FOUR

In Daylight

Lightning arced across the sky as Amon kicked heels into his horse. He looked up into the darkness and said a silent prayer to The Tri so they would hold off the rain until he and Thred got there.

“This is not a good idea. We should have come earlier in the day.” Amon peered into the dark swamp to their left and listened as the night creatures sang their cadence. If frogs were happy and singing, surely that meant there were no Sush warriors slinking around the bog.

“Viscount Edos has been avoiding you, sir. If we pay him a visit in the late evening, he’ll be there to receive us. We won’t need to hunt for him.” Thred was holding their torch, riding his own horse. Amon thought Thred was staring at him. It was hard to tell with the flickering of the torchlight and the darkness enveloping them.

Thred was staring hard at him lately. It seemed sometimes as if he was trying to drive thoughts into Amon’s head with just a look. The man’s constant stare was unnerving.

Thred set his reins down and guided the horse with his knees. Still holding the torch in one hand, he reached into his pouch to pull out a stick of dried jerky. Amon marveled how he was never without food and was always eating.

Thred should be three times the size of a regular man with how much he consumed. He should be at least thirty five or forty stones. Instead, he was no more than fourteen or fifteen. That left him thick and muscled with little fat despite eating enough for three people.

“We should be there soon, sir.” Thred swallowed a small mouthful of jerky. “It’s a long day’s ride and we left after midday. We should find him retired to his sitting room or just now readying himself for bed.”

Cyriac had been dodging Amon for days.

When he was not refusing to answer Amon’s summons at all, he was persistently able to avoid availability. Amon had even tramped all the way down down to Cyriac’s visiting apartments in Stormhall. It only seemed logical the way to force a meeting with the ethereal Viscount was to spring on him at his own country estate.

Amon looked around them again, this time in disgust. Viscount Cyriac Edos’ estates were nothing but swamp and wilderness. The land was practically worthless. He still didn’t understand why Cyriac and the Margrave were working so hard to save this mess of countryside from the Sush.

If it were him planning their same betrayal, he would have ousted himself from his own lands and given this marshy disaster back to the nation of Sush. They were dolts to trade away his prime and fertile lands to keep this swamp and bog.

That went to prove to Amon that his plan would be simple to finish. If the Viscount and Margrave were gullible enough to make a deal like that with savages, he should have no problems with bringing their plans to light. The other Viscounts might even insist on himself being named Margrave for the sharpness he showed.

That would roil Warin Daloret. It would be delicious.

The pair arrived at the estate of Viscount Cyriac Edos. It was deserted. The sun had set only and hour or two before. The two riders stopped at the open outer gate.

“The gate is open, but there’s no one to even greet us?” Amon turned in his saddle and struggled to see any sign of guards.

The deal with the Sush must be strong indeed if the Viscount felt he didn’t need a watch posted. Cyriac’s manor was scant leagues from the border. Amon had patrols on running on shifts throughout the day and all night on his own estates. The man was a trusting idiot.

Amon looked over to Thred to see if he had spotted any guards. Thred appeared fully at ease and not surprised at all. Amon didn’t know if that meant the absence of men was expected or if he didn’t care.

Amon and Thred entered the wide-open outer gate. They had to stable their own horses as there was no stablemaster to take their reins. Amon began to think this sloppiness was because Edos didn’t fully understand how a house should be run. After all, Cyriac had been raised from little more than peasantry and handed his Viscountship. He obviously didn’t know the necessary protocols to receive a noble guest.

Yes, this was going to be easy.

Lightning flashed and thunder followed.

Amon would accuse the man, twist his words into an admission of guilt, and ride him off to a jury of the other Viscounts. Amon’s lands would be safe again within a fortnight.

“Where is everyone?” Amon stood to the side while Thred found some grain for their horses.

Thred lifted an eyebrow at Amon. “I don’t know. They must be inside scurrying to prepare for your reception.”

Thred didn’t remove the tack nor did he brush down their horses. Amon thought they’d find the stablemaster inside and send him out to do it for them.

