EIGHT
I walked to the palace. Three times city guards stopped me, concerned at the gore dripping from my finery.
“I’m Prince Jalan. A man tried to rob me. He won’t try again.” I said the same thing three times and passed on.
I met more soldiers than guards, units of them moving rapidly and offering me no more than curious glances. At last I came to the Errik Gate through which heroes enter the palace, and took instead the postern gate just as I had on my return from the North. The sub-captain on duty recognized me and admitted me without fuss once he’d established the blood wasn’t mine.
On the far side of the wall the palace waited, unchanged, baking in the late Vermillion summer. “What’s going on in the city?” I asked the sub-captain as I emerged. “Soldiers everywhere.” It had been like this before we moved out for the Scorron border. That had been war in earnest and there hadn’t been as many troops in the streets.
“It’s a campaign against Slov, my prince.”
“Why?” I cared little enough for politics but I was pretty sure Slov hadn’t offered Red March even a hint of aggression in my lifetime. I seemed to remember half their royal family were honoured guests of the March, hostages against the good behaviour of the current regime— though quite how much the current Slov royals would care about people they hadn’t seen in decades I didn’t know. “What have they done?”
The man wrinkled his brow as if the act might produce an answer. “They’re the enemy, sire.”
“By definition if we’re attacking them. But why are they the enemy?”
Again the frown, but this time relaxing into a smile as he remembered the fact he’d been hunting. “Harbouring a person of interest.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, Prince Jalan.”
“You’re dismissed, sub-captain.”
“But, my prince. We should escort—”
“I made it from here from the deserts of Afrique, sub-captain. I should be able to negotiate the next three hundred yards in my own home without mishap.”
The first two hundred and ninety yards went well. It was approaching the front steps of the Roma Hall that I ran into difficulty.
“Jalan? By Christ!” An angry roar from behind me. “It is you! Where the hell have you been you bankrupt little weasel?”
I paused. My big brother Martus. A man I’d not had to endure since that audience in the throne room the day I first laid eyes on Snorri. I made a slow turn and found myself in Martus’s shadow as he loomed over me.
“Killing people, brother.” I met his gaze squarely.
It took a moment for the words to sink in, another for him to take in the crimson state of me, one more for him to put the two together and take a sharp step back. “Dear God . . .”
“My debts have been paid in full.” I turned back and walked on up into the house.
Not strictly true but the arm-aching weight of gold remaining in the coffer I held before me would pay off the various wine merchants, tailors, and bawdy houses still holding my credit notes. It would be good to be free of the burden.
I won’t say the Roma Hall seemed small, because set against the places I’d been laying my head of late it was huge—but somehow it felt smaller than my memories of it. Fat Ned and young Double stood on guard at the front door, the former blanching at my approach and shaking so much the loose folds of his skin jiggled around his old bones.
“It’s Prince Jalan, Ned.” Double elbowed the old man, his dark eyes taking in more than just the gore drying across me. He bowed, the black locks of his hair falling across his face, eyes still studying me from behind this veil.
I favoured them with a brief nod and pushed on through, Fat Ned still gaping at me.
A couple of servants in the entrance hall ran off screaming murder, but Ballessa stood her ground, her expression disapproval and concern in equal measures.
“No errant peasant boys to take care of this time, Ballessa. Clean clothes will suffice.”
A frown at the memory of Hennan’s brief stay, then Ballessa gave a nod, rotated her matronly bulk and set off down the corridor to order up a bath and fetch a collection of suitable garments from my wardrobes.
I washed off the blood and left the water pink, the last of Maeres Allus swirling around, diluted, sluiced away, and beneath it Jalan Kendeth, clean and without stain. I’d killed a man with intent, done it in cold blood, or as cold as any human’s blood can be at such a moment. An evil son of a bitch, true enough, but it didn’t feel good, it didn’t feel right. No part of me felt the hero. I called for more water and washed again— though water will only take the stains you can see.
