Always, along with the smell of blood in his nose, there was smoke—braziers and torches, campfires and the burning of homes, forts, and castles. With the host defeated on the field, the gates thrown wide, the spoils of victory were his. The men would rush in howling and near mad, having shaken hands with death and lived. Afterward they felt like gods. They deserved everything—and who could deny them? They took what they wished and slaughtered any with a different opinion.
Hadrian’s ritual afterward had been trying to drown himself. Someone would drag a barrel of something into the street, splinter the lid, and they would all dunk cups to toast themselves. Hadrian would continue to drink. Trying to make it all go away. He wanted to wash the blood off, but he could never rid himself of the stain. As he sat there, beside the barrel, they would offer him his choice of the women they ripped from their homes, because they knew he was instrumental in their victory. He picked a pretty blonde with the torn dress. She reminded him of Arbor, the girl he once loved back in Hintindar, the girl he lost to his best friend. He grabbed her. She screamed, but all he did was hug the girl to his chest. She fought against him but stopped when she realized he was crying.
When he let her go, she knelt beside him, just watching. She never said a word, just a pale perfect face looking up, highlighted by the flames.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What’s that?”
Hadrian blinked. The girl was gone and he was looking at Essendon Castle again.
“What did you say?” An elderly man stood beside him, shivering.
“Nothing,” Hadrian replied.
“They say the king is dead, you know.”
“Do they?” Hadrian replied, wondering how to slip away.
“Betrayed by one of his own, a guard named Hilfred.”
Hilfred? Hadrian was no longer in a hurry to leave. “What happened to the guard?”
“Executed by Chancellor Percy Braga. Our new chancellor is as good as Count Pickering with a sword, you know.
“I heard one of the guards saying that Lord Exeter is to blame. He’s been plotting against the king and ordered the doors to the royal residence chained and the fire set. The whole royal family is gone.”
“Not the whole family.” A woman clutching a child to her chest spoke just above a whisper, as if imparting a dangerous secret. “One of the children lived.”
“Which one?”
“The girl, Arista.”
“Lord Exeter will have the child killed, then.”
“The hateful bastard,” the woman cursed, covering the ears of her own child.
“Careful,” the old man said. “He might be our new king.”
This brought a look of horror to the woman’s face. “The new chancellor won’t allow that. He’ll see justice is done.”
“Chancellor Braga is foreign-born,” another man said. This one had managed to pull a blanket with him on his way out as well as a misshapen hat that he tugged down over his reddening ears. “He’s had no time to make alliances. Lord Exeter commands the guards and all the sheriffs. Given a choice between the two, even if it can be proved that Exeter killed the royal family, I don’t know which way the army will side. We could be looking at civil war.”
“It’s a dark, dark day,” the woman muttered, hugging the child tight and twisting at the waist.
With one last look up at the burning castle, Hadrian pushed out of the crowd. He slipped into the empty streets of the Gentry Quarter. Away from the castle, away from the burning heat, it was cold. A wind was picking up, a northern wind, a breath of winter.
He aimed for Gentry Square, deciding to cut through to the Merchant Quarter. He’d try poking his head into The Hallowed Sword. Maybe Royce had returned the carriage to Dunwoodie and was waiting there for him. As he entered the square, he found another crowd forming. About twenty people stood around the statue in the center, holding up lanterns and torches. As he got closer, he saw why.
The body of a man hung from the statue. Horribly mutilated, the corpse had been strung up by ropes and decorated in macabre fashion with candles. He wore the black and white uniform like the sheriffs. His eyes, ears, and several of his fingers were missing. Nailed to his chest, held there by what Hadrian assumed had been the man’s own jeweled dagger, was a sign printed in large letters:
NOBLE OR NOT, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS
TO ANYONE WHO HARMS
THE LADIES OF MEDFORD HOUSE
Royce had found Lord Exeter after all. Hadrian turned away. He’d seen enough for one night.
When he reached The Hallowed Sword, he found Dunwoodie’s carriage and Diamond tied up out front, but Royce was not there. Dunwoodie himself was still sleeping, and Hadrian decided to leave him to it.
He wanted a drink but the place was deserted. Everyone who was awake was at the castle or in the square.
Hadrian left the Merchant Quarter, passing once more near the castle, which was still burning. Flames were shooting out of the rooftops, and one of the peaked cones of a lower tower had caved in, taking the falcon flag with it. A communal Ohhh! went up from the crowd. The bucket brigade had given up on the castle and were now hoisting water from the moat and splashing it on the courtyard’s outbuildings, trying to save what they could.
Hadrian slipped back into the shadows, this time entering the Artisan Quarter. Once more he found a crowd in that quarter’s central square. Only five people stood witness where another body was strung up. This one was mutilated in much the same way. The dead man was missing his eyes, ears, and fingers. The note nailed to him read simply:
He killed a lady of Medford House.
A man wearing a bright red stocking cap was trying to read it out loud for the benefit of those who couldn’t. “Ka-ki-killed, ah laaadee…” Hadrian listened as he methodically struggled through the seven words.
“That’s Stane,” one of those in the small crowd said.
“I was there the night he killed that poor girl,” another mentioned. He looked familiar, wearing a carpenter’s hammer where a sword would be.
“What was her name?” the speaker with the red cap asked.
“It was a year ago. Don’t even remember now.”
“I knew he would end badly.” An elderly woman wagged her finger. “Always said so.”
Hadrian remembered the name Stane. He was the one Grue had said killed Gwen’s friend. The murder that caused her to leave the tavern. Hadrian looked back at the sign. Technically she was a whore from The Hideous Head at the time, but he could see Royce was keeping to a consistent message. The townsfolk didn’t seem to mind him blurring the details.
Hadrian continued on through Artisan Row and the gate to the Lower Quarter. The bodies were gone, as if the fight had never happened. Dark spots remained to reassure him it had. He realized too late that he should have gone the long way around and avoided the scene, but he was too tired. It had been a long night, and he was hoping Gwen would give him a bed. He’d look for Royce again in the morning. Knowing Royce, he’d find Hadrian if he was alive.
Hadrian didn’t take the shortcut this time. He took the main street through the Lower Quarter’s central square. Each quarter had something. The gentry had their fancy statue, Merchant Square had pretty benches, and even the artisans had a fountain. In the Lower Quarter all they had was the old common well and a notice board. Even before he got close, Hadrian knew that a new notice had been tacked up that night.
He wasn’t disappointed.
One more body hung, stretched in the now-familiar grotesque design. Blood dripped and was warm enough to raise steam off the icy street. No crowd surrounded it. The square was deserted, and Hadrian stood alone, looking up at the grisly display. Of all the men who had died that night, this was the only one he had known. Still he couldn’t muster any sympathy.
Royce had indeed been busy that night, and he was thankful they had separated. Hadrian walked on, heading for Wayward Street, turning his back on the square, the well, the notice board, and the mutilated body of Raynor Grue.
CHAPTER 20
FALLOUT