The light from the windows meant the lamps in the manor were on. Amon expected to find servants bustling around inside, surprised at the lack of warning for such an important guest. That was good. A nervous staff would jump and scurry to obey.

Amon and Thred walked from the stableyard up to the inner gate at the manor entrance. Again, there were no guards.

Amon drew his brow tight and looked at Thred. Thred simply looked back. Amon nodded and Thred banged on the inner gate.

They waited.

After a few short moments, and at Amon’s signal, Thred banged on the gate again.

Still no answer.

“What is going on? If my servants were this deaf, I would flog them until they could hear again.”

“Perhaps there is so much commotion inside they can’t hear our knock?” Thred turned and started walking back out around the corner. “We should try the kitchens.”

Amon followed. This was ridiculous. Cyriac Edos didn’t deserve the title of Viscount. He didn’t even deserve the title of Merchant. He was indeed a peasant.

They walked around to the backside of the silent manor.

Amon hoped the conflict didn’t escalate. Someone without even the common propriety befitting a man of station might be socially unpredictable. The last thing Amon needed right now was to be tossed out on his ear by an infuriated friend of the Margrave.

“The last thing we need, Thred, is a brawl. We need him to admit to helping the Sush. We need him to agree to talk to the other Viscounts.”

“Yes, sir.” Thred was looking into every shadow as they passed through the courtyard. Amon liked that he was taking his job as personal guard seriously.

“If we threaten him, he’ll get defensive. Even with as little noble blood as he has,” Amon said with a slight shiver, “he’s still my equal in the eyes of the King.”

“Yes, sir.” They were approaching the kitchen now. There was light streaming into the empty yard.

“This needs delicacy, Thred.”

“Of course, sir.”

The other Viscounts weren’t here, at this manor, seeing the shambles of House Edos. They wouldn’t understand Amon’s circumstances tonight. If this conversation went poorly, the council would only know Viscount Mantisarr came upon Viscount Edos late in the evening and was thrown out. The Viscounts would simply nod and agree they might have done the same given the bad blood between the two.

Amon thought to what his own actions would be if Cyriac came calling in the middle of the night. He liked to think he would have the decency to at least put the visiting Viscount up for the night and discuss matters in the morning.

Then again, his was a noble house.

There was a bright flash and another peal of thunder rolled across the sky deep enough it caused Amon to look up. It wasn’t raining yet. Edos should have ushered them inside by now.

Viscount Edos, however, was not true nobility so there was no telling how he would react to their visit. It was good Amon brought Thred with him. He would liked to have brought Paran and a few of the other new recruits as well. Thred said they didn’t want to make a show of arms because that might spook the Viscount. It was a good point. Especially in the light of their current situation with conspicuously missing guards.

It would be fine. Even if their talk escalated into shouting, Amon would take his leave. And they would leave by the front gate.

Thred stopped and touched Amon’s arm.

The door to the kitchens was wide open. They glanced at each other, then stepped in. The ovens and basins were cold and empty. The floor and counters were tidy.

Amon stopped in the middle of the kitchen, hands on his hips. He was surprised, but also pleased. He had been ready with an excuse about an urgent summons from the Margrave regarding Viscount Cyriac’s son on the Eastern March. It was reed-thin, but he didn’t need it. Not yet, anyway.

Thred poked his head into the doorway leading deeper into the house. Then, he checked up the stairs.

“Nobody is here.”

“Where are they? Don’t you think this is strange?” Amon rubbed his chin, disquieted.

“Maybe they saw us coming and didn’t bother meeting us. Maybe left the lights burning and retired to the servants’ quarters?” Thred moved to the stairway leading up to the next floor. “Let’s find Cyriac, sir.”

Thred led the way. Amon followed.

They reached the next floor and walked in the direction of where they hoped the solar was located. Amon strode along confidently behind Thred until the man started, pulled his knife, and ducked into a side room. Amon froze.

Thred emerged from the room a short time later and continued down the hall without saying a word. Amon followed more cautiously afterwards.

