Mary Gentle Read Online Free PDF Page B

garlands going up for her entry tomorrow as Queen. I will denounce her where she stands. There is Henri’s killer, there is the murderer!
    Under these circumstances I hate cities. The business of agents is an underground war; I would rather have my wars in the open country. If that involves marching through intemperate heat and foul rain in the day, sentinel duty and alarms at night, and the disastrous result of pike and musket-piece on a man’s body, still at least a man is free of streets in which he cannot move for the shoulder-to-shoulder press of other men—or if he is not, he can out with his short rapier or poniard and hack a way through them.
    I shoved my way through the crowd pushed back into the gates of the Cimetière des Innocents, broke out into the empty space beyond, started down the narrow white paths between the sepulchres—and heard de Vernyes hail me.
    Glancing over my shoulder, I saw him behind me with sword in hand, sticking prick-spurs deep into the bay’s flanks, and so forcing market-women, burghers, and street-brats out of the way with much more celerity than I could. He shouted something unintelligible. I thought I have no time for this, and ran, hurdling the fallen monuments as if anger could make me fly.
    The expensive sepulchres stand close together in the Cimetière, mausoleums higher than a man’s head; there is no seeing over their peaked roofs. I ran between them as silently as I could, picking my way east, halting where the ground opened up to flat tombs no higher than a man’s waist, judging my direction.
    Two men on horseback clattered out from the monuments and tombs behind me: de Vernyes and another of the King’s horsemen.
    They split, instantly, to go one either side of me and block off my way. Behind, I could hear a great howling roar now, in the streets: the news of the assassination attempt spreading out from the rue de la Ferronnerie.
    “Sully’s man!” de Vernyes’ companion shouted; a young burly man wearing the most fashionable doublet and ruff over the body of a thug. He pulled at the waist of his doublet, trying to hold his reins with the hand that held his rapier. The unmistakable shape of a pistol’s butt was visible hooked over his belt.
    De Vernyes himself reined up, staring at me down the length of his blade. “You’re under arrest: Throw down the sword. Now! ”
    My hands had gone by instinct to my hilts, cross-drawing rapier and dagger in a single movement. I backed away fast, circling to keep from being trapped on the paths in that narrow space between the tombs. “I? Why am I under arrest?”
    De Vernyes’ companion shouted down, “You were with him, murderer!”
    This second horseman was having difficulty forcing his mount in among the tilted stones and monuments. In the fumbling moment while he tried to unhook the pistol’s butt-hook from his belt, I made a leap up onto one of the flat-topped graves so that I was level with him where he sat in the saddle, and gave him a thrust that went through his chest just under the armpit, and put six inches of wet steel out of the back of his ribs.
    “Bazanez!” De Vernyes shouted to his friend and swore at me. His horse curveted. Hooves rattled on cobbles; tack clinked. He abruptly dropped the reins, freed himself from the stirrups, and slid down from the saddle without using his hands, they being both occupied with rapier and dagger.
    I tightened my grip through my rapier’s finger-ring, twisted, and recovered my blade from Bazanez’s chest.
    Heads were turning at the edge of the Cimetière.
    I caught a flush on de Vernyes’ face; he looked as though he wished it any man but me.
    “Give up, Rochefort! You will speak as loud as a dead witness as you will alive.”
    “Not quite true,” I said grimly, “as you may find by asking any of these men around us.”
    Skull-ornamented stones stood up in the bright day: jaws and femurs and time-glasses carved on monuments, along with weather-obscured names. The