The Warrior King (Book 4)

by Michael Wallace

  Before the arrival of the company from Balsalom, Faalam had shadowed Chantmer wherever he traveled, but since then, he had spent his time watching Sofiana. This left Chantmer the opportunity to skulk around, working his plans without observation, but made it exceedingly difficult to extract Sofiana from Marrabat and send her on her way north toward Balsalom. Worse, as soon as she was gone, Chantmer would fall under suspicion, and all of Faalam’s attentions would be turned his direction again.

  Like many in the palace, the eunuch had the habit of entering an indolent slumber during the thickest, most stifling heat of the day. He would retreat to his tomb-like chamber behind thick walls and doze for as long as two hours before returning to his mischief of slipping here and there throughout the palace. During the nap, he placed the girl under the watch of two other eunuchs of the palace harem. Chantmer couldn’t penetrate Faalam’s defenses without detection, but he could do something about the other two eunuchs.

  So he expended the magic of three spells inked into his skin. The first, he hoped would deepen Faalam’s sleep, but more importantly, give the two attending eunuchs the irresistible urge to seek out a dark corner and steal a few minutes of sleep while their master napped. That few minutes would turn into an hour, and they would wake in a panic and rush back to their posts.

  The second of Chantmer’s spells came from a subtle rune, inked under great pain over several hours, and was designed simply to disguise the effects of the first, so Faalam wouldn’t sniff out Chantmer’s magic lingering around his two lazy servants. In the manner of lazy servants everywhere, Chantmer was certain the two would not confess their sloth.

  After he’d accomplished this task, the wizard infiltrated the courtyard that led to the apartments where Princess Marialla and her entourage from Balsalom stayed. There, he cast his final spell through the walls, directed toward Sofiana. It fed her an irresistible restlessness. It didn’t matter if she were studying with her tutor, napping away the heat of the day, or eating, her limbs would turn twitchy, her attention wander. Soon, she would be looking for a way to escape to explore the palace. Chantmer slipped away and waited for his spell to take effect.

  About an hour later, he found the girl in a tree in one of the sultan’s gardens, barefoot and wearing a pair of trousers and a boy’s shirt. As soon as she spotted him, her face lit up, first with excitement, then anger.

  “Chantmer? What are you doing here? You betrayed us!”

  Two men with bare, mud-caked chests had been repairing the wall on the other side of the square. They had been paying attention to their work, and not the girl, but now they looked up as Sofiana leaped out of the tree and thrust a finger into the wizard’s chest.

  “Why did you do it?” she demanded. “I should get my crossbow and put a bolt straight through your heart.”

  The masons laughed. Frowning, Chantmer summoned a simple spell and suddenly the masons found their attention urgently drawn to a bucket of mortar. There they discovered that something was subtly wrong with the texture or color, something hard to define. They carried off their bucket to mix more, which left the wizard alone with the girl. Her anger faded and now she looked curious as she stared after them.

  “How did you do that?”

  Instead of answering, Chantmer beckoned her into the shade of the arcades and out of the heavy sun overhead. There, he removed a small packet from his robes and handed it to the girl. “Look, but don’t touch it or breathe too closely.”

  Now Sofiana seemed eager. She gingerly unfolded the scrap of sheepskin to reveal a small pile of what looked like metallic grains of sand. “What is it?”

  “Silver bite,” Chantmer said. “It is quite deadly.”

  “Oh, I know what that is!” she said, eagerly. “My tutor told me all about that. Gustau said—”

  “Really?” Chantmer said. “Your tutor has you learning about poisons? Does the khalifa know this is part of your education?”

  “Why wouldn’t she?” Sofiana frowned. “Anyway, it wasn’t her idea, and it wasn’t Gustau’s either. Everything he wants to teach is boring: dead languages, dusty, boring old treatises on law or stupid politics. Do you know he had me reading about the Aristonian Book of Law? Aristonia doesn’t even exist anymore.” She threw up her hands. “And in the old tongue too!”

