The Last Knight, page 22
“So now what?” I asked.
Relief flashed in his eyes, and I realized how groggy I must have been before. “Now I get you out of this.” He examined the lock on my shackle, and pulled a pick from his boot.
I started to laugh and he looked up, startled.
“I knew you could pick locks. Never mind. What next?”
Fisk’s gaze dropped. “I was hoping you’d have an idea.”
’Twas like being hit in the head with a brick. “What? You came all the way in here with no plan for getting out?”
He abandoned the lock to scowl at me. “It was a little difficult, Mike, when I didn’t know what the defenses were, or where you were, or in what condition. My plan was to get in, find you, and then make plans once I had some information.”
“I’m sorry.” I’d have been sorrier if he wasn’t calling me Mike. “But of all the ridiculous—”
“Look, could we discuss my stupidity later?”
I drew in a breath and let it go. “What are the defenses?”
“A problem.” Fisk returned to picking the lock as he spoke. “There are four guards on the walls, and probably one on the gate—I didn’t have a chance to find out. There are horses in the stable, but a guard on the stable door. None of them will let us out without Lady Ceciel’s permission…. Maybe if we took her hostage…I can get a knife in the kitchen…”
It sounded feasible until we looked at Lady Ceciel. She sneered at us. She would not make a good hostage.
“Not a chance,” I told Fisk. “She’ll fight us off and make a break for it.”
Fisk grimaced in agreement, then his face lit. “Michael! Do you know how—”
The door swung open.
For several seconds Hackle and Fisk just stood there, staring. Then Hackle turned toward the hall, drawing breath to shout, and Fisk leapt across the room and catapulted into him.
On a peg leg Hackle couldn’t keep his balance—he and Fisk careened across the hallway, into the opposite wall. But unlike Lady Ceciel, Hackle wasn’t stunned. He drew another breath, and Fisk clamped both hands around his throat.
I jumped from the bed and stumbled halfway across the floor before the chain yanked my ankle and almost sent me sprawling. Recovering my balance, I spun in place, desperately estimating the distance. The hall was wide—even if I dragged the bed across the room, I couldn’t reach them.
Hackle clawed at Fisk’s wrists for a few, futile moments—then he did the smarter thing and reached for Fisk’s eyes. Fisk ducked, burying his face against the nearest shelter, which happened to be Hackle’s chest. I heard Hackle haul a ragged breath past Fisk’s hands. His face had a purple cast, but if he was still getting air, ’twould be a long time before he passed out. I had to get loose—now!
I flung myself onto the bed, braced my hands, and kicked the post with both feet, as hard as I could. The blow jarred my legs from toe to hip, but the give I’d worked into the post over the last few days kept me from breaking bones. I kicked again and again. The post locked into place, and pain rang in my heels, but I didn’t stop.
Hackle gave up trying to reach Fisk’s eyes and grabbed his hair, trying to drag his head back. I swear I saw Fisk’s scalp leave his skull. He made a muffled sound of pain, but he held his place, nearly invulnerable, except…
The same thought occurred to Hackle. He let go of Fisk’s hair and reached for his hands, feeling carefully, gripping the little finger and bending it back. One hand came away from Hackle’s throat and air rasped into Hackle’s lungs. He still couldn’t shout, but it wouldn’t be long.
Fisk would be captured.
Lady Ceciel would win.
Bracing my back and arms, I put everything I had into the next kick. My bones vibrated, but there was no pain—because the wood began to crack. I kicked again, even harder, and was rewarded with a sweet snapping sound as the bedpost broke. My hands shook as I twisted it apart and slid the chain free.
Hackle saw what I was doing. He clawed at Fisk’s hand in such a frenzy that his nails drew blood, but Fisk held on.
The shattered bedpost made a wonderful club.
I sprinted out of the cell and struck Hackle’s temple, trying to hit him hard, but not enough to crack his skull, for I wasn’t prepared to do murder…not quite. I must have judged it fairly well; his eyes rolled up, and he slid down the wall, taking Fisk with him. Hackle was still breathing, but he’d have a monster of a headache when he woke—a thought that gave me considerable satisfaction.
