Chapter 20: No Rat

Frankie

Talking to an empty room was embarrassing.

I had done worse for money.

“The replacement payroll goes to the quarry granary,” I said. “Tomorrow before dawn. There’s a loose board under the east window. Third board from the wall. The box goes beneath it.”

There was no loose board or replacement payroll. There was a ring on the desk and a seal beside it.

I moved papers around so it sounded like work and read the false instructions twice. Then I locked both objects in Brannik’s lined box and went back to the church.

Everyone was still there.

Mara sat beside Liora, mending a child’s coat. Hobb carried water. Benny sliced bread. Rosella supervised three women who clearly intended to ignore her as soon as she looked away. Brannik was arguing with Aldric about the angle of a roof brace.

We stayed together until morning.

I wanted it to be an ordinary evening so badly that I almost forgot why we were doing it.

* * *

Dren had watchers at all three buildings before I chose one.

They were instructed to observe, keep civilians away, and stop anyone setting fires. He checked each one himself. The window bars were sound, the service doors bolted from within. Only the loading entrance stood open. Nobody sleeping in a corner. Nobody tied to a damn chair waiting for me to be clever.

At dawn, six men approached the quarry granary.

The watchers let them enter.

They went straight to the east window and began prying up the third board. No search. No trying anywhere else.

Dren surrounded the building and offered them a choice between coming out unarmed and explaining themselves to Hobb.

He hadn’t brought Hobb.

Five men began coming out with their hands up. Our watchers stepped forward to take them.

Their captain rushed the loading entrance behind the last two, shoved one into Dren, and drew a knife. Berrit, a carter we’d hired to hold that side of the doorway, caught his coat.

The captain stabbed down into Berrit’s thigh. His coat tore. He got through and ran for the horse Berrit had tethered beside the west path.

By the time Dren pushed the stumbling prisoners clear, the captain was in the saddle.

Dren could chase the horse or stop the bleeding.

He stayed with Berrit.

We heard the whistle from the church. Hobb reached the quarry before I did, with Mara carrying Rosella’s bag behind him.

Hoofprints led away from the granary. The man who knew who’d hired the voice and sent Oren’s killer through my kitchen was gone.

Dren knelt beside the carter with both hands pressed around the knife wound.

“Could’ve had him with the gate,” he said.

Brannik stood beside me.

“Maybe,” I said.

Berrit began shaking. Mara unfolded a blanket and told me to hold his shoulders while Rosella worked.

The man apologized for losing the horse.

“Was it yours?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Then it’s my horse now. What’d you pay?”

He couldn’t seem to remember. Mara said his wife would know.

Dren looked toward the west path.

“If I’d gone after him—”

“You stayed with your man.”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

I made myself stop looking at the hoofprints and turn back.

“Get a cart. One with springs.”

One of the five prisoners had been hired to lift the floorboards. He swore he knew nothing about an attack on a tavern. I wanted to ask him until his answer changed.

Instead I had Dren take his name and bring the others to the watch house separately.

Their captain’s satchel lay beside the doorway, its strap torn where Berrit had caught him. Inside was the search order bearing a royal counterseal. The third board. The east window. Every damn word I’d told an empty room.

I read it while Berrit was lifted into the cart.

Then I read it again.

There was no rat.

There was a Boss.

* * *

At the church, Berrit’s wife asked whether he would walk.

Rosella said they would know more when the swelling eased.

I paid for the horse and put his wages with it, then told Dren the man’s name went on our books until he could return to his own work.

Then I went to Brannik.

“The captain’s gone.”

“I know.”

“Boss may never give him up.”

“I know that too.”

All the way back, I’d practiced what to say to him. He waited.

“Check the carter’s wagon before his wife takes him home. The springs sounded bad.”

“I’ll do that.”

I left the rest unsaid.

Mara came out of the vestry with blood on her cuff. She’d heard us. She stood beside me for a moment.

“Go wash,” she said. “I’ll have your clean shirt brought.”

“I can get it.”

“Stay until she knows where they are taking him.”

Berrit’s wife was still in the doorway, holding the money in one hand and a boot they had cut from his leg in the other.

