Ninth Euclid's Prince

by Daniel M. Hoyt

  The biggest problem with making enemies on the way to the top was that they tended to multiply once you got there.

  Ultimately, Lord Oswald followed Vere, as I knew he would, in search of another tigerdeer.

  We didn’t have to wait long.

  Less than an hour after Prince Vere selected another site, he signaled a sighting. This time, everyone else saw the signal at the same time. Vere, in a display of understanding I didn’t think possible from the self-absorbed prince, had taken up a position in front of the hunting party, lest they thought he’d take a shot at one of them, too.

  Perhaps Vere recognized that, on the whole, we weren’t so sure as Lord Oswald of the prince’s innocence in the errant arrow.

  Whatever his reason, back or front, he was clearly a better tracker than the rest of us, for he saw both tigerdeer first.

  This buck was slightly bigger than the first — I counted sixteen points — but he seemed a bit more skittish, too, constantly interrupting his munching to look around nervously.

  At Vere’s signal, we switched to voiceblockers.

  “In view of the recent events,” Prince Vere whispered, “I will be happy to yield my right to shoot.”

  Nobody replied for quite some time, at which point Prince Vere twisted around and scanned the party.

  Lord Oswald cleared his throat, which sounded through the voiceblockers more like he was sandpapering his tongue. “I think I speak for all of us, Hunter. It’s your sighting, your shot. Good luck.”

  My opinion — and I think at least some of the heirs shared it, too, which is why they were silent — was that if the prince was in our full view and we watched him like hawks, we had time to duck if he decided to turn and fire on us.

  But Prince Vere took careful aim at the tigerdeer, and loosed his arrow expertly, leading his quarry. The buck started at the twang of Vere’s arrow, and ran right into the line of fire, falling dead from a clean shot.

  Prince Vere whooped heartily, and the heirs joined in, albeit not as enthusiastically. I, for one, was happy to see the prince unarmed again — or at least not armed with a cocked weapon.

  Vere called on his men — who had returned in the jumper while we were still scouting a good location — to collect the carcass and verify the kill for the prince.

  The hunt was over, and I was glad to be done with it. Lord Oswald was calm, cool and collected, but I wasn’t. Ever since that arrow zinged between us, my insides had been twisting around. For the first time since I’d begun working for Lord Oswald, I had second thoughts about leaving the relative safety of my daddy’s farm.

  We turned in our bows and arrows, and I didn’t recall having been more glad to be rid of a weapon before.

  Vere’s man scowled when Prince Oswald turned in his quiver, and Prince Vere appeared by my Lord’s side instantly.

  “What’s wrong?” Vere asked his man.

  “Begging your pardon, Prince Oswald, but where’s the other arrow?”

  I jerked my head around to see my Lord; he looked as surprised as I was.

  “What other arrow?” Lord Oswald asked Vere’s man.

  “I don’t mean to accuse, Prince,” he said apologetically, “but Prince Vere says you shot only one arrow.”

  “Yes, and Vere shot two.”

  “Begging your pardon again, but we have his remaining eight.” Vere’s man nodded at his prince. “But there’s only eight in your quiver, too.”

  This caught the attention of the other heirs, who started filing back out of the jumper to see what was happening.

  Studying the man’s face, I concluded that either he was an exceptional liar, or he spoke what he thought to be the truth. I noted also that he was not the same man that issued the arrows at the beginning of the hunt, so he was probably telling the truth.

  There was a shout off in the distance, from where we’d just come, and Prince Vere used his personal comlink to inquire into the commotion.

  “It seems,” said the prince gravely, “that the missing arrow has been found.”

  Coming out of the woods, we could see two of Vere’s men dragging something along the grass.

  Lord Oswald looked the prince questioningly, and his eyebrows raised in alarm at Vere’s expression.

  “It was found,” said Vere, “in Lord Sumter’s back, near the first buck we hunted.”

  My blood chilled. Lord Sumter was an heir, and I realized, surprised, that he had joined the hunt alone. If he had, somehow, been killed near the fourteen-point buck, none of us had noticed he was missing throughout the entire second hunt.

