Queenslayer

by Sebastien de Castell

  I gave a little laugh and shook my head. “Don’t you get it? I thought you were supposed to be the smart ones around here.”

  “Play games with us, boy, and you’ll soon regret it.”

  That made me laugh more. “Really? You still haven’t figured it out? You moron. Didn’t you hear me before? I don’t play games. I don’t have time to play games. You think the queen wants me to teach her how to play cards? You dumb, ignorant thugs. The eleven-year-old girl you beat and burn every day just gave me all the protections of a royal tutor. Right there, in front of the whole court. I can’t be brought up on charges for anything. The only way they can get rid of me is if they can get four-fifths of the court to dismiss me. How likely you think it is that anyone’s going to get that to happen anytime soon?”

  “A royal tutor who turns up dead can’t benefit from any royal protections,” Arrasia said, smiling.

  “You got that right, you dumb bitch.” Ferius would’ve scolded me for using that word, but I was pretty sure she’d’ve found something even worse for Arrasia. “The queen played the outlaw of blades for a reason, lady. So if you and your half-witted friend here aren’t long gone by the time everyone goes to bed tonight, I’m going to kill you in your sleep.”

  “You’ll never—”

  “No? How do you think I’ve stayed alive all this time? A disowned Jan’Tep with next to no magic, a spell warrant on my head and shadowblack marks on my face? I’m a spellslinger, lady. I rely on magic that’s got half a chance of blowing my hands off every time I use it. And I’m still here. You think I don’t know how to get around whatever guards or friends or wards you have protecting you? You think I won’t come a-knocking tonight? Ask yourself one question: do you really want to gamble with the only cards you’re holding?”

  Arrasia started to say something but then stopped herself, turned and left by one of the corner passageways. Koresh followed her. I breathed in and out several times in quick succession, unable to stop my heart racing now that I wasn’t in immediate danger.

  Karanetta had tears in her eyes. I had paid little attention to her up until now. She seemed neither a threat nor an ally, and so didn’t figure much into my thinking. “I’m so… I’m so sorry,” she said. “I knew they… but I’m not like Koresh or Arrasia. I really am just a mathematics tutor. I have no power other than my knowledge, no friends or influence at court. I just—”

  I wanted to say, “Then what good are you?” but I had just narrowly avoided being killed on my eighteenth birthday by gambling that an eleven-year-old girl was smarter than all the political forces of the Daroman court. I was feeling merciful. “Just go. Teach the queen some astronomy or something. I’m told she missed most of her lessons today.”

  Karanetta paused for a moment, as if she was going to apologise again or start telling me her secrets. Instead she nodded once and walked away, her eyes full of tears and heartache.

  Her departure left me entirely alone in the queen’s court of justice. Only then did the unbelievable stupidity of my actions occur to me. I was exhausted, bruised and battered, in unfamiliar territory with no allies and no plan, and I’d just declared my intent to murder two people who up until a few minutes ago had been powerful enough to control the queen of Darome. And Reichis wasn’t even here to appreciate it.

  I looked down at the table we’d scuffed up in our card game. Someone had left my handcuffs there. A reminder? A threat? Well, it wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last. I picked them up and put them in the pocket of my coat. Maybe I could find someone who could sever the chain and use them as bracelets. They were, as it turned out, surprisingly comfortable.

  There’s one way an outlaw can survive beyond those first few years on the run: go straight. It’s not that hard; there’s always some desperate town or wealthy patron willing to pay for the services of someone who can perform dirty deeds, quick and quiet-like. After a while though, all those little things about civilisation you got used to living without start to make you itch. It’s just a matter of time before you do something stupid—something that reminds people why they don’t like outlaws in the first place.

  9

  Uncommon Comforts

  They gave me a pleasant room on the same floor as the queen’s own chambers, a courtesy which, I assume, came by custom rather than by anyone actually wanting me there. Harrex and Parsus were waiting outside for me. My powder holsters, deck of throwing cards, castradazi coins—even the pair of long knives I’d taken off old Merrel of Betrian—were conspicuously in their care. I motioned for the powders with a slight grin on my face.

