Chapter 29: Froggy (2)

“I know, I thought you'd like it.”

“So if Mark does emerge for whatever reason then Kerrass can say “Aha! You are no longer indisposed, ready to answer some questions now?”,”

“Yep, and also. I've known your Witcher for an hour at best but I can just tell that he's going to turn up at all hours of the day and night just to check on the Arch-Bishop's health.”

“That sounds like him.”

We were both laughing when Emma's maid found us and handed me a piece of paper. She nodded to me and frowned at Sam before leaving just as quickly.

The note said that I was to meet Kerrass and Emma at Dad's study.

“What's her story?” I asked as I got up to leave,

“Who?”

“Emma's maid.”

“The flame only knows. She was here when I got back. She's got more status in the castle than everyone but the family and the Seneschal. Cold one though.”

“Tried your luck did you?”

“Some of us don't have sinister Vampire ladies to keep us warm at night so I gave it a try yeah, I mean look at her, she's gorgeous.”

“Knocked you back did she?”

“With enough force to leave a bruise.”

I hissed in sympathy “Serves you right.”

“Probably.”

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“Anyway,” I said with a grin. “Duty calls.”

“Yeah well,” Sam's smile faded. “Good luck.”

I grunted and left.

Kerrass and Emma were waiting for me outside of Father's old office. This was the hallowed place, the room where the vast empire ran. I had rarely been in here but those times that I had been in here had made my head spin.

I am a clever man. I don't say this to boast but I am smart. Some would say intelligent and some others would go even further and suggest that I am gifted. An enormous compliment that I don't really think that I deserve. Believe me when I say that I got absolutely nothing on my father.

That room was like a whirlwind. A tornado of paper, people shouting and arguing. Often with each other and against each other. Pieces of paper were flying everywhere, draws and shelves were emptied and filled. All the while with a couple of scribes who spend their entire time just sitting in the corner and recording everything. At any one time Father ensured that he had six fully trained members of the Scribes guild in the castle attached to his staff at any given time. They worked in a shift pattern so that they could attend father around the clock and all day, every day. As well as their abilities to write, transcribe and record all of fathers daily meetings they were also expected to keep up with Father in all of his other activities. Hunting being the most obvious one so that if someone tried to discuss business or politics during the Hunt, there could be a record of it.

Along with all of this flying paperwork their were lawyers, servants, merchants, nobles and all of the other people that father needed to run his commercial empire and ask Father for little favours. All the little favours.

Always sat in the middle of it sat my Father, listening, taking it all in. He liked to sit perfectly still, his fingers pressed together in a way that always made people think of a church roof. This attitude that he was half asleep or not really listening meant that people thought that they could get one over on him and he would say that this was when people's real thinking came out. Then he would move suddenly and pounce on a comment, or make a decision here or order something else to be done. Emma had once said that he looked like a spider in their web. Sam said he looked like a general amongst the generals staff. To me, he always put me in mind of a cat. A well fed cat who is surrounded by mice and birds and other animals that would normally be the cats prey. The cat lies there with his eyes close and lets them all come closer, closer still, closer and then just when they prey thinks that he is asleep.... He Pounces and purrs as they all flee.

I hadn't been in here in a long time.

Emma was pale, her hair tied up in a tight bunch at the top of her head. She looked as though she had been crying a little. I got a little angry at that but when I raised my eyebrow at her she smiled a little and nodded. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

The small interactions that exist between people never cease to astonish.

Kerrass was frowning intensely at the door but was clearly waiting for me.

“You summoned?” I managed with little humour.

“Yes,” Kerrass was all business and turned to us both. “Frederick, you are here because I may need some practical help, Lady Emma, you are here because I suspect that this room is familiar to you and I need a guide but also as a witness to see that I don't move anything or interfere with anything.”

Emma and I nodded.

“Milady, you are well?” Kerrass was all polite solicitude. “This can wait.”

Emma seemed to straighten herself.

“I am fine, please proceed.”

“Now just to be clear, the door was closed when the body was found.”

“Yes, it seemed indelicate to occupy the room while Father was ill so we shut the door.”

“And locked it?”

“Yes,”

“Was it unlocked that morning when the body was found?”

“Yes,”

“Who has the keys?”

“I do, Mother does, Father had a set of keys as well as his chief scribe and lawyer. Also the housekeeper who let the servants in who were responsible for keeping the place clean.”

“So lots of people then.”

“Yes, but all of those people are trustworthy.”

Kerrass nodded.

