The Child Prince (The Artifactor)

by Honor Raconteur

  “Alright, let’s start this planning meeting. We have two main objectives, as I understand it. First, to get enough gold secured to break Bel’s curse. Second, to find a way to usurp the Council’s power and shift it back to the governing family.”

  “The first step, as I see it,” Axelrad rumbled thoughtfully, “is how to break into the palace without alerting anyone.”

  “That’s already taken care of,” Bel assured him dryly.

  Axelrad looked at him sideways, clearly not sure if he wanted to know. “Might I ask how, Your Highness?”

  “Sevana has portals in several different locations in the palace,” he answered forthrightly.

  The former guard captain’s eyes bulged in horror. “W-what?”

  “Yes,” Aren said slowly, thinking hard. “I remember a hidden door of some sort opening before I stepped through.”

  “It’s actually a grandfather clock,” Bel informed him. “We’ll have easy access in and out through them.”

  It had been a wise decision to de-age Axelrad before having this conversation. As it was, hearing that someone else had open access through his beloved palace security almost gave him a heart attack. “B-but that’s—!”

  “Oh calm down, man.” Sevana rolled her eyes to the heavens, praying for patience. “I’m the only one that knows how to turn them on and connect them to the right clock. It’s not like some unknown enemy can use them against you.”

  Axelrad thought that through for a long moment before stating, “That doesn’t really make me feel any better.”

  “Deal with it,” Sevana advised unmercifully. “Alright, we have free access. Who needs to go where?”

  Bel piped up, “Just the treasure room for me. Sevana, how much gold do we need to bring with us?”

  “Well, at least a cart load to do the final payment for the dragon, plus a good bit to wear when we walk into their territory…” She started calculating weight and such in her head. “I think I’ll need three carry-all bags to get everything we need.”

  “Wait, wait, dragon?” Hana held up her free hand in protest. “I’m not following.”

  The prince explained briefly, “In order to quickly break my curse, we have to borrow the power of a water dragon.”

  Hana’s expression froze. “Isn’t there a safer way to break it?”

  “Well, yes, but it will take too long.”

  “So you’re just going to waltz into dragon territory with some gold and hope they’re in a bargaining mood?” she demanded incredulously.

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Bel, this plan sounds very risky.” Hana worried at her bottom lip with her teeth. “Surely it would be better to do this a different way.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he assured her with a brief smile. He probably meant it to look reassuring, but it just reinforced the steel determination in his eyes. “I’ve faced a dragon once, after all, and came through without a scratch.”

  “So you think that now that you’re experienced, there’s no real danger?” she growled in exasperation. “Didn’t it occur to you that you’re pushing your luck and the second time you face a dragon, you might not have enough luck left?”

  He raised a hand and cupped her cheek in a gentle way, eyes softening. “I’ll be fine. I have an Artifactor prodigy guiding my every footstep.”

  Oh sure, pass all the potential blame to her! Sevana let out a disgusted “Pah!”

  Bel, probably well able to guess what she thought of this, gave her an amused look. “Don’t worry. If I do get eaten, they’ll remember it was my decision.”

  “If you get eaten, I’ll likely get eaten too,” she retorted scathingly. “So don’t plan on that, princeling.”

  He gave her a mocking bow from his seat.

  Hana, not happy about these baseless reassurances, pulled Bel’s attention back to her and demanded, “Give me one good reason why except your own impatience.”

  Aren stirred. “Son, it’s not because of that, is it?”

  Bel spared him a glance and a nod of confirmation before saying to Hana, “There’s several political schemes in the works that we need to quickly nip in the bud. One especially is under a tight deadline—if I can’t stop it within the next six months, it will have far reaching consequences. But I can’t do anything about it as I am.”

  Hana gave him a long, searching look. “How bad are the consequences?”

  “It’ll directly affect our relationship with Belen.”