Fisk stared up at me. “You broke that?” ’Twas a sensible question—the thing was four inches thick.
“I’ve been working it loose for days.” I tossed it back into the cell and reached for Hackle’s feet. “Give me a hand.”
“I’m not cut out for burglary,” Fisk moaned.
The loudest sound, as we dragged Hackle back into the cell, was the rattle of my chain on the floor.
Lady Ceciel’s eyes widened above the gag when she saw her steward’s limp form.
“He’s alive,” I told her, checking as I spoke to be sure ’twas true. “Just stunned.” Her eyes closed in relief.
I didn’t care.
Fisk stripped blankets off the damaged bed and we hauled Hackle onto it, tying his wrists and his good foot to the remaining posts. His eyelids were fluttering, so we gagged him as well. Then it took several minutes of scrounging over the floor to find the lock pick Fisk had dropped.
I sat on the floor and Fisk lifted my shackled ankle. He still looked stunned, but his hands were steady.
“Right back where we started.” My lips twitched. “You were saying?”
“Huh?” Fisk looked up, puzzled.
“When Hackle interrupted. You were about to ask me something.”
“What? Oh. Yes! Michael, do you know how to brew aquilas?”
I stiffened. “No one in my family has ever used that vile stuff. We wed our women honestly—we don’t seduce them with drugs!”
“I didn’t ask if you’d used it,” Fisk said, fishing inside the lock. “I asked if you knew how to make it. Come on, Mike, nobles are supposed to pass that recipe from father to son.”
“My father didn’t! I told you, no one—”
“But you know the formula, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I learned it at university.”
Fisk’s jaw dropped. “They teach you to make aquilas at university? I thought it was illegal!”
“Of course it is,” I snapped. “They don’t teach you—the students write it with chalk on the inside of privy doors. You couldn’t help but read it. Though the formulas differ a bit.”
We turned again to Lady Ceciel. Her eyes glittered with fury, but I thought I saw the beginning of fear.
Fisk’s eyes were bright with hope. “The real question is, does it work?”
“How should I know? I’ve never used it.” But I’d heard tales. My hopes began to rise as well…but to make aquilas? To use it against a woman? My father would never forgive me.
“But you could make it?”
Could I forgive myself? I thought of Janny, of my misery over the last few weeks, of the oddly luminous potions, twisting in my intestines, and became so lost in thought that Fisk had to repeat his question.
“Could you make it?”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, I think I could. Some ingredients were the same in all the formulas. But I—”
“This is no time for scruples, Mike.” The shackle clicked open and Fisk pulled it wide. I reclaimed my ankle and rubbed it, erasing the feel of captivity more than any pain. “It’s our only chance to get out of here.”
I owed it to Fisk to get him out. I owed a debt to Janny, and the others as well. I met Lady Ceciel’s defiant gaze and the past few days filled the space between us, destroying my remorse.
“You’re right. I’ll do it.”
Fisk took a few seconds to put his boots back on—if all the noise we’d made hadn’t alerted anyone yet, we had nothing to fear from boot steps. I wasn’t afraid of making noise. I wasn’t afraid of anything. We left Hackle in the cell—door neatly bolted. He was coming around, but he looked like his head ached too badly for him to do much. I was glad for that—a bitter gladness that felt heavier than grief.
Lady Ceciel we brought with us. Or rather Fisk brought her, having first retied her ankles with a short hobble so she could walk but not kick or run.
I let him handle her—not because I didn’t want to touch her, but because I had never in my life wanted to hurt someone the way I wanted to hurt Lady Ceciel. The cold fear of what I might do, given the chance, occupied my mind as we hurried down the corridor to her herbarium.
