‘In a tavern,’ Sparhawk replied softly. ‘There’s going to be a fight in just a few minutes. We’ll slip out into the main room during the confusion.’ He went to the curtained doorway leading out into the tavern and twitched the curtain several times. ‘All right,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll mingle with the crowd during the fight, and after a while, we’ll leave. Behave as if you’re slightly drunk, but don’t over-do it.’
‘I’m impressed,’ Stragen said.
‘I’m more than impressed,’ Talen added. ‘Not even Platime knows that there’s more than one way out of that inn.’
The fight began not long after that. It was noisy, involving a great deal of shouting and pushing and finally a few blows. Two totally uninvolved and evidently innocent by-standers were knocked senseless during the course of the altercation. Sparhawk and his friends smoothly insinuated themselves into the crowd, and after ten minutes or so, they reeled out through the door.
‘A little unprofessional,’ Stragen sniffed. ‘A staged fight shouldn’t involve the spectators that way.’
‘It should when the spectators might be looking for something other than a few tankards of ale,’ Sparhawk disagreed. ‘The two who fell asleep weren’t regular patrons in the tavern. They might have been completely innocent, but then again, they might not. This way, we don’t have to worry about them trailing along behind us.’
‘There’s more to being a Pandion Knight than I thought,’ Talen noted. ‘I may like it after all.’
They walked through the foggy streets towards the rundown quarter near the west gate, a maze of interconnecting lanes and unpaved alleys. They entered one of those alleys and went through it to a flight of muddy stone stairs leading down. A thick-bodied man lounged against the stone wall beside the stairs. ‘You’re late,’ he said to Talen in a flat voice.
‘We had to make sure we weren’t being followed,’ the boy shrugged.
‘Go on down,’ the man told them. ‘Platime’s waiting.’
The cellar hadn’t changed. It was still smoky and dim, and it was filled with a babble of coarse voices coming from the thieves, whores and cutthroats who lived there.
‘I don’t know how Platime can stand this place,’ Stragen shuddered.
Platime sat enthroned on a large chair on the other side of a smoky fire burning in an open pit. He heaved himself to his feet when he saw Sparhawk. ‘Where have you been?’ he bellowed in a thunderous voice.
‘Making sure that we weren’t followed,’ Sparhawk replied.
The fat man grunted. ‘He’s back here,’ he said, leading them toward the rear of the cellar. ‘He’s very interested in his health at the moment, so I’m keeping him more or less out of sight.’ He pushed his way into a small, closet-like chamber where a man sat on a stool nursing a tankard of watery beer. The man was a small. nervous-looking fellow with thinning hair and a cringing manner.
‘This is Pelk,’ Platime said. ‘He’s a sneak-thief. I sent him to Cardos to have a look around and to see what he could find out about some people we’re interested in. Tell him what you found out, Pelk.’
‘Well sir, good masters,’ the weedy man began, ‘it tuk me a goodly while to git close to them fellers, I’ll tell the world, but I made myself useful, an’ they finally sort of assepted me. They was all sorts of rigimarole I had to go thoo – swearin’ oaths an’ gettin’ blindfolded the first couple times they tuk me to ther camp an all, but after a while, they kinda let down ther guard, an’ I come an’ went purty much as I pleased. Like Platime prob’ly tole you, we figgered at first they wuz jist a buncha amachoors what didn’t know nothin’ about the way things is supposed to be did. We sees that sorta thing all the time, don’t we, Platime? Them’s the kind as gits therselves caught an’ hung.’
‘And good riddance to them,’ Platime growled.
‘Well sir,’ Pelk continued, ‘like I say, me’n Platime, we figgered as how them fellers in the mountings was jist a buncha them amachoors I tole you about – fellers what’d took up cuttin’ th’oats fer fun an’ profit, don’t y’know. As she turns out, howsomever, they was more’n that. Ther leaders was six er seven noblemen as was real disappointed ‘bout the way the big plans of the Primate Annias fell on ther faces, an’ they was powerful unhappy ‘bout what the queen had writ down on the warrants she put out fer ’em – nobles not bein’ accustomed to bein’ called them sorta names.
‘Well sir, t’ short it up some, these here noblemen all run off into the mountings ‘bout one jump ahead of the hangman, an’ they tuk t’ robbin’ travellers t’ make ends meet an’ spent the resta ther time thinkin’ up nasty names t’ call the queen.’
‘Get to the point, Pelk,’ Platime told him wearily.
