Lora of Two Worlds

  Last night, just while Lora was singing her children’s songs and drinking her wine, the city saw a great affair past all decent telling. Windsor Yves and his favorite mistress were both dead, and the manner of it was ugly to look on. Past decent telling it was — so past telling that the Minister’s mansion never even went to the officials with it: Windsor Yves had died on top of Rowena Ashby, the two of them bare as plucked birds, worked clean to death. The young lord was the apple of Lady Windsor’s eye — not only as her last-born son, but as the man who pulled in the big money for the Windsor house. Most of the Windsor sons and grandsons held posts at court or in shire and county; they could not go down into the pit and rake the money themselves — they needed men outside working with men inside. Windsor Yves, quick in the head, thick in the skin, and black at the heart, was the very best of instruments. Through the first half of the night, the Windsors were still dropping a few grudging tears with curses running under them; by the second half, the house physician had found what was wrong: The wine in Windsor Yves’s chambers had been dosed heavy with a passion drug; the two of them had drunk the drugged wine, and after that there was no stopping. But no one of the household had ever seen Windsor Yves touch an elixir. A man lecherous, yes — but proud to a fault of his own powers, and, above all, mighty careful of his life. They asked his other chamber-women and mistresses, and every one of them said the same: never once seen the young lord use the stuff. Something was rotten here, then. The old Minister of Rites sent men out in the night to hammer at the doors of Lohenheim’s best-known physicians, and before daybreak there was an answer: It was a beast-drug, the kind horse-men use to bring a mare to heat — so that out of breeding season she may still catch. No private man in Lohenheim kept a horse ranch; the one ranch there was belonged to the Lohenheim army. And the trick of it was that the Odenheim house, which held the Lohenheim army under its hand, had only just come to blows with the Windsors — Rowena Ashby bursting in on East Manor — with dead and hurt on both sides. And Windsor Yves had put out that great sum to buy up the Odenheim deeds, without so much as a word to the Odenheims beforehand; and then, minded to drag his feet on the redemption, had let it come into open court besides. If that wasn’t a motive for murder, what was? There was no need of Felix to try this case: the old Minister, and the other Windsors with him, had long since passed sentence — you keep beast-drugs in your stables, you keep covert guards who walk walls and fly eaves, and you had the quarrel with Windsor Yves and Rowena Ashby into the bargain. If not you, who? The old Minister came and planted himself in the General’s mansion, face black as iron; it so chanced that Roland was just back from East Manor, and he and Gareth could make neither head nor tail of it: ”Our house, with a feud to settle — would we need so base a tool to take our revenge with?” ”One heart hides behind another man’s belly — there’s no sure thing in that! Odenheim: you have five sons, I have two. Even if you paid me a son for a son this day, my Windsors would not let it go.” The old Minister said it through grinding teeth. Roland and his second brother traded a look — each knowing the other had laid no hand to it, and their father less than any man alive — and Roland answered with his back straight: ”Lord Minister — the horse ranch is under my hand. Summon the shire court and let it search. If your Windsors cannot trust even the shire court, then carry it up before His Majesty and let the High Court search. Until the truth is dug out, I must ask you not to slander the Odenheims.” ”His Majesty? You think I dare not? If the Odenheim house does not hand over the killer today and give the Windsors their answer, petitions impeaching you, Odenheim, will be before His Majesty before long. Hmph!” The old Minister brought his palm down once, hard, on the table, rose, and flounced out with his sleeves swinging. What in the world sort of affair was this? By the time word brought Felix hurrying over to the General’s mansion, the Minister was gone. He heard the story out, and said, brow knotted: ”If the Windsors truly squeeze from the top, the Odenheims will stand in a tight place. Now then — send for the ranch’s horse-doctor and for Dr. Osler both. Osler’s medicine carries real weight of voice in Augustburg. Get there before they stir the bodies, and verify the cause of death — whether it is as the Windsors say. I’ll go back and set men asking what other enemies Windsor Yves kept. A man who can walk in and out of the Minister’s mansion at his pleasure is no common man — he’ll leave spider-silk and hoof-tracks somewhere.” So it was that Leon had gone along with Dr. Osler to the Minister’s mansion. The old Minister, seeing the crippled Baron of Charnwood come too, simply did not