The King's Man Read online

  The arrow quivered again as we reached an abandoned shipping office, attached to a giant warehouse. It looked deserted, but I could feel a quivering ward melded into the brick wall. I was impressed, despite myself. The ward was almost impossible to detect. I would have missed it completely if Sir Muldoon hadn’t forced me to push my senses to the limit. And yet, it wasn’t good enough to hide Cathy.

  I held the arrow as we circled the building, doing our level best to pretend to be lovers searching for a place to make out. The arrow rotated in my hand, insisting that Cathy was inside the office block. It definitely looked deserted, yet ... I told myself I couldn’t rely on anything. The warehouse was huge. There could be a small army quartered inside. I lifted my gaze, allowing the arrow to steer me. Cathy appeared to be on the second floor. I had no idea if she really was.

  Caroline caught my eye as I eyed the drainpipes. “You want to get inside?”

  “Yeah.” The doors would be locked and protected, of course, but the upper floor windows might be a different story. Or ... would they? Cathy had been taken out of an upper floor window, after all. And whoever had done that was no slouch. “Contact Sir Griffons. Tell him where we are and what we’re doing.”

  I knew I should wait for orders, or for help, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand the thought of an innocent young girl being held captive. I’d heard enough horror stories, first in Water Shallot and then from my instructors, to know she could be going though utter hell. Her kidnappers might not even care to leave her alive, after they’d got whatever they wanted. Her memories might lead to a short and unpleasant meeting with the city’s hangman.

  “Follow me,” I ordered. “I have a plan.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I put my doubts out of my mind as I walked up to the wall, inspecting the drainpipe carefully. It looked strong enough to take my weight, although I had my doubts. There might be any number of wards designed to toss unwanted climbers back to the ground, perhaps deliberately crafted to inflict serious injury - or death - when the climber crashed to the stone below. No one would care, not in Water Shallot. If you climbed someone’s drainpipe, or broke into their house, you took your life in your hands. I’d known enough kids who’d been injured to be wary of the drainpipe. But it didn’t matter.

  I braced myself, then cast a levitation spell. I drifted upwards, using as little power as possible. There didn’t seem to be any searching wards, not outside the building, but I knew better than to take that for granted. Someone might cast a cancellation spell at any moment, in hopes of sending me plunging to my death. It might work, too. Levitation wasn’t easy, not when you were trying to levitate yourself. I kept calm as I reached the window and peered inside. There was nothing moving, as far as I could tell. The glass was covered in muck, rather than a ward. I wondered if that was deliberate. I drew a multitool from my belt and went to work on the window, carefully opening it from the outside. The entire frame came free, pieces of mouldy wood and dust drifting around me as I peered inside. There was a shape on the bed. I glanced down, giving Caroline a pair of hand signals, then threw myself into the room. I expected to be greeted by an angry ward, or a sorcerer, but there was nothing. The room was as dark and silent as the grave.

  A chill ran down my spine as I turned to the bed. A young girl - Cathy, I assumed - lay on the mattress, utterly unmoving. I felt a surge of pure anger as I realised they’d frozen her solid. She couldn’t even move her eyes. I cast the counterspell as quickly as I could, realising my mistake a second too late. Cathy screamed as her muscles spasmed in agony. The bastards hadn’t frozen her so much as locked her muscles solid. The cramps would be unbearably painful. I hastily slapped a silencing spell into space as Caroline came through the window, spellcaster in hand. She had to have assumed the worst. I motioned for her to take Cathy - the young girl would probably find another woman less threatening, right now - and inched towards the door. I’d expected the screaming to bring the kidnapper and his goons running up the stairs, but there was nothing. The entire building was quiet. I reached out with my senses, noting that there were only three wards within detection range. None of them felt particularly dangerous. I frowned in bemusement. Surely, they had to have left someone in charge of their victim. Cathy wouldn’t have been left to starve.

  And she would have starved, if they didn’t come back and remove the spell, I thought. They could have used a spell that ensured she didn’t need to eat, but they hadn’t. It was cruel, sadistic and pointless. Did they decide to run the moment they heard her scream?

