“I fear I will disappoint you in the end,” Abramm said finally, glancing at Channon. His lieutenant had been waiting for that sign and now turned to give Wanderer a casual salute. On deck, Captain Kinlock should have them centered in his spyglass and—yes. Here came the flash that showed he had received the signal.
Abramm turned back to Bonafil, pulling the thick queue of his hair over one shoulder and drawing up the hood of his robe. He lifted a hand in casual salute of his own. “Good day, sir.”
Bonafil’s soft mouth dropped open as Abramm pulled his horse back and around. It was a borderline breach of etiquette and a calculated risk, but as heir to the throne he was justified in not waiting for dismissal. It was also a clear indication that he had turned from Mataian persuasions.
Before anyone could protest, though, a mighty squeal of wood and metal erupted from out on the bay, drawing the throng’s attention. Abramm glanced again over his shoulder as the kraggin’s corpse was hauled from the water by cranes set up aboard bothWanderer and the whaler that had accompanied her. As the great gray-and-ivory carcass slithered upright into view, the crowd exclaimed in muted susurration. Among them only one kept his attention on Abramm: a figure in Guardian gray standing at the junction of pier and dock, a man whose ruined face and barren scalp only accentuated the fire of hatred burning in his one good eye.
Have you remembered me yet? Abramm thought at him. With a shudder of foreboding he settled himself forward in the saddle, urging his horse after Channon’s. Leaving the now-distracted crowd, they trotted into the back ways of Portside, which Channon’s men had earlier cleared of spectators, and rode on toward the palace.
CHAPTER
5
They rode through the Portside sector and into the hilly city beyond, where a busy service road switchbacked up the steep face of the long escarpment from whose seaward-most point the palace overlooked the bay. Pedestrians and delivery wagon drivers automatically made way for the detachment of Royal Guard as it headed for the southern service gate, eyeing the cloaked figure it escorted with interest. If they guessed who he was, Abramm did not know, for he was paying little attention.
His headache and nausea had worsened dramatically, his middle cramping so violently at one point it doubled him over. With that, it dawned on him that this wasn’t just a case of jitters or a bad smell or not having eaten. Nor was the increasing weakness and throbbing pain in his left arm the result of physical exertion or injury. All were the unmistakable signs of spore sickness.
At first he couldn’t think how he’d been exposed, until he remembered he’d been swimming in the kraggin’s blood. Diluted by seawater, the spore’s initial effects would be unnoticeable, increasing gradually over time as they multiplied within him. Cursed—or blessed?—with unusual sensitivity to the stuff, he’d be dog-sick by the end of the day unless he initiated a purge first. But a purge would not only cocoon his body in an aura of Terstan Light— hardly a spectacle he wanted just anyone to see right now—it would also require several hours to complete. He’d have to find a place where he’d be sure no one would stumble onto him. And with no one but Lieutenant Channon available to guard him, he wished yet again that he hadn’t sent Trap away. Well, no help for that now. At least in the course of the night’s events, Channon had shown himself an honorable man, a fellow Terstan and already devoted to Abramm’s cause.
Passing through the gate without incident, they threaded their way through the congested alleys between the palace service buildings and came at last to the backside of the west wing, its three stories of windows gleaming in the morning light. A trio of blue-jacketed armsmen stood at the small side door through which Abramm had chosen to enter. Dismounting stiffly, he had to lean against the horse and wait for the dizziness to pass before handing off the reins and stepping forward to greet a worried-looking Channon and a tall elderly man he recognized as his own father’s Grand Chamberlain, Lord Robert Haldon.
Haldon had changed little in the fourteen years since Abramm had last seen him. Although he was not the giant perceived by a twelve-year-old, he was still big—as tall and broad of shoulder as Abramm. His hands were huge, and his craggy face, with its beak of a nose and jutting chin, was more seamed than ever. Clad in a dark gray doublet with puffy sleeves and those horrible ballooning breeches, he wore his wiry white hair long now and tied at the nape with a black ribbon. Abramm recalled him as a quiet, competent man, so solemn he often seemed stern, especially to the king’s sons. Yet for all his imposing bulk he had been kind and respectful of Abramm when others had not.