bar them, and said with contempt: ”Timely indeed, my lord Baron. Pray look sharp. When His Majesty asks about it, you’ll stand witness for the Windsors.” Leon’s face was blank as he said, mild: ”The Windsors and the Odenheims are both great houses. If the Odenheims are the killers, my brother the King will not shield them. But if you raise your clamor, and at the last the Odenheims wash clear — then the Windsors...” He had it worked out on the road: even if the killer was never found, so long as the thing was framed as a quarrel of great houses over their interests, the King would make no great matter of it. A gentry not standing shoulder to shoulder — that was the very sight the King hoped to see. Then a little breeze blown at his ear by the men close about him — a von Klein, say — and a thing without evidence would drift off on the wind before the King’s very eyes. The hard part was this: if the two houses truly struck root as enemies this time, the Windsors would have no need of the King at all. They would lean on the strength of their house, and crush the Odenheims without leaving a mark. Ugly past looking on as it was, Dr. Osler examined the cause of death in dead earnest, and they confirmed the drug in the wine: a beast-drug for horses, and no other. The Windsors had not lied. ”I’ll go search the ranch. You two go home first — and see whether there’s any word from Felix.” Roland could not, for his life, work it out: unless he and his father gave the word, who among the Odenheim people would ever have struck? And yet, take the several conditions the Windsors named, and put themselves in the Windsors’ place — they could hardly have thought otherwise either. ”It’s all far too pat.” Hearing Leon through, Lora’s brow knotted too: ”Could somebody mean the Odenheims harm? The way I see it — don’t only look into Windsor Yves’s enemies. Look into the Odenheims’ enemies as well.” ”Your second brother is already out on that errand. What’s your notion?” Leon asked. Whenever Lora spoke with that chop-iron certainty, she mostly had her plan already in hand. ”Could Rowena Ashby have dosed the wine herself?” ”Do you take her for a woman who’d spend her own life to buy the Ashby house its revenge? Rest easy — we thought of that too; the answer is no. Felix has men out on it already.” ”Men out on it?” ”The Windsors won’t go to the officials, so it’s only privately laying hands on the folk round Rowena — coaxing and scaring, to shake out what looks off. If she dosed the wine, someone had to hand it to her; it’s no common drug you pick up off any shelf. That Windsor Fortune — the man’s a soft-shelled shrimp; nine chances in ten they’ll squeeze something out of him.” Leon’s brow went tight between the eyes. There were things he had no wish to say to Lora. This woman of his: in some things clever past all borders — and in the reading of men’s hearts and the play of court power, a perfect little idiot. It gave him a small sense of safety. A person ten parts perfect — that would be a frightening thing. If the Windsors struck root as the Odenheims’ enemies over this, they would be a stumbling block square in his forward road. Sooner or later his own hand must reach for Augustburg. The Three Transriver Marches, for whatever reason of their own, had already come to something of a working understanding with him. Highgarden, the Navel Hollow — even the gold mines still to come, and the wine-monopoly trade — all of them needed the great hand of the court spread over them to run their smoothest. ”It is not yet the hour for me to stand,” Leon said, holding Lora’s hand and speaking low, ”but Roland and Felix must go back to Augustburg first.” My people must enter the ring of the core officials — then don’t blame me for pulling your Windsor men up out of their holes. Two ends with one throw. Lora stared at him, a little blank. The meaning of it was that their march was to be quickened. Because of this Windsor business? ”Next spring the court means to roll a thing out across the realm — the same thing you spoke of with your brothers before.” ”The wine monopoly?” ”The same. It was tried only in a few southern shires before; now it is to be pushed out over all of them. Didn’t you mean to buy wine mountains — or buy mountains and plant the wine? Whatever you mean to do, the silver is here with me.” ”Is that how money gets spent? Do you know your weighty from your hasty? Your first task this minute is to get the Lohenheim Vault open. Highgarden is about to ship goods — without a vault of our own, it’s hard to hide what we made mining on the sly. Hugo’s East Vault can only play the supporting hand. Once our bank is up and running, you think you’ll be short of money for mountains?” Lora was one hair short of hauling him up by the ear. ”What’s a bank? A merchant house that deals in silver?” ”You learn quick enough at taking words apart. What’s not proper, don’t go prying into — didn’t your teacher ever teach you that?” ”My teacher never taught that one...” Blah, blah, blah...