  I glanced back at Caroline, then slipped down the corridor. The office block appeared to have been deserted for years. It was nothing like my father’s office. There were a handful of broadsheets on the table, all five years out of date. They were chatting about Caitlyn Aguirre as if they’d only just found out about her. I frowned as I found the top of the stairs and inched downwards. It was growing increasingly difficult to believe there was anyone in the building. I was starting to think we’d gotten incredibly lucky.

  The warehouse was immense, but empty. The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust. It looked as if no one had visited for years. I couldn’t even see any footprints in the dust. I turned and slipped into the next room, spotting a handful of pieces of paperwork on the ancient wooden desk. They looked to be political pamphlets, but I didn’t have time to look at them. The entire office building appeared to be empty. I frowned as I hurried back up the stairs, no longer trying to be sneaky. We really did appear to have gotten very lucky.

  “I’ve used a pair of painkilling spells,” Caroline said, as I returned to Cathy’s room. The girl lay on the bed, twitching in an uncomfortable sleep. “But she really needs more help than I can provide.”

  I heard a rattling sound downstairs and peered out the window. The black carriages were outside, a stream of black-clad men - and Sir Griffons - making their way towards the door. The wards howled in alarm as they snapped, men crashing into the building as if they expected armed resistance. I keyed my ring, muttering a hasty update. Sir Griffons said nothing, but the crashing from downstairs came to an end. I let out a breath as I heard a handful of people making their way upstairs. Sir Griffons stepped into the room, his face utterly unreadable. It dawned on me that we might have made a mistake. He’d warned us against heroics ...

  But we saved her life, I thought. Didn’t we?

  “Report,” Sir Griffons ordered, as another man followed him into the room. “What happened?”

  “I saw a chance to sneak into the building and took it,” I said, carefully. “And it paid off.”

  “So I see,” Sir Griffons said. He sounded as if he wanted to say something more, but not in front of the stranger. “Well done.”

  I beamed. “Thank you, sir.”

  The stranger took a step forward, his eyes lingering on Cathy. He was a tall man, with short white hair and a lined face that suggested he was easily as old as my father. I was sure he was an aristo. He wore a simple black outfit, but he wore it with a grace and style that practically screamed of an aristocratic upbringing. And he looked at me as if I was something unpleasant he’d scraped off his shoe. There was no greater proof of aristocracy than that.

  “My people will search the office,” he said. “And return Cathy to her parents.”

  “Of course, Lord Dirac,” Sir Griffons said. “You will keep us informed.”

  Lord Dirac nodded, curtly. “And we will also require statements from yourself and your apprentices,” he said. “My staff will take them before you go.”

  I kept my thoughts to myself as Sir Griffons handed Cathy over to a pair of healers - they seemed to have accompanied Lord Dirac - and took us downstairs. The office was teeming with black-clad armsmen, chatting to each other in low voices as they searched the entire building from top to bottom. They seemed to be doing a professional job of it, although it didn’t look as if they were worried about putting the building back together afterwards. I would have been more concerned
about that if the building hadn’t been deserted before the kidnappers moved in. I wondered, grimly, if we’d made a mistake. If we’d kept an eye on the building, instead of crashing through the window, we might have caught the kidnappers in the act. Instead ... they’d hear the building had been raided and retreat back into the shadows.

  Cathy might have gotten a look at the bastards, I thought. She was a child, but who knew? Children could have pretty good memories. She might be able to tell us enough to track the kidnappers down.

  “Tell them everything,” Sir Griffons said, as a stenographer appeared to take our statements. “We’ll discuss the issue later.”

  I frowned. “Sir? Who is Lord Dirac?”

  “Magus Court’s enforcer,” Sir Griffons said. “One of them, at least. This case clearly has political implications.”

