XXIII. Everything
You Know Is Wrong
Inside the small cell, both of the human prisoners now lay against a hump of putrid straw; both were unfettered. The bar constraint was on its side in the corner as if flung there. Thomas/Simforax had released the humans—but of course, if the Yvags were going to empty Little John, they would want him relaxed, receptive, and in a position for the dight to do its work.
Then Thomas turned and offered Passelewe the bag. The sheriff snatched it, and untied the flap. “All three?” he asked ardently, so excited that he spoke the words aloud.
Glamoured Thomas nodded and thought in the affirmative.
Shouting echoed up the stairwell, the Waits getting ever nearer. As if fearing their arrival, he circled behind the sheriff to close the door completely. Kunastur stepped aside to let him.
Passelewe felt about for the dights. He pulled one out, a look of ecstasy on his ruddy face.
Thomas projected the thought of using one of devices on Little John as though he were debating the matter with himself. He and Passelewe had forged some sort of link at the archery contest, and the sheriff had practically been bellowing his thoughts all the way up the steps. He’d also snidely uttered the name Zhanedd. Thomas got the impression that the doxy in The Pilgrim and the sheriff were in a competition of sorts. More than that, the sheriff’s disparagement seemed to confirm that she was a changeling. Although he’d loaned her two of his guards, the Yvagvoja riding Passelewe considered itself vastly superior to those who merely glamoured, but especially superior to changelings.
“Here, watch them both,” the sheriff called. Kunastur gave Thomas an odd look—had the knight heard his supercilious thoughts, too?—but walked up beside the sheriff, one hand on the pommeled hilt of its sword, which for once appeared to be a normal arming sword.
Passelewe rolled Benedict aside, then knelt down and pushed aside the straw in order to clear a spot on the floor where he could start the dight spinning beside the unconscious Little John. Thomas knew it wouldn’t take long.
Almost immediately the sheriff encountered a large piece of cloth. It was the corner of one of his cinquefoil surcoats, a yellow flower on red. He tugged to free more of it, and a thin arm sheathed in black armor slid out of the straw. He sat up on his haunches, puzzlement on his face. He reached out, pushed away more straw, and shortly uncovered the true, unglamoured face of dead Simforax. Quickly, he glanced around. Thomas as bearded Simforax stood at the door, returning his stare darkly.
“What—” he started to ask.
Little John’s eyes opened. He grabbed the sheriff’s left wrist. Passelewe whipped about to face the outlaw, unconscious no longer. Exhausted brown eyes now stared daggers at him.
“Kunastur!” Passelewe shouted.
Kunastur drew its sword, but Thomas reached around its shoulder and pressed the point of his dagger to its throat. “No help from you,” he said, relinquishing his glamour. When the Yvag stared back in shock, he said, “You should do the same. Conserve your energy. Nobody in this room believes you’re human anyway.” Kunastur glared at him, but the glamour evaporated.
John sat up while continuing to grip Passelewe’s left wrist. The sheriff dropped the dight as he reached blindly with his right for his own dagger. Grasping it, he attempted to stab, but John caught that hand as well, twisting hard to make him drop the blade.
Passelewe tore his other hand free and struck John in the face twice. John took the blows and spat blood. Then he laughed and, letting go the sheriff’s wrist, grabbed him around the neck with both hands while he climbed the rest of the way upright. He dragged his captive along with him. Passelewe was tall, but John lifted him off his feet. The Norman sheriff kicked desperately at the straw, and pummeled the torso before him.
Benedict meanwhile sat up and collected the fallen dight.
“Wait, John,” called Thomas just as the Waits and Keepers threw open the door and charged in, Geoffrey in the lead and Elias dragging Ernald with him, all of them armed and ready to kill . . . something.
The Yvag Kunastur tried furiously to tear itself free of Thomas, preventing him from interceding further.
“Greenleaf, stop!” Will Scathelock shouted. But instead, with one quick gesture, John snapped the sheriff’s neck.
Passelewe’s final look of amazement moldered in an instant. A burst of fine red droplets sprayed John and the straw. Unlike the prelate on the King’s Way, the sheriff withered as if all the water in him had evaporated at once. His eyes fell in, his mouth collapsed into a grim rictus. A dried crust crumbled off him. Horrified to be touching it, John hurled the corpse away, yelling, “Why’s it me gets all the rotten ones?” He wiped his hands madly down his front. The dried-up body hit the wall and slid down, where it appeared to be sitting up and listening.
Isabella, Scathelock, and the Waits stared in horror but made no move to challenge John. The young guard, Ernald, fled.
