I tried not to smile in relief. “No gloves,” I echoed.
“So they weren’t Zhuban…”
“If they’d been Zhuban they would have put an arrow in her mouth, slit their own throats and waited to stand upon the great wheel alongside the great astronomers and philosophers of their dead.”
“But then who…?”
“Who else could have arranged all of this?” I asked as if the answer was obvious. “Who had the ability to get these men into the queen’s palace?”
Colfax shook his head. “It couldn’t be any of you Jan’Tep bastards,” he said. “Too many magical wards in this place, and too many Jan’Tep mages bought and paid for by our royal treasury.”
I nodded just slightly, both because I didn’t know for sure if that was true any more and because I didn’t want to interrupt his train of thought by reminding him how much he hated me.
“So it was one of us. One of our own noble houses. Someone who could put all the pieces in play, maybe even buy someone in the marshals service.”
He turned for a moment and locked eyes with his two men. Were they part of it? Could his own men be bought? I considered that all of a sudden I might no longer be the least trustworthy man in Darome. Colfax’s eyes came back to me, searching for a shred of honesty in the treacherous landscape of my face, paying particular attention to the black swirling marks around my left eye, as if that might betray some secret to him. “You think you can figure out who took her?” he asked.
I was so relieved that it was all I could do not to let all the stress and fear out of my body in one breath. I had to take a moment to steady my voice. “No,” I said at last, “not in a thousand years.”
The sudden rage in his expression was hot enough to burn a hole through leather. His left hand reached out and grabbed my throat again while his right pulled back to line the knife up for a killing blow.
“I don’t have to,” I said quickly.
“What? Why?” Colfax demanded.
“Because they’ll be looking for me.”
That stopped Colfax in his tracks. It was tempting to make him think about it for a while, but I decided not to press my luck this time. “Look, why does anyone start a conspiracy in Darome?”
The marshal didn’t hesitate. “To increase their own influence or control.”
I nodded. “So what do you do when you’ve got your hands on the queen herself? Kill her and take the throne?”
Colfax shook his head. “That wouldn’t work. It’s never worked. The Daroman people would never let a regicide take the throne. The marshals service only works for the lawful ruler, and we’d never stop until we found the ones responsible and killed them. I’d find their friends, card player. And their families. Their lines would die out forever. Besides, if anyone who isn’t the lawful ruler tries to even sit on the throne, the complex mystical forces inside it will judge them a tyrant and burn them to a crisp.”
“Right. So how is power ever transferred in Darome?”
“By inheritance. Usually the spirit passes to one of the monarch’s children, but if she dies without an heir, the spirit will manifest elsewhere in the royal line. Problem is, nobody knows who’s the lucky candidate until they show themselves at court and manage to sit the throne without bursting into flame.”
“So what would be the point of killing her? There’d be no way to guarantee…” An ugly thought came to mind. “What if the queen is forced to abdicate?”
The marshal shook his head. “That won’t work either.”
“Because…”
“Because, believe it or not, the esoteric forces inside the throne won’t allow it. Best we can tell there’s a sort of… awareness that guides it. A decree of abdication can’t be signed by the queen alone. It has to be endorsed by one of her trusted advisors as well. And the decree has no power unless the advisor is signing of their own will, true and free. The ruler can be forced to sign it—that’s always been a necessary balance against royal power. But it won’t apply unless a soul she trusts signs it as well. Without that, the new king or queen designated in the writ would just light up like a torch the instant their butt hit the throne. But there are only a handful of people the queen trusts.”
“She trusts you,” I said quietly. “She trusts Arex.”
“I’d die before I ever did that. And Arex is the same; he’d cut his own hand off rather than betray that girl. There are only a few of us that the queen truly trusts, and not one of us would let her down like that, no matter what the cost.”
I waited for the last card to fall from the top of the deck. It didn’t take long.
