by Jasmine Walt
“The point is,” Marrok continued, “the longer we spend in the square, the more likely we are to be spotted. And the earlier we go, the less reliable the information will be.”
Marrok had a point. In the early morning, it would just be rumors and opinions. To decide their course of action, they needed facts. They also needed to not endanger themselves unnecessarily.
“Why do you always have to be so sensible?” Reyn grumbled.
“Sensible?” Bruno groaned. “He made us stay in a brothel!”
“It’s probably the most sensible thing about him.” Reyn grinned. “He just cuts to the chase and makes it transactional.”
Bruno shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood to take the bait. He knew Reyn was just trying to get him riled up. But later, when the keeper of the establishment came by to give the knights a change of clothes, Bruno didn’t even want to ask where the clothes came from. He sniffed at them, imagining some unruly citizen being disposed of. They smelled of musty perfume and soap, but the scent was not unpleasant. Just a little strong.
After dressing, they inspected each other. They wore gentlemen’s clothes but nothing ostentatious. Each wore long, tapered black pants and loose, billowing shirts tucked into sword belts. Over this they pulled on long capes with hoods. It was springtime and the capes would look a little out of place, but the knights of the Order of the Regent were known, and they needed to wear some level of disguise. Marrok added a turban with a long, flowing scarf he wrapped around his face so only his eyes showed. Now he appeared as any citizen of Fado, his duchy.
“You look quite good in that.” Reyn smiled at Marrok. “You should keep your face covered more often.”
“Today is not a day for jests,” Marrok said. “The house we are supposed to protect is in peril. We must approach this with seriousness.”
“I was serious,” Reyn said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Bruno gave Reyn a jab with his elbow, but he couldn’t suppress a slight smile. Reyn always used humor to defuse his nerves, a talent Bruno appreciated. He breathed deeply as they made their way out of the low-lying whorehouse and up the narrow cobblestone street. Though the sun was high, the streets lay in shadows cast by the gangly, tall buildings. It didn’t take long to make it to the main square of the capital.
Bruno loosened his hood as he followed Marrok and Reyn into the crowded plaza. He tugged at the rose gold chain around his neck, bringing up San Noemie’s medallion. He kissed it and brought it to his forehead before raising his gaze to the six twisted spires that loomed over the plaza.
“If ever we need your help, it is today,” he murmured.
There were numerous markets around the city, but the knights needed information. And on this, the day after King Peverell’s death, the narrow pathways along the stalls would be rife with crowds and gossip.
“I guess word has gotten out the king is dead,” Reyn said, dodging a tall man carrying a basket on his head.
The jostling crowds milled around, having quiet conversations. “No one seems very happy about it,” Bruno said.
“The king has died,” Marrok said. “The people are in mourning.”
“Peverell was well-loved.” Reyn pulled the men to the side of the crowd.
“Or is it that Guntram is well-hated?” Marrok asked. “Is he hated enough for people to back a challenge to the throne?”
“We won’t know until someone does,” Bruno said darkly. “But we should spread out. One cloaked figure may go unnoticed, but three will not.”
The others nodded and moved out.
Bruno clutched his cloak around him and ducked his head, grateful for the crisp breeze. The market was hushed today. Black banners flew from the castle on the hillside, a sure sign that the kingdom was in mourning. Bruno positioned himself under the awning of a fishmonger’s stall, hoping he was in the shadows enough to not draw any attention but close enough to still hear interesting conversations. The death of the king was all anyone talked about.
Fishmongers muttered to each other as they pulled fish out of carts and threw them to each other. “They say the queen’s in mourning,” said the small, round man as he gutted a massive sturgeon, its blood and intestines spilling out across the slanted wooden board and draining into the gutter below.
“I don’t doubt it,” said a butcher on the other side. He had a cow strung up by its back legs, and he worked massive pieces of meat off of its hindquarters, throwing them down on the wooden table in front of the shop. “My cousin’s wife’s sister who works up at the castle says she’s been taken to the prison. She might have killed the king.”
“I don’t believe it,” the fishmonger said. “She’d make a better monarch than the slimy prince.”
“I’m just telling you what I heard.” The butcher shrugged. “They say a knight’s been imprisoned, too. One of the Order of the Regent.”
“No,” the rotund fishmonger said. “Which one? That’s no good.”
A young lad jostled by carrying a heavily laden tray. “No surprise at that,” the boy said with a chuckle. Bruno cocked his head to the side, listening to the boy’s laughter as anger rose in his veins. “There are rumors she’s been sleeping with all the king’s knights.”
Bruno’s hands clenched into fists as he stared at the ground. He knew he shouldn’t do anything, but there was no way he could stand by and listen to this smut about the queen.
“Yeah, but there’s only one problem with your theory, boy.” The butcher wiggled his knife towards the boy, winking. “If she’s been taking so many men inside her, you’d think she’d ’ave produced a single babe by now.”
