Arc 5: Chapter 12: The Headsman and The Lady Dance

Arc 5: Chapter 12: The Headsman and The Lady Dance

Some time later, I was getting ready to head out when Emma appeared at the door again.

“Someone here to see you,” she said, not bothering to hide her annoyance. “Also, I’m not your secretary. Shouldn’t we have a servant to answer the damned door?”n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

I gave her a steady look. “You’re my squire. I should be having you scrub my armor and dress me. Would you prefer that?”

Emma blew out a breath, sighing. “Shall I see them up?”

I waved my assent. A minute later, Faisa Dance stepped into my office.

A tall, lavishly adorned woman in her fifties, Lady Faisa was the older sister to her House’s leader and a leading name in the renaissance movement, a patron to artists and inventors. The Dance’s were powerful and wealthy, rulers of the Duchy of Mirrebel. When I’d first arrived in the capital, I’d played the role of a mercenary sleuth investigating her lover’s murder. Her cooperation had enabled me to learn that demonic activity was at work in the city.

Needless to say, I bowed my head to the noblewoman and spoke in courteous tones. “Lady Faisa. To what do I owe the honor?”

Faisa Dance didn’t reply immediately. She paced around the room, her layered skirts whispering along the freshly scrubbed stone of the floor. Bronze skinned and silver haired, Faisa had a piercing gaze shaped by a thin, elegant nose and high cheekbones. It was said by many she’d been among Urn’s greatest beauties in her youth, and I could still see it.

And I didn’t feel ready to host any one of her standing. My personal quarters were still mostly barren, and not as clean as I’d like. There was the desk, my armor stand, and a shelf I’d had brought up not two hours before to help organize some of the paperwork I’d already been inundated with.

Faisa paused by the desk, glancing over the stacks of reports. “You’ve come a long way since that day you were introduced to me as Lord Yuri’s fetch,” she said, turning to face me. “Alken of the Linden, was it?”

I kept my chin lowered, feeling very wary of this powerful woman. “I regret deceiving you, my lady, but I trust you understand the reasons.”

Faisa snorted, then glided over to the window. “Since then, I’ve learned so many strange things about you. Not Alken of Lindenroad, but Alken Hewer of Karledale. Not a mere fetch, but the Headsman of Seydis and a Knight of the Alder Table, once sworn to the service of the Elf King.”

She tilted her head to watch me out of the corner of my eye, judging my reaction. “And before all that, you were our fair lady empress’s man. Rosanna’s Headsman. The Ram of Karles, First Sword to House Silvering. So. Many. Names.”

My jaw flexed. “Is there something I can help you with, my lady?”

Faisa made an odd gesture, waving her hand through the air while fluttering her fingers, causing an emerald on the middle one to flash. “Oh, don’t look so glum. I do not mean to threaten you, Ser Headsman, but you should be aware that I am not the only one who has made these connections.”

She fixed me with a look very much like the admonishing one I’d given Emma only minutes before. “People talk. They gossip, and they whisper. They ask themselves, is the Headsman still bound to his old mistresses’s leash? Did she force her husband to accept him, or are they in accord?”

She turned to me, her bemused expression turning stern. “They ask if the Emperor and Empress of the Accorded Realms have been using you to chop inconvenient heads. They ask if it was Markham Forger and Rosanna Silvering who ordered the death of the Grand Prior.”

My heart skipped a beat, but I managed to keep my expression remote. “Dangerous assumptions. Besides, you were there that day. You know who gave me that order.”

“Oh, very much so.” Faisa flashed even teeth in an almost feral little smile. “And yet, things are assumed. Only a small portion of the peerage and some members of the clergy saw your angels, and besides.”

She shrugged. “There is much phantasm in our world. Perhaps they were conjured?”

“Do you believe that?” I asked her.

Faisa flicked her ringed hand. “What people actually believe matters very little next to what they choose to say.” She leaned forward, enunciating carefully. “Politics.”

“Are you trying to blackmail me?” I asked, letting a chill enter my voice. “Or do you mean to blackmail our rulers through me? I won’t take kindly to that, my lady.”

Faisa made a show of shivering. “Oh, so frightening. I can’t believe I didn’t realize what you were when I saw your golden eyes… ah! I can practically see the light in them. Is it true you Alder paladins can see lies?”

I held her gaze. “Try telling me one, and find out.”

The Lady Faisa made a shooing gesture at me. “Perhaps if I were twenty years younger. I am here for business, I’m afraid, not pleasure.”

