Prince of Fools

At last! I hurried out among the others, catching up with Serah. ‘Well that settles it! The old bat’s cracked. The emperor!’ I laughed and flashed her my cavalry grin. ‘Even Grandmother isn’t old enough to have seen the last emperor?’

Serah fixed me with a look of disgust. ‘Did you listen to anything she said?’ And off she strode, leaving me standing there, jostled by Martus and Darin as they passed by.

4

From the throne room I sprinted down the grand corridor, turning left where all my family turned right. Armour, statuary, portraits, displays of fanned-out swords, all of them flashed past. My day boots pounded a hundred yards of staggeringly expensive woven rug, luxuriant silks patterned in the Indus style. I turned the corner at the far end, teetering on the edge of control, dodged two maids, and ran flat out along the central corridor of the guest range where scores of rooms were laid ready against the possibility of visiting nobility.

‘Out the fucking way!’ Some old retainer doddered from a doorway into my path. One of my father’s – Robbin, a grey old cripple always limping about the place getting underfoot. I swerved past him, Lord knows why we keep such hangers-on, and accelerated down the hallway.

Twice guardsmen startled from their alcoves, one even calling a challenge before deciding I was more ass than assassin. Two doors short of the corridor’s end I stopped and made an entrance to the Green Room, gambling that it would be unoccupied. The room, chambered in rustic style with a four-poster bed carved like spreading oaks, lay empty and shrouded in white linens. I passed the bed, wherein I’d once spent several pleasant nights in the company of a dusky contessa from the southernmost reaches of Roma, and threw back the shutters. Through the window, onto the balcony, vault the balustrade and drop to the peaked roof of the royal stables, an edifice that would put to shame any mansion on the Kings Way.

Now, I know how to fall, but the drop from the stables roof would kill a Chinee acrobat and so the speed with which I ran along the stone gutter was a careful balance between my desire not to fall to my death and my desire to not be stabbed to my death by Maeres Allus or one of his enforcers. The giant Norseman could bludgeon me a way out of debt altogether if I managed to secure his services and make the right wagers. Hell, if people saw what I saw in the man and wouldn’t give me good odds then I could just slip him some bonewort and bet against him.

At the far end of the stables hall two Corinthian pillars supported ancient vines, or vice versa. Either way a good, or desperate, climber could make his way to ground there. I slid the last ten foot, bruised my heel, bit my tongue, and ran off toward the Battle Gate spitting blood.

I arrived there winded and had to bend double, palms on thighs, heaving in great lungfuls of air before I could assess the situation.

Two guards watched me with undisguised curiosity. An old soak commonly known as Double, and a youngster I didn’t recognize.

‘Double!’ I straightened up and raised a hand in greeting. ‘What dungeon are the queen’s prisoners being taken to?’ It would be the war cells up in the Marsail keep. They might be slaves but you wouldn’t put the Norseman in with common stock. I asked anyway. It’s always good to open with an easy question to put your man at ease.

‘Ain’t no cells for them lot.’ Double made to spit then thought better of it and swallowed noisily.

‘Wh—?’ She couldn’t be having them killed! It would be a criminal waste.

‘They’s going free. Tha’s what I heard.’ Double shook his head at the badness of the business, jowls wobbling. ‘Contaph’s coming up to process them.’ He nodded out across the plaza and sure enough there was Contaph, layered in his official robes and beetling toward us with the sort of self-importance that only minor functionaries can muster. From the high latticed windows above the Battle Gate I could hear the distant clank of chains, drawing nearer.

‘Damn it.’ I glanced from door to sub-chamberlain and back again. ‘Hold them here, Double,’ I told him. ‘Don’t tell them anything. Not a thing. I’ll see you right. Your friend too.’ And with that I hurried off to intercept Ameral Contaph of House Mecer.

We met in the middle of the plaza where an ancient sundial spelled out the time with morning shadows. Already the flagstones were beginning to heat up and the day’s promise simmered above the rooftops. ‘Ameral!’ I threw my hands wide as though he were an old friend.

‘Prince Jalan.’ He ducked his head as if seeking to take me from his sight. I could forgive him his suspicions, as a child I used to hide scorpions in his pockets.

‘Those slaves that put on this morning’s entertainment in the throne room … what’s to become of them, Ameral?’ I moved to intercept him while he tried to circumnavigate me, his order-scroll clutched tight in one pudgy fist.

