Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

he had obviously made up his mind that he would not be swayed. No words, gifts, or reason would move him.

Christopher was tired. Tired of lying. Tired of arguing. Tired of false and artificial flummery. Despairingly, he looked to Natil, but she shook her head. It was hopeless.

A thought struck him. “What about the Free Towns? Will there always be more Free Towns?”

Yvonnet was suddenly cautious. “Why do you mention the Free Towns?”

“Oh . . .” Christopher was cautious himself. “I had a visitor from the Free Towns a few months ago. Martin Osmore.”

Yvonnet stared at the unshuttered window, his expression that of a man who had just had a handful of ants dumped into his tunic. “I . . . don't believe I could care less about the Free Towns,” he said. “I certainly haven't heard of them paying any taxes to me!”

He laughed. Behind him, Lengram covered a smile with his hand. The old cleric giggled.

Christopher was undeterred. “But you have to admit that they're quite valuable to Adria as a whole. The best artisans work there, and a substantial amount of taxes and fees from the Free Towns do wind up in your coffers, Yvonnet. Your yearly market fairs, for example.”

“Well, yes.”

“And what would Adria do if we lost the Free Towns?”

Yvonnet's mouth was set. “Well, I'm sure we could find another baron mad enough to let himself be overthrown by his own towns. Wasn't David a'Freux related to the delAurvre line somehow?”

Lengram snickered audibly.

“We're all related to one another,” Christopher snapped. It had been a direct insult, but anger would do no good, and he struggled to soften his voice. “Well . . . then what about the people of the Free Towns? People like . . . Martin Osmore . . .”

Yvonnet stiffened. “You're a fine one to talk about the Free Towns, Christopher. Your grandfather tried to overthrow them.”

“That was my grandfather. This is me.” Christopher felt relived at his own words. Yes, this was Christopher delAurvre, defending the Free Towns, bonding with Shrinerock, attempting to unite the barons of Adria against an outside threat. He was decidedly not his grandfather.

But he saw the flicker in Yvonnet's eyes. The baron of Hypprux was frightened, and therefore dangerous. Christopher had pushed too hard.

“I don't think I'm at all concerned about commoners,” said Yvonnet. “Not concerned at all. I might as well be concerned with . . .” He groped for something unlikely enough. “. . . with Elves, for example.”

He laughed loudly at his own joke, and the old scribe looked up from his tablets with a toothless smile. “Old Roger believed in Elves, my lord,” he said. He fingered his deformed nose. “And in beating his clerks.”

“Well said, Amos!” Yvonnet continued to laugh. “And it looks to me like his fist was the more substantial of the two!” Still chortling, he turned to Christopher. “You know, I've always thought the delAurvres prey to occasional fits of . . . ah . . .”

“Whimsy,” suggested Lengram from his place behind Yvonnet's chair.

“Whimsy, yes! I hope, cousin, that when you leave Hypprux you won't be telling everyone that Elves sabotaged your efforts here.” Yvonnet giggled.

Elves. Children's stories and the tales of doddering old men. It was an insult.

But Christopher was staring at the scribe. Roger had been chamberlain of Hypprux at the time of his sudden reformation, and despite his love of forestry and hunting—deer, boar, and peasants, too—had spent most of his time in the city with his co-conspirator, Bishop Aloysius Cranby. If Roger had struck Amos, then the scribe had surely known the baron before his change. And, more important, it was quite possible that Amos had known Roger during it.

Something had happened to Roger. Christopher found himself seemingly possessed of an opportunity to find out what.

“We're done here,” Yvonnet was saying. “It's time for a feast.” He grabbed Christopher's hand and stood up. “And pledges of friendship between Hypprux and Aurverelle! God and Rome know, we've had our differences, but we'll settle them tonight in the Château!”

Christopher caught a hint of dissemblance in Yvonnet's voice, but while he recalled that there were many ways of settling differences, he was still staring at the old man. Feast or no, settlements or no, he was going to talk with Amos.

Chapter Fifteen

Christopher suffered through the banquet, picking at the dainties and richly sauced dishes that were put before him. Good God, he had actually made a habit of eating this way? Black bread had a wholesome way about it, and watered wine was a good enough drink for any meal. He had actually grown to like both of them, and he found it difficult to reconcile his stomach to the task with which it was now confronted.

But he smiled and joked and improvised rhymes with the best of Yvonnet's courtiers and councilors. He laughed at the right times, applauded at the right times—how quickly the properly noble idiot came back!—and, as far as he could tell, gave the lie to the rumors of his madness and deranged behavior. Even Yvonnet's wife, a mousy little woman with prematurely graying hair, perked up at his flattery, and when Christopher danced with her, he actually managed to bring a smile to her face.

Her husband, though, seemed worried, and Christopher was reminded of nothing so much as a caged cat. Something was afoot, and he wished repeatedly that Natil were at his elbow, but the Château staff had classified the harper as a servant, and she had been given a plate at the table in the kitchen and a place toward the end of the night's entertainments. At present, she was probably off somewhere in the maze of corridors that made up the Château complex, tuning her instrument or combing her hair and arranging her costume.

Christopher looked in vain for Amos, too. The old scribe was obviously not needed at the festivities, and in fact, Christopher suspected that his presence at the meeting that afternoon had been solely for