I let my hands slide down to my hips as casually as I could, letting them rest on my powder holsters.
“You’re curious, right?” he asked. When I didn’t answer he continued, “You’re wondering why we brought you here, why we’re being nice to you instead of—well, I don’t rightly know what people do in these situations. Beating you up and torturing you a bit for fun, I suppose.”
“Oh, Adie, don’t even talk about such things,” Darlina said. “Look at the poor boy. Those horrible marshals have already been at him.”
The count kept his eyes on me. “Well, it’s as I said, Mister Kellen, we’re a practical people. And you know what isn’t practical? Hurting people for no reason. That’s not practical. Taking pleasure in the pain of others. Not practical at all. It’s just self-indulgent. And we aren’t a self-indulgent people. Colfax is a fool.”
“You mind if I ask an impractical question?” I asked.
Martius nodded to Darlina, who left the room. “I reckon you wouldn’t be Jan’Tep if you didn’t,” he said with a soft smile. “Go ahead, son. Speak your piece.”
I stood up and flipped the covers off my holsters. “You’re a would-be tyrant,” I said casually. “You kidnapped an eleven-year-old girl in the middle of the night, caused the deaths of who knows how many people, and you’re trying to steal the throne. So you’re what we in my line of work call a real gods-damned villain. And now here you are, holding all the cards, and you’re putting on this ma and pa farmer act for me. That tells me that you’re either some kind of sick lunatic who finds all of this entertaining and probably likes pulling the wings off flies, or you’re thick as wood and don’t know any better. Now up until tonight you’ve played everything pretty smart, so I guess my question is, just how insane are you?”
Martius’s eyes went wide, just for a second. Then he relaxed and shook his head. “Well, son… Mister Kellen, I mean, I have to tell you I’m just a little bit disappointed.”
I started to speak but he cut me off.
“No, no. You’ve had your turn. I listened to all of it, and now you can listen to me.” He stood up and warmed his hands at the fire. “I like to keep things polite, but I can tell that doesn’t impress you in the least, so let me be plain. You don’t need to figure me out. You might be clever back at the palace, but you haven’t got the intellect to understand how everything I’ve been planning for the past ten years fits together. I could stand here all night long and talk about the Daroman civilisation, about its people and where we’re going, about a childish superstition regarding a two-thousand-year-old royal spirit that’s gotten so out of hand that now they use it to put an infant on the throne and ask her what she thinks we should do about going to war. But I’m not going to bore you with any of that because I know a fella like you doesn’t really care about such cold, hard truths, and frankly you wouldn’t understand them.”
He stepped back from the fire and put his hands in his pockets. “So let’s keep it real simple now. I’ve got the girl. In a minute Darlina’s going to bring her out and sit her at the table over there in the kitchen. We’re going to put a pen in her hand and a writ of abdication in front of her. Then I’m going to hit her, real hard, until she signs the paper. She might want to hold out for a while, sure, but we’ve been working on her for a couple of days now, and I’m telling you she isn’t in any state to put up a fight. Then I’m going to take that pen out of her little hand and I’m going to put it in yours, and you’re going to sign that writ.”
“I won’t—”
He put up a hand. “I’m not done yet, son. Then the girl’s going to die. I’m sorry about that. I don’t take any pleasure in it. But I can’t spend the next twenty years of my reign with a bunch of idealistic fools dreaming up ways of restoring her to the throne. Wouldn’t be practical.”
“And you’re a practical man.”
“Yes, sir, I am a practical man. We’ll let you go, of course. I reckon you’ll leave town pretty quickly, given everything we know about you—and make no mistake, we know a lot. Now I’m real sorry about your squirrel cat. Can’t say I understand it, a man having an animal for a friend or familiar or whatever it is you people call it. But that’s not my business. My boys tell me that Marshal Colfax said he’s gonna kill him and, well, I honestly don’t give a darn about that right now. I’m telling you this because I’m trying to be straight with you here.”