“Is it locked now?”

“Yes, Sir Robart insisted on that.”

“A point for Sir Robart. Open it please.”

Emma produced a large key from a pouch at her side and opened the door.

Kerrass did not enter. Instead he knelt down and examined the lock in detail as well as the side of the door before grunting.

“No signs of forced entry so either Edmund was let in first, or the killer was in here waiting for him. Lets go in. Please keep to the edges of the room.”

We filed in. Kerrass fell to his knees and over the next several minutes spent a good deal of time frowning at the carpeting on the floor. Knowing what to look for I could see his pupils dilating and contracting and he audibly sniffed several times.

Emma and I stood next to the large window and, not for the first time in this whole affair, I felt like a school child waiting to be scolded. You know, that thing where you look at everything around you, your shoes, the examination of the dust motes floating through a sunbeam. Then you shift your weight a bit from one foot to the other and realise that you've got no idea what to do with your hands so you try out a couple of different ideas. In your belt, behind your back. One hand in different positions from the other before you eventually settle on just leaving them in the same place they were originally.

Kerrass meanwhile was edging his way across the carpet, nose along the floor until he got to the desk where he stood up and stared at the chair that was behind the desk at an angle. There was a large blood stain on the carpet underneath the chair and across the chair itself. I shuddered to think how much blood would be on the corpse itself. He looked at it all from different angles and different distances, frowning all the time.

I cannot emphasise how boring and frustrating it was to watch him doing this.

I can, however, admit to a certain amount of pride that I wasn't the first person to crack.

“Seven people?” my sister said quietly.

“What?”

“Seven people. You've killed seven people?” There was a look in her eye as though she was seeing me for the first time.

I blew out some air.

“Yes. There are possibly some more but those are the ones that we can absolutely confirm. They're not the ones that I severely injured or the ones that might have died from their wounds later.”

There was a long pause. I was disturbed by what I saw in her gaze then and I looked away.

“Was it hard?”

“That depends on the circumstances.”

“Don't mince words with me Freddie,” I couldn't tell what she was thinking. Whether she was mad at me, worried for me or just curious.

“Physically it's very hard. Much harder than I thought it was going to be and I was surprised at how much training was involved. It's not just about strength but it's about where you hit them and what you hit them with and how you hit them. Otherwise you're just... Hitting a slab of meat with a stick.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I know but there are many different areas to it. Mentally?”

I took another deep breath.

“It's not as hard as you might think to kill while you defend yourself. When that guy means you harm and he absolutely intends to kill you and it's a choice between killing him or dying yourself then that's easy. The harder one is killing someone who isn't attacking you but is attacking someone else. That I found really hard but I was cured of that when it nearly killed me.”

Emma nodded encouragement. “Does it haunt you? Do you have nightmares?”

“No. Not about them. Not really anyway. Combat nightmares happen as I imagine all the things that might have gone wrong and all the ways that I might have died or those times when I really wanted to run away. I get nightmares about the people I've killed mixed in with those for a while but then they tend to go away after that. I get nightmares about those times I personally faced monsters. Without going into it, well, you've read the first account with the village and the Nekkers right?”

She nodded.

“That boy in the cottage having blood explode from his mouth as the Nekker bit down. That shit haunts me. The sound of his Mother's screaming...”

I shook my head in a half shudder, half conscious effort as the scream echoed through my skull then before I could banish it from my mind.

“Oh Freddie.”

I took the risk of looking at her and I was ashamed to think that I had expected condemnation from my sister of all people. Instead I saw sympathy and understanding.

Oddly, it was worse.

“But with the people, you try and find their names?”

“Yes,”

“Why?”

“I have thought about why I do it. In each case it was either kill or be killed, directly or as a result of other things, or allow something worse to happen to other people. I killed a knight that had me hostage who was trying to use me to force Kerrass into doing something. I started the fight but he had a knife to my throat so I feel justified in that one. But I digress.

“I look at these men and I think to myself that the only difference between them and me is an accident of birth. Of seven people, Two were bandits, another three were knights or soldiers who had been ordered to kill or detain me. A sixth was a city thief who tried to rob and kill me and he died because he didn't expect me to draw my own knife and ran onto it. The seventh was a poor, stupid man who tried to lynch Kerrass and I after we had helped with their monster problem and had decided that they no longer wanted to pay us. Of all of them he's the one who I feel sorry for as he was coerced into it by a ringleader who didn't dare attack us himself and instead coerced and pleaded so that others did his own dirty work.”

