The Chancellor’s shoulders broadened and he breathed rapidly through his nostrils, like a bull readying to charge.
But surprisingly, he regained control, dropped to one knee, and lowered his head.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” he said.
Willow blinked twice in astonishment. This day was full of surprises. No matter what might happen next, at least she was no longer bored!
The Queen had identified this man as the King of Bryanae; the Chancellor had (reluctantly) concurred. Whoever this man may have been before today, as far as Willow was concerned, he was the King now.
Now it appeared to be Fyrelord’s turn. He glided past the Chancellor to tower over the bed.
“Chancellor,” he said, as though it were an insult.
“Sorcerer,” the Chancellor hissed back.
The Queen drew breath sharply at the Chancellor’s insult. Willow grasped her rapier. The use of sorcery—death magics, demon conjurations, and the like—was reviled throughout most of the civilized world, and was punishable by death here in Bryanae. To accuse the Royal Mage publicly of being a sorcerer was a bold choice, to say the least.
Of course, that would explain the creature that Willow had fought at the inn …
Fyrelord ignored the Chancellor’s insult, and turned his attention to the King.
“How did you accomplish this ‘revitalization’ of yours, Your Majesty?” he said.
The King’s jaw jutted and his eyes narrowed in what appeared to be genuine anger.
“Good mage,” the King said. “If I had wanted you to know the details of my mission, I would have already told you. Since I have not, it is probably best for you to assume it is because I deemed it fitting you do not know. And may I point out that as one of my advisors, your job is answer questions and not ask them?”
An appalled silence filled the room like a toxic gas. Fear shone in the Queen’s and the Chancellor’s eyes. Even Marcus seemed to recognize the danger; he gasped and took two steps backwards.
Fyrelord loomed enormous in the room. A cold breeze blew out of nowhere, extinguishing one of the candles, leaving the others to cast grotesques shadows upon the stone wall.
Then he dropped to one knee and bowed his head in acquiescence.
“Your Majesty,” he said abjectly.
He remained kneeling, awaiting the King’s command to rise. The command did not come.
Instead, the King said to the Queen: “My darling, would you please excuse the Chancellor and me for a few minutes? We must speak of something of great import. Something of which I learned during my mission.”
“But …” the Queen said, hesitantly. Her nervous eyes darted to the mage. “Fyrelord?”
“Oh, right,” the King said. “I had forgotten you were there, Fyrelord. Yes, you too must leave.” He added: “You may rise.”
As the mage departed, Willow was astonished to see that he was smiling. Fyrelord was a dangerous man who almost never smiled. Willow didn’t know what to make of it.
Then the Queen left, reluctance and frustrated desire showing in her bovine eyes.
At last, the Chancellor flashed a glance to Willow, and she departed, grabbing Marcus. She closed the bedchamber doors, leaving the King alone with the Chancellor.
Then she cupped her ear against the door and tried to hear what transpired.
The first word she heard through the door was the Chancellor saying: “D’Arbignal.”
Chapter 25
“D’Arbignal, what in the Icy Inferno—?” was all Willow had time to hear.
“Is that a game?” Marcus said, walking excitedly toward her. Willow’s heart skipped a beat, and she quickly moved away from the door. She hadn’t heard him come back in.
“Yes,” she grumbled, fantasizing about beating Marcus’s head against the wall, “we’re playing a game. Hiding. Quick, run and hide, and I’ll find you.”
Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “This isn’t a trick, is it?”
“No,” she lied.
“Very well, then!” Marcus’s grin stretched across his entire face. “I know just where to hide; you’ll never find me! This is absolutely wizard!”
He ran from the foyer into the rest of the castle.
Willow heard a heavy thumping sound coming from the King’s bedchamber. She sprang to the door and opened it, her hand on her rapier.
“Oh, no, you’re not!” the Chancellor yelled at the King, whom he held suspended above the ground. He slammed the King into the mantel, and then again, knocking off a candle. It rolled along the floor and sputtered out.
This was an unprecedented occurrence in her life. Nothing in her training had prepared her for such an event. Willow was momentarily frozen with indecision.
In theory, the protection of the royal family was Willow’s highest priority. In practice, she took her orders directly from the Chancellor … besides, she wasn’t convinced the other man was the true king.
While she stood frozen in indecision, the King spotted her. He flashed her a surreptitious wink.
Astonished, she withdrew from the bedchamber and closed the door except for a tiny crack.
“I shall reveal your true identity to the Queen,” the Chancellor was saying, spittle flying all over. “She’ll have you hanged! Remember the price on your head.”
Willow inhaled deeply, her eyes wide. If there were a bounty on this man's head, there would be a record of it somewhere. She made a mental note to send agents to find it.
Incredibly, the King smiled.
“Alas, my head is terribly undervalued,” he lamented, “unlike yours, Gianelli. Ten pieces of gold? Now that’s a bounty. Have you ever considered selling your head? We could split it: the bounty, I mean, not the head.”
Willow almost choked. She muffled her coughs against the crook of her elbow. Gianelli?! Bounty?!
