chapter FIFTEEN
Across the plaza, Ephitel’s face twisted in a cruel grin. He came forward at the same slow advance.
“This is your plan?” Avery hissed.
“It gets us in the palace,” Corin answered under his breath.
“In the dungeons! That is not the same at all.”
“Can you think of something better?”
“Yes! You should have left town! Hidden in some manling farmer’s barn for a week while you made some connections and plotted something that might actually work.”
Corin swallowed his first sarcastic response. He said, “Maurelle believed the Nimble Fingers would be connections enough.”
“Not to challenge Ephitel. Oberon himself might not be connection enough.”
Ephitel’s arrival ended that conversation. For a long moment, he sat in judgment over them, his cohort spread out in tableau.
Then he spoke. “Avery of the House of Violets. While under charge, you have further dared to despise the custody of the Royal Guard. And here’s your pretty sister, Maurelle of the House of Violets. A conspirator in your crimes.”
Avery’s whole body tensed in anger and fear, but the gentleman did not dare object. Corin had no such restraint. “She’s done no—”
“And you,” Ephitel boomed, smiling even as he voiced his grim displeasure. “Corin Hugh of Aepoli, a manling vagabond far from home now meddling in the affairs of his betters.”
Corin staggered at those words. How had Ephitel learned his identity? The answer came to him in a moment. “Aemilia…”
Corin barely breathed the name, but Ephitel nodded. “You have led me on a merry chase, slinking fox, but the moneylender made for docile prey.”
But she’s escaped your net, Corin thought. He strove to hide the flash of satisfaction from his eyes, but Ephitel reacted. He spurred his stallion forward, knocking Corin back, and kicked aside the open carriage door. He stared inside. Corin itched to have some weapon—the sword he’d left behind, or even the crude knives he’d nearly borrowed from the kitchen earlier. For one long moment Ephitel left his back turned on Corin, and the pirate yearned to bury three feet of sharp steel in it.
Maybe not too sharp.
Then the prince wheeled in a fury. “Where is she? Where has the druid gone?”
One of his lieutenants pressed forward. “She must have slipped away with the crowd.”
“Impossible!” Ephitel shouted. “She carried a draught of the druids’ own sleeping potion. That would have rendered her as useless as these fools upon the road.” His eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “What has happened here?”
Panic burned behind Corin’s breastbone. He couldn’t let Ephitel suspect the druids’ involvement. Corin pushed forward and raised his chin. “I came to rescue Avery.”
“I have seen something of your tricks,” Ephitel said. “This is not your handiwork.”
“It is!” Corin shouted. He pointed to the guard he’d overcome earlier. The unfortunate soldier was stirring now, groaning softly, and matching bruises blacked both his eyes. Corin darted toward him. “Ask this one. I fell upon him like a storm at sea.”
Ephitel followed Corin until he sat staring down at the stirring soldier with the same disdain he had shown to Corin before. “Yeoman Kellen. I should not be surprised to find you embroiled in this affair.”
Yeoman Kellen stopped stirring, although he did give one more heartfelt groan.
Ephitel leaned one arm against his pommel and asked icily, “Do you need aid, Yeoman Kellen?”
“No, sir,” the fallen soldier said. His eyes snapped open, and Kellen winced once, then began the laborious process of climbing to his feet. “No, Lord Ephitel. I am able.”
“Hardly,” the prince said. “What happened here?”
“Riot, sir. There might have been a thousand angry citizens—”
“Rebels,” Ephitel growled.
Kellen swallowed hard, then shrugged. “As you say. Torches and stones.”
“What was their intent?”
Kellen swallowed hard again, and this time he looked away. “I couldn’t make it out.”
“Ha!” Ephitel leaned back and shook his head. “You’ve never had a spine, Yeoman Kellen. I feel your time among my men is at an end.”
The yeoman hung his head in shame and gave no answer.
“And what of my other brave jailers?” Ephitel cried, apparently hoping to stir more of them. “So much disturbance, and still they sleep, though I see no mark upon them. One might even think these others suffered the effects of druids.”
Ephitel’s lieutenant called out, “Sir!” from where he knelt beside one of the fallen men. “Even so. These are the druids’ poisoned darts.” He brandished one of the shiny projectiles Corin had seen before.
“Aha,” Ephitel said, “proof at last of their treachery.”
“No,” Corin cried, inventing wildly. “That’s my doing, too.”
“Impossible.”
“Not at all. I…the druids took me in. As you well know. And…while I was in their care, I stole these trinkets.”
“Is that so?” Ephitel asked, a strange, hungry look in his eyes. “You are quite the resourceful one. Yeoman Kellen! Tie him up.”