“And you know all their names?”

“No, I tried but no, I don't know them all. That haunts me occasionally. I try and pray for them but...his companions fled and he died before he could tell me his name.”

“What happened?”

I smiled a little sadly.

“It's a more common story on the road than you might think. People like Kerrass and I don't generally get attacked by bandits because we're obviously armed and there's only two of us so they weigh up the benefits of how much we're carrying against how many of them might be hurt. He insists that I wear basic clothing so it doesn't look like we're particularly rich. At worst the bandits jump out, try to look intimidating, we draw our weapons and tell them to fuck off. Eventually it turns out that they don't dare attack when their targets are ready for them and we move on.

“But every so often we come across those people who are less fortunate.

“We were heading South into Nilfgaard and along the road we came across a peddlers wagon. You know the type, festooned with scraps and odd things to be bought and sold. The Tarpaulin that covered it had been torn and there were items strewn all over the road. The horse was dead, filled with arrows and there was a Man and a woman nearby. He had been killed as he had dismounted for whatever reason and she was a little distance off near a tree. I won't go into detail but it was an unpleasant scene.”

“I'm grateful for that.” Emma was already pale and looked as though she was beginning to regret asking.

“But then we heard a young woman screaming. Kerrass tried to stop me, it's one of those circumstances where he tries not to get involved. But I didn't listen and charged off into the woods. We found the couple's daughter held on the floor and there were six bandits arranged around her. You can guess what was happening. I charged in and ran one of the men through. The others grabbed for clothes and weapons but it was clear that things would have gone badly for me if Kerrass hadn't appeared, sword drawn and killed another. The other four put up a little fight but they cut and run quickly when it was obvious that Kerrass outclassed them after killing another.

“I remember trying to help the girl. I took a blanket and offered it to her so she could cover up but she pulled a knife from the corpse of one of the bandits and slashed it at me. I recoiled and she ran off into the trees, following the direction that the bandits went. I didn't understand it at all and I still don't but Kerrass insists that it isn't unusual for that reaction in victims.”

I shook myself and my eyes focused again.

“Anyway. I couldn't get his name as he was already dead before I could think to act.”

Emma was watching Kerrass again.

“I can't imagine,” she said after a while.

“No, neither could I. I still can't despite having seen it for myself.”

She nodded and we stood together in silence for a while.

“Do you want to ask me?” she said suddenly, her voice small and timid.

“Ask you?”

“My secret.” She shook her head, a bit more defiance leaking through.

“Nah,” I said. “I did think about it but then I thought that you would tell me when you were comfortable with it or when it was important. Until then, it's not my business.”

She made a small sound, like a cross between a sob and an explosive expulsion of relief. She took my arm and rested her head on my shoulder.

“Thank you Freddie.”

Kerrass was watching us.

“Have you two done making up and getting your family in order?”

Emma and I looked at each other, her eyes were suspiciously misty.

“Yeah,” I said, “yeah I think so.”

“Good, in which case I have a number of questions for the Lady.”

“Please Master Witcher, could you not call me Emma. You have saved my brothers life, from what he tells me, on several occasions and I feel that you are deserving of it. If matters were different I would say that you were almost part of the family.”

Kerrass twitched a little. “I would be honoured to call you by your given name milady, however I do not feel that it would be appropriate at this time as I am still engaged professionally.”

“I understand.”

Kerrass waited for a while while Emma wiped her eyes a bit. It was turning into an emotional day.

“At the end of the day's business. How does things work. In other words, who is the last person out of this room before it being closed for the evening?”

“Father, every time.”

“Why?”

“He said that he liked to keep everything in order and wanted to make sure that it would be for the following day.”

“When is the room cleaned?”

“First thing in the morning.”

“And the cleaning staff are let in by the Housekeeper?”

“Yes.”

“Is this room ever used when your father is absent?”

“No,”

“I understand that there is another filing office where people who are not in the loop of awareness come in and leave their reports?”

“There is,”

“To help protect security?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what's in the drawers and cubbyholes?”

“Yes, Father had a particular system that he liked to institute. The system is occasionally shifted so that it isn't the same all of the time.”

“Interesting. And Impressive from a security standpoint. Did you not find that this made life more difficult having to shift things round all the time.”

“Not really. Only those of us who knew the formula for the filing could properly put things away and we were the ones that were trusted to do that filing.”

“Interesting. Who were those people?”

“Myself, Obviously Father as he invented it. I think Mother knows it but I have never been sure. Father's lawyer and his chief accountant...”

