That is why Lord Bartok did not bother to lower his voice when he said, “Mordecai has kidnapped my son.”
The other great lords gaped at him, thunderstruck. Indeed, tall, skinny Lord Tweedsmuir was so startled that he loosed the arrow in his drawn bow without bothering to take aim. The arrow came within a hair’s breadth of piercing the heart of a gardener trimming the leafy tail of a topiary mermaid in a distant garden.
“Atticus kidnapped by His Grace!” cried Lord Tweedsmuir in his reedy voice. “How can you be sure, my lord?”
“Yesterday I received a note—”
“A ransom note?” put in Lord Tweedsmuir’s dandified nineteen-year-old brother-in-law with an eagerness that Lord Bartok found in poor taste.
“No, not a ransom note,” he said thinly. “A note written in Atticus’s own hand, but with words he would never use and advice he would never give.”
“That is not necessarily evidence of mischief, my lord,” offered Lord Tweedsmuir by way of comfort.
“And yet I am certain that Mordecai has my son and means him far worse than mere mischief.”
Ponderous Lord Belmont—who, being too fat to participate but too sociable to be left out, was lounging nearby beneath a fluttering white canopy on a couch being tended to by a skinny girl who had nothing but a stump where her tongue should have been—asked what evidence Lord Bartok had to support his accusations against the former regent.
“I sent Atticus on a mission to rescue Queen Persephone,” shrugged Lord Bartok.
Grunting and digging his elbows into the back of the couch, Lord Belmont heaved himself into a more-or-less upright position. “You did this thing without informing the rest of the Council?” he rumbled.
“You openly declared your support for Mordecai,” reminded Lord Bartok, taking care to ensure that his words sounded like an accusation.
“We openly declared our support for the named successor of the dead king Finnius,” corrected Lord Belmont indignantly, wheezing slightly as he reached up to adjust one of his gigantic shoulder pads.
“And when that lowborn cripple lurched into the Council chamber and announced that he and the queen were to marry, you—just—sat—there,” said Lord Bartok, biting off each word. “Even though you knew there was no possible way that the queen had willingly agreed to marry him.”
Twitching the sleeve of his forest-green doublet, Lord Tweedsmuir’s young brother-in-law sucked in his cheeks and muttered, “As I recall, Lord Bartok, you just sat there as well—”
“AND THEN, BY THE GODS, I SACRIFICED MY ONLY SON AND HEIR IN A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO SAVE HER!” thundered Lord Bartok.
Though the mute didn’t even blink, the far-off gardener glanced over in their direction.
“Quietly, my lord, please!” begged Lord Tweedsmuir, flapping his hands like an overexcited bat. “Remember that we are trapped in a city crawling with armed New Men!”
Lord Bartok sneered and swatted the air in front of his face to show what he thought of this.
Selecting a large sweetmeat from the silver bowl in the hands of the mute, Lord Belmont crammed it into his mouth. “You accuse us fairly, Lord Bartok,” he admitted as he laboriously chewed the sticky treat. “I only regret that you did not come to us before you sent Atticus to rescue the queen.”
“I am coming to you now.”
“Coming to us now?” grunted Lord Belmont’s second cousin—a squat, beetle-browed nobleman who looked more like a blacksmith than a duke.
“I am going to challenge the cripple on the battlefield,” explained Lord Bartok.
After a short, shocked silence, Lord Belmont’s second cousin responded with all the crude bluntness of a blacksmith born and bred, saying, “That would be suicide! Your army hasn’t strength enough to defeat Mordecai’s army.”
“I know,” said Lord Bartok. “Unless I am able to call upon considerably more men and horses, my army will be utterly destroyed.” He let his words hang in the air for a moment before continuing. “But I can no longer ignore the fact that some things are worth dying for, my lords. Honour. Justice. Chivalry. I cannot sit idly by and allow that twisted creature to make a mockery of all we hold sacred by murdering my noble son and violating the queen night after night.” His eyes burning with fervour, Lord Bartok said, “My lords, do you not think it is time that we of high birth stopped trembling before those of vile birth? Do you not think it is time that we came together to set things to rights for men like us—men who’ve suffered too long beneath the rule of a nobody? Join with me, my lords! Together, let us rescue the queen, save my son, vanquish the cripple and send his despicable New Men back to the gutters where they belong!”