I didn’t bother hiding my scowl. I hadn’t intended to flirt with her, and she’d known it. I’d heard rumors about how clever the thorned roses of House Dance could be with wordplay.

I’m outmatched, I thought. One slip, and she might get more from me than I want her to.

The noblewoman watched me a moment, then sighed. “My, you’re dour. She wasn’t lying after all.”

I frowned. “Who?”

Faisa rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t be daft. The Empress, of course. I am one of her confidants.” She placed a hand to her chest. “I was the one who brokered an alliance between her faction and House Greengood. I am little Darsus’s godmother.”

She lifted her gray eyebrows as I took that new information in. Darsus was Rosanna’s younger son, heir to House Silvering and the Kingdom of the Karledale. She and Markham had split their children’s inheritances, with the older son set to take the throne of Reynwell one day.

“Did she send you?” I asked.

Faisa shook her head, snuffing the small ember of hope in me before it could flare into anything larger. “I’m afraid I took my own initiative in this regard, Ser Alken. I wish to offer you my services in the matter of the Emperor’s command. You are hunting for the culprits behind our recent troubles?”

When I agreed, Faisa’s manner changed. “Do you believe it is the same force behind the other killings? The same thing that took my Yselda from me?”

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

She had a very intense expression in that moment, hard and sharp as broken glass.

“I have some theories,” I said, hedging. “But I can’t be certain. This is much bigger than anything the Carmine Killer has done before, and it doesn’t quite fit for him.”

Faisa’s expression became remote again. She started to pace, folding her hands before her as she did. “Why do you believe so?”

I watched her, still not certain why she was here and what was safe to tell her. The Dance’s were staunch supporters of the Accord, but they had always been an opportunistic family, willful and eccentric.

“Yith — that is, the Carmine Killer — has been haunting people connected to the renaissance movement. Artists, noble patrons, inventors, architects, scholars. He gets into theirs heads, drives them to mania, then kills them.”

Faisa made that fluttering gesture again. “Why?”

“I believe he wants to ferment paranoia in the city,” I said. “The Inquisition already had cold feelings towards influence from the west, which the renaissance movement pulled from heavily. By turning the most hardline faction of the Church against the artists, and by extension against the nobles who patronized them, it fermented fear and anger in the city.”

I shrugged. “Besides, he’s targeting our culture. The renaissance movement symbolizes something besides doom and blood, a brighter time we can pull ourselves into. Progress. By putting an ugly face on it, the demon poisons those ideas.”

Not everything Lias had told me had failed to find purchase. I’d seen many wonderful things since returning to civilization.

“And what does this demon gain from such a thing?” Faisa pressed, still pacing. She seemed like a tutor in that moment, asking questions to spur my thought, to test.

Is that what she’s doing? I wondered. Is this how she means to help me? “It makes him feel more at home.”

Faisa frowned, her first show of emotion. “At home?” When she noticed my expression, she urged me on impatiently. “I have made some study of the occult, but I am little more than a novice in such lore. Please, explain it.”

I was impatient. I didn’t have time to indulge this wealthy aristocrat, and had work to get done. I wasted daylight with every minute I lingered.

Even still, her flippant warning about politics and her knowledge of my history had a note of danger in them. I sensed this wasn’t a good woman to make an enemy of.

“Demons might have intelligence,” I explained, “but they’re basically just extensions of the Abyss. Hungry mouths, with just enough of their own will and personality gained from devouring souls to act independently. They instinctively try to make any environment they’re in more like the place they originated from.”

“More like Hell,” Faisa said, nodding.

“More like the Abyss,” I clarified. “The place we call Hell is just a lid fashioned over the home of demonkind, to contain it and prevent damned souls from being pulled in. What lies below the infernal realm is… worse.”

When the lady lifted an eyebrow at me in question I added, “I have seen glimpses. Those scarred by demons get visions of the Abyss. You remember Lady Yselda’s paintings?”

Faisa’s eyes went to the claw scars on my face. “I remember. So you do not believe the Carmine is behind these more recent attacks?”

I shrugged. “It’s just very different from how he’s acted before, is all. I haven’t discounted anything yet.”

“Have you considered that the Priory is behind it?” Faisa asked, too casually.

I shook my head. “They would be insane to try such a thing, especially so soon after everything that happened last month.”

