Suddenly, her fingertips brushed against something that moved beneath her touch. Badly startled, she snatched her hand away from the wall a split second before her mind registered what she’d just touched:
It was the end of a dangling rope.
Suddenly, she understood exactly how the buffoon had gotten in—and how he’d planned to get out.
Quickly (but reluctantly) snuffing out the torch, Persephone grasped the rope with both hands, took a deep breath and started to climb. Her arms began to tire almost immediately but she refused to acknowledge the burn. Hand over hand, higher and higher she climbed until she emerged out of the fog into the gloom of the night. Feeling a burst of energy at the sight of the top of the wall, she tucked the rope firmly between her booted feet, thrust herself upward …
And nearly suffered an apoplexy when she found herself nose to nose with Hairy’s decapitated head.
Stifling a scream, Persephone jerked her own head backward. Even as she did so, however, she knew that there was nowhere to go but onward or down—and down with a mighty thump, if the violent trembling in her arms was any indication. So, without giving herself time to reconsider, she flung herself forward, grasped the gory base of the iron pike just above the rope’s grappling hook and heaved herself onto the top of the wall. Then, taking care not to look at Hairy’s sagging grey face and ragged neck stump, she scrambled to her knees, hauled up the rope and tossed it over the other side of the wall that she might use it to climb down. The instant she did so, an unseen horse whickered softly and someone below anxiously whispered, “Atticus? Is that you, Atticus?”
Persephone held her breath, cursing herself for not having considered that Lord Atticus might have left someone behind to watch over the horses that he and his surviving companions would need to make good their escape.
“Atticus?” came the voice again.
Persephone knew she’d have to deal with the whisperer one way or another. Doubting her ability to talk sense into any friend of Lord Atticus’s and unwilling to risk a knife fight in the foggy darkness against an assailant of unknown size and strength, she decided that her best bet would be to try to distract him.
Mouthing a silent apology to Hairy even though he really didn’t deserve one after the shabby way he’d treated her, she gingerly grasped his cold, clammy ears, tugged his head off the iron pike and dropped it over the spot from which the voice had issued.
The horrified shriek that followed the squashy thud told her she’d scored a perfect bull’s eye. Sliding to the ground so fast she got rope burns on her hands, Persephone chirruped softly. The face of a curious horse immediately loomed before her in the fog. A heartbeat later she was in the saddle on her way.
She’d done it. Her baby was safe and she was free.
All that was left to do was to find Azriel, prevent the slaughter of the tribes, save the kingdom and take the throne.
SEVENTEEN
AS PERSEPHONE WAS BEGINNING her desperate flight toward the Gypsy camp, many miles away Azriel, Rachel and Zdeno were nearing the end of theirs.
“Please stop looking at me like that,” said Azriel with exaggerated patience. “I’ve already told you a thousand times that I don’t know where she is.”
This unwelcome news was met with moody silence.
“How about another bit of intestine?” said Azriel, using a stick to lift up a pale, skinny piece about six inches long. “I understand that such treats are best served warm from the torn belly of a fresh—and, ideally, still squirming— victim. However, I can assure you that the piece I offer is just as slimy and disgusting a morsel as you could hope for.”
In an agony of temptation, Ivan took several agitated steps to one side of the rock on which he was perched, then several steps to the other. Then, without warning, he launched himself forward in a blur of brown feathers, snagged the piece of intestine with his talons and flew so low over the startled Gypsy’s head that the dangling tails of the “morsel” dragged through his crown of auburn curls.
As she listened to Azriel huff in disgust and watched Ivan disappear into the darkness beyond the campfire’s light, Rachel smiled and snuggled deeper into Zdeno’s arms. The hawk had joined up with them about a mile outside Parthania. Since then, Azriel had been making a supreme effort to find common ground with the creature. He claimed it was repayment for the vital part Ivan had played in helping them to escape the city, but Rachel suspected it had more to do with a long-ago promise Persephone had once said he’d made to her—a promise to take care of her animals if anything should happen to her. At the time, he’d been nothing but a chicken thief who’d bought her for a small bag of coins and a pretty piece of stolen jewellery, and Persephone had been nothing but an uncooperative slave girl with freedom on her mind.