  Yet here was his body being dragged to the jumper, and he looked dead an hour or two at the most.

  “They say Prince Oswald hung back,” one of Vere’s men said, “that he was the last to leave the scene.”

  Most of the heirs, looking more scared than ever before, nodded in agreement and muttered among themselves.

  I couldn’t blame them. In a contest between the princes, they had little choice but to back the emperor’s favorite. And they were right about my Lord being the last to leave.

  Prince Vere studied my Lord’s face, which remained impassive throughout the inquiry, a useful ability my Lord had cultivated in the legion. Never show emotions to the enemy, and he won’t be able to use them to his advantage.

  “I don’t believe,” said Vere finally, “that Adrian is guilty of callously murdering another heir, especially a lesser one.”

  I relaxed a little. If Vere believed my Lord was innocent, Lord Oswald probably wouldn’t be arrested immediately upon returning to the emperor’s palace. And that would give us time to find the real murderer.

  “But you did have motive, opportunity and means,” Vere continued, “and this unfortunate incident did occur on the emperor’s preserve. Lord Noir will initiate a full investigation once we return.” He turned and walked toward the jumper.

  We followed the prince, but not at the end this time, and we were ourselves followed by a couple of Vere’s armed guards. The other heirs scurried away from us with terrified expressions, as though merely being near Lord Oswald would mark them as an accomplice.

  As we climbed in the jumper, I strained to remember the last time I'd seen Lord Sumter, but I couldn’t place him at all.

  Was Lord Sumter even on the hunt, as Prince Vere had claimed? Or was he killed before the hunt? Perhaps one of my Lord’s arrows had been stolen, somehow, and Lord Sumter was killed with it after the hunt, while the tigerdeer carcass was being collected?

  And who killed him?

  I had been with Lord Oswald throughout the entire hunt. If there was one thing I did know about the afternoon’s events, it was that my Lord had shot only one arrow. A sinking feeling in the pit of my already tangled stomach told me that I should have counted the arrows when they were issued.

  In a bundle, who would notice that there were only nine instead of the ten that were supposed to be there?

  It was the only reasonable explanation I could find, and it pointed to only one conclusion.

  Prince Oswald had been set up for cold, calculated murder.

  Chapter 8

  Announcing Succession

  THERE WAS A SPECIAL KIND OF GRATITUDE THAT WE OWED those who helped us in times in need. If anyone had told me a year ago that my Lord would owe such a debt to Prince Vere, I would have laughed at him and thought him a fool to believe Prince Oswald would allow himself to be in a situation where Prince Vere could provide such help.

  I was the fool, it seemed.

  Prince Vere, as unlikely as it appeared, was all that stood between my Lord and a certain death sentence, with Lord Noir as judge and condemning jury both.

  On the good side, several things were now clear to me. On the bad side, I understood the implications of those facts.

  First, Lord Noir had somehow managed to ingratiate himself to the emperor beyond my expectations — or my Lord’s, I was sure — and the ranking senator seemed to have grabbed a significant amount of the day-to-day
running of the empire in the process. How much was still unclear, but I had no doubt the extent of his influence would crystallize in the course of the investigation into Lord Sumter’s murder.

  Second, Prince Vere was definitely in league with Lord Noir to some extent. Face it, Lord Noir was scary to most of the heirs. He even looked scary, especially with his predilection for black clothes and hiding in shadows. But the perfect prince wasn’t overly concerned when Noir was around; in fact, he seemed to prefer having the albino nearby. That by itself was suspicious, but Prince Vere had a habit of being where Noir would likely be, or contriving some circumstances by which Noir could be called.

  The question, again, was to what extent that relationship went? Was Vere indeed Noir’s henchman, carefully eliminating his competition one by one, until none remained? Or was Noir using Vere unwittingly somehow? Or were they just innocent buddies, and the murders were completely unrelated?

  Somehow I doubted that their relationship was that casual.

  Third, whoever was killing heirs wasn’t hiding the fact anymore. Lord Sumter had been shot through with an arrow in broad daylight, with plenty of potential witnesses — none of whom actually saw anything tangible, however.

