The Liar's Key

“Easy now. This is madness! You only had to wait—”

“.” The count waved at the two men who had dismounted as I did. I shook my head but couldn’t make sense of the words.

“Hey now!” They grabbed my hands and secured them behind me with disturbing swiftness, having a rope noose already prepared to loop around both wrists.

The count glanced back down the road then stood in his stirrups to look ahead. Satisfied we weren’t about to be disturbed in the next minute or two he sat back. “And the mask.” Neither man shifted. The count placed his palm over his mouth, “!”

A rustling behind me and hands reached around me to press something heavy across my mouth.

“No!” I started struggling but the man in front, tall as me and thick with muscle, punched me in the stomach, right in that spot that tells all the air to leave your lungs fast as it can.

While I doubled up they secured the gag, forcing the leather bit between my teeth as I gasped for breath. The thick leather straps reached out across my face and round the back of my head like the fingers of a hand, partly blocking my nose and half-covering my eyes. A common liar’s mask of the sort used to transport seditionists and madmen. I would have smiled if I could. Count Isen had gone far too far. Grandmother wouldn’t stand for anyone bearing her name to endure such humiliation. Dragging me through Vermillion like this might sully my reputation somewhat but the count would be lucky to escape with his lands and title, certainly there would be no question of me having to duel him.

“Up!” The count waved his hand at the pair manhandling me and with distressing ease they lifted me back onto Nor. I slipped my boots into the stirrups and held on tight with my knees. Falling off a horse with your hands tied behind your back is a quick way to break your neck.

The third of the Slavic men lowered his crossbow and removed the bolt. I guess the trio didn’t speak the Empire tongue, though why the count would employ such men I couldn’t—

“No!” Is what I would have said. Instead I made a muffled scream around the gag. The man on Isen’s other side had raised his hood. He released his reins to do it since he only had the one arm. The hood slipped from a bald white skull, pale eyes stared into mine from a fleshless face that somehow, despite seeming nothing but skin stretched over bone, managed to look pleased to see me. How the hell did Maeres Allus’s head torturer, Cutter John, come to be riding with Count Isen? I tried to urge Nor into a trot but the bully beside me had tight hold of the reins and the other punched me in the leg, hard enough for me to lose feeling in it.

“Steady now!” The count raised a hand. “You left it a little late to run, Prince Jalan.” He smiled without humour. “I see you’ve recognized John. I’m Alber Marks, and my associates’ names are unimportant. What is important is that they won’t understand anything you say to them and have no idea who you are. I mention this only to save you breath when trying to bribe them or otherwise sway them from their purpose.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. Maeres Allus had sent one of his best lieutenants after me. Alber Marks had a reputation for ruthless efficiency. Here I’d been thinking that only social niceties and royal duty stood between me and being run through with the count’s longsword. But the real threat had been re-acquaintance with Cutter John’s pincers—and anything that stood between me and being tied to a table in one of Maeres’s warehouses had slipped away when I stopped paying attention. I should have known it wasn’t the count. Isen was said to be a small man and even on a horse, dwarfed by henchmen, Alber Marks hadn’t fit the bill.

“Come.” Alber tilted his head and led off toward a gap in the verge where a tiny track angled away from the highway. The Slavs rode two in front, one behind, corralling me. They led me after Alber and Cutter John at an unhurried pace. It took a minute or two to get out of sight of the road among the vine rows and the dividing hawthorn hedges.

The men lifted me from Nor’s back again and Cutter John came over to check my bonds, running a cold and long-fingered hand over each of the five straps about my head—an intimate touch that made me shiver with revulsion. A moment’s fiddling at the back of my head and I heard the snap of a lock. Cutter John came back into view, dangling a small key before dropping it into his pocket. He smiled, displaying narrow teeth and pulled open his cloak to show the stump of his arm, ending in an ugly mass of pale scar just above the elbow. The last time I’d seen Cutter John blood had been pulsing from the wound—Snorri having sliced the arm off just moments before—and I’d given him several good kicks in the head while he lay unconscious, and I rather hoped, dying. I wished now I’d staved his skull in with a table leg.