An Alliance of Mortals, page 20
part #6 of The New Earth Chronicles Series
“Your cousin is a rogue?” he asked. “You never told me that.”
His partner shrugged.
“Second cousin. And it never came up. We can discuss it later if you want to. For now, we're on duty for another hour and you know what will happen if the captain walks by and finds us gossiping.”
“Aye. Good point.”
They resumed their posts on either side of the narrow gate and became silent and immobile again.
When Shandon approached his quarters, he saw that the royal guards stationed there were not alone. He groaned to himself as he recognized the figure of the seneschal pacing back and forth in front of his chambers.
“There you are!” Falder exclaimed as he saw the king coming down the hall.
He looked at Shandon's dented breastplate and unadorned beard and sighed loudly.
“You slipped out of the palace again without an escort, didn't you?” the seneschal asked with a disapproving frown.
The king nodded to the royal guards and one of them opened the door for him.
“If we're going to argue, Falder, I'd rather do it inside if you don't mind,” he said irritably. “My feet hurt and I'm thirsty.”
He walked into his quarters with the seneschal behind him.
“I do not wish to argue with you, my lord,” Falder told him as they walked through the rooms and into the lounge. “I was simply worried when I came looking for you and discovered that you had disappeared.”
Shandon waved him toward one of the tables as he walked over to the bar to draw himself a mug of ale.
“Your guards are very tight-lipped, by the way,” Falder told the king as he sat down. “Neither of them would tell me a thing beyond saying that you weren't in your quarters.”
“I appreciate discretion,” Shandon said as he walked over and sat across the table from Falder. “And yes, I went out to gauge the mood of the populace again. As usual, I was escorted by Hallic's rogues, so you can rest easy. I was in absolutely no danger.”
The seneschal nodded and relaxed slightly.
“Well, that's good news, at least.”
Shandon drank some ale and then rolled his head from side to side, loosening his neck and shoulders.
Falder winced at the snapping sounds and the king grinned at his discomfort.
“So why were you looking for me?” he asked the seneschal. “More complaints from petitioners? I'll be holding court this afternoon, you know.”
Falder shook his head.
“No, my lord. It isn't that. Something far more worrying has been brought to my attention and I felt it important enough to share it with you.”
“Yes? What is it?”
Falder slipped a roll of parchment out of a inner pocket of his tunic and offered it to the king.
“Several people have been murdered recently in the city,” he said as Shandon unrolled the parchment and began to read it. “And while we do have the occasional homicide in Kingstone; it is a large city with tens of thousands of citizens, after all; murders are still very rare. And now there have been four of them in the space of two days.”
The king read through the document and then set it down and stared at Falder.
“All four of these people seem to have been unrelated. One was a soldier. Another a clothier. The last two were laborers. Is there something that connects them all?”
“Not personally, my lord,” the seneschal replied. “All four of them were killed in separate locations and at different times of day.”
Shandon leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table.
“But there is a reason that you brought these tragic deaths to my attention, Falder,” he said. “What is it?”
Falder picked up the parchment and sighed as he rolled it up again.
“It isn't noted in this document, but I was told that the way they were killed is the commonality between the four of them.”
“Which was what?”
The seneschal hesitated and swallowed before he answered.
“They were hacked to pieces, my lord,” he said with a tinge of disgust. “Literally chopped into bits. The messenger sent by the city council told me that it took quite some time to identify each of the victims.”
Shandon stared at him with a confused frown.
“Chopped up? But why? Even in a rage, no dwarf would do such a thing. We do not suffer from the mental illnesses that used to plague the human race. At least, that is what I am told by our healers. Yes, dwarves can become depressed or murderously angry, but insanity is unknown to us.”
He looked across the room blankly, an expression of regret passing briefly over his face.
“And hacking up a body would be insane. My late son may have schemed against me, and taken innocent lives, but that was because of blind ambition, not because he was crazed. I doubt that even Corbin would have slaughtered random citizens the way you say these poor people were killed.”
Falder remained silent. The subject of the king's traitorous son was one that was never brought up in front of him, by anyone.
Shandon shook his head and focused on the seneschal again.
“The city council wants me to look into this?” he asked.
“Yes, my lord. They are out of their depth in this matter. Random murders, especially murders this gruesome, are not something that they have ever had to deal with before.”
“Understandable.”
The king sipped his ale absently as he gave the problem some thought.
“Very well. Send someone to fetch Hallic, would you? I know that he's very busy, but have the messenger emphasize that I would like to discuss something of great importance with him. Don't mention the murders. The guild probably knows about them already anyway. Just get him here as soon as possible.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And feel free to call me away from my duties if I'm still holding court when he gets here, all right?”
Falder smiled at him.
“Any excuse to get away from that tedious task, eh?” he asked lightly.
Shandon laughed as he pushed himself to his feet.
