The Musketeer's Seamstress - By Sarah D'Almeida Page 0,20
forward. “We must look in there,” he said, looking past D’Artagnan, still plastered to his wall, and to Porthos. “For the murderer.”
“Aramis never murdered anyone,” Porthos said, surging forward. “Killed, sure, lots of people. But he never murdered anyone. If you call him a murderer again, I shall have to cut your tongue out and feed it to you.”
Dlancey grinned, a grin that made his thin and worried face appear more like the devil-may-care expression of a seasoned man of war. He pulled his sword out. “I should like to see you try.”
“Oh, that you shall,” Porthos said, and in the next moment, the two of them were fighting on the staircase, step up and step down, calling boasts to each other and advertising to each other the horrible things they intended to do to the other.
“I don’t suppose you’ll be reasonable about this,” Fasset asked. He looked at D’Artagnan calculatingly.
D’Artagnan grinned. He knew better than to argue with a stooge of the Cardinal. And besides, if he judged the game properly, Athos meant to delay these men as much as humanly possible, keeping them busy, to give Aramis a chance to get a horse and escape Paris. “I’m always reasonable,” he said, and let his sword hand fall upon the pommel of his sword with accustomed ease. “And here is my reason.”
Fasset had anticipated D’Artagnan’s response. His sword was out, and as D’Artagnan lunged, he parried most ably.
They fought silently for a few minutes, D’Artagnan taking care to close the door of his friend’s room behind him in the one moment he had a chance to. They fought up and down the staircase, D’Artagnan keeping the upper hand but never quite prevailing. In the hall beneath, Athos had a spot of blood on his right sleeve and had moved his sword to his left hand.
At the bottom of the staircase, Porthos and Dlancey fought, cursing and threatening each other, but neither looked the worse for the wear, save for sweat and reddened features.
“I don’t suppose he’s even in his lodgings,” Fasset said, as he parried D’Artagnan’s thrust. “He’s probably at Monsieur de Treville’s as we speak, looking for justification from that worthy gentleman.”
D’Artagnan managed to smile and hoped his face betrayed the proper triumphant expression and then just as quickly erased it. If he was lucky, he thought, as he battled Fasset down the stairs, then Fasset would think that Aramis was within and D’Artagnan was glad at the thought he had escaped.
“Curse you,” Fasset said. “To the deepest hell. He’s within, is he not?” and, with redoubled fury, he started fighting D’Artagnan up the stairs. But D’Artagnan couldn’t allow him to check Aramis’s quarters just yet, and he fought vigorously downward.
Down in the hall, the more timorous guards of the Cardinal had regained their courage. Not enough of their courage to help Bagot with Athos. Even madmen would scruple to get in Athos’s way when his dark blue eyes shone with that unholy light. They started up the stairs towards Porthos. Porthos fought four of them without breaking a sweat.
Two of them straggled past Porthos to challenge D’Artagnan. Without a word, Fasset turned and fought beside the young guard against his own comrades, his concentration intense, his swordplay deadly.
“Would you side with me?” D’Artagnan asked, puzzled.
“I would side with honor.”
“Is it honor to come arrest a man early morning, on a mere rumor?” he asked.
Fasset snorted, even as his sword made short work of his stunned former comrades. “Rumor? Spare me. We found his uniform in the lady’s room.”
“Knowing Aramis,” D’Artagnan said, as he fought an enemy three steps down, only slightly worried about having Fasset now behind him. “I’m only surprised you didn’t find two uniforms—a normal one, one for special days, and his lace and velvet outfit for the days when he didn’t wear a uniform. He practically lived at the lady’s.”
Fasset laughed behind him, as D’Artagnan sent his opponent’s sword flying over the stair railing and to the hall below. Then he resumed parrying the attacks of another two.
“But this uniform was the only one, and it was clear he’d run away naked.”
“How could he run away naked? And make it through half of Paris on the way back home.”
“Ah,” Fasset said, as he fought his three opponents down the steps, till he was side-by-side with D’Artagnan. “Ah, that I cannot answer, but we’ve long since, all of us in his eminence’s guards, lived in awe of those we call the four inseparables.” He turned