He seemed intent on leading me somewhere. For the moment I was willing to go along. “And now?” I asked.
“Have you noticed the necks of our beautiful Daroman ladies?”
“Not especially. No offence.”
“None taken. But if you glance around the room you’ll see more silver adorning their necks than gold. Fewer gemstones in their broaches and bracelets than in the past too.”
I looked around and saw that what he said was true. I was used to travelling near border towns where money was scarce; to me these people all looked like royalty from the old stories. But the women weren’t like the bejewelled figures in the old tapestries. “I guess peace isn’t always prosperity,” I said.
“Not for an empire, Mister Kellen.”
“So why not just go out there and beat the hells out of some other country? I hear the Berabesq have shrines lined with gold and the Zhuban hoard precious stones in their mountain keeps.”
Martius let out a long sigh. “Once, my friend, we’d have done just that, but the queen’s father signed a peace treaty and now, well, we are where we are. These days, Darome is like me: a little too old, a little too fat.” He wagged his finger. “But always very diplomatic, yes?” He let out a breath and seemed to deflate somewhat. “All in all, it’s still a good place to retire. But what about you though? How do you find our court?”
I thought about how to answer that. What the hells? I thought. He’s probably just some low-level clerk; what will he care? “I’m starting to think it’s quite possibly the most dangerous place I’ve ever been,” I replied.
Martius smiled again. “Quite so, quite so. I see what you told the queen the other day about cards is true—a good player can see the map of all humanity.”
“That’s not quite how I put it, but I’m flattered to have left an impression.”
“Oh my, of course. Most exciting thing I’ve seen in years. In fact…well, I hope you won’t find this too presumptuous…”
“Go on,” I said.
“Well, I was wondering if you might join me for a game of cards tonight? I’m no master player like yourself, but I could try to give you a bit of a battle.”
“Sure, why not?” There are worse ways to spend an evening than swindling a bureaucrat at cards. I wondered if clerks around here made decent money.
“Count Martius,” Arex interrupted. “Forgive my intrusion. The Countess Mariadne arrives for an audience with the queen, but you are her senior and a closer cousin. Would you like to speak to Her Majesty first?”
Count Martius?
“Oh, don’t worry about me, Arex. Nice of you to ask every day, but no, the queen’s got better things to do than keep me entertained.”
“As you wish,” Arex said stiffly, and left us.
“I see you already know how to keep your cards close to your chest, Count Martius,” I said.
“What? The title? Don’t pay any attention to that.”
“And the queen’s cousin.”
He shrugged. “Well, it’s a small empire really. We’re all related somehow. No,” he said, patting me on the arm, “I’m just a middle-aged man with a nice wife and a plain home. I come here because I’m expected to and because the food is good, not because anyone particularly wants me.”
“Well, either way, I’m going to keep a close eye on my money when we play cards.”
Martius laughed. “Ah, thank you, my boy. You do honour me.”
A stirring in the hall broke into our conversation.
“The Countess Mariadne, cousin to Her Majesty the Queen,” the old herald announced loudly. “Holder of the northern district of Sarrix, widow of the most noble Arafas.” The crowds parted to let a woman through to the throne. Dark red hair, almost the colour of wine, framed a face that would have been stunningly beautiful were it not so full of sorrow. The dark red dress clung to her body in a way that made most of the men in the room ignore that sorrow altogether. Most of all though, it was the way she walked that made my breath catch in my throat. Graceful, determined, and yet somehow even her bearing seemed somehow utterly inconsolable.
“Your Majesty,” Countess Mariadne said.
The queen rose from her throne and embraced the woman in her small arms, causing a minor stir in the assembled audience. “Beloved cousin.”
“Forgive me for my arrival unannounced,” Mariadne said, stepping back to kneel before the queen.
“You need never apologise for coming to my home, cousin.” Then the queen gave her a stern look. “Only for being absent too long.”
The countess nodded, fingers clasped in front of her.