For a long moment, the noblemen fidgeted and cast furtive glances at one another—all except Lord Belmont, that is. He busied himself selecting another sweetmeat.
Eventually, his reedy voice sounding higher and thinner than ever, Lord Tweedsmuir said, “My lord, you … you are speaking of war.”
“Yes,” agreed Lord Bartok, a trifle impatiently. “I am speaking of war.”
Lord Tweedsmuir’s brother-in-law—who’d never worn his gleaming suit of armour outside the tiltyard— glowed at the prospect of battle glory and smoothed his perfumed hair behind his ears.
Lord Belmont frowned. “Why would we not simply mount another attack on Mordecai’s stronghold?”
“Because I do not know where it is,” replied Lord Bartok. “Atticus followed the cripple to his lair, and the note I received made no mention of its location. Attacking his army is the only way to draw him out. He will not stand by and see it destroyed because without it, he is nothing.”
“You may be right,” said Lord Belmont. “Even so, my lord, you are asking a great deal—”
“And offering a great deal in return,” interjected Lord Bartok, who needed Belmont’s support above all others.
The fat lord shrugged one massive shoulder. “I and my noble brethren will need some time to consider—”
“There is no time,” interrupted Lord Bartok flatly. “Our queen is in the clutches of a monster, and my only son is in imminent danger. That is why, though I well know it may be the end of me, I intend to move against Mordecai’s army as soon as may be. You can join with me or not as you see fit, but mark me, my lords: if you fail to support me now and my army is annihilated, you will never have the strength to rid yourselves of the upstart. You will have to stand by and watch as he comes out of his hiding hole, plants his bony, lowborn backside on the throne of Glyndoria and crowns himself king. And then you will have to spend the rest of your days bending the knee— first to him and then to the malformed half-lowborn brat who comes after him.”
The vision was so unspeakable that all the great lords shuddered—even Lord Belmont, whose shudder made him jiggle like a bowlful of jelly.
When he’d sufficiently recovered from the horror of what could be, Lord Tweedsmuir said, “Lord Bartok, even if we agree to support your cause—and even if we can persuade other lords to do the same—there may be noblemen who do not care for the idea of sending thousands to their deaths in a war to save your son and set things to rights for us few, even if we do mean to rescue the queen in the bargain.”
“When we are victorious, those of noble blood who failed to support our cause will be stripped of titles, land and money,” said Lord Bartok tightly.
“If our ruling monarch says it shall be so,” said Lord Belmont pointedly. Heaving himself even farther forward on the couch, he said, “Pray tell, my lord, who shall that ruling monarch be?”
Lord Bartok made a great show of hesitating. Then, sighing heavily, he laid his hand over his heart and said, “While I truly believe that my son-in-law, the king, would have named his unborn child heir if he’d known that Aurelia was pregnant, as has been pointed out to me by some, he did not know. And so, my lords, since I would not have us divided on such a vital issue, I … I hereby declare myself content to abide by the dead king’s expressed wishes.”
Lord Be
lmont raised his unkempt eyebrows so high that his fat forehead wrinkled impressively. “Upon your honour, Lord Bartok, you swear to see Queen Persephone crowned and anointed whether your daughter is safely delivered of a royal child or not?” he asked in surprise.
“Provided that the cripple is dead—so that he cannot claim the title of king—I do so swear, yes,” said Lord Bartok, consoling himself with the thought that the lie— which would only be exposed in the unlikely event that Aurelia managed to do her duty—was for the greater good of the Bartok Dynasty.
