The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [161]
Anger, deep, shaking and resentful swept over him, recalling all the resentment of the Troitsa. ‘Only a bloody, arrogant bastard,’ said Richard Chancellor, ‘would choose a born killer to cut a bloody, arrogant figure with.’
The cup remained. Lymond said coolly, ‘Who freed her?’
Grey said, ‘I was asleep. I didn’t see anybody. I was asleep until you woke me just now.’
Lymond repeated, without turning, what he had said. ‘Who freed her?’ He was still in his torn furs, spattered with deer blood. A scarlet handkerchief had been stuffed inside his coat, to one side of his neck.
Chancellor took the cup and sat up. His shoulder was wrenched, and his ribs hurt, and two fingers of his left hand were swollen and reddened. His head throbbed. He said, ‘There was no one in the house when we came back from drinking. Grey fell asleep right away, and no one came in until the captain came and told us about the race. I found the eagle gone then, and the jesses and chain.’
Lymond said, ‘I have sent someone to look for them, on the shore where we first saw the eagle. A faint hope. They will be safe in someone’s cabin by now.’
Grey, willing but not yet quite awake, said, ‘Would she not simply slip the thong from the swivel and fly out?’
Chancellor stared at him with equal dislike. ‘And take her hood?’ he suggested. ‘Anyway, she had no jesses on her. No. Someone must have taken her when we were out drinking. Someone with a right to come in, or a key, or access to a key.’
‘The two men behind us came in,’ Lymond said. He was speaking in English, extremely clearly: it suddenly penetrated Chancellor’s senses that he was in a towering rage: and that this harsh, level tone was a mark of the force he was at this moment using to control it. Lymond added, ‘They say they were called out later by Konstantin, but locked and barred the front door behind them. Konstantin had a key. So had Aleksandre. Master Grey was here alone before you, Chancellor, came. Any one of the soldiers may have stolen and replaced one of the keys. They will all be questioned, when they are sober enough to be frightened. Meantime the field, unfortunately, is extremely wide open.’
So were Grey’s bloodshot eyes. He said incredulously, ‘Seriously? Do you seriously think it would cross my mind to walk back there and free your damned bird? Someone stole it. Someone freed it. Someone maybe doesn’t like you or it. Diccon was right. The fault for those deaths on the ice was three-quarters your own for having her with you.’
Lymond had stopped listening to him. He said, staring at Chancellor, ‘The ironic thing is that I suspected that race from the start. I tested every inch of the reins and had a look at the shafts and the terrets. But it wasn’t the sledge he had tampered with.’
So, against all appearances, he had taken seriously after all the warning Chancellor had been instructed to convey to him. Not excluding even Grey from his suspects. Too seriously to be perfectly rational on the subject, perhaps. Probably few people could be called rational, once they had been warned that their lives were in danger. Chancellor said, ‘There are less devious ways, equally secret. Such as poison.’
‘Except that I would have discovered it. Over the years,’ Lymond said, ‘a great many people have persuaded themselves that the world would be a brighter place if I were not in it. When I am given a warning, I never ignore it. Besides, this is the third attempt since Kholmogory.’
‘The …?’ said Chancellor. Someone had brought hot water and, displacing Grey at his side, was unlacing his shirt prior to pulling it off. He wondered if he had put out his shoulder, and decided that he probably had, and someone had wrenched it back into place, none too gently. The door rattled, and Grey went to open it.
The young Russian lieutenant Konstantin came in, his unbandaged hand holding a fragment of blue which he laid on the mattress. It was Slata Baba’s hood.
‘Where?’ said Lymond.
‘In the trampled snow