Forest Kingdom Trilogy 2 - Blood and Honor

me.'
    Roderik smiled politely. DeGrange just looked at Jordan.
    After a moment they bowed formally, and left. The lock made a hard, final sound as the key was turned from the other side. Jordan shook his head slowly. It was times like this that made him wish he'd taken up a career in carpentry, like his mother wanted.
    Robert Argent sat alone in his study, leafing through the letters and business papers that had accumulated in his absence. He'd been doing it for some time, but he wasn't getting anywhere. He realised he'd just read the same paragraph for the third time, and it still hadn't sunk in. He dropped the letter on to his desk, and rubbed tiredly at his eyes. He knew he ought to be concentrating; the letter was important, they all were, but none of it seemed to matter much any more. The man who sweated his guts out over every deal, squeezed every bargain till it screamed to get the last drop of credit out of it; that was a different Robert Argent. That man now lived only in the past. Argent missed him.
    He sat back in his chair and looked around him. It was a medium-sized study, simply appointed, modest but comfortable. The carpet had been a gift from his late wife, and the portraits on the walls had been painted by his daughter-in-law. They were quite good, some of them. With the money he was making these days, he could easily afford living quarters that were much more ostentatious, but he'd never seen the point. He was a man of simple tastes, and always had been. It might have been different if he'd
    married again, but somehow he'd never got round to it. He could have married again; among the merchant community, political marriages were even more popular than among the aristocracy, but he no longer believed in arranged marriages. He believed in love and romance, though there'd been precious little of either in his life.
    When he'd been younger, he'd pictured many possible futures for himself, but this hadn't been one of them. Argent smiled slightly, remembering his early days with Rod, more than twenty years ago, when his friend had been plain Rod Crichton, instead of Count Roderik. They'd had some times together, the two of them . . . One night in Web City, they'd been thrown out of fourteen inns in less than three hours; a record that still stood. Argent sighed, and looked listlessly at the wine bottle on his desk, still unopened.
    He'd always liked his wine, but of late he'd lost even that.
    When Rod had first come to him with his lunatic scheme of finding a double for the Prince, it had seemed like old times all over again. The two of them together, against an uncaring world. And, of course, a chance to rebuild his fortunes after the failure of their last great scheme. But the deal had gone sour, right from the beginning. Not his fault this time, or even Rod's; it had just turned out that the world had grown stronger and nastier than he remembered, while he had grown old and soft.
    Robert Argent stared unseeingly at the wall before him; a man with too much past, and no future at all.
    Jordan wandered round the huge room, looking for somewhere to settle. The room seemed uncomfortably large and echoing now that he'd been left alone in it. He trailed his fingertips across the furniture, trying to get the feel of the place. Something about the furnishings and fittings just didn't add up. The design was a total mess, a hopeless mixture of styles. It was as though each item had been chosen to impress the viewer with its appearance and value, and with no thought to the overall picture.
    The room was more like a showroom than a place where someone lived. Jordan shrugged. Maybe that was how Viktor saw it ...
    Jordan crossed over to the nearest window, and pulled back one of the drapes to look out. Night had fallen, and the stars were out. He could hear a wind blowing outside, though the thick glass reduced the sound to the barest murmur. The night looked cold and forbidding, and Jordan shuddered briefly as he let the drape fall back and turned away from the window. So far, Castle Midnight was proving as gloomy and uncomfortable as he'd thought it would. He hadn't come across an architect yet who could design a Castle that was fit to live in. All in all, Jordan was beginning to feel thoroughly depressed. He hadn't seen a single happy face or cheerful sight since he entered this great hulking pile of black stone.
    And then his ears pricked up as he heard something moving, not far away. He glared quickly around, but