Forsaken Kingdom (The Last Prince Book 1)

by J. R. Rasmussen

  “Something wrong?” the king asked quietly.

  Wardin deliberately slowed his breathing. “Not at all, Majesty.”

  “You seemed distressed, just now.”

  “No, Majesty.” He matched the older man’s slow, soft tone. “Apologies. Just tripping over my words. Speaking too quickly, I suppose.”

  Bramwell regarded him through narrowed eyes. Wardin held his gaze.

  Finally the king rose from his chair, towering a full head above Wardin, who was himself taller than average. “You look tired,” he said as he walked to the other side of the room, where a waist-high chest stood with a pitcher and several goblets on top. “I hope you’re not falling ill.”

  “No, Majesty,” Wardin said, though truth be told, he felt quite ill. A bloom of white pain behind his left eye told him another headache was coming.

  Bramwell gave him a piercing look as he poured two goblets of wine. “Are you sure? I can’t have you around the children, if you are.”

  “Quite sure, Majesty. I’ve not been sleeping well, is all.”

  “Has Falk’s death disturbed you?”

  Wardin supposed it must have. At least, his difficulties had started shortly after Falk died. Yet it wasn’t the poor old man falling past his window that robbed Wardin of sleep and haunted his dreams, but stranger, if less grisly, images: a laughing, green-eyed man on horseback; a flat rock by a waterfall; a great black dog, square-headed and shaggy, nothing like the king’s sleek hounds; a corridor so cluttered with bookcases there was barely enough room for two men to pass one another. And most often of all, two children, a boy and a girl, with shining dark hair and ready smiles.

  He rubbed sweat from the back of his neck and tore his thoughts away from his inexplicable dreams. “I’m sure that’s what it is, Majesty. I spent a lot of time with Falk over the years.”

  “Yes, well. It was a regrettable thing.” Bramwell gestured for Wardin to come and claim the other goblet. “Still, best have some wine to be sure you stay healthy. It’s fortified with ginger and cloves.”

  “Thank you, Majesty.” Wardin accepted the goblet and once again met the king’s pale-eyed stare. “You’re very kind.”

  “Indeed.” Bramwell watched him a moment longer in silence before nodding at Wardin’s hand. “You won’t get its benefits from just holding it, you know.”

  The scent of cloves rose up from the goblet. Was that all he could smell? Was it masking anything else? Wardin’s pulse quickened as he drank. The wine was thickly spiced and bitter, and he had to force himself to swallow without shuddering.

  A moment later, the king took a long drink of his own, and Wardin let out the breath he’d been unaware of holding.

  They spoke a short while longer about Hamlin and the other palace children, then Wardin was dismissed. He felt feverish and sick from the wine, and it was with great relief that he bowed himself out of the solar and headed back to his own cold, dim chambers on the first floor of the palace.

  He lay on his bed and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, trying to relieve the pressure in his head. But that pressure only mounted, as the silver inkwell loomed in the darkness behind his lids.

  What significance could an inkwell possibly have to him? Wardin had a half dozen of them, between his own desk and the children’s table. They were common objects, and the only thing special about this one was that it was of the quality he would expect a king to possess. Finely made—of Eyrdish silver, if he was any judge.

  Eyrdish silver. The thought made his heart leap and his stomach turn, at the same time. Or was that the headache? (Or the wine?) Eyrdish silver meant nothing to him, apart from his awareness of its value.

  Perhaps the better question was what significance an inkwell could possibly have to Bramwell. Because although the king had already been annoyed over Hamlin, there was no doubt that his irritation with his adept had increased tenfold after Wardin betrayed his sudden agitation.

  So what? I acted like a fool, and he isn’t a person who suffers fools. Wardin knew that perfectly well. Yet he couldn’t dismiss the feeling that there was more to it than that. The king had been suspicious. To the point of trying to trap Wardin into letting something slip—though Wardin had no idea what that something might be.

  He knew.

