by Moore, John
“I imagine Jeremy can read it, and maybe Evelyn.” Charlie stepped back and looked at the cabinets. “But it will take months to do even a quick analysis of all this, and it’s likely that we’d end up with nothing but his expense accounts. Are they all this way?”
Pollocks pulled open a few more drawers, took out a few files at random, and scanned them. “I’m afraid so, Your Highness.”
Charlie also pulled out a few more files. He put them back. “This isn’t going to . . . Wait, what’s this?” He carried the last file to the desk and looked at it carefully. It consisted of several large sheets of vellum. Each unfolded to cover almost the entire desk. They were crisscrossed with light blue lines.
Pollocks looked over his shoulder. “It’s the plan for the sunken road project.”
“Yes. It’s exactly the same, except the notes are in Chaldean, the sorcerers’ language. Why would the Royal Sorcerer be interested in a public works program?”
“Why did he want to eliminate the chickens? Thessalonius was interested in a lot of things.”
“There’s nothing magical about building a road. It wouldn’t be much of a public works project if it wasn’t labor intensive.”
“But if he approved of the project,” Pollocks said brightly, “then perhaps it is a good thing that you are going ahead with it.”
Charlie considered this. “Right. He was supposed to be able to predict the weather. If he was predicting a drought, he might have anticipated the need for a public works project.”
“Exactly. Or . . .” Pollocks hesitated.
“Or what?”
“Or he might have been expecting a war, Your Highness. A good system of roads is essential for moving men and equipment around quickly.”
Charlie thought this over. The flat plains provided a great field for armies to maneuver. Would a network of sunken roads provide breastworks and trenches for battle? He didn’t have the military experience to judge that. He sat back in the sorcerer’s chair, hooked a leg over one arm, and swiveled to look out the window at the snowcapped mountains in the direction of Matka. “Pollocks, set up a meeting with my uncles.”
Xiao walked through the temple complex, her white robes wrapped around her slim silhouette, her long black hair flowing behind her. She knew she was being watched by the tourists, so she kept a calm, serene expression on her face. Inside she was seething.
What had she done, she railed at herself. How could she have been so stupid? What kind of way was that to act in front of the boy? Acting jealous, getting into an argument with him. What did he think of her now?
What she really needed to do now was talk it over with a bunch of other girls. Or at least one other girl. But there were no other girls she could talk to at the Temple of Matka. Cili was two years younger than Xiao and wouldn’t understand. Zhang was two years older and had already left. She had finished her term as High Priestess and had gone back home. But that, Xiao vowed, was something she would never do.
She climbed a set of outside stairs and paused on a flat rooftop, turning her face up to let the sun bathe her skin. She became aware that the background noise from below had faded away, and when she looked down she saw a crowd of people—pilgrims, tourists, and monks—watching her. She lifted her arms in a gesture of blessing and the people bowed their heads. She turned away with a sigh.
That was the problem right there. She could never go home, not after this. Here she was a High Priestess. At home she would once again be the property of her family. The money she brought back would be taken from her. They would sell her to a husband and then she would be his property, under the rule of her mother-in-law.
No. She wouldn’t do it.
She stopped at a doorway. It opened to a stairway that led down to a windowless room. A monk sat beside the door, his legs crossed in the lotus position. He smiled at Xiao and nodded, but she didn’t enter right away. Her mentor did not like the light. The sun was nearly overhead. Xiao waited beside the monk for a half hour, until the sun had shifted a little, and the doorway held a bit of shadow. Then she went inside.
Just as she reached the bottom step a candle flared. Her mentor, the man who had taught her everything she knew about prophecy, was sitting on a low chair. He wore the same robes that the rest of the monks wore, and his cowl was pulled over his head, leaving his face in deep shadow. Nonetheless, she could sense he was smiling, because she knew that he knew what had happened, and she didn’t find it amusing at all.
“Did it go well?” he asked.
Xiao felt a burning in her cheeks. But she kept her voice level and professional. “I did as you instructed.”