Rachel did not have to wonder what Azriel would have given to return to those days, because she saw the answer every time she looked at him.
And the answer was: everything.
“Tomorrow, I’ll let the horses go,” he said now as he tossed the last of the grouse entrails onto the fire.
“Why?” asked Rachel.
“The tracks left by hooves are easier to follow than those left by feet,” explained Zdeno as he tenderly brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “We’re less than a day from the Gypsy camp and on the off chance that the man we stole the horses from—”
“Borrowed the horses from,” interjected Azriel.
“Either way,” said Zdeno diplomatically, “if the horses’ owner has somehow managed to pick up our trail, we’d not want to make it easy for him to follow us the rest of the way. Though I could probably catch and kill him before he told anyone the location of the camp, I’d rather not have to do so.”
“And if the man somehow got away, the tribe would be in such danger that no one would have time to waste helping us find Persephone,” added Azriel in a low voice. “As devoted as Cairn is to the idea of the coming Gypsy King, even she would not set the lives of the entire tribe behind the life of one girl who might be the key to the prophecy.”
“No,” said Rachel, shivering slightly at the sound of a distant wolf howl—and at the memory of how ruthless the Gypsy leader, Cairn, could be. “I don’t imagine she would.”
EIGHTEEN
SHORTLY AFTER DAWN on the day following the disappearance of the queen, the commander of the black castle had spotted the bloody body at the base of the cliff, and Mordecai had been devastated.
By mid-morning, the soldier lowered down the side of the turret to retrieve the body had discovered that it was a fake, and Mordecai had been elated and furious.
By early afternoon, the rope hanging from the castle wall and the New Man lying under the bed had both been found, and Mordecai had come to the conclusion that the queen had engineered her own escape and played him for a fool—again.
And by late evening, trackers had been dispatched to hunt down and bring back the queen, and Bartok’s wastrel son had pissed himself.
Again.
Disgusted though he was by Lord Atticus’s utter lack of courage, dignity and self-control, Mordecai smiled inwardly at the sight of the dark, spreading stain at the crotch of the hysterical noble worm’s vomit-splattered breeches. Having spent the previous night and most of the day in a damp, windowless cell in the soldiers’ barracks without food, drink or a blanket, Bartok’s heir looked like death warmed over. His skin was pasty, his close-set eyes were bloodshot and the spasms that intermittently wracked his soft body suggested to Mordecai that he was suffering badly from a lack of wine. Indeed, he’d probably have long ago toppled over if he’d not been tightly lashed to the straight-backed chair in which he currently sat.
The New Man who had failed so spectacularly in his duty to guard the queen was likewise lashed to a straight-backed chair—one that had been positioned directly in front of Lord Atticus. The incompetent soldier was yet clad in nothing but his underwear and in Mordecai’s considered opinion, he was not long for this world.
W
ell, four hours of relentless interrogation could do that to a person.
Even before setting to work with the fireplace poker— indeed, even before giving the soldier the opportunity to prove his loyalty by cutting off his own nose—Mordecai had believed the man to be ignorant of the queen’s whereabouts. Unfortunately for him, that was irrelevant. What was relevant was that he deserved to be brutally punished for allowing himself to be overpowered by the unarmed, pregnant woman who was the key to all of Mordecai’s great plans—and also that his punishment was serving to impress upon Lord Atticus just what would happen to him if he failed to cooperate.
“Wine,” snapped Mordecai to no one in particular.
A bleary-eyed servant immediately hobbled over with a jewel-encrusted silver goblet filled nearly to the brim. Leaning closer to the dying New Man, Mordecai used his thumb and index finger to pluck the nose from the palm of the man’s badly shaking hand. Then, shuffling around so that his noble guest had an unobstructed view, he dropped the severed nose into the goblet, causing a small measure of wine to slosh over the sides.