“Of course, on the other hand, were you to just keep quiet for the night,” the King said, “I’ll be gone by dawn like an impeccably-dressed phantom. No one need be the wiser.”
The Chancellor thought a moment and then released the King, who landed lightly on his feet. The King smoothed out the wrinkles in his shirt.
At length, the Chancellor nodded. His fists clenched and released repeatedly, as he fought to control his quicksilver temper.
“The King mysteriously vanished once,” he said. “He can do so again. Be gone tomorrow morning, and I shall say nothing of your deception. It will be said that his Royal Majesty has resumed this mysterious ‘mission’ of his, and none will be the wiser.”
“Agreed!” said the King, extending his hand. “It’s been great working with you again after—”
The Chancellor slapped the hand away, and stomped toward the door. Willow leapt across the antechamber to stand at ease by the far door.
The Chancellor emerged from the bedchamber. Willow snapped to attention, her heart pounding. He eyed the partially opened door suspiciously. Willow kept her face devoid of emotion.
The Chancellor stared at her as though evaluating her loyalty. He breathed heavily through his nostrils, his face a dark red. He stormed across the antechamber toward her; she resisted the urge to draw her rapier.
The Chancellor came up short. He gestured toward the bedchamber.
“He does not leave that bedchamber,” the Chancellor said, his voice choked with suppressed rage, “Do you hear me, Captain?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, her voice neutral. But she thought, so there is a price on your head, too, Lord Chancellor. Or should I say, “Gianelli?”
A cunning look crossed the Chancellor’s face, and Willow wondered if he knew how transparent his moods were.
“You are to remain here until midnight,” he said. “He does not set one foot outside those chambers. After midnight, I want you to leave, and have the castle guard withdraw to the landings by the staircases. I don’t want anybody within one hundred feet of him come midnight. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!” she shouted.
The Chancell
or snarled and exited, slamming the antechamber doors behind him.
She re-opened the doors and flagged down a page.
“Send a page to the Shuttered Lantern in the Jeweler’s District,” she said. “Tell the barkeep that I said ‘at the crowing of the cock.’ Be sure to get that exactly right: ‘Willow said at the crowing of the cock.’ Do not wait for a reply.”
The page, a boy of perhaps ten, looked at her with eyes full of fear, but to his credit, he bowed.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and departed.
He had good reason to be afraid. The Jeweler’s District was a misnomer these days. While once there had indeed been jewelers there, the rampant criminal element had long since driven them out. These days, few dared to go there after sundown. Whoever drew the duty had his work cut out for him.
And he’d better not fail.
The doors to the antechamber opened once more, and Willow leapt back, fearing the Chancellor had returned to silence her. She reflexively gripped the hilt of her half-drawn rapier.
The Queen of Bryanae sauntered in, wearing only a low-cut white cotton shift that emphasized her already ridiculously large bosom. She had let down her fiery red hair so it cascaded around her shoulders. A haze of desire clouded her eyes.
“Oh,” Queen Tiranda said. Her cheeks colored. “It’s you.”
Willow bowed. “Your Majesty.”
“You may go now, Willow. His Majesty and I have … private business to discuss.”
“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but the Chancellor gave me explicit orders to remain at this post. I’m afraid I may not leave.”
The Queen’s eyes narrowed. Her gaze went up and down the length of Willow’s slender body, lingering briefly on Willow's nearly flat chest. The Queen smirked and tossed her abundant hair. It was like the corona of sparks had kicked up from a roaring fire.
“Very well,” the Queen said, a vindictive smile on her face, “remain.”
She crossed the antechamber, her manner regal despite her state of undress.
“In fact,” the Queen added over her shoulder, “I’ll be thinking of you while I’m with the King, basking in the warmth of … the fireplace.”
Her smile was arch and venomous, and Willow ground her teeth to remain silent.
The Queen slid into the bedchamber, as quiet and sinuous as a cat. The door shut behind her, and Willow heard the key turn in the lock.
For a while, Willow heard nothing within the room and at first, she thought the Queen had been rebuked. The thought gave her no small degree of pleasure.
Then she heard the Queen exclaim, “Oh, Eric, it’s been so long!”
Willow rolled her eyes. Yes, it had been that kind of a day, all right.
The sighs and moans started soon thereafter, and continued off and on until Willow left the room at midnight as ordered.
Chapter 26
The window to her office that the Chancellor had broken had been replaced with pine boards, and some temporary, low-quality furniture stood in place of the shattered remains of her desk and chair. Willow approved; Jenz, who served as the company clerk had done his job quickly and well. She had given up on appointing seconds-in-command after all the times she had had to replace them as they aged out; however, Jenz’s reliability and efficiency made her reconsider. She made a mental note to begin grooming him for the role once the chaos from the King’s return had settled down.
Her guest would arrive around dawn. Ordinarily, she had duties to occupy her, but she had been too short on sleep for too long. After cleaning and sharpening her rapier, she turned the desk chair so it faced the door, and sat with the weapon across her knees and her hand resting on the hilt. She leaned back and shut her eyes.
A discreet knock on the door awakened her. When she opened her eyes, she saw that it was almost dawn.