For a moment Kerrass dropped his professional mask. “He has more than one accountant?”

“Oh yes. No one person could keep it all in their heads.”

Kerrass shook his head in amusement before the Witcher in him came back. “Anyone else?”

“The scribes and one or two of his chief agents.”

Kerrass nodded. “Are there any cubbyholes, cupboards, drawers or safes that do not have their contents

rotated?”

“A couple.”

“What makes them different?”

Emma grimaced. “They are the ones with the expensive Gnomish locks.”

Kerrass nodded. “How expensive?”

“I never found out but it is really expensive.”

Kerrass nodded before turning back to the rows upon rows of shelves. He shifted his view and closed one eye, then the other. He told me to close the drapes and the room was plunged into darkness. Kerrass clicked his fingers and a candle sprang into light which Kerrass held aloft.

“Thank you Freddie you can open the drapes again. Now milady, if I point to a couple of drawers and cupboards could you tell me what's in them. I don't need to look inside yet but a brief overview of the contents will be important.”

“I think so.”

“What's in this drawer?” Kerrass pointed at a relatively small drawer that was in a bank of about twelve drawers of similar size.

“That one is... That one is the travel itinerary for last month.”

“Last month?”

“Yes, who father visited, where he went and who he spoke to and about what.”

“Did anything interesting happen last month?”

“Not that I remember.”

Kerrass nodded before moving to a much smaller cabinet. He spent a bit more time peering closely at the door and the lock. “What's in here.”

“Father's journals.”

“Have they been emptied since this accident?”

“No,”

At first Kerrass seemed to be surprised but then his face smoothed over again.

Finally he moved to a drawer at the bottom of a small chest of drawers. The draw was quite wide but not very tall. This time Kerrass didn't bother examining it. “This one?”

“Fathers appointments diary. Those people for when he books meetings with specific people.”

“Can I have a look at it?”

Emma grimaced a little.

“Very well, I won't force the issue at the moment.” He stood up and had another look around. He walked back to the chair behind the desk. He examined the desk carefully.

“So the body was sat in the chair?”

“Yes,”

“With it's feet on the desk?”

“One foot. The other foot was resting under the chair.”

“Was the body slouched?”

Emma frowned in confusion.

“Did it look like he had slid down the chair after his injury?”

“I don't think so,”

“Why not?”

“Because there were no scuff marks on the blood soaked carpet.”

Kerrass smirked a little. “And he was resting his head on the back rest?”

“Yes,”

“Well done Milady. I can see where Freddie gets his eye for detail from.”

He turned back to stare at the chair. He then peered at the carpet and adjusted the chairs position slightly.

“Was that him paying me a compliment?” Emma asked me as Kerrass froze staring at the chair.

“Yes, enjoy it. They don't come often when he gets like this.”

Emma nodded.

Kerrass meanwhile made a couple of strong stabbing motions towards the chair before nodding.

“OK. I've seen what I want to see. I understand that the body is still in the cellar?”

“Yes,”

“Freddie, could you get my kit and meet us down there?”

Kerrass left as I went on my errand and I found them in the deepest wine cellar that we owned.

It was cold down there and although I had prepared by finding a thicker tunic I could see that that Emma was feeling uncomfortable.

“In here?” Kerrass asked.

“Yes,”

“Has he been cleaned?”

She nodded, hugging herself.

“Stripped?”

“I don't know.”

Kerrass thought for a moment before nodding and opened the door.

Edmund was lying a little way in. He had been cleaned and stripped and although I had seen many corpses by now and helped Kerrass with a number of different autopsies to help identify what had killed them. This was different. I felt uncomfortable and dirty.

I hadn't seen Edmund in a number of years now but even then I found that I was a little surprised at how much he had changed. I knew that he was, or at least had been, a skilled duellist. A skill that he used to protect himself from various angry husbands, fathers and brothers and so he was always thin and lean. A fact of which he was exceedingly proud. The man lying on the slab in front of us had begun to develop a paunch, his muscle definition had reduced considerably and he was balding with his hair obviously having been dyed back to it's original black. No natural hair is that black. I find myself now remembering the Edmund that I knew. The bully of the castle who I, as a young boy, couldn't help but look up to and worship as my social superior until I discovered, much to my pleasure now, that I lacked his taste for hurting others both socially and physically.

Kerrass of course was all business, lighting torches and laying out his tools.

