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  Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda

  Book Ten of the Guardians of the Flame

  Joel Rosenberg

  Kethol is an adventurer with an easy smile, a man who is quick with a quip and quicker with a sword.

  His partner, Pirojil, the ugly one, looks impressive and deceives people into thinking he's stupid to their sorrow-for his might and loyalty are worth a kingdom.

  And the fledgling wizard Erenor, a man who tries to stay two steps ahead of his enemies, as well as one step ahead of his friends.

  Loyal retainers they are, sworn to Jason Cullianane, a man who walked away from a crown, and who has been trying to convince all the almost-warring factions that he doesn't want the job back. Their lives aren't very easy, what with keeping Jason from getting killed by yet another conspiracy, rescuing some damsel or whatnot in distress, and squirreling away something for the ever-diminishing prospect of retirement.

  And now it looks like our heroes might wind up succeeding in none of their schemes, for there are plots within plots, and Kethol has been forced into a disguise not of his own making. There is magic aplenty in the air (and on the ground), and in order to save a kingdom, they may have to pull off a complicated scheme that could kill them all--or land them in positions of supreme power.

  But, hey, whoever said that a soldier's life was a cakewalk?

  Books by Joel Rosenberg from Tom Doherty Associates

  Home Front

  Foreign Land

  Not Exactly the Three Musketeers*

  Not Quite Scaramouche*

  Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda*

  *Fantasy

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

  NOT REALLY THE PRISONER OF ZENDA: A GUARDIANS OF THE FLAME NOVEL

  Copyright © 2003 by Joel Rosenberg

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form.

  Edited by Claire Eddy

  This ePub edition v1.0 by Dead^Man April, 2011

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor ® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 0-765-30046-X

  First Edition: June 2003

  0987654321

  For Dave Baker,

  owner/operator of http://www.slovotskys-laws.com

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Part 1

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  Part 2

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  Part 3

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  Part 4

  chapter 17

  Part 5

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  Part 6

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  Prologue

  THE NIGHT

  IT WAS, OF course, a dark and stormy night.

  That was the way that his luck was running.

  The gusty wind had let up — just for the moment, probably; life is like that — which merely made the hard rain beat straight down on him as Pirojil limped slowly through the mud down the Street of Two Dogs, looking for trouble.

  But he wasn’t finding any, not tonight.

  Unfortunately.

  The dim light leaking out from the tavern windows was the only illumination, and it was scant illumination at that — but there wasn’t much to see, anyway, except for the rain and the mud, and that was hardly worth looking at, anyway.

  He had already had to give up on the theater district, busy as it had been — and it had been busy: Birth of an Empire was still doing a full-house business at the House of Wise Tidings, night after night after night.

  Pirojil didn’t understand that at all. He had finally forced himself to sit through the whole play; a mugger’s pouch had contained a couple of Karlsday Night tokens, and there was no need to let them go to waste. It made no sense that the playwright had received applause after the final curtain, instead of the rapidly thrown rotten fruit — or, better, rocks — that the idiot fully deserved.

  It wasn’t just this one theater that was doing well, though. The other theaters were crowded, despite the fact that yet another had opened since the last time that Pirojil had been in the capital.

  But, despite the threat of rain in the clouds and in the air that had become a promise too well kept, the streets in the theater district had been just this side of lined with not only the capital armsmen, but more than a few nobles’ guards. Pirojil had spotted some Imperials that he knew were from the Emperor’s Own — Silver Company, he thought, although with the recent shake-up, they could have been moved to Gold or Purple — which meant that the nobility attending theater tonight included more than just a few nobles minor, but some of the major landed nobility, as well.

  Shit.

  You could pretty much trust the old-line nobility to ruin a good thing, at least for a night. The theater district was often prime hunting ground for footpads and such, but tonight it had been far too well watched for the footpads’ purposes, or for Pirojil’s own.

  So he had moved along, down to less well-off districts, and then the rain had finally hit, driving everybody indoors, apparently.

  Rain.

  It was more than unfortunate, worse than unfortunate — it was unprofitable, as well as being miserably cold and even more miserably wet, and he hoped that it wasn’t a harbinger of things to come. He would have to get used to doing this alone sooner or later, and to Pirojil’s way of thinking, later was usually worse than sooner.

  He and Kethol and Erenor had, until recently, been supplementing their pay with the occasional footpad in much the same way that he and Kethol had when they were partnered with Durine. The Three Swords Inn — if there ever was a Three Swords Inn — would not be built with what three soldiers could save from their pay, despite Pirojil’s recent promotion to captain.