“You,” he said, the finger of his right hand pointed at me like a dagger. “She trusts you. Her ‘tutor of cards’. She’s barely known you a fortnight, but that girl listens to you. If you countersigned the decree with her, the old wards that hold this place together would accept it. Then it would all be over.”
I let the apparent truth of it sink in. I say “apparent” because I had no clue if any of this was true. It was just the only card I could think to play.
“You don’t have to find them,” he said at last. “They’ll be coming to you, because they know that, although the queen trusts you with her life, you’re utterly unworthy of her faith. They’ll come for you, and through your weakness and ugliness they’ll take the throne from her.”
It was hard not to feel hurt by those words. I had never been loved here by anyone except the queen herself. “You have a kind face,” she’d said to me once. It seemed like years ago. No one else would have ever said that about a man with the mark of the shadowblack around his left eye. But the queen trusted me. “They’ll come for me,” I said. And I won’t be here when they do. I’d use the queen’s love and trust one last time to get myself out of this situation and then I’d run again. The only difference was, this time I’d run further and faster. I’d hook up with Reichis outside of town and ride like the wind. It’s not that I didn’t care about the queen. I did. It was simply that I couldn’t beat the people who were out to get her, and there’s nothing noble about dying for a noble cause. In this life, you play the cards you’re dealt.
As if he could read my mind, Colfax put his hands around my throat again. But he wasn’t squeezing. “Then I guess the smart thing to do is kill you before they can use you, isn’t it?”
No, that would be a stupid thing to do, I thought The odds that the conspirators didn’t have a backup plan if they couldn’t get her to abdicate were slim to none. If nothing else, they could always just set up a different Daroman court somewhere else, and put a new throne in it that wouldn’t kill the usurper. I supposed if that were the case then it didn’t matter whether Colfax executed me or not. “Kill me and you won’t find out who’s behind this until it’s too late,” I said.
“You already said you don’t know who it is, Kellen, so killing you is the safest bet I’ve got right now.” He started to squeeze. I wondered if this was what it had felt like for Tasia, hanging in that cell, coming to the precise moment where there’s no longer any turning back—no strength left to fight, and no voice to call for help. I thought about that king of arrows again, and all the other cards she’d left face up. Did she play a final hand of Bent Aces Solitaire? Not a good way to spend your last minutes. Maybe she had told her own fortune one last time? I felt oddly guilty that she’d taken the time to teach me the card meanings and I hadn’t bothered to look at the ones she’d left. Oh, hells, I really am thick, I thought, finally understanding what Tasia had done and why Sha’maat had brought her cards to this cell. My vision began to blur. I had to get the marshal to stop choking me before the whole empire shattered into a thousand pieces.
I tried to kick Colfax but I couldn’t get any weight behind it. On my second try I got my knee into his side. It wasn’t strong enough to knock him away but he did briefly loosen his grip. I spent the tiny sip of air that bought me almost as fast as I took it. “Cards,” I gasped.
Colfax glanced back at my
things on the ground. “What about them?”
I tried my best to suck in as much air as possible before answering. Tasia, I sure hope to hell you knew a lot more than anyone gave you credit for. I nodded towards my saddlebags, and the deck of cards sticking out from the opening. “Give me those cards and I can tell you who’s got the queen.”
He snorted. “If you were any kind of fortune teller I imagine you’d have known not to come back here.”
I shook my head. “The maid. Tasia. The one Leonidas tried to have killed. She knew who was behind all of this. She’s left me a message in the cards.”
54
The Cards
“Take off the cuffs,” Colfax ordered his men.
As they let me go I fell to my knees and every ache in my body flared to life. The wounds that until now had been muted by my frantic efforts at self-preservation came right to the surface. Everything hurt. My face was swollen, my skin was red and raw, my stomach felt like I was bleeding on the inside. I wished Reichis was here. At the least the little squirrel cat bastard would say something funny. But maybe it was better that he wasn’t. He’d despise me right now.
