Two Kingdoms 27: Farmhouse

[DoctorM]

TWO KINGDOMS 27: FARMHOUSE

Author's Note: This is the twenty-fifth part of an AU construction about a very different post-1120 Gwynedd where the coronation challenge at Kelson's coronation went rather differently--- very differently. This episode falls immediately after "Hand and Eye". As always, input and comments are very much appreciated.

****

"If they come asking," Driss says, "I'll tell them the truth." He nods at the pair of Queen's Moors over by the door. "I had their book, and a couple of heretic bravos with blades came and took it, and I don't know where. That's straight-up truth." He's folding cloth round the heavy book and binding it in twine.

Driss slides the package down the counter to Christian. "They come asking, and I'm going to be angry about it all. I'll tell them that next time they get me involved in something where people with swords come calling, I'll triple the fees." He grins. "That goes for you, too."

Christian picks up the package. "Fair enough," he says. He grins back. "There's no problem paying to keep your shop open."

****

Christian is at the edge of the tree line, watching the farmhouse and the outbuildings. Almost dark, the violet hour fading into night. They're south out from Djellarda, and there's a breeze from the south-southwest. He can scent the desert on it.

He looks down the line of the trees at Rizak and signals. Rizak holds up a gloved fist: understood. This is all silent, here in the dusk. No words, no whispers, nothing Deryni— no mind-speaking, no witch-lights or handfire.

He sees Rizak slide back toward the trees and over towards his men. Rizak is Yusuf al-Fayturi's deputy, the second in command of the Shadow Queen's Moors.  He's syed of course, what the Western Moors call Deryni.  This will be Rizak's moment. Break wards, pick locks, infiltrate a fortress or a guarded town, debate the intricacies of Moorish theology— Rizak is good at it all.

Christian is focusing on the outbuildings— stables, privies, what's probably a shed for sheep. Nothing is stirring there. No voices, animal sounds, no lights or cooking smoke from the house itself. He's crouched down with his kinzhal loose in his hand, He knows as well as Rizak what could've been left in the farmhouse for unwanted visitors. He counts backward in his head from five in Darija— khamsa, reb'a, tlata, jouj, wahed —and...daba!— now! He raises a gloved hand and signals to the Moors.

When it happens, it happens in a heartbeat. There are sudden flashes of silver light down there— one in the farmhouse doorway, one on the tiled roof. Up on the tree line, every Deryni, every syed,  shudders for an instant. Inside the house,  whoever or whatever's Deryni will be blind and stunned.

Rizak and his men dash down the path to the door in a crescent. They sweep like wraiths across the yard. They're all in midnight blue, faces hidden behind lithams, cloth face-veils. Christian can see Rizak in the center of the crescent, greyhound-lean, a long dagger in his hand. There's the sound of wood splintering— two of the fedayin jamming pry-bars into the wooden shutters of the windows flanking the door. Rizak and the others kick in the farmhouse door. Christian watches for tumbling bursts of blue-green light— Rizak is tossing in specialized warding cubes to burn out any Deryni traps.

There's noise from the outbuildings, too. Christian's cousin Michael Gordon and half a dozen Falcon Horse are there, dashing through the stables, kicking open doors. No sounds, though, other than breaking wood. The Falcon troopers circle round to look for any cellar entrances.  A broken door swings open on one the privies.

It's all over in a minute or two. Fedayin are opening the upstairs shutters and signalling back— khawi, nothing. Christian stands and motions to the rest of his men. He slides his kinzhal back in its scabbard and strides down to the house. There's still wind out of the south, and he can feel the touch of desert night. 

Rizak is waiting for him at the doorway. He pulls down the blue veil. He shakes his head. "Khawi," he says. Rizak opens one hand. "Long gone."

Christian looks into the dark of the main room. "Anything left for us?"

Rizak steps inside. He looks around and stares at the corners and the walls. He holds up a hand and lets pale blue witch-light come up. He nods at the wall over the fireplace.  "There," he says.

Rizak strides over and stares hard at the wall. He pulls a slender metal pick from a belt pouch and scratches at the shadowed stone. He turns back to Christian. "Here we are." There's a red chip of something in his hand. He holds it up and nods toward the opposite wall. Christian taps a gloved hand at eye-level along the plastered stone.. There's something wedged into a chink. He twists it out. Flat red crystal, cracked along one side. He turns back to Rizak. "There's the match."

"Blanchement," Rizak says. "They cleaned up after themselves. That's good crystal. They knew exactly what they were doing."

Christian nods. He looks round at the other Moors. "Everything," he says in Darija. "Go through everything— every cupboard, every room, every floorboard. I want anything they left, anything at all."

There's a noise from the kitchen. Michael Gordon comes through, pulling down the desert scarf wrapped round his face. "Nothing out there," he says. "I mean, riding off on the horses, sure, but there's nothing at all." He grins. "They took the chickens, if you can believe it. They emptied the grain bins from the stables. They filled in the privy pits, too. Poured something ghastly down them—maybe quicklime." He shrugs. "There's horse dung in the stables, still, but it's dry as dust. They left a while ago.  They knew we'd be coming."

Christian holds up the broken crystal. "They knew somebody would be coming one day.  Not us, maybe, but somebody. And they were very thorough and very good. Crystal like this— I know what they did with it, but I don't where they'd get it, and I'm not sure I could use it. Whoever used this is seriously skilled."

He holds up a hand and lets blue witch-light drift up over his head. He points— there are writing desks facing each other down the length of the main room, three on a side. The angled writing surfaces touch, back to back. "That's where they had the copyists. Get down under the desks. Check the backs and bottoms. Get into the floorboards. Anything anybody dropped, anything that got left or stuffed away anywhere— I want it."