Lord Belmont smiled and stuck out his hand. “Then I pledge my sworn swords to your cause, Lord Bartok. And I pray that we soon find a way to overcome the soldiers who hold the city, for unless we do, I fear that any attack we might launch upon the former regent will come too late to prevent him getting the poor queen with child and murdering your son.”
Wrapping his own elegant hand firmly around the fat lord’s sticky fingers, Lord Bartok smiled and said, “I think we will not need your prayers, Lord Belmont. For you see, I have a plan.”
Much later that night, there came a tentative knock at the door of Lord Bartok’s private chambers. Setting his pen down next to the inkwell, he sprinkled the parchment before him with sand to dry the ink, then set it to one side. With a nod, he indicated to his manservant that he was to admit the visitor.
By the time the door closed behind the departing servant, Lord Bartok’s daughter, Aurelia, had come to a nervous halt before him. It did not occur to him to greet her with a pleasantry, to tell her of the fate that had befallen her brother or even to offer her a chair. Instead, he examined her body carefully for signs that it was beginning to ripen. When he saw none, he frowned slightly. Then, without preamble, he explained what he wanted her to do.
Her pale face was paler still by the time he’d finished. “You … you would have me invite another disgusting commoner into my bedchamber?” she stammered in the voice of one struggling for control. “You would have me invite that disgusting commoner into my bedchamber?”
“Yes, Aurelia,” he said impassively.
She stared at him without speaking for a moment. Then tears welled in her bright eyes, and her lower lip began to tremble. She opened her mouth to speak but Lord Bartok cut her off before she had the chance to utter a single word.
“In spite of the fact that you are a girl and the younger, I have agreed to make you my heir over Atticus, Aurelia,” he reminded her. “I did not grant that privilege to you that you might shirk your duty to this family.”
Aurelia flinched as though struck. Then a wild look flashed in her eyes. Boldly taking a step forward, she slapped her hands down onto his desk—right on top of his papers!—and hissed, “You know perfectly well that you’ve no cause to accuse me of shirking my duty, Father, for you are the one who ordered me to suffer through my duty each and every night!”
Lord Bartok stared at his daughter’s hands until she removed them. Then he looked up at her and said, “You struck a bargain, Aurelia. Do not complain to me now that you do not care for its terms. And remember that attempting to do your duty is not what matters—succeeding is what matters. Can you tell me for a certainty that the stable boy has impregnated you with a bastard you are going to be able to carry to term and deliver alive?”
Colour suffused the girl’s face. “No,” she mumbled, stifling a small cough. “But—”
“But nothing,” interrupted Lord Bartok, returning to his papers. “You will play your part in this, Aurelia, and that is final.”
Face pinched with displeasure, Lady Aurelia watched him scratching away at his latest letter. Then she dipped him a stiff curtsey and left the chamber without another word.
TWENTY-TWO
LATER THAT SAME DAY, in a far less sumptuous chamber within the imperial palace, General Murdock daintily slurped a raw oyster from its half-shell. Tipping his head back, he let it slide, unchewed, down his throat. As it joined its slimy brethren in his belly, the distant sound of a shouting mob floated in through the open window. The sound swelled as the mob drew nearer, reached a crescendo as it swept through the street on the far side of the palace wall and then faded again as the street veered away from the palace and the mob melted back into the noisy city.
After a moment’s hesitation, General Murdock sighed and reached for another oyster. That his New Men had not been able to prevent a mob from forming was a troubling reminder that in spite of his best efforts, his grip on the city was growing more tenuous with each passing day.
General Murdock had expected those of noble birth to take exception to being trapped in the city against their will, of course, and he’d expected the merchant class to complain that the inability to trade with those outside the city walls was bad for business. He’d even expected the working poor to protest the abuses of the soldiers who invaded their narrow, crowded streets with intent to cause mischief.