“She’s in mourning for her husband,” Count Martius whispered to me, pointing out the red dress.
“How long?”
“Almost five years.”
I turned to him in surprise. “Isn’t that a long time for someone so young?”
He nodded. “It’s a long time for someone of any age, and far too long for the queen’s tastes.”
“You come before us in formal mourning once again, beloved cousin,” the queen said, her voice ringing through the audience. “It brings us no pleasure to see you so determined in your grief.”
Countess Mariadne returned the queen’s gaze, fire in her eyes. “My grief will end, Your Majesty, when my husband is no longer dead.”
“You have spent too many years adrift in sadness, countess. I find myself confounded by your insistence on endless mourning.”
“Perhaps Her Majesty will understand better once she has had more years with which to understand.”
Rumbles of shock and disapproval ran through the crowd. The queen waited until silence returned before she sat back down on the throne. “You are in error, beloved cousin. Do you doubt my love, or do you forget that I embody two-thousand years of Daroman rule?”
“Oh my, this isn’t good,” Martius warned.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the queen’s just boxed her into a trap. Questioning the queen’s veracity is a treasonable offence.”
“So however she answers…”
Martius nodded.
The countess bowed her head. “I doubt neither your love nor your wisdom, Majesty, merely my own capacity to benefit from it.”
The crowd breathed a collective sigh of relief. “Clever,” Martius said.
“Very well, cousin,” the queen continued. “I can see there is no dissuading you from your melancholy. What cause brings you to me then?”
Mariadne stood. “Your Majesty no doubt recalls my maid Tasia,” she said.
The queen shrugged. “I suppose I must have met her at some point. No doubt you have many maids.”
Anger and betrayal flashed in Mariadne’s eyes.
“The queen just lied,” Reichis chittered.
No kidding, I thought.
“Tasia is special to me, Your Majesty. She has been with me many years. She is my dearest friend.” A pause. “Other than Your Majesty, of course.”
“And why do you carp at me about this maid of yours, cousin? Does she require a promotion?”
The audience laughed like trained dogs.
“No, Majesty, she is due to be executed by your own marshals in six days’ time.”
The room went deadly silent.
“And what crime did she commit?”
“None, Your Majesty. She was raped.”
The countess around spun and pointed straight at me. “By that man.”
The queen and everyone else looked in my direction and my first thought was to grab Reichis by the scruff and run for it. I didn’t know who this Tasia was, but I wasn’t about to go back to jail for something I hadn’t done.
“I believe the countess refers to me, Your Majesty,” boomed a voice behind me. Leonidas strode past me to the throne. “The lovely Mariadne is, however, mistaken as to the facts.”
“Mistaken how?” the queen asked.
“The maid, Tasia, entered my chamber at night when I was a guest of the countess some wee
ks ago. My men guard the border near Countess Mariadne’s lands, and we are sometimes forced by the needs of war to take our respite there.”
“And make yet another failed effort to work his way into Mariadne’s bed,” Martius whispered.
“The maid tried to seduce me. When that failed, she became hysterical and attempted to stab me. It was only a small matter to me, but as Your Majesty knows, threatening the life of a military commander during times of war is tantamount to treason.”
I nudged Martius. “Why does Leonidas keep talking about war? I thought you said there was a peace treaty with Zhuban.”
“Depends who you ask,” he whispered back. “The queen may be sovereign, but the military have great discretion in how they defend the empire’s borders.”
Coutess Mariadne, however, was having none of it, and her rage was a thing to behold. “You lie, Major Leonidas, and Tasia pays the penalty for your false witness.”
Leonidas spread his arms wide. “I myself urged the magistrate towards mercy, if only so as not to deprive the countess of her beloved companion, but alas, my pleas were ignored.”
“Again you lie!” Mariadne accused.
“Cousin,” the queen said, “you vex me now.”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but Tasia’s life is in danger, and it is two days’ ride to my home. I had hoped to bring a writ from you commuting the sentence.”
