Destiny’s Conflict: Book Two of Sword of the Canon. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ drunks’ laughter. Shouts pierced the dark as the harbour watch cracked belligerent heads, and the town’s rag and salvage men scurried for patsy’s pence, paid to finger the malcontents ousted from the shoreside taverns.

      The lot were tossed in the gaol and fined, or else handed off to an out-bound ship, one silver for the comatose and upwards to ten for the most obstreperous.

      While the water-front’s seamy rambunctiousness tried nerves that no one had cause to suspect, Dace continued to black Lysaer’s boots. Even that lowly service inflamed the steward’s ambitious distrust.

      Pouched eyes slitted, the cook volunteered, “Mark me, one slip will see you washing the pots alongside my gutter-snipe scullions.”

      Dace doused his resentment. As the vindictive bone caught between rivals, he stood his ground, forced to watch the back postern and guard his Lordship’s interests from belowstairs.

      Lysaer liked his pressed shirts stored in camphor, with collar and sleeve points unlaced. He eschewed scented candles. His fastidious taste preferred sheets without starch and the luxury of warmed towels. Royal bearing rebuffed intimacy. He received both petitioners and guests upon formal terms, summoning them from the front foyer for audience in the vaulted sitting-room.

      Which rigid etiquette exposed the muffled stranger, slipped in through the pre-dawn fog by way of the servants’ door. The house steward stalked like a furtive crow from the unlit pantry. He dismissed the scullion slicing the bacon and chased off the harried maid eating her breakfast. A murmured exchange saw the unannounced visitor ushered upstairs. Yet the fellow bore no parcel sent from the tailor’s; no evident reason for intimate business conducted in the master’s chambers.

      Unnoticed behind the loom of the wash-tub, Dace shed his emptied yoke buckets and snatched wax and rub rag from the broom closet. He dodged the cheeky scullion who snitched and nipped up the backstairs on the pretence of buffing his Lordship’s boots.

      This hour, the dressing-room should be empty, street-side curtains drawn before sunrise. Yet light flickered through the cracked-open door from a sconce on the marble-topped mantel. Past the master’s stuffed chairs, the wardrobe’s lacquered doors were flung wide, the fine clothing apparently under inspection. Prone to sea-side mildew, the velvets were often brushed out and aired, though usually under the afternoon sun, and never before the mist lifted. The steward himself hovered by his Lordship’s closed study. Dour features pinched into a thunderbolt frown, he eavesdropped, while Quince’s coarse handling set creases into the master’s best jacket.

      Dace suppressed Daliana’s madcap grin. Threatened with demotion to the scullery anyway, he lost little by kicking the hornet’s nest. Rag and tinned wax abandoned, he barged in, and grabbed the boy by a jug-handle ear.

      Quince squealed in surprise.

      The steward gestured with bilious dismay, frantic to forestall a disruption of the private dialogue on-going inside his Lordship’s shut chamber.

      “Bumbling fool!” Dace let fly, oblivious. “What do you think you are doing?”

      While the idiot boy squirmed, coarse fists wringing the disputed velvet, Dace rebuked, “Have you no care for costly fabric?”

      The thwarted steward bristled. “Get out! Straightaway. Await me in the kitchen!”

      Dace rebelled, snatched the jacket, and indignantly whisked at the furrowed nap. “A shameful disgrace, to assign an oaf to tend his Lordship’s garments.”

      Which noisy effrontery brutalized protocol. The door to the study banged open. Lysaer filled the entry, from brushed-gold hair to fawn breeches radiating mortified affront. “Take your servant’s quarrel elsewhere.”

      The steward temporized, “They’ll both go, milord. I’ll just tidy this mess.”

      “You’ll all leave as you’re told!” Lysaer snapped, indifferent to his debased clothing.

      Discomposed as a vulture chased off a carcass, the steward had no choice but to scuttle along with his chastened underlings.

      Dace feared more than the haughty man’s enmity, stoked to avenge the shameful embarrassment. Instinct had not erred. His impetuous glimpse through the study door showed the stranger’s doffed cloak, draped over a chair. Unveiled, the gilt braid and white vestments that had been concealed underneath. Badges differentiated the Sunwheel priests. Lysaer’s secretive visitor likely came as an inside informant, positioned amid the ranked hierarchy of the True Sect Temple.

      Disadvantaged, disgraced, Dace jockeyed to outpace the punitive speed of event. He elbowed past the grumbling Quince, reached the kitchen ahead of the irate steward, and reclaimed his discarded yoke buckets. Luck deserted him as the blindsided cook hounded him in reprisal.

      “Larking off, were you? D’you think I’m a fool? Mooners who squat over-long in the privy cut no slack with me. I’ve sent Manda after the water. You’ll fetch her dust-bin and shovel, forthwith. On with you, then! Clean out the grate in the sitting-room fire-place.”

      Dace tossed the implements into the ash bucket and bolted, before the steward burst in and sacked him on the spot without pay.

      The sitting-room’s drawn curtains plunged the room’s marquetry furnishings into airless stillness and gloom. Spared in brief reprieve, Dace crossed the vacant carpet to the mantel and knelt in despair on the marble apron.

      Davien had warned that his course would be harsh. A moment’s impatience may have wrecked his best chance to temper Lysaer’s cursed nature. Bent to a scullion’s task, Dace shovelled up cinders and swore. “Ath above, what I’d give to uncover the report delivered by that slinking spy!”

      An intrusive movement flickered in the shadow behind. Dace started, head turned, fearful he had been followed. Yet he encountered no flesh-and-blood presence. Only the fugitive impression of Kharadmon, dapper in lace cuffs and velvet, a sardonic finger touched to his lips.

      The room still loomed empty. Frowning, returned to the ash in his dust-bin, Dace beheld a perfect red rose, there and gone in an eyeblink. Two such apparitions were not prompted by nerves. Stilled in thought, Dace picked up the faint sound of voices funnelled through the flue from the master suite’s upstairs fire-place.

      In hindsight, the cook’s remedial punishment suggested the sly meddling of a Fellowship shade.

      Poised, Dace listened in as Lysaer demanded, “You insist you have proof?”

      “… beyond question,” the temple informant responded. “Confirmation by direct pigeon, the High Priesthood endorses the cleanse. Most agree that a sweep to root out clan blood-lines is long overdue.”

      Lysaer’s murmured answer at tensioned pitch, then, “Oh, yes. The sealed order’s already mustered the war host’s remnant companies. The Hatchet’s busy as the weasel tossed into the hen coop. Defeat by the High King of Havish has badly scorched his towering pride. He’ll enforce the mandate to kill, and damn all to the wave of red slaughter unleashed upon folk who may never have been in collusion with Shadow.”

      The pause hung. Breath stopped, his grip on the dust-bin white-knuckled, Dace strained to fathom the tenor of Lysaer’s suspended opinion.

      The mask of the statesman must have prevailed, for after a moment, the Sunwheel agent resumed, “You’re keen for the list?”

      Lysaer’s СКАЧАТЬ