“Here,” Colfax said, handing me the deck of cards. “You’ve got five minutes to tell me who has the queen or we put you down right here and now.”
I got my feet under me and took the cards before taking a seat. They felt different somehow. No longer did they represent the sad and hopeless final hours of a woman who planned to kill herself. Now they were a testament to what she’d died for. Tasia had been loyal, but a part of her had desperately wanted to tell me her story, to make me know why she would take her own life. And it was all here, in thirteen cards placed in order, face up on the top of the deck. I laid them out on the table in front of me.
The king of arrows.
The three of blades.
The ace of chariots.
The seven of arrows.
The golden outlaw.
The jack of blades.
The queen of chariots.
The knight of chariots.
The six of blades.
The ace of trebuchets.
The two of chariots.
The silver outlaw.
The ace of arrows.
“She said the face cards aways represent people,” I said, “and the numbered cards can be people or actions.”
“What about the aces?” Colfax said, pointing at the third card.
“Emotions. The forces behind the actions.”
I picked up the king of arrows. What was it that Martius had said? A good king with a soft heart? “The last king, Ginevra’s father—what was he like?”
“Decent, as sovereigns go,” Colfax said. “Tried to make peace where he could.”
I placed it back down. “Three of blades. Blades stand for violence.”
“What about the three?”
“Peace. Did he have to fight for the throne?” I asked.
“No,” Colfax said. “No brothers or sisters.” Colfax picked up the card. “But three could mean the Treaty of Three Nations. The king signed a treaty between Darome, Jan’Tep and Zhuban just in time to prevent a war.”
“That explains the ace of chariots,” I said. “Anger and change. I imagine a lot of the nobles probably didn’t like the idea of peace in an empire that’s made its fortunes on the back of taking over other countries.”
Colfax nodded. “The seven of arrows is easy. Ginevra was seven years old when the king declared her the heir of the royal spirit. He used it as an excuse not to declare war or change any treaties. He wanted to wait until Ginevra was ready to rule.” Colfax pointed at the golden outlaw. “So what does this mean? Never heard of fortune tellers using outlaws. Reckon she left it in there by mistake?”
I couldn’t imagine Tasia being careless. “Maybe it means something from outside the game—someone working behind the scenes.” Arex, I thought. It was Arex who made the comment to me about the outlaws on my third day at court. Could he have set this whole thing up, only to be betrayed at the last minute?
I put the golden outlaw aside for a moment.
“The jack of blades. A powerful warrior,” I said. I thought back to what started all of this, and who put Tasia in that cell in the first place. “Leonidas.”
“Who you killed.”
“It was a duel, and not one I asked for,” I said. “But leave that for now. The king signs a peace treaty that angers the nobles. They put pressure on him to break the treaty, but then he declares Ginevra as the next sovereign, so they’ll have to wait a few years.”
“They’d have to wait a lot longer than that,” Colfax said. “The queen wouldn’t declare war just to please the nobles or fill their coffers.”
So how do they get their war? I thought back to Koresh and his brutal treatment of the queen. Maybe it wasn’t random meanness. Maybe he was pushing her to declare war against Zhuban? Or just waiting for the chance to kill her? Then what? “Someone, maybe the golden outlaw, picks Leonidas to take over.”
“Leonidas would have declared war against his mother if he’d thought it would be to his political advantage,” Colfax said. “So he goes after the queen of chariots. But if Ginevra was represented by the seven of arrows when she was a child, wouldn’t she be the queen of arrows now?”
“I don’t think it’s that literal,” I said. “The queen of chariots could just be any woman with royal blood—someone who could boost Leonidas’s status enough to make him a credible candidate to rule.” Then it hit me. “Mariadne. She’s perfect—cousin to the queen, wealthy, well-liked—”
“But this must have been going on for years,” Colfax said. “And she was married to Arafas.”