The queen looked at her with little sympathy and no mercy whatsoever. “Ah, I see. A year passes without a visit, my counsel to relieve yourself of mourning and marry again is ignored, but now you wish me to overrule my own magistrates?”
“Your Majesty—”
“No, countess. I will not do what you ask. It is not for a queen to break her own laws. I regret that your maid is to come to such an end, but if Major Leonidas has already begged for clemency and the magistrate has refused, he must have good reason.”
“But, Your Majesty… cousin…”
“You have my answer, countess.”
Mariadne threw herself on the ground, crying. “Will you do nothing then? Will you grant me no assistance? Is Tasia to die frightened and alone a hundred miles to the north in one of your own marshals’ jails and I to lose my truest friend?”
The queen sighed. “Cousin, again your grief wounds me.”
She stepped down from the throne and held out her hand to Mariadne, who stood back up. “I cannot alter the law to suit my whim, but since you fear for your maid’s loneliness, I will grant you this: I shall send someone to provide her with comfort during her final hours.”
“I… I don’t understand. Who would you—”
“Tutor of cards,” the queen began, looking straight at me. “You provided me with some small amusement the other day, and this felidus arborica of yours is entirely delightful. You will accompany Countess Mariadne to the jail where her maid resides and provide what companionship you can during her final days.”
“Me?” I looked around. People were stifling laughter. Leonidas looked particularly smug. But not the smug that says, “I’m enjoying your misfortune.” More the kind that says, “I’ve just figured out how to kill you and solve all my other problems in the process.” I turned back to the queen and did my best to give her a meaningful look. “What am I supposed to do with her?”
If she caught my concern, she elected to ignore it completely. “Why, play cards with her, of course. Isn’t that what I hired you to do?”
The audience burst into open laughter. Countess Mariadne fled the room in tears.
The queen sat back down on her throne and, just like that, the audience was over.
I turned to Martius, hoping for some explanation as to what had just occurred. He shook his head. “Well, my boy, I’m sad to say we won’t be having our card game tonight. Still, the queen and many of the court are about to head north, to survey the borders to see if the Zhuban problem is as bad as Major Leonidas says it is, so I’ll be spending the next several days at my villa in Juven. It’s only about an hour’s ride from Countess Mariadne’s estate. Come see me when you get the chance. If I can assist you without getting myself into trouble, I will.”
He left before I could thank him.
“Sorry, kid, that’s how it plays out sometimes,” Arex said from behind me.
“What’s the hell is going on, Arex? How did I just get wrapped up in this?”
“You remember how a Daroman deck has four outlaw cards—gold, silver, red and black? You know what they’re for, right?”
I nodded. “In some games, the golden outlaw in your hand makes your cards stronger. In others—”
“In others you throw the red outlaw on your opponent’s pile to weaken theirs,” Arex finished for me. He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Guess which card you are, kid.”
Off to the side of the room I saw a tall and slender grey-clad figure leaning against the wall. Marshal Colfax touched a finger to his dusty frontiersman hat and nodded to me.
Seems everybody knew the game but me.
18
A Yellow-Haired Girl
The walk back to my rooms felt interminably long. I was tired and frustrated. Sometime between learning that a senior officer in the Daroman army was predisposed to kill me and discovering the queen I’d thought I was saving might have similar plans, my sense of equilibrium had left me. What the hell had happened to me? This past year since leaving Ferius behind, I’d survived in the frontier towns by using the skills she’d taught me to read people at a glance—to spot their intentions and weaknesses before they could figure out mine. When I gambled with my life I always played my opponents’ cards, not my own. But here? In this place? I was an amateur brought to the table to feed the big fish. If that wasn’t bad enough, the poncey silver-and-purple shirts Arex had told me I was required to wear at court were starting to itch.
