Tyrek Gnawer's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The ledger held forty names now, but Tyrek could not act on one. Bailey wore the crown, and the new King kept Tyrek at his side day and night. Every council, every meal, Bailey pulled him close and studied his face as if he could read the blood on it. Tyrek smiled and lied. He knew Bailey had saved his life. He also knew Bailey would stop him if he learned the truth. Because Bailey is a merciful king. One name in the ledger stood above the rest. The sergeant who gave the order. He guarded the palace gate now, part of the King's own guard, always in sight of Bailey. Tyrek could not touch him inside these walls. He had to draw him out. So Tyrek forged a paper. He copied the royal hand and pressed a stolen seal into red wax. A reassignment notice, sealed and stark, ordering the sergeant to a post beyond the capital that night. The lie would move the man where no one watched. But Bailey found him bent over the wax. "You're never in your quarters anymore," Bailey said. His old eyes went to the sealed envelope. "What is that?" Tyrek's hand covered it. "Orders. Crane asked me to move a man." The lie came easy. Bailey held his gaze a long moment, then nodded and let him go. Tyrek's chest ached. He had lied to the boy who pulled him from the reeds. He waited for dark. He pulled a mud-stained fisherman's coat over his palace clothes and raised the collar high. In it he was no captain, only a marsh man crossing the yard. He passed two guards who did not look twice. He slipped through the gate and into the streets. The sergeant took the forged notice from a runner and marched out alone, exactly as the paper commanded. Tyrek followed him through the capital's poorest lanes. He led the man toward a place Bailey would never think to look. A house at the edge of the sick ward, timbers warped, windows black, a plague mark still nailed to the porch. No one went near it. No scream would carry. Inside, Tyrek struck the man behind the knee, then bound him to a rotting beam. He held his candle to the tattooed arm. The axe ringed by arrows. "The reeds," Tyrek said. "A woman. Two children. You gave the order." The sergeant knew his own death. He did not beg. He named the field where they had buried the axe men's paymaster, and the name of the officer above them all. Then Tyrek finished it. He wiped his blade and stood over the body in the plague house dark. The first of forty was dead. But the forged seal, the missing sergeant, the guard that would find its post empty by dawn—the King's men would search for who took him. And Bailey had already seen the sealed paper in his hand.