“Very good. Did you do anything else?”
Now Xiao knew she was turning red. She was grateful for the dim light. “He’s . . . so different from what I expected.”
“But not in an unattractive way, I suspect.”
“Um, no. But he seems rather irritable.”
The man in the blue robes laughed. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about a few rough edges. Women have their way of smoothing a man out.”
What did he mean by that? “What do you mean?”
The smile in his voice disappeared. He actually sounded embarrassed. “Um,” he said. “We won’t get into that now.”
Xiao pushed the subject out of her mind and got right to the heart of the matter. “Is he a real prince?” It was her key concern. This was what she had been promised for doing her part.
“Prince enough for you, my dear. He’s a gentleman, and that counts more than rank.”
He was right, Xiao acknowledged. That was what really counted. As a priestess of Matka, Xiao was treated with respect. But once she left here she would just be a common girl. That wasn’t too bad in the Twenty Kingdoms. A woman could have her own money here and even own property. But she would still be a commoner and have to bow and scrape to the upper classes. She didn’t want to go back to that.
The way out, of course, was to marry a gentleman and become a lady. Of course, Xiao knew those stories about common girls marrying highborn men were strictly fairy-tales. It almost never happened. But it could happen, she thought. I will make it happen.
Yes! she told herself as she walked back to her room. If she just had another chance. If she just controlled herself this time. She wouldn’t snap at him. She would be calm and agreeable next time. But what had possessed her to take off her clothes in front of him. Had she gone crazy? Boy crazy? Xiao had heard the term “boy crazy” before, but she had always thought it was just an expression. Yet even now she remembered the warmth of his hands on her shoulders, could still feel the delicious tingle that enveloped her body when her breasts touched him.
She looked at herself in a mirror. “Pull yourself together,” she told the reflection. “He will be back. And this time you will control yourself. You will be totally cool.”
“A Weapon of Magical Destruction?” said Packard. “Well, Charlie, I can’t say I’m surprised.” They were back in the same conference room where Charlie had accepted the post of prince regent. It was late in the evening. The summer sun was red on the horizon, casting long shadows into the room. Candles were already lit. A decanter had been set out, along with glasses. None of the men were drinking. Charlie was pacing the floor. As he passed in and out of the shadows in his black clothes, he seemed to fade away and reappear. Packard found it a little unsettling. “Sit down, Charlie. Relax.”
“We’d heard rumors,” said Gregory. “We knew the king had Thessalonius working on some big project. So now we know it was a WMD. That’s very troubling.”
“Damn right it is,” said Charlie. “I have no objection to seeing Damask get absorbed back into Noile. But I don’t like the idea of him getting his hands on a WMD. According to the ghost, this thing could wipe out a whole army in one shot. It could destroy an entire city in a flash. Can you imagine what Fortescue would do with a weapon like that? He wouldn’t be satisfied with consolidating Damask and Noile. No country would be safe, not from a man wit
h his ambition.”
“Do you really think he’d use such a weapon?” asked Packard. “He’s ambitious, we all agree, but he’s also pragmatic. He’s not an evil overlord, after all. My understanding is that this WMD is a one-time event. If he ever used it, the retaliation from the other kingdoms would be devastating.”
“Every weapon that’s ever been invented has been used eventually. Anyway, just having a weapon hanging over all our heads, like myriad swords of Damocles, is horrific enough. We need to find it before he gets here.”
“We’ll find it. We’ll bring in more sorcerers. We get a bunch of temps who read Chaldean to go through Thessalonius’s files. We’ll get a task force of sorcerers to investigate the construction of a WMD, to try to guess how big it is and what it looks like.”
Charlie looked out the window, where the fields were slowly, but surely, browning up. “We’ve got a time constraint,” he reminded his uncles. “Our food reserves are going fast. We don’t want to invite Fortescue in before we find the WMD, but we can’t wait too long, either. How is the revolution going?”
“Excellent, Your Highness. You’ll be pleased to know that your loyal subjects really hate you.”