What he’d not expected was that instead of cowering in the shadows hoping not to be noticed, the lowborns who’d thusfar escaped deportation from Parthania would start making trouble. It had begun with the disturbance they’d caused during the king’s funeral procession almost a fortnight earlier and had gotten progressively worse from there. They were untrained and poorly armed, but they were also angry and suddenly, recklessly brave. It was as though they’d finally been pushed over the edge by the death of their king, the absence of their uncrowned queen and the omnipresent hordes of hated New Men who’d ever caused them so much suffering; it was as though they’d finally realized that they had nothing but their lives to lose—or give. And the more aggressively General Murdock and his soldiers tried to subdue them, the more defiant they became.
Like a snowball in the sun, the fear that had kept them in check all these years seemed to be slowly, inexorably melting away.
More concerning still were the reports of sabotage and revolt that had begun to trickle in from all corners of the realm. In the seaside village of Syon, a New Man had been beaten to death on the quay when he’d threatened to deport a pair of urchins to the Mines of Torodania. To the west, a hundred head of woolly sheep stolen from the Khan had mysteriously escaped from their pens in the dead of night. On the northern frontier, someone had set fire to a half-built bridge at a lowborn work camp.
Taken in isolation, these were minor incidents.
Taken altogether, they spoke of a kingdom creeping toward chaos.
The previous day, General Murdock had been in the middle of crafting a carefully worded letter explaining all this to Mordecai—and requesting permission to begin executing children en masse to bring the Parthanian lowborns to heel—when he’d received a coded communiqué from His Grace. It had contained no information, only an order to kill Lord Bartok and Lady Aurelia as soon as may be. If possible, he was to make their deaths appear accidental; if not, he was to make their deaths appear the random acts of a madman.
Since Mordecai had always insisted that he wished to show the world that he did not need to kill Lord Bartok to triumph over him, the order had come as a surprise to General Murdock—but a most welcome one. He’d long believed that the Bartoks posed an unacceptable risk to His Grace’s ambitions; having at last been given leave to eliminate this risk was a considerable relief.
Unfortunately, since Lord Bartok and his daughter did nothing together and went nowhere together, General Murdock knew it would be impossible to stage an accident that would kill them both. Taking a small nibble from the wedge of smelly cheese he’d selected from the artfully arranged tray of exotic cheeses that had been served alongside the oysters, he permitted himself a small smile. Though he was a military man who always executed his orders to the best of his ability, there were some orders he enjoyed executing more than others, and eliminating Lord Bartok and his daughter in a manner that would convince people that it was the work of a madman was going to be one of these. All that remained was to find the perfect opportunity to—
A knock at the door interrupted General Murdock’s tho
ughts and his dinner. Frowning slightly, he lifted the white linen napkin off of his lap, dabbed at the corners of his mouth and then nodded to the attendant that he should open the door.
A servant in Bartok livery stepped into the room. In his hand, he held a folded piece of parchment.
Pursing his thin lips, General Murdock wondered what the doomed Lord Bartok wanted now. Then he read the note, and his eyes seemed to protrude a little farther out of his narrow face.
The note was not from whom he’d expected it to be, and the message it contained was similarly unexpected.
Unexpected—but most convenient.
Much later that night, General Murdock quietly rapped on the unattended door of one of the finest suites of chambers in the castle. Almost immediately, the door swung open to reveal Lady Aurelia dressed in the same black satin dressing gown she wore each night when she received the servant who studded her. Like a frightened little bird, she poked her head into the torch-lit corridor. She cast one jerky glance to the left and one to the right. Then, apparently satisfied that there was no one lurking about, she hopped back and nervously gestured to General Murdock that he should step inside.
Wordlessly, he did as she bid. By the time he’d closed the door and turned around to face her, she’d flitted halfway across the room, which appeared to be deserted but for the two of them.
Laying a hand at the gaping collar of her peignoir, Lady Aurelia cleared her throat several times as though in an effort to remove a persistent tickle. Then she said, “Thank you for coming, General.”
If General Murdock had been the sort of man to feel awkward, uncomfortable or even desirous, he might have felt those things at that moment. But of course, he was not the sort of man to feel any of those things, and so all he felt was the slight weight of the sharpened straight razor he was carrying in the front pocket of his perfectly tailored black doublet.
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