  “There’s a good deal to learn from the Book of Law,” Chantmer scolded. “And the old tongue is a beautiful, subtle thing. You would do well to study it.”

  “Boring and pointless.”

  Any emotion, any thought seemed to manifest itself on the child’s face. This might be a problem.

  Sofiana had recently turned thirteen, yet seemed at once much younger and much older than her age. Younger, in that she still had a slender, boyish body at a time when many young girls—especially princesses—would be dressing for their changing body shapes. And younger too, in her manners and sophistication. That came from living with her father, Whelan, on the road for so many years, instead of being raised properly in a noble household.

  But the girl also had a lithe, confident way of carrying herself, like a slightly-built thief or an assassin. She was a deadly shot with the crossbow and had charged into the fray of more than one battle, seemingly fearless. The way she’d confronted Chantmer, like a mouse facing down a lion, proved her bravery.

  “Who do you want me to kill?” she asked as the wizard took the packet and sealed it up again. “That’s why you’re showing me, right? You want me to poison someone.”

  Chantmer smiled. “A moment ago you were talking about killing me. Shouldn’t we at least be friends before I tell you my secret plan?”

  “You’re the one who brought up the poison, not me. Does King Daniel know you’re here?”

  “Not yet, he doesn’t.”

  “If I were you, I’d run away before he finds out. He doesn’t like traitors.”

  “We’ve had a few misunderstandings about the war,” Chantmer said. “But that will be patched up soon. Do you know your friend is here too, that slave boy from Balsalom?”

  She gave a look like she’d just eaten a piece of rotting fish. “He’s not my friend. How could you even think that?”

  “He’s not mine either, but Markal seems to care for him, and since Markal is here, so is Darik.”

  “Markal was really mad at you. I bet he still is.”

  “A little bit,” Chantmer admitted. “But we both have the same enemy, so we must work together.”

  “What about that mud creature you created? It attacked our own side.”

  “Are we going to keep arguing about what happened in the battle? That was months ago. If we’re going to defeat King Toth, we’ll be forced to work together. And you might be forced to work with Darik, as well.”

  Curiosity had gradually been pushing aside the suspicion on her face, but now the latter returned. “You’d better explain.”

  Could he trust the girl not to blurt out everything he told her to the Balsalomians? That would muddle the situation. First, it would get Daniel agitated about the sultan’s plans for the girl, and it would make Marialla wary. She was here to marry Mufashe, not to be a rival for some child. Then there were the guards and slaves, all with the loose tongues common to that low sort of person. Word of Chantmer’s plans could easily get back to the sultan’s eunuch.

  Meanwhile, Markal and Darik were waiting for him to deliver Sofiana so they could smuggle her out of the city. He’d told them he was unable to get alone with the girl, yet here he was. Apart from that, he’d mostly told them the truth. And they had mostly believed him, he guessed. Chantmer glanced around, suddenly suspicious that he was being spied upon by Markal. It was what he would have done had the situation been reversed.

  But the courtyard was empty of people. There were a few chittering birds up in the leafy branches of the cork trees, and green and gold lizards rested in the shady gaps between the stones of the walls and arches, but nothing seemed out of place.

  “Wait, it’s not the sultan you want
me to kill, is it?” Sofiana said.

  “Of course not.”

  “Good, because he is in love with the princess.”

  Chantmer raised an eyebrow. “You don’t understand this business if you think it has anything to do with love.”

  She looked annoyed. “Oh, I know. It’s about having the sultan marry Kallia’s sister so there will be an alliance between Marrabat and Balsalom. The sultan has lots of wives and concubines already. So maybe he doesn’t love her yet, but he desires her.”

  “That’s . . . closer to the truth.”

  “I’ve heard the grand vizier and King Daniel and Princess Marialla talking.” Sofiana grabbed hold of the lowest branch of the cork tree and swung herself up. She sat with her bare, dirty feet dangling in the air and rubbed her hand over the thick rough bark. “They want the sultan’s armies to help fight the dark wizard and they’ll trade Marialla to get it.”