“Care for a drink, my lord?” Mordecai asked politely as he held the goblet out to Lord Atticus.
Small, close-set eyes bulging in horror, Lord Atticus alternated between squealing and grunting as he frantically shook his head and strained against his bindings.
Gratified by this further evidence that he had the noble worm exactly where he wanted him, Mordecai ordered the nearest soldier to remove his gag.
“P-p-please—” stuttered Lord Atticus, the instant the gag was removed.
“Please, you’d like a sip of wine?” asked Mordecai, affecting surprise.
“NO!” shrieked Lord Atticus, bucking and twisting with renewed vigour. “Please, get away from me! Please, let me go!” He moaned loudly. “Oh, god, this is a nightmare!”
“No, my lord, that is a nightmare,” said Mordecai softly, pointing to the battered, burnt, nose-less thing strapped to the other chair. “This”—he used his free hand to gesture between himself and Bartok’s blubbering spawn—“is a conversation between two civilized men. One that need not end in unpleasantness, I might add.”
At these words, Lord Atticus’s thrashing gradually subsided. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he panted, “My … my father will pay any ransom you demand.”
Smiling broadly at the uncertainty in the young lord’s voice, Mordecai said, “I do not think he would. And even if he would, I am not interested in money. And even if I were, I wouldn’t know where to begin setting the price on the head of a nobleman who behaved like a common brigand.”
Provoked into momentarily forgetting the rather precarious position in which he found himself, Lord Atticus’s watery eyes bulged again—this time with indignation. “Do not compare me to some lowborn piece of refuse,” he huffed, puffing out his soft chest. “I am a lord of impeccable breeding—one day to be the greatest nobleman in all the realm!”
“And yet instead of announcing yourself at my gate, you slunk over my castle wall in the dead of night, murdered my soldiers in cold blood and raced toward my kitchens to … what? Abduct my cook? Raid my larder?”
Lord Atticus’s pasty face went blotchy with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to make my way to your kitchens,” he muttered.
“No?” said Mordecai, his dark eyes glittering. “What did you mean to do?”
When the future “greatest nobleman in all the realm” mashed his fleshy lips together to show that he had no intention of replying, Mordecai slowly and deliberately turned his head and stared at the fireplace poker—the tip of which was nestled deep within the glowing embers of the fire. Then, just as slowly and deliberately, he turned his head back around, fixed his gaze upon the reluctant young lord and hissed, “Answer me.”
Though still firmly tied to the chair, Lord Atticus yelped and jerked as though he’d just been jabbed with the business end of the poker. Then, his words running together in his haste to spit them out, he cried, “Imeanttorescuethequeen!”
“Who set you to this evil, treasonous task?” barked Mordecai, who already knew the answer. “What did he hope to accomplish by it? And are you quite sure that kidnapping my beloved betrothed was the only thing you meant to do?”
Eyes bulging—again—Bartok’s terrified idiot heir opened and closed his mouth several times, but nothing came out.
Ignoring the death rattle of the dying New Man, Mordecai shuffled closer to Lord Atticus. As he did so, he casually lowered the wine goblet and gave it a vigorous swirl so that the young nobleman had a good view of the nose.
“Are you sure you didn’t also mean to cause me mischief, my lord?” asked Mordecai softly. “Are you sure you didn’t mean to murder me in cold blood—just as you murdered my soldiers?”
Though the accusation pushed Lord Atticus to the brink of tears, he did not deny it. Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut and moaned, “Why are you torturing me like this? If you do not want money, for gods’ sakes, tell me: What do you want?”
Amazed and disgusted that the spoiled young lord could indulge himself in feeling “tortured” when the results of real torture sat not three feet away from him, Mordecai said, “I want information. I want cooperation.”
Lord Atticus stopped moaning and reluctantly opened his puffy eyes. “What kind of information?” he muttered, more petulant than wary. “What kind of cooperation?”