In addition to raiding the homes of nobles, speaking out against the Houses publicly, kidnappings, torture, assassinations, and other crimes, the Priory of the Arda had been thoroughly humiliated when two angels had appeared to sanction the death of their leader at my hand. They had been quiet since then, appearing less often out in the public. I’d heard rumors that their key members had retreated out into the countrysides, shifting their operations from the capital to sleepy rural churches.

“I have heard the new Grand Prior is not the most stable of mind,” Faisa told me seriously. “And she has maintained her predecessors accusations against Laessa Greengood. The girl’s trial by combat will take place on the first day of the tournament, and several of those who swore to take the young lady’s side were attacked the other night.”

I knew what she was getting at. I’d had a similar thought, and done some digging during the past two days. “Several of those targeted during the Culling were knights who took the Priory’s side,” I said. “Two of them were killed.”

Faisa cursed savagely. I understood her frustration. All this trouble being the work of zealots would have simplified things.

“I haven’t discounted the possibility,” I admitted. “They might have used most of the attacks as a cover for their real targets. Still, it seems brash even for them.”

“Brash for fanatic torturers who were kidnapping nobles for political leverage?” Faisa snorted. “Unlikely. Even still, I had to ask. They spat in my face that night.”

I sighed, spreading my hands out helplessly. “My investigation has just started, my lady. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I truly have nothing so far. I just sent a team I was introduced to this morning out into the city barely three hours ago. I’ve got them investigating different leads in pairs, and I expect to have a clearer picture of these attacks soon, but even still…”

I glanced at my already cluttered desk. “This will take time.”

“I know,” Faisa said. “Forgive my haste, ser. In truth, I am here to assist you, not demand fast results. Forgive my theorizing.”

I nodded. “How do you intend to assist me, Lady Dance?” And what is it going to cost me? I added silently.

“I have information.” A tight smile formed on Faisa’s painted lips. “One of those attacked during the Culling was the Cymrinorean, Siriks Sontae.”

“Siriks?” I frowned, looking at the stacks of reports on my desk. “I wasn’t given his name.”

“The delegation from Cymrinor did not announce it,” Faisa informed me. “I only know because of my own network of contacts. The peninsula has always been insular, and they still don’t trust us. I believe they have kept this hidden from the rest of the city while they conduct their own investigations. Lord Siriks survived, but is presently recovering from wounds sustained that night within the Cymrinorean embassy.”

Siriks had also put himself forward to defend Laessa during her trial, just as Jocelyn and Tegan had. No wonder Faisa thinks the Priory is involved, I thought.

“You think they know something the rest of us don’t?” I asked, catching her drift. Then, startled I added, “Do you think they managed to capture the assassin?”

Faisa shrugged. “I do not know, but they shut their doors that night and have refused to answer the palace since. Cymrinor is a member of the Accord, but the Princedoms have always been independent. They do not bow to the authority of the Ardent Round or the Emperor, and are here only as a courtesy. If they have decided to handle this problem themselves…”

“It could become a mess,” I finished, drumming my fingers on the desk. “Damn.”

Faisa turned to the door. I spoke before she left. “This is helpful. Why are you telling me?”

The noblewoman glanced over her shoulder. “Because I am forward thinking enough to know that being in the good graces of the Headsman might be valuable, one day.”

“Sniping a favor from me, is it?” I smiled, finding I wasn’t annoyed. “Very well. You have my thanks, Lady Faisa.”

She paused at the door, a hand lingering on the frame. “I do not need your thanks, Ser Headsman. Find whoever is behind all of this. And find justice for my Yselda. I may not be a great sorceress, but I can be a petty witch. I will make it a curse, if I must.”

She left then, leaving the door open. A minute later, Emma peeked back in.

“If you’re about to tell me there’s someone else here to meet me,” I growled, “I’m escaping through the window and swimming out of this damned castle.”

My squire lifted a scroll. “Just a letter, actually.”

Sighing, I gestured for her to bring it. I checked the seal first. A bronze coin had been affixed to the letter in place of a more typical seal.

Removing the coin and pocketing it, I read the letter. It was very short. I put it down, turned to the stand set on the back wall, and lifted my hauberk off it.

“What is it?” Emma asked, after I’d let the coat of rings settle over my shoulders. “Who is it from?”

“Grab your gear,” I ordered her, putting on the harness I wore over the hauberk, then sliding my axe back through its belt ring. I grabbed my rondel and other bits, gearing up fully without paying much attention to what I did. “We’re heading out.”

When I turned, Emma had my cloak in hand. I met her eyes as I took it.

“It’s from the Backroad Inn. We’ve got a private audience with its keeper.”