The didn’t run into another soul.

Thred stopped in front of one of the oak doors. “This is it. This is his study.”

Amon wondered how he was so sure but squeezed and twisted the handle anyway. The door swung silently open. He slipped into the room, and found Cyriac sitting in an overstuffed chair.

He was dead.

The man was sitting there with his pipe smoldering as it dangled from half-open lips. He had a snifter of steaming brown liquor, having already sloshed on the floor, hanging limp in his hand.

“The Tri be mighty.” Amon pushed a breath through pursed lips as he bent over and put his hands on his knees.

Viscount Cyriac Edos jolted up.

“What, what?” Edos grunted and yanked at his snifter. It sloshed onto the leather of the chair. “Damn. I’ll have to get Harl to clean that again.”

Cyriac noticed Amon was standing in the study with him.

“Who? Oh, Viscount Mantisarr. It’s a pleasure to see you.” Cyriac, always spry for his apparent age, slid smoothly to his feet.

Amon straightened, surprised at the sight of Cyriac springing up from his overstuffed reading chair. The man was already moving as if he’d not been dead asleep thirty seconds before. Amon decided he’d just been faking slumber to try and gain a sympathy advantage.

“It seems I shall have to talk with Mistress Mena about sending guests in unannounced,” said Viscount Cyriac Edos. He waved a hand at the room’s contents. “Please, Viscount, Pardon my clutter.”

Cyriac set his warm brandy down next to an open book on the chair’s side table. He lifted a small bag from his pocket and casually filled his pipe with the contents.

“No, Viscount Edos, it is I who should apologize. I have come calling late in order to finally catch a word with you.” Amon tried to keep the disdain from his voice. “You’ve been a difficult man to schedule time with.”

Amon waited as Cyriac watched him over his cupped hands. He cradled his pipe and the punk lighting it. After a few sharp, smoky puffs, he gripped the stem with his teeth and let his hands fall behind his back and clasped them together. Cyriac was in no hurry.

“We need to have a rather difficult conversation.” Amon clasped his own hands behind his back.

Cyriac turned and swept over to his writing desk and stood beside it. He kept his eyes on Amon while he plucked absently at a book that lay open.

“And what conversation might that be, Amon?”

Fine. If the old man was going to be smug and evasive, Amon would drop the pretense and barrel into him.

“The conversation regarding how you are working with the Sush to the detriment of my estates.” Amon locked eyes with the fidgeting man. He didn’t miss Cyriac dropping his honorific title.

“What makes you think I’m involved with anything between you and the Sush?” One of Cyriac’s eyebrows drew down to a squint as if he was trying to puzzle out exactly how much Amon knew about his plans.

While the true answer to the unspoken question was “Not much,” Amon needed to play at knowing the entire tale as he answered the spoken one. He needed to go on instinct.

“I may be young, Cyriac, but I am not without my own resources.” Amon felt cool, collected, in command. This was going well.

“Well then.” Cyriac began to pace back and forth in the room. “If I may be so bold as to inquire why exactly you think I’m colluding with the Sush?”

The older man wasn’t going to give anything away. He hadn’t even so much as admitted to knowing a Sush savage, much less having a deep and malevolent plot. He suspected Amon didn’t have as much knowledge as he was trying to allude to. Amon was sure of it.

Amon looked over at Thred. The big man was staring back at him with his intense eyes, but no expression on the rest of his face. As if he was silently waiting for orders. It was time for Amon to gamble.

“The Margrave has lost his teeth.” Amon crossed his arms over his chest. “He’s grown fat with his own house and lands no longer pushing on the border with Sush. He’s content to sit back and watch our Houses do the work for him. He also knows that I am a strong candidate to lead the Duchy and further expansion for the King.”

“Go on.” Cyriac paused his pacing. Amon had his full attention now.

“It’s a land swap.” Amon sneered and raised a finger at him. “You will gain more of that worthless swampland of yours.” He pointed a thumb at his own chest. “And I, I will be overrun with all the savages in the east. With my holdings gone and your own grown larger, the size of the Duchy will remain the same. The key difference will be me, pushed out of the way.”

