"What happened?"
"How do I know?" Oskahr Mhulvayn replied irritably. He glowered at Zhaspahr Maysahn, his immediate superior. The two of them sat at a table in a street-side café only two blocks from the wharves, sipping cups of strong, sweet Dohlaran chocolate. The café was on the west side of the street, which had put it into cool shadow as the sun moved steadily towards evening (for which both men were devoutly grateful), and seabirds and sand wyverns foraged for scraps in a square across from it, where the produce hucksters had just closed their booths for the day. Despite the noise and bustle of a typical, busy Tellesberg day, the scene was reassuringly normal and calm. Which might well change in the next few hours, Mhulvayn thought, and shrugged one shoulder.
"Cayleb went out; he came back. Alive," he said.
"That much I've figured out for myself," Maysahn said sarcastically. "And I know two of his bodyguards came back dead, and another one came back wounded, too."
"Then you should also know the gate guard was told to expect a pair of wagons shortly. One's supposed to have a dead slash lizard in it; the other one's supposed to be piled up with dead assassins. A full wagonload—over a dozen." Mhulvayn bared his teeth in a caricature of a smile. "I don't suppose you'd care to guess just who all of those 'dead assassins' might be?"
"Shan-wei!" Maysahn muttered. "How could they screw up that badly against just five bodyguards?"
"Well," Mhulvayn said philosophically, "at least we don't have any explaining to do." He paused and looked at his superior closely. "We don't, do we?"
"Not likely!" Maysahn snorted. "You think I'd be sitting around here talking to you if there were any chance something like this might lead back to me?"
"It would seem a little foolish," Mhulvayn agreed.
"The only thing more foolish I could think of right off hand would be going home to tell him in person that I'd been involved in anything this stupid."
Mhulvayn chuckled, although, in truth, neither of them felt particularly amused. He started to say something else, then paused as the waiter stopped by their table to offer refills on their chocolate. Maysahn raised one eyebrow at him, and Mhulvayn nodded. The imported chocolate was expensive, but Mhulvayn's cover as the representative of a Desnairi banking house and Maysahn's cover as the owner of a small fleet of merchant ships gave them the resources to indulge themselves from time to time.
The waiter poured, then departed, and Mhulvayn waited until the young man was out of earshot before speaking again. Their table was right at the edge of the slightly raised sidewalk, which put them very close to the cobblestone street. It was hardly a preferred location for most of the café's patrons. The noise of horse hooves, the grating roar of iron-shod wheels over cobbles, the burbling whistles of draft dragons, and the constant surf of background voices made it difficult to carry on a comfortable conversation. That same racket, however, also made it extremely difficult for anyone to overhear what they might have to say to one another.
"Actually," Mhulvayn said in a more serious tone, when he was certain no one else was in earshot, "from the rumors I've heard, it ought to have worked."
"The rumors are already busy?" Maysahn looked amused, and Mhulvayn shrugged.
"The rumors are always busy. In this case, the mayor of Rothar sent a messenger ahead. The yokel he chose passed his message to the gate guards, then found himself a tavern and had a few beers." Mhulvayn raised one hand and waggled it back and forth. "By the time he had three or four of them inside him, he was waxing eloquent. How much of it was accurate, I don't know, of course."
"Of course." Maysahn nodded. Half a spy's job consisted of picking up rumors which might or might not be true and passing them along. If he was smart, he eliminated all the ones he could demonstrate were inaccurate and was honest with his employer about the ones whose veracity he doubted. Not that all spies were smart, in Maysahn's experience.
"Bearing that in mind," Mhulvayn continued, "it sounds like everything went pretty much according to plan. They had the Prince out in the woods, and he'd sent two or three of his bodyguards back for horses. And they'd brought along crossbows, so they shouldn't even have had to get into sword's reach of them."
Maysahn looked impressed, almost against his will. He cupped his chocolate in both hands, sipping thoughtfully, then shook his head.
"If they had a 'wagonload' of men, and they had the target just where they wanted him, what the hell went wrong?"
"That's the interesting part," Mhulvayn said. "According to our beer-loving messenger, everything was going exactly the way it should have until some mysterious stranger interfered."
"-'Mysterious stranger'?" Maysahn repeated.
"That's what he said. Some fellow with 'strange blue eyes' who killed at least a dozen assassins single-handedly."
"Of course he did!" Maysahn snorted sarcastically. "I may not have been overly impressed with the quality of our . . . associates' brains, Oskahr, but they were reasonably competent in their own limited area."
"Agreed, but this fellow was pretty insistent. According to him—and he stuck by it through at least three complete repetitions before I had to leave to make our appointment here—it was the stranger who warned Cayleb's bodyguards about the attack, and then he apparently slaughtered the attackers right and left himself. If we're going to believe the messenger's version of things, Cayleb and this 'stranger' were the only two still on their feet when it was all over."
