Count Scar - SA by C. Dale Brittain, Robert A. Bouchard Page B

open to see each of the storeys within each part of the castle. I unfolded them gingerly, almost expecting to see a tiny image of myself in the middle of my great hall. "You did not do this with brush alone," I declared.
    "No, my lord, I do have some small skill in magic," Raymbaud said with a rather self-satisfied smile. "And if you will follow me, I can show you that my map represents Peyrefixade quite accurately."
    Bruno and I spent much of the rest of the day with Raymbaud as he led us around, showing us each feature of my castle as proudly as though it were his own. I forced myself to put aside my immediate and unreasoned thought that there must be something sinister about a man, not even a priest, who had studied the rudiments of magic; clearly my northern expectations had no place here.
    I already was familiar with the courtyard, entered by the great gates opposite the keep, with the stables on one side and the kitchens opening off the other. The keep, with the great hall on the main floor and chambers above, I also knew, but I hadn't realized how extensive were the store rooms underneath. Raymbaud led me around behind the keep, circling the tower where I had stood on my first morning in Peyrefixade, to a little terrace from which a steep stair led down to the postern gate, the private way in or out of the castle. Bruno and I took a torch to follow the long, long spiral of stairs down and back. Then, with the magic map in hand, I was finally able to make sense of the tangle of passages and stairways at the back of the castle, an area now apparently little used except for a small practice yard, shadowed by a squat square tower that stared away across the mountains.
    Several knights were practicing their sword-fighting there, and I joined them, both to assure myself that my skills had not become rusty during the long trip down here and to assure them that a scarred count could fight as well as anyone. Raymbaud also joined us and showed himself a polished if rather cautious swordsman.

    "You were clearly brought up as a knight," I said to him when we stopped to mop our brows. "You know fighting as well as you do your wine barrels. A younger son?" An archduke's younger son, I thought, at least had the opportunity to fight for the emperor. The landless younger son of a manorial lord would be lucky to find himself a service position at court that was not too degrading.
    "That's right, my lord," he said with an accommodating smile and another dip of the head. "And I count it my good fortune that I have been able to serve both in Duke Argave's court and more recently here in Peyrefixade. My goal is always to provide service of the level that I would want were I lord here myself."
    "He must be the duke's spy here," I said in private to Bruno later that evening. "Our duke seems to have a taste for Magians. Say nothing to Raymbaud to let him know we've guessed his secret.
    Even aside from his abilities in castle management, which the next man the duke tried to plant on me might not have, a known spy can be dealt with as long as he does not realize he has been recognized."
    Once I had learned the names of the rest of the staff and had stood watching them at work long enough that I had a good idea of their functions and abilities—and they had come to the realization that I would be no slipshod master—I turned my attention to the documents in the bottom of the treasure chest. The old count, my great-uncle, had kept very good records. Most people who give property to the Church trust the monks or canons to keep the records of the transfers themselves, but he had had his own scribe draw up the charters and make chirographic duplicates of all of them. The two identical accounts had been written on a single piece of parchment, side-by-side, with the word CHIROGRAPHUM written vertically between them, and then the two had been cut apart through the letters of that word, so the two halves could be fitted back together if there were any