Thomas slapped Kunastur’s helm, which receded. He pressed his dagger deeper into the guard’s neck. “You’re next for the chopping block. Now where lies the Yvagvoja that rode him?” Gray-green and mottled, the Yvag attempted to sneer at him, but behind the contempt was outright fear—either at Thomas’s use of that word, or because he, a human, had altered his form as easily as they did.
Little John drew Benedict to his feet. Both stared, repulsed, at the husk of Passelewe, but their looks became feral as they considered the revealed Kunastur. “You want us tae ask him for you?” John said. “Just for makin’ us lie down in the smell of piss, I’d beat him into the stones.” He bent down, collecting the bag and taking the dight from Benedict, who continued to stare owl-eyed at Passelewe’s corpse.
“Perhaps after a moment.” Thomas stuck the dagger into the Yvag’s flesh enough to make it jerk. “Where do I find Zhanedd, then?” The name clearly surprised the creature. Thomas leaned closer. The barbed blade pricked deeper, drawing a trickle of black blood from its throat. “You’d be amazed all I know of your kind, beginning with your Queen, Nicnevin.”
The black rings of the Yvag’s pupils expanded in distress as it tried, against the knifepoint, to get a better look at him.
Geoffrey bellowed, “Egads! Another demon!” He’d dragged a poleaxe up the stairs with him and despite the small space, managed to lower it. Thomas let go, and the Yvag scrambled back against the stone wall, Geoffrey striding right after it.
Isabella and Elias stared Thomas up and down. He could see that they were wondering how he came to be dressed in the same clothing as their demon. “My other way in,” he said, acknowledging the black-and-silver armor.
“But how did you get down the steps? How . . . ?” She stopped, shook her head.
Elias asked, “Is that truly Passelewe?”
Benedict said, “Aye.”
Geoffrey looked back over his shoulder as he menaced Kunastur. “It is certainly his clothing,” he said, then added, “And his red hair.”
“He was a bit more lively earlier.” Thomas held out his hand for the bag. John happily gave it away. Thomas held it up. “And if you’re wondering at John’s ire, Passelewe was just about to spin one of these to life—which would have been the end of John.”
Isabella asked, “The one you killed in the gaol—why didn’t it go the same way?” Even as she spoke, Benedict and Little John were dragging the twice-punctured corpse of Simforax out of the straw. She looked down with horror as it emerged.
Thomas replied, “I realize this is confusing, but Passelewe isn’t like these two. He’s what John would have become if he’d spun this little device—namely, an empty repository possessed by a demon, what they call Yvagvoja. These other demons are hidden in crypts and tombs—probably some in caves here in Nottingham. If you came across one, it would appear to be asleep. Think how many places there are to hide in hereabouts.”
“I’m to believe you have lived with these . . . Yvagvoja?” she asked.
He replied, “We’re acquainted.” For an instant he stared again into the past: at Waldroup shoving one through a ring he’d sliced open; at Baldie resurrecting for one final moment before his body melted; at the little screaming hobs that guarded the creatures populating the crypts. But the Waits and Keepers were waiting, no doubt, for some elaboration. “The instant that John killed Passelewe, the demon controlling the sheriff, wherever it was, awoke. The umbilical between them was severed. It’ll have fled by now, probably out of our world and back to its own.”
“All right, but why did he rot thus?”
“Because—” He paused as the door opened and the young guard, Ernald, stuck his head into the room. He looked at all of them, at the corpse of the sheriff, and hesitantly came in.
Thomas gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Because,” he said again, “in truth, like your bishop of Doncaster, Passelewe actually died some time ago, I would guess years from the look of him. Doncaster was much more recent. Someone used one of these to empty each of them for occupation, same as he was going to do to John.”
Osbert said, “Well, what’re we supposed ta do nar?” he asked. “Sheriff’s dead, an’ who’ll believe it?”
Thomas answered, “I don’t know. Ask Ernald here what he thinks. Probably best to tell anyone he fought off a demon at the price of his life. At least there’s an element of truth in it.” He gestured at Kunastur, that Geoffrey held at bay. “And you can show them this one as proof, same as the one in Chandler’s Lane gaol.”
“You mean, cut off its head?”
“I do. It’s the only way.”
“It’s not,” Elias argued. “We should ask it questions. Who has ever had a demon to interrogate?”
Thomas tried to explain that interrogation would be pointless.
Osbert interrupted him. “What—what do we do tae keep it if we’re keepin’ it?”