  Biemestren’s wealth, and the trade constantly flowing in and out of the capital, supported the largest criminal class in the Empire, probably in the Middle Lands. You could hang all the thieves you wanted to in the square — and hangings were a standard part of Tenthday entertainment for the masses — but, as far as Pirojil could tell, all that really did was give the pickpockets and pouch slashers a distracted crowd in which to ply their trades.

  It had always seemed to Pirojil and particularly to Durine amusing — not to mention profitable, although the profit was the entire point of the whole thing, after all, and the amusement just a bonus — to let that criminal class help support them.

  After all, how could a robber complain about being robbed?

  What were they going to do? Go pound on the door of the jail and ask the armsmen to arrest the erstwhile victims who, instead, had beaten the robbers and taken everything they had, from their pouches, to their knives, even to their brass belt buckles?

  Biemestren armsmen, like armsmen everywhere, weren’t renowned for their senses of humor, and besides, Pirojil, Kethol, and Erenor had not lolled about at the scene of the crime either, as Biemestren armsmen probably wouldn’t have found their hobby terribly amusing — and neither would Baron Cullina
ne, which was only part of the reason the three of them had always been careful.

  Jewelry was a problem only in that you could never get its full value — but the gems could be pried out and sold separately, and while it was always a shame to ruin some delicately crafted setting or pendant, it was also safer to simply melt it for the value of the gold or silver.

  They had once managed to acquire a particularly gorgeous brooch, beautiful enough that Kethol had been tempted to find the rightful owner — some minor lord from Niphael, judging from the filigree work; it would have been easy to find out which visiting noble had been set upon that night — but, for once, it hadn’t taken much effort for Pirojil and Durine to talk him out of doing anything stupid.

  Common soldiers who were supplementing their pay with a little bit of private enterprise among the criminal class — even if it consisted of stealing from the criminal class — couldn’t afford to draw any attention to themselves.

  Money was money, of course, and the most they ever had to do was carefully examine the silver coins — or, all too rarely, a gold one — for any distinctive markings that had been scratched on to it. On the rare occasions that they found any, that coin, too, would go into the melting pot. The evening wasn’t over until they had melted the silver and gold — separately, of course — and reduced them to unidentifiable metal lumps.

  That part Pirojil could do himself, of course. But it really took more than one person to do the rest of it effectively, not to mention safely.

  There had to be one person acting as bait, and Pirojil wasn’t the best bait. He was above average in size, for one, and a close look — which he hoped would come too late, which should come too late in the dark — would reveal that his preposterously ugly face was creased with scars, proclaiming him a less than ideal target.

  He did the best he could.

  A floppy cap covered where the tip of his left ear had been bitten off even better than his fringe of hair could. His slick oiled canvas rain cloak, with its mirror-polished silver buttons, hid the brace of knives at his hip and the sword that was slung down his back, while the buttons acted as an additional garnish on the bait. His short, heavy dagger was in his right hand, but he had it in a reverse grip, the blade flat along his forearm, and he always made a point, before going out, to be sure that he had fully blackened its surface by holding it over a candle. It would be hard enough to see the blade in daylight, and at night it would be effectively invisible.

  Not that he was going to have any use for the knife, unfortunately. Even the pouring rain couldn’t wash from the air all of the garlicky smells of roasting meat that mixed with the sounds of laughter from the taverns, but the rain had almost emptied the streets. It lacked an hour of midnight, and even an Imperial soldier who was due to stand the next watch — and who at least thought that his decurion was too lazy to check for the smell of beer on his breath — wouldn’t think of leaving the warmth and comfort of the tavern to go out into the storm until either the storm passed or the various stations of the Nightwatch, scattered throughout the city, began to echo the sounding of the warning bell.

  Shit, all of the Nightwatch on duty in this part of town were probably inside, somewhere, keeping themselves warm and dry, too, although the fact that none of the lanterns in front of each shop and home were lit was only weak evidence for that, and didn’t approach proof. There was no point, after all, in rousting the locals out of their bed to light the lanterns, no matter what the law said, if the next blast of wind was simply going to blow the lantern out again.

  A stray dog rooted in a pile of garbage in the alley next to the largest of the taverns, but if there were eyes peering out of the dark at him, Pirojil couldn’t see them.

  He staggered on down the muddy street, listening, ever hopefully, for quiet splashes behind him, but hearing nothing but the damn rain.

  It was useless, and he probably should have quit tonight before beginning. Still, he would have to get used to doing this alone sooner or later, after all, and at least to Pirojil’s way of thinking, sooner was better than later.

  Durine was dead, his body rotting in that cave in Keranahan under a cairn of rocks; Erenor wasn’t trustworthy; and Kethol wasn’t even Kethol anymore — he was Forinel.

  So if Pirojil was going to work this scheme, he would have to do this by himself, and he might as well get used to it now.

