Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [217]
The bedroom felt cold after the bathing room; he went to his closet and began dressing, as the Squires called for more help.
“How many dead so far?” he asked.
“A groom, a bootboy, Aulin and Sarol, Joriam,” Edrin said. “Garris told us all to put on mail. Most of us keep our mail with our travel packs, in the stable; I had just put on mine when someone found the groom’s body and called out. Lieth and I ran for the palace. The other one—”
“Other one?”
“Claims he’s a Halveric. Garris and the steward found him in the back passage; claimed he’d been to the jacks—”
“Is he alive?” Kieri asked, shrugging into a velvet tunic over his mail. He reached for the sword belt, snugged it, then sheathed the great sword.
“Yes, and bound to a chair in Garris’s office. Sir King—how did you do it?”
“He flinched at the soap when I threw it,” Kieri said. “Beyond that, the gods were on my side, I suspect.” Dressed, armed once more, he felt better, though the anger simmered.
Now he heard more people coming, voices he knew: the steward, the Seneschal, Sier Halveric.
He started toward the door, but Edrin moved in front of him.
“Sir King—are you—you’re not hurt!” That was Sier Halveric.
“No, I’m not hurt,” Kieri said. To the Seneschal he said, “Aulin and Sarol died in my defense; Joriam also. And I understand an assassin also killed a groom and a bootboy. They should be treated with all reverence, and I am still unsure of the customs.”
“Sir King, all will be done,” the Seneschal said. “I have called for the burial guild; we will take the bodies and prepare them. By your leave, I will begin here.” He knelt beside the Squires’ bodies.
“Of course,” Kieri said. “What shall I do to help?”
“Let us have a sheet from your bed—”
“Not the king’s bed,” the steward said. “Let me bring—”
“From my bed,” Kieri said. “They died for me; they deserve far more than a sheet off my bed.” He went to his bed, pulled back the covers, stripped off the sheets, and carried the bundle to the Seneschal.
“Half will do for each,” the Seneschal said. “And as their deaths were violent, your sword may divide them.”
The sword whispered through the sheets Edrin and Lieth held taut, one after another; they helped the Seneschal straighten the bodies, ease them onto the sheets, and carry them to the passage. Kieri came to each, and knelt for a moment with a hand on each head.
“Falk honor your service, for which you have a king’s thanks.” Then he bent and kissed each forehead. “Fare well in your afterhome. You honor the gods you served.”
He went with the Seneschal and the Squires into the bathing room, where they laid Joriam in a winding sheet; Kieri felt tears sting his eyes. The old man had been a comfort to so many—sweet, thoughtful, gentle—serving Lyonya’s royal family all his life; he had been the one to recognize Kieri’s sword when Paks arrived with it. To die like this—so violently, so unfairly—it was wrong.
The Seneschal finished with Joriam’s body after Kieri had given his thanks and farewell blessing. By then the burial guild had arrived. Kieri and the Seneschal stood aside as they lifted Joriam’s body onto a plank and carried it away. The Seneschal glanced around the room, then at the assassin’s body. “And that one?”
“What do you with murderers’ corpses?”
The Seneschal gave him a long look. “They were someone’s get and sometimes someone’s parent. We give their bodies back to the taig, but do not raise the bones.”
“Do that, then, with this one.”
“You broke his head,” the Seneschal said. “How?”
“That ewer,” Kieri said. “It was all I could reach as I came out of the tub.”
“You were in the tub when he—?”
“Yes,” Kieri said. The aftermath of the day hit him then and a mental image of himself—a naked, wet, redheaded man throwing soap and then charging an