Chapter 253: Heirloom (1) [BONUS]

"His Grace will see you when he is ready," Corvan said. "Until then, you are welcome to wait in the hall."

He said it with a small bow, the way he had said it to nobles and generals for thirty years. He did not say how long it would be.

The two visitors stood in the entrance hall of the Gannon house with snow melting on their shoulders.

They had arrived without a herald, on plain horses, in plain dark coats. If Corvan had not seen the small silver eye pinned inside the older man’s collar, he might have taken them for a pair of lawyers from the southern towns.

He had seen it.

The Imperial Inquisition did not usually announce itself. That was what made it the Inquisition.

"Thank you," said the older man. "We will wait."

He had a forgettable face and a quiet voice. He had introduced himself at the door as Inquisitor-Captain Odric Grane, and he had shown his seal without being asked. His companion was a young woman of perhaps twenty-five, with dark hair pinned tight and a satchel full of papers over one shoulder. Grane had called her Inquisitor Sella Varne. She had not spoken a word since they came in.

Corvan had a fire built up in the hall and brought them hot cider. Then he went upstairs.

The Duke was in his study, standing at the window, as he always was at this hour.

"Two of them, your Grace" Corvan said. "They claim to b from Inquisition. The older one is a captain. Grane."

"I know the name."

"Shall I bring them up, Your Grace?"

The Duke did not turn from the window.

"How long is a Duke of the Four Houses permitted to keep an officer of the Crown waiting, Corvan?"

"Until the turn of the glass, Your Grace. One hour. Any longer is an insult the Crown may answer."

"Then turn the glass."

Corvan went to the shelf and turned the old sand-glass that stood there. It was the same glass the Duke’s grandfather had used. The sand began to run.

"And until it is empty?" Corvan asked.

"Until it is empty," the Duke said, "I am reading my letters."

He sat down at his desk and picked up the top one. Corvan noticed that it was a letter from the grain merchants of the Serpentine about the price of barley, which the Duke had already read twice that morning.

Corvan bowed and went out.

? ? ?

Inquisitor Sella Varne waited until the steward’s footsteps had gone up the stairs before she spoke.

"He’s making us wait on purpose."

"Yes," said Grane.

"For how long?"

"An hour. Not a moment more. Not a moment less." Grane sipped his cider. "It’s a very old custom. The Duke wants us to know that he is not afraid of us. He also wants us to know that he knows the law well enough not to give us a reason to complain. Both of those things are useful to know."

Varne frowned.

"Useful how?"

"A frightened man keeps you waiting for five minutes, or for three hours. Five minutes, because he wants to look calm and can’t bear it. Three hours, because he hopes you’ll leave." Grane set down the cup. "A man who keeps you waiting exactly one hour has nothing to hide from the clock. That doesn’t mean he has nothing to hide. It means he has decided exactly what he will say."

Varne took out a small notebook and wrote something down.

Grane stood and walked slowly around the hall.

It was a good hall. Old, plain, and well kept. There were no tapestries of battles, as one found in the southern houses. Instead there were banners. White griffins on blue, crowned in gold, hung from iron rods along the walls. Some of them were faded almost to grey. Some had been mended so many times that the stitching made new patterns of its own.

Under each banner, a small brass plate gave a name and a date.

Grane read them as he walked. Battles he had never heard of. Places on the northern frontier that no longer had names on the Crown’s maps. The Gannons, he thought, kept their own records of what they had paid.

He stopped at the long window that looked onto the inner yard.

There was a training ground below. A dozen youths in practice padding were working with wooden swords under the eye of a broad, grey-bearded master-at-arms. Most of them moved the way young men always moved, with too much shoulder and not enough feet.

One of them did not.

He was smaller than the others, perhaps thirteen. His dark hair was tied back, and his lip was swollen as if he had been in a fight recently. On his back, even during practice, he wore a long bundle wrapped in old cloth and tied with cord.

He was doing the same cut, over and over. A plain overhead stroke. Each time, he stopped at the end and looked at his left elbow. Then he did it again.

"Who is that boy?" Grane asked.

A maid was passing behind him with a basket of linen. She stopped, startled, and looked out of the window.

"That’s Arthur, sir. The young master’s boy."

"The young master?"

"Young master Encrid, sir. He found him in the north and sent him here to be trained." The maid hesitated. "He’s been out there since before light. He’s always out there."

"Thank you."

The maid hurried on.

Grane stood at the window and watched the boy do the cut eleven more times.

"Write that down," he said quietly.

Varne looked up from her notebook. "The boy?"

"The fourth son was a drunk who was thrown out of this house for disgracing a counsellor’s daughter," Grane said. "On his way to exile, he found an orphan in the north, sent him home, and asked his father to raise him. And his father did."

He turned from the window.

"Those are three facts that don’t fit together very well. I like to know which of them is wrong."

Varne wrote it down.

The sand-glass upstairs ran out at a quarter past the tenth bell. Corvan came down the stairs at exactly the same moment, as though he had been standing at the top, waiting for it.

"His Grace will see you now."

? ? ?

The study was cold. The fire had been allowed to burn low. The Duke of the North stood behind his desk with his hands clasped behind his back, tall and silver-haired, with pale blue eyes that did not seem to blink very often.

He did not offer them a chair.

"Inquisitor-Captain," he said.

"Your Grace." Grane bowed exactly as deeply as the law required, and not a finger’s width more. "Thank you for receiving us."

"You came a long way to stand in my study. I assume you have a question."

"I have several, Your Grace. But I’ll begin with the simplest one."

Grane did not take out a paper. He did not look at Varne. He looked only at the Duke.

"What did your son do on that bridge?"

? ? ?

Thank you for the magic castle, @Stingdragon ~