Not that Athos didn’t value Aramis as a friend-he did. And not that he believed that Aramis would knowingly betray him, or any of them. Their friendship had been tried in too demanding a course for him to have any doubt that they did indeed stand one for all and all for one.

It was more the way that Aramis’s mind ran, deep and convoluted and often hiding from himself what he himself thought. Aramis knew of the conspiracy and, in fact, Aramis might be part of it. Athos didn’t think so, at least not knowingly, because much as Aramis despised Richelieu, he did not condone of murder. A man he wanted out of the way would be challenged to a duel or manipulated into exile. And if neither of those applied, then neither would murder.

And yet, he might very well refuse to help save the Cardinal’s neck, or work only halfheartedly to save it. “I can’t promise my friends, or not yet,” Athos said.

The Cardinal watched him. Finally, he nodded. “I cannot give you the servant’s liberty without some surety you can do what you promise,” Richelieu said. “So this is the deal I offer you, Monsieur le Comte. I shall promise you nothing will happen to the boy for the next week. No torture, no condemnation. But you must deliver me the conspirators meanwhile or…” He clasped his own neck, with one hand, as if to indicate hanging.

Athos nodded, staring. It wasn’t till he was outside the Palais Cardinal-having crossed the great antechamber where all conversations stopped at his approach and didn’t resume again till he was too far to hear their words-that Athos thought there was another outcome the Cardinal hadn’t considered, and one for which he was sure of his friends’ approval.

He could discover who had, in fact, killed the armorer. And then Richelieu would have to free Mousqueton.

Meanwhile, he had a week. A week, and Mousqueton would be safe meanwhile. And he could work to find the real murderer. If he needed to pry into the conspiracies of the court to find something to keep Richelieu quiet meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt. The court was so rife with conspiracies, he was unlikely to find anything concrete.

He was putting on his gloves, preparing to go back to his lodgings, when he heard a soft cough behind him. “Monsieur Athos?” a well-known voice said.

Athos pivoted on his heel, to see Rochefort, the shadow of the Cardinal and, many said, the Cardinal’s evil genius. He was looking at Athos with an expression of interested amusement in his single eye. His other eye socket was covered with a patch. The last time they’d seen each other alone, Athos had held the upper hand. He rather suspected that Rochefort imagined he had it now.

“Yes?” he said.

“His eminence asked me to have a talk with you. If you would follow me.”

The Bravery of Youth; Porthos’s Defense; Ghost Tale

OUTSIDE the door to the armorer’s, Xavier hesitated, and D’Artagnan took advantage of the moment, to run ahead. There was a crowd outside the door, and a large man had just knocked on it and was calling out.

No one answered him. As D’Artagnan approached-since everyone was keeping a safe distance and looking rather like they were ready to take to their heels-the big man turned around and said, “No one is answering. Perhaps it’s just a cat locked in there? A cat would make a lot of noise. There was once a cat locked over in the potters and he-”

“Don’t be daft, Francois,” a voice shouted from behind him. “How would a cat reach the swords?”

D’Artagnan didn’t know why, but he did not want anyone to come in with him, and he found himself saying, “Perhaps. Or perhaps it is a ghost.”

At his conspiratorial accents, even the big man stepped back a little. Which allowed D’Artagnan a chance to slip past him, open the door, and slip into the dark armorer’s.

Of course, it only occurred to him afterwards, as the dark, clammy air of the workshop closed around him, that he was alone. In the armorer’s. Where a recent murder had happened.

Monsieur D’Artagnan père, a man of certain convictions and wise maxims, had once told his son, when D’Artagnan was just a small boy, that the probability was that there was no such thing as ghosts, and that it was very important for D’Artagnan to know that. On the other hand, it was important to keep in mind that the ghosts themselves might not know it.

It seemed to D’Artagnan, now, in the dark workshop, his nose filled with the smell of coals and metal polish as well as that curious metallic tang of smithies and an underlying smell of sudden death, that he heard his father’s voice again. He swallowed loudly, and hoped these ghosts-if there were any here-knew that they didn’t exist.

In the dark he took a step, two. And he found a huge hand clamping tight over his mouth. He put his hand to his sword belt, but he was wearing neither sword belt nor sword, and squirmed in the grip of another huge hand that had clasped his shoulder, in an attempt to turn around and kick his captor-who he was quite sure was corporeal-where it would hurt, when a well-known voice stopped him.

“D’Artagnan,” Porthos whispered in his ear, in his whisper which had an odd habit of booming at unexpected times. Not loud enough, D’Artagnan hoped, to be heard outside the doors to the smithy, but one could never be sure. “D’Artagnan? What are you doing here? And dressed that way.”

D’Artagnan did his best to answer, which was easier thought than done, due to the huge hand still clamped tightly across his mouth. He let out a hiss of exasperation, lifted his own hand and, delicately, prized one of Porthos’s fingers away, enough to say something that sounded like “pfffff” but was in fact, “Let me speak.”

Porthos jumped a little. “Oh, sorry,” he boom-whispered, while pulling his hand away from D’Artagnan’s face.

D’Artagnan, in turn, took his finger to his lips, in the universal gesture of recommending silence and said, in quite a low whisper. “There’s a crowd outside. Don’t speak. You boom when you speak.”

Porthos nodded and looked an enquiry at D’Artagnan.

D’Artagnan sighed. He said, thinking as he said it. “Well… You can’t get out. Not through there. There is a crowd out there too. So…” He chewed on his lip, thinking, as he looked around the darkened smithy. There was a candle burning on one of the forges, its light too little to make it beyond a circle perhaps as tall and wide as D’Artagnan himself. Well, and a little more of it making it, attenuated some distance. He could see the swords overhead and, near the embers on the hearth, a pile of something that might be coal or metal. But that was about it, except for the light of the embers. There was a crowd outside the door. Porthos couldn’t leave without being stopped by the crowd. And since he was Mousqueton’s master, things could get ugly rather quickly. He would not put it past the crowd to try to arrest Porthos. And one of the ever-obliging guards of his eminence might be nearby. The last thing they needed was to be arrested or worse, to fight a duel in full view of a lot of people, a duel that could-at a stroke of the King’s pen-become their last.

No. Something more cunning must offer. And, as D’Artagnan thought it, the plan presented itself, emerging from his head like a rather shifty Athena from Zeus’s head. He grabbed at Porthos’s gold-lace edged sleeve. “Listen,” he said, standing on tiptoes to whisper as close as he could to his giant friend’s ear. “Hide behind that pile of… whatever it is, there. And I will… do something that will bring the crowd in here. They don’t have torches. At least not yet. The moment they enter here, you mingle with them. Remember, I’m your servant-” and at Porthos’s look of rebellion-“your other servant. And as such, you were looking for me, and I’m a bad, bad boy, and in a lot of trouble.”

Porthos looked doubtful. “But-” he said.