Not toward the manor thoughThey let the pale...
Not toward the manor thoughThey let the pale moonlight lead them over the snow to the barns
There they found troubleThe largest barn was locked from the inside, and Baerd pointed silently, with a grimace, to a spill of torchlight that showed from under the double doorsHe mimed the presence of a guard
The three of them looked upThere was, clearly illuminated by Vidomni's glow, a single small window open, high up on the eastern side
Devin looked from Alessan to Baerd and then back to the PrinceHe looked at the bodies of the two men already dead
He pointed to the window and then to himself
After a long moment Alessan nodded his head
In silence, listening to the ragged singing from over in the manor-house, Devin climbed the outer wall of the Nievolene barnBy moonlight and by feel he deciphered hand and footholds in the coldWhen he reached the window he looked over his shoulder and saw Ilarion, just rising in the east
He slipped through and into the upper loftBelow, a horse whickered softly and Devin caught his breathHis heart thudding, he froze where he was, listeningThere was no other responseIn the sudden, seductive warmth of the barn he crawled cautiously forward and looked down
The guard was comprehensively asleepHis uniform was unbuttoned and the lantern on the floor by his side illuminated an empty flask of wineHe must have lost a dice roll, Devin thought, to have been posted so boringly tiffany jewellery on guard against nothing here among the horses and the straw
He went down the ladder without a soundAnd in the flickering light of that barn, amid the smell of hay and animals and spilled red wine Devin killed his first man, plunging his dagger into the Barbadian's throat as the man sleptIt was not the way his dreams of valiant deeds had ever had him doing this
It took him a moment to fight back the churning nausea that followedIt's the smell of the wine, he tried to tell himselfThere was also more blood than he'd thought there would beHe wiped his blade clean before he opened the door for the other two
"Well done," Baerd said, taking in the sceneHe briefly laid a hand on Devin's shoulder
Alessan said nothing, but by the wavering light Devin read a disquieting compassion in his eyes
Baerd had already set about doing what they had to do
They left the guard where he was to be burnedThe informer and the soldier from the Second Company they dragged towards one of the outbuildingsBaerd studied the situation carefully for a few moments, refusing to be rushed, then he placed the two bodies in a particular way, and wedged the door in front of them convincingly shut with what Devin assumed would later appear to be a dislodged beam
The singing from the manor had gradually been fading awayNow it had come down to a single voice drunkenly caroling a melancholy refrain about love lost long agoFinally tiffany and co jewelry that voice, too, fell silent
Which was Alessan's cueAt his signal they simultaneously set fire to the dry straw and wood in the guarded barn and two of the adjacent outbuildings, including the one where the dead men were trappedBy the time they were off the property the Nievolene barns were an inferno of flameHorses were screaming
There was no pursuitThey hadn't expected anyAlessan and Sandre had worked it out very carefully back in FerrautThe charred bodies of the informer and the Second Company soldier would be found by Karalius's menThe mercenaries of the First Company would draw the obvious conclusion
They reclaimed their horses and headed westThey spent the night outside again in the cold taking turns on watchIt had gone very wellIt seemed to have gone exactly as plannedDevin wished they'd been able to free the horses, thoughTheir screaming ran through his fitful dreams in the snow
In the morning Alessan bought a cart from a farmer near the border of Ferraut and Baerd bargained with a woodcutter for a load of fresh-cut logsThey paid the new transit duty and sold the wood at the first fort across the borderThey also bought some winter wool to carry to Ferraut town where they were to rejoin the others
There was no point, Alessan said, in missing a chance at a profitThey did have responsibilities to their partners
In fact, a disconcerting number of untoward events had ruffled the Eastern swiss cartier pasha seatimer Palm in the autumn and winter that followed the unmasking of the Sandreni conspiracyIn themselves, none of them amounted to very much; collectively they unsettled and irritated Alberico of Barbadior to the point where his aides and messengers began finding their employment physically hazardous, in so far as their duties brought them into proximity with the Tyrant
For a man noted for his composure and equanimity, even back in Barbadior when he'd been only the leader of a middle-ranking family of nobility, Alberico's temper was shockingly close to the surface all winter long
It had begun, his aides agreed amongst each other, after the Sandreni traitor, Tomasso, had been found dead in the dungeons when they came to bring him to the professionalsAlberico, waiting in the room of the implements, had been terrifyingly enragedEach of the guards, from Siferval's Third Company, had been summarily executedIncluding the new Captain of the Guard; the previous one had killed himself the night beforeSiferval himself was summoned back to Astibar from Certando for a private session with his employer that left him limp and shaking for hours afterwards
Alberico's fury had seemed to border on the irrationalHe had clearly, his aides decided, been radically unsettled by whatever had happened in the forestCertainly he didn't look well; there was something odd about one of his eyes, and his walk was peculiarThen, in omega speedmaster watches the days and weeks that followed, it became manifest, as the local informers for each of the three companies began to bring in their reports, that Astibar town simply did not believe, or chose not to believe, that anything had happened in the forest, that there had been any Sandreni conspiracy at all
Certainly not with the Lords Scalvaia and Nievole, and most certainly not led by Tomasso bar SandrePeople were commenting cynically all over the city, the word cameToo many of them knew of the bone-deep hatreds that divided those three familiesToo many knew the stories about Sandre's middle son, the alleged leader of this alleged plotHe might kidnap a boy from a temple of Morian, Astibar was saying, but plot against a Tyrant? With Nievole and Scalvaia?
No, the city was simply too sophisticated to fall for thatAnyone with the slightest sense of geography or economics could see what was really going onHow, by trumping up this "threat" from three of the five largest landowners in the distrada, Alberico was merely creating a sleek cover for an otherwise naked land grab
It was only sheerest coincidence, of course, that the Sandreni estates were central, the Nievolene farms lay to the southwest along the Ferraut border, and Scalvaia's vineyards were in the richest belt in the north where the best grapes for the blue wine were grownAn immensely convenient conspiracy, all the taverns and khav rooms cheap prada handbags ag