The Wheel of Osheim

“Hertet likes to keep his enemies close,” I said, reclining with a groan.

Few parts of me didn’t hurt.

“Prince Jalan?” A concerned voice from just behind me. “Are you injured?”

“I’m fine. The worst of the pain is in my . . . body.” I craned my neck to see who addressed me. Squinting against the remnants of double vision I made out a thin and balding man in the latest Rhone fashions, yellow buttons on a black velvet jacket. The two images joined to reveal him sharp featured, sporting a port-wine stain below one eye. “Bonarti Poe!”

On my list of likely rebels Bonarti Poe would be keeping me company in the weasel section at the very bottom. “What did you do? Rush my uncle screaming death threats?”

Poe gave a high-pitched and flustered laugh. “No! No, never!” He coughed into a lace-edged handkerchief. “The king considers me Count Isen’s man and mistrusts me.” Another cough and he raised his voice. “But there’s no man more loyal to the throne of Red March than Bonarti Poe!”

“Isen is against my uncle?” That sounded promising. Count Isen was madder than a bag of ferrets but very capable and with a standing army of his own.

“I’m sure the count’s loyalty is beyond reproach,” Poe replied. “But he cannot yet have expressed an opinion on the matter. Even with the swiftest of messengers and leaving his hall immediately the count can’t be anywhere near Vermillion. I fear the king has simply anticipated defiance where I’m sure none exists.”

I was far less sure, but the count’s opinion didn’t matter one way or the other if he was still down at his holdings in the south. “So we’re doomed to live out the rest of our lives in this damn awful dungeon then?”

I sunk further back into the chair and smiled at the maid standing attendance between two guardsmen at the door. A pretty girl with red curls. “They’ll move us to the Marsail cells come morning.” An ancient, crumbling lord I recognized but couldn’t name. “That silly boy’s too scared to spare the men right now.”

“Hmmm.” I tested my chain. It turns out that heavy chains are just for show. A light chain will hold a man. I had more chance of breaking off the chair leg that the other end was wrapped about. Actually, if not for the half dozen guards stationed around the walls, I could just turn the armchair over and slip the chain free. But with my sword gone, my knife confiscated, and the fact I had no intention of pitting myself against six trained guards, with or without a sword, my options were limited. “They seem to be having fun.” The sounds of conversation just reached us from Hertet’s court, a low continuous rumble interspersed with the occasional shriek of laughter or outburst of applause. “Scared out of their wits, most of them.” The Baron of Strombol, a portly but fierce little man governing a sizable territory in the mountains to the north. “Terrified of whatever is at our gates, frightened that the Red Queen won’t come back to save them, frightened that she will.”

“She isn’t dead?” I hadn’t believed it, not truly. I didn’t think she could die. Not a woman that tough. And the Silent Sister . . . she always seemed too old for death to bother with.

The baron threw up his hands, chain clattering. “Who knows? Hertet says she is, but I’ve had no word of it save his. Wishful thinking?” I pursed my lips. It was perhaps the best chance the heir-apparentlynot was ever going to get to wear the crown. Maybe he just decided to gamble. We both shared that weakness. I understood gambling. We sat and time passed. I took a goblet of wine and picked at a bowl of olives. I smiled at the maid and earned a scowl for staring. A few parts of me even stopped aching, though I knew I’d be walking like an old man tomorrow, if I could even stand. It would have been quite pleasant but for the nagging of an unwelcome conscience. I’d left Darin’s wife and child in the care of a necromancer and sent just a dozen men under the command of a shiny knight to save them. Along with a barbed conscience I also had “overwhelming terror” to spoil the evening for me. The certain knowledge that the forces at the Appan Gate would soon crumble if they hadn’t already, and the tide of dead citizenry would then swamp the palace walls and kill us all.

I had less than an hour’s uneasy rest before the screaming started. I recognized it immediately despite the sound reaching only faintly through the curtained windows. The death-scream, issuing from the mouths of corpses all across the palace compound.

“What the?” The baron shifted his bulk around in the narrow confines of his chair.