?”
He stared hard at Wells. They all did. The chamberlain’s eyes darted around once more.
Christopher rested his hand on the hilt of his sword as a gentle reminder that Wells might already be in too deep. He wasn’t, of course. The matter would still be word against word, but his little demonstration with Knox was bound to pay dividends.
“All right.” Wells nodded. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing at the moment. We’ll wait to see what the consultants have to say.”
“And Sherwood?”
Christopher just smiled.
Sherwood put a breakfast biscuit in his mouth. Holding it with his teeth, he shifted the painting to his left hand and opened the study door with his right. Another lovely Maranon morning cast spears of sunlight across the floor, over the desk, and up the wall. There was something magical about early light—late evening, too. Sherwood had a fondness for both dawn and dusk. Fairy tales said that these between-times, the not-quite-day and not-quite-night periods, were when the doors between the world of men and the worlds of the fantastical opened. These were the enchanted minutes when wonderful and dreadful things occurred. Sherwood wasn’t one for superstition, myths, or legends, but he admitted to the truth of the between-times being enchanting. The light was always more golden, its angle casting dramatic shadows, and everything came alive with color. That morning should have been wonderful, but instead, Sherwood was greeted by the dreadful.
At first, he didn’t know what he saw. Something strange was in the center of the room, lying on the floor in a twisted, unnatural way.
As usual, Sherwood had arrived early. Lady Dulgath, always punctual, wouldn’t be there for half an hour. He had intended to finish the last of his breakfast as he oiled his paints. He hadn’t left much time to set up. He’d lingered in bed, suffering a mild attack of depression. The morose feelings came over him often. Most times they were fleeting and easy to weather. Yet occasionally a random hurricane hit, the world turned dark, and rain fell in unimaginable torrents.
During those times, death by drowning was all but certain—and quite often welcomed. What had been fine the day before became too much to bear when the depression hurricane descended, and any memory of happiness was dismissed as a delusion. He was worthless; his work was atrocious, his life a miserable failure, and obviously Elan would be a better place without him breathing the air. While the attacks came without warning or trigger, that didn’t mean they couldn’t be provoked. Given that he had begun that morning experiencing a sprinkle, what lay on the floor of the private study threatened to bring the thunder.
For a brief instant Sherwood thought he saw a person, a horribly broken and mutilated corpse. Then he realized he wasn’t seeing flesh and bone, but splintered wood. He was looking at his easel, shattered in a dismembered sculpture of wanton destruction. Worse still were his paints. Bottles had been thrown, leaving brilliant bursts of colors on the walls and glass shards on the floor. A yellow ocher starburst had exploded near the window, looking like a second sun; a splatter of vermilion made the wall appear to bleed; a fan of umber had sprayed the wooden floorboards.
Sherwood always left his tools in the study. The room was never used and always closed. It made no sense to carry everything up to his room and then back down every morning. Early on, he left the canvas, too, but grew paranoid as the image of Lady Dulgath took form. He couldn’t afford to let anyone see it until finished. Maybe not even then.
He had taken the painting with him the night before and slept with it beside his bed, breathing oil fumes all night—one of the things his despair latched onto and labeled as stupid. He no longer felt that way; his depression couldn’t care less about such crumbs when a banquet lay before it.
The easel had belonged to Yardley, who inherited it from his master, who very likely got it from his. No telling how old the thing was—easily a hundred or more years. And every inch was covered in paint, with some places showing a buildup of layers, the sediment of decades. The screw that held the crossbar had long been cracked; so had the crossbar and the back leg. This had always caused the canvas frame to wobble, and the tray never was tight enough to suit Sherwood, especially not when it held a vial of Ultramarine. He’d cursed the thing countless times and considered having a new one made.
But seeing it on the floor, broken into a dozen pieces with bright jagged splinters, he felt he might vomit. This was the easel he’d learned on. This was the platform from which he discovered how to properly see the world. He’d taken it everywhere, sleeping with it on ships and in winter camps on high mountains. It had leaned against walls while he bedded ladies of varying ranks, and he’d whispered his fears to it more than once after coming home drunk.
Almost as tragic as the easel were the pigments. Seventy-five or maybe as much as a hundred gold tenents decorated the walls of the study. No blue burst, though—he’d thrown away the vial of Beyond the Sea all on his own. He still hoped to catch the man—Royce Melborn—and ask for it back. If Melborn had half a brain, he’d deny knowing anything about it, but laymen rarely understood the value of paint. That one vial was worth a dozen easels and everything presently on the walls.
Sherwood felt the hurricane build as he saw his brushes, also vandalized. Each one had been snapped in half, and some of them had the hairs pulled out or mashed with so much force that the ferrule had split. The painting was safe, but what good was it now that he had no hope of finishing it?
“What happened?”
Sherwood turned to see Lady Dulgath standing in the doorway.
How long have I been standing here?
He couldn’t talk and only pointed at the disaster, shaking his head.
“Who did this?” Her voice rose in volume and anxiety. “Did you see, were you here?”
He continued to shake his head. He felt like crying, afraid he might. Already his face was hot, his eyesight misting. He blinked fast to hold everything back.