The envelope had already been slit open, but the wax seal was still on the back. It depicted an eagle with a bolt of lightning in one claw and a bleeding sword in the other. “Wait,” I said. “Isn’t this…”
Colfax nodded. “The Daroman Imperial seal. Not the queen’s, of course. That one bears an olive branch rather than a sword.” He tapped on the blob of cracked red wax. “Seal ain’t had a lightning bolt on it for over a hundred years. It’s from what some might call the good old days.”
Inside the envelope I found a simple handwritten card. It read: Thought we might finally have that game of cards.
“You know who sent this?” Colfax asked.
I could’ve held on to the name or tried to negotiate my release in exchange. But I knew none of that mattered. If the marshal wanted to, he could torture it out of me. My best shot was to give him a reason to trust me, if only a little. “Martius,” I said. “It’s Count Martius.”
Colfax didn’t respond. Instead he looked to the two guards still waiting at the door and then he reached into his pocket. He pulled out a clumsily rolled smoking reed and lit it, using one of the lanterns against the wall. “Count Adrius Martius. Pays his taxes on time,” he said, accentuating the words with a puff of smoke. “Sends his levies when called upon. Never participates in any grumbling or complaints against the crown.”
“Just one of Her Majesty’s loyal noble subjects,” I said.
The marshal went and leaned against the wall.
I took the opportunity to stand up and test my legs. “I’m guessing Martius has one hell of a claim to the throne.”
“Three generations back,” the marshal said quietly. “His grandfather, Gallan, was elder brother to Eredus. But the royal spirit passed to Eredus, not Gallan. Both of them had children. The queen descends from Eredus, and Count Martius from Gallan. No one can predict for sure, but based on historical precedent, there’s a reasonable chance that if she died the spirit could pass to him.”
“And the marshals service hasn’t kept a very close eye on him because…”
Colfax dropped his half-finished cigarette to the floor and stepped on it heavily with his boot. A small self-punishment. “Because he’s always been a model citizen.”
I shook my head, trying to keep my mouth shut. But I failed. “You dumb hicks,” I said, louder than I had intended. “A guy has a claim to the throne, denied only by virtue of a so-called ‘royal spirit’ that no one can see or touch, and you don’t keep a watch on him because he’s a model citizen? Being a model citizen when you have a valid claim to the throne is exactly what you do when you’re planning a coup!”
The marshal’s eyes flicked to his two guards again, then back to me. “He might never have tried to make a move if you hadn’t come along,” he said. “Someone who the queen would take on as a trusted advisor, but who would sell her out to save his own skin.”
I had to laugh, just a little. “Really? You honestly believe I’m the linchpin in his plans? You think if I’d never have come along, he would have spent his entire life as a loyal subject? Don’t fool yourself, marshal. This guy’s been planning this a long time. You can bet he’s got a dozen scenarios ready to achieve his aims. I just happened to be the unlucky chump who triggered this one.”
Colfax took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Reckon you’re right,” he said.
“So now what? You want me to use the fact that he needs me to make her abdicate, so that I can what? Run in and rescue her?”
The marshal didn’t even bother laughing at that idea. “No,” he said. “Even if I did trust you for a second, the odds aren’t exactly in your favour.” The old man’s face went dark. “Getting her to abdicate isn’t the only way he can control the throne,” he said.
“You mean he might kill her if I’m out of the picture.”
“No,” Colfax said. “Not kill her. If he did that, we’re back to the same spiritual roulette. Maybe Martius would get the spirit, but maybe it would be someone else in the royal line. You’re a professional. Does Martius strike you as much of a gambler?”
He strikes me as somebody who’s outwitted the entire Daroman court and its legendary marshal service for years. “So then how does he get control?”
Colfax’s expression became grim. “He could do things to the queen. Torture her. Drug her. Use her to hold the empire hostage. Given time, he could probably even subvert and corrupt her will. She may have the wisdom of her ancestors, but she’s still an eleven-year-old girl.”