Now he wore a tense, suspicious look that faded into flatness as Abramm stopped in front of him. “Prince Abramm!” he whispered thickly. “It really is you!”
“Hello, Haldon,” Abramm said with a wry smile. “Good to see you again.”
Haldon bowed low. “Welcome home, Your Highness.”
The guards at the door had stiffened when Haldon greeted Abramm, and Abramm felt their attention fix upon him, though nothing in their mien changed outwardly.
“We have had to put you in the Ivory Apartments,” Haldon said. “With the Council of the Realm set to meet tomorrow, the peers have been arriving all week, and I’m afraid we’re overcrowded. If you are willing to wait, it would not take long to vacate something more appropriate.”
“The Ivory Apartments will be fine.”
Haldon looked relieved. “Very good, sir. If you’ll come with me?”
As they trod the empty, gleaming corridors, Abramm could only thank Eidon he’d had Channon arrange for his quartering discreetly. Wishing to choose his own time and place for meeting Gillard and the court, he had counted it better not be seen at all than as a weary, bedraggled waif, stinking of kraggin. It never dawned on him he’d have to worry about spore sickness, too. Which was why, when they reached the Ivory Apartments on the second floor of this west wing, he was profoundly displeased to find three noblemen awaiting him.
One was a complete fop, decked out in salmon-colored doublet and breeches trimmed with copious amounts of lace. A wig of golden curls cascaded to the middle of his back, and he carried a beribboned walking stick. The very sight of him raised Abramm’s hackles, for he represented all that the Esurhites had mocked in Kiriathan character, an embarrassment Abramm had spent two years fighting to overcome.
The second man, clad in black and brown, wore his own lank brown hair long around a sallow, pockmarked face. Spectacles obscured his eyes, but he looked vaguely familiar.
The third member of the trio was as different from the first two as they were from each other. His gray doublet stretched tightly over a bony frame, its only adornment a tongue of red flame embroidered onto the left breast. Also eschewing the false curls of current fashion, he wore his graying hair queued back from his face like Haldon. His eyes were too small, his nose too round, and his mouth too wide, and he held himself as stiffly upright as if a poker had been rammed up his spine.
All three looked surprised at Abramm’s appearance, their eyes flicking up and down his torn and stained clothing, catching on the sword, the bloody hands, the beard. He actually saw the smell hit them, all three recoiling in unison.
The foppish one choked out a faint, “Oh my,” and yanked a lace-edged kerchief from his sleeve. Covering his fleshy nose and mouth, he coughed delicately into the cloth, then forced himself to pull it away. “They said that beast had an odor,” he said in a strangled voice. “I fear they did not exaggerate.”
“I am on my way to address the problem now,” Abramm assured him, trying to ignore the pounding in his head.
“Far be it from me to detain you, then.” The man backed a step and coughed into his kerchief again. “I only wished to welcome you, sir, and to offer my thanks for ridding us of the monster. Also, I have considerable exper- tise in matters of wardrobe and cultural affairs, should you have need of counsel.”
“And you are?”
The dandy froze in the act of bowing, then straightened. His blue eyes watered. �
�Temas Darnley, Your Highness. Earl of Bathport.” He patted his lips with his kerchief, then straightened his spine. “I shall detain you no longer, sir, and look forward to making your acquaintance at the Table this evening.”
And with that he fled, leaving Abramm to address his sudden puzzlement to his two remaining visitors. “The Table is meeting tonight?”
“They’ve called a special session in your honor,” said the bespectacled one. He bowed a formal greeting. “Byron Blackwell, Highness. Speaker of the Table of Lords.”
Tonight? Plagues! Will I even have enough time to complete a purge? It didn’t matter. As another spasm of nausea wrenched through him, he realized he was fast reaching the point where it would either be a purge or days of fevered delirium.
Blackwell was eyeing him sharply. “Perhaps you remember me from years ago?”
“Count Blackwell’s son. Yes. I remember.” Blackwell’s father, Henry, had been a favorite of Abramm’s own sire, and Blackwell himself a friend of Abramm’s eldest brother. Abramm had been too young at the time to remember much about him save that he’d been a quiet youth with a penchant for reading.