Then we opened the door, and I beheld a sight so horrifying it made all my previous fears hollow. It wasn’t half a dozen guardsmen, or a monster, or a mutilated corpse. Just a room full of bottles and herbs—but some of them glowed with their own light, the light of magica, made visible, in a way no normal person could see.
She had changed me.
CHAPTER 17
Fisk
Michael froze in the doorway. The rigid set of his shoulders made my neck prickle.
“What is it?” I tightened my grip on Lady Ceciel and peered around him. Lamps mounted on the walls cast their light over shelves of bottles, pots, and arcane paraphernalia. There was a cheery fire in the hearth, and a stuffed raven perched on one of the roof beams, its outstretched wings forever frozen in place. The room was empty of any threat that I could see, but Michael didn’t move.
He seemed more focused than when I first found him, but he wore a cold expression that made him a stranger…a stranger I didn’t particularly want to know.
“What’s wrong?” It came out sharper than I meant it to.
“Nothing.” Michael took a deep breath and stepped into the room. “There’s nothing wrong.”
Looking at the sheen of sweat on his face, I wasn’t inclined to believe that, but he was speaking and moving again, so I decided to leave well enough alone.
I tied the lady to a table leg and then checked the windows. The parapet was lower than the tower, so a guard looking up would see nothing but a few feet of ceiling, unless someone stood in the window and looked out.
I told Michael that, and he nodded absently. He was wandering up and down the herb rack, choosing the jars he needed. Suddenly he froze again, looking at a half-empty bottle. I was about to go to him when he shook himself, and went on picking out ingredients.
He carried them over to one of the tables, and I hurried to clear a space for him, but even when I finished, he just stood there, his arms full of jars, staring at a thick pile of notes.
When he looked at me his face was pale again, his eyes dark with anger and pain.
“You brew, I’ll burn,” I told him.
I burned every scrap of paper in that room in the big fireplace, ignoring the tears rolling down Lady Ceciel’s face.
Michael appeared to be intent on his work, but his face grew more human, more himself, with every page I laid in the flames.
When the papers had been reduced to ash, I poured the potions out of their bottles and onto the floor, till they ran over our feet in shimmering floods. I hesitated when I came to the bottle that had frightened Michael. It looked like all the others—the label held a list of ingredients and the directions—two doses daily. The writing was in a different hand than on most of the bottles, but there were several labels with different writing. I looked at Michael and caught him staring at the bottle in my grasp.
“Well?” I asked.
His expression changed again. “Dump it.”
So I did.
I told Michael to gather up everything he needed, and went back to the cell to grab some blankets. Then I folded all the glassware into them and smashed it. Lady Ceciel flinched at every crunch.
By the time I finished, the herbarium had been demolished—even the dried herbs, which I’d not dared to burn lest the scent alert the guards, had been ruined by the moisture on the floor. Michael was eyeing a pot of murky liquid dubiously. “It needs to cool.”
“Will it work?”
“Hanged if I know.”
We looked at the lady again. She sneered at us.
“She won’t drink it,” I said. “She’ll spit it out, or dump it on the floor.”
A smile I didn’t like at all touched Michael’s mouth. “Wait a minute.”
He went out, returning only a moment later, which meant the object he carried must have come from his cell. It was a funnel, made of reddish wood with a curved spout, and my stomach lurched as I realized its function. Michael set it on the table, holding Lady Ceciel’s eyes with his own.
“Cut her free, Fisk, and stand behind her with your hands around her throat.”
I did as I was told, trying to conceal that my hands were trembling again.
Michael picked up the potion. “I’m going to ungag you now. If you try to scream, Fisk will throttle you unconscious, and we’ll pour the stuff down you. If you drop it on the floor, I’ll brew another batch—and next time we won’t give you a choice.”
Lady Ceciel’s throat rippled beneath my hands as she swallowed.
Michael’s eyes were alive with mockery, and I knew he was quoting her when he said, “We can do this the hard way or the easy way—the choice is yours.”
If he was bluffing, he was better at it than I’d ever suspected, and worry tightened like wire around my heart. I wasn’t surprised when Lady Ceciel took the jug and drained it.
