Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [161]
First, I decided, I should like to remedy the one lack in my costume. I was, in fact, armed with a slim throwing knife that rode in the top of my left boot, but a true Bedouin male would not be caught dead without an impressive blade at his belt. Not that I had any intention of using the thing here—I would actually be happy with just a decorative hilt in an empty scabbard—but the costume cried out for it.
The Armoury was the obvious place for decorative knives. Also for pikestaffs, crossbows, claymores, and broadswords, but those weapons fit neither in the theme nor in a press of merrymakers. I walked to the Armoury door, let myself inside, closed the door behind me, and then froze.
One thing about old stone buildings: The sound of rats is generally confined to the wooden rafters, yet I could have sworn that I heard the characteristic quick scuffle of movement from against the wall. From the enormous waist-high chest, in fact, which on closer inspection seemed to have its lid slightly lifted. I fought a smile, frowned at the walls as if choosing my weapon, then went over to the chest and clambered up to reach a foot-long jewelled scabbard hanging above it. I jumped down to the floor and arranged the knife in my belt (where it proved remarkably uncomfortable), stamped noisily across the room to the door, opened it, shut it, then crept back to the chest and waited.
The heavy lid rose up, an inch, then two; I stuck my hands in my belt to face the growing gap. An inch more, then a startled gasp and it banged shut. I stepped forward, wrestled the massive lid open, and glared down at the two figures inside.
“It’s all right, sir,” Lenore Darling gabbled. “We have permission to be here, really we do, and we weren’t hurting anything, and never touched the weapons, honest.”
“Honest,” the boy echoed.
“Come on out of there, you two,” I said, and held the top for them. “How on earth did you get this lid open in the first place? It weighs a young ton.”
“We had to sort of prise at it—I think it scratched it a little, but it has a lot of scratches anyway. Are you one of the guests?” she asked, trying to distract me from my examination of the great gouge along the side where they had levered it open, which was, indeed, only the latest gash among the many time-honoured wounds of its long career. A bit of shoe polish or lamp-black and no-one would be the wiser, I thought.
“I am a guest,” I told the girl, “but we’ve met before. Mary Russell.”
They gaped at me, frankly admiring. “Zingers!” said Walter, and “Is that really you?” said his more skeptical sister. I pulled off my head-covering to give them the benefit of my hair, and both agreed it was their uncle’s guest.
I was not, however, finished with the chest. They had agreed with Iris not to touch any of the weapons in the Armoury, and although I had no wish to turn them in to the authorities, I thought it best to be sure that they had kept their part of the bargain. Every object I could see capable of prising open that lid had some kind of blade attached to it; I lifted the lid up enough to let light inside, and saw what they had been using.
It was an old tyre-lever, which was now transferring rust to a collection of moth-chewed wall hangings someone had stored in the chest and forgotten. Marsh’s mother, or grandmother even; certainly they’d been in the chest so long, I thought, that rusty metal or children’s shoes could not do them much damage. Which was more than I could say for the children’s clothes—one of Miss Paul’s chief duties was undoubtedly overseeing the changing of their clothes several times daily. I stretched to prop the heavy