‘I’m to set them on a caravan for Port Ismuth with papers dissolving any indenture.’ He stopped trying to get past me and sighed. ‘What is it that you want, Prince Jalan?’

‘Only the Norseman.’ I gave him a smile and a wink. ‘He’s too dangerous to just set free. That should have been obvious to everyone. In any event Grandmother sent me to take charge of him.’

Contaph looked up at me, eyes narrow with distrust. ‘I’ve had no such instructions.’

I have, I must confess, a very honest face. Bluff and courageous it’s been called. I’m easy to mistake for a hero and with a little effort I can convince even the most cynical stranger of my sincerity. With people who know me that trick becomes more difficult. Much more difficult.

‘Walk with me.’ I set a hand to his shoulder and steered him toward the Battle Gate. It’s good to steer a man in the direction they intended to go. It blurs the line between what he wants and what you want.

‘In truth the Red Queen gave me a scroll with the order. A hasty scrawl on a scrap of parchment really. And to my shame I’ve let it drop in my rush to get here.’ I took my hand from his shoulder and unfastened the gold chain from around my wrist, a thing of heavy links set with a small ruby on both clasps. ‘It would be deeply embarrassing for me to have to return and admit the loss to my grandmother. A friend would understand such things.’ I took to steering him again as if my only desire were for him to reach his destination safely. The chain I dangled before him. ‘You are my friend aren’t you, Ameral?’ Rather than drop the chain into a pocket of his robe and risk reminding him of scorpions I pressed it into the midst of his sweaty palm and risked him realizing it was red glass and gold plated over lead, and thinly at that. Anything of true value I’d long since pawned against the interest on my debts.

‘You’ll retrace your steps and find this document?’ Contaph asked, pausing to stare at the chain in his hand. ‘And bring it for filing before sunset.’

‘Assuredly.’ I oozed sincerity. Any more and it would be dripping from me.

‘He is dangerous, this Norseman.’ Contaph nodded as if persuading himself. ‘A heathen with false gods. I was surprised, I must admit, to see freedom set against his name.’

‘An oversight.’ I nodded. ‘Now corrected.’ Ahead of us Double appeared to be engaged in heated conversation through the view grille set into the Battle Gate’s sub-door. ‘You may allow the prisoners out,’ I called to him. ‘We’re ready for them now!’

‘You’re looking uncommonly pleased with yourself.’ Darin strolled into the High Hall, a dining gallery named for its elevation rather than the height of its ceiling. I like to eat there for the view it offers, both out across the palace compound and, via slit windows, into the great entrance hall of my father’s house.

‘Pheasant, pickled trout, hen’s eggs.’ I gestured at the silver plates set before me on the long trestle. ‘What’s not to be pleased about? Help yourself.’ Darin is self-righteous and overly curious about my doings, but not the royal pain in the arse that Martus is, so by dint of not being Martus he carries the title of ‘favourite brother’.

‘The domo reports dishes keep going missing from the kitchens of late.’ Darin took an egg and sat at the far end of the table with it.

‘Curious.’ That would be Jula, our sharp-eyed head cook, telling tales to the house domo, though how such whispers came to Darin’s ear … ‘I’d have a few of the scullions beaten. Soon put a stop to it.’

‘On what evidence?’ He salted the egg and bit deep.

‘Evidence be damned! Bloody up a few of the menials, put the fear into the lot of them. That’ll put an end to it. That’s what Grandmother would do. Light fingers get broken, she’d say.’ I went for honest outrage, using my own discomfort to colour my reactions. No more selling off the family silver for Jal then … that line of credit had come to an end. Still, I had the Norseman safely stowed away in the Marsail keep. I could see the keep from where I sat, a slouching edifice of stone more ancient than any part of the palace, scarred and disfigured but stubbornly resisting the plans of a dozen former kings to tear it down. A ring of tiny windows, heavily barred, ran around its girth like a belt. Snorri ver Snagason would be looking up at one of those from the floor of his cell. I’d told them to give him red meat, rare and bloody. Fighters thrive on blood.

For the longest time I stared out the window, watching the keep and the vast landscape of the heavens behind it, a sky of white and blue, all in motion so that the keep seemed to move and the clouds stay still, making a ship of all that stone, ploughing on through white waves.

