Chapter 168 The Black Cat Arrives on Schedule

While Leon and Lora sipped their weak wine over harvest cakes, the Serene Palace held a great crowd, seated and standing — crow-quiet, sparrow-silent.

Every eye was on the Queen Mother. She was lifting, in high good spirits, the hometown wine her brother had poured her — the "maiden's vintage" — and at one swallow the tears came down:

"Our parents went early — never got to drink the maiden's vintage they brewed for me..."

The King beside her smiled: "The wine the Queen's brother brewed carries something of the old pair's hearts in it, at the least."

"Speaking of which, I have Your Majesty to thank. But for all your pains, I should never have set eyes on my one blood brother again..." The Queen Mother set down her cup and smiled out at the company:

"No one stand on ceremony. Prince Jasper's household has sent up a distilled liquor — a deal stronger than our everyday wine. Come, everyone — try it."

At the Queen Mother's word, the palace maids brought round the little silver cups — an ox's eye in size — and poured.

"Can't tell whether Prince Jasper's house is stingy or the Queen Mother is — this thimbleful we're poured, not one good swallow in it!" Prince Marius lifted his dainty ox-eye cup, laughing.

One smell of the stuff told you it was no everyday weak wine. The King had not drunk from his own cup, and so nobody else had touched theirs — except Prince Gawain, sitting beside Prince Marius, who lifted his and drained it at a pull. His whole face changed on the instant.

That odd turn of Prince Gawain's caught every eye at once. Prince Ian, seated across from him, bowed his folded hands to the Queen Mother and the King:

"The Queen Mother's gift of wine — Uncle Gawain yielded to no one and drank the first cup of it. Clearly it is to Uncle Gawain's taste. I beg the King grant him a great cup, that he may drink his fill."

"Good! A great cup!" The King's sport was up.

Prince Gawain was of the uncle generation, but of an age with the rest of them; dull and slow in the common run of days, and made their sport often enough.

At the King's word a maid carried over a horn cup at once. Even had it been weak wine, a man not built for drinking fast would go dizzy under one such goblet.

"No — no — no, there's ginger in the wine — it burns!" Prince Gawain, seeing the maid filling the horn cup, waved both hands in a flurry.

A chance like this — would the King let it by? He tapped, one after the other, at the two brothers seated below him, Prince Ian and Prince Ambrose:

"What are you two sitting there for? Go — go pour for your Uncle Gawain!"

Prince Gawain could not dodge it: the King's two brothers had him by the arms and were pouring into him by force. There were princes at that table whose hearts burned at it — but none so foolish as to step in and draw the fire onto themselves; they could only lift their own cups and drink, and see nothing.

Three rounds past, the remoter kin came up to toast the King and the Queen Mother; and from the back rows the Odenheims, father and sons, lifted their cups and fell in behind.

On the day before the Harvest Home recess, the Count had taken up the Warden of Thornford commission before the whole court. This night past, tomorrow, he and his sons rode for Thornford to take up the post.

When the Odenheims' turn came round, Prince Gawain was already up on his feet, drunk and reeling, meaning to leave — and the Ambrose brothers pressed him back into his seat. The King laughed till he roared, and never even heard the Count's toast.

Which set the Odenheims, father and sons, harking back to little Yvonne's words:

In the Western Capital, Ambrose is no true rival — the true one is Prince Ian, who chases everlasting life and never looks at the affairs of state. And whoever else you slight, do not slight Prince Gawain. The man is no true fool — only a great wit playing the dunce, and biding his hour.

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The Count smiled along and raised his cup again: "Your servant wishes the Queen Mother and the King a flourishing age and high hearts, fair fortune and full joy."

"Odenheim, my good lord — Prince Jasper tells me this is wine you brought up from the Eastern Capital, and good wine it is! Augustus von Klein: carry the word to the Royal Brewery — from this day, the East-Capital Brew of the Odenheim distillery in Lohenheim goes onto the register of royal wines."

The King, in rare feather, paid the Queen Mother's caution at his side no mind, and drank three cups with the Odenheims, father and sons.

The Count was just making to withdraw when a sudden commotion broke out beyond the Griffin Pavilion:

"An assassin!"