The cold fury in his words infected my own thoughts, making it hard to focus. Gettin’ angry in a fight ain’t no different than holdin’ a sword by the wrong end, Ferius’s voice cajoled me. She was right too. I was missing something. Even with the queen under his control, Martius would need agents here at court to make sure whatever orders he forced her to issue were followed. I turned around and looked at the two guards, still standing like slightly bored statues a few feet away.
Colfax caught my look. “Wait outside with the others, boys,” he said.
The two men hesitated for a moment but then turned, unlocked the door and walked out of the cell.
“Yeah,” the marshal said after they’d left. “They’re dirty.”
I looked back at him. “Damn,” I said. “You’re pretty screwed, old man.”
Colfax shrugged. “They won’t do anything to me. If someone tries to get you out of here without my say-so, the whole place goes straight into lockdown. They need me to get you out of here.”
“And do what?”
Colfax reached into his long grey leather coat and took out my powder holsters. He handed them to me. “You’re going to go see Count Adrius Martius. You’re going to sit down with him and the queen and their writ of abdication. You’re going to look into that trusting eleven-year-old’s face.” The marshal paused for a second. Then he looked me straight in the eye and said, “And then you’re going to kill her.”
55
The Cage
It took only a moment for shock to transform into so much rage that I nearly threw myself at the marshal. “Son of a bitch! I thought you were supposed to protect her?”
Colfax had a strange look on his face. Maybe it was just exhaustion, or shame, but it looked a little different. Was it pity? “I’m supposed to protect the crown,” he said. “I can’t let her be taken this way.”
“Why would they let me even get close to her, if that’s a possibility?”
Colfax shrugged. “A lot of reasons. They probably figure they can buy you. Or that you’ll be too soft to do it. Or maybe it’s because they know you don’t care about the throne.”
I looked at him and shook my head. “They’re right. I won’t do it. You send me out of here and the first thing I’m going to do is run.”
Colfax looked down at the crushed cigarette on the floor as if he might pick it up and try to fix it. “I don’t think so, Kellen.” He pointed at the door. “I’m guessing the two guards behind that door are going to walk you all the way to wherever Martius is holding the queen. Knowing you, I don’t doubt that you’ll run. But I don’t think those men will let you get far.”
“You’ve really thought this all out, haven’t you?” I said, but deep down I knew he hadn’t had to. Given the alternatives, why wouldn’t I just go ahead and sign the damned writ of abdication as the queen’s advisor and take whatever rewards might be forthcoming, rather than almost certainly getting myself killed?
“Yeah,” he said, a little sadly, “I did.” He walked over to the door and pounded on it three times. “Bring him in,” he called out.
The door to my cell opened up and two men I hadn’t seen before entered. These were dressed the same as the other guards, but seemed a little, well, rougher. They looked at the marshal differently too, showing him a kind of subtle respect that I hadn’t seen from the others. These were his men through and through. One was wearing long chain-mail gloves—the kind butchers sometimes use to keep from cutting their own fingers off. T
he other guard, coming in behind him, wore the same type of gloves, and was holding a cage.
“Reichis!” I called out.
The squirrel cat was throwing himself against the bars of the cage, chittering like a maniac.
“Get me the hells out of here, Kellen!” he said. “Drop one of these skinbags and I’ll take the other.”
“How long’s he been like that?” the marshal asked.
“The little fella’s been doing this pretty much all day,” said the guard holding the cage.
“What are you doing, Kellen?” Reichis screamed. “Take that son of a bitch out and get me out of here.”
“I can’t,” I said. “There’s no way I can take all of them. Why didn’t you run? I told you to run!”
Colfax looked at me strangely. “So it’s true? You talk to him? And you can understand what he says?”
“Stick him, Kellen. Just get me out of this cage and I’ll take ’em all down!”
