lapses like that.
Lord Nightingale selected one of the cut-glass decanters and poured out generous
measures for them all. The mood was generally more relaxed than it had been, now
that the traitor Fisher had been exposed, and they shared little jokes and
anecdotes as they emptied their glasses. Nothing like talking for ages and
saying nothing to work up a really good thirst. Their murmured conversation
wandered aimlessly. None of them were in any particular hurry to get back to the
Talks. The chairs were comfortable, the room was pleasantly warm, and in a while
it would be time to take a break for dinner anyway.
Lord Nightingale looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, heaved himself out of
his chair and left the room on a muttered errand. He shut the door, smiled
broadly, and then froze as someone in the hall behind him cleared his throat
politely. He looked round sharply, and found himself facing ap Owen and Fisher,
someone who by his appearance had to be Hawk, and a woman in sorcerer's black.
For a moment Nightingale just stood there, his face and mind utterly blank, and
then he drew himself up, and nodded quickly to ap Owen.
"Well done, Captain. You've apprehended the traitor Fisher. I'll see you receive
a commendation for this."
Ap Owen stared at him stonily. "I'm afraid that's not why we're here, my lord.
It is my duty to inform you that you are under arrest."
"If this is some kind of joke, Captain, it's in very bad taste. I shall inform
your superiors about this."
Ap Owen continued as if he'd never been interrupted. "We've been here some time,
my lord, searching the house. Among your belongings we discovered—"
"You searched my room? How dare you! I have diplomatic immunity from this sort
of petty harassment!"
"Among your belongings, hidden inside the handle of one of your trunks, we found
a quantity of the super-chacal drug."
"A lot of things made sense, once we found the drug," said Fisher. "We knew the
drug tied into the Talks somehow, but we didn't have a connection, until we
found you. And once we started looking at you closely, all kinds of things
became clear. You gave away the location of the house, because you knew you'd be
safe inside the pocket dimension. When that didn't work as well as you'd hoped,
you used your sorcery to open a door into the dimension, knowing your sorcery
would protect you from the creatures you'd summoned. And of course you were able
to close the door once it became clear the creatures were getting out of hand
and might pose a threat to you. Finally, you've been subtly using your magic all
along, influencing the delegates to make sure nothing would ever be agreed.
You've gone very quiet, my lord. Nothing to say for yourself?"
"I admit everything," said Lord Nightingale calmly. "I'll admit anything you
like, here, in private. It doesn't matter anymore. You can't prove any of it,
and even if you could, I have diplomatic immunity from arrest. And I'm afraid
the whole matter is academic now, anyway. My fellow delegates have just drunk a
glass of wine from a decanter I dosed rather heavily with the super-chacal drug.
My sorcery protected me from suffering any effects, but we should begin to hear
the results on them any time now. They'll tear each other to pieces in an animal
frenzy, and that will be the end of the Peace Talks. Evidence is already being
planted in the right places that this was the work of certain leading factions
in Haven, to express their opposition to the thought of peace with Outremer."
"Why?" said Hawk. "Why have you done all this? What sane man wants to start a
war?"
Lord Nightingale smiled condescendingly. "There's money to be made in a war,
Captain. A great deal of money. Not to mention political capital, and military
advancement. A man in the right place at the right time, if properly forewarned,
can rise rapidly in wartime, no matter who wins. Whatever the outcome of the
war, my associates and I will end up a great deal richer and more powerful than
we could ever have hoped to be under normal conditions. The super-chacal was my
idea. I helped fund its creation, and oversaw its introduction into Haven. You
can think of this city as a testing ground for the new drug. If it does as well
here as we expect, it should prove an excellent means of sabotaging the Low
Kingdoms. We'll introduce the drug into selected foods and wines, poison some
strategic wells and rivers, and then just sit back and watch as your country
tears itself apart. All we'll have to do is come in afterwards and clean up the
mess. It could be the start of a whole new form of warfare.
"I hope you've all been listening carefully. It's so nice to be appreciated for
one's work. And it's not as if you'll ever get a chance to tell anyone else. My
fellow delegates should see to that."
He reached to open the study door, and then hesitated, listening. Hawk smiled
coldly.
"That's right, my Lord. Quiet in there, isn't it? Like ap Owen said, we've been
here for some time. Mistique's magic revealed that one of the decanters had been
drugged, so we switched it for another one. The original should make good
evidence at your trial. As for your citywide test of the drug, you can forget
that, too. We got it all back before it could hit the streets, and it's
currently being protected by some very trustworthy Guards. Morgan is dead. So is
Burns. You're on your own now, Nightingale."
"You can't arrest me," said Lord Nightingale. "I have diplomatic immunity."