“You know me all too well, my friend. Now off you go. I have to dress properly and head to the throne room. Don't worry, Falder. We'll get to the bottom of these murders.”
After several boring hours spent listening to a host of merchants, nobles and ordinary citizens, the king returned to his quarters feeling drained and irritated. It seemed as if everyone had wanted a favor from the crown, which wasn't usually a problem. No, the problem had been that the large audience, sitting on the stone benches around the edges of the throne room, had watched Shandon's every move and listened breathlessly to every word he said. It had been somewhat nerve-wracking, even for him.
Do they think that I'm some sort of oracle? he wondered, annoyed. I'm a regular person, just like them. I do not understand what they see in me. I truly don't.
Every guard on duty who saw his dark expression as he walked through the palace quickly saluted and remained silent as Shandon passed by. The king was obviously having a bad day and none of the guardsmen wanted to risk his anger, although he was not known for taking out his ire on the troops.
When he entered his chambers, Shandon began unbuckling his ceremonial breastplate as he walked through his rooms and into the lounge. He stopped abruptly as he saw someone sitting indolently at one of the tables.
“Well, well, I didn't expect you to drop by so quickly,” the king said to his visitor.
He grinned as his dark mood changed immediately and he kept working on one stubborn buckle as he walked over to the bar.
“You got my message, I take it?” Shandon asked as he finally got his breastplate off and dropped it on to the floor with a loud clang of metal.
“I did. And since my people had already begun investigating the murders your messenger so scrupulously avoided mentioning, I thought that I should get here as soon as possible.”
Shandon smiled ruefully as he picked up a tall mug and began drawing some ale from a cask on top of the bar.
“I told Falder that you would be able to guess the reason for my summons,” he said as he walked over to the table and sat down with a tired sigh. “So how are you doing, Hallic?”
The master of the rogues guild grinned at the king, his youthful face looking as carefree and innocent as always.
“I am well, my lord,” he replied. “You, on the other hand, look troubled.”
“Aye, I suppose I do. Court intrigues are tiresome to me, but the news of these strange murders are something else. What do you make of them?”
He drank some ale as he waited for the rogue to reply.
Hallic, as usual, was dressed in nondescript clothing and was apparently unarmed. Shandon doubted that was the case though.
“I believe that we are of the same mind,” Hallic told him pensively, his smile slipping from his face. “Dwarves do not kill in this way, not even when in a rage. When my people told me of the murders, I got involved personally and did some digging. What could all four of these rather unremarkable people have in common? It was a mystery and I don't like mysteries. Not when it affects our city and threatens our citizens.”
“So what did you find out?”
A small, keen dagger appeared in the rogue's hand as if by magic and he began flipping it absently as he talked.
“I traced their movements as well as I could, checking locations that they had visited before their deaths,” Hallic told the king. “It took some time to gather the information, but I finally found something.”
Shandon put down his mug, his gaze intensifying.
“Which was what?” he asked.
The dagger disappeared again and Hallic slipped a hand inside of his tunic and pulled out a piece of parchment. He unfolded it and set it down on the table.
It was a map of the city, small but very detailed. Shandon leaned forward to stare at it.
Hallic tapped a spot on the map at the northeast corner of the city near the outer wall.
“All four of the victims visited a shop located here, at the edge of the warehouse district,” he told the king. “It sells a variety of dry goods including bales of cloth, bags of nails and screws and bundles of wooden planks, among other things. All quite ordinary and mundane.”
Shandon frowned at the map and then gave Hallic a puzzled glance.
“Wait a minute. These people visited a dry goods shop and were then killed for it? I don't understand.”
“I didn't either, at first,” the rogue admitted. “So I set some of my people to keep an eye on the place.”
He picked up the map and began folding it again.
“Turns out that our innocuous little shop is a front for something far more interesting.”
He smiled impishly at Shandon and the king sat back and rubbed his eyes.
“Hallic, I'm far too tired to deal with your teasing,” he groaned. “Just get on with it, please.”
“Of course, my lord. Please forgive me.”
Shandon looked at his insincere expression of contrition and chuckled in spite of himself.
“You'll never change, will you?” he asked Hallic.
“Of course not. And I doubt that you would want me to. Anyway, getting back to this suspicious little shop.”
He slipped the map back into his pocket and the dagger reappeared in his hand.
“That's a rather disconcerting little habit you have, by the way,” Shandon observed as he nodded at the weapon. “If Jergen was here right now, he'd probably object to you flipping a dagger around so close to my throat.”
Hallic laughed.
“Actually, he'd probably jump me in a misguided effort to save you from the big, bad assassin. And that would be unfortunate. For him.”
He began flipping the dagger from hand to hand as he became serious again.
“The shop is a gathering place where clandestine meetings are held,” he told the king. “Our four ordinary citizens were not what they appeared to be. They were spies.”
“Spies!” Shandon exclaimed. “Spies for whom? And for what?”