  Knew what? What was there to know? That Wardin had been looking at an inkwell? That he’d allowed himself to be distracted over a trivial thing for no reason at all, when he should have been thinking only of the discussion at hand, and his king’s displeasure?

  Wardin ran a hand over a brow that had gone clammy with cold sweat. There was nothing to know. There was nothing wrong with that inkwell, or the wine, or the king. The wrongness was in Wardin, and in him alone.

  Perhaps what Bramwell really suspected was that Wardin was going as mad as Falk.

  Perhaps he was.

  5

  Wardin

  Whatever the season, cold or hot, Witmare could be relied upon to be damp. And to smell it. Wardin could forget its dreariness inside the breezy stone corridors of the palace, but out here, even on a temperate spring day, the narrow streets of the surrounding city were stifling. The cramped buildings loomed on either side of him like creatures vying for the same scarce air. He’d lived in northern Harth all his life, yet he’d never grown accustomed to the suffocating lowland climate.

  Perhaps that’s because I haven’t lived here all my life.

  Such rogue thoughts had become commonplace since his encounter with the king—and the king’s inkwell—in the solar. Wardin was still haunted by dreams of people and places that by all accounts he’d never seen, yet that were more clear to him than his waking memories. It made him wonder, although he knew the very notion must be madness, whether he didn’t have them the wrong way around. What if the dreams were the real memories, and the memories a lie?

  And that inkwell. That blasted inkwell. He could not escape the feeling that he knew it. That he remembered it. That it was, somehow, his.

  As he rounded a corner, he briefly considered running, to give the scout shadowing him a bit of trouble. But a few moments’ amusement didn’t seem worth revealing that he knew the man was there.

  This part of the city was orderly and clean, its residents respectable tradesmen. Apart from the regular patrols of city guards keeping the peace and protecting the shops from robbery or vandalism, there was little need for soldiers here—or spies. The king’s scouts, when they lingered in Witmare at all, frequented the inns and guildhalls of the shadier districts, where the best information could always be bought.

  And yet, this particular scout had been following Wardin since he’d left the palace. A simple adept unaccustomed to intrigue should not have been a challenging target, but the man wasn’t very skilled. He turned corners too soon, slipped out of shadows too often, came too close and backed off too quickly. Probably he was new and inexperienced, someone who could be spared from more important work. Apparently the master scout didn’t consider Wardin much of a threat.

  But Bramwell, it seemed, did; Wardin had been watched since their meeting.

  And that, more than anything, kept Wardin’s puzzled obsession with the inkwell alive. Clearly he’d somehow tread on ground he shouldn’t have. If only he understood how, and why.

  He walked into the bakery—the scout did not follow him inside—and stopped to savor the smell of fresh rolls while Cedany packed a basket of bread for a customer. When the latter had paid her pennies and gone, Wardin stepped up to the counter and returned the girl’s dimpled smile, although with perhaps less enthusiasm.

  “Wardin, I’m so glad to see you! I mean, that is, my uncle will be glad to see you.” Cedany’s tongue flicked over her lips. “You missed your visit last week.”

  “Yes, it was a bit chaotic at the palace.” He fixed his gaze on a platter of buns at her elbow, the better to pretend he didn’t notice her blushing.

  “Those buns are quite a treat today. We got some early berries in.” She
lowered her voice. “When you’re finished upstairs, stop and share one with me.”

  Wardin fiddled with his sleeves. “That’s very kind of you, but I don’t think I’ll be able to spare the time. Lessons all afternoon, you know.”

  He bowed and turned away from Cedany’s downcast face. She was sweet, and pretty enough, but she wasn’t his kind of woman. Not that he could have said what his kind was.

  The upstairs rooms were small and sparsely furnished, but clean, and they’d been steeped in bakery smells for enough years to make them a pleasant place. Jervis sat by the window, in the armchair that was, by unspoken agreement, never occupied by anybody else.

  “Wardin!” His reedy voice suggested a sternness that was belied by his twinkling eyes. “Unless I’ve gotten too doddering to keep a proper sum, you were expected days ago.”