Martius looked up at me and shook his head again. “All you young people—you want everything to be happy, but when it can’t be happy, you want it to be as awful as possible, just so you can feel righteous. Just like Leonidas. You know how much time I invested in that boy? I was this close, Mister Kellen—” he held up his thumb and the tip of his forefinger, nearly pinching them together—“this close to making him the king of this country. The countess was isolated and getting desperate. I would’ve gotten them married, and the nobles in line and the whole country would have risen up and demanded the queen abdicate. We would have had a real ruler on the throne again. We could have shaken the sleep and fat off this country and gone back to doing what we do best.”
“Conquering other countries?”
“Yes. We’re an empire, Kellen. Conquering’s what we do.” Martius pointed a finger at me and then pulled it back as if he’d realised he was being rude. “But then you come along, with your little bits of magic and your overblown sense of heroics, and within a week you’ve got Leonidas in a duel. You know what would happen if I could bring that thick-headed boy back from the dead, Kellen? He’d get right up out of the ground and challenge you to another duel. ‘This time for sure,’ he’d reckon. Can’t let go of his own sense of self-righteousness. Well, that’s not how grown-ups think. You wanted to know why Darlina and I are being nice to you? It’s because what we have here is a foregone conclusion. I’ve been at this for a long time, I’ve got it all worked out, and I’m not looking to create any more trouble than necessary. My hope is we can do this dirty business—and I know it’s dirty business, but, well, that’s just what it is—anyway, we do this thing, and then we shake hands and say goodbye like civilised people. Well, I’ve said my piece now. What do you think?”
I looked into his eyes and saw something that made the muscles in my legs squirm like eels. No evil there, no meanness, no joy, no anger, nothing. He was just an ordinary, practical man doing what he thought made sense. I found it so terrifying I could barely speak. But then I remembered the queen and those screams as they took her away. And I thought about Reichis, lying in a ball in that cage, the bravest creature I’d ever known, with his limbs broken and bleeding. So when I could bring myself to reply, what I said was, “You want to know what I think? I think that, even if for no other reason than you trying to make me swallow that load of nonsense, I’m going to blow your head off and make your wife cook it in a pot of stew, you lousy piece of dirt.”
As if on cue, a thunderous crash was followed by the front door of the house bursting open.
Two of Martius’s men raced into the room, swords in hand. “Leave it, boys,” the count said. “We’ve got guests.”
Marshal Colfax entered, short-hafted Gitabrian fire lance in hand. Another man stood behind him in the darkness of the doorway. He stepped into the light and my heart froze. It was Sophistus, the white binder.
“Sorry, Kellen. I hope you’ll understand that I had no choice in this,” the marshal said.
I tried to run, but with the slightest look the binder already had control of me.
Martius shook his head. “You should’ve left well alone, Colfax. But you boys in the marshals service never can do the smart thing, can you? You only ever see two paces in front of you, while the rest of us are thinking a hundred miles ahead.”
Colfax smiled. “Your accomplices led us right to you, Count Martius. Your boys managed to lose some of mine, but not me.”
“So now what? You here to arrest me?” Martius said.
The marshal laughed. “Arrest you? No, Count Martius, you�
�ve got too many friends at court for that.”
“So you’re a murderer now.”
“Me? No, sir—the marshals service takes the law very seriously. But Kellen over there, well, he’s a bit of a wild card, isn’t he?”
Martius shrugged. “Do what you came to do, marshal. I’m not running, and I’m not begging. Show me your hand.”
Colfax nodded to Sophistus, who smiled. He was all the way inside me now. “Do it,” Colfax said.
I felt my hands flipping open my powder holsters. I looked briefly at Count Adrius Martius, and then my hands moved and my mouth spoke the incantation. “Carath.”
The blast was precise, and the twin fires struck their target with the all the fury of seven hells coming for their next occupant. A second later, Marshal Colfax fell to the floor.
57
The Queenslayer
Count Adrius Martius made no boasts over his victory, gave no eulogies for his defeated adversary. He just picked up his glass and took a sip of wine.
