The Liar's Key

“.” He reached for a water skin and started to fill the funnel. From that point, until he stopped, the business of not choking to death kept me fully occupied. The incident made two things clear—firstly that they didn’t have the key to the mask, and secondly if I were ever going to be fed again it would be after we reached Vermillion.

The “watering” solved the other problem I’d been having, my bladder losing all its shyness as I choked. The effect was at first a not-unpleasant warmth, fading fairly quickly to the less pleasant sensation of cold wet trousers.

The sun set and though I imagined Aslaug whispering amongst the dry voices of the corn I couldn’t make out the words and she offered no help. In fact, it sounded almost like laughter.

Two brothers settled down to sleeping, leaving the third to watch me, and eventually I lay down on the bed of flattened maize stalks to try to sleep. My finger, or what I imagined might be left of it, pulsed with hurt, and without being able to bring my arms forward I could find no position in which they didn’t ache, the mask was a misery and bugs emerged in the darkness to explore every inch of me. Even so, at some point in the night I passed out, and ten seconds later, or so it seemed, my captors were shaking me awake with the sky hinting grey above us.

I watched them break their fast, choked down more water, and was hoisted onto Nor’s back once more. We resumed our journey toward Vermillion, clattering along at a gentle pace past the day-to-day traffic of wagons, messengers, carriages bound for distant destinations, and peasants making shorter visits on laden carts or leading over-burdened mules along behind them. The road rose among some stony ridge of hills that I didn’t recall from my outward journey, and farmland gave over to a dry forest of cork oaks, beech, and loose-limbed conifers. The morning haze burned away and the sun beat down again, seemingly harder than before, raising a stink from the manure piles punctuating the Appan cobbles and making me yearn unexpectedly for the cool clean winds of a Norseheim spring. I lolled in the saddle, sweating, thirsty, and wretched, wondering how many flies were clustered around the aching ruin of my finger and laying their eggs in the glistening wound.

“That’s him!” A man’s voice, strident and triumphant. “Or at least it’s his horse. Certain of that. Look at the flash.”

I unglued my eyes and tried to focus. Four men on horseback had moved to block our way.

“It can’t be him.” A different man, dismissive. “A prince of Red March wouldn’t—”

“Check him, Bonarti.” This from the man on the largest horse, a real monster.

The last of them urged his steed toward me. The Slav brothers tensed but made no move to prevent his advance.

“Definitely his horse.” The first man, daring anyone to disagree with him.

Relief flooded me. If I’d not been gagged I would have shouted for joy. Every ache vanished in the instant. Grandmother, Martus . . . someone . . . had learned of Maeres’s intentions and sent out a rescue party. A rescue party including a man who’d taken note of Nor’s peculiar markings—that jagged white flash down the velvety blackness of his nose. His distinctiveness had drawn me to buying him—I’d wanted to look good riding back into my hometown and, even though a connoisseur of horseflesh like myself shouldn’t be guided by such frippery, I had let it guide me. And it must have guided Maeres’s men too. If I’d only chosen a plain dun nag and worn a hood I would have been crossing the border into Florence instead of a day’s hard ride from Vermillion and neck deep in the mire.

The thin man closing in on me leaned forward in his saddle to peer at me, his eyes narrow, one with the red stain of a birthmark just below it. It was Bonarti Poe! I’d last seen him at the Grapes of Roth just before Maeres showed up to ruin the evening. He might be an oily fellow with a pointy face that seemed to beg for slapping, but at that moment I’d never been so pleased to see anyone I knew. I didn’t even begrudge him all the Rhonish red he’d swigged at my expense that night.

“Prince Jalan?”

I nodded vigorously making gurgling noises that I hoped sounded affirmative. Bonarti continued to peer at me closely, shifting his head from side to side as though it might help him see past the straps across my face. “It’s him all right!” Then in a quieter and puzzled voice. “Prince Jalan, why are you—”

“He’s hiding, obviously! A ruse to smuggle himself back into the city unobserved.” The man on the enormous horse cut across Bonarti’s question. My attention though was on the Slav brothers—given half a chance they’d cut my saviours down and carry on to Vermillion as if nothing had happened. I gestured urgently toward them with my head making gurgling noises that I hoped sounded a strong note of warning.