I pointed to the next card. “The knight of chariots. But then look, the six of blades. Six for conspiracy, blades for violence. Leonidas had Arafas killed.” Not hard to do when you command the garrison that covers the northern border. Was that why there was so much fighting now? Had Leonidas provoked the Zhuban to launch ever more aggressive raids? It made the perfect cover if he wanted someone dead: dress his agents up like Zhuban warriors, and blame it on the enemy everyone knows is hungry for Daroman blood. Every time it happened, it would make it easier for the nobles to push for war. He had everything he needed to force Mariadne into marriage.
“But she wouldn’t marry him,” Colfax said.
I agreed. “The next card is the ace of trebuchets. Determination and self-interest. No, Mariadne would never marry him. And the queen won’t give in to the calls for war.”
“But Leonidas, and whoever was pulling his strings, were using the military to circumvent her,” Colfax countered.
“Of course. So the queen gets creative. The two of chariots—the lowest number in the deck. She gets Tasia to seduce Leonidas and try to kill him.”
“Putting aside that you’ve just accused the queen of conspiracy to commit murder,” Colfax said, “Tasia failed. Why kidnap the queen now instead of continuing with their plan?” The marshal stared at the cards, each in turn, probably trying to decide if I was making all this up or just out of my mind. Finally he picked up the silver outlaw and handed it to me. “This is you, isn’t it?” he said.
I took the card and traced its outline with my finger. Beneath the image of a masked character tricking a crowd of onlookers was its older name. “The Outlaw of Ruses. The one that foils power. The one who messes things up. Me.” If I hadn’t come on the scene and dug into Tasia’s conviction, she would have been executed, Leonidas wouldn’t have been embarrassed and Mariadne and the queen would’ve had more time to plan a more permanent solution. But I’d gone and embarrassed the queen, brought the verdict into question. If Leonidas hadn’t been such an arrogant arsehole he probably would be halfway to the throne by now. But he was dead, and the queen weakened, and yet someone had decided they could still make the conspiracy work.
“That leaves just the ace of arrows,” Colfax said. “You said aces were for emotions. So that would make this love, wouldn’t—”
I picked up the golden outlaw and flipped it in my hand before he could finish. “We need to know who this is—the person behind Leonidas, behind everything. It’s someone who’s been around since the beginning. Someone powerful. But they didn’t want the throne—not for themselves. So not a would-be king.” I threw the card back down on the table. “A kingmaker.”
“A kingmaker who decided to be king after all,” Colfax said.
I nodded. A plot years in the making. A slow, gradual takeover that would restore Darome’s martial imperative. The whole thing could have been nearly painless if I hadn’t stuck my nose into it. Now, unless the queen abdicated, it was going to be a long and bloody process.
The marshal leaned towards me, showing every crack and crevice of his old face. “Still plotting, tutor of cards?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked quickly.
He shook his head and smiled. “You’re a good actor, kid. Very convincing. I especially like how you’re so careful to make sure I draw my own conclusions. Make it all feel like it’s my idea, right?”
“I don’t know—”
Colfax stood. “Sure you do, Kellen. You’re clever. Maybe the cleverest man in the whole damned empire. But you know what? I’m clever too.”
“You don’t believe me?” I asked, and suddenly my insides were chilled by the possibility that this had all been a game to him—a way to make killing me just a little bit sweeter. I kept rubbing my arms, trying to work some life into them. I’m not the best hand-to-hand fighter. I rely on my powders for these situations. But I was a little bigger than he was, and even though I’d almost certainly get killed either by Colfax or one of his two men, I knew when to drop a three on the table in the faint hope the other guy draws a two.
He smiled a little wider and shook his head just a bit. “Ah, relax, master of cards. I believe every word you said. Of course, by that I mean I don’t believe a word out of your mouth, but that it turns out everything you said is true.” He drew an envelope from his coat pocket and handed it to me. “You missed one of the cards, though.”
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