I wondered how and when he’d turned Sophistus to his cause. I doubted I’d ever learn.
Darlina came into the room. “Time’s up now, boys,” I heard her say. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her pulling the queen along by her hair. “I think Her Majesty’s ready to do the right thing.”
Martius nodded twice. “Right, right you are. Here we are still chatting when there’s important work to be done. Let’s bring him into the kitchen, Sophistus.”
Sophistus started towards the kitchen when the marshal grabbed at the hem of his robe. “Traitor,” he said, choking on his own blood.
The binder kicked Colfax’s hand aside and forced me to come over to where he lay dying. I felt my hands reach down and wrap around the marshal’s neck. I wasn’t squeezing yet, just holding his life in my hands while Sophistus looked down on us both. “It’s okay, kid,” the marshal croaked. “I know you can’t help yourself.”
Sophistus reached inside me, and my hands started squeezing ever so slowly.
“The girl from the restaurant,” Colfax wheezed. “Paid her. Just needed to get you away from the quee—”
I felt the binder push my hands to squeeze even harder, and, for just an instant, I was grateful to him. If I were free, I would have needed to put the queen’s life ahead of my need to kill Colfax for what he’d done to me. If I were free, I would have had to let him have his last, half-hearted attempt at redemption. Marshal Colfax had broken me in a way that no one—not even my father—had been able to do. He had taken every story I’d heard, every fear I had about the shadowblack, and made them real. My hands squeezed so tightly around his throat that I could feel the muscles spasm. In a moment, he was gone.
“Oh, Sophie?” Darlina’s voice chimed in. “Have Mister Kellen bring old Colfax into the kitchen. I should get started on him too.”
I think I blacked out for a moment, because the next thing I knew I was in the kitchen, sitting at a round wooden table. The queen was across from me, with Martius and his wife on either side. The body of Marshal Colfax was laid out on the floor next to us. The binder stood off to one side, still keeping his eyes on me. Again I felt that lack of control that was so complete I found myself terrified that Sophistus might forget to make me breathe.
“Now, little lady,” Martius began, “it’s time for you to sign the writ so we can get this foolishness over with.”
The queen’s eyes were full of tears, her face covered in cuts and bruises that I saw extended down beneath the nightshirt they had put on her. I felt a black, bloody rage well up inside me, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Darlina reached over and put a pen in the queen’s hand and gently closed her fingers around it. “Now I’ll have no trouble from you, little miss. Adie has a soft heart but I’ll take my sewing scissors and I’ll cut pieces off you until you do the right thing and sign.”
The queen looked at me for a second. I couldn’t even move my eyes to make any kind of expression of sympathy, and I realised I must look like I didn’t care at all. She just smiled at me sadly and signed the paper. I wanted to scream at her, to give some kind of voice to the rage in my heart before it burst through my chest. Nothing came. Ginevra, who might have been a decent queen for her people had she not placed her trust in an outlaw shadowblack, signed away her throne, and with it her life.
“Well now,” Martius said, “that was very nicely done, little miss. Very nicely done indeed.” He turned to Darlina. “Dear, you’ve got such a way with children. Makes me wish we’d had our own when we were still young enough.” He turned to look at the queen for a moment. “I almost wonder if… but, well, no, that just wouldn’t be practical.”
“Oh, Adie,” Darlina said, patting his shoulder. “You’re such a soft heart. Now don’t make me get all weepy. I need to work on old Colfax.”
She pulled down a box from one of the shelves and removed a long needle from it, the kind used for sewing leather. She held the needle between her lips as she sat down cross-legged on the floor, pulling Colfax’s head onto her lap. “Adie? I’m such a goose and forgot the thread. Be a dear and get it for me? The red one, please.”
Martius rose, pulled out a bobbin of red thread from the box and handed it to her. “Loves sewing, that woman,” he said as he sat down again. “When I told her we had to hole up here, she tried to bring along half her sewing boxes.”