  Her brows compressed into an unhappy frown. “There’s no other way? Now that King Aren is back to his senses—”

  “I can’t do anything about this one,” Aren said almost apologetically. “This particular understanding was actually made by me, a few years before I was cursed.” He let out a troubled sigh. “I can only say that it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Sevana followed this conversational ball as it bounced around the room, becoming more confused with each sentence. Just what was this troublesome agreement with Belen they were so unhappy with? And didn’t anyone else notice that they were dancing around the subject but not speaking of it directly? Judging from the way that Bel looked at Hana, he was very carefully skirting around the subject, so whatever it was, it would likely upset her. Well, fine. Sevana could wring it out of him later and satisfy her curiosity.

  “Regardless, I have to deal with this myself.” A blaze of determination reignited in Bel’s expression. “Don’t worry. As long as I’m dripping with enough gold, I can walk into dragon territory safely.”

  That ‘safely’ bit might be pushing it a mite. But Sevana let that slide. “Alright, moving on. After we have the gold, we’ll be leaving almost directly for the Kesly Islands.”

  “We’ll probably be quite busy while you’re gone,” Sarsen drawled. “Majesty, Captain, I’ve a few ideas to stir them up without us making an appearance, see. I have a way of listening through the walls so you can get your thumb on their dealings.”

  Aren perked up instantly. “That would be very helpful. How?”

  “Tuning forks?” Sevana guessed.

  Sarsen shrugged. “Them. And I’ve got the New Face Makeup.”

  “Ooooh, I’d forgotten about that.”

  Axelrad cleared his throat. “Can I get an explanation for us non-Artifactors?”

  Sarsen, charitably, put it in layman’s terms. “The tuning forks, once rung, will broadcast any sound from the opposite room. It’ll be easy to eavesdrop that way. And the makeup will make you look like a different man. It wears like skin.”

  “No, it looks like skin,” Sevana corrected. “It wears like makeup, so if you touch your face and mess it up, it’ll look very strange.”

  Sarsen waved a hand in acknowledgement of her point. “If you want to stir things up a might, I can enchant the ink blotters to copy over everything written on it to the paper nearby.”

  Aren stroked his chin. “I had thought of setting the Council members at odds with each other, see who betrays who. What else?”

  “Seals,” Sarsen added after a moment of thought. “I can make their seals copy each other, so each time they use it, a different seal is stamped.”

  “That’s evil,” Sevana told him in admiration. No one in the government actually signed anything anymore, so the seal would be perfect at framing people for things they weren’t actually doing.

  “We’ll likely think of other things, once we have a better idea of what’s going on there,” Sarsen told them with a slight shrug.

  “For now, that’s more than sufficient,” Aren assured him. “Can we go in tonight?”

  “Don’t see why not,” Sarsen assured him. “With makeup or not?”

  “With,” Aren decided with only a split second of hesitation. “I don’t think it’s wise to show my face just yet in the palace.”

  “Or mine,” Axelrad added with a dark frown.

  Wise of both of them. Glad they were being sensible about this, Sevana pushed up to her feet. “You’ll need more
information before Pierpoint arrives anyway so you can properly scheme. But if we’re doing this, let’s get to it.”

  Since they had a few hours to wait until true night fell, and most of the palace was occupied with the formal dinner, everyone scattered to prepare. Well, most of them did anyway. Sevana went straight for her workroom and sat down with a long branch of eight hundred year old oak that she had gotten her hands on. Wait. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted something moving through the open door that led into the alcove, something that lay atop Bel’s grow-for-true-love-bed. And she knew exactly what that twitching thing was, too. “BABY!”

  Alarmed, the cat abruptly reared up, looking a little panicked at being caught on the bed. AGAIN. When he saw Sevana glaring at him, his ears went flat and he scrunched in on himself.

  “Get off that bed,” she growled at him. As the cat reluctantly slunk off and down to the floor, she continued in exasperation, “What part of ‘thou shalt not’ do you not understand? You know good and well that being on that bed is dangerous for you!”

  Baby looked ashamed of himself but didn’t try to charm his way out of trouble.