“Good, good. Are they ready to revolt?”
“Not quite. We’re still organizing and arming them. We have to be subtle about it, you understand, and pretend we’re working behind the scenes. And we’re still working on setting them up with a leader to inspire them.”
“Good. Whom did you pick? No, let me guess. Abe Gagnot, by any chance?”
Both Packard and Gregory looked surprised. “Very good, Charlie. How did you know?”
“He just seemed like a good choice. Military experience, lots of friends, lots of influence, and forceful enough to hold attention. He’s also a bit hotheaded and he bears me a personal grudge.”
“You did very well in creating that situation, Charlie. He’d certainly like to see you deposed. However, he also bears a certain amount of innate loyalty to the crown and to Damask, that is yet keeping him from taking action. We’re working to overcome those scruples.”
Charlie thought this over. “Yes, well, we wouldn’t want a revolutionary who is too easily swayed, anyway. We don’t want someone who is going to double-cross us in the end.” He drummed his fingers on the hilt of his dagger. “I suppose that when the time comes, I could order his father to be executed.”
His uncles exchanged glances. “Execute Lord Gagnot, Charlie?”
“No, no. Of course I wouldn’t actually do it. But the threat of it would force his hand.”
“That’s certainly a possibility, Charlie,” said Gregory. “We’ll let you know if it comes to that.”
“He has plenty of incentive already,” said Packard. “What with his father in jail, the potential confiscation of his family estates, and his love of Catherine Durace. All it requires are a few more gentle nudges from us and a little judicious whispering in his ear, and he’ll think an insurrection was his own idea.”
“Mmmm,” said Charlie. He seemed to suddenly have taken a great interest in the view from the window. He spoke with his back to his uncles. “So Lady Catherine is acquainted with the situation?”
“Oh yes. She and young Gagnot were quite an item while you were away at school. Now she’s making sure he knows how unhappy she is supposed to be. But I expect you knew this. That’s why you chose Gagnot to set up as an enemy, isn’t it?”
“Um, right,” said Charlie. He continued to look out the window, watching a pigeon fly from a balcony across the courtyard. A man stood behind it, hidden by shadows. Charlie frowned slightly, but when he turned back to his uncles, his expression was cheerfully bland, the benign face of a card player who has been dealt a very bad hand. “All part of my clever plan.”
“Don’t take too much on yourself, Charlie,” warned Packard. “You’ll wear yourself out. We’ll find this WMD for you. You can trust us.”
“I know I can.” Charlie headed for the door. Before he reached it, he stopped to pose his uncles a final question. “What I can’t figure out is why Dad wanted such powerful magic to begin with. He was not a good man by any means, but he wasn’t warlike. What was he going to do with it?”
“In many ways, your father was a difficult man to understand,” said Gregory. “Don’t worry about it, Charlie.”
The prince nodded and left the room. Immediately Packard bolted the door behind him. “I don’t believe it,” he exclaimed. “All my life I’ve heard it said, countless times, but I never thought that it would turn out to be true.”
“What?”
“That honesty is the best policy. Here we’ve been pussy-footing around for months, trying to find the king’s WMD without letting Charlie know, and now he just ordered us to look for it.”
“That will certainly make things easier. We can do a proper job of it now.” Gregory reached for the decanter, poured two glasses, and sipped one thoughtfully. “We’ll start with a room-to-room search of the castle and its environs. We’ll examine Thessalonius’s files. We’ll . . .”
There was a coded knock on the door—two taps, followed by three. Packard unbolted it and allowed Pollocks to slip in. Then he bolted it again. Gregory was looking sternly at the Faithful Family Retainer. “Pollocks, we’re very disappointed in you.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Pollocks was breathing hard, as though he had been running up stairs. He made an attempt to look contrite, and managed to convey the impression for a full three seconds before giving up on it. He tried to look around Packard to see if there was wine on the table. His eyes brightened when he saw the decanter.
“You were supposed to stop Charlie from finding out about the WMD.”