  I mulled the issue over and over in my mind as I gave the stenographer a brief statement. He didn’t seem inclined to ask questions, unlike my instructors when they’d drilled me in making clear, concise and - above all - informative statements. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. Witness statements could be unreliable, even if the witnesses thought they were telling the truth. It took a careful interrogation - sometimes - to sort the wheat from the chaff.

  Lord Dirac appeared as soon as we were finished. “We found a boatload of socialist literature,” he said, thrusting some of the pamphlets at Sir Griffons. “They might well have been behind the kidnapping.”

  “Maybe,” Sir Griffons said. “Or maybe someone is trying to frame them.”

  “Maybe,” Lord Dirac echoed. “But the Word of Shallot has taken a strong stance against the socialists. Cathy could have been kidnapped in a bid to convince the editor to change his tune.”

  “But they didn’t send any demands,” I said. “You’d think they’d insist the editor didn’t call for help, at the very least.”

  Lord Dirac gave me a sharp look. “Socialists are not very clever,” he said, curtly. “They don’t trust the City Guard. They probably assumed the Word of Shallot didn’t trust the City Guard either.”

  I kept my thoughts to myself. If there was anyone in Shallot who trusted the City Guard ... I’d never met him. I didn’t even believe he existed. The editor had been lucky or smart enough to get us, instead of the guardsmen. I wondered if he’d been the one who sent the message. The City Guardsmen had never struck me as being smart enough to admit they needed help.

  “Keep us informed,” Sir Griffons said. “Adam, Caroline ... with me.”

  I took one last look around the abandoned building, then turned and followed Sir Griffons up the streets towards South Shallot. He said nothing as we walked, leaving us to stew in our own thoughts. We’d saved Cathy ... hadn’t we? But we’d ignored his order to avoid heroics. And yet ... I shook my head. The thought of leaving her alone and suffering was unbearable. I had no time for newspaper editors - they filled their papers with lies - but Cathy didn’t deserve to be kidnapped and tortured. I hoped Lord Dirac’s people would get her safely home. Her parents missed her.

  And if Sir Griffons wants to chew me out for saving her life, I thought coldly, I can take it.

  Sir Griffons said nothing until we were back home. “Make some coffee,” he ordered, as he snapped the wards into place. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  He hurried upstairs, leaving us alone. I shrugged and put the kettle on, then made a big pot of coffee. Caroline poured milk into three mugs, then handed out a tray of biscuits. Sir Griffons returned, looking grim. I felt my heart skip a beat as he took his coffee and swallowed half of it in a single gulp. He didn’t look remotely pleased.

  “You took a horrible risk,” he said, putting the mug on the table. “Are you aware of it?”

  I swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

  “You could have gotten her killed,” Sir Griffons added. “You could have gotten yourself killed. And that would have been disastrous.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Sir Griffons stared at me. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t give you both punishment duties?”

  I gritted my teeth as his eyes bored into mine. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  “Granted.”

  “First, it was my idea.” I forced myself to hold his eyes, somehow. “You shouldn’t be punishing Caroline for going along with it.”

  “I can punish her for not talking you out of it,” Sir Griffons said, coldly.

  “Second, it worked.” I tried not to look away. “We rescued the victim. We found their base, which is being searched for clues. We may have laid the groundwork for tracking them down ...”

  “You may.” Sir Griffons conceded the point with a nod. “You might also have given them a chance to go further underground. They presumably already know their plan’s gone spectacularly wrong.”

  His eyes held mine for a long second, then switched to Caroline. “You’ll find that success brings you great rewards,” he said. “But if you fail, you’ll find that everyone will blame you. You could have gotten both her and yourselves killed. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Sir Griffons leaned back in his chair. “What do you make of the whole affair?”

  “It was too easy,” I said. “We shouldn’t have found her that easily.”

  Sir Griffons cocked his head. “Explain.”

  I took a moment to put my argument together. “The enemy was competent enough to take her out of her bedroom, without setting off any alarms. At the same time, they didn’t bother to hide her behind heavy wards. It should have been impossible to use a blood-spell to track her down. They could have made us work much harder to find her, if we found her at all. It makes no sense.”