“Tie him, sir? There are chains in the carriage—”
“Chains he has already defeated once, you will find. As I said, he is a resourceful one. Tie him with an elven knot.” He turned aside for a moment, running his eyes over his other prisoners. “We should have a knot for Lord Avery, too. Chains will suffice for Lady Maurelle.”
“No!” Avery cried. “Let her go!”
Ephitel spurred his horse two quick steps closer to Avery, then answered the angry thief with an armor-plated kick to his unprotected stomach. Avery folded double, then collapsed in a whimpering pile. Ephitel spat down at him. “Watch your tongue when you speak to the lord protector.” He turned dispassionate eyes back to Kellen. “Well? Tie them!”
The soldier sprang into action. He uncoiled a cord from around his upper arm, something fine and gilded that Corin had taken for decorative braiding. But as Kellen unrolled the cord and drew out a measured length of it, Corin recognized the hair-fine thread. In his time it was an artifact, a relic of the ages when elves walked with men. But he was in those ages now, and Yeoman Kellen approached to bind his hands with a delicate thread that could have held an anchor through any gale. Now two loops went over each hand, and Kellen pulled the knot tight with a simple gesture, but Corin found no slack, no loose edges, no angle to escape the bindings.
“There’s a handy trick,” Corin said. “Why use manacles at all?”
Ephitel moved closer, eyes narrowed. “It is strange the things that you don’t know. And, then again, the ones you do.”
It took only a moment before Corin understood. The dwarven powder. Maurelle had told him Ephitel craved the stuff. Corin shook his head, “I am just a manling vagabond—”
“Rich in mystery and richer in defiance,” Ephitel said. “We have a place set aside for such as you.” He jerked his head toward the coach. “Take them to the palace dungeons. And you! Take thirty men and hunt down the traitor druids.”
Halfway to the carriage, Corin wrenched against his captors’ grip to shout back, “No! The druids had no part in this!”
“You are a wretched liar,” Ephitel answered. He told his lieutenant, “Go. Now.” Then he turned back to the jailers’ carriage as two of his soldiers forced Corin into its confines. “Two insignificant children from the House of Violets, and one mysterious manling from out of time,” Ephitel mused, almost to himself. “What can you have in common?”
Corin suppressed his angry response. He said, “Innocence?”
“Hardly.” The prince stepped back half a pace so Yeoman Kellen could heave the groaning Avery up into the cab with Corin and Maurelle. Ephitel considered them all for a moment, then nodded slowly. “This shall be interesting. I must speak with Oberon.”
“I would speak with him, too,” Corin said. “Shall we go together?”
Ephitel’s brows crashed together. “You shall go to the darkest prison I can find for you.”
“I demand an audience with the king.”
“It is not your right to demand such a thing.”
“Avery, then—”
“No. By its association with you, the House of Violets has lost such rights as well.” Ephitel grinned. “Oh, you may prove useful to me after all.”
“Gods’ blood!” Corin snapped. “What have they done against you?”
“Be careful of the threats you make,” Ephitel answered him. “Yeoman Kellen! Are the prisoners secure?”
“Yes, Lord Ephitel.”
“Very good. You will accompany them to the dungeons.”
“Yes, Lord Ephitel. And who will join me? The rest of my unit are still upon the road.”
“So they are,” Ephitel said. “I believe you will go alone.”
Kellen looked into the confines of the carriage, and a little shudder shook him. Corin understood. Once the carriage was in motion it would become an island, isolated, and on that island Yeoman Kellen would be much outnumbered by his charges. Even with their hands bound, they could do him no small damage. Jailers always preferred numbers until their prisoners were safely in cells. This was near enough a suicide order, or must have seemed so to the yeoman.
He swallowed hard. “Alone, sir?”
“You have your orders.”
For a moment he seemed prepared to argue. Then he meekly bowed his head and reached to retrieve the truncheon that had fallen from his grip. Ephitel urged his horse forward, and a steel-shod hoof slammed down on the haft of the hardened club, reducing it to splinters. Kellen barely kept his hand.
The yeoman leaped back, looking to his lord protector in shock. Ephitel nodded pointedly at the sword on Kellen’s belt. “A soldier of mine should not fear a little bloodshed.”
Kellen nodded, defeated, then turned and climbed into the carriage. A moment later the door slammed shut, and everyone within it could hear the locks on the outer doors slamming into place. Outside, Ephitel sniffed. “Ease your heart, Yeoman Kellen. I would not trust these prisoners to your charge for all the gold in Oberon’s coffers. There will be forty of your stalwart companions riding along outside.” Then he shouted a command and the carriage jerked into motion, dragging them all toward the palace dungeons.