Cyriac barked a laugh.

How dare the man laugh! Amon looked to Thred who was standing still, but whose eyes were boring into his own. A feeling of white-hot anger reared up and raged through his body. It pulsed with sudden violence and he yearned for destruction.

Amon turned back to Cyriac, fury on the verge of releasing. The old man had laughed at him.

“That’s preposterous, boy. Do you really think the Duchy of Cragfeld will just sit there while we let hordes of savages storm over your lands and right up to their border? Do you think…”

“Do not deflect!” Amon screamed. “It’s your son, Bainburn, who commands the armies protecting my lands. It is not coincidence that he’s been falling back more and more. It is not coincidence that you’ve had fewer Sush raids here in the Duchy west. It is not coincidence that you and Warin are treating with the Sush. It is not coincidence that Warin wants my Viscountship dissolved.”

“Amon, my son fights to protect you and the rest of the Duchy. Do not question his…”

Amon screamed himself purple in Cyriac’s face. Cyriac blinked several times and took a step backwards. Complete shock on his face.

Amon was staring at Cyriac, dumbstruck. The man would not answer a simple question. He would not take responsibility for his greedy land grab. He wouldn’t even lay the blame at Margrave Warin Daloret’s feet.

Amon’s head was starting to hurt. He looked over to Thred again hoping the man’s calmness would smother his own fire. It had the opposite effect. As soon as his eyes met Thred’s, he was awash in images of savage hordes storming over his lands, murdering his people.

“Are you plotting with the Sush and Warin?” Amon took a dangerous step towards the other Viscount.

“Any plans the Margrave and I have with the Sush are of no concern to you,” said Cyriac dryly, clasping his hands behind his back again and standing his ground.

Amon had him. That was enough of an admission of guilt as Amon needed for his conscience. His heart was pounding loud in his ears and his head was spinning. They truly were plotting to throw away his lands to some Sush animal like so many scraps from a feast table.

“So you finally admit to working with the Margrave and the Sush? Against me?” Amon roared.

“I admit to nothing,” replied Cyriac coolly, his eyebrows pinching tight in irritation. “I think it’s time you left.”

As he spoke, Cyriac turned his back on Amon and strode across the room toward the door. Amon’s anger flamed hot up behind his eyes. He would show this old man he was not so easily tossed to the hounds.

“And I suggest you not mention our conversation to…”

Amon struck Cyriac, full-bodied, and slammed him up against the lengthwise edge of the table. The thick wooden legs gave way under the onslaught and the whole mess — men, table, patterned tabletop tile, and the chair behind — exploded across the rug-covered stone floor.

Amon groaned weakly. His anger replaced by a sharp pain in his side. He rolled off of the other Viscount and sat up, readying an apology. Cyriac was right. He had flown into an unintended rage and needed to leave. He had his admission of guilt even if it was a weak one. The Rainn Duchy council would pull the rest of it from Cyriac.

He looked down at the man he had just crawled away from and noticed the strange angle his head lolled from his shoulders. When they had landed, Cyriac’s neck slammed across one of the many support crosspieces required by the tabletop’s tile heft. His neck was neatly snapped and now lay overextended and flopped across the broken beam.

Amon had just killed the Viscount of House Edos.

“No, no, no. This can’t be happening.” Amon leaned back to his knees and laced his fingers behind his head.

“Thred, you saw. I didn’t mean to hurt him.” Amon let out a slow breath and scanned the room for Thred. “Thred?”

He was standing by the door, half into the hallway, head swiveling back and forth, checking for servants. When he was satisfied there was no one running up the hall to investigate the noise, he eased the door closed. Finally, he turned his attention to Amon.

The look on the man’s face was pure calculation.

In the span of seconds, Thred took in the room. His eyes moved from the now-deformed Cyriac and the splintered table, to the overstuffed chair, to the desk, the ledgers on it, and the brandy. Everything. He consumed the entire scene with that same flat stare. Finally, he looked over at Amon.