  “Now, see here, Kellen, I mean, tutor of cards—” Harrex began.

  “You can just stick with Kellen,” I said, “seeing as how we’re old friends.”

  “Come on now, we didn’t have no choice. We had to bring you in and—”

  I took the holsters and attached them to the sides of my belt. He and Parsus took an involuntary step back.

  “Relax, gentlemen,” I said. “We’re square.”

  “Really?”

  “You could’ve done a lot worse to me if you’d wanted. I know you had to show off how tough you were back there. But you played things straight on the road and you treated the squirrel cat right, all things considered. As long as he hasn’t been hurt since the last time I saw him, we’re good.” I turned the handle and started opening the door.

  “Wait!” Harrex shouted.

  Something small and furry slammed into me with the force of a tornado tearing up a dead tree. I fell backwards, reaching hopelessly for the powders at my side. My head hit the stone floor and I saw stars.

  “Kellen!”

  I opened my eyes to behold teeth, fur and beady little eyes.

  “Damn it, Reichis, whose side are you on?”

  The little bastard gave me a sheepish, lopsided smile. It’s the closest thing you get to an apology with him. “They had me locked in there. I was getting ready to escape.”

  Harrex reached a hand down. “Tried to warn you,” he said.

  Reichis nearly bit his hand off.

  “Hey now, little fella, didn’t we treat you right? You didn’t give us no choice about the crossbow. But we fixed you right up, fed you treats and such, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah,” Reichis chittered. “Then you locked me up in a cage like I was some kind of pet rabbit, arsehole!”

  “What’s he sayin’?” Harrex asked.

  I pushed Reichis off me and got back to my feet. “He says he’s sorry and he promises not to do it ag—Ow! Damn it, Reichis,” I swore, rubbing my own hand.

  Harrex shook his head as he and Parsus headed back down the hall. “Little guy sure has a temper on him.”

  You have no idea.

  “All right,” I said, my hand still smarting. “How are the accommodations?”

  Reichis hopped in ahead of me and gave me the tour.

  “Two exits,” he said. “The one we just came in and the window. The window’s not great—it’s a long drop and hard to climb down if you’re big, dumb and clumsy.”

  “Thanks. I was thinking more about the bed.”

  Looking inside the room they’d prepared for me was like drinking a very expensive bottle of wine much too quickly. Marble floors reflected traces of gold-leaf gilding from the painted ceilings. The furniture was all of a set—elaborately carved oak chairs, a sofa whose shape was remarkably feminine and a table carved with a battle scene from the Third Berabesq War (the one in which the Daroman were the victors.) It wasn’t so much a large room as a small mansion. “Guess tutors of the queen’s court don’t lack for the finer things in life,” I said aloud. Some enterprising servant had even managed to find an array of card decks and laid them out elegantly inside a display case next to the bed. But the opulence and elegance, like the taste and smell of an overpriced wine, left quickly, replaced by a single thought: Don’t fool yourself into thinking this is for you. Not for long anyway.

  Exhaustion overtook me and I found my
way to the bed. My head hadn’t even hit the pillow before Reichis crawled over and asked, “What’s the play?”

  “Could you move down a bit?” I asked. “You don’t smell so good.”

  He sniffed. “You should talk.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s my bed.”

  Reichis looked at me askance. “For how long?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows? They made me a royal tutor, if you know what that is.”

  “Really? A Daroman royal tutor?”

  “Yep.”

  “All rights, privileges, stationery… whatever and such?”

  I lifted my head and opened my eyes. “How do you know any of this stuff?”

  “Heard them two morons through the door talking about it when they were waitin’ for you.” He hopped up and down a couple of times excitedly. “Damn, Kellen, you’re practically untouchable in this place! Let’s go steal something! They can’t do hardly anything about it. No, wait, let’s…yeah, let’s go murder somebody, right in broad daylight!”

