Free A Path to Coldness of Heart by Glen Cook Page B

tasked to accompany him still awaited his appearance.
    Inger paced. She muttered. She cursed. She was certain fate had handed her another cause for despair. Josiah was almost all she had left.
    Not many months ago she had been ready to abandon Fulk’s claim to Kavelin’s crown. Then Bragi got himself killed. Most of the people who wanted rid of her then turned round to support her—except that witch Kristen, whose brat’s claim had no legal foundation.
    Here she was again, abandoned by another man, ready to shriek, “To hell with it!” and leave Kavelin to anyone who wanted the heartache.
    She watched Fulk nap, for once in rare good health. The boy seemed angelic, lying there in a splay of blond curls. Neither she nor Bragi had curly hair but her mother said she had had curls as a toddler. One of her few remaining women came into the nursery. “Yes, Garyline?”
    “That unpleasant Wolf person is here, Majesty. He says he has the information you wanted.”
    Inger rolled up her nose. She avoided Nathan Wolf as much as she could. But when Josiah dropped off the face of the earth she had nowhere else to turn.
    “Send him in.” She had no choice.
    Sometimes she felt sorry for Wolf. The man was never anything but what he ought to be. He never did anything wrong. But he radiated something that made everyone wary and distrustful. Only Dane actually liked him. Inger suspected that Wolf did not like himself much. What others thought reflected back and made him think he deserved the negative responses.
    Wolf’s manners were perfect. Inger did not face him. She did not want him to see the revulsion his presence sparked. “You found something?” She stroked Fulk’s hair, praying his good health would last.
    “Colonel Gales spent the evening at a tavern, the Twisted Wrench, which is frequented by the garrison. He drank so much he wet himself. The last anyone saw him, he was going out the door.”
    “That’s it? That’s all?”
    “It is, Majesty. And I would like to point out that the men and I have done almost miraculous work, coming up with that so fast.”
    True. Inger reined in her emotions. Wolf had developed that information so fast she wondered if he had not been involved somehow. “You’re right, Nathan. That was good work. Can you even guess where he is now?”
    “No, Majesty. But these things usually end with a corpse. Or an embarrassed soldier who has been rolled by a prostitute.”
    Josiah would not have taken up with a prostitute.
    Wolf stepped to the door. “I can keep on squeezing the men who were there, but…”
    “Almost certainly a waste of time. Nathan, you’ll have to do what Colonel Gales was supposed to do today.”
    “I am at Your Majesty’s command.”
    Exactly the answer she wanted from every man in her service, but from Wolf it seemed somehow both sinister and darkly suggestive.
    Poor Nathan could not talk about the weather without making people think he was an oily, wicked pervert.
    Inger gave Wolf his instructions, which were exactly those she had given Gales. Though her stomach tightened, she allowed a hint of a suggestion that a substitute who handled the Colonel’s work well might expect some of the Colonel’s perks.
    She felt filthy when Wolf left.
    She did wonder why the man seemed so slimy, creepy, and repulsive. He did nothing to validate that.
    ...
    Nathan Wolf, wounded, reached the Breitbarth castle two days later than he should have without having run into trouble. He was afoot. He was the second member of his band to get through, and the last. He arrived to find that the cavalryman who had preceded him had expired before he could explain what had happened.
    The Duke himself came to see Wolf. The sorcerer Babeltausque was dressing his wounds. “What the hell happened, Nathan? The other guy thought he was the only survivor.”
    “An ambush, Your Grace. I didn’t get a good look. Marena Dimura bandits, I guess.”
    Babeltausque said, “He’ll be fine if there’s no