Mindless

Chapter 12 Haëgre

"Will you face trial?"

He'd expected... something. Surprise. Remorse, perhaps. He knows they spoke with Tomlin—the captain had already had his chance to reaffirm his lies. To spread his counter-remarks. Still, Adalbert looks at him with the same unfaltering anger, and when the captain pulls the lad back, he goes. Then the captain stands before him again.

"None of what you say is true," he says bemused.

Haëgre sneers at him. "Still hiding from your men? If you would go any further with this plot of yours, you'll have to tell them eventually."

Fahlan gestures to the room. "They're listening now. What is it you would have me tell them?"

He looks around at the men surrounding him. Most of the guards are watching him with apathy. Disgust. Adalbert's unrelenting loathing. Though the most of them lack the lad's hostility, he can see he's no more than a captured vagrant to them. Only Cornwall shows something close to pity. A pained twist at the corner of his mouth. Haëgre latches onto this small sympathy.

"He's lying to you," Haëgre entreats. "He has your faith, but he doesn't deserve it. I know not if he helped plot against the king, but I know he has turned it to his favor. These are not the queen's orders. She is not against us!" Haëgre is leaning towards the guard, watching the twist deepen. "The captain has gone behind her back and placed us in a stranglehold as he would seize the crown. He's using you. You cannot trust him."

Cornwall takes a step forward. His hands flutter forward, as if he might in some way help the captive man, but they fall impotently back to his sides. "What makes you so sure?"

"I," Haëgre hesitates, passes a furtive look at the captain before returning his gaze to Cornwall. He doesn't want the captain to know about the maiden and so endanger her, but he doesn't know what else might convince the fooled men around him. "I was visited by an agent of the queen."

"Who?" The captain demands instantly.

A protest catches in Cornwall's throat, and he holds up a hand to placate him just as Adalbert places a hand on Fahlan's arm and Jerditch releases a consoling and reproving, "Captain."

The captain takes a step back to demonstrate his submission. Adalbert has begun to look upon Haëgre with something akin to a blind hope. The barest suggestion of discontinuity of the situation they had found themselves in having lightened him.

"Who?" Cornwall asks, and Haëgre returns his gaze to him.

"A maiden," he answers after a moment. "A personal servant of the queen."

"What did she tell you?"

"Just as I've said."

"And you believed her?" Adalbert reproaches.

Haëgre flushes and glares at him. "She bore proof."

Cornwall steps forward again, intercepting the conversation. "What proof?"

"She—" Haëgre takes in the honest look in Cornwall's eyes. He's a smart man. He's good. The innkeeper believes that if he can get the truth to him, he would stand for it. "She bore the royal ring," he admits surely.

The captain sucks in a breath. An immediate and violent relief lights Cornwall's face. The guards around the room begin to chitter—some clapping each other on the back, some standing stunned, some as desperately pleased as Adalbert standing over him.

"Are you sure?" Cornwall inquires urgently. "It was the king's ring?"

Haëgre regards him uncertainly. He glances at Adalbert, at the captain, before answering. "Yes. It was so large it didn't even fit her thumb. I had seen the ring before—it was the same. She could only have gotten it from the queen."