Kingdom's Fall

Chapter 8, Part 1

Gray tried to stay as still as he could while Ambrose, the stable-master, splinted two of his fingers together. The man had noticed Gray’s hand immediately, bringing it up almost as soon as he had identified himself, and offered to help. Gray was glad of it, as what little numbness there had been ebbed away and a slow, painful throb developed in its place. They retired to a cramped store room appended onto the back of one of the stalls where the stable-master kept all the tools, ointments, and other equipment needed for the care of horses. Gray’s hand, laid out on the table between them, was badly swollen along the bottom two fingers and palm, the skin around it dark with bruising. From the corner of the room, Cuan watched the procedure with squeamish interest.

“You’d be surprised how many of these I see,” Ambrose said, tightening the bandages and making Gray wince. “Sorry. It’ll ease off a bit soon. Just try to hold it up, above your head if you can.” Gray followed the man’s direction and lifted his arm up, bracing his elbow against the back of his chair.

“How long do I have to stay like this?”

“Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Hard to tell. Usually the lads that come in here with a broken fist are so full of drink they can barely feel it. I bandage them up and then they toddle straight off to bed to lie on it and make things worse. I get the feeling you’re unlikely to do the same.”

“You’ve got that right,” Gray said.

“Well, you’re lucky you didn’t seek out an army cutter to deal with this. All the ones I know would rather chop off your hand than let it heal.”

Gray thought back to all of the medics he had ever encountered, blunt, practical men, dulled to the point of implacability by exposure to every kind of wound and injury one man could inflict on another. “You’re not wrong,” he said. “Thanks for this.”

“No problem. Be sure to remind me before you go, I’ll make you a sling to keep it out of the way.”

“Again, thank you.”

“Now,” Ambrose said, leaning to one side and fetching up his tobacco pouch. “What can I do for you?”

“I want to know who bought their way into the palace to take the princess.”

The stable-master’s hands froze in mid air, a sizeable pinch of leaf caught between his fingertips. “Who told you?”

“The king,” Gray said.

“That’s impossible,” Ambrose said. “He questioned me himself. He promised to keep us out of this.”

“The king told me to find her, nothing else. I came to my own conclusions about who else might be involved.”

"Did you now? And how did you end up with me?” Ambrose’s hands went back to filling his pipe, but the motions were automatic. His eyes never left Gray’s face.

“The stables are a good place to start,” Gray said. “If the snatch was made outside the palace, someone in the stables would be able to quickly signal that the princess had left. If it was inside, the yard is a busy place, full of deliveries, difficult to guard or search. What better way to get something inside, out?”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“Not really. I’m sure there are other ways but, as I say, this is good a place to start.”

“Then you’ve come all this way for nothing.” Ambrose reached for the lamp to light a taper, and as he pulled it across the table between them the flame guttered and went out, leaving them in darkness. “Damn lamps,” he said. “Always when you least expect it.”