  “I know, I’m sorry.” Wardin dragged a plain wooden chair across the floor to sit by his mentor, and handed the old man the small bottle of wine he always brought from the palace.

  “Thank you,” Jervis said. “You might as well tell me what kept you away, Cedany will be trying to get it out of me all through supper tonight. Haven’t found yourself a sweetheart, have you? Not sure I could take the moping about.”

  Ordinarily, Wardin was more than a match for Jervis’s teasing, but he only shook his head. “No, I’m sorry to say it was for a much more grim reason. Falk died. Suicide, and Mairid and Hamlin saw it. Well, some of it.”

  Jervis’s grimace was confused rather than surprised. “Saw it? How could they have seen it? What did he do, stab himself in the great hall?”

  “Jumped from the tower above my chambers, while I was in the middle of a lesson.”

  “Ah.” Jervis rubbed his grizzled chin. As those same chambers had been his until his retirement the year before, the old man knew them quite well. “Must have been a dreadful mess in the courtyard. Don’t imagine it troubled Hamlin much, though.”

  “Er, no.” Wardin cleared his throat. Even to Jervis, he wouldn’t suggest that the prince had, in fact, taken inappropriate pleasure in the grisly scene. “But Mairid was all but silent for days afterward.”

  “Hart’s teeth, Mairid gone silent? You’re right, that is grim.”

  “Indeed.” Wardin rubbed the back of his neck. “I always knew Falk was unbalanced, but—”

  “What do you mean?” Jervis snapped.

  Wardin blinked at him. He’d never known Jervis to be so fond of Falk that he’d be offended on his behalf. “I didn’t mean to speak ill of him. But you didn’t find him a bit unstable?”

  “Unstable.” Jervis relaxed back into his chair. “Yes. I suppose he was.”

  “Why, what did you think I meant?”

  “Nothing. It’s just surprising, is all. There are plenty of eccentric people who don’t throw themselves from towers. It must have been a shock to you, too.” Jervis’s eyes narrowed as he studied his former apprentice. “How have you been feeling? You haven’t taken ill or anything, have you?”

  A knot tightened in Wardin’s belly. “The king asked me that same question a few days ago.”

  “Well, you look tired.”

  “He said that, too.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  Wardin returned the old man’s defiant stare. A few heartbeats of silence stretched between them. It was Jervis who looked away first.

  “Jervis,” Wardin asked softly, “when I first came to the palace, did I have anything with me?”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know, but it seems likely that I would have brought something. Everything in my chambers, I can tell you how it came to be there, and none of it is from before I started training under you.”

  “Well, what would you have had to bring? You were a ropemaker’s boy. Did you expect to travel with a favorite scrap of flax?”

  A ropemaker’s boy. Wardin closed his eyes as a sudden pain shot behind them. When was the last time he’d thought about his parents? He couldn’t even recall his father’s face, although something tugged at the corner of his memory, not a sight but a sound, the echo of an exuberant laugh.

  “But was I only a simple ropemaker’s boy? I must have been unusual in some way, otherwise why bring me here? What was it that made you think I had the potential to train as an adept?”

  Jervis became very interested in scraping something from beneath one of his fingernails. “I couldn’t say. I wasn’t the one who found you. And as I didn’t unpack for you either, I also couldn’t say what you had with you. All I know is that Falk brought you to me and said that you were extremely bright, and that I ought to see if I could make something of you.” He looked at Wardin from beneath raised brows. “Not so sure he was the best judge of intellect, but I did a fair job anyway, I’d say.”

  Wardin’s stomach tightened another degree. “Falk brought me to you? What was the king’s master scout doing concerning himself with ropemakers?”

  “How should I know? Perhaps he needed a noose.” Jervis chuckled and tugged at his ear. “Obviously he came across you while on business in those parts, and you impressed him.”

