The two of us stared at the fish.
Slap.
“Is this some sort of Kair Toren custom I don’t know about?”
Will shook his head. “Nothing I ever heard of.”
“Could you please put it out of its misery?”
Will walked over, pulled out his knife, and sliced through the back of the fish’s head. The fish went limp. I handed Will a rag and he wiped his knife on it.
“This is the second fish that’s showed up in my rooms. The first time I thought it was Kaiden, but he’s out with Reynald now.”
“Why would Kaiden leave fish in your rooms?” Will asked.
“Why does a twelve-year-old boy do anything?”
“Good point.”
We looked at the fish some more.
“Did you want something?” I asked.
Will pulled a small, sealed envelope from his tunic and passed it to me. “Someone rang the bell and left this by the door.”
While we were waiting on the salt ship to come in, Gort had rigged a rope and a bell to our front door. Unlike Derog, we didn’t have the manpower to have somebody sit by it. If one of us went out, we’d pull the rope when we came back, which rang the literal bell in our courtyard.
“I might have seen a priest walking away,” Will said. “It was hard to tell with the cloak, but I think they had a blade staff.”
Blade staffs were polearms, like spears and halberds, but while spears thrust and halberds chopped, the long, sharp blades at the end of the blade staffs were used to slice. Rellas was a martial kingdom, and a lot of priests practiced martial arts. The blade staffs served as preferred weapons for a number of denominations, so much so that when people saw one, they usually assumed a priest wielded it.
I tore the envelope open and pulled out the paper inside.
Drugh knows. He’s coming.
Shit.
Drugh was Filderon’s sort of son-in-law. He was trained as a knight, although never knighted, and he ran his own mercenary company, acting as both a commander and a broker. He was also bad news.
I showed the note to Will.
“Hireling damn it. I swear, we weren’t seen.”
“I believe you. We don’t know what happened. Maybe he told Drugh he would be meeting you.”
I had a little bit of ammunition against Drugh but nothing that would knock him off-balance if he was truly determined to avenge Filderon. The relationship between the two men was strained, and they barely talked, but according to the note, Drugh had decided to do something about it.
Who had left the note? Who would know that the Magnars had done away with Filderon, that Drugh was looking for them, and that they were here, in this house? I spun the roster of characters in my head. Maybe, possibly, the Shears, but delivering an anonymous note wasn’t Solentine’s style.
“What do you want to do?” Will asked.
“We sit tight until Reynald and your father come home. If Drugh shows up, don’t open the door.”
He nodded and turned to walk away.
“Will?”
“Yes?”