I stayed.

* * *

Azrath was waiting in the room with the white asters.

He stood when I entered.

Actually stood.

“Magnificent,” he said.

I had rehearsed several openings on the ride up.

That destroyed all of them.

“You did this.”

“You found the channel, identified the false witness, and devised a clean test. I expected competence, Francesco. You have begun to show wisdom.”

I put the forged letter on his table.

“Oren’s dead.”

The pleasure in his voice softened into patience.

“Yes. I was informed.”

“Tovin too.”

“There were regrettable excesses in the execution.”

“Execution’s a good word.”

His fingers rested beside the letter.

For a moment, I thought he might be angry.

Instead he said, “I allowed for your anger, Francesco.”

Like I was a boy whose birthday present had arrived the wrong color.

My hands began to shake. I put them behind my back.

“You sent killers into my place.”

“I created pressure. Men reveal themselves under pressure.”

He glanced at my ring.

“You demonstrated that rather beautifully at the weighing house.”

I couldn’t speak for a moment.

I wanted to tell him it was different.

Garran’s sister had my signature saying exactly how different it wasn’t.

“I murdered him,” I said.

“You overcame an obstacle and engineered a solution.”

“No.”

Azrath waited, as though I would eventually arrive at the sensible description.

“These men you sent. The pressure. Was it for my men?”

“You.”

Azrath came closer.

I could see the bone inside his cheek and the little space where a tooth was missing.

Been calling him Boss so long, sometimes I forgot what was doing the talking.

“Any fool can suspect betrayal,” he said. “Any butcher can produce a confession. You examined evidence without surrendering the assets that made you strong. You understood that a wise ruler must know his possessions more intimately than an enemy can imitate them.”

“They’re people.”

“Of course they are.”

He said it fondly.

That was worse than if he’d argued.

* * *

He explained the seals with the patience of a father showing his boy what was under the hood.

I kept my hands in my pockets.

The objects witnessed what happened near them. The ring could hold voices. The governor’s seal could preserve the shape of a document. Neither could reach a mind or know what happened in a room where I had left them behind.

My upstairs room.

The conversation about the door.

He’d heard all my orders. Missed the night I couldn’t sleep.

“You watched my people,” I said.

“I watched you flourish.”

He sounded almost hurt that I couldn’t appreciate the distinction.

“The voice?”

“An echo. The handwriting, a competent copy. The other objects were obtained through ordinary means. I wished the test to concern your judgment, not your knowledge of obscure magic.”

Ordinary means.

A knife taken off a hook. Silk taken from a basket. Men hired to frighten people until somebody died.

“It ends,” I said.

“It has ended. You passed.”

“No more trials involving my people.”

Azrath considered me.

Then he inclined his head.

“No more trials of this kind.”

Of this kind.

I’d used wording like that myself.

“The families receive restitution,” I said. “From the crown. Enough to live on. And the men who killed for you answer for what they did.”

“Arrange the compensation.”

“That wasn’t all I said.”

“I heard all you said.”

The cold deepened.

I glanced at the door.

Could keep pushing. See whether I made it that far.

Elin still needed the money. I told myself that on the way out of every bad conversation lately. Somebody needed the money.

* * *

Before I left, the Boss opened a narrow cabinet.

Inside stood a small silver cup, a book bound in pale leather, and a second ring almost identical to mine.

He touched the empty place beside them.

“I had a son,” he said.

I waited.

“A clever boy. Impatient. He believed there would be time to become everything he intended.”

He kept his hand in the empty space long enough that I stopped looking at the door.

“There was not.”

My mother used to put things away for later. Good linen. A little money.

Most of it was still put away when she died.

“I’m sorry.”

“So was I.”

He closed the cabinet.

“I will not make the same concession to death again.”

Then he looked at me.

“I intend to make you immortal, Francesco.”

Never die.

Never get old. Never hear a gun behind me and wonder if that was it.

For a second, I forgot the letter on his table.

He saw me do it.

* * *

I told them everything.

The test. The seals. The compensation. The refusal to surrender the men who had acted on royal orders.

The Gift.