  Wardin crossed his arms, but Jervis only mirrored the gesture and shrugged. “Honestly, Wardin, I don’t know what you’re after. It was years ago, and I’m hardly in the habit of questioning the king’s scouts. What is it that you want me to say?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” Wardin flicked an imaginary gnat from his tunic. “I’ve just been looking for an inkwell, that’s all. I remembered it and wondered when I’d misplaced it.”

  “An inkwell.” Jervis pinched the bridge of his nose. “You have any number of inkwells, all of which have probably been in the adept’s chambers since you were a pupil there.”

  “This one was particular.”

  “Particular how?”

  “Silver, I think. Eyrdish silver.”

  Jervis drummed his fingers against his knee. “A ropemaker’s son with an Eyrdish silver inkwell? You had a dream, that’s the only explanation. Why a man your age would be dreaming of inkwells instead of women, I couldn’t say, but then you always were a bit odd.”

  By then, Wardin’s patience had worn so thin that it took a moment’s effort to unclench his jaw enough to speak. “Jervis, is that really all you want to say? Because you’re fidgeting an awful lot. Wasn’t it you who taught me to recognize a liar?”

  Jervis’s eyes flicked to his, all pretense gone. “It was. And you learned from the best. So perhaps if you would be honest with me, I would return the courtesy.”

  There was something about the old man’s shrewd stare, his hawkish nose, the hard lines of his face in the dappled light coming through the window, that made Wardin feel a bit dizzy. He had the oddest feeling he’d somehow done this before.

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Fair enough. But I’d prefer this go no further than between us.”

  “Of course.”

  “I saw an inkwell, a small silver one, on the king’s desk. And I thought … I have this feeling that it’s mine.”

  “And have you asked the king about it?”

  “No, but he seemed displeased to find me looking at it.”

  Jervis sat for a few moments with his chin in his hand, tapping a finger against his lips. “All right,” he said finally. “I can see you’ve worked yourself up to making something scandalous of this, so I’ll put it to rest with the dull truth. That inkwell belonged to your family for many years. On your father’s side, I think, some great-grandmother who came from a wealthy family and married beneath her, or some such.”

  Wardin slowly released the breath that had caught in his throat at the words belonged to your family. “Why would the King of Harth have a ropemaker’s family heirloom on his desk?”

  “A gift from your parents.” Jervis spread his hands. “Or a payment, if you like. For taking you in to be trained, and raising your station.”

  “Then why wouldn’t Bramwell have told me so, when he saw me looking at it?”


  “Well, it’s exactly as you say: he’s the King of Harth. It looks a bit petty, doesn’t it, for a man who can have anything he wants to accept a lowly subject’s dearest treasure? But the king has a fondness for Eyrdish silver, always has.” Jervis slapped a hand against the arm of his chair. “Now, pour me some of that wine you brought, and let that be the end of it.”

  Wardin rose to do as he was told, and agreed that that would, indeed, be the end of it. He felt no guilt for the lie. After all, whatever his affection for Jervis, he had no obligation to be truthful with a man who was quite obviously lying himself.

  Or at best, telling only part of the truth. Jervis’s words thrummed along with Wardin’s pulse as he poured the wine. It belonged to your family.

  Where did Grandfather get it? Did Eyrdri give it to him herself, for being such a great king?

  He would almost certainly have liked you to think so. But whatever you might have heard, your grandfather did not regularly dine and ride with deities.

  A fairy, then?

  Perhaps. He never told me.

  But he gave it to you.

  Yes.

  And he gave Dragon’s Edge to Uncle Lional. So he must have thought you like writing best, and Uncle Lional likes fighting battles best.

  Something like that. I’m certainly better with words than Uncle Lional.

  Is he better at fighting battles?

  Most people would say so. But words can win battles just as well as swords, sometimes.

  How?

  Well, words possess some of the greatest magical powers. Charm and command. Thought. Understanding.

  Thinking is magic?

  It can be, if you do it right.

  And is that what the inkwell does? Help you think, and understand?

  Wardin woke wrapped in a sweaty blanket, his heart racing as if the dream had taken him into a battle instead of a conversation. He rose and went to the basin to splash some water on his face.