“The kind that will allow me to outmanoeuvre that pack of noble worms that wriggle around to your father’s tune,” replied Mordecai serenely as he gave the goblet in his hand another swirl. “The kind that will see your father destroyed utterly.”
The young lord gaped up at Mordecai like some goggle-eyed bottom-feeder. “See my father destroyed?” he said, speaking as slowly as if he were trying to decipher words spoken in a foreign tongue. “What do you mean? Do you mean … do you mean that you want me to betray my father? You want me to help you ruin him?”
“Yes, my lord,” said Mordecai, who actually had a more permanent form of destruction in mind. “That is exactly what I mean.”
At these words, a violent spasm ran through Lord Atticus’s wine-thirsty body. Mordecai idly wondered if the boy was going to vomit again.
“P-please,” whined the panting nobleman after the worst of the attack had passed. “You don’t understand what you’re asking! My father—he’s not like other fathers. He’ll never forgive me if I betray him.” Then, as though the thought had only just occurred to him, a look of utter horror settled upon his face and he screeched, “Never mind forgiving me—he will kill me if I betray him! He will actually kill me!”
“And I will ‘actually’ kill you if you do not betray him,” said Mordecai, resisting the urge to laugh aloud at the nobleman’s histrionics. “But first—”
He casually waved his hand in the direction of the now silent and still (but still nose-less) New Man.
Lord Atticus hung his head and sobbed freely.
Mordecai let him sob. He knew the worm was going to agree to his terms because he was a coward and weakling, and he would do anything to save his pathetic noble hide. Moreover, he was too thick-headed to realize that he would not actually be saving his hide, only delaying the skinning process.
At length, Lord Atticus’s sobs ebbed. Raising his head, he sniffled loudly and said, “If … if I cooperate—if I do all that you ask of me—what will I get in return? Besides my life, I mean?”
Mordecai laughed at this very Bartokesque question. Then he took a long, slow drink of wine from the goblet in his hand, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, leaned very close to the piss-scented young lord and whispered, “You will get the chance to keep your nose.”
NINETEEN
FOUR DAYS LATER, Lord Bartok stood in his imperial palace chambers fingering the parchment in his hands. Though the broken wax seal bore the imprint of Atticus’s ring and though it was written in Atticus’s atrociously sloppy hand, Lord Bartok questioned its authenticity. For one thing, though it contained spelling
errors, it contained too few to have been written by Atticus alone. For another thing, it was too clever by half. Since when did Atticus offer suggestions that were even remotely insightful? And when was the last time he referred to the queen as anything other than “the bitch”? His gaze dropping to the parchment once more, Lord Bartok read the most telling passage for the umpteenth time:
... the queen is in my safekeeping, and the criple is dead at last, murdured in his own bed. As I am weery to the bone and also wounded, I will be delayed in delivering her (the queen) two you. Meantime, I beg you to stay where you are. Do nothing to raise the suspishuns of General Murdock for I think he will not react well to the death of his master ...
No, it didn’t sound at all like Atticus—except perhaps for the part about being weary and wounded, for the boy had ever been the most infernal complainer.
What it sounded like was someone talking through Atticus.
And Lord Bartok knew who that someone must be as surely as he knew that his only living son was now a walking dead man.
Deliberately setting the parchment down on his desk, Lord Bartok rested his elbows upon the table and touched his lips to his gracefully clasped hands.
When he’d sent Atticus after the cripple, he’d known that something like this might happen, of course. Yet what choice had he had? It simply would not have done to allow his own flesh and blood to loll about guzzling wine like a common sot while lesser men undertook the rescue of a queen. Theirs was the greatest noble family in the kingdom and had been since before the beginning of recorded history. It was each Bartok man’s responsibility to bring the family more land, more riches and more glory than the Bartok men who’d come before him had done.
Unfortunately, time and again Atticus had demonstrated not only that he lacked the ability and temperament required to improve upon anything that had been done by those who’d come before him, but also that he was in full possession of every single quality required to drag a family into utter ruin.
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