“What’s he saying?” the marshal asked, leaning closer to the cage but still out of the range of Reichis’s claws.
I shrugged. “He says it’s all right to let him out of the cage. He respects your authority and promises to behave himself.”
That got me a brief smile. “Yeah, listen, I don’t know squirrel cat or whatever the hell it is this little monster speaks, but I’m pretty sure something got lost in your translation.”
“You’ll be losing your ugly skinbag face in a minute,” Reichis chittered.
The man put the cage down on the room’s only small table. They looked to the marshal expectantly. It took me a moment to figure out what this was, what was about to happen, and when I did, everything that had been done to me in that cell paled in the face of what Colfax planned to do next.
“No,” I pleaded. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll do what you want.”
The marshal’s eyes met mine, a trickle of sadness floating on the surface of an ocean of steel. “I’m sorry, Kellen, but I know who you are. I know what you are and how you think. I need for you to know that I’m not fooling around here, that I won’t hesitate.”
I begged him. “I said I’d do it. I get that you’re serious! Please don’t do this!”
“It’s too important. I need you to know for sure.” Colfax nodded at the two guards. One opened the top of the cage while the other reached in hard and fast with his metal-clad hands. He grabbed Reichis by the throat and lifted him out of the cage in a merciless grip that stifled any sound that the squirrel cat would have uttered. I saw Reichis’s tongue loll from his mouth as he struggled for air. I lunged for the powder in my holsters, but the marshal slammed his fist into my stomach, causing me to double over. He grabbed the back of my hair and hauled me back up, so that I was facing towards the men holding Reichis. “Do it,” he said.
Without an instant’s delay the second guard took the squirrel cat’s front paw between his two gloved hands. I heard a crack louder than it had any right to be, as he snapped Reichis’s leg.
“You bastard!” I screamed.
The guard took hold of his other front leg and snapped that too.
“Stop! I’ll do anything you want! Just stop!”
Reichis’s head sagged, unconscious from the shock. The guard took one of his hind legs.
“That’s enough,” Colfax said. “For now.”
The guard immediately dropped Reichis back into the cage and sealed the top. The squirrel cat, usually full of fire and thunder, collapsed like a sack and lay still. I tried to reach for him, but Colfax had his arm around my throat and my arm behind my back.
“You lousy piece of shit,” I screamed. “I’m going to kill you for this. I’ll rip your throat out.”
“Maybe you will,” he acknowledged. “But first you’re going to go with those two traitors out there. They’re going to take you to Count Martius, and then you’re going to put our queen out of her misery. Because if you don’t, I’m going to end your familiar.”
“He’s not my familiar. He’s my partner.” I don’t know why I bothered to say that. It’s not like the marshal would have cared about the intricacies of an outlaw’s relationship to a squirrel cat, or why I wasn’t a powerful enough mage to have a true familiar, or why Reichis had agreed to be my business partner in the first place. But by that point I had tears trickling down my face and I couldn’t think of anything clever to say, so I just said what should have been obvious. “It’s never going to work. You know that. They’re going to know this might be the plan, and they won’t let me near her unless they’re absolutely sure they’ll be able to control me. It’s hopeless.”
Colfax reached down, picked up the mashed remains of his cigarette from the floor, and started smoothing it out. “I know,” he said. “But you ever hear that old gambler’s adage? If the only card you’ve got is a three, you throw it down and hope the other guy’s holding a two.”
56
The Kingmaker
The men charged with bringing me to Count Martius did their job admirably. I’d counted five marshals following us when we set out from the palace, but between the twists and turns and changing horses and a half-dozen other distractions enacted by whatever other operatives they had helping them, we’d lost them all within the hour.
There was nothing about the townhouse they brought me to that spoke of a vast conspiracy to steal the throne. The plain exterior with its four-column entrance and flat-topped roof was matched by an interior with only modest decorations and simple wooden furnishings. Everything was well made, well maintained, but nothing in the two-storey home stood out. This was especially true of its owners.
