Chapter 193 Two Groups

When the masked men came with their blades for his legs, Leon understood the thing well enough. These were his brother the King's men. They had not come for his life — not necessarily. The King wanted proof tried out: were the legs truly crippled? And if they were not — they would be made so. But when the masked men tried to carry Lora off, the cloud of doubt came down on him all at once: His brother had no cause to lay hands on Lora. If it was the rumor of the Grand Strategy of the Realms, there would have been buzzing of it, more here or less there — and Augustus von Klein had brought him no word at all. Who, then, had need of both things at once? The masks had all been torn off now — and not one face among them was a face they knew. "My lord, the thing sits crooked with me. I crossed hands with four of them. Three fought all in the Northern Office's inner-guard style; the fourth was the better hand of them, but his school I couldn't place — he may be one of the Northern Office's outside blades, kept clear of the palace." Leon glanced once at Ruth. "Ruthie — you women get in the carriage. Nobody comes out unless called." The door had scarce shut when Ruth caught, faint through it, her lord's order: "Strip their trousers off them." A brief scuffle, and the answer came back beyond all they had guessed: The forty-odd dead held no inner guards. They were all men from outside the palace — black-clad and masked to a man, with the plainest issue of bow and saber, nothing on them that said who they were. All Voss's outside men, then? Voss bending public office to a private grudge against Lora? Or some notion of his own? A hundred thinkings, and still no solving it. "Drag them to the cliff edge and throw them down. We ride." With no sure answer in him, Leon could only press for Tarnfield before dark. Morn, seeing the field swept clean of anything a young lady ought not to look at, called toward the carriage: "My lady — you can come out now." Lora let go of her mother's hand and smiled: "Mother, I'll go see how soon we can move. Don't you worry — I've kept every word you said just now. They've left this many dead; they'll not be back in a hurry. It should be safe now." Down from the carriage, she saw the guards dragging the killers' bodies to the cliff and hurling them over. Some of their own were dead too. The Grey Wolf lads, faces drawn and grieving, were loading their own fellows onto their horses' backs — no fitting burial ground on this narrow road; they would carry the bodies along. It went to Lora's heart. Three hundred Grey Wolf guards had come a thousand miles into the Heartlands for her sake — and so soon, some of them had already walked the road of no return. She stopped at Suluk's side, watching him pass rope round a body. The dead Grey Wolf lad — Lora could not have said his name, but the face was familiar; he seemed always to be at Corin's heels... "Write down every one of their names for me. A warrior of the Odenheim house is worth a headstone with his own name cut in it." At the young lady's words, Suluk's hands paused. He did not dare look back at her — only set his teeth, and nodded, hard. Lora came to Leon's side. His brow was lightly knotted, and the look on his face was cold past ordinary. Hearing Morn say no women were to come down, she had guessed already that Leon would be proving the men's identity. "Any answer yet — who they were?" Leon kept his eyes straight ahead: "Voss's men are in it somewhere, that much is sure. What I don't know is why he'd carry you off, or whether my brother the King stands behind it." Lora followed his gaze — the bodies going over the cliff edge, one after another. Suddenly her brow gathered, and she called: "Hold a moment!" She walked fast toward the few bodies left. Leon and the rest followed her to the cliff edge. She pointed at the black short boots on the dead men's feet, certain: "These are soldiers. And these two — not. I've made boots for a brother of mine. The first pair I used common soles; after that Lilac got me the soles the household troops wear — said they wore longer. Look — these two have the common sole. These others' soles are the same as yours. But the uppers are deerhide — no common soldier's issue." Black short boots, all of them — at a glance, no difference to find. But Lora was a woman who had sewed. Back when she was badgering her fourth brother into giving the velvet boots back to Cedric Salt, she had gone and learned the trade, stitching him a pair of deerhide boots with her own hands. Her fingers had taken the needle's point more than once — she would not mistake it. At her word, everyone lifted a foot and studied his own soles and uppers — and sure enough, the difference was there. The black homespun was one cloth on them all; the black boots that matched to the eye gave themselves away at the sole. And with that, the knot in Leon's mind came loose all at once: "Two packs of them!" The men sent at his legs were Voss's outside men — the deerhide boots. The Silver Shield was thick with sons of gentry and official houses; they had come up soft to start with, and the Silver Shield's kit and pay had always run above the provincial armies besides. Best gear, fattest pay. When the Odenheim household troops mutinied, their cry had been: equal with the Silver Shield. The men who'd carried Lora off wore the common soles. They were very likely not Voss's men at all — but men like Hugh Kestrel the archer: some great house's hired blade. The Windsor house was broken and scattered — that door was shut. But houses that kept retainers and advisors, as the Windsors had — there was never just the one or two of them. An assassin who belonged to no Silver Shield and no provincial line — who in the world was he? "Don't grind at it. Whenever I've lost a thing, I turn the chests and cupboards upside down hunting it and can't find it — and the day I stop looking, there it is, sitting out in plain sight." Lora gave Leon what comfort she had. Norton, standing by with a boot in his hands, pitched it on the ground and drew back his foot to boot it off the cliff — when Chance, taking it for a game started with him, came charging over, scooped the boot up in his mouth, and made off. Norton went after him; the dog ran and stopped, ran and stopped, and would not give the boot up for anything. By the time everyone was up on carriage and horse and the train was near ready to move, Norton had to give up his idea of getting the boot back. Chance bore his prize along behind the horses, chest out, head high. Belle, trotting at his side, kept trying to get her nose at it — and Chance only ran the faster. The assassins had cost them a long stretch of time; making Tarnfield before dark would now be a hard thing. The train must make speed, and Norton ended by loading both dogs onto the last baggage carriage. Tarnfield — "Milnfield" it was first named — was a first-rate relay: eighty post horses in its stalls; the whole station ran like a little farming village, and the neighboring farmers even came carrying melons and fruit to sell. Dusk though it was, the station gate was still in an uproar, a small market all its own. Leon's carriages went straight into the rear courtyard. For clear sightlines, no tall trees stood inside the station, and flowering trees few; even with dusk drawing over it, one look took the whole place in. The station master came along behind Linn in short order, made his bow to the Baron of Charnwood, and led them to a courtyard off by itself: "Set your mind at ease, my lord. Tarnfield keeps a full larder — whatever you need, you have only to say. There's a watchtower at either end, east and west, and couriers walking their rounds all night. You may sleep easy." Lora helped her mother upstairs. The little building matched Newholm's: four rooms up, four rooms down. Tonight Leon had Ruth and the women up on the upper floor as well, lodged in the rooms at the two ends. Lora had barely entered her room — Lilac was spreading her bedding — when Lucy called out at the side: "Quick, look — where did Belle come by a shoe too?" A marvel, truly. A while ago it had been Chance with a boot in his mouth, and nothing in Belle's. And now here they stood, one boot to a dog, tails going, wheeling round and round in front of Lora — and by the look of them, they meant to trade the shoes for hot meat pasties. "My lady... it's uncanny..." Lucy squatted over the boots, mumbling: "These two boots are a pair. And... both of them left feet!"

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