The Death of Dulgath by Michael J. Sullivan

their kind. But that does give me an idea. What about…”
    “What?”
    “Well, we could use the incident to our advantage. You saw a crime being committed and stepped in. We’ll make you sheriffs.”
    “W-what?” Royce asked.
    “Yes, of course. I’ll talk to Knox.”
    “I won’t work for him,” Royce declared.
    “In a way, you already do,” Fawkes said. “But you’re right, he didn’t seem too taken with you. That’s fine. I’ll tell you what. I’ll say that the two of you are special royal constables sent by the king himself to investigate attempts made on Lady Dulgath’s life. It makes perfect sense. Vincent is scheduled to visit here in the next few days to review the fief, accept Lady Dulgath’s pledge of fealty, and renew the homage. It’s only sensible he would want to send his own men to ensure his security, if not hers. Yes…” Fawkes grinned. “Two royal constables—you’d have authority to go anywhere and question anyone.”
    “How do we prove it?”
    “I’ll vouch for you and talk to Wells and Knox—convince them it’ll help protect Lady Dulgath, and they’ll need to back me up if anyone asks. I can be quite persuasive when I need to. We’ll draw up some official-looking papers with Vincent’s signature. Almost everyone here is illiterate, but if it looks official, and if I, Wells, and Knox confirm your story, they’ll believe.”
    “Constables?” Royce muttered more to himself than them. He’d played roles in the past: shopkeepers, tradesmen, soldiers, tax collectors. Once he’d even impersonated an executioner—he was good at that one. Never had he imagined acting as the chief law enforcement official of a realm. The notion left him unsettled, like being asked to eat human flesh.
    “Appropriate, too,” Fawkes said, and threw his arms out to remind them of their surroundings. When they didn’t show a hint of understanding, he explained, “The word constable comes down from imperial times, when the officer responsible for keeping the horses was the count of the stable. It’s like a sign from Novron.”
    Royce agreed. He just wasn’t certain what was on that sign.

Chapter Six
The House and the Bedchamber
    While riding by himself back to town, Hadrian concluded something wasn’t right about the village of Brecken Dale. He felt it in that faint, absent way he noticed the first kiss of a cold—nothing specific, nothing he could point to, just a general sense of things being askew. Seeing the pretty berries along the trail reminded him of what Royce had said about them being poisonous. Could he have been on to something or was that just another example of Royce being Royce? Over the last couple of years, Hadrian had witnessed many Royce-being-Royce moments and developed a truism about his partner’s unique brand of paranoia and cynicism. Offered help was either an insult or a ploy. Needed help was a con or a ploy. Pretty much everything was suspected of being a ploy of some sort, except perhaps admitted exploitation , which Royce oddly identified as honesty.
    Believing the worst of people, of the world in general, was a trap too easy to fall into. Hadrian had fought beside soldiers who’d developed similar views. Such men saw evil and virtue as concepts of childhood naïveté. In their minds, there was no such thing as murder, and killing was just something you did when circumstances warranted.
    A terrible way to live. What good is a world—what is the point of living—if generosity and kindness are myths?
    Royce, like everyone, saw what he looked for, what he expected to see. Hadrian looked for goodness and believed he was better for doing so.
    Who doesn’t want to live in a brighter world?
    He rode along a short wall that decorated rather than protected one of the many stacked-stone farmhouses. Farmers always built from what was at hand, and being tucked between the toes of old mountains, the fields had to be a veritable quarry of rocks. As a blacksmith’s son,