The Prince of Lies (Night's Masque, #3)(14)
“You expected me to bring our… acquaintance here, my lord?”
“Those were my instructions,” Grey said. He undid the top two buttons on his doublet. “God’s teeth but it’s close today!”
“Shall I send for chilled wine?”
“Later. Let’s get this business over with. About Selby…”
Mal ran his tongue round a mouth suddenly dry at the mention of wine.
“Forgive me, my lord. I thought you said to take him into safe custody, not bring him into the midst of our enemies.”
“The palace is empty, as you must have seen. Where better to conceal him?”
“With respect, my lord, the Tower is a far more secure location.”
“And are you certain that neither the Lieutenant of the Tower nor any of his men are members of this conspiracy?”
Mal stared at the reflection of the candlesticks in the table’s polished surface. There were ways to uncover a guiser using the magics Sandy had taught him, but they required close contact and risked alerting the subject to one’s suspicions. Only a handful of his intelligencers had been tested – and cleared – thus far.
“No, my lord.”
Grey shook his head and tutted.
“But I do have men in the garrison,” Mal added. “It was they who took the prisoner into custody, and they are under strict instructions not to let him speak except to his interrogators.”
That much was true, if everything had gone to plan. The Huntsmen were no more keen to enter the Tower than Mal was to have them there, so he had arranged for Selby to be handed over to two of his most trusted agents on the outskirts of Tower Hamlets.
“Nonetheless, I do not appreciate independence in my subordinates,” Grey said. “Next time you will follow your orders to the letter. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And I want the names of these men of yours at the Tower. I trust they were included in your reports?”
“Of course. If you have pen and paper to hand, I’ll make a list for you.”
Grey gestured towards a cupboard on the far side of the room. “And when you’re done, I want a full written report of your doings in Kent. No, make that two reports. An official one for the Privy Council, leaving out all this conspiracy nonsense, and the real one.”
“What would you have the official report say, my lord?”
“Say whatever you like, as long as it puts them off the scent. For all we know, half of them could be in on the plot, eh?”
“Indeed, my lord.”
Mal found paper, quills and ink and set about scratching down a list of names. At this rate Selby would be tortured and executed before he got another look at him. Damn Grey and his reports! Should have run the bastard through good and proper instead of letting him live. Your honour will be the death of you, Mal Catlyn.
Writing the reports for Grey took until nightfall, by which time Mal’s right hand was stiff with cramp and his head pounding like a war drum. He had considered going back to Southwark and calling upon Parrish’s talents once more, but the less his friends knew about the goings-on in Kent, the better. So he painstakingly composed each story in outline – with many crossings-out and amendments – then wrote them out in formal language before burning all his notes in the fireplace. Without their masters to run around after, the remaining servants would be even more likely to notice something amiss and use it to their advantage if they could.
He found a manservant to bring him supper, and retired to the chamber he had slept in during previous sojourns at court. With a pleasantly full belly at last, and a final cup of wine to hand, he stripped to his drawers and lay down on the bed. He fingered the smooth round beads at his throat, remembering the dead skraylings he had found in the watchtower on Corsica, and his thoughts strayed eastwards to another tower, older but much closer. For one drunken moment he considered removing his spirit-guard and dreamwalking in search of Selby, of probing his enemy’s most secret thoughts as Sandy could do. With the palace empty, there might not be any other guisers in the whole of London, so now would be as good a time as–
No, dammit. The villain would be in irons, cut off from the dreamlands as effectively as any mortal man. That was a vital part of the plan.
No use for it; he would have to wait until the morrow. Yawning widely, he rolled over and surrendered to sleep.
The Tower of London was silent but for the croaking of ravens and screaming of kites as they squabbled over the meagre pickings on Traitor’s Gate. There had been few prisoners here of late, and only one that Mal cared about.
He spared a glance for St Thomas’s Tower, where the skrayling ambassador and his party had lodged several summers ago, then turned left into the inner ward and climbed the long slope to the green. An L-shaped timber-framed house was tucked into the corner of the south and west walls, facing the five hundred year-old bulk of the central keep. Mal went up to the front door and knocked. It felt like a lifetime since he had first come here, perplexed and unwilling, to discover he had been chosen as the ambassador’s bodyguard. There was another Lieutenant of the Tower now; they were never allowed to stay in their post long, lest complacency made them corrupt. The Tower was reserved for the kingdom’s most dangerous wrongdoers, many of whom were rich and powerful enough to bend even the most honest gaoler to their will.