‘What did you think of all that rubbish this morning?’ I asked the question without expecting an answer, sure that Darin had taken his leave.

‘I think if Grandmother is worried we should be too,’ Darin said.

‘A door into death? Corpses? Necromancy?’ I sucked and the flesh came easily off a pheasant’s bone. ‘Am I to fear this?’ I tapped the bone to the table, looked away from the window and grinned at him. ‘Is it going to pursue me for vengeance?’ I made it walk.

‘You heard those men—’

‘Have you ever seen a dead man walk? Forget distant deserts and ice wastes. Here in Red March has anyone ever seen such?’

Darin shrugged. ‘Grandmother says at least one unborn has entered the city. That’s something to be taken seriously.’

‘A what?’

‘Jesu! Did you really not listen to a word she said? She is the queen you know. You’d do well to pay attention from time to time.’

‘An unborn?’ The term rang no bells. It didn’t even approach the belfry.

‘Something born into death rather than life, remember?’ Darin shook his head at my blank look. ‘Forget it! Just listen now. Father expects you at this opera of his tonight. No showing up late, or drunk, or both. No pretending nobody told you.’

‘Opera? Dear God why?’ That was the last thing I needed. A bunch of fat and painted idiots wailing at me from a stage for several hours.

‘Just be there. A cardinal is expected to finance such projects from time to time. And when he does his family had better put in an appearance or the chattering classes will want to know why.’

I had opened my mouth to protest when it occurred to me that the DeVeer sisters would be among those chattering classes. Phenella Maitus too, the newly arrived and allegedly stunning daughter of Ortus Maitus whose pockets ran so deep it might even be worth a marriage contract to reach into them. And of course if I could have Snorri make his debut in the pits before the show started then I would likely find no end of aristocratic and mercantile purses opening in the opera intermissions to wager on this exciting new blood. If there’s one good thing to be said about opera it’s that it makes a man appreciate all other forms of entertainment so much more. I closed my mouth and nodded. Darin left, still munching his egg.

The appetite had left me. I pushed the plate away. Idle fingers discovered my old locket beneath the folds of my cloak and I fished it out, tapping it against the table. A cheap enough thing of plate and glass, it clicked open to reveal Mother’s portrait. I snapped it shut again. She last saw me when I was seven: a flux took her. They call it a flux. It’s just the shits really. You weaken, fever takes you, you die stinking. Not the way a princess is supposed to die, or a mother. I slipped the locket away unopened. Best she remember me as seven and not see me now.

Before leaving the palace I picked up my escort, the two elderly guardsmen allotted to the task of preserving my royal hide by my father’s generosity. With the pair in tow I swung by the Red Hall and collected a handful of my usual cronies. Roust and Lon Greyjar, cousins of the Prince of Arrow, sent to ‘further relations’, which seemed to entail eating all our best vittles and chasing chamber maids. Also Omar, seventh son of the Caliph of Liba and a fine fellow for gambling. I’d met him during my brief and inglorious spell at the Mathema and he’d persuaded the caliph to send him to the continent to broaden his education! With Omar and the Greyjars I headed up to the guest range, that wing of the Inner Palace where more important dignitaries were housed and where Barras Jon’s father, the Vyene ambassador to court, kept a suite of rooms. We had a servant fetch out Barras and he came sharp enough, with Rollas his companion-come-bodyguard trailing behind.

‘What a perfect night to get drunk on!’ Barras saluted me as he came down the steps. He always said it was a perfect night to get drunk.

‘For that we’d need wine!’ I spread my hands.

Barras stepped aside to reveal Rollas behind him carrying a large flask. ‘Big goings-on in court today.’

‘A meeting of the clan,’ I said. Barras never stopped fishing for court news. I had a hunch half of his allowance depended on feeding gossip to his father.

‘The Lady Blue playing her games again?’ He flung an arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the Common Gate. With Barras everything was a plot of nation against nation or worse, a conspiracy to undermine what peace remained in the Broken Empire.