“Oh, don’t exaggerate,” his wife chided. “Besides, it’s a good thing I thought to bring them, isn’t it? How else would we go about taking care of old Colfax?” She threaded the needle and then pressed the point into the top of Colfax’s right eyelid. She pulled it through, a little “thwip” sound filling the air, and then pushed it through the bottom lid.
“Ugh,” Martius said. “Don’t think I want to watch once she gets to the ears.”
Darlina shook her head and kept running the needle between the dead marshal’s eyelids. “Spoken like a man who’s never had to dress a turkey in his life.”
The queen gave a little sob and I realised what this senseless act must be doing to her. “There, there, little miss,” Martius said. “It’s a bad business, I know, but Colfax is dead. He can’t feel a thing.”
“Are you doing this for my benefit, Count Martius? Or simply for your own amusement?” the queen asked. Her voice was small, thin, but unwavering. It was the same voice I’d heard her use when the nobles in the court or her generals or anyone tried to get the best of her.
“Neither,” Martius said. “It’s those darned marshals of his. Even once you abdicate, some of them are likely to try to be heroes. Stupid really. Won’t do anyone any good and, well, it’ll be illegal once the proper ruler takes the throne.”
“You’re desecrating him,” the queen said.
“Yes, little miss, we’re desecrating him. Those marshals are just as superstitious as everyone else these days.” Martius turned to me. “You see, Kellen, there’s an ancient ritual we Daroman used to perform on traitors. You sew the eyes shut so the dead can’t see. You sew their mouths shut so they can’t speak. And you cut their ears off so they can’t hear. Oh, that reminds me,” Martius said, turning to his wife, “don’t forget to cut his fingers off and put them in his mouth before you sew it shut.” He turned back to me. “That’s so their deeds in life will be forgotten. Foolish, isn’t it? But I figure if it helps keep some young marshal from doing something unwise that’ll just get him killed, well, it’s worth it, now, isn’t it?” The count picked up the writ and looked at it. “Lovely handwriting, little miss. My compliments to whichever of your tutors taught you penmanship. Was it Koresh? Man always did have a fine hand for calligraphy.”
“This is meaningless, you know,” the queen said. “I’ll sit here all night and sign as many of those as you want me to, Count Martius, but none of it matters unless one of my trusted advisors signs it too. You’ll never sit on the throne.”
Martius looked at her for a moment, amazed at her apparent calm, and then shook his head and said, “But what do you
suppose we have our friend Mister Kellen here for? And don’t go trying to tell me he isn’t one of your trusted advisors, little miss, because we all know you’ve got a soft spot for this one. Whole court knows it.”
The queen looked from Martius’s eyes to mine, and then back again. “It’s true,” she said. “He’s my tutor of cards. He’s my spellslinger. And yes, he is absolutely my trusted advisor. That’s why he will never sign this document.”
Martius shook his head and sighed. “Oh, little miss. This is why you don’t put children on the throne. Mister Kellen here is very much going to sign the writ. Our friend Sophie here has him bound in ways you and I can barely imagine. And if you’re thinking that it won’t count because it’s under duress, well, that would be true of any other kind of spell, I suppose. But this here’s different. Sophistus isn’t forcing Mister Kellen to sign it. No, he’s binding the evil in the boy’s soul to make him sign it. Kellen’s got all the free will in the world right now. It’s the shadowblack inside him that’s doing the dirty deed, no different than if Kellen himself had sold you out. We spent a good deal of time and no small expense checking this out, and we’re assured that this’ll get around the so-called royal spirit and all the magical nonsense in the palace and the throne.”
Darlina gently took the pen from the queen’s hand and placed it in mine. I dropped it. “Sophie, get your act together here,” she said, her gentle tone softening the words.
The binder nodded. “It takes more concentration for finer muscle movements.”
Darlina put it back in my hand and this time my fingers wrapped around it.
“Now, will you be able to get a good signature out of the boy?” Martius asked. “I don’t want my first royal writ to be all smudged. The historians would be carping about it for ages.”
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