The Ruby Knight

such delay.’
    ‘I will send for armed men,’ the count declared. ‘I have enough resources for that, and I will seal up the gates of the castle. If necessary, I will kill my sister to prevent her escape.’
    ‘You may not have to go that far, My Lord,’ Sparhawk told him, remembering something Sephrenia had said in the cellar. ‘Let’s go and have a look at this tower.’
    ‘You have a plan, Sir Sparhawk?’
    ‘Let’s not get our hopes up until I see the tower.’
    The count led them out into the courtyard. The storm had largely passed. The lightning was flickering on the eastern horizon now, and the pounding rain had diminished to intermittent tatters that raked the shiny stones of the yard. ‘It’s that one, Sir Sparhawk,’ the count said, pointing at the south-east corner of the castle.
    Sparhawk took a torch from beside the entryway, crossed the rainy courtyard and began his examination of the tower. It was a squat, round structure perhaps twenty feet high and fifteen or so in diameter. A stone stairway wound half-way around the side of it to a solidly barred and chained door at the top. The windows were no more than narrow slits. There was a second door at the base of the tower, and it was unlocked. Sparhawk opened it and went inside. It appeared to be a store-room. Boxes and bags were piled along the walls, and the room appeared dusty and unused. Unlike the tower, however, the room was not round but semicircular. Buttresses jutted out from the walls to hold up the stone floor of the chamber above. Sparhawk nodded with satisfaction and went back outside again. ‘What’s behind that wall in this store-room, My Lord?’ he asked the count.
    ‘There’s a wooden staircase that runs up from the kitchen, Sir Sparhawk. In times when the tower had to be defended, the cooks could take food and drink to the men up there. Occuda uses it now to feed my sister.’
    ‘Do the servants you sent away know about the stairway?’
    ‘Only the cooks knew, and they were among the ones Occuda killed.’
    ‘Better and better. Is there a door at the top of those stairs?’
    ‘No. Just a narrow slot to push the food through.’
    ‘Good. The lady’s misbehaved a bit, but I don’t think any of us would want to starve her to death.’ He looked around at the others. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said to them, ‘we’re going to learn a new trade.’
    ‘I don’t quite follow you, Sparhawk,’ Tynian admitted.
    ‘We’re now going to be stone-masons. Kurik, do you know how to lay brick and stone?’
    ‘Of course I do, Sparhawk,’ Kurik said disgustedly. ‘You should know that.’
    ‘Good. You’ll be our foreman then. Gentlemen, what I’m going to suggest may shock you, but I don’t think we have any choice.’ He looked at Sephrenia. ‘If Bellina ever gets out of that tower, she’s probably going to go looking for Zemochs or the Seeker. Would they be able to restore her powers?’
    ‘Yes, I’m sure they could.’
    ‘We can’t allow that. I don’t want that cellar ever to be used in that way again.’
    ‘What are you proposing, Sir Sparhawk?’ the count asked.
    ‘We’re going to wall up that door at the top of those stairs,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘Then we’ll tear the stairway down and use the stones to wall this door at the base of the tower in as well. Then we’ll conceal the door that leads from the kitchen to that stairway inside the tower. Occuda will still be able to feed her, but if the minstrel or those servants ever manage to get inside the castle, they’ll never figure out how to get to that room up there. Lady Bellina will live out the rest of her life right where she is.’
    ‘That’s a rather horrible thing to suggest, Sparhawk,’ Tynian said.
    ‘Would you rather kill her?’ Sparhawk asked bluntly.
    Tynian’s face blanched.
    ‘That’s it, then. We brick her up inside.’
    Bevier’s smile was chill. ‘Perfect, Sparhawk,’ he said. Then he looked at the count. ‘Tell me, My Lord, which of the structures inside your walls can you spare?’
    The count gave him a puzzled look.
    ‘We’re going to need building stone,’ Bevier explained. ‘Quite a bit of it, I think. I want the wall across that door up there good and thick.’

Chapter 16

    They removed their armour and put on the plain workmen’s smocks which Occuda provided, and then they went to work. They knocked out a portion of the back wall of the stable, working under Kurik’s direction. Occuda mixed a large tub of