“That I do not know. Yet,” Hallic admitted. “But my rogues have observed many ordinary dwarves coming and going from the shop. None of them have any real status or wealth. They are just citizens. None of them buy anything, but over several days the same people have dropped in, spent some time speaking with the owner of the shop and then left again, empty-handed.”
“And you believe that they are spying for someone? Why? Couldn't there be some other explanation for these meetings?”
“Yes, of course. That is why my people followed each one of them, to figure out their motives.”
“And what did they discover?”
Hallic made a subtle motion and the dagger stuck into the tabletop, quivering for a moment.
“They learned that all of these regular people were trying to get in here,” he said as he looked around the room. “Into the palace. All of them have tried to attend a royal session when you hold court and accept petitioners. Fortunately for us, these appearances of yours have become so popular that it is difficult to get a seat in the audience.”
He winked at Shandon.
“Being a good king has actually had an unexpected side effect. It has made it difficult for these people to infiltrate the palace. So far, at least.”
Shandon drank more ale as he glowered at the dagger sticking out of the tabletop.
“So whoever is behind this spy ring is trying to get people into the palace,” he muttered. “For what purpose? My assassination?”
“Doubtful,” Hallic told him. “You are both highly protected and a very skillful warrior in your own right. Plus, everyone attending one of your audiences is searched before being allowed into the throne room. No, I think that they are being sent here to get a good look at that new piece of furniture that you've had installed.”
“The anchor?”
The king angrily slapped his hand on the table.
“Yes, of course! How could I be so stupid? Of course that is what they wanted to see. We were warned that dark forces would be interested in the thing as a way to reach all three of the mortal races. I'm just surprised that we were the first ones that they attempted to spy upon.”
“What makes you think that we're the first?” Hallic replied as he raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps our new allies are being spied on as well but just don't know it yet.”
Shandon looked surprised at the rogue's comment. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up.
“You make a good point, Hallic. Come with me. I'm going to contact them at once and warn them of their danger.”
The rogue got up and pulled his dagger out of the tabletop. He examined it carefully as he spoke to the king.
“Don't you want to know why those four people were killed? The ones who were sent to spy at court?”
Shandon had turned toward the doorway, but stopped and looked back at Hallic. He sighed and smiled ruefully.
“Sorry. I'm getting distracted too easily right now. That sometimes happens when I'm overtired. Yes, of course I want to know why they died.”
Hallic's dagger disappeared as he locked eyes at the king.
“They died because they were patriots,” he said gravely. “I believe that those four very ordinary people were killed because they had decided to warn you that the empire was in danger, rather than spy for our enemies. And they were slaughtered in such a horrific manner to send a message to any others who are working against the crown. And that message is: do not make the same mistake that those four dwarves made.”
Chapter 15
Malcolm was standing at the front gates of Nottinghill Castle, chatting casually with the two guards there, when a young woman ran up to him, her face flushed as she gasped for breath.
“Molly?” the big man exclaimed in surprise. “What's wrong? What's happened?”
The young woman, dressed as a member of the castle's staff, held up a hand as she tried to catch her breath.
“Just...just a moment, sir,” she panted.
Malcolm exchanged a mystified glance with the two guards.
“Of course. Take your time,” he told her.
After a moment, Molly nodded as her breathing slowed down.
“Ah, that's better. Sorry about that,” she told Malcolm. “I got a little over-excited there. This is the first message that we've received and I just happened to be the one on duty, so...”
“Message? From whom? What are you talking about?” the warrior asked with a frown.
“From the anchor, sir.” she replied. “It was my turn to keep an eye on the thing. Scared me half to death when that pillar started talking, I can tell you.”
Malcolm chuckled.
“Yes, I imagine it did. But why come to me about this?”
Evening was falling over the castle and torches were burning in sconces all around the inner walls of the courtyard. Shadows danced in the uneven light as gusts of wind blew through the open gates.
“You are the ranking member of the leadership on duty right now, sir,” Molly told him with a shrug. “So I came to you.”
“Am I? Sorry, I forgot about that. So tell me, who is calling?”
“Someone named, err, Sharon or something?” Molly replied haltingly. “Very powerful voice. He sounded a little impatient when I told him that I was just a minor member of staff”
She stopped speaking as Malcolm gaped at her.
“Shandon?” he asked her in a strained voice.
“Oh, yes. That was it,” Molly agreed with an laugh. “Silly me. Such an odd name. So anyway, he was a little snippy and...”
Malcolm raced away, crossing the crowded courtyard in a sprint and narrowly avoiding knocking people over in his haste. His armor clanged loudly as he ran.
“What's up with him?” she asked the guards, perplexed.
One of them, an older woman, shook her head at Molly.
“You were speaking to the king of the dwarves and you left him on hold?” she asked her. “Seriously? What were you thinking?”
Molly paled at the statement.
“The king? That was the king? Oh my God. I didn't know! I don't pay attention to politics and all that stuff.”