  Pulling her wand from her holster, Sevana sank down to one knee and quickly scanned him. He’d already aged a good two years, the turd. He must have been sleeping on there for at least an hour to manage that. “I’m going to have to give you another anti-aging potion. Don’t look at me like that; it’s your fault for laying on the bed.” She stood again and went to fetch one before pouring it on the ground for Baby to lick up. Under her watchful (and threatening) eye, he lapped up every drop. “Now, if I catch you on there again, I will not give you this potion and you can suffer with old age. How does that sound?”

  Letting out a mewl of displeasure, Baby flicked his tail in irritation and escaped out the door.

  Sevana watched him go, eyes narrowed to slits. “He’s going to do it again.”

  Probably, Big sighed in agreement.

  “Do us all a favor? The next time he gets on that bed, tell me. Or just flip him off.”

  Will, Big promised with a hint of evil glee.

  Shaking her head, she returned to the workbench. She’d done all the preparing for this trip that she could, really. Aside from a few minor details that she would assign to Bel to take care of. While she waited, she might as well make a wand or two and get some work done.

  Speak of the devil…Bel cautiously knocked on the door and stuck his head in at that moment. “Sevana? Have a moment?”

  She waved him in, not dropping either the wood or the carving tool in her hand.

  Pushing the door wider, he stepped just inside. “So how are we going to travel to Sa Kao?”

  For some reason, Bel looked wary. What, did he think she would opt for the far-see glasses again? Not likely. The kid now had a good two inches on her. If anything, he should be the one carrying her this time. But no. “We’ll go by cloud skimmer most of the way.” It was too far to travel by glasses. “After that, we’ll go by boat.”

  He blinked at her. “Just a regular old boat?”

  “I only have two methods of crossing water and both of them are too showy for entering dragon territory.”

  “Ah. And I imagine that a boat would give them plenty of time to see our approach.” The tense line in his shoulders relaxed. “Alright, cloud skimmer. How much should we pack?”

  “You should pack enough to get us to Vash Village.”

  He gave her quite the look for dumping that chore on him. “And, ah, where is that?”

  “Southern tip of Sa Kao.” It didn’t surprise her that he asked. The village was too small to show up on that world map of his. “Four or five days.”

  “Hmmm. I don’t think we have enough food on hand. I’ll run to market and pick up a few things.”

  Sevana shooed him on his way, half-amused that a prince had become so comfortable with going to market. He didn’t think anything of it anymore.

  Kip sauntered into the workroom as Bel left, the two of them passing by each other in the doorway. “Where’s he going?” Kip inquired with a thumb jerked in Bel’s direction.

  “Market.”

  “Ah.” Without asking, he slung himself onto the bench nearby. “Sev, what do you know about the political situation in the palace right now?”

  “As little as possible.”

  Kip gave her one of those looks, the one that said she was being purposefully difficult just to irritate him. And he was right. She was. “So you didn’t know that the Council structure has changed? The way it works now, the ruling family are little more than figureheads.”

  She put the tool in her hand aside and paid more attention. “That sounds…problematic. Is that what you were investigating these past few days?”

  He let out a sigh and nodded, looking a good decade older. “Fortunately, I have friends in low places. But I don’t know how the king is going to handle this. I mean, it’s not just the council he’ll need to fight, but the laws themselves.”

  “I think he already knows this.” Bits and pieces of conversations that she’d overheard floated to the surface. “I’ve heard snatches here and there of his plans. He doesn’t plan to just dismiss the Council, but discredit them.”

  Kip paused mid-worry, brows perking up. “Thereby calling into question any laws they’ve passed?”

  She shrugged. “I would assume so.”

  “That might very well work. Especially with the testimony of Pierpoint and two Artifactors that he was cursed and the Council did nothing about it.” Kip looked downright relieved. “I was half-afraid this would come down to a battle.”

  “It wouldn’t be much of one,” Sevana observed with no false modesty. “The guards wouldn’t stand a chance against us and the current Court Magician is a joke.”