Emma asked if she could go at one point but Kerrass pointed out that he wanted to make sure that no-one could accuse him, or me of interfering with the corpse and she nodded and proceeded to suffer in silence.

It was a long half an hour as I held the torch close to the body and helped examine it in minute detail. We lifted the arms to check the armpits, the groin for other signs (Incidentally, there is no embarrassment quite like discovering that your elder brother had suffered from a particular nasty form of the pox while inspecting his dead body in the company of your elder sister) as well as the backs of the knees and the soles of his feet.

Try as we might we could find no other injury before we finally came down to the injury on the neck.

The wound itself was a very precise wound and talking it over we decided that the entry had been fast and strong with a very sharp knife but that there had then been some tearing as the knife was withdrawn, either from the movements of the killer or from the thrashing of the victim.

The blade itself will have been very small with one edge fully sharpened and only the tip of the other edge similarly sharpened. Kerrass thought it could be a kitchen knife or a sewing knife of some kind. The sort of thing that anyone might pick up, sharpen for use and then drop unobtrusively somewhere and we decided that looking for the weapon was a bit of a waste of time.

We packed up and moved back to the courtyard so that Emma could sit in the sun for a bit.

“Just a couple of questions Milady before we...I beg your pardon, I let you get back on with your day. I imagine that you would have mentioned it if someone had prominently lost their favourite knife as that would have been looked for by even the most amateurish investigator but has anything else gone missing?”

Emma thought,

“Such as?”

“I'm thinking specifically of your dressmakers or seamstresses losing a dressing dummy or a fighting dummy being missing from the armoury.”

“Not that I can think of. Why?”

“Just a thought. Does everyone have an alibi?”

Emma snorted. “Quite the opposite in fact. None of us have alibis. It happened late at night. Any one of us could have committed the murder. Also every one of us, theoretically of course, had reason to dislike or hate Edmund.”

Kerrass nodded. “That in and of itself is significant.” He pursed his lips and frowned in thought again before he visibly gave up on whatever line of thought had caught him. “Very well, in that case what I need now is a list of the biggest castle gossips. It doesn't matter who they are or what social status they are but Anyone that would notice even the smallest detail changing in the castle. Also if you have a record of events in the castle as to who was visiting and why at any given time within the period of about a week before your fathers death and now. Can that be arranged?”

“Certainly. You want Debbie the cook and Theo the gate guard for gossip and the Chamberlain can provide you with records.”

“Can you introduce me, or give me a guide to take me to them.”

“I can do that,” I said, feeling a little peeved to be left out.

“No you can't,” Kerrass said shortly. “You're done for now.”

“But...”

“Nope. I will tell you when I find something to tell you about but I do not work with the client hanging over my head. You of all people should know that.”

I was stunned into silence.

“Your maid can guide you.” Emma put into the awkward silence.

Kerrass nodded and stalked off without a word.

Emma followed him after putting her hand on my shoulder for a moment.

I lost track of how long I stood there for.

Because then I spent the rest of that day and a good chunk of the following day waiting for something to happen.

Kerrass meanwhile had wandered off.

Literally.

He spent the remains of the day that we examined the body chatting to various servants and making friends with guardsmen. I found him chatting and making jokes with the gate guard and sharing some dwarven spirits with the serving staff. I'm told that he even stood the early watch with some of the men and took a sword fighting class in the morning with some of those men who the Captain thought could handle the Witcher's teachings. I have it on good record that he spent a good hour wading through the cess-pit and those areas where the toilets in the castle emptied out onto. He marched out like a man with a purpose and spent a good afternoon climbing through the kitchen waste that goes into a heap a few hours away from the castle where it gets composted down for the fields. There didn't seem to be anyone who he didn't spend time with or make friends with, other than the family itself. He even vanished off to Oxenfurt for a day to “pursue enquiries there” and didn't come back until late that evening.

Even though I had been warned, both from my own experience and from Kerrass' mouth itself that this would have been hard I found the entire process immensely difficult and frustrating. Eventually I found myself an empty office and got down to some work. The university had gotten wind that I was a days ride away and had forwarded a lot of my correspondence onto me. It turned out that I was becoming an authority on several subjects that I wasn't entirely comfortable with and had a large number of letters to write. I began my write up of our adventures in Angraal as well as taking the opportunity to work with Emma on my first private letter between myself and Ariadne. I was bemused to discover that even this has a lot of tradition and routine in it. That although it was supposed to be “private” correspondence that only I wrote and Ariadne would read, there was a lot of things that needed to be said as well as more than a few things that ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT BE SAID UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Those things seemed to be all about titles, negotiations, any potential dowry or transfer of wealth or anything like that. A union between the two of us would need to be gone through with a fine toothed comb both by Ariadne's people and my lawyer.