"I think your people can be persuaded to waive that," said Hawk. "You'll be
surprised how fast they disown you, to avoid being implicated themselves. After
all, no one loves a failure. They'll probably let us hang you right here in
Haven, if we ask them nicely."
Lord Nightingale suddenly raised his hands and spoke a Word of Power, and
halfway down the hall the air split open. A howling wind came roaring out of the
widening split, carrying a rush of thick snow and a bitter blast of cold. Within
seconds, a blizzard raged in the narrow hallway, and the temperature plummeted.
Ice formed thickly on the doors and walls, and made the floor treacherous
underfoot. Hawk raised an arm to protect his face as the freezing wind cut at
his exposed skin like a knife. The cold was so intense it burned, and even the
shallowest breath was painful.
Hawk glared about him into the swirling snow, trying to locate Lord Nightingale,
but he and everyone else had become little more than shadows in the roaring
white. From behind him, he could hear something howling in the world beyond the
gateway that Nightingale had opened. It sounded huge and angry and utterly
inhuman. More howls sounded over the roaring of the blizzard and the buffeting
wind, growing louder all the time, and Hawk realised the creatures were slowly
drawing nearer. He staggered forward, head bent against the wind, until his
flailing arms found the nearest wall. Nightingale would be just as blind in this
storm as everyone else, so he had to be following the wall to find his way out.
All Hawk had to do was make his way down the wall after him—assuming he hadn't
got s
o turned around in the blizzard that he'd ended up against the wrong wall…
Hawk decided he wasn't going to think about that. He had to be right.
And then his heart leapt in his chest as a door suddenly opened to his right,
revealing the startled faces of the other delegates. The force of the storm
quickly threw them back into the study, where they struggled to close the door
again, but Hawk took little notice. He knew now that he'd found the right wall.
The howling of the creatures came again, rising eerily over the sound of the
storm. They sounded very close. Hawk ran down the corridor, slipping and sliding
on the ice, his shoulder pressed against the wall. A shadow loomed up before
him. Hawk threw himself forward, grabbed the figure by the shoulder, and slammed
it back against the wall. He thrust his face close up against the other's, and
smiled savagely as he recognized Nightingale's frightened face.
"We've got to get out of here!" shouted Nightingale, his voice barely audible
over the roar of the blizzard. "The creatures will be here soon!"
"I've got a better idea," said Hawk, not caring if the Outremer lord heard him.
He took a firm hold of Nightingale's collar and dragged him kicking and
struggling back down the corridor towards the gateway he'd opened.
Hawk had to fight the force of the storm with every step, as well as hang on to
Nightingale with a hand so numb he could barely feel his grip anymore, and he
thought for a while that he wasn't going to make it. But then suddenly he was
close enough to make out the split in the air, stretching from floor to ceiling,
and he lurched to a halt. The split was wider now. Huge dark shadows moved in
the blizzard beyond the gateway. The creatures were almost there. Their howls
were deafening. Hawk put his mouth against Nightingale's ear.
"Close the gateway! Close it, or I swear I'll throw you through that opening and
let those things have you!"
Nightingale lifted his hands and chanted something, the words lost in the tumult
of the blizzard and the creatures' incessant howling. For a long, heart-stopping
moment nothing happened, and then the split in the air snapped together and was
gone, and the blizzard collapsed. The sudden silence was shocking, and everyone
just stood where they were, numbly watching the last of the snow drift lazily on
the air before falling to the floor. The corridor seemed a little less cold, but
their breath still steamed on the air before them. Nightingale lurched away from
Hawk, and headed down the corridor at a shaky run. Hawk caught up with him
before he'd gone a dozen paces, and clubbed him from behind with the butt of his
axe. Nightingale fell limply into the thick snow on the floor, and lay still.
Hawk leaned over him and hit him again, just to be sure. Then he dragged him
back to the others. Ap Owen shook his head unhappily.
"They won't let us put him on trial, you know. He'd be an embarrassment to both
sides, and probably prevent any future Talks. And besides, diplomatic immunity's
too important a concept in troubled times like these. They'll never allow it to
be waived, no matter what the crime."
"You mean he's going to get away with it?" said Fisher, scowling dangerously.
Ap Owen shrugged. "Like I said; he's an embarrassment. His own people will
probably take away his position and privileges and send him into internal exile,
but that's about it."
"Right," said Hawk. "Technically, for what he tried to do, he should be
executed, but there's no way that will happen. Aristocrats don't believe in
passing death sentences on their own kind if they can avoid it. It might give
the peasants ideas." He looked down at Nightingale's unconscious body, his face
set and cold. "So many people dead, because of him. All the people who might
have died. And I almost raised my axe against Isobel… If I killed him now, no
one would say anything. They'd probably even thank me for getting rid of such an
embarrassment."