“I thought he was successfully distracted, Sire. He never mentioned it to me. It was the ghost that told him, I take it? Very difficult things to anticipate, ghosts.”
“You should have persuaded him not to visit it.”
“He didn’t seem interested. He refused every summons to see the ghost, at least when I was present. I don’t know what caused him to go out that night.”
“Now, Gregory, there’s nothing to be gained by recriminations,” said Packard. “As it turns out, Charlie wants us to find the WMD for him, so it all worked out for the best.”
“That’s true,” said Gregory. “Pollocks, go through the king’s appointment books. Make a list of everyone he saw in the weeks before his death. We’ll interview them all.”
Pollocks nodded.
“How are things going with Lady Catherine?”
“Very well, Sire. I wouldn’t say she has our prince regent completely twisted around her little finger, but he’s at least three-quarters twisted.”
“Very good. I want you to continue to keep an eye on them. Full reports, daily.
“Yes, Sire.”
“Is there any way you can manage to hear what they are saying? He trusts her more than he trusts us, I suspect. A boy is likely to tell his girlfriend many things he won’t tell anyone else.”
“Eavesdropping will be quite difficult, but I’ll see if I can manage something.”
“Very good. You may go, Pollocks.”
Once again Packard unbolted and then re-bolted the door. When he and Gregory were alone again he said, regretfully, “What a shame about Charlie. I do hate to break up a fine romance like that.”
“True, but on the other hand, a romance that ends tragically makes such a good story. Women enjoy such things. There’s no need to feel sorry for Catherine. She will not mourn him long.”
“I hope,” said Packard, “it will be the same with Fortescue.” He took the second glass from Gregory, tossed it off, and set it on the table. He walked to the window, the same one Charlie had been looking through, and opened it to feel the cool night air on his face. A motion caught the corner of his eyes. He stuck his whole head out the window and craned it around to see the south tower, now little more than a shadow in the uncertain twilight. But he was certain he saw motion.
“Come here, Gregory,” he said. “What is Catherine up to now?”
It was a daring, if somewhat short-lived, escape.
On top of the south tower a heavy beam of oak had been securely fastened to the stone. The end of the beam extended over the edge of the tower, and from it a stout block-and-tackle had been attached. From this arrangement a wide woven basket had been lowered to the window of Lady Catherine Durace.
Into the basket she climbed, and there is no denying that this took a bit of nerve. For although the scheme had been well thought out and much discussed among the small cadre of conspirators, the job of actually crawling out a window, in the dark, and sliding her delicate bottom into a small basket suspended on a narrow rope some fifty feet above the ground, was not a task for the faint of heart.
But she made a stirring sight as she descended. She wore a dark wool dress for concealment and to protect herself from the chill night air, but a playful breeze whipped the skirt up around her thighs, showing an enticing length of creamy skin glowing in pale moonlight. The men below stared in appreciation. For, indeed, there were men below. Albemarle Gagnot was waiting with a half dozen companions. Their faces were concealed within their cloaks, and the hooves of their horses had been wrapped with burlap to muffle the sound of horseshoes. They carried dark lanterns with the windows cracked open to release only narrow beams of light. The beams followed her down the wall, and when she arrived on the ground they bathed her in light from three sides, as though she were on a stage lit by foot-lights. Perhaps it was because of this theatrical effect that Catherine, after slipping out of the basket, immediately responded with a bow and a curtsy.
Her rescuers nodded in silent approval. Rosalind, watching anxiously from above, withdrew her head and shut the window. Gagnot stepped forward and took Catherine’s hand. She gave him a warm smile. His men closed their lanterns once again and moved toward their horses. No one spoke. It was quiet except for the whisper of the night wind, the sound of muffled footsteps, and the gentle rustle of cloaks and harnesses. Alas for Catherine’s intrepid band of supporters, the silence did not last long. It was broken by a voice from the shadows, the voice of Bad Prince Charlie. He said, “Nicely done, my lady. Very nicely done indeed.”