It took less than a second for Bruno to explode onto the butcher. His fist shot out from under his cloak and landed square in the butcher’s face. The butcher’s humongous bulk barely noticed. From behind the butcher stepped two young men, clearly his sons. They immediately launched themselves onto Bruno, grabbing his arms and giving him a swift punch to the gut. Marrok and Reyn were there in seconds, drawing the young men off Bruno, but in the chaos their cloaks came undone, revealing their faces.
Almost immediately, a guard noticed the ruckus and called out, “There! The Order of the Regent!”
“Attacking the citizens!” another voice called.
Soldiers ran in as more of the villagers joined the fight, trying to protect the butcher from the knights.
“There’s nothing to be gained here,” Marrok called to the others, giving one final punch to the tallest butcher’s son, sending him backwards into a pile of beef entrails.
Bruno grabbed the hanging cow and swung it hard towards the other man, who tumbled over. “Come on,” Bruno called, yanking at Reyn’s shoulder and pulling him into the darkness behind the fishmonger’s shed.
The ground was slippery with entrails, but this wasn’t the first time the knights had run over viscera. They moved swiftly along the walls of another alley until they came to stairs leading to the fishing docks.
“Come,” Marrok said as they flew down the embankment and leapt into the bottom of a fishing boat. Baskets toppled over them as the boat rocked and fish poured out, the stench of bloody dead creatures filling the air. Reyn quickly untied the rope and pushed the boat off down the river.
Bruno sat up, dropping dead fish off his body and wiping the entrails from his face.
“That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I suggested we get some information from the market,” Marrok growled.
“He insulted Queen Lorelai!” Bruno exclaimed with no remorse.
“You have to control yourself,” Marrok said. “I’ve told you time and time again.”
“Last time I checked, this wasn’t a dictatorship,” Bruno said. “We are equals, brothers in the Order of the Regent, and if I feel somebody’s honor has been stained, I will take measures into my own hands and seek retribution.”
“People spew filth about the monarchy all the time. What does this matter?” Reyn asked. “You can’t be affronted by ev
ery stupid thing citizens say. We are not here to police their speech, we are here to protect them.”
“You didn’t hear what he said,” Bruno said as he pulled the pole from the floor and pushed the boat farther out to the river.
“What?” Marrok asked.
“They implied the queen has taken all of us, the Order of the Regent, as lovers,” Bruno said, his jaw tightening at the insults.
“By the dead saints’ testicles,” Marrok swore.
“We have to go back,” Bruno said.
“To beat up the butcher?” Reyn asked, giving another massive push against the bottom of the river.
“No,” Bruno said with a sigh. “The butcher said the queen and Taron have been imprisoned. They were conjecturing why that had happened.”
There was silence on the small boat, and a dull ache gnawed in Bruno’s stomach.
“Bruno is right,” Marrok finally said. “We must go back.”
Reyn nodded, all traces of humor gone. “Guntram has waited years for the throne. If he has imprisoned both the queen and Taron, he must plan to execute them.”
7
Lorelai shivered in the thin shift she wore. The thick, damp walls of her prison were like a cold tomb around her. The only difference was one side of her cell was made of thick, black iron bars that stretched from floor to ceiling. Lorelai had never been here before, but as queen she had been required to enter tombs to pay her respects to the dead. Secretly she had hated entering these dark, damp places. Now she bent over herself, trying to keep her body still, desperately wanting to see the light of day.
Peverell was dead.
A sob rose from deep inside her.
While it had not been the fairytale romantic marriage many women dreamed of, Peverell had been a good man and had loved her from when he first saw her on his fateful hunting trip to Lorelai’s home, Bas Terrenia.
The king had ventured into the northern lowlands with his younger brother, Guntram. The area was ripe with bogs and swamps where peasants carved out life in one-room shacks equipped with sails. The sails caught the Mer du Nord winds, turning cranks and allowing the people to drain water off the bogs. Lorelai was proud of her people. They were clever, hearty, and kind. They took in any stranger lost in their country, even if it was a king they did not fully support. The people who found him, thrown from his horse and unable to walk, had carried him, wet and broken, to Castle de Haar, the seat of House d’Anjou and Lorelai’s home. It was a large, squat red castle with turrets and thick walls to keep out the wicked northern winds.
When the king had woken from a feverish sweat, Lorelai had been there, for her father thought the king should have a representative from his house with him at all times.
King Peverell always said that was the moment his life began. When he opened his eyes, he saw a halo of red light around Lorelai’s head. She laughed it off, as it was only her hair. But the king would not be deterred. She was his angel from that instant, and he would not have another. His gallant knight, Taron, who had been sitting by Lorelai at each evening meal, suddenly no longer came to supper, and Lorelai’s life changed.
Completely.
She had argued with her parents that she did not wish to marry the king and move to the capital, but her parents were in no position to support her. How could they? They lived on the outskirts of the kingdom near the ever-encroaching darkness, the Grosse Obscurite. They needed the protection of House du Capet and the mages of Valliere.
The Grosse Obscurite, with its murky mists and hidden monsters, had already taken half of Bas Terrenia before Lorelai was born. Though the darkness had not advanced in Lorelai’s lifetime, her father remembered the resurgence when he was a boy, and how it took his people. It was the mages who saved Bas Terrenia. Ayanne the Young, leader of the mages’ guild, had delivered a phalanx of mages to halt it.