Abramm glanced at the third man, the one in the gray doublet with the tongue of flame who was now bowing stiffly.
“Darak Prittleman, Highness. Lord of Lathby, First Secretary of the Nunn, Headman in the Laity Order of Gadriel, and humble servant of Tersius in the Flames.” His voice was dry, nasal, and overly precise. “I, too, wish to offer my welcome and thanks, and to express my joy that at last we shall have a king of Eidon’s choosing to deliver this realm from the evil overtaking it.”
Abramm stared at him, rankled by this recitation—he’d heard rumors of this new order of Gadriel back in Qarkeshan—and bereft of an appropriate response.
Once again the kraggin’s ammoniac musk delivered him. Prittleman had been quietly turning green, and now he straightened abruptly. “I, too, offer my assistance should you require it, sir, but will impose upon you no longer. Eidon’s Light be with you.”
And with you would have been Abramm’s correct response. But he said nothing, and after a moment Prittleman beat a hasty retreat.
“It wasn’t so bad out on the water,” Abramm murmured apologetically.
Blackwell smiled. “I have sinus trouble, my lord. It doesn’t seem that bad to me.”
“Ah.” Abramm didn’t quite manage to keep the dismay out of his tone. The pounding in his head was growing louder.
The son of Count Blackwell, presumably Count Blackwell himself by now, regarded him speculatively. “Are you feeling all right, sir?”
“I’ve had better days.”
“I’ll not keep you, then.” But he lingered nonetheless. “They say you were actually on the water with the beast. That you stabbed it with a spear.”
“I did,” Abramm said. “Which is why I smell as bad as I do and why I am so looking forward to a bath.”
Blackwell still did not take his cue. “They say you used the power of Eidon to slay it.”
In an instant, Abramm’s growing frustration transmuted to full wariness. “They are saying that, yes.”
Blackwell’s spectacles magnified his brown eyes. “And did you?”
“I and three others stabbed it with spears, but as I told High Father Bonafil, it was by the power and mercy of Eidon that we succeeded.”
The brown eyes studied him shrewdly. “A politic answer, my lord. Perhaps you are not so naïve as we’ve been led to believe.” He waited as if he expected a response. When Abramm merely stared at him, he went on. “I, too, offer you my support, sir, in whatever capacity you desire it. I have little liking for your brother, and frankly I’ll be delighted to see you take the Crown from him. He has never really risen to its demands.” Blackwell paused. “But you realize he will fight you.”
Abramm met his gaze for a long moment, seeking through the haze of his discomfort and fatigue to grasp the man’s mettle, to gain the knowledge only time and familiarity would bring. Was this friend or foe?
When again he did not answer, Byron Blackwell nodded once, then bowed and departed, leaving Abramm at long last alone with his chamberlain and Lieutenant Channon, his silent shadow. It was the chamberlain who caught his attention, however, for he should have left long ago.
Realization dawned. “You are not Grand Chamberlain anymore.”
“No, sir. The king—er . . . uh, prince-regent brought his own man when he came to the throne.”
“The more fortunate for me, it seems.”
Haldon inclined his head. “I hope you will pardon the lack of attendants— with such short notice we’ve had a time finding any of suitable rank— but your bath has been prepared. If you’ll come this way?”
Inside the bedchamber a handful of body servants waited before the open door of a tile-walled side closet where stood the steaming bath. As much as Abramm had yearned for this earlier, he wondered now if he had the stamina to see it through. What he really wanted was to be shown the bed and left alone so he could . . . what was it he needed to do?
“Are you in pain, sir?”
Haldon’s voice shattered his train of thought. “What? Oh. Yes. I do have something of a headache.” He unfastened the harness that held his two blades, rapier and dagger, and handed them over to one of the servants, as another took the Dorsaddi overrobe from his shoulders. There was something I was supposed to do here. Something important. . . . Plagues, that pounding is so loud. . . . They must be doing renovations, making more room for all the arriving peers.
No. Wait. That’s not right.