We tied her hands and gagged her again, and then destroyed the equipment and herbs Michael had used. The last thing Michael did was put the funnel on the fire. The red glow illuminated his thoughtful expression, and some of the tension eased out of his shoulders.
I turned to Lady Ceciel. She no longer glowered defiantly, but she didn’t look beaten either. She looked…relaxed?
“You think it’s working?” I asked Michael.
“One way to find out. Lady Ceciel, if I remove your gag, will you promise not to scream?”
She made encouraging sounds.
“Nod if you won’t scream.”
She nodded.
Michael untied the gag and pulled it out of her mouth. I was ready to grab her throat, but she didn’t scream. She looked pleasant and amiable, an expression I’d never seen on her face. I was willing to bet the guards had never seen it either.
I met Michael’s dubious look. “It’s a dark night. Maybe they won’t notice.”
He frowned. “How are we going to explain this, Fisk? Even if she agrees, they’re going to wonder why she’s letting us go in the middle of the night. You are going to let us go, aren’t you, Lady Ceciel?”
“Yes, of course.” She smiled.
“So we’ll think of some excuse.” I began to pace. “Say…say I offered to show her some arcane herbal something or other. Something that requires blood sacrifice by moonlight.”
“Nothing to do with herbalism requires blood sacrifice, by moonlight or otherwise,” said Michael.
“You may know that, but I’ll bet the guards don’t. Especially the way she practices herbalism. And that gets all of us out. You can take her back to Lord Dorian and repay your debt.”
Michael frowned. “It gets you and her out—where do I fit in?”
“You’re the sacrifice,” I told him. “Lady Ceciel, would your guards believe you’d practice human sacrifice?”
She looked confused. “Yes, of course.”
Sir Michael snorted. “You won’t get any information from her—not without a lot of patience. But it might work, Fisk.”
“It might not.” The more I saw of Lady Ceciel’s vacuous expression, the crazier our plan sounded.
“Have you got a better idea?”
I shook my head.
“Then we’ll try it.”
Only a lunatic would have agreed to this lunatic plan…so I shouldn’t have been surprised.
I had to tie up Sir Michael, and we both agreed that he should be bound tightly, since the guards would notice if they checked the ropes. He didn’t like the idea of being gagged, but I told him it would look suspicious otherwise. Actually I didn’t think that mattered in terms of the guards, but he was such a rotten liar I didn’t dare leave his tongue free.
Managing Lady Ceciel would be hard enough. This wasn’t going to work.
We were halfway down the hall before I remembered I should turn out the lamps in the herbarium, and we had to go back. The second time we passed the cell door, Michael stopped and thumped his elbow against it. He looked at me commandingly.
“All right, but we really don’t have time for this.” Despite my grumbling I was rather relieved. I liked the crazy Sir Michael better than the ruthless one.
I entered the cell. Hackle’s eyes were closed, his face slack, but he roused when I touched his shoulder, and after a moment his eyes focused. He scowled at me. His pupils were the same size.
“He’s fine,” I announced, bolting the door behind me.
I had to lead the way, for Sir Michael didn’t know the keep’s layout, and Lady Ceciel did nothing but smile and nod. We were almost down the main stair when I remembered something else.
“Lady Ceciel, where’s your bedroom?”
“Yes?” She smiled.
Michael turned on the step, brows raised.
“They’ll never believe she’s going out at night, in early Oakan, without a cloak. M’lady, where’s your room?”
“Oh, yes.” She smiled.
Michael snorted with laughter. I glared at him.
“Can you point to it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Point to your room. Point to your bedroom, Lady Ceciel.”
After a moment she pointed back up the stairs; no surprise. In the gallery I asked her to point again, and she directed us down the hall.
We crept down the corridor in silence. I still didn’t know where the upper servants slept, but ladies’ maids frequently slept near them. We might be able to fool the guards, but a personal servant? Not a chance.