“Slow down,” Reichis chittered, shuffling along the floor to catch up with me. “I just got over being bitten by a poisonous snake and I don’t feel like running just because you’re in a mood.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“It’s your fleeing instinct,” Reichis said.
“What?”
“Your fleeing instinct. You said you didn’t know what’s wrong with you. I’m saying it’s your fleeing instinct. Pretty much everyone here is out to get us, and your body wants you to run, but there’s nowhere to go, so you can’t do anything except walk too fast.”
He had a point. Arex was clearly on the queen’s side, but that did me no good since it looked as if she might not be on mine. Leonidas apparently had it in for me. Countess Mariadne hadn’t even formally met me and she already hated me. Martius seemed like the only person who wasn’t out for my blood, but he claimed to have no personal interest in what was going on, and people like that don’t exist. Thank the ancestors that Koresh and Arrasia were dead at least. They’d made their move and it had failed.
Now I just need to deal with…Well, pretty much everybody else.
The memory of the langzier sent a shiver through me. As we reached my rooms I paused before opening the door, and looked down at Reichis. “How do you manage it then?” I asked.
“Manage what?”
“Well, you said we all have fleeing instincts when we’re under threat. You knew the langzier would get its fangs into you. How come you didn’t panic?”
“Oh, that,” he said. “We’re completely different that way, Kellen.”
“How so?”
The squirrel cat looked up at me. “Well, for one thing, I’m not a coward.”
Great.
“And for another, I’m not the one with my tail in a knot over whether a black mark on my face means I’m going to be possessed by demons one day. So get your head in the game or we’re gonna end up dead long before we find out.” He sniffed at the door. “Probably by whoever’s waiting for us inside right now.”
I pushed open the door and slipped my hands into my holsters to pull out a small pin
ch of each of the red and black powders. There’s a reason why I don’t just blow a hole in everyone who crosses my path, and it’s not because they don’t give me plenty of cause. The red powder is a mix of chemicals that can get pretty expensive. Still, the ingredients aren’t that hard to find. The black powder, on the other hand, requires some additional unpleasantness to procure.
I scanned the room. There was no one in sight, though it was clear that the servants had been there. The sheets and bedding had been changed and I could see my clothes, freshly laundered, sitting on top of the chest of drawers. Heavily scented flowers had been placed discretely about the room, masking the smells from the night before. I stepped inside. The late-afternoon sun brought an orange glare through the window, a contrast to the heavy shadows filling the corners of the room. It would have been easy to miss the intruder, but, unlike most people, I’ve learned to always keep my eyes on the shadows. “Go ahead,” I said. “Make your move. They can always clean the room again after I’ve put a hole in you.”
The figure stayed where it was. I expected Reichis to pounce or growl or say something, but when I glanced down at him, he was just wandering around in circles, as if he were nothing more than a dumb animal searching for a place to sleep.
“Reichis? What the hell are you doing?”
My eye caught a tiny movement in the shadows and I raised my hands, ready to toss the powders and form the somatic shape that would do serious damage to both the decor and my visitor.
“Oh my, still with that old trick, Kellen? You’re going to burn your hands off one day, and what will you use to keep yourself occupied then?”
The glare from the window was playing havoc with my vision, making it hard to discern the shape of the intruder, but I recognised her voice even before she stepped out of the shadows. Soft, a little high-pitched, dripping with a mixture of honey and pepper. The recognition only served to make me resolve to take better aim. “Shalla?”
She stepped forward into the orange light coming through the window. The effect made her look as if she were glowing, accentuating a beauty that in recent years was fast becoming her favourite weapon. “My darling brother,” she said, taking another step that brought her closer. The glare around her softened to reveal a green dress that nearly matched her eyes and set off her long, blonde hair to remarkable effect. Around her neck she wore the elaborate golden necklace that marked her as a Jan’Tep diplomat to the Darome empire. Somewhere in the six months since I’d last seen her, my little sister had gone and become an ambassador. She opened her arms wide. “Sweet brother, will you not embrace me?”
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