One of the servants gestured him into the provided chair. As a young valet knelt to remove his stiff, salt-crusted Dorsaddi boots, Abramm surveyed the circle of men surrounding him, and it dawned on him that if he continued to submit to their ministries they would find the mark upon his chest—
He sprang out of the chair, scattering the servants like startled sparrows. “That will be all, thank you. I am accustomed to seeing to my own needs.” He motioned toward the door. “You may go. I will call when I need you. Lieutenant, post your guard outside the bedchamber.”
Channon nodded and stepped out, but the attendants stared at him in astonishment.
“Your Highness—” Haldon began.
“Go!” Abramm barked, gesturing again at the door.
At Haldon’s nod, the others, looking puzzled and hurt to a man, put down the various articles of bathing and clothing they held. When they were all out and the door closed behind them, Abramm sagged against it and let out his breath.
As the tension bled out of him, the sickness he had been holding at bay refused to be ignored any longer and he found the chamber pot just in time. Afterward, as he rinsed his mouth with water to chase away the taste, he noted his hands—chapped and blistered from the rough work he had put them through last night, and also blotched with red welts, a sign of low-grade exposure to spawn spore.
Spawn spore . . . I have to do a purge! His head pounded and his ears buzzed and fatigue pulled at him. Right now!
He staggered toward the bed, mentally pressing his way through the fog in his brain to focus on the Light within him, a tiny flicker in a great sea of darkness. He touched it and clung. The buzzing increased, accompanied by the cold blue sensation of the spore coursing through his veins. Fire flamed up his left arm, and his thoughts shifted. The pain was terrible. He might burn his arm. What if there was too much spore? He was so inexperienced, so weak. Maybe he should wait for Trap.
Grimly he resisted the mental distractions, turning his thoughts back to the Light and the One who gave it. The buzzing intensified, making his teeth rattle as it swelled up in him like a cloud of angry bees. His grip on the Light quailed, flickered, faded. . . . He groped again, cried out for help—
And then something snapped. Shards of color exploded through his inner vision as the white burst through his flesh, searing away everything else. And the purge began.
CHAPTER
6
Abram
m was still at the dock when Simon passed through the vast King’s Court on his way to the royal apartments, pushing through the crowd of courtiers as if he were the vanguard of an advancing battle line. Pummeled by questions and suggestions and the offensive perfumes of the more dandified of his peers, he left in his wake scowls and wounded egos, and any number of broken fences he’d be weeks mending.
By the time he limped up the broad staircase at the court’s far end to cross the parquet-floored Upper Court and Gallery, his initial fury had submerged itself to a calmer, if no more courteous, state. Thus, when he finally burst into the antechamber of the royal apartments and pushed past the Grand Chamberlain into the sitting room, he had himself under a measure of control. Finding the lofty, blue-carpeted sitting room empty, he followed the murmur of voices through the book-lined privy chamber and study into the blue-and-gold royal bedchamber where the king was just finishing his dressing.
To Simon’s surprise, except for the servants, only the diminutive Ives attended the king this morning, the other members of Gillard’s trio of merry men presumably still recovering from their night of excess. Or maybe they’d gone down to the docks to have a look at the new arrival. In any case, it was a refreshing change.
Gillard gave him a nod. “Ah, my lord uncle, the duke. Good morning, sir.”
In the four years since he had ascended the throne, Gillard had changed much. The constant association with fawning courtiers had worked its inevitable influence, and lately the boy had become almost as much of a dandy as the court’s Lord of Fashion, Temas Darnley. Today he wore the ballooning, slash-cut breeches that were the latest rage with white hose and a billowysleeved doublet of violet satin brocade trimmed with gold piping and amethyst. A cravat of white lace frothed at his throat, and more peeked from under his cuffs. Rubies and sapphires glittered on his fingers, in the lace at his throat, and off the gold circlet on his head. In deference to feminine persuasion, he had grown his white-blond hair into a thick, shiny mane that curled to his shoulders. He went clean-shaven for the same reason, displaying the slender jagged scar on his chin that was his trophy from the first realm-wide fencing championship he had ever won. Though his appearance was not to Simon’s taste, the old duke knew it was admired by all the court ladies and emulated by many of the men.
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