  “You understand our side’s motives. What you don’t understand is the desire of Sultan Mufashe. He doesn’t want to marry Marialla.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said, climbing higher. “Marialla is the most beautiful woman in the world—everybody knows that. Any man would want to marry her. That’s what Kallia said.”

  “I don’t think the khalifa understands Mufashe’s appetites, either. Let me explain.”

  Sofiana was now almost to the top of the tree, the slender branches swaying under her weight, but as he began to tell her what he’d seen in Roghan’s quicksilver, she stopped and came somberly back to the ground. There, she listened with a look of growing horror.

  #

  “That’s disgusting,” Sofiana said when Chantmer finished. “How should I poison him?”

  “I told you, you’re not poisoning the sultan. That would mean the death of us all, and anyway, we still need him. It’s his chief slave you need to kill, a eunuch by the name of Faalam. If he falls, the sultan loses his eyes and ears in the palace. Then, we slip you out of Marrabat with Markal and Darik. That will be a good deal easier with the eunuch dead.”

  “I’ll worry about escaping later.” Her face was grim and serious, making him forget temporarily how young she was. “Now how do I administer the poison?”

  She was so eager. And trusting. The perfect combination of young and naive and without fear.

  But this was still a delicate business. Every evening for the past ten days Chantmer had removed a single grain of the silver bite and let it dissolve in the perspiration of his palm. It made him violently ill the first time he did so, and he had spent the night shaking in alternating hot and cold chills. It was especially unpleasant given the oppressive heat here in the south, and no magic or tincture had been able to ease the discomfort. The next night he had done the same thing and suffered similar results. Gradually, however, he had grown accustomed to the dose. He had intended to increase his exposure to two grains this evening and continue for another fortnight.

  At the end he would be completely immune to the poison, at which point he would dissolve the rest of the packet into a cup of tea and drink it. After that, it was a simple matter of seeking out Faalam and finding a way to touch his skin several times: trip against his robes, feign drunkenness, shake his hand—whatever it took. The silver bite would rise to Chantmer’s skin and poison Faalam. It would either kill the eunuch or leave his senses permanently addled, but delivered in this diluted fashion, would do so slowly, so Chantmer would not be implicated. Either dead or crippled, the eunuch would be out of the way for good.

  But now he had no time for that. Chantmer’s spying had revealed that the sultan was tired of waiting and meant to take the girl for his harem tomorrow morning. After that, there would be trouble with the Balsalomians. Daniel considered himself as much the girl’s father as her uncle, and the former king of Eriscoba and the Free Kingdoms had recovered his strength and passion in the past few months.

  As distasteful as the sultan’s desires were, Chantmer would have reluctantly sacrificed the girl if necessary. But he couldn’t risk open conflict between Balsalom and Marrabat. That would spoil his gathering plan to reenter the war against the dark wizard and take the place that was rightfully his.

  “Well?” Sofiana demanded when Chantmer had spent several seconds thinking.

  “Faalam takes a cup of mint tea after his daytime nap. I will send you in with the other eunuchs and you will shift two grains of silver bite into his cup.”

  “Two grains? That’s all it will take?”

  “Any more and he would taste it, and then he would realize you’d poisoned him. But two grains will be sufficient to make him sick enough for you to escape.”

  “Why me? Why don’t you do it?”

  Chantmer sighed, loath to confess the true reason. “I’m not strong enough yet,” he admitted. “Faalam will detect my actions, and I can’t risk that.”

  “You can’t make him look away like you chased off those gardeners?”

  “No, I cannot. Those men were weak in the mind. The eunuch is something else entirely.”

  The other problem was, Faalam was no doubt acclimated to a number of poisons already, and while Chantmer had tried to choose a poison rare to the sultanates, one of them might be silver bite. If so, Faalam would instantly recognize the tingle on his tongue when he drank the tea.

  That would be a disaster on every level, but at least Chantmer would have a chance to flee the palace before they extracted the information from the girl under torture.

