The Traitor's Blade by Kevin Sands (fiction books to read .TXT) 📕

to be someone else. He would infiltrate some noble’s house, drain the coffers dry, and then disappear into the night—but not before murdering his former master.

“They claimed the Raven murdered people to reduce the chance of the victims coming for revenge. Can’t chase after him if you’re dead, yes? I suspect his motive was different.” Simon’s voice turned fierce. “I think he killed people just because he could. I think he liked it.”

I thought very much the same.

“Anyway, he’d always got away with it before. I suppose he thought with Uncle Marin gone, and the estate’s finances in shambles, I wouldn’t be willing to go after him.”

Simon’s eyes burned. “He was wrong. I spent nearly every sou hunting him down. In the end, I should have stuck to my own kind. Because it wasn’t the criminals who found him. It was another vicomte, Guy d’Auzon, living on an estate in the Val de Loire. I’d written to several landowners to be on the watch for Rémi, and possibly Colette—you remember her, the servant who fled with him?—applying for positions with false references. D’Auzon wrote back that they were there, and he’d already taken them in.”

“What happened?” Tom said, breathless.

“I rode for the Val de Loire straight away. Unfortunately, the vicomte took matters into his own hands. He challenged them in his home, and they attacked. D’Auzon, rash but no fool, had already armed himself. He shot Rémi straight through the heart.”

“What about Colette?” Sally said.

“Fled into the night, while the vicomte was reloading his pistol. Man should have brought two.”

Suddenly I felt a lot better about wearing mine. I rested my hands on the grips.

“That’s the way,” Simon said wryly. “Anyway, by the time I got there, Rémi was already laid out on a bier in the cemetery. I examined the body myself. He’d grown a beard, and there was a fresh cut on his chin, but there was no doubt: It was him. And thus ends the Raven.”

It was an amazing tale. And that should have been the end of it.

So why didn’t I believe that it was over?

“We don’t actually know,” I said, “that Rémi was the Raven. We just assumed that.”

Simon regarded me skeptically. “Who else could it have been?”

“A different man, behind Rémi, pulling the strings. For all we know, it could have been Colette.”

“She was a pretty girl, Christopher, but not an intelligent one. Certainly not clever enough to be a criminal mastermind.”

“Sounds like the perfect cover,” I said. “Spread the word there’s some man in charge of everything, then play the artless young maid.”

Now everyone looked skeptical. “You’re reaching,” Simon said.

“I’m not. I’m just not jumping to conclusions. That’s what I’m supposed to avoid, isn’t it?”

“But you are jumping to conclusions,” Simon said gently. “You saw the Raven as this larger-than-life figure, so you can’t imagine him dead. In the end, all he was, was a man.”

I stared out the window of my bedroom. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me. But if the Raven’s really gone, why were you attacked?”

“Maybe it wasn’t to do with me at all,” Simon said. “Maybe it’s because of you. You and your king.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ashcombe told me a girl was murdered yesterday at the palace. I was there, Christopher—very likely there when it happened. He also suggested you’re in service to the king now, though he didn’t say exactly how. So: A murder happens in Whitehall. You’re part of the investigation. I’ve made no secret of why I’m in London, and no secret that I was coming to see you. Whether it was mistaken identity, or eliminating one of your allies, I suspect whoever attacked me is wrapped up in whatever it is you’re doing. And that’s nothing to do with the Raven. Is it?”

No. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t.

I still didn’t accept that Rémi was necessarily the Raven. Colette was a ridiculous suspect, true. But all we really knew was that Master Benedict had been, according to the letter the Raven had sent me in France, a thorn in his side for a long time.

I stopped.

Thinking of Master Benedict made me think of Paris. Not of the Raven. Of the clues we’d followed to solve the riddles.

And now I couldn’t get that thought out of my mind.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Are you in much pain?”

Simon looked at me askance. “Is my constant grimace not enough of a hint?”

I gave him an embarrassed grin. “Sorry. I’ll prepare the poppy.”

I set water to boil down in the workshop. Bridget joined me, trying to poke her beak into the cork that stopped the jars. Once the pot was over the fire, I asked Tom and Sally to help me look for Master Benedict’s coding device. “It’s in one of the spare rooms. I can’t remember which.”

“What does it look like?” Sally said.

I described it to them. “Everyone take a different room. What?”

Tom watched me with narrowed eyes. “You’re up to something.”

Was I that easy to read? I beckoned them close, so Henri, in the shop, couldn’t hear. I wasn’t sure if he knew English, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

“This whole business,” I said, “with the letters I’ve been getting, and the codes. Does it feel familiar to you?”

“You mean running around the city,” Tom said, “chasing clues that will almost certainly get us killed? I thought that’s just what we did now.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“A letter appears in my home,” I said, “with no apparent way of it getting there. It holds a riddle, and a cipher—that leads us to another riddle, and another cipher. And I bet, once we’ve solved the second one, it will send us off to hunt down a third. Doesn’t that feel like something we’ve done before?”

Sally frowned. “Paris,” she said. “It feels like what we did in Paris.”

“And who was making us run around in Paris?”

It dawned on them at the same time. They stared at me. “You mean…,” Tom began.

I nodded, leaned in, and whispered,