Lorelai’s father had said having her in the capital would create more protection for her people and her house, but she always felt it was one way he could ensure one of his offspring had the best protection Valliere could offer.
But Peverell had been sweet in his courtship. He had told her privately he would not wed her unless she wanted him. Then he had spent weeks in her home, walking along the massive dykes, visiting the marshland, and getting to know her people. By the end of that time, he was as passionate about the lowlanders and their beautiful, flat land as she was. She could hear it in his voice.
Most remarkably, Elba had walked demurely at her heels, towering over her protectively, but never once growling or showing her teeth to the king.
Elba liked him.
Slowly, as the weeks passed and Peverell listened to her and promised he would care for her and make a good husband, she saw the man beneath the crown. The man who did not want an alliance in some arranged marriage, as she had seen in the other houses. Instead she saw a man who, like any person, desired to find true love. And he believed he had found it in her.
It was the night her father asked her if she loved Peverell that everything went wrong.
Lorelai had smiled. She was sure. “I love him enough to be a good wife,” she had told him.
The relief and gratitude in her father’s eyes almost brought tears to her eyes. Every single bannerman sworn to their house would be grateful and excited at this union. It was the greatest boon that could be endowed to the lowlanders.
But it was too late.
The Grosse Obscurite moved that night, engulfing her people, turning them into monsters. If not for the Order of the Regent and the king, Lorelai would not have made it out alive. Only a sliver of Bas Terrenia remained uncovered.
Now in the cold, damp prison cell, with no child, no family, and no husband, all of the years and loss seemed to have been for nothing. A sniffle rose from the back of her throat and came out like a hacking cough.
Her husband had always been the only thing standing between her and imminent danger. She had not realized it quite so clearly before. She had always known the houses of Valliere could be dangerous and that you needed to beware of alliances, which could easily damage the power of the throne. She had spent her adult life wielding the sword of diplomacy and governance, but she had always thought it was to support the supremacy of her husband’s position and House du Capet. She had considered herself safe in her position as queen. The last thing she would have expected was to be accused of treason and thrown in prison.
Despite the fealty the knights of the Order had sworn to her husband, they had made no oath to her. She understood this now. Undoubtedly, they had already sworn to Guntram. If they did not, they would put not only themselves in danger, but their families, their houses, their lands, and their people as well.
But she had none of those left. She had only herself…and an enemy.
Guntram.
He would stop at nothing to bring her to his bed, or to death, and she knew which of those she would choose.
Still, she was not ready to accept death as her fate. Lorelai pulled the amethyst ring of House d’Anjou off her finger as she shivered. It was the amethyst her father had thrown to her as the darkness had overtaken him and he had been turned into a monster. The purple stone with gold veins was tiger amethyst, almost as much a symbol of their house as the laircat. It had been handed down from firstborn to firstborn for generations. Lorelai was not the firstborn of her family, but she was the last one left. If she survived, she would give this ring to her child, if she ever had one.
Lorelai turned the ring over in her fingers, deftly probing it with the fingernail of her pinky until she felt a delicate latch on the inside. A thin sliver of metal slid out of the ring from the base of the jewel, engaged by a hidden spring. She knew the needle concealed in her family ring was meant to be used for a poison strike. If the point was dipped in poison, it could be deftly jabbed into an enemy, causing them to die instantly with no trace of the wound.
But Lorelai had never anointed the needle with poison. Now she moved towards the iron bars of the prison cell
and reached around towards the lock on the grill. It was unlikely she would be able to navigate the guards and escape through the castle. Her flaming red hair made her instantly recognizable. However, she’d rather die fighting in the halls of her own castle than be taken to the green and hanged on the scaffold in front of a crowd.
Lorelai felt around the bars until she found the lock. She reached around with the ring and pressed the needle into the hole, searching for a way to dislodge the internal clasp. Like everything she did, she worked slowly and purposefully to determine how she could get the lock open. Her hands were aching by the time she realized there were two levers inside the lock. She could feel each individual one move as she pressed the needle down. It would require pressing both down at the same time and pulling on the lock to trigger it to open.
A loud clanging down the hall and footsteps approaching startled her. She ripped her hand back from the lock, accidentally poking her finger with the needle. With a slight yelp she hid the ring in her clenched finger.
“Sit down.” The guard’s raspy voice came through the bars of the cell. “Back to the wall.”
Lorelai closed her eyes and cringed, leaning her forehead against the chill wall. Her finger stung as much as his rudeness. She was not used to being spoken to this way. Not by anyone. Not ever. But what could she do? She was no longer the queen. She was, at best, the widow queen, a dowager queen. Clearly, though, Guntram had not instructed his guards to treat her with any respect.
She did not respond to the guard; she simply stopped what she was doing and turned her head slightly towards him, so he knew he had her ear.
“You have a visitor,” he said roughly.
Lorelai hated the way her head snapped up at the mention of a visitor. Could it possibly be one of the knights coming to get her out of this hell? She peered eagerly into the dark recesses of the prison hall.
She waited eagerly as a figure approached.