Page 19 of Paladin's Hope

“So we’re agreed the bodies probably aren’t coming from there, then?”

Nods all around. Brindle had an ear cocked toward them, but didn’t comment.

“The chateaus were probably always more likely,” offered Galen. “The sort of place where you swap out shoes to save the carpets.”

Earstripe twisted his whiskers until Brindle made a chuffing sound at him and he stopped. “A gnole is thinking chateaus will be harder,” he said. “A human walks up and asks a butler-human about dead bodies, butler-human gets very…” He paused, clearly searching for an appropriate word. “Mallory-captain says shirty.”

This had already occurred to Galen and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. “I suppose we go up and…hmm…could we tell them that there’s been some suspicious activity reported in the area and ask if they’ve seen anything out of the ordinary? Give them an opening to mention bodies if they want to?”

“If you phrase it in a lot of civic duty and we’re-just-checking-up-on-people,” said Piper, “I suppose it might work?”

“If we could get in and talk to the servants,” said Galen, “we might get somewhere. Or at least see if anything sets off warning bells. But that’s going to depend entirely on who answers the door.”

“Fancy houses don’t hire gnoles,” said Brindle. It didn’t sound like he considered this a burning injustice so much as a matter of poor taste. “Can’t go asking gnoles. Could maybe visit a stable, follow nose, but don’t know if it’ll help.”

Ten

It could have gone better. The first house had a butler who said, in icy tones, that there had been no suspicious activity of any kind, unless one counted disreputable sorts coming to the door. His expression left little doubt as to exactly who he was referring to. The second house was staffed by a caretaker who seemed to think that Galen was trying to run a protection racket, and was demanding money to keep the suspicious activity from happening to him. The third house had no one home at all, so far as they could see.

They caught a lucky break with the fourth house. The caretaker was garrulous and extremely bored. “Ah, well, it’s a skeleton crew on now,” he said. “Come in, come in! Have a bite to eat. Tell me all the news from the city.” He made a sweeping gesture that included both humans and gnoles, although Brindle opted to stay with the ox.

Unfortunately, while he pulled out a selection of cold food in the kitchen and called in the two gardeners who were out working on the grounds, he didn’t actually know anything useful. Galen didn’t get any sense that he was hiding any information. The most that he could offer was that occasionally a cow got loose from the fields and turned up in the gardens, and that the baker’s boy kept obstinately making full deliveries, even when they’d told him to stop. “Said I wasn’t paying for a whole house worth of bread,” he said, gesticulating with the end of a loaf, “but I don’t like to short change him, because the lord’s cook doesn’t do plain baking. Flatly refuses. Take a few loaves with you, will you? Otherwise it’ll go to waste. Even the chickens are getting sick of it.”

“Well, I can’t say that was useful, but it was certainly profitable,” said Piper, setting a sack full of round loaves into the wagon. “If we’re lucky, maybe the next house will have a feud with the cheesemaker.”

The next fine house was abandoned. So was the one after that. “I didn’t realize so many of these places were in such poor condition,” murmured Piper.

“Big house is expensive,” was Brindle’s opinion. “Maybe too expensive.”

Galen nodded. “And if they’re entailed to a title you might not be able to sell them, even if you can’t keep them up.”

The one after that didn’t look promising either. The roof had a precarious slant and several of the windows had boards over them. Piper had already mentally dismissed the place when Earstripe called a halt. “Smoke from a chimney,” he said, pointing.

“So it is.” They left Brindle and the ox at the road, and hiked up the long drive to the chateau. It was even less promising up close, although someone had made an effort to keep the weeds clear of the front entrance.

Galen knocked loudly, waited for a few moments, then knocked again. He had just lifted his fist for the third time when the door was yanked open and a man blinked at them in surprise.

“Are you the clerk?” he asked. His gaze swept down, taking in the sword and the surcoat over the armor. Then he spotted Piper behind Galen’s shoulder. “Are you the clerk? I didn’t think the roads had gotten that bad, that you’d need to hire a guard…” He trailed off in the face of the men’s incomprehension. “Err…are you here about the ad?”

“No,” said Galen. “We’re in the area investigating some suspicious activity and wanted to ask if you’d seen anything.”

“Suspicious?” He blinked again. He had a certain owlish quality, Piper thought, rather short and sturdy, with large, watery eyes. “Good heavens! Come in, come in.” He stepped back into the hall. “I’m sorry, I’m Thomas. I mean, I’m not sorry that I’m Thomas, I’m sorry that I thought you were here because I’d placed an ad for a clerk.”

“You needed someone to manage the estate?” asked Piper politely. Privately he thought that the man was rather more in need of a carpenter, or perhaps a fleet of them.

“Oh my, yes. It’s this dreadful chateau, you understand.” He waved in a gesture that encompassed the building, outside and in. “It’s falling apart and it’s simply full of all this horrid furniture that the last generation wasn’t able to sell off, but now they’re antiques so perhaps someone will want to buy them. But I haven’t any idea what’s here, so someone needs to document it all, and probably there’s paperwork somewhere and then if I’m lucky, one of the dear departed family actually left some money or property that isn’t falling down. But you can’t get anyone to stay out here, of course, so I post the ads…”

They crowded into the hall. Thomas blinked at Earstripe, but didn’t comment. Once inside, the decay was even more obvious. This had clearly been a very impressive building in the distant past, with wallpaper on the walls, but it had fallen down or been haphazardly ripped away in shreds.

Piper saw movement past Thomas’s shoulder. A heavyset woman stood in the doorway behind him. She had a curiously blank face, but she met Piper’s eyes and mouthed words. He missed part of the first word as Thomas moved, but the second one looked like “away.”

Get away? Go away?

It seemed rather odd. His surprise must have shown on his face because Thomas turned, following his gaze, and said, “Missus Hardy? Is there a problem?”

“Wanted to see if your guests fancied tea,” said Missus Hardy, in a flat, uninflected monotone.

“Tea would be lovely.” Thomas beamed at the trio. “Please, come into the parlor. Err…forgive the state of the furniture. And the walls. Actually, forgive the state of the whole place. I inherited it from my grandfather, you see, and he hadn’t done any upkeep at all, and now it’s all falling apart. The floors are still sound enough, but you go into the east wing and you’re taking your life in your hands.”

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