‘Damned if I know.’ Now he mentioned it there had been talk of the Lady Blue. Barras always insisted that my grandmother and this purported sorceress were fighting their own private war and had been for decades – if true then to my mind it was a piss-poor excuse for one as I’d seen precious little sign of it. Tales about the Lady Blue seemed as doubtful as those about the handful of so-called magicians who seemed to haunt the western courts. Kelem, Corion, half a dozen others: charlatans the lot of them. Only the existence of Grandmother’s Silent Sister lent any credence at all to the rumours … ‘Last I heard our friend in blue was flitting from one Teuton court to the next. Probably been hung for a witch by now.’

Barras grunted. ‘Let’s hope so. Let’s hope she’s not back in Scorron stirring up that little war again.’

I could agree with him there. Barras’s father negotiated the peace and treated it like his second son. I’d rather a close relative came to harm than that particular peace deal. Nothing would induce me back into the mountains to fight the Scorrons.

We left the palace by the Victory Gate in fine spirits, passing our flask of Wennith red between us while I explained the virtues of wooing sisters.

As we entered Heroes’ Plaza the wine turned to vinegar in my mouth. I half-choked and dropped the flask.

‘There! Do you see her?’ Coughing, wiping tears from my eyes, I forgot my own rule and pointed at the blind-eye woman. She stood at the base of a great statue, The Last Steward, sombre on his petty throne.

‘Steady on!’ Roust thumped me between the shoulders.

‘See who?’ Omar asked, staring where I pointed. Dressed in tatters, she might in another glance be nothing more than rags hanging on a dead bush. Perhaps that’s what Omar saw.

‘Nearly lost this!’ Barras retrieved the flask, safe in its reed casing. ‘Come to papa! I’ll be looking after you from now on, little one!’ And he cradled it like a baby.

None of them saw her. She watched a moment longer, the blind-eye burning across me, then turned and walked away through the crowds flowing toward Trent Market. Jostled into action by the others I walked on too, haunted by old fears.

We approached the Blood Holes in the early afternoon, me sweating and nervous, and not just because of the unseasonal heat or the fact that my financial future was about to ride on two very broad shoulders. The Silent Sister always unsettled me and I’d seen entirely too much of her today. I kept glancing about, half-expecting to spot her again along the crowded streets.

‘Let’s see this monster of yours!’ Lon Greyjar slapped a hand to my shoulder, shaking me out of my rememberings and alerting me to the fact we’d arrived at the Blood Holes. I made a smile for him and promised myself I’d fleece the little fucker down to his last crown. He had an annoying way about him did Lon, too chummy, too keen to lay hands on you, and always snipping away at anything you said as if he doubted everything, even the boots you were standing in. Fair enough, I lie a lot, but that doesn’t mean cousins of some minor princeling can take liberties.

I paused before approaching the doors and stepped back, casting my gaze along the outer walls. The place had been a slaughterhouse once, though a grand one, as if the king back in those days had wanted even his cattle murdered in buildings that would shame the homes of his copper-crown rivals.

On the only other occasion I’d seen the blind-eye woman outside the throne room she had been on the Street of Nails up close to one of the larger manses toward the western end. I’d come out of some ambassador’s ballroom with an enticing young woman, got my face slapped for my efforts, and was cooling off, watching the street before going back in. I had been wiggling one of my teeth to check the damned girl hadn’t knocked it loose when I saw the Silent Sister across the broadness of the street. She stood there, bolder than brass, a bucket in one white hand and a horsehair brush in the other, painting symbols on the walls of the manse. Not the garden walls facing the street but the walls of the building itself, seemingly unnoticed by guard or dog. I watched her, growing colder by the moment as if a crack had run through the night letting all the heat spill out of it. She showed no sign of hurry, painting one symbol, moving on to the next. In the moonlight it looked like blood she was painting with, broad dark strokes, each running with countless dribbles, and coming together to make sigils that seemed to twist the night around them. She was encircling the building, throwing a painted noose about it, patient, slow, relentless. I ran back in then, far more scared of that old woman and her bucket of blood than of the young Countess Loren, her over-quick hand, and whatever brothers she might set upon me to defend her honour. The joy of the night was gone though and I left for home quick enough.

A day later I heard report of a terrible fire on the Street of Nails. A house burned to ash with not a single survivor. Even today the site lies vacant, with nobody willing to build there again.

The walls of the Blood Holes were blessedly free of any decoration save perhaps the scratched names of temporary lovers here and there where a buttress provided shelter for such work. I cursed myself for a fool and led on through the doors.