"You can't just kill him in cold blood!" protested ap Owen.
"No," said Hawk finally. "I can't. Even after all these years in Haven, I still
know what's right and what's wrong. I only kill when I have to. I know my duty."
"Look on the bright side," said Mistique cheerfully. "You found the drug before
it hit the streets, exposed the traitor in the Guard, and with Nightingale
removed from the Talks, they might actually start agreeing on things. You've
saved the city and possibly averted a war. What more do you want?"
Hawk and Fisher looked at each other.
"Overtime," said Hawk firmly.
Chapter Ten
Loose Ends
As prisons went, it wasn't too bad. Certainly Lord Nightingale had spent longer
periods under far worse conditions during his travels. He'd known some country
inns that boasted accommodations so primitive even a leper would have turned up
what was left of his nose at them. His present circumstances were surprisingly
pleasant, and, all things considered, the Outremer Embassy in Haven had gone out
of its way to treat him with every courtesy. He was confined in one of the
Embassy's guest rooms, with every comfort the staff could provide, until such
time as he could be escorted back to Outremer. And given the current appalling
weather conditions, that could be quite some time.
Nightingale didn't mind. The longer the better, as far as he was concerned. He
was already filling his time writing carefully worded letters to certain people
his feelings about the coming war, people who could be trusted to see that his
cause was presented to the King in its most positive light. He'd have to spend
some time in internal exile, of course; that was only to be expected. But once
the war began, as it inevitably would, and his associates became men of power at
Court, he would undoubtably be summoned again, and his present little setback
would be nothing more than an unfortunate memory. In the meantime, his current
captors were being very careful to treat him with the utmost respect, for fear
of alienating the wrong people. You could always rely on diplomats to appreciate
the political realities; particularly when their own careers might be at risk.
So, for the moment, Nightingale bided his time and was the perfect prisoner,
never once complaining or making any fuss, and the time passed pleasantly
enough. There were books to read and letters to write, and a steady stream of
visitors from among the Embassy staff, just stopping by for a chat, and dropping
not especially subtle hints of encouragement and support, in the hope of being
remembered in the future. True, his door was always locked, and there was an
armed guard in the corridor outside his room, but given the current
circumstances, Nightingale found that rather reassuring. If word of what he'd
intended were to get out in Haven, the populace would quite probably attempt to
storm the building and drag him out to hang him from the nearest lamppost. You
couldn't expect the rabble to understand the importance of concepts like
diplomatic immunity.
There was a sudden knocking at the door, and Nightingale jumped in spite of
himself. He cleared his throat carefully, and called for his visitor to enter. A
key turned in the lock, and the heavy door swung open to reveal Major de
Tournay, carrying a bottle of wine. Nightingale was somewhat surprised to see
the Major, but kept all trace of it from his face. De Tournay had taken the news
of Nightingale's treachery surprisingly calmly, given that his life had been one
of those threatened, but even so he was one of the last people Nightingale had
expected to drop by for a chat. Still, recent events had done much to turn up
unexpected allies.
"Come in, my dear Major," he said warmly. "Is that wine for me? How splendid."
He studied the bottle's label, and raised an appreciative eyebrow. "I'm obliged
to you, de Tournay. The Ambassador means well, but his cellar is shockingly
depleted."
"I need to talk to you, my lord," said de Tournay bluntly. He looked vaguely
round the room, as though embarrassed to be there and unsure how to proceed.
Nightingale waved for him to sit down on a chair opposite, and the Major did so,
sitting stiffly and almost at attention. "We need to discuss the present
situation, my lord. There are matters which need to be… clarified."
"Of course, Major. But first, let us sample this excellent wine you've brought
me."
De Tournay nodded, and watched woodenly as Nightingale removed the cork, sniffed
it, and poured them both a generous glass. They toasted each other politely, but
though de Tournay drank deeply, his attention remained fixed on Nightingale
rather than the wine.
"Before we begin, Major," said Nightingale, leaning elegantly back in his chair,
"perhaps you would oblige me by bringing me up to date on what is happening with
Captains Hawk and Fisher. I must confess I half expect every knock at my door to
be them, come to drag me off in chains to face Haven justice, or worse still,
administer it themselves."
"You needn't worry about them," said de Tournay. "They had their chance to kill
you, and chose not to. They understand the realities of the situation. And since
they've been cleared of all charges, they're not foolish enough to risk their
necks again by harassing you."
"I'm relieved to hear it." Nightingale drank his wine unhurriedly, ignoring de
Tournay's impatience to get to the point of his visit. Nightingale smiled. It