  I stared at him just long enough to establish that he was dead serious. “You really are becoming an evil little monster, aren’t you?”

  Ever since Reichis had gotten infected with the shadowblack, I’d been careful to keep an eye on any especially demonic new proclivities. This is hard to watch for in an animal that basically wants to kill anyone who irritates him—and in case you haven’t noticed? Everybody irritates Reichis.

  He offered up the squirrel cat equivalent of a shrug. “It’s an evil world. Let’s have some fun while we can.”

  “The queen, she… implied she might be able to remove the shadowblack, Reichis. If I do whatever the hells it is she wants done here. You and I could be rid of this once and for all. I could—”

  Reichis snorted. “What? You still think your daddy’s going to welcome you back with open arms if you just get those marks off your face?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I’d settle for not having to spend every day of my life with a big black target on my face.”

  He scampered off to stare at himself in a full-length mirror near one of the armoires. “Well, I like how it makes me look. Fierce. Deadly.”

  “Psychotic?” I offered.

  “Psy-co-tic,” he repeated slowly, making it clear he had no idea what the word meant. “Yeah, psychotic. Cool.”

  Few people know much about the true nature of the shadowblack. I’d heard a half-dozen theories even before I’d found the Ebony Abbey and plenty more in the months since I’d left it in flames. Is it a demonic curse? Or just a different form of magic that no one’s mastered yet? No one knows for sure, but there are no end of Jan’Tep hextrackers, Berabesq Faithful, and a host of other righteous folk ready to ritually sacrifice anyone who has the marks. I’d done my level best to kill as many of those upstanding citizens as I could, but there would always be others eager to try to murder me in my sleep. And yet, there was always some arsehole glibly telling me that there are worse problems to have than a few swirling black markings around my left eye and that I should quit whining. That arsehole usually happens to be Reichis.

  “This is how all those other skinbags sucker you, Kellen. They spin you some story about a spell or a potion that’ll rid you of the shadowblack and off you go, taking chances with our lives and, worse, spending all our money, just to find out you’ve been tricked again.”

  I ignored him. It was an argument we’d had too many times already.

  “Fine,” he growled. “At least let’s go explore the place and see what there is to steal.”

  “Can’t,” I said, and pulled my hat down over my eyes. “Gotta get some sleep. We’ve got work to do tonight.”

  The squirrel cat did his best impression of a sigh, which sounded a lot like someone blowing their nose. “Great. No doubt something just slightly more boring than being trapped in a room with nothing to do and nobody to eat.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” I said sleepily. “Chances are it’s going to involve killing some very uptight people.”

  My eyes were closed but I was pretty sure Reichis was smiling.

  10

  The Langzier

  I managed a few hours of sleep before the combined smells of Reichis and myself—along with the natural unease caused by sleeping in a place that I wasn’t sure how to escape—dragged me unwillingly into consciousness. Reichis was already awake.

  “Bath,” he chittered, kicking me with his back feet.

  I made an appropriate grumbling noise and stumbled off the bed. “I thought you wanted to kill somebody?”

  “Bath first,” he said, wandering over to the window. “Then murder.”

  I pulled on my trousers and attached the powder holsters to my belt before peering out the window with him. “Two hours until daylight,” I said.

  He padded over to the door and stretched up on his hind legs to open the latch. “Plenty of time.”

  I quickly rummaged around the drawers in the room on the off chance that they’d brought clothes for me. I found a few shirts in varying degrees of embarrassingly shimmery fabrics and colours not remotely suited to blending into a crowd. I discarded them in favour of my own filthy shirt. I may as well get clean before dressing up like a comfort artisan.

