John woke with the first hint of dawn, as always, and sat bolt upright in shock and confusion before remembering where he was, and the cruel turn that his life had taken. Across the room, Sir Bane's breathing rose and feel, steady and even; one of his massive arms hung over the side of the bed.
Fortunately for John, at some point in the night Bane had managed to wind his linen sheets around himself, and so the torment of bare flesh was reduced to tolerable standards. John dressed in hurried silence, toes curling against the icy floor, then stoked the brazier and slipped out to find breakfast.
Some perverse remnants of his desire to do his job, and do it well, compelled him to load a tray with a fair spread of bread, crumbling white cheese, new lager and plum chutney, a breakfast for his new master. He did, after all, have an appearance to keep up, and the Commander-
Gordon had made it abundantly clear to him that he suspected al-Ghul, Bane, and possibly even al-Ghul's daughter of misdeed. Most of the realm took Bruce's apparent death by fit as a romantic tragedy, but Gordon hadn't risen to his position of power and influence by taking everything at face value. And when the Lady Talia had placed her request with the Commander, Gordon had seized the opportunity to place his keen-eyed spy into the private wing of the al-Ghul entourage.
And John had gone willingly, after his meeting with the Lady Talia. He did not accept her public demeanor of modesty and quiet any more than did the Commander, but he could not suspect her of betraying Bruce.
I know what love looks like on a man's face, she'd said. I cannot fault anyone on this earth for loving him, Sir Blake. But when I was weeping in my marriage bed over the corpse of my husband, you threw yourself on his body like a jilted bride, and because I know you loved him- don't try to deny it, Blake, I am no innocent maiden- I know you will understand that the thought of you breathing makes me sick. I know this is pure emotion, and only a fool acts upon the heart without weighing the mind as well. But I can never know what truly passed between you and my husband, and because of that I can never truly trust you. For your own protection, Sir Blake, from my own jealousy and my own spite, I want you under the eye of my loyal man. And I want your word that you will serve him well to earn back my favor. I would hate for your reputation, so long preserved, to be tarnished; and I would hate to accuse you of seeking, in your jealousy, to prevent me from having what you could not have.
She was a formidable foe, but John could not see the path that led to such vindictive widowhood from any false and murderous passion. And if his dedication to the service of Sir Bane kept him from his usual investigations... well, there were other questions to be answered now, and perhaps his beloved king's memory might be served better by a keen-eyed servant in the enemy's wing than by an overworked knight with a kitchen-boy's knowledge of the palace's nooks and crannies.
Lost in his ponderings, John nearly dropped his tray of food when he trod, quite by accident, upon the hem of the Lady Talia's bosom handmaiden, the fair and innocent Selina.
If Selina had been any of the other maids who scurried around the Lady al-Ghul's wing, she would have taken a nasty fall when her frock snapped tight around her waist and slung her backward. She was, however, no regular maid, and as her back bowed into a bridge, her knees crouched and splayed, and her thighs tightened like springs; as soon as his foot released her, she sprang back upright, ready to twist into self-defense.
Perhaps she should have taken that fall, she reflected, when her assailant was revealed to be nothing more than Bane's slim boy-knight. Too late; now he had affixed his sly gaze to her, and she could almost see the wheels turning in his head.
"Beg pardon, messire," she said, affecting her most shy and breathless tone, but as she hurried away she saw his reflection in the glazed red tiles at the end of the hall, watching her with interest. As she neared the corner, he pivoted on one heel and followed her, hands casually tucked into the loose pockets of his trews.
Damn.
She doubled back through the connecting room between this hall and the next, but no sooner had she reached the stairs than she saw the flash of a white shirt on the landing below; somehow he had come out of the servants' staircase, and he pretended not to notice her as she brushed past him, eyes lowered. She hadn't even known there was an opening to the servants' stair on that level.
She had no time for this; she had a report to give, and Auld Fox would mistrust her if she tarried. There was one place she could safely shake him, and she was confident that she could escape any delay once within.