The clothes Ballessa brought still fitted me. They wrapped me, comfortable, familiar, rich, a second skin that completed my disguise—I stood before the mirror and Prince Jalan stared back at me, surprised. I looked the part, every inch of me, and every inch felt the impostor. Every step of my journey had taken me further from home, no matter the direction I took, and now, standing in my father’s house, I was further away than I’d ever been.
I made to turn away and in the last moment caught a flash of blue that drew my gaze back to the mirror, staring past myself into the room behind, the doorways, the windows, the shadows. There’d been a flicker of motion. I was sure of it. I wanted to whirl around and check that nobody stood at my back. Instead I stood there, without motion, studying the reflected room, hunting it, looking for that blue.
Finally I turned the mirror to the wall then did the same for the three others hung in my rooms. I hadn’t forgotten about the Lady Blue and much as I wanted her to forget about me that was unlikely to happen. She and Grandmother still had their war—and when the Red Queen crushed the witch the loudest cheer would come from me. She had the blood of my great-grandfather on her hands, a crime I could perhaps overlook, but the blood of my unborn sister, and the blood of my friend, Tuttugu, could not be washed away. Part of me, more than a small part, the pieces still burning with the memory of taking Maeres Allus’s corrupted life, wanted to be the one to stick the knife into the Lady Blue, and twist it.
An hour later I stepped from the Roma Hall, fresh and clean, wearing my old clothes and my old smile. I doubted there’d be much to mark me from the Jalan who sneaked back from the DeVeer mansion at dawn on the day of the opera, though it felt like half a lifetime ago.
Walking away from my old home I felt a curious sensation of being watched. Not the adoration or curiosity a returning hero might expect but a crawling sensation on the back of my neck, as if I were the object of a close and cold scrutiny. Feeling distinctly uncomfortable, I picked up my pace and crossed the courtyard with a brisk stride.
I went to the palace. Not Grandmother’s main doors, but to the guest wing, up the stairs to the Great Jon’s suite. The guards at the ground floor informed me Barras still occupied the rooms, presumably now the headquarters for the search for his misplaced wife.
Knocking on the door I found my heart pounding harder than it had in the Blood Holes in the moment I realized I had murder on my mind.
“Good afternoon, sir.” A short doorman, immaculately groomed, offered me his bow. “Who may I say is calling?”
“Jalan?” Lisa’s voice calling from somewhere off the reception hall. She came running, holding her skirts at both hips to keep from tripping. Barras nearly as fast behind her, pale, dark lines beneath both eyes.
“Jalan . . .” Lisa pulled up short of throwing herself into my arms, hands going to her face as if I were still wearing all the gore I arrived at the palace with. “Are you . . .” She studied my face, leaving me wondering if perhaps I had changed rather more than I suspected.
“Jal!” Barras showed no such hesitation and threw himself into my arms with no pretence at a manly hug. “Jal! Thank you, Jal! Thank you!”
“Steady on!” I waited for a loosening of his grip then slipped free. “The bad news is you owe me two camels—” I caught Lisa’s look of outrage. “Three! Three camels. Good ones!”
“Same old Jal!” Barras laughed, punching my shoulder.
“No, really. I’m not jo—”
“Thank you!” And he was back to the hugging.
When I finally untangled myself it seemed as if the moment to ask for my camels’ worth had passed. Barras stood, running his hands back across the short brown shock of his hair and looking in happy amazement from me to Lisa and back again. “We have to celebrate . . . A feast!”
“I’ve been on the road too long to turn down a feast.” I held up a hand to forestall him. “But right now I have an urgent meeting with our monarch.” I looked to Lisa, lovely in her powders and jewels now, though I liked her looks just as much out in the wilds. “Do you have the package I gave you for safe-keeping?”
Barras looked confused and raised the tempo of his Jalan-Lisa-Jalan watching. Lisa nodded and pulled the velvet-wrapped key from some pocket artfully concealed in her skirts. She handed it over without even a twinge of hesitation, which meant something to me. I think perhaps it’s not a key you can give to someone who isn’t your friend without at least some measure of regret.