An assassin? The King and the Queen Mother both went taut. Voss, at their backs, waved one hand, and the Silver Shields on either flank closed up round them at once.

From outside, quick, another cry:

"It's nothing — a black cat."

"A black cat? You damned army slaves — frightening the Queen Mother half dead! How many heads have you got for the chopping?" Voss slid his saber back into its sheath, swearing as he went.

Everyone breathed out and began returning to their places — and Roland lunged toward the King:

"Mind the assassin!"

Wasn't it a black cat? What assassin, from where?

A green-fletched arrow grazed past the Odenheims, father and sons, and flew at the King. Roland's cry had come early enough: the Silver Shields at hand drew as one and beat the arrow aside.

Then the uncanny thing happened. The shaft was knocked aside — and the arrowhead flew on, and buried itself in the shoulder of a Silver Shield who had come over to shield his King.

The black cat, arriving right on schedule: the same hour, the same place as in the life before. And Lyle, tucked in among the White Guard, stood on the side exactly opposite the cat.

Corbin Tate, colonel of the White Guard, had had his word from the Duke of Charwick's household — and had found, sure enough, a fugitive from the Crown's justice among Chancellor Bohun's retainers.

The man marked, Tate soon had his proofs too: the fellow's goings in and out of the chancellor's villa.

Corbin Tate was a happy man. Case cracked, on the sly — and the White Guard, elbowed clean out of standing by the Silver Shield, about to cover itself in great merit. Only... the Windsor house was no soft touch. Botch it, and the merit would never land — the house would bite him back to the bone instead.

Roland, come into the capital again, had put a new thought in his head: strike first, and strike hardest.

When the Lohenheim garrison raided the Windsor retainers, the flying-arrowhead killer got away — and left one arrow behind.

We have only to put that arrow before the King's own eyes, and the King must dig to the bottom.

And then — then you shake out the fugitive you have found among the retainers.

The Windsors harboring a fugitive of the Crown as a retainer; the retainer bearing arms the Crown has banned; an attempt on the Odenheims, with whom the Windsor house stood at odds — and all of it, together with the murdered foreign merchants and seized cargoes and the rest, let out at one breath. Let the Windsors be as able as they might: the King would never again suffer them before his face.

Corbin Tate had a certain awe of Roland Odenheim's hardness — to pull the Windsor house down, the man would spend his own father as the bait that brought the retainers into the open.

For he knew: unless the thing was sprung before the King's own eyes, no truth in the world could pierce the wall of Chancellor Bohun and Voss and live to reach the King.

And when he set eyes on Lyle, Corbin Tate understood a little more. Lyle was the Baron of Charnwood's own bodyguard — and here he stood, of all places...

Whether it was the young lord meaning to be rid of the Windsors, or the Odenheims, mattered nothing any longer. What mattered was this: his own hunger for merit stood very near its feeding.

Lyle, his arrow flown, slipped quietly out — and Corbin Tate brought the White Guard of the outer cordon closing in.

While the royal physicians stood at their wits' end before that arrowhead, Tate made his report:

"Your Majesty — your servant knows whence this arrowhead comes, and knows also the man who can treat the wound it gave."

The King, his soul not yet back in him, asked quick, one question hard on the last:

"Say it — who is it? Who dares put an arrow into Us?"

"Of late, patrolling the palace city, your servant marked an official's attendant with a face the very picture of a wanted fugitive of the Crown. Mindful of Your Majesty's safety, I set myself on his heels — and by that road found one of the great ministers of the court keeping a whole den of retainers under his roof. The man who loosed this arrow was among them."

A thing worth doing was worth doing whole.

Only so would the King's suspicion take root past all erasing.

The Count sank slowly to his knees, his voice running with tears:

"Your Majesty — do you remember how Chancellor Rothwell died, in the old day? I fear there are men who mean to walk the rebel lord Strickland's road again!

This arrow, and the arrow that was loosed at your servant's little daughter — one and the same, to the feather."

Chancellor Rothwell had been assassinated on his road to morning court — the work of his political foe, the rebel lord Strickland.

That retainer of his had fled clean away in the end, and the court has never laid hands on him to this day.

To think — the man had been playing hide-in-the-shadow-of-the-lamp all along!