Selina paused in the linen cupboard; she could no longer hear or see him, but she knew he followed, if only by the prickle at the back of her neck. She loaded her arms with fresh linen and scurried out, glimpsing his unmistakeable silhouette leaned in a doorway, and made her way to the back staircase, from whence she sailed down the main hallway of the wing (a tall, cloistered passage with one side open to sunlight through glazed windows, and the other side dotted with doors and tapestries). He followed her, swifter now, guessing her aim, but long before he stepped within earshot she had overtaken the guards outside Lady Talia's room.
She needed only a nod, a slight shift of the eyes, to alert them; Sir Blake perceived this and paused, knowing he could not follow. The guards stared at him, openly suspicious, and as Selina entered her lady's suite, Sir Blake turned on his heel and strode away.
Lady Talia was not within; likely she was at council, this late in the morning. Selina dumped her armful of muslin unceremoniously in a chair and slipped out through the maids' quarters, which opened around the corner of the hall and were guarded by only one man.
She was more careful after this, taking the servants' stair (apparently it opened behind one of the tapestries, a strange thing for a knight of the realm to know, though Lady Talia had warned her that Sir Blake was a canny soul) and ducking into the solarium to let a noisy group of laundresses past.
In this way she found herself at last in the butler's pantry, a dim closet full of oak tuns with a single, ill-lit, sparsely spread table at the center.
"Hello, Alfred," she murmured, slipping into a chair opposite the castle steward.
"You're late," said Alfred, with a fatherly tone of no real disappointment.
"I was nearly followed," she replied, looking back at the door. "Your Sir Blake is a fine lad with a quick mind. Knows his way around the castle, too. Are we certain we don't want him with us?"
"Blake has his duties," said Alfred, pouring her a glass of wine before topping his own off. "Dangerous duties enough, without that burden of suspicion. And he is a fiery lad, scarcely free of the rages of youth; he would not bide well in patience. You were wise to avoid him."
Her report was succinct; she knew Talia to be communicating with her father by occult means, locking herself in her boudoir alone with her powders and potions to converse with al-Ghul in secret. When Selina inquired, Talia laughed and said it was no great intrigue, that a sorcerer's daughter was allowed a few beauty tricks; and yet al-Ghul's voice could be heard muttering, deep and masculine, by an attentive listener.
"So the rumors of her quarrel with her father are untrue," mused Alfred. "One hears such things... and perhaps one is meant to hear them, to distance the Lady from her father's influence in the public eye.
There was a sudden, distinct smell in the air, a rain smell that was alien to the dark must of the butler's closet; and Auld Fox appeared, kind eyes twinkling under his mop of white hair, so naturally that Selina took a few seconds to be unsettled by his sudden arrival. The king's wizard had a way of materializing that made Selina suspect he had been there all along, somehow concealed so that the eye slipped right over him.
"Auld Fox," she greeted him, watching the old man slip into the third chair and reach for the wine. "When will you teach me that trick?"
"When I trust you," retorted Auld Fox, in his irritatingly polite way.
Alfred gave Selina's report to him, eyes crinkling at his old friend with amusement (which irritated Selina endlessly, given that Auld Fox so brazenly suspected her of subterfuge). When he was finished, Auld Fox sat back and nodded at Selina.
"Back to your lady's service," he dismissed her, and her mouth fell open.
"Am I to have no part in this discussion?"
"You mistake me, miss, you have contributed greatly to this conversation. But your time is up, and you will soon be missed."
"Horseshite," she said, rising from the table indignantly and turning to leave.
"Ah-ah-ah," said Auld Fox, raising a finger. "Your pockets, miss?"
With a sigh, Selina withdrew a cloth-wrapped bundle from her pocket and tossed it to Alfred, who opened it to reveal a lapis statuette that had, until recently, decorated the third sideboard in the great hall. "A girl's got to have her prizes once in a while," she complained.
"My trust would be a great prize indeed," said Auld Fox regretfully, and he leaned to pat Alfred's hand as the steward looked at the figurine in mild disappointment. "On with you now, miss."
She almost regretted not seeing Sir Blake on her way back to Lady Talia's chambers; she would have relished the chance to quarrel.