"Really?" Maysahn leaned back, lips pursed. "That is interesting," he murmured, so softly even Mhulvayn could scarcely hear him through the background noise. "If this fellow was that insistent, then he was probably telling the truth, at least as far as he knows the truth. Did he have anything to say about how this stranger of his happened to be there?"
"According to him, the stranger was obviously sent by God," Mhulvayn said. The two of them looked at one another across the table, their eyes amused. "After all, how else could he have arrived at exactly the right moment to save the crown prince?"
"Somehow I doubt God had a great deal to do with it," Maysahn said dryly. "Which isn't to say someone else didn't. Were our friends indiscreet, do you think?"
"They must've been. Although," Mhulvayn frowned, "I wouldn't have expected it of them. Admittedly, they were basically blunt instruments, but they knew Haarahld's agents are watching everywhere for assassins these days, and they were experienced."
"Not the sort to blab about their plans where someone might hear, you mean?"
"Exactly. Besides, if that was what happened, why was only one 'stranger' involved? We're talking about Cayleb. If they'd truly believed someone meant to try to kill him, they'd have had an entire regiment out there, not just one man."
"Unless that one man was the only one who'd realized what our less adroit associates intended to do," Maysahn said thoughtfully.
"Even then, he should have gone straight to the Guard with it," Mhulvayn argued.
"Unless he truly is a stranger, not a Charisian at all, and he saw this as an opportunity to win the Prince's confidence."
"Ah?" Mhulvayn scratched one eyebrow, frowning thoughtfully out across the busy street, then looked back at Maysahn.
"That could be it," he conceded. "A rather risky strategy, though, I'd have said. One man would stand a pretty good chance of getting himself killed trying to play hero against a 'wagonload' of assassins. Assuming this really was the work of the people we think it was, and I'm pretty sure it was, there'd have been at least a dozen of them. Pretty steep odds, don't you think?"
"I certainly wouldn't care for them." Maysahn nodded. "On the other hand, I suppose a lot would depend on just how good with a sword you actually were. That's not my area of expertise, after all. Actually, the riskiest part of the entire strategy would be that the assassins might succeed despite your intervention. You wouldn't win much of Cayleb's confidence if he was dead. Besides, if he'd been killed, and you looked like you'd known about the attempt ahead of time, Haarahld would probably have had a few unpleasant things to say to you about your failure to bring it to someone else's attention."
"At the very least." Mhulvayn made a face at the oblique reminder of all of the "unpleasant things" King Haarahld and his interrogators might have to say to one Oskahr Mhulvayn under certain best not thought about circumstances.
"But," Maysahn continued thoughtfully, "if this 'stranger' did manage to stymie an attempt to kill the Prince, he's undoubtedly going to find himself cordially received at the palace. If he plays his cards properly, that could lead to all sorts of rewards. Or," he looked back across the table at his subordinate, "influence."
"Influence to accomplish what?" Mhulvayn wondered.
"Who knows?" Maysahn shrugged. "Still, I suspect our employer won't be overly pleased to discover that a new player's taken a hand. This broth's rich enough without adding another cook to the kitchen!"
"What do you want to do about it?" Mhulvayn asked.
"He's going to want to know about this as soon as possible," Maysahn replied. "Unfortunately, Captain Whaite's just sailed."
"Should we use one of the alternate couriers?"
"An interesting question." Maysahn took another sip of chocolate and considered Mhulvayn's query.
Captain Styvyn Whaite's merchant ship plied a regular trading route from Tellesberg, up Howell Bay and The Throat, and across the Charis Sea to Corisande, picking up whatever cargo charters he could. That ought to be enough to make him a guaranteed object of suspicion to Haarahld's agents, but Whaite's vessel was a miserable, barely seaworthy tub, and Whaite himself was a drunk who spent most of his time in port cozied up to a cask of cheap wine. No one in his right mind would trust him or his ship with anything remotely important or confidential.
Unless, that was, they knew Captain Whaite was actually Lieutenant Robyrt Bradlai of the League Navy. Lieutenant Bradlai didn't even like the taste of cheap wine, and he was far from incompetent. He couldn't afford to be, since his Sea Cloud was almost as ramshackle as she looked. The Royal Charisian Navy was unlikely to be fooled by surface appearances, so she truly was as down-at-the-heels and poorly maintained as she seemed. Which made nursing Sea Cloud back and forth between Tellesberg and Corisande a nontrivial challenge even for a sober captain.
