“A squirrel, Your Grace,” the priest said. “We captured it.”
“Go and fetch it for me.”
“Your Grace, it’s quite wild and—” He stopped, recognizing the look in Lightsong’s eyes, then waved for a servant.
“No,” Lightsong said. “Not a servant. You go and get it personally.” The priest looked incredulous.
“Yes, yes,” Lightsong said, waving him away. “I know. It’s an offense to your dignity. Perhaps you should think about converting to Austrism. For now, get going.”
The priest left, grumbling.
“The rest of you,” Lightsong said, addressing his own servants and priests. “You wait here.”
They looked resigned. Perhaps they were growing accustomed to him dismissing them.
“Come on, Scoot,” Lightsong said, walking toward the first group he had sent off onto the lawn—the two guards. Llarimar scurried forward to keep up as Lightsong took long strides over to the two men. “Now,” Lightsong said to the two, out of earshot of the others, “tell me what you saw.”
“He came to us pretending to be a madman, Your Grace,” one of the guards said. “He sauntered out of the shadows, mumbling to himself. It was just an act, though, and when he got close enough, he knocked us both out.”
“How?” Lightsong asked.
“He grabbed me around the neck with tassels from his Awakened coat,” one of the men said. He nodded to his companion. “Knocked him in the stomach with the hilt of a sword.”
The second guard raised his shirt to show a large bruise on his stomach, then cocked his head to the side, showing another one on his neck.
“Choked us both,” the first guard said. “Me with those tassels, Fran with a boot on his neck. That’s the last thing we knew. By the time we awoke, he was gone.”
“He choked you,” Lightsong said, “but didn’t kill you. Just enough to knock you out?”
“That’s right, Your Grace,” the guard said.
“Please describe this man,” Lightsong said.
“He was big,” the guard said. “Had a scraggly beard. Not too long, but not trimmed either.”
“He wasn’t smelly or dirty,” the other said. “He just didn’t seem to take much care for how he looked. His hair was long—came down to his neck—and hadn’t seen a brush in a long while.”
“Wore ragged clothing,” the first said. “Patched in places, nothing bright, but not really dark either. Just kind of . . . bland. Rather un-Hallandren, now that I think on it.”
“And he was armed?” Lightsong said.
“With the sword that hit me,” the second guard said. “Big thing. Not a dueling blade, more like an Easterner sword. Straight and really long. Had it hidden under his cloak, and we would have seen it, if he hadn’t covered it up by walking so oddly.”
Lightsong nodded. “Thank you. Stay here.”
With that, he turned and walked toward the second group.
“This is very interesting, Your Grace,” Llarimar said. “But I really don’t see the point.”
“I’m just curious,” Lightsong said.
“Excuse me, Your Grace,” Llarimar said. “But you’re not really the curious type.”
Lightsong continued walking. The things he was doing, he did mostly without thinking. They just felt natural. He approached the next group. “You were the ones who saw the intruder in the hallway, right?” Lightsong said to them.
The men nodded. One shot a glance back at Mercystar’s palace. The lawn in front of it was now crowded with a colorful assortment of priests and servants, both Mercystar’s and Lightsong’s own.
“Tell me what happened,” Lightsong said.
“We were walking through the servants’ hallway,” one said. “We’d been released for the evening, and were going to go out into the city to a nearby tavern.”
“Then we saw someone in the hallway,” another said. “He didn’t belong there.”
“Describe him,” Lightsong said.
“Big man,” one said. The others nodded. “Had ragged clothing and a beard. Kind of dirty-looking.”
“No,” another said. “The clothing was old, but the man wasn’t dirty. Just slovenly.”
Lightsong nodded. “Continue.”
“Well, there isn’t much to say,” one of the men said. “He attacked us. Threw an Awakened rope at poor Taff, who got tied up immediately. Rariv and I ran for help. Lolan stayed behind.”
Lightsong looked at the third man. “You stayed back? Why?”
“To help Taff, of course,” the man said.
Lying, Lightsong thought. Looks too nervous. “Really?” he said, stepping closer.
The man looked down. “Well, mostly. I mean, there was the sword, too . . .”
“Oh, right,” another said. “He threw a sword at us. Strangest thing.”
“He didn’t draw it?” Lightsong asked. “He threw it?”
The men shook their heads. “He threw it at us, sheath and all. Lolan picked it up.”
“I thought I’d fight him,” Lolan said.
“Interesting,” Lightsong said. “So you two left?”
“Yeah,” one of the men said. “When we came back with the others—after getting around that blasted squirrel—we found Lolan on the ground, unconscious, and poor Taff . . . well, he was still tied up, though the rope wasn’t Awakened anymore. He’d been stabbed straight through.”
“You saw him die?”