Adrius Martius was the same humble-faced, slightly overweight man of middle years and kindly face I’d thought had been helping me over the past few weeks. His wife was much the same as he was: brown-haired with streaks of grey and plain as a wooden bucket. She had a figure that might as easily have belonged to a farmer’s wife, but for the lack of calluses on her hands, and the silver silk dress she wore.
“Mister Kellen,” she said warmly, taking one of my hands in both of hers. “Welcome, welcome. I have heard so much about you, but always second-hand. I wish I could have met you sooner and in our own home but, well, that wasn’t really an option. How have your first weeks been in the royal palace?”
The words were those of someone playing a game with me, but the voice was so genuine I couldn’t think of an appropriate response. “Uneventful, madam,” I said at last, hoping I sounded clever.
“I see, yes. And oh my, are those markings around your eye what I think they are?” she said, pointing to the swirling black lines around my left eye.
I nodded. “Shadowblack.”
“My, oh my,” she said, putting one hand to her mouth. “Such an ugly name for something that’s really quite beautiful.”
“Would that more people shared your perspective,” I said, and kissed her hand.
She nodded with a small giggle.
“Now then, Darlina, let’s not keep the boy standing in the entryway,” Count Martius said, ambling towards us with a goblet in each hand.
“Wine,” he said, taking a small sip from one and offering me the other. “From our little vineyard in Juven. I’ve warmed it over the fire and steamed in some caramel root. Care for a drink?”
I looked at the goblets and then back at Martius. “I think you forgot something,” I said.
He looked down at the goblets. “Well, that’s certainly in keeping with my poor memory, but I can’t think what I might have forgotten in the wine.”
“You forgot that you invaded the royal palace, kidnapped the queen, killed innocent people who were trying to protect her and had me brought me here so you can bring down an empire for your own personal gratification. So no, I wouldn’t care for a drink.”
Darlina made a face. It wasn’t a mean face. More of a cross between hurt and sympathetic. “Oh now, Master Kellen, I—”
“Now, now, Darlina. The boy’s got a right to believe what he believe
s. It’s no hurt against us that he’s loyal to the girl.”
He set the goblets down on one of the shelves that lined the entryway. He motioned me into the parlour, reaching for my arm but pulling back when he saw my reaction. I thought about killing him right then, or grabbing his wife and threatening her life. But I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere, so I just followed him in and sat down in a high-backed red velvet chair near the fire.
“You’re Jan’Tep, isn’t that right?” he asked, easing himself back onto a long couch covered in the same fabric as my armchair.
“Not really, not any more. I’m what you might call ‘between nations’ at the moment.”
Martius shook his head and sighed. “All too common these days. People don’t have cause to be patriotic any more, that’s what I always say. Isn’t that right, Darlina?”
His wife stood behind the couch and patted his shoulder in agreement. “So many young folk these days have no sense of belonging.”
Martius went on. “That’s just it. People used to feel like they were part of their country, you know? That they shared something with the people that came before them. Now…” He leaned forward and extended a hand towards me. “But you, I can see the Jan’Tep in you, Mister Kellen, no matter what you might say. I look in your eyes and I see that cleverness there: the quick wit and the keen insight. Spotted it the first day I met you at court.” He shook his head as he leaned back heavily onto the couch. “Not us Daroman though, eh, Darlina? We’re not what you’d call a clever people. Want to hear a good Daroman joke, son?”
I just stared at him.
“Me too. Let me know if you ever hear one!” he laughed.
Darlina gave a little giggle again, and swatted her husband’s head gently. “Oh, he pulls that one out all the time. Thinks it gets funnier in the retelling.”
Martius cocked his head to the side. “Well, you get my point. We’re not a witty people, and we’re not a curious people. But you know what we are? We’re practical. That’s it, in a nutshell. The Daroman people have always been practical.”
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