****

"I'm going to tell anybody who asks that armed zanadiqah came for the book," Driss says. "Djellarda's Djellarda, but no one here really knows what the heretics do down in Moorish country. Not even the Anvillers. You know that.  Most people don't even know Moors have heretics. But if you want, now, I can drop hints that maybe the Anvillers came for the book. These  hand-and-eye people, they aren't commanderie Anvillers. That should set a few cats loose among the mice."

Christian shakes his head. "No. Make it Moors. Let's send anybody looking down south. They don't have my name yet. They don't know I'm down here, or not yet. Nobody's looking for anyone from up  in Valoret yet."

"Djellarda's not a big town. I know your face here, even if it's been half a dozen years. Other people— maybe they know your face, too.  At least your name."

"No." Christian shrugs. "I haven't been down here in too long. Back then, I was here at the mektaba, but not around the Anvillers or the scholars.. Anybody knows my name, what they know is I'm in the Gwynedd wars. They know I'm up north, doing—"

"Doing whatever you do for your woman. Or whoever has your contract up there."

"Iyeh. Naam. Yes. Whatever it is I do these days."

****

Blue witch-light drifts over the copyists' desks. Christian is peering at the lacquered wood of the angled writing slopes. This is all good work, all good wood. It's as good as anything he's seen at abbeys. He has to shake his head at what's he's thinking— what one of these things would look like in his rooms at Valoret. He beckons the ball of light close. Everything here has been cleaned, wiped down with bleach. However many days it's been, the smell is still on the wood and in the joints.

There it is, up in the upper right corner of the slope. A tiny, stick-like hand and a tiny eye scratched into the wood. Something you'd do with the tip of a quill-knife or a fine-point stylus. The hand follows the eye, the eye directs the hand. 

Rizak motions to him. "Over here."

Christian looks up. Rizak is scraping at the wall where he'd found the bit of red crystal. "It's an eye," he says. "Look at yours."

Christian looks over at the wall. He follows his ball of witch-light over. Up a couple of feet from the where the crystal had been wedged there's another small eye incised into the plaster. "Here's the second one."

"Whoever they are, they set the crystals to wipe away anything Deryni we could get, anything anybody put on a shiral. They didn't set traps, though. They could've, but they didn't. They didn't burn the house down, either. They just cleaned up and walked away."

Michael Gordon is holding up a stylus point, In the shadow, it looks like a needle. "Down in the floorboards," he says. "Dried ink on it, nothing else."

Christian looks between the two of them. "They thought somebody might come, just not soon. No Deryni traps for visitors, and the house is still standing. They did a blanchement, but they didn't want to cause a stir in Djellarda. That means...at least some of them are still here." He looks at his cousin, "This isn't Coram— Coram's up in Gwynedd. But this is the heart of it. This is where the money is, too. Whatever Coram is doing, they're feeding him from here."

Rizak tilts his head back towards the north side of the house. "If these people are still here in town, shall I tell the old bookseller?"

Christian nods. "Send word to Driss. Tell him to be careful. Tell him I'm coming to see him."  He turns the bit of crystal in his fingers. "Michael— keep looking upstairs. Then...I think we're leaving town. I don't want the Anvillers or any of their friends to know we're here."

"Are we leaving men in town?" Rizak asks. "Are we still looking for any hand-and-eye people?"

"The Hands of Camber," Christian says. "No— call your people back in. The hand-and-eye folks, they're gone. But they'll have friends and listeners in Djellarda. We're going home." He looks at the crystal. "I know what they're thinking and I know what they want, What I need to find is where they're in touch with Coram. There's a money trail. We'll find that back home."

****

"I thought there'd be drama," Driss says. "I thought you and your heretic bravos would find the hand-and-eye people and start cutting throats. I wondered how you'd explain that to the Anvillers and the local senate,"

Christian is sipping from his wine cup. "No. No street fights, no climbing into houses after midnight, I don't want the Anvillers or anyone Anviller-related involved.  I have the book; I know what the hand-and-eye people claim to be. Up north is where I have to fight them."

"Good. We don't need the Gwynedd wars coming down here." Driss shakes a long, skinny finger at Christian. "I remember the stories about you when you were young: the mailed fist in the mailed glove."

"Was I ever like that? Is that what people said?"

"You need to admit it. You liked burning things a little too much."

Christian taps a finger on the package, "But never books."

"That I'll give you." Driss cocks his head, "You're going back north to your new wife, I know. The tall, scary blonde thing you were with down here. Your runaway ducal daughter. She's at Valoret, isn't she? Isn't that the story? You actually married the Shadow Queen at Valoret."

Christian smiles. "That I did. All five foot thirteen of her. It's a hell of a story. Light horse captain makes good, you know?"

Driss rolls his eyes. "What does that make you? King in the North? I'm not about to start saying Your Grace to you, so get over that."

"Not even close. I got to be a prince, though. Prince of Kheldour."

Driss opens both hands, "That's so very, very much you. Marry a queen, but get to be a prince in a place nobody's ever heard of. I don't even know where to find  your Kheldour."

"Far north. Really far. The top end of Gwynedd. Actually— Tolan and the West. We're not using 'Gwynedd', Charissa and I. That's a Haldane thing."

"A princedom out where nobody knows, and a kingdom you and your woman just conjured up out of thin air. Just what you'd do, isn't it?" Driss reaches for the wine flask. "Prince of Kheldour. It is a hell of a story. Just don't bring the wars down here. When you do find the hand-and-eye people, start cutting throats up north over the water. And you and your woman— make sure when the story gets written down that you're the one who gets to write the ending."

[Jerusha]

Still as engrossing as ever.  Well done!

[DoctorM]

Still as engrossing as ever.  Well done!

Thank you! I hope to do at least a couple more episodes before Christmas!