The Terrif brothers who ran the Blood Holes had sent a wagon to collect Snorri from the Marsail keep earlier in the day. I’d been particular in the message I dispatched, warning them to take considerable care with the man and demanding assurances of a thousand in crown gold if they failed to ensure his attendance in the Crimson Pit for the first bout.

Flanked by my entourage I strode into the Blood Holes, enveloped immediately in the sweat and smoke and stink and din of the place. Damn but I loved it there. Silk-clad nobles strolled around the fight floor, each an island of colour and sophistication, close pressed by companions, then a ragged halo of hangers on, hawkers, beer-men, poppy-men and brazens, and at the periphery, urchins ready to scurry between one gentleman and the next bearing messages by mouth or hand. The bet-takers, each sanctioned and approved by the Terrifs, stood at their stalls around the edge of the hall, odds listed in chalk, boys ready to collect or deliver at the run.

The four main pits lay at the vertices of a great diamond, red-tiled into the floor. Scarlet, Umber, Ochre, and Crimson. All of a likeness, twenty-foot deep, twenty-foot across, but with Crimson first among equals. The nobility wound their way between these and the lesser pits, peering down, discussing the fighters on display, the odds on offer. A sturdy wooden rail surrounded each pit, set into a timber apron that overlapped the stonework, reaching a yard down into the depression. I led the way to Crimson and leaned over, the rail hard against my midriff. Snorri ver Snagason glowered up at me.

‘Fresh meat here!’ I raised my hand, still staring down at my meal ticket. ‘Who’ll take a cut!’

Two small olive hands slid out over the rail beside me. ‘I believe I will. I feel you owe me a cut, or two, Prince Jalan.’

Aw hell. ‘Maeres, how good to see you.’ To my credit I kept the blind terror from my reply and didn’t soil myself. Maeres Allus had the calm and reasonable voice that a scribe or tutor should have. The fact that he liked to watch when his collectors cut the lips off a man turned that reasonable tone from a comfort to a horror.

‘He’s a big fellow,’ Maeres said.

‘Yes.’ I glanced around wildly for my friends. All of them, even the two old veterans picked specially by my father to guard me, had slunk off toward Umber without a word and let Maeres Allus slide up beside me unannounced. Only Omar had the grace to look guilty.

‘How would he fare against Lord Gren’s man, Norras, do you think?’ Maeres asked.

Norras was a skilled pugilist but I thought Snorri would pound the man flat. I could see Gren’s fighter now, standing behind the barred gate opposite the one that Snorri had come through.

‘Shouldn’t we call the fight? Get the odds set?’ I shot Barras Jon a look and called out to him, ‘Norras against my fresh meat? What numbers there?’

Maeres set a soft hand to my arm. ‘Time enough for wagering when the man’s been tested, no?’

‘B-but he might come to harm,’ I flustered. ‘I plan to make good coin here, Maeres, pay you back with interest.’ My finger ached. The one Maeres had broken when I came up short two months back.

‘Indulge me,’ he said. ‘That will be my interest. I’ll cover any losses. A man like that … he might be worth three hundred crowns.’

I saw his game then. Three hundred was just half what I owed him. The bastard meant to see Snorri die and keep a royal prince on his leash. There didn’t seem to be a way past it though. You don’t argue with Maeres Allus, certainly not in his cousins’ fight hall and owing him the best part of a thousand in gold. Maeres knew how far he could push me, minor princeling or not. He’d seen past my bluster to what lies beneath. You don’t get to head an organization like Maeres’s without being a good judge of men.

‘Three hundred if he’s not fit to fight wagered bouts tonight?’ I could slip back after Father’s ridiculous opera and buy into the serious fights. This afternoon’s exercise had only ever been intended to whet appetites and stir up interest.

Maeres didn’t answer, only clapped his soft hands and had the pit-guards raise the opposite gate. At the sound of iron grating on stone and chains ratcheting through their housings the crowds came to the rail, drawn by the pull of the pit.

‘He’s huge!’

‘Handsome fella!’

‘Norras will ugly him up.’

‘Knows his stuff does Norras.’

The beefy Teuton came out of the archway, rolling his bald head on a thick neck.

‘Fists only, Norseman,’ Maeres called down. ‘The only way out of that pit for you is to follow the rules.’