  “Oh? Who’s the Court Magician?”

  “Someone’s illegitimate son. I forget whose.” She didn’t remember the idiot’s name, either. But nothing about him had been particularly memorable.

  “Still, I doubt King Aren or Bel really want to destroy half the palace in order to reclaim it,” Kip observed with dry humor.

  Probably not. Although she thought it would be more fun that way.

  “So what are they planning, anyway?”

  Drawn away from her destructive fantasies, she switched mental tracks to answer. “A few things, actually. Aren will go in and pass a few laws in the dead of night, just to stir things up. After that, I think Sarsen is planning to play a few tricks – make documents copy themselves and randomly show up on different people’s desks, make the seals stamp a different crest than they’re supposed to, that sort of thing.”

  Kip’s mouth stretched into an evil smile. “In other words, they’ll sow discord in the Council and turn them against each other.”

  “A-yup.”

  “Aren will orchestrate the fall of his own Council.” He shook his head in open admiration. “Clearly, I didn’t need to worry about him.”

  “So why were you?”

  “It seemed like the thing to do at the time.” Shrugging it off, he said more seriously, “I guess I need to worry more about you and Bel. Do you know how to bargain with a dragon? I mean, without losing life and limb in the process?”

  Sevana picked her tool back up and continued working on the wand, carving it into the shape she wanted. “Let’s hope I do. Otherwise, it’ll be a short trip.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Sevana.”

  She looked up to find Pierpoint hovering in her workroom door. (When the door opened, she hadn’t the faintest clue, as she could swear she’d shut it behind her.) “Pierpoint. About time you got here.”

  He took this as tacit permission to come in and took a seat next to her at the workbench. The way he sat indicated he felt more than tired, as he didn’t so much as sit and plop onto the chair, making the wood creak as he settled. He’d forgone his usual fisherman attire for something more magician-ly looking, with a starch white shirt, long coat done up in royal blue, and lo
ose black trousers tucked into high boots. The clothes looked worn too, creased in a multitude of places that made her think he’d been traveling about in them for the past few days. Even his face had more wrinkles to it than usual, matching the clothes in an eerie way.

  “I had a few things to tidy up before I could come. I’ve already seen both the king and the prince. They are…remarkably different than when I’d last seen them.”

  “A teenager instead of a child and a skinny old man instead of a middle-aged one?” she responded sarcastically. “What did you expect to see?”

  “Not quite what I meant.” His lips twitched upwards briefly. “Although the change in physical appearance was quite startling in its own way. No, I referred to other differences. The prince had always been an obedient, amiable child. Now he charges forward like a lion, barely pausing long enough to listen to any advice or warnings. Even his father’s words don’t seem to hold much water with him.”

  Ah, he must have walked in on one of Aren’s and Bel’s frequent arguments. “If Aren could be consistent in giving his advice, he’d make better headway.” She snorted, leaning back in her chair so that she could put both hands comfortably on her stomach. “But as it stands, he always reacts after Bel’s back from doing whatever ‘dangerous thing’ he’d done, which doesn’t work. Most of the time, Bel hasn’t really done anything dangerous. Dates in the village with Hana, or hunting around the edge of Noppers Woods, or excursions with Kip. I think the only truly dangerous things he did were before his father even arrived. Has the man always been this way?”

  Pierpoint winced, rubbing at one temple as if feeling a headache coming on. “I’m afraid so. The reason why the Magnifying Curse worked so well is because of this flaw in the king’s nature. He’s quite distractible. When focused, the man can be a force of nature. But he often gets absorbed in little tasks and misses what’s going on around him.”

  She’d observed the same thing. Aren focused on spying on the council and gathering information and almost ignored his son for days on end. She’d initially found it odd that Bel accepted this behavior from his father (after ten years of separation, she’d expected the prince to be hurt by his father’s neglect) but instead he’d accepted it. In fact, he’d taken advantage of it. He’d gone along on his own plans without notifying the king of what he was doing, steadily working and only infrequently updating his father as he needed to.