Bradlai and his counterpart, Lieutenant Fraizher Maythis (better known in Charis as Wahltayr Seatown), maintained Maysahn's communications with Prince Hektor. Voyage time was almost forty days each way at Sea Cloud's best speed, however, and Maythis' equally disreputable Fraynceen wouldn't arrive back at Tellesberg for another three five-days. Which meant Hektor wouldn't have Maysahn's report for another seven, minimum, if he used the regular channels for it. There were arrangements for emergency alternates, but Maysahn was reluctant to use them, because none of the alternative couriers' covers were as good as Whaite's or Maythis'. Their best protection was that they'd never been used, and he had no desire to risk exposing them—or himself—to Charisian agents for something which wasn't demonstrably critical.
"I think we won't use any of the others," he said finally. "Not at once, at any rate. Better to use the time until 'Seatown's' return to see what additional information we can pick up." He shook his head slowly, eyes distant. "It's only a feeling, so far, but something tells me a new cook is indeed about to begin stirring this particular pot, whether we like it or not."
"Wonderful," Mhulvayn sighed. He finished his cup of chocolate and stood.
"In that case, I suppose I'd better get started picking up that information," he said, and nodded briskly to Maysahn before he turned away from the table.
Maysahn watched him go, then stood himself, tossed a handful of coins onto the table, and headed off in the opposite direction.
"Stupid damned idiots!" Braidee Lahang muttered savagely as he watched Crown Prince Cayleb riding past below his second-story window vantage point.
The Royal Guards who'd been dispatched to meet the prince at the gate formed a solid, vigilant ring around him, and a Marine lieutenant rode in a stretcher suspended between two horses, while three other Marines rode tight-shouldered at Cayleb's back. That much Lahang had more or less expected, given the preliminary reports he'd already received. What he hadn't expected was the civilian riding with the prince, and his eyes narrowed as he gazed down at the dark-haired stranger.
So that's the bastard who screwed all of our plans to hell and gone, he thought sourly. He still didn't have a clue how the mysterious civilian had gotten wind of the operation in the first place, or how his highly paid mercenaries could have been so inept as to allow a single busybody to completely negate so many days of careful planning.
It ought to have worked—it would have worked—if not for him. Lahang kept his bitter anger out of his expression, but it was harder than usual to make sure his face said only what he wanted it to say. Prince Nahrmahn was going to be . . . displeased.
He watched the cavalcade move on up the street towards the palace, then turned away from the window. He crossed the main chamber of his modest, if comfortable, lodgings and climbed the stairs to the roof.
A chorus of whistling hisses and clicking jaws greeted him, and he smiled with genuine pleasure, his frustration and anger fading, and hissed back. The wyverns in the big, subdivided rooftop coop pressed against the latticework, crowding together as they whistled for treats, and he chuckled and reached through the lattice to rub skulls and stroke necks. It was, in many ways, a foolhardy thing to do. Some of the wyverns in that coop had wingspans of over four feet. They could have removed a finger with a single snap of their serrated jaws, but Lahang wasn't worried.
He made a comfortable living, without ever having to touch the funds his prince could have made available to him, by raising and training hunting and racing wyverns for the Charisian nobility and wealthier merchants. And the wyverns in these coops were not only his friends and pets, but also his cover, in more than one way. They provided his income, and his profession explained why he had a constant influx of new wyverns to replace those he sold. Which conveniently hid the fact that two or three in each shipment he received were homing wyverns from Prince Nahrmahn's own coop in Eraystor.
Now Lahang took the enciphered report from his tunic pocket. It was written on the finest Harchong paper, incredibly thin and tough, and commensurately expensive, although that was the least of his concerns as he opened the coop door and crooned a distinctive sequence of notes.
One of the wyverns inside the coop whistled imperiously at its companions. A couple of them were slow to move aside, and it slapped them smartly with its forward wings until they bent their heads obsequiously and got out of its way. Then it stood in the coop door, stretching its long neck so that Lahang could scratch its scaly throat while it crooned back to him.
He spent a few moments petting the creature, then lifted it out of the coop and closed and carefully secured the door behind it. The wyvern perched on top of the coop, obediently extending one leg and watching alertly, head cocked, as he affixed the report to the message-holding ring. He made sure it was securely in position, then gathered the wyvern in both arms and walked to the corner of the roof.
"Fly well," he whispered in its ear, and tossed it upward.
The wyvern whistled back to him as it flew one complete circle around the rooftop. Then it went arrowing off to the north.
He gazed after it for a moment, then drew a deep breath and turned back towards the stairs. His preliminary report would be in Prince Nahrmahn's hands within the next six days, but he knew his master well. The prince was going to want full details of how the plan to assassinate the Charisian heir had failed, and that meant it was going to be up to Braidee Lahang to find out what had happened.
Hopefully without losing his own head in the process.