  Durine had worked it by himself from time to time, but Pirojil had always thought that you really should have at least two, preferably three men. Beyond the bait — and you had to have good bait — it was just this side of necessary to have at least another one, or preferably two, in case you actually struck gold. Or, more commonly, silver. And sometimes only copper.

  And tonight, apparently, nothing except mud, and if mud was valuable, peasants would be princes.

  The streets were more than due for a good cleaning; his boots sunk almost to the calf in spots, and it was just as well, at least while he was struggling to get himself clear, that he was alone.

  Of course, he could have walked along the wooden sidewalks, which were raised up just out of the mud of the street, but he was supposed to be scared — a merchant, perhaps a frightened horse trader from the territories, hurrying back to his inn after closing a deal, constantly clutching at his pouch, visibly patting at it to be sure that it still was there, while unintentionally reassuring anybody watching that here there was money for the taking.

  Pirojil had learned some useful things from Erenor about maintaining a disguise. Erenor was a wizard, granted, and much of what he did in creating a seeming was magic — but not all of it, not always. He said that putting on a seeming was always more than just magic, and sometimes didn’t require magic at all, and could be utterly ruined if, say, you looked like a bent, wizened wizard but carried yourself with the easy grace and bold strides of a young man.

  For this, you needed to do more than act like you were a victim, looking for a place to be victimized — you had to be the victim, to know yourself the victim, to believe with every move you made that you were the victim, curse yourself for finding yourself in Dogtown too late on a night when even the Nightwatch barely ventured out into the rain.

  Pirojil was, he hoped, putting on a good show, but there was nobody watching, and, of course, his new rain cloak leaked.

  Shit. He should have expected that. There should have been a flap of cloth over the shoulder seams, because no matter how much you oiled the seams, they always leaked, and Pirojil’s old ragged rain cloak, which hung in the bureau in his quarters, was of better construction than this — it just looked cheap. This poor excuse for a slicker had left him soaked and miserable, and his teeth were starting to chatter with the cold.

  He hurried along.

  Just one more trip up Dog Street, then down Blacksmith’s Way — although why they called it that Pirojil didn’t know; there were no smithies along that twisting street, and had been none the first time he had been in Biemestren, years ago — and then he would give up.

  Which he did, wet, cold, muddy, and empty-handed.

  He paused for a moment under an overhang and wrung his floppy hat out just as a matter of good practice, although the point of it escaped him. The hat, even wrung-out, was still soggy, and when he walked out into the rain it would become instantly soaked, once again. Which, of course, wouldn’t have made it any less useful for flinging up and into a face while he went in low behind his knife, but he clearly wasn’t going to be having the opportunity to do that, not tonight.

  It seemed that the armies of thieves and footpads and muggers and such that infested the capital were taking the night off, at least until the rain let up, and Pirojil should probably have been smart enough to do the same in the first place, rather than spending a couple of hours tromping through mud, with nothing to show for it but wet clothes.

  Well, so much for this ….

  ***

  He made his way back up the hill to the outer gate of Biemestren Castle, and cursed his l
uck when the rain finally stopped just at the very moment that he reached the top of the hill.

  It was one of those nights.

  He thought for a moment about going back down into the town, but decided against it. He was getting tired, and tired men made mistakes, and it was bad enough a night without ending up beaten and dead in some alleyway.

  He stripped off his floppy hat, and twisted it once again until he got most of the water out, then folded it and his slicker across his arm, revealing the tunic underneath.

  Not that the guards would need to see the tunic — his face was, unfortunately, so distinctively ugly that he would be instantly recognized.

  Surprisingly, he didn’t have to knock on the small door in the main gate, as it swung open at his approach. He was reaching for the pass that he had put into what he hoped was a sufficiently waterproof packet under his tunic, but the guard didn’t challenge him.

  “A pleasant evening to you, Captain Pirojil,” the guard said. “A little wet out tonight, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Well, in fact, Pirojil did mind his saying so — Pirojil was soaked like a drowned rat, and he hardly needed any comments from some lucky soldier who had been fortunate enough to be able to spend his evening warm and dry in shelter of the guardhouse, with a warm brazier of coals to keep him company — but it didn’t seem like a good idea to put the man at a brace and explain that in detail, despite the strong temptation.

  You made enough enemies in this life, as it was, and shouting at the lucky sod wouldn’t have made Pirojil any warmer or drier.

  “Yes,” he said, “it’s been just a little bit damp, at that.”

  The soldier surprised him by offering him a folded blanket; it was warm, warm enough that it had probably been sitting next to that brazier, waiting to comfort some officer, or even a noble, who had been foolish enough to go out on a night like this. That was very nice of —