  “The average criminal is no mastermind,” Sir Griffons pointed out.

  “Anyone who could steal her from her own bedroom should be good enough to hide her, afterwards,” I countered. “The kidnapper was clearly an experienced wardcrafter.”

  “Unless the kidnappers hired a wardcrafter to do the kidnapping and then paid him off,” Sir Griffons said. “They might not have realised we’d do a blood-spell.”

  “They should have considered the possibility,” I insisted. “It makes no sense.”

  “No,” Caroline agreed. “Sir ... was it a test?”

  Sir Griffons looked irked. “We are not in the habit of kidnapping little girls to test our squires,” he said. “This was no test.”

  I winced at his tone. “So ... it just makes no sense. If they were idiots, they couldn’t have carried out the kidnapping in the first place. But if they’re not idiots, they shouldn’t have been caught so easily.”

  “They weren’t caught,” Sir Griffons reminded us. “The kidnappers themselves remain unknown.”

  I made a face. “Perhaps they were trying to distract us - or Lord Dirac. What happened while we were busy looking for a kidnapped girl?”

  “Nothing, as far as I know,” Sir Griffons said. “There’s been no report of anything that might require attention from us or Lord Dirac. There’s no suggestion that anything happened - and if it did, we’d have heard of it.”

  “Unless they managed to cover it up,” Caroline suggested.

  “It makes no sense,” Sir Griffons said.

  “Or perhaps it’s a frame-up,” I said. “Perhaps the real motive was to point the finger at the socialists.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Sir Griffons agreed. He unfurled one of the pamphlets from his pocket and spread it out on the table. “But it’s not proof of anything.”

  He studied the paper for a long moment. “Lord Dirac has taken responsibility for hunting down the kidnappers,” he mused. “Officially, we’re off the case. The Word of Shallot must have more clout than we’d thought.”

  “Or whoever funds it has clout,” I said. “Sir ... who is Lord Dirac?”

  “I told you,” Sir Griffons said. “He’s Magus Court’s enforcer. He’s responsible for upholding the laws, such as they are. Politically ... his job is
to give Magus Court some extra teeth. If it actually works ...”

  Caroline frowned. “Because of the alliance between Aguirre and Rubén?”

  “Yes.” Sir Griffons looked down at his scarred hands. “Right now, Aguirre and Rubén have the clout to run things to suit themselves. The remainder of the Great Houses aren’t going to tolerate that any longer than strictly necessary. I imagine they intend to use Lord Dirac and his men as a wedge to limit the power of the individual Great Houses. It’ll weaken them all, in a sense, but Aguirre and Rubén will get the worst of it. After all ... if you’re at the top, the only way you can go is down.”

  “I see, I think,” I said. It sounded like the aristos were knifing each other in the back. I wondered, absently, if Aguirre and Rubén understood the danger. “How do they intend to get around Caitlyn Aguirre? She’s unique.”

  “For the moment,” Sir Griffons said. “Statistically speaking, she cannot be unique.”

  “You think,” Caroline said. “So far, there’s been no other Zeros.”

  “No.” Sir Griffons shrugged. “Right now, that isn’t our problem. We’re going to approach the whole investigation from a different angle.”

  He held up the paper. “There’s going to be a socialist rally at one of the working men’s clubs, down in Water Shallot,” he said. “You two are going to attend.”

  I frowned. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of spying on the working men. “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve got to report to my superiors,” Sir Griffons said. “You two can write your own reports too. Hopefully, by then, we’ll have a copy of Cathy’s statement. We might learn something useful from it.”

  I wasn’t so sure. The kidnappers had been really odd. Maybe it was just me, but ... they’d been a strange mixture of terrifyingly competent and unbelievable incompetent. It just didn’t make sense. Perhaps someone was trying to frame the socialists. I couldn’t see any real long-term interest in threatening Cathy’s father. The population would be outraged, when the truth came out. I knew people in Water Shallot who’d have no qualms about drowning a kidnapper in the canals and leaving the body to drift out to sea.