  We left the rooms expecting to spend some time finding the baths, but there was no need. A servant was waiting outside my door. The boy was young, barely into adolescence, with jaw-length brown hair atop an innocent face, and wearing a long, white Daroman servant’s robe. He looked practically angelic when he asked, “Tutor of cards, how might I serve you?”

  Reichis sniffed him and snarled. The boy took a discrete step back.

  “The baths,” I said. “We’re looking to get clean.”

  “There’s a bath in your rooms, sir. If you give me some time I can start a fire and heat water for you. It would take no more than an hour.”

  Reichis gave a low growl.

  “We were hoping for something a little faster,” I explained.

  The boy looked down at the squirrel cat with a dubious look on his face. Reichis, despite his many feral proclivities, approves of the civilising quality of a good bath.

  “There are the court baths, sir. They’re connected to the hot springs that run beneath the palace, so they’re always hot. But I’m afraid they aren’t private.”

  “Anyone likely to be having a bath right about now?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Then those sound perfect.”

  “But are you sure you wouldn’t rather—”

  Reichis opened his jaws and closed them again several times, clacking his fangs and saving me the trouble of repeating myself.

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said, though I wasn’t clear whether he was talking to me or the squirrel cat. “I’ll take you there now.”

  The court baths were set in a vast marble room that contained all kinds of watery delights, from oval tubs set into the floor meant for a single person to more elaborately shaped pools clearly intended to house multiple guests and serve purposes other than just getting clean. Small green trees in clay pots stood throughout the room and small tables stocked with wine and dainty assortments of slightly soggy-looking biscuits stood like waiting servants next to each of the baths. Soon every part of me was submerged in the heated, slightly sulphuric water, except for my hands. Those I rested on towels on the rim of the bath. Wet hands are not a good idea for someone whose survival often depends on handling exploding powders.

  “Well, this is just awful, isn’t it?” I said.

  Reichis’s reply came in the form of a small grunt that was halfway to a groan of pleasure. We had found a small upholstered stool and—over the objections of the servant boy—placed it in one of the tubs so that the squirrel cat could bask in luxuriating warmth without drowning. He was lounging on his back with his snout out of the water, a biscuit held between his teeth that he was gradually nibbling his way through.

  The boy coughed politely. “Sir, if you’ve no more need f
or me, then perhaps I could return to my other duties?”

  “Sure, you go ahead and—”

  Reichis swallowed and then chittered, “Biscuit.”

  The sight of the squirrel cat, his face sticking out of the hot water with its mouth open, teeth revealed, made the boy look ill. “Sir, does it want me to…?”

  I nodded. “Just get him another biscuit and then you can be on your way.”

  The servant picked up another one of the crumbly delicacies from the nearby table and held it up to me as if for inspection. I nodded. “Just pop it in his mouth.”

  The boy held one tiny edge of the biscuit between his fingers and stayed as far back as possible while reaching towards Reichis’s mouth. The squirrel cat clacked his teeth together several times, nearly sending the servant falling backwards. After taking a moment to recover his wits, the boy half dropped, half threw the treat into the waiting maw before turning and scampering out the door.

  “Moron,” Reichis mumbled as he chewed.

  “You really aren’t very respectful towards servants,” I said.

  Reichis made a hissing sound. “Anyone who allows themselves to be made a servant deserves whatever he gets.”

  “It’s not something people choose, Reichis.”

  “I didn’t see a collar around his neck. What? He doesn’t know where the door to the palace is? He could be a free creature any time he wanted if he wasn’t a coward.”

  I let it go. Reichis has some strange ideas and we’ve known each other long enough to have accepted that we’re not going to change each other’s mind. We sat in silence for a few more minutes before he spoke again. “Kellen?”

  “Get your own damned biscuit. See? I’m a free creature. You should be proud of me.”

  “No, the other stuff. Who are we killing?”

  I proceeded to tell Reichis about what the tutors had been doing to the queen, and what I presumed she wanted me to do about them. When I started to describe Koresh and Arrasia, Reichis stopped me.