Chapitre Trente et Un

Le Mort

Edmund

Indistinct whispers permeated the air, crisscrossing and echoing in the darkness. Edmund could barely make out a word.

"Angel..." followed by natter and murmurs.

"Whisper..." again, subsequent nonsense.

"The finned woman.."

A snake's hiss? Overlapped with indecipherable gibberish.

"The air is poison..."

A woman moaning in anguish.

"Gray coat..."

"False peace..."

"All of you..."

"Javel..."

"He'll kill the sun first..."

A child's voice calling out in the darkness, followed by a baby's cry.

A mother's voice called back in turn, "Where are you?"

"And even then..."

"Amun salt..."

"He loves her..."

"The killer is gracious..."

The sound of a rat scratching against the walls, its tiny nails digging between the bricks and scraping off bits of hardened mortar.

A clock struck midnight.

A man hacked and coughed so badly Edmund assumed he must be dying.

"She wears the willow well..."

"And no one cared..."

A knock on the door startled Edmund and he opened his eyes. With his trance broken he could no longer hear the distant whispers. He stared at the door, knowing better than to call back at whomever was on the other side. He'd been instructed to always be silent when someone came knocking, lest spies who'd made it that far into the Renart home discovered that someone actually lived in that room.

Nonetheless, he also knew that Fitzroy, Lucien, and now Leon always knocked before they entered his room.

A key turned in the keyhole.

He slipped his robe over his shoulders, covering his previously-naked form.

Edmund closed his eyes and breathed deeply. A hazy aura of a man formed behind his lids. The height ruled out Leon, the tallest of his visitors. A low bubble just above the shoulders assured him that it was not Lucien, who always kept his head held high with perfect and noble posture.

Behind the door stood Fitzroy, Edmund thought. The latch on the door released.

"Amadeus?" Edmund whispered, hoping his friend would respond in kind.

"Yes," said Fitzroy, "It's me."

"It is I," Edmund corrected him.

Fitzroy closed and locked the door behind him. "You and your books..." he chuckled.

"What brings you to my room?" Edmund asked, seating himself in his arm chair in the corner. He pulled the ottoman near, thinking Amadeus would sit, but the lanky spymaster stood in the center of the room with an eye on the door. Did the man ever rest?

"I need your help again," said Fitzroy. "Have you been communing?"

"Yes, I have," Edmund looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember everything he'd overheard. "The dead's whispers are far more frequent these days, but much harder to understand now because they all speak at once."

Fitzroy nodded. "And whenever they get like that something terrible happens, yes?"

"Indeed," said Edmund, leaning forward and folding his long, spindly fingers in front of his pointed chin. All four of his thumbs scratched the insides of his palms. "Last time they were half this talkative those soldiers attacked us."

That had been the last time... It had not been the first. Even Edmund could not recall when the voices had begun whispering to him out of the darkness. Surely Lucien remembered when he began hearing their reports. At five years old, Lucien had assured Edmund, or rather himself, that the voices were the machinations of a young mind. That was until he reported the death of Lucien's wife. Edmund shuddered as her cries of pain echoed in his memory. He had heard them days before her labor struck. Lucien would never have admitted that he was avoiding Edmund, but his subsequent months of absence spoke volumes. Edmund never offered his intel again without being explicitly urged by Fitzroy.

Fitzroy sighed and finally slumped onto the ottoman. "I was afraid of that. What could possibly be worse than an attack on our home?"

Drawing a long stream of air into his lungs, Edmund focused.

"Poisoned breath," said Edmund, flatly.

Fitzroy stared at him a moment. "Is that something you read about, or something you actually heard the spirits speaking of?"

"They whisper something about the air being poison every time I listen these days," said Edmund. "But I don't know if that's literal, or just the idea that venomous words pervade the air. Tell me, do you know of a woman who wears a willow well?" It was only as he repeated the words that Edmund realized what a humorous alliteration they were.

"A woman... who wears... a willow well?" Fitzroy repeated, raising an eyebrow.

Edmund nodded. "The spirits keep speaking of her. Apparently, she's tied into something important that's about to happen."

Fitzroy shook his head. "Other than old legends about dryads, I can't think of anything."

Edmund shrugged. "It was worth a try. With what, exactly, did you need help?"

"I recently interrogated a prisoner about an assassination plot against the Empress." Fitzroy stood and paced the small room. "He told me that Duke Raul Loup was behind the plot. But... it just doesn't add up with the rest of my intelligence. Duke Loup is involved in so many other things right now, his agents are stretched thin as it is without sending more to plot the Empress' murder." Fitzroy leaned against Edmund's bookcase. "Have you heard anything about him in the whispers?"

"I..." Edmund thought back for a moment and bit his lip. "I truly have not. His name has never been mentioned."

"Well... maybe they won't call him by his name?" Fitzroy suggested. "His family crest is a wolf on a dark blue field with a fox in its mouth. Have the voices said anything about a wolf? A fox hunter? Anything like that?"

Edmund shook his head. "They have not."

"What about a golden man? Anything about 'the Richest in the Realm,' or 'the Lord of Bandits?' Do any of these sound familiar?"

"No. I'm sorry. They've spoken often about 'the soldier.'"

Fitzroy snorted. "But we already know who the soldier was."

"Do we?" Edmund asked, catching Fitzroy's eyes with his own. "They've continued to speak of the soldier and the evil he plots long after Magnus' death."

Fitzroy shifted his feet, visibly uncomfortable. "Damn... So the Forbin's weren't the only soldiers we had to worry about? Wonderful."

"I suppose not."

The two of them shared an uneasy silence for a moment.

Finally, Edmund spoke, "What is my father doing now?"

A smile returned to Fitzroy's face. "Winning, I dare say. He and Leon went to Senon, the capital, to help sort out the aftermath of House Forbin's fall."

"Senon?" Edmund said, tilting his head. "How far away is that? How long would it take to walk there?"

"Walk there?" Fitzroy laughed. "My my... let me think... probably a few months!"

Edmund stared at him for a moment, then stood, walked to one end of his room, and then down to the other end. He counted the seconds it took him to move from one wall to the next.

He simply couldn't comprehend how enormous the world outside this room must have been. To take months to move from one place to another? How tiny was the little speck of space that was his home? Recently he'd marveled at a spider building its web under his bed. He'd thought how silly it was that this tiny spider thought its little home was all there was to the world. It couldn't see beyond the shadows around it. Was Edmund no different from that little spider? If so, he was revolted that he had so callously crushed it.

Fitzroy unfolded his arms. "Well, my friend, it was a nice visit. I'll drop by again soon, but it seems the spirits haven't whispered anything particularly useful to you this time." He turned toward the door and fished into his pocket for the key.

"Just a moment!" Edmund said, raising a long, spindly finger.

"Yes?" Fitzroy turned back to face him, his back against the door.

"There..." Edmund hesitated. "There is one other... one other thing the spirits keep talking about. It's something I didn't want to believe at first, and... well, it seemed to me like acknowledging it would make it more real."

Fitzroy grunted. "I don't have time for riddles. Spit it out already!"

Edmund trembled at the sound of Fitzroy's sudden irritation. "N-now, bear in m-mind, the spirits aren't specific. They've b-b-been vague, at least as f-far as I c-could hear. They haven't s-said when, or h-how, or even who..."

"I said spit it out!" Fitzroy said. "I've no time for games!"

"A Renart will die before the year is out."