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.A few moments later the two of them were locked in, and Tom Garnett and the guards moved out of sight, and either out of hearing or silent, although Durine wouldn’t have wanted to guess which.It probably didn’t much matter, unless all four of them were involved in the murder, and while Durine wasn’t willing to throw any possibility out, that didn’t seem to be likely.He hoped.Of course, there would be a simple way to find out.If he pasted a satisfied look on his face after he had finished talking with Erlic and they were part of some sort of conspiracy to murder Baron Morray and Lady Mondegreen, they would quickly kill Durine in the cell, rather than allowing him out.If so, one of them was probably going for a crossbow right now, just to make it easy.That thought warmed him as he turned to Erlic.‘So,’ he said.‘I don’t have much to bargain with, and you’ve got less, but let’s see if we can work a deal.’ Working a deal was more Pirojil’s thing than Durine’s, but Durine had watched him many times.‘I could start by, say, breaking a couple of your fingers and promising to stop if you tell me everything you know.’Erlic looked up at him, and shook his head.‘But I don’t know anything, except that I fell asleep at my post.’‘Nobody asked you to look the other way while they went into Lady Mondegreen’s room, say, just to have a quick talk with her?’ Durine didn’t think that it would be that easy, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.It still left the question of why Erlic hadn’t noticed that somebody had exited the room covered with blood, or heard the sounds of a struggle, but one thing at a time.Erlic shook his head.‘Nobody asked me to do anything.Baron Morray went to her room, but–’‘But he’s done that before.’Erlic nodded.‘I had the watch on that hall last night, too, and the night before.’ He shrugged.‘He just ignored me, and I pretended not to see him.’‘Who is in the next room?’‘From Lady Mondegreen?’‘No,’ Durine said.‘From Prince Erland.’Erlic just looked confused; sarcasm, apparently, didn’t work for him.‘Yes, from Lady Mondegreen.’‘Verheyen on the near side–the side nearest me–between her suite and Baron Morray’s suite.Viztria and Langahan share the suite beyond her room.’And if this castle was as lousy with secret passages between rooms as Castle Mondegreen was, there were three more people who could have done it, and if it was Verheyen or any combination of them, then maybe it wasn’t this poor sod’s fault, after all.That might save his neck.Durine paused for a moment to consider: it could have…no, should have taken two people or more to kill both Baron Morray and Lady Mondegreen without raising an outcry that would have awakened this idiot, or somebody else.Maybe one man who was awfully quick with a knife–Damn.Servants.He hadn’t thought about servants, although why…He could think about why later.‘Any of the serving staff go in or out?’Erlic shook his head.‘Not that I saw.Not there.Emma, the housecarl’s daughter, brought Baron Morray a bottle of wine, but that was to his suite, and she brought a tray to Baron Folson’s room, just before she brought me my own dinner, and another to Viztria’s just after the clock struck two, I remember that, but–’‘Which he shares with Langahan.’‘Yes, but–’‘But nobody went into Lady Mondegreen’s room, that you saw.’‘Except for Baron Morray, which I already said.’‘Yeah, but I don’t think he slit her throat, and then his own.’ Durine shook his head.‘You wouldn’t happen to know if Baron Verheyen usually stays in that room when he visits the Earl, do you?’Erlic shook his head.‘No, I don’t know, but…’‘But what, man? Out with it.’‘But usually, there’s only one or two barons staying in the castle, at the most, and when they don’t stay at their own residence in town–though I don’t think Baron Verheyen has one–they’re usually put up in the big suite, at the end of the hall.There was some grumbling, the other night, about the court barons getting the good suite.’As though the fractious barons didn’t have more important matters on their mind.‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’ Durine asked.‘Anything at all.’Erlic shook his head.‘Just that I swear I’ve never fallen asleep on watch before.’ He looked as if he was about to cry.‘Well, you certainly picked a great time to lose your virginity in that, eh?’ Durine rose.‘Look: it may–may–not have made any difference.I want your word that you’ll wait for the Earl’s justice.’Erlic nodded slowly.‘I deserve that.’‘I’m not asking what you deserve.I’m asking you for your word.’‘You’d accept my word?’‘Yes,’ Durine said, lying.It seemed to be the best way to get agreement from Erlic.‘You have my word, sir.I’ll not take my own life.’Durine nodded.‘Good.’He rose, and drew the other hidden knife from under his left armpit, then beat it against the bars until he heard feet pounding on the stone floor.He pasted a satisfied look on his face.‘You found out something?’Durine nodded wisely.‘Yes,’ he said.‘It’s quite possible that I found out the most important thing.Let me out of here, please,’ he said, resheathing the knife.‘And do keep an eye on Erlic.’Tom Garnett seemed to relax, and one of the other men went for the key.Nobody tried to stab Durine as he stepped out of the cell and quite deliberately turned his back on them to speak to Erlic one more time.Durine didn’t know whether he was happy or sad about it–it would, at least, have been a clue, and despite his protestations to the contrary, he didn’t have a clue–or, to be more accurate, he either had none, or far too many.‘We’ll be watching him,’ Tom Garnett said.Durine nodded.‘Yes, you will.’ If Erlic turned up dead, that would, perhaps, be another one of these clues they were looking for.Kethol didn’t know what to look for.The two bodies that lay in the bed were dead, and the killer hadn’t shot them with a marked arrow, or any kind of arrow at all.Unsurprisingly, there were no bloody bootprints across the deep carpet, and what impressions of feet and shoes there were, were indistinct and useless.He had looked at the bodies, just because that was something he knew how to do.There was obviously some dust in the air, although where it had come from, he didn’t know, but he did have to keep wiping his eyes, particularly when he looked down at Lady Mondegreen.He had opened the window to let the stink clear out of the air, but that didn’t seem to help as much as it should have, at least with the dust.He turned back to the bodies on the bed.It was important to remember that these were just bodies, just dead meat, not two people, each of whom had treated him, all in all, better than a mercenary soldier had any right to expect.Death was, as always, utterly undignified, although these two had escaped the worst of that.If you ignored the blood and the death stink, you could have imagined them to be sleeping.After staring at Lady Mondegreen for a few moments, he knew he couldn’t ignore the simple fact of death.The colour in her cheeks, present when she laughed, or when tweaked by the cold wind while they were riding to her estates, was gone, replaced by a near-parchment pallor that could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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