  Chantmer took back the packet with the silver bite. He removed a second, empty packet from the satchel at his waist and tapped in two solitary grains of the poison. After tying off the second packet, he told her he’d give it to her later, when she was bathed and perfumed, at which point she was to keep it concealed on her person.

  “So I’m not going to kill him,” Sofiana said again. She sounded disappointed. “Only make him sick. I suppose that would be wrong.”

  “That’s right. We’re not going to kill the eunuch. That would be wrong.”

  This part was a lie.

  Chapter Five

  “Don’t tell me you trust Chantmer,” Darik said. He and Markal were waiting in the overgrown garden where Chantmer had left them.

  “Of course not.”

  Maybe it was the heat, almost smothering now even in the shade, or maybe it was the way that Markal sat casually with his back against the wall, peeling an orange and eating it in segments, but Darik felt his temper rising.

  He pulled off a sandal and slapped an ant that had crawled between his toes. “We chased the Betrayer through the mountains, fought him on the Tothian Way, and then spent eight days on the Spice Road with a bunch of salt traders and their smelly camels. Now we get here and after five minutes we’re suddenly doing Chantmer’s bidding? I don’t understand it at all.”

  Markal spit out the last of the orange seeds and tossed the peel to one side while he picked up another orange. The ants came to inspect the discarded peel. “You don’t think it worthwhile to get Whelan’s daughter out of Marrabat before she’s forced into the sultan’s harem?”

  “It’s not that. Of course I do. But Chantmer doesn’t care about the girl—he’s using her to get rid of us.”

  “Obviously.”

  “So why would we go along with his plan?”

  “Who said we will?”

  Another ant crawled onto Darik’s foot. He went to flick it off, but this one bit his toe and clamped down and he had to pinch it dead to get it off. He’d swapped his boots for sandals when they reached the Spice Road, and his feet had toughened up, so the bite didn’t hurt overly much at first. But there was some venom in the ant’s bite and it began to sting. Grumbling, he lifted his hand to get rid of the itch.

  “Ah, ah,” Markal said with a waggle of the finger. “No magic.”

  Darik got up to get away from the ants, but as soon as he stood, he found himself out of the shade, with the sun beating down on his bare head. Sweat trickled down his temple. A moment or two o
f that, and he decided to risk the ants. He dropped to a squat next to the wizard.

  “We’ll help the girl,” Markal said, “and hopefully get a better understanding of what the Betrayer is about at the same time. And of course we won’t leave Marrabat before we figure out what he’s up to. At the very least, we need to stay to make sure he doesn’t meddle in this business with Princess Marialla.” Markal popped another segment of orange into his mouth and winked. “Meddling is my business, not Chantmer’s.”

  “Maybe there’s a guard or soldier from Balsalom who could escort Sofiana north,” Darik offered. “Or we could find the salt traders and see if they’d take her away.”

  “Good, now you’re thinking. We’ll figure out something. For now—” Markal stopped, cocked his head with narrowed eyes.

  Darik followed his gaze. A pair of cats paced along the top of the wall opposite. He’d seen plenty of cats in the palace—lounging about, stalking birds, eating scraps fed to them by servants and slaves—and he wouldn’t have otherwise found the sight odd if not for Markal’s sudden look of suspicion. Now that he was looking, it struck him as strange that they were out in the blazing heat of the day instead of sleeping it off like everyone else. And something was wrong with one of the cats.

  The first was sleek and gray and bright-eyed. The second was a white cat with black fur on the face and black mittens, but its fur had a bedraggled, sorry appearance. Its head drooped, and it limped like a very old cat, or one that had been attacked and savaged by dogs and now needed somewhere to curl up and die. The first cat leaped from the wall to a tree, then turned to watch its sick companion come to the edge and hesitate. The gray cat meowed plaintively.

  Darik rose, growing concerned not only with the strange appearance of the two animals, but with Markal’s wary look as well. The wizard rose and pulled back the sleeves of his robe.