LITMIR.BIZ

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on the order of: Stop! Gods, please stop!’

      ‘I admit that my ship floated off-station,’ Leighton blustered. ‘Such things happen occasionally, there’s nothing deliberate in it. An anchor bolt rusted through and the tide caught our bow. It was merely misfortune that it happened at that particular moment. When I heard the commotion I rose from my bed, came topside and corrected the situation at once. At the very worst it was dereliction of duty, though even that would be coming it a bit high under the circumstances.’

      Del Garza raised his brows and leant back in the commander’s chair with his hands clasped over his lean stomach. ‘Indeed?’ he said.

      ‘Of course,’ Leighton said, allowing a touch of his former haughtiness to creep into his tone. ‘I tell you these things happen, ’tis no one’s fault, my good man. No one could have predicted that a ship would choose that particular moment to …’

      ‘We know the Upright Man bribed you.’ The acting governor waited for the explosion, but none came; the Captain merely stared at him, his mouth opening and closing like a gaffed fish. Not only guilty then, but the man had no spine. ‘What was it, the gold? Or some misplaced sense of loyalty to Prince Erland’s family?’

      ‘We have known them a long time …’ Leighton began.

      Del Garza cut him off. ‘You may as well admit it, you know. We have proof.’

      The Captain shook his head silently.

      ‘Oh, but we do,’ del Garza insisted. ‘We have our own sources inside the Mockers, you know.’

      They didn’t, of course, have either – proof, or sources. But it was obvious to the secret policeman that the Mockers had an interest in freeing the Princess Anita. It was certainly Mockers he and his men had been fighting this morning. Besides, every instinct he had told him that it was beyond unlikely that a ship would just ‘happen’ to drift off-station at precisely the wrong moment.

      The lie came easily though, because if del Garza was going to have to answer for Anita’s escape – and he was – then others would answer first and far more painfully.

      Leighton licked his lips. ‘You could hardly call it treason,’ he said.

      Del Garza leaned forward blinking rapidly, his brows raised incredulously. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Taking a bribe deliberately to disobey orders during wartime could never be anything else.’

      ‘We are hardly at war with the Mockers,’ the Captain argued.

      ‘We are always at war with the Mockers,’ del Garza corrected, his voice flat. ‘That it has never been formally declared makes it no less a war. For if we were not at war with them, I assure you these thieves and murderers-for-hire are and have always been at war with the decent citizens of Krondor.’

      ‘They are hardly worthy …’ Leighton began.

      ‘Opponents?’ Del Garza sneered. ‘If their money is good enough for you then why shouldn’t they be considered … worthy?’

      The Captain pressed his lips together and took a deep breath, then he straightened. ‘I should like to see this “proof” you claim to have.’

      Del Garza chuckled, an impulse he couldn’t control. ‘Are you now going to claim innocence, after all but admitting your guilt?’

      ‘I have not admitted any guilt,’ the Captain said. ‘Come, come, you shall have to produce the proof at my trial.’

      With a sad shake of his head the Baron asked: ‘Would you really put your family through the shame of a trial when the conclusion is inevitable? Must we prove to them and all the world your villainy?’

      The colour drained from Leighton’s face. ‘What are you suggesting?’ he demanded, clearly shaken.

       ‘You need do nothing radical,’ del Garza said, suddenly all generosity. ‘Naturally you cannot keep your commission.’ He drew a document from a small pile and pushed it toward the captain along with a quill pen already resting in an ink stand. ‘Herein you resign your commission; just sign at the bottom of the page, and the next page as well and then we’ll send you home.’ He lifted the pen from the inkwell and proffered it to Leighton with a slight smile. ‘Your older brother wouldn’t be the first nobleman who had to find a second career for a younger brother; much less a problem than shaming the family name.’

      ‘That is all?’ the Captain asked, taking the pen hesitantly.

      Del Garza nodded. ‘We will take care of everything else. All the arrangements,’ he clarified. He pointed to the bottom of the page. ‘If you would,’ he invited.

      As one hypnotized, Leighton signed. Del Garza lifted the corner of the page to expose the one beneath.

      ‘Sign here as well, if you would be so kind.’

      With a shaky hand the Captain signed the bottom page as well and the acting governor drew them back, sanded the signatures and shook them dry.

      ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘But for one minor detail that concludes our business.’

      Leighton mopped his brow with a handkerchief. ‘What is that?’ he asked.

      At del Garza’s nod the three guards stepped forward; two caught hold of the captain’s arms while the third whipped a garrotte around his neck. The stool went over with a crash, and Leighton’s legs became caught up in it so that he couldn’t get his feet under him. Del Garza cocked his head, watching the consciousness of imminent death and agony flood into the man’s eyes. Soon his heels beat a brief tattoo on the floor and after a very few moments he was dead.

      The Baron neatly folded and sealed the two sheets of paper. ‘Poor fellow,’ del Garza said to the guards. ‘Carry him to his quarters and arrange things there. Make sure the bracket he hangs himself from is stout; he was a fleshy sort.’ He handed the papers to the chief guard. ‘Don’t forget to leave his resignation and most important, his confession, where they’ll be easily found.’

      The guard smiled as he took the papers. ‘That was neatly done, sir,’ he said. ‘Makes me feel like we’re getting a bit of our own back.’

      Del Garza looked at him for long enough that the man knew the Baron wasn’t amenable to flattery, then dismissed him.

      Alone, del Garza considered his choices. Leighton had to die; there was no other option. Had he remained alive, word of the Duke’s vulnerability would eventually spread. Loyalty to the Prince or avarice for Mockers’ gold, the reason for Leighton’s treason didn’t matter. What mattered was who would be looked at when Duke Guy returned from dealing with the Keshians in the Vale of Dreams.

      Del Garza could put a fair amount of responsibility on Radburn’s shoulders, with justification. His iron grip on the city had bred discontent, and the way in which he ran roughshod over the Prince’s own guards and the city’s constables would be certain to drive some firmly into the Prince’s camp.

      The handwriting was on the wall, as they say; Erland was dying, no matter what the healing priests and chirurgeons did to hold death at bay. With no son to inherit, Anita would be a prize for any ambitious man. And with the King having no heirs, her husband was but one step from the throne in Rillanon. So, Guy would marry Anita, and some day, sooner rather than later, del Garza judged, Guy du Bas-Tyra would become King Guy the First.

      Del Garza tapped his chin with a forefinger as he wondered where he might come out in all this. He was not by nature an ambitious man, but circumstances seemed to dictate that his choice was to rise or fall; there was no standing still. Hence, he would choose to rise. Who knew? An earldom in the east, perhaps near Rodez?

      But to rise, he had to avoid falling, and to do that, he had to survive Guy’s wrath when he returned and found the girl missing. He hoped Radburn would return soon with the girl in tow, or not return at all. If Jocko had the good grace to get himself killed in the attempt, everything would be his fault by the time del Garza got finished explaining things to the Duke. And that

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