It turned out that I have one. If anyone can recommend a cream or some other agent for me to remove a lawyer legally then please pass it on. Kerrass has also refused the contract claiming that even he doesn't hunt certain kinds of monsters.

I jest as the man is as inoffensive and funny as they come while also being terrifyingly intelligent.

I also spent as much time as I could at Father's bedside but I will admit that it was deathly boring. He was comatose for much of the time and whenever he did manage to wake up he was only awake for a few moments at which time he would eat something laced with pain relief so strong that it would flatten a decent sized horse.

Over time I could see my Father wasting away before my eyes becoming more and more skeletal, Splotches began to appear on his skin and what remained of his hair was falling out which was when that most insidious of thoughts crossed my mind. That first time that I thought to myself that it would be better for everyone, including him, if he could just die. That it would be a mercy for him that he would no longer be in pain and then everyone could move on. I thought of his brilliant, if strict, mind caged in that dying body swimming through drug and fever induced nightmares and more than once I had to have a quiet little weeping session to myself in some out of the way area.

I was not alone. The time dragged on for the rest of the family as well. Notably my mother was eating less and less as well as praying harder and harder. Mark didn't emerge from his rooms except to go to chapel and to stand his own watch over Fathers living corpse and only then when it was confirmed that Kerrass was out of the castle and that I was nowhere to be seen. Emma spent her time making sure that the entire families holdings didn't collapse but she reminded me of a swan. That old saying about a swan that they seem calm, placid and beautiful on the surface but underneath they are paddling like hell and I grew concerned about what would happen when she came to a stop. Sammy was Sammy and spent his time training. I joined him as often as I could manage it. He was surprised by how good I was but criticised that I wouldn't be able to fight in a unit. It was an ongoing argument but I pointed out that I never intended to fight in a unit and that was that.

So all things considered I had actually re-adapted to castle life really well. I was a little put out about how fast I had re-acclimatised to it all. I had spent significant amounts of time trying to get away from that place but there I was back to old habits and doing old things same as I ever had. I won't try to suggest that it was all unpleasant. I enjoyed reconnecting with Emma and Sam, spending time with some of the more well to do servants that had had a hand in bringing me up. I visited a couple of the surrounding villages to see some old friends and things. It was soured a little bit that Mark didn't want to talk to me at all because I would have liked a little bit of religious guidance but according to Emma he was still nursing his anger against me and it would take time for him to calm down and be able to talk to me like a reasonable human being.

It got to the point that I was actually rather shocked when I received a written message from Kerrass to say that he wanted me to come down to the stables.

The stables that the former Stable-master and my father had put together in the bottom courtyard were a thing of beauty. That's not an exaggeration. Everything that could ever be needed for the care and upkeep of horses was there. I've already mentioned a herbary and tack-making shed but the foaling area, the breeding area, the exercise yards. It was enough to bring a tear the eye of even the most devoted equestrian in the world.

I found Kerrass chatting amiably with the new stable master. The stable masters in our home were very well thought of and enjoyed a certain amount of prestige amongst the rest of the castle. My father gave them the authority to run the stables how they wished, providing that Fathers, and only fathers, requirements would always be met. Anyone else, from royalty down, had to abide by the stable-masters rule. I had not met the new stable-master yet although I understood his name was Gregory and was struggling with adapting to his new station in life and the extra authority that it gave him. Kerrass had, of course, put him at his ease and was talking about all kinds of things until I arrived. Kerrass greeted me with a happy little smile and a wave while he gestured for me to wait a little while he finished his conversation.

I found a piece of straw and greeted one or two of the horses that were down in the stables. My own horse had arrived from Flame knows where in the mean time so I gave her an apple.

Kerrass approached me,

“Come with me,”

“Oh hello stranger. How are you today?” It was possibly a little more bitter than I had originally meant it to be.

Kerrass frowned.

“Are you angry Freddie?”

I thought for a moment.

“Yes, and it's unfair. I apologise.” I made a little bow. “What have you got to show me?”

“It's over in the tack room,”

“What is?”

“Is your Father still alive?”

“If you can call it living. We reckon a day or two at most, although we've been saying that since I got here.”

Kerrass nodded. “That might be important.” He blew out a breath.

“I think your Father was murdered.”