The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [77]
“Do not do this to me. Do not fail your queen.”
“If you can work one miracle, then you can work another. Free Mery. Free Areana. Than I will happily go with you—so long as you have proof they are safe and well.”
“Think, at least, of your music,” Alis urged. “I told you your songs were famous. Did I also tell you that performing them is considered shinecraft? An attempt was made to do the entire play in the town of Wistbirm. The stage was put to the torch by the praifec’s guards. But the performance was already a failure, because the subtler harmonies of your work eluded even the most gifted minstrel. If you were free, you could write it again, correct their performances.”
“And doom more unfortunates to my fate?” he asked, lifting his useless hands.
“That’s very odd,” Alis said, seeming to notice his traction for the first time. She shook her head as if to clear it. “Look, it’s a doom they choose.”
Leoff felt himself suddenly balanced very precariously. The woman—and why a woman? The woman’s story was implausible at best.
Most likely this was Robert, having another go at him. So far he hadn’t done anything that would make matters worse; Robert knew that Leoff would never lift a finger for him unless Mery and Areana were in danger.
And if Alis was honest, his decision to stay was still consistent.
But here was a problem. What he might reveal here could give something to Robert that the usurper didn’t already have, something that appeared to be of great value.
Yet the risk might be worth it. It probably was.
“In the Candlegrove,” he said, breaking the silence.
“What in the Candlegrove?”
“Beneath the stage, on the far right, there is a space above the support. I knew they would burn my music, and I knew they would search my apartments for copies. But I hid one there; Robert’s men might have missed it.”
Alis frowned. “I’ll find it if I get out. But I’d rather have you.”
“You know my conditions,” he said.
Alis hesitated. “It was an honor to meet you,” she said. “I hope to meet you again.”
“That would be nice,” Leoff replied.
Alis sighed and closed her eyes. She drew the hood down. He thought she might have murmured something, and then she was again an absence, a shadow.
The door opened and then closed. He heard the lock being worked clumsily, then nothing for a long time.
Eventually he went back to sleep.
When the door rattled open the next day, it was in the usual way. Leoff had no way of knowing what time it really was, but he had been awake long enough that he reckoned it midday, in his sunless world.
Two men entered. Both wore black tabards over breastplates that had been enameled black, and each had a broadsword slung at his hip. They didn’t resemble any of dungeon wards Leoff had seen before, but they did look a great deal like Robert’s personal guard.
“Hold still,” one of them said.
Leoff didn’t answer as one of them produced a dark cloth and wrapped it around his temples and eyes, tightening it until he couldn’t see. Then they lifted him to his feet. Leoff’s skin felt like cold wax as they began walking him down the corridor. He tried to concentrate on distance and direction, as Mery had, counting twelve steps up, then twenty-three strides through a corridor, twenty-eight up a passageway so narrow that occasionally both shoulders brushed the walls at the same time. After that it was as if they suddenly had stepped into the sky; Leoff felt space expand away from him, and currents of moving air. The reports of their footsteps stopped reverberating, and he guessed that they were outside.
Next they led him to a carriage and hoisted him up, and he felt a certain despair creep up on him. He kept suppressing the urge to ask where they were going, because obviously they had covered his eyes so he would not find out.
The carriage began rolling, first on stone, then on gravel. Leoff began to wonder suddenly if he hadn’t been kidnapped by allies of the woman who had come to “rescue” him the day before. Adopting the livery of Robert’s guard could be accomplished easily enough. His heart