“Thank you.” And I meant it. “Keep the feast warm for me.” I slapped a hand to Barras’s shoulder, finding it hard to hate him any more. “I’ll come along later, if I can still walk when the Red Queen’s finished with me.”
“What have you done?”
But I was already striding away. “Later!”
Grandmother’s court was not in session when I arrived beneath the great doors to her palace. Two lords, Grast and Gren, stood waiting on the steps along with a solid, dark-haired knight with an impressive moustache—Sir Roger, I thought. All three favoured me with dark looks. I don’t think they recognized me but I had bad blood with Lord Grast’s older brother, the duke, so I ignored the trio and went on up without a word.
Before the queen’s doors the same plumed giant who had admitted me on my return from the North—or perhaps his cousin—tilted his head down at me and said he would see my request for audience carried to my grandmother.
I sat in the shade of one of the great portico columns and waited, watching the elite guardsmen swelter in their fire-bronze on the sundrenched steps. The courtyard before us lay wide and empty, as blank as my future. I wasn’t sure even what the night might bring. Could I really stand to watch Barras and Lisa’s reunion? I briefly considered calling in on my father, but Ballessa informed me that the cardinal had taken to his bed a week earlier. Ill, she said. Ill on wine I suspected . . .
The door behind me slammed and turning I saw Uncle Hertet pushing aside the guardsman although the man had already stepped sharply out of his way. Lord Grast and Lord Gren were quickly by his side as the heir-apparent, or as he was more commonly known: the heir-apparentlynot, stormed toward the steps.
“If she wasn’t my mother . . .” Hertet smacked his fist into his palm. It might have looked menacing if he weren’t a rather paunchy man of modest build in his fifties, gone to grey. His mother I was sure could still put him over her knee and deliver the soundest of spankings. Not to mention fell him with a punch that would leave few teeth for his dotage. “This city needs a king, not a damned steward. And it needs a king who will stay here and do his duty by it, not swan off on some wild ex-pedition. These are troubled times, boys, troubled times. A queen who leaves her throne empty in troubled times is practically abdicating—” My uncle spotted me lounging in the shade. “You! One of Reymond’s boys?” He pointed a ringed finger my way as if being his brother’s son were an accusation.
“I-”
“Martus? Darin? Damned if I can tell you apart. All of you the same, and none of you like your father.” Hertet went past me, flanked by the two lords with Sir Roger at his heels. “Still, what did Reymond expect ploughing such a foreign field? He wasn’t the only plough, that’s for sure.” His voice carried back across the courtyard as he walked away, trailing off as the distance grew. “They can’t help it, these Indus girls . . .”
I found myself on my feet, having got there swiftly and without conscious decision. My hand had found the hilt of my knife. The tide of angry words rising to defend my mother’s honour had yet to leave my mouth only because they were still battling to organize a coherent sentence.
“Prince Jalan.”
I looked up. The overly large guardsman loomed over me. “The queen will see you now.”
I shot a scowl at the retreating backs of Hertet and his cronies—one that in a just world would have lit them up like torches—and brushed myself down. You don’t keep the Red Queen waiting.
Four guardsmen escorted me into the empty throne room, gloomy despite the day blazing through high windows, striated by their bars. Lamps burned around the dais and Grandmother sat ensconced in Red March’s highest chair. Two of her advisors stood further back in the shadows, Marth, wide and solid, Willow, whip-thin and sour. Of the Silent Sister, no sign.
“You’ve changed, Grandson.” Grandmother’s regard could pin a man to the floor. I felt the weight of it settle on me. Even so I had time to be surprised by her acknowledgement of our relationship. “The boy who set out has not returned. Where did you lose him?”
“Some wayside tavern, highness.” In Hell was the true answer but no part of me wanted to talk about that.
“And you have something to report, Jalan? I’m sure you didn’t request an audience before the throne without good cause. Your northern friends eluded my soldiers. Perhaps you encountered them again on your travels?”