Hobb stood so quickly his chair struck the wall.

Brannik said something in a language that had probably been invented by craftsmen dealing with royalty.

Liora took off her spectacles and cleaned them with elaborate care.

Benny looked older.

Rosella kept both hands flat on the table.

Mara asked one question.

“Did he apologize?”

“No.”

Nobody spoke for a while.

Al stood near the window with Dren’s man beside him.

I’d just finished telling them what it felt like when the Boss played games with your life.

The guard shifted his feet.

“You protected them,” Aldric said at last.

“Not all of them.”

“No. But you refused to let him make you destroy the rest.”

“He thinks that means I’m ready.”

“For what he wants you to become.”

I put the lined box on the shelf.

The seals stayed inside.

For tonight, the Boss could wonder what we were doing.

* * *

Before midnight, Mara and I wrote the public notice together.

No member of the household had supplied the attackers with information. The accusations against them were false. Anyone with a complaint could bring it to me under their own name.

I signed it.

Then I gave Dren a second order. People frightened by the attacks were free to leave, with wages and an escort. No debts held over them. No questioning them to make sure they weren’t carrying an inconvenient story.

Brannik read both orders before he agreed to post them.

He changed one line. I signed it again.

* * *

Mara found me in the kitchen after midnight.

There still wasn’t any coffee. I was considering making that everybody’s problem when she sat beside me.

“The door gave you proof,” she said.

“A place to start.”

“Before that.”

I looked at her.

“Why didn’t you believe it?”

I knew how she kept the accounts. How she talked to the boys making deliveries. How she got mad at me when nobody else would.

Could’ve gone through the whole list. Made it sound like detective work.

“Because you’re you.”

She looked down at her hands.

“I know what you did to Garran.”

“I know.”

“I still see him when I close my eyes.”

I looked at the table.

“I wrote it for his sister. Exactly what I did. She has it.”

She nodded. Her eyes stayed on the table.

“I thought tonight would be the same. Another locked door. Someone begging.”

“So did I.”

“You could have ordered Brannik to build it.”

“Could’ve tried.”

“And when the captain escaped, I thought you would make him pay for refusing.”

I remembered every word I’d practiced on the cart ride.

“Wasn’t his fault.”

She looked at my clean shirt, then at the cloak on the peg.

“Berrit’s wife came back for his other boot. She said you waited with her.”

“She didn’t know where to go.”

“I know.”

Her voice had changed a little.

“Should’ve stopped the first time.”

“Yes.”

Nothing to argue with there.

I got up, took her cloak from the peg, and laid it around her shoulders. The kitchen fire had burned low.

She caught my hand before I could move away.

“Frankie.”

She had a thousand things to say when we were working. Right then she couldn’t seem to find one.

I drew her to her feet.

“You been keeping me awake a long time, you know that?”

A little color came into her face.

“Have I?”

“Don’t look so innocent. You know damn well.”

She gave me the small smile I’d been missing for days.

I put a hand against her cheek and kissed her.

Her fingers tightened in my waistcoat. Then her arms went around my neck, and I forgot what I’d meant to say next.

When I lifted my head, she stayed close.

“Took you long enough,” she whispered.

“Had to be sure of my opening.”

“You are a very foolish man.”

“Yeah.”

I kissed her again.

She touched the corner of my mouth with her thumb.

“What?” I asked.

“You smile differently when you forget to be clever.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“It is. I’ve had a dreadful time pretending not to notice.”

I laughed, and she looked so pleased with herself that I had to kiss her again.

Afterward I sat by the hearth and drew her down beside me. She tucked her feet beneath her skirt and settled against my shoulder. Her hand stayed inside mine.

I could hear Benny putting away glasses in the other room.

He took an unreasonable amount of time over the last two.

Mara hid a smile against my coat.

“He knows,” she whispered.

“Benny knows everything. Terrible habit.”

“Shall I go?”

I put my arm around her.

“No.”

She lifted her face to mine.

“Then stop looking as though you expect me to.”

I hadn’t known I was doing that.

I kissed her forehead and leaned back with her against me. For once, when the room grew quiet, I didn’t reach for work.