She opened the door a crack, her rapier drawn in her hand but out of view.
A disreputable-looking man in dirty, threadbare clothes looked up and down the street impatiently.
“Gonna let me in?” he said, his expression simultaneously furtive and disapproving.
This was not the man she had been expecting.
“Where’s the Rat?”
“He’s gone, inn’he,” the man said with a shrug.
“Gone where?”
Another shrug. “I ‘eard ‘e went looking fer a score. Never came back. This’s, oh, six months now.” He gestured at the door with his thumb and repeated: “You gonna let me in?”
Willow sighed. She opened the door and the miscreant slunk in. Beneath his dirt and tattered garments, he was otherwise unremarkable, which was the point. His face was bland but his eyes were shrewd.
“And you are?” she said.
“They call me the Viper.”
Willow suppressed a derisive snort. The Rat and the Viper … not exactly an original crowd.
“Well, ‘Viper’, are you familiar with the arrangement I had with the Rat?”
Those shrewd eyes shone with a mixture of greed and cunning.
“Spying, innit?” he said. “Fifty pieces silver a day?”
Actually, it was twenty pieces of silver a day, but this was a rush job.
“It’s fifty pieces of silver a day,” she said, “if you get me results.”
“And if I don’t get you results? What then?”
She opened the door and extended her arm in an after-you gesture. “Then you get my sincere thanks.”
The Viper stared at her for a long moment, as though contemplating a murderous act. She stared back, wearing her customary empty mask.
At length, he shrugged once more. “Sounds a’right. Whatcha looking for?”
She closed the door again, and gestured for him to join her in the center of the room, far from the windows or doors where ears might be lurking.
“I want you to find out anything you can associated with the names D’Arbignal and Gianelli. I need you to be discreet, and I need you to be quick about it.”
“Calphus’s erection! Find out everything there is in the whole wide world about two names? Not even elves live that long! You don’t ask much, do you?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got a good starting point for you.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“Start in Cerendahl. Look for a seamstress named Shara.”
Chapter 27
The summons to the Castle came scarcely minutes after the Viper had slithered away. Willow had been expecting it, but she took her time answering the knock at her office door.
It must have raised one hell of an uproar when the impostor King was discovered to have fled the castle. There would be questions and accusations. Many of those questions and accusations would be directed at her.
Fine, let them. She’d had plenty of time to prepare her answers while the Queen repeatedly (and loudly) renewed her acquaintance with her mysteriously rejuvenated “husband.” Willow did not experience jealousy the way lesser women did, but the Queen’s slights had annoyed her. It gave her no small amount of pleasure knowing that the Queen had been unwittingly committing adultery, and could quite possibly be hanged if the truth were brought to light.
Willow’s lips turned up in a grim little smile as she opened the door.
Sure enough, there were two members of the King’s Elite, the upper echelon of the Guard, awaiting her. They stood at attention, eyes forward, and hands at the hilts of their rapiers.
“Your presence is requested at the castle,” one of them, Captain Sennelor, said. Willow had trained him; she knew he was left-handed, slow on the draw, but skilled at the riposte.
To Sennelor’s right was Lieutenant Unger. She had trained him, too. A mediocre swordsman at best, but he excelled at some of the flashier disarms.
She nodded and followed them to the Castle without a word. As she crossed the courtyard and headed for the portcullises, she began a mental count of the Guardsmen present, just in case her departure had to be more dramatic than her entrance.
&nbs
p; She passed through the five open sets of portcullises and was relieved to see that there was only a slightly elevated guard count. Good. They were in a heightened state of security, but they weren’t going to try to arrest her. Or at least she hoped for their sakes that they wouldn’t try to arrest her with only the fifteen guards she had seen so far.
The two Elite led her down a long hall toward the Throne Room. Willow could only imagine how furious the Queen must be that her toy had fled, and what kind of tongue-lashing she had in store for Willow.
The Herald and a page met her at the door. The Herald then turned to announce her. There was an odd energy in the air, a feeling of excitement whose source Willow could not place.
“Captain Willow, Captain of the King’s Guard!” he announced. The page then led her down the long crimson carpet toward the thrones …
… upon which sat both the Queen and King!
Willow’s head rocked back as though she had been struck. She blinked several times in astonishment.
There he sat, the very image of the old King in his younger days. His posture was imperious, his expression every bit as self-satisfied as Willow remembered.
Beside him, the Queen sprawled languorously in her throne. Whatever the King had done to her last night had been more effective than the veritable army of masseuses who daily tended to her every need.
“Ah, Captain Willow,” said the King. His expression was mild and his tone genial. “Come forward. We would speak with you.”
She blinked twice more before she regained her wits and marched down the carpet to stand before the monarchs. She knelt before them, as was proper within the Throne Room.
“Your Majesties,” she said, feeling like the ground had shifted slightly beneath her.
“No, no,” said the King with uplifted palms, “please rise.”
Willow rose and stood at attention, not sure how to proceed. This man was a self-confessed impostor, but nobody in the room seemed to know it but her. Indeed, he was so alike in manner and voice, even she was beginning to have doubts. How had he changed so quickly?
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