Thred pulled a piece of jerky out of his pouch and began chewing.

Amon went to stand. His elbow brushed something solid that sent flames of pain rolling up the side of his body. He looked down and saw the cause — a thumb-thick shard of the wooden table had lodged itself into the fleshy part of his side, just above his left hip. He collapsed back on his elbows.

Wincing, he signaled Thred to come closer and remove the offending bit of table from his body. Thred picked up the snifter of brandy and walked over to where Amon was gingerly poking at his wound.

“What have we done, Thred? Why is everyone around me dying? First it was Wil, Enmes, and Jylai. Now this.” Amon quaffed the rest of the offered brandy.

Thred swallowed his mouthful of jerky. “It’s coincidence. There’s nothing to worry about. This is recoverable.”

“Recoverable? That’s what you have to say?” Amon was floored at Thred’s flippancy. “This is a complete disaster. I will lose my titles, lands, everything. I will be lucky if I’m only beheaded for this. My family is ruined. My people slain.”

Amon collapsed to his back and immediately regretted it as a wave of pain rolled through his torso. He looked down his nose at Thred.

Thred took that moment to yank the wooden stake free from Amon’s side. Amon yelped and the bodyguard tossed the bloodied shaft of wood to the ground with the rest of the broken table.

Thred didn’t move. Their eyes were locked as he stared again at Amon.

“What am I to do? What… what if…,” he trailed off.

Amon relaxed. He began to think. That was his problem. He was thinking too small. Trying to bandage a festering wound never worked. You had to chop it off. Chop them all off. Cut them into smaller and smaller pieces until you finally had their respect. Then he would make them feel the pain.

A terrifying grin split Amon’s face.

“Viscount?” asked Thred, frowning slightly. He broke off their eye contact.

“Yes?” Amon popped back to the present. He had wandered for a moment. Wandered into strange and foreign thoughts. He had to salvage this disaster and save his Viscountship.

“May I suggest we make it look like an accident? Or maybe a pillaging by the Sush? Preferably something other than a middle of the night visit gone wrong?” Thred stood up and walked over to the mantle where he selected an ornate statuette off the end.

He threw it on the ground where it smashed to shards.

“Yes, you’re right. Raids aren’t exactly uncommon this close to the border. Yes, that’s perfect.” Amon stood and kicked over the overstuffed chair. He winced at the pain the sudden movement caused. It reminded him of what was at stake.

He walked over and swept an arm across the desk, spilling everything to the floor. Then, he upended the desk with Thred’s help. They were knocking everything to the ground in great heaps and piles.

Amon came across a jeweled belt buckle on one of the shelves and decided not to throw it to the ground. It was one of the jeweled buckles the Margrave had given to Bainburn when he was raised to Commander of the March.

“We should probably take any obvious valuables. The Sush would do that.” Amon slipped the gaudy emerald buckle into his pocket. He glanced around the room and didn’t see anything else that needed to be pocketed. Cyriac was evidently a peasant and a pauper.

“That should be enough. Let’s get out of here.” Amon jabbed his thumb at the doorway.

The swept out of the room and down the stairs back toward the kitchen. As they were crossing to the outer door, a thought occurred to Amon.

“We should make it obvious the brigands came through here, maybe even rummaged around for sundries. They would likely haul those off in their raid.” Amon opened the pantry.

Thred nodded in agreement. “Good thinking.”

That was close. There was no plausible reason Sush Raiders would sneak into the house and just ramshackle one room of dozens. There was especially no reason for the starving savages to skip the kitchen.

As they were stringing the stray fruit and salted pork across the cold tile floor, Amon couldn’t help but marvel at how the servants were nowhere to be seen with all this plundering. He would strip the hides from his own servants if they showed this much incompetence.

“The flour. Kick over the flour.” Amon ripped open a bag of onions and couldn’t help but feel a bit relieved. This was going well.

And he would frame Margrave Warin Daloret for all of it.

Lighting flashed. Thunder rolled.