I glanced left and right, seeking the Silent Sister. Did Grandmother already know exactly what I’d been up to from the moment I left the city? Had my great-aunt’s silence revealed it as prophecy before the march of days turned it into my personal history?
“I found them. I recovered the key. I returned it to Vermillion.”
The Red Queen left her chair with remarkable speed for an old woman. Standing on the dais with the spars of her collar fanning out above her head she towered over me. Even toe to toe in our stockinged feet she would have overtopped me, and few men can say the same.
“You’ve done well, Jalan.” She hadn’t a mouth for smiles but she showed her teeth in a reasonable approxi-mation. She stepped down and was before me in three paces. “Very well indeed.”
I noticed her hand in the space between us, held out, palm up. The same hand I had seen wrapped around a crimson sword in my dreams of Ameroth. “I . . . uh . . . don’t have it now.” I took a quick step back, sweat running down my neck all of a sudden.
“What?” As short and cold a word as I ever heard uttered.
“I—it’s not . . .”
“You left it somewhere?” Her eyebrows lifted a remarkable distance. “There’s no safe place—” She glanced about and waved at the guardsmen around the walls, all hand to hilt. “Quick, all of you. Get to the Roma Hall and escort Prince Jalan back with the—”
“I gave it to Great-uncle Garyus,” I said. “Your highness.”
Grandmother raised both arms, one to each side, palms out, and every man in the throne room stopped moving, guards halfway to me now frozen in their tracks. “What?” I swear she could stab someone to death with that word.
I clenched my teeth and gathered my courage. “I gave it to my greatuncle.”
“Why would you do that?” She took hold of my jacket, gathering two handfuls of the cloth, one just below each shoulder. “To.” She hauled me closer. Far too close. “Me?”
We stood eyeball to eyeball now. Oddly—worryingly—that same red tide that had risen in me when standing before Maeres Allus in the Blood Holes rose in me now, curling my lip in a half-snarl. “I lost his ships. I gambled them away.” Spoken too loudly. No highness. No apology. “I owed it to him.”
I had gone from Lisa and Barras to the east spire above the Poor Palace and climbed the long stair. I’d told the old man of my failure and sat with bowed head for his judgment. Instead of raging he had struggled a little more upright against his pillows and said, “I hear you have a salt-mine.”
“I have the option to buy the Crptipa mine from Silas Marn for ten thousand in crown gold. I am debt free and have two thousand to my name.”
“So a man offering you eight thousand more might ask a high price?”
“Yes.”
I left the tower room with a note for eight thousand and an agreement that Garyus would own two-thirds of the mine. As I left I set a black velvet package at the foot of his bed.
“It’s Loki’s key, Great-uncle Garyus. Don’t touch it. It’s made of lies.”
I left then, though he called for me to come back. I ran down the stairs faster than any sensible man would, feeling something new, or at least something I’d not felt for a very long time. Feeling good.
“I’m paying the price for your failings!” The Red Queen thrust me before her and I staggered back as she advanced. “Your duty is to the throne! Your debts are not my concern.” A roar now, her anger loose.
My own anger leapt from my throat before I could cage it. “I was paying your debts, Grandmother!” I halted my retreat. “I gave the key to Garyus. You took his throne. And you.” I pointed without looking to the place where the Silent Sister stood. I could sense her now, like a needle in my flesh. “And you took his strength. I have given him something neither of you can take. You can ask and he may allow because he loves this land and its peoples, but you can’t take. When you put a cripple in a high tower the message is clear enough. A hundred and seven steps are hardly an invitation to the man to join the world! I have put him at the centre of it.” I exhaled and my shoulders went down, the anger gone from me, quicker than it came.
The Red Queen towered before me, sucking in her breath to roar again. But the roar never came. Something in her expression softened, just the smallest bit. “Go,” she said. “We will speak of this another time.” She dismissed me with a wave of her hand, and I turned for the door, willing myself not to run.
I saw the Silent Sister, standing where I had pointed. Rags and skin and glinting eyes. What she thought of the matter I couldn’t tell. She remained as unreadable as algebra.