Scathelock said, “There’s oubliettes on a level higher up where the Normans put people they want to forget about. Even this creature shouldn’t be able to get out of that space unless it can levitate. Can it levitate?” Will asked him.
“No, I think it can’t, but you see—”
“Ernald?” Scathelock asked.
The young guard nodded enthusiastically. “No one can get outta them. None e’er has.”
“What about Passelewe, then?” Benedict asked. “There another like ’im comin’?”
“There won’t be another like Passelewe. It takes one of these—”
“Spinners,” Will interjected.
“Spinners, yes.” And they’ll look for someone else influential; maybe it will be Orrels this time. Or Isabella. We need to get her away from here and warn the sheriff, too.
Isabella said, “Like Passelewe or no, the town will need to elect someone new to oversee the Norman borough.”
Thomas replied, “Yes, and we don’t want to be around for that. Far too many questions. Why not make Ernald here your sheriff while that’s decided? After all, you’ve captured a demon yourself.”
“Me? But I’m no one.”
“My reasoning exactly. You might stand a chance.”
Ernald clearly didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Well, why not you? You seem to know everything about this.”
“I’m not even Norman. I wouldn’t be considered.”
“You speak it as well as anyone.”
Thomas smiled wearily. “No one else in this group can. Every one of us needs to get away from Nottingham right now, today. We’re every one of us lures. John alone has killed two of their prized possessed; they’ll want his head on a spike. But you, all of you, were present for this death and that of the demon they sent to retrieve these.” He shook his bag. “Which we still have. They want these more than anything, and they are now after us all, believe me.”
Will Scathelock scratched his head. “Well, I have a suggestion,” he started to say. Thomas raised a hand to silence him.
“Discuss nothing further in front of this one.” He indicated the Yvag. “It’s capable of telling its marrows everything we say. We need to kill it.”
Ernald reached for the poleaxe Geoffrey held as if it had just occurred to him to use it.
They all fell to arguing again, talking over each other.
Frustrated, Thomas said, “All right, keep it alive. But nobody visits it by themselves. No one can be alone with it ever. And whoever watches over the oubliettes needs to understand that the demon can mimic anybody. It can change itself into you or me or even Passelewe—anyone it can remember. You could open the oubliette and find your mother in there.”
“How can it remember me mother?” asked Geoffrey. He released the poleaxe to Ernald, who immediately balked, reluctant to go off with the Yvag.
Osbert patted him on the back and said, “I’ll accompany tha, an’ if it changes inta anybody at all, I’ll be pleased to cut off its ’ead like Robyn says.” He gave the Yvag a smile of invitation, then stepped aside to let the “demon” pass. He poked it with his arming sword. It gave Thomas a black look as it walked by him.
This is not over whispered in his mind. Beside him, Isabella and Elias both cringed a little. Thomas supposed they had all heard or felt the threat.
“Osbert,” he called after. “Don’t hesitate to run the bastard through if given the least provocation.” He followed them out and watched as they walked to the steps. A part of him felt it was a terrible idea to let them out of his sight. Even with Osbert guarding the lad, he knew he should simply have slain it no matter how this group reacted. They did not understand the Yvags. What would Alpin have done? Killed the creature in all likelihood here and now. No quarter.
With the creature gone, Will Scathelock said, “The King’s Houses?” He was addressing Isabella Birkin.
Skeptical, she replied, “What, now we welcome in outlaws we’ve hunted?”
Scathelock looked insulted but restrained himself from answering in anger.
Sensing the transparent tension, Thomas said, “I don’t know these King’s Houses, but if it’s a question of our being outlaws, then arrest us first. Consider John and me prisoners if it gets us and the Waits out of Nottingham tomorrow.”
“I was referring just to this one,” she said, although her look said that could easily change. “And his partner, who has remained curiously absent this Fair day.”
“Robert Hodde, you mean. He is absent because he is dead,” Thomas told her to her surprise. “He fell to them early.”
Little John nodded grimly. “I seen his body myself,” he said to no one in particular.
Benedict clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry to hear it. He was a right pain in our arses, collectively speakin’.”
Little John barked a laugh. “’E were that. E’en ta me.”
Thomas said, “If you need to see for yourself, I can take you to where he lies, a hut in Barnsdale. Though my inclination is to go this instant, I suppose we’ll remain here long enough to bury Warin on the morrow. Our belongings are in Chandler’s Lane anyway.” As he spoke, he ducked out the cell doorway. The Waits and Keepers followed. They went down the steps, which led to the back of the ground-level Norman gaol.