CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE common touch did not come easily to LaBarque. He had disguised many aspects of his personality over the years, but never his rank, unless to aggrandize himself. His mouth drew down in distaste at the touch of these rough clothes, soiled and patched by some common laborer, and he drew his cloak farther over his brow so none would see the disdain glittering in his eye.

It was well for him that he did so, for more showed in his face now than mere contempt for the jostling market crowd. The relentless malice that drove him burned in the dark sockets of his eyes, so that any who marked him shrank from his approach.

He was learning to keep his mouth shut also, for his educated speech betrayed him. In monosyllables he bought a crusty loaf and a slab of pork to lay inside it. It was wholesome enough food, but it disgusted him to eat thus, without plate or service, getting grease on his hands and crumbs down his shirt. No matter. The food, like the clothes, like the anonymity of this stinking crowd of humanity, was only a means to an end. LaBarque retreated to a quieter side street, crouched against a wall and ate mechanically while he planned his next move.

Lots of guards around. Guards at the city gates, questioning peoples’ business. Guards here at the market. Word had reached Chênier, then. The castle itself would be shut tight as a drum.

Could he use the same trick twice and enter the castle as he had the Royal City, hidden in a load of hay? He smelled risk. If rumor had spread in the city, and he approached the wrong delivery boy, one unmoved by the coins clinking into his palm...

He would wait and listen and learn how things lay. The Royal Brat was not one to lie walled up in safety for long. Sooner or later, the rat would come out of its hole.

BY THE MIDNIGHT bell, LaBarque had visited five different ale-houses, bought and wasted five mugs of ale and eavesdropped on untold meaningless conversations. At last he had grown impatient enough to risk a more direct approach. He drained his mug (the first he had actually drunk) and weaved up to the counter, acting befuddled.

“Another mug, sir?” The bartender’s belly bore witness to many years of sampling his own goods. It thrust proudly against the counter as the man came up to serve him.

LaBarque shook his head, spread his hands helplessly. “I must be in the wrong place. I’m new in town, I was to meet my cousin. I thought it was here but... He’s a groom at the Royal Stables. Is there a place he’d be likely to...” He left the question dangling. He knew well enough that pubs tended to have their regular clientele, often groups of men and women who shared a workplace or a neighborhood. If the royal servants had a regular watering hole, there was a good chance a hosteller would know of it.

“The Royal Stables, is it? Maybe he was too worn out for drinkin’. There’s been a deal of coming and going at the castle lately, or so I’ve heard. But you could try the Queen’s Girdle, just across the road at the corner there. Lot of the castle folk favor it.”

LaBarque flipped a coin onto the counter and pushed out the door.

THE QUEEN’S GIRDLE was, in LaBarque’s estimation, “a fetid little armpit.” It offered, however, everything the royal servants required of a gathering place: an excellent beer in ample mugs, a congenial host, and best of all, deeply padded red leather benches flanking the back tables—a comfortable and spacious place to rest their bones and exchange gossip. Here they held their own little court, for the inside story on royal goings-on was highly prized and gladly paid for in ale.

LaBarque found a seat not far from the back tables, squeezed in and stared into the beer while his ears did their work. It was not long before he was rewarded for his troubles.

“Oh, aye, she’s a lovely girl. Mind you, she has a temper of her own, she does. Didn’t she give the Lord Tristan a proper dressing-down just the other day?” This from a clucking, know-it-all voice. It had to be Rosalie under discussion. So the little miss has a shrew’s tongue in her head, does she? LaBarque thought. He would soon have cured her of that.

“She didn’t!” Braying, delighted shock. That horse-voice could only come from the blowsy redhead he had noticed on the way in. “How could anyone be mad at him, with his lovely smile and all?”

“She was, though. She was all but spittin’ fire, let me tell you! Though it weren’t long before they was all lovey-dovey again.” The two women sighed in apparent satisfaction.

A new voice joined in, a man’s.

“I heard there was trouble on the coast and that’s why the Martineaus came back here. Is it true the prince was nearly killed?”

“Where’ve you been, down a hole?” The cluck-hen again. “Of course it’s true; everyone knows that old story.”

“Ooooh, the treachery of it!” Carrot-top, wallowing in boozy outrage. “Wouldn’t I like to get my hands on that one! He’d be missing summat in his britches, if I had my druthers!”

A new voice overrode the chorus of chuckles. “Maybe you’ll get your chance, Maude. My brother in the guard says that LaBarque guy gave ‘em the slip and might even be headed to Chênier for another try.”

The excited shrieks of the women almost drowned out the man’s next sentence: “Not that it’ll do him any good. Prince Tristan’s off to the defense talks already, and the Lady Rosalie with him. Let him come here, I say—make it easier to catch the treasonous devil.”

THE HANDS GRIPPING his mug trembled with the effort of self-control. In LaBarque’s mind he had hurled it against the wall, crockery shattering, suds frothing down to the floor, and turned on the whole pack of smug, self-satisfied, mindless gossip-mongers like a rabid dog.

Gone. Tristan DesChênes, the man who had become LaBarque’s sole reason for being, was gone. The sour taste of defeat rose up in his throat, and he met it with his own seething hatred. He would not be sucked down into the muck and mire of failure.

LaBarque’s stool clattered to the ground as he jumped to his feet, temporarily stilling the buzz of conversation. He left the stool where it lay and shoved his way through the crowded room. Only a thin thread of will kept him from knifing the first fool who stood in his path. He needed space and air. It wouldn’t do to murder someone—the wrong someone—now.