‘Yessir, I wuz jist about to. Well now, it went on like that fer a spell, an’ then this here Krager feller, he come into camp, an’ some of them there nobles, they knowed him. He tole ’em as how he knowed some furriners as’d help ’em out iffn they’d raise enough fuss here in Elenia t’ keep the queen an’ her folks from gittin’ too curious ‘bout some stuff what’s goin’ on off in Lamorkand. This here Krager feller, he sez as how this stuff in Lamorkand might just could be a way fer ’em all t’ change the way ther forchunes bin goin’ since ol’ Annias got hisself kilt. Well, sir, them dukes an’ earls an’ such got real innerested at that point, an’ they tole us all t’ go talk t’ the local peasants an’ t’ start runnin’ down the tax-collectors an’ t’ say as how it ain’t natural fer no country t’ be run by no woman an’ the like. We wuz supposed t’ stir up them peasants an’ t’ git ’em t’ talkin’ among therselves ‘bout how the people oughtta all git together an’ thow the queen out an’ the like, an’ then them nobles, they caught a few tax collectors an’ hung ‘em an’ give the money back t’ the folks it’d been stole from in the first place, an’ them peasants, they wuz all happy as pigs in mud ‘bout that.’ Pelk scratched at his head. ‘Well sir, I guess I’ve said m’ piece now. At’s the way she stands in the mountings now. This here Krager feller, he’s got some money with ’im, an’ he’s mighty free with it, so them nobles what’s bin on short rations is gettin’ downright fond of ’im.’
‘Pelk,’ Sparhawk told him, ‘you’re a treasure.’ He gave the man several coins, and then he and his friends left the cubicle.
‘What are we going to do about it, Sparhawk?’ Platime asked.
‘We’re going to take steps,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘How many of these “liberators” are there?’
‘A hundred or so.’
‘I’ll need a couple dozen of your men who know the country.’
Platime nodded. ‘Are you going to bring in the army?’
‘I don’t think so. I think a troop of Pandions might make a more lasting impression on people who think they have grievances against our queen, don’t you?’
‘Isn’t that just a bit extreme?’ Stragen asked him.
‘I want to make a statement, Stragen. I want everybody in Elenia to know just how much I disapprove of people who start plotting against my wife. I don’t want to have to do it again, so I’m going to do it right the first time.’
‘He didn’t actually talk like that, did he, Sparhawk?’ Ehlana asked incredulously.
‘That’s fairly close,’ Sparhawk told her. ‘Stragen’s got a very good ear for dialect.’
‘It’s almost hypnotic, isn’t it?’ she marvelled, ‘and it goes on and on and on.’ She suddenly grinned impishly. ‘Write down “happy as pigs in mud”, Lenda. I may want to find a way to work that into some official communication.’
‘As you wish, your Majesty.’ Lenda’s tone was neutral, but Sparhawk knew that the old courtier disapproved.
‘What are we going to do about this?’ the queen asked.
‘Sparhawk said that he was going to take steps, your Majesty,’ Talen told her. ‘You might not want to know too many details.’
‘Sparhawk and I don’t keep secrets from each other, Talen.’
‘I’m not talking about secrets, your Majesty,’ the boy replied innocently. ‘I’m just talking about boring unimportant little things you shouldn’t really waste your time on.’ He made it sound very plausible, but Ehlana looked more than a little suspicious.
‘Don’t embarrass me, Sparhawk,’ she warned.
‘Of course not,’ he replied blandly.
The campaign was brief. Since Pelk knew the precise location of the camp of the dissidents, and Platime’s men knew all the other hiding places in the surrounding mountains, there was no real place for the bandits to run, and they were certainly no match for the thirty black-armoured Pandions Sparhawk, Kalten and Ulath led against them. The surviving nobles were held for the queen’s justice and the rest of the outlaws were turned over to the local sheriff for disposition.
‘Well, my Lord of Belton,’ Sparhawk said to an earl crouched before him on a log, with a blood-stained bandage around his head and his hands bound behind him. ‘Things didn’t turn out so well, did they?’
‘Curse you, Sparhawk.’ Belton spat, squinting up against the afternoon’s brightness. ‘How did you find out where we were?’
‘My dear Belton,’ Sparhawk laughed, ‘you didn’t really think you could hide from my wife, did you? She takes a very personal interest in her kingdom. She knows every tree, every town and village and all of the peasants. It’s even rumoured that she knows most of the deer by their first names.’
‘Why didn’t you come after us earlier then?’ Belton sneered.
‘The queen was busy. She finally found the time to make some decisions about you and your friends. I don’t imagine you’ll care much for these decisions, old boy. What I’m really interested in is any information you might have about Krager. He and I haven’t seen each other for quite some time, and I find myself yearning for his company again.’
Belton’s eyes grew frightened. ‘You won’t get anything from me, Sparhawk,’ he blustered.
‘How much would you care to wager on that?’ Kalten asked him. ‘You’d save yourself a great deal of unpleasantness if you told Sparhawk what he wants to know, and Krager’s not so loveable that you’d really want to go through that in order to protect him.’
‘Just talk, Belton,’ Sparhawk insisted implacably.