  When Vere had handed over Prince Oswald to Noir, along with his account of the afternoon’s hunt, Noir hadn’t said much. The senator merely took the names of witnesses and suggested to them that, as heirs to the empire, it would be imprudent to leave New Rome. To my Lord, he stated plainly that Emperor Seraphim would be informed of Lord Oswald’s involvement at once, and he would extend my Lord’s apologies for being unable to attend dinner that evening.

  Summarily dismissed by Noir, we returned to our assigned quarters in the palace, followed closely by a quartet of the emperor’s guards, who posted themselves outside the door to a receiving room shared by two bedrooms.

  Lord Oswald asked to have word sent to his Angels on the Phoenix that we would be unable to return due to the present circumstances. His Angels would be on high alert after that, knowing as I did how my Lord hated to sleep in someone else’s palace, at the mercy of someone else’s guards.

  Unfortunately, even Prince Oswald couldn’t expect to be allowed back on his starship under the circumstances, so we had to make do with the palace quarters, no matter how uncomfortable.

  Dinner arrived promptly after our arrival, so at least Noir didn’t want my Lord to starve. The dinner was excellent — and pleasantly unencumbered by the façades, rumors and intrigues that were surely smothering the other heirs in the dining room at that very moment, making dinner the bright spot of the day.

  “Euclid,” Lord Oswald said gravely, after our dinner had been cleared away and we were alone again, “this isn’t good.”

  I agreed.

  “Get some sleep,” my Lord said, heading toward his bedroom. “I suspect we’ll need our energy for tomorrow.”

  In my bedroom, I stripped and slid under the sheets of an enormous bed, bigger than Lady Redwing’s on the Phoenix.

  My sleep was destined to be fitful, but at least the bed wasn’t uncomfortable, too.

  ***

  Morning arrived with a rather rough introduction from my Lord’s Angels.

  “The emperor,” one of them, Bahr, said, shaking me harshly, and I awoke instantly.

  Dragging myself to my Lord’s bedroom, I entered the room without knocking and woke Lord Oswald. We joined the Angels in the receiving room.

  “The emperor is calling for breakfast, my Lord Prince Oswald,” Bahr said, bowing deeply. Behind the Angels, two of the emperor’s guards stood by the open door to the hallway. The other two presumably waited just out of sight, in case there was a problem that required their presence.

  I noticed that before being allowed entry, the Angels had been disarmed — of obvious weapons, that is; the Angels had been trained to be lethal in unarmed combat.

  At least they’d been allowed to rouse us for breakfast. I wasn’t convinced the emperor’s guards would have been so gentle.

  And it was to be breakfast as usual? There were no nefarious plans for the separation of my Lord’s head from the rest of him?

  I handed over our clothes to one of the Angels and ordered him to get them instacleaned in five minutes. He took the bundle, paused briefly to get directions from one of the door guards, then shot away down the hall, pounding bootsteps fading away into the distance.

  At least we had advance warning about breakfast for a change. I had begun to think that the palace’s irrational schedule was designed solely to breed disfavor with the emperor. It certainly weeded out the weak-willed heirs, so to speak, so that the ones remaining in His Grace’s good graces knew how to be an effective emperor. But that meant that the heirs generally had to remain close at hand at all times or risk missing an important meal or announcement or party or whatever.

  On the other hand, it also meant the heirs generally stayed out of trouble. Perhaps that was the intention all along?

  As a blood prince, rather than just one of the ever-changing heirs that caught the temporary fancy of the emperor, my Lord couldn’t be disinherited, so he had a little more leeway with the rules. I had no doubts that his princely status was the only reason he wasn’t rotting in the emperor’s jail at that very moment.

  It occurred to me with a shock that the murder on Prince Vere’s hunting expedition reflected badly on the prince, as well. Also a blood prince, Vere had more leeway, which had given him the power to organize such a hunt, but he also bore a certain amount of personal responsibility for each of the heirs that had gone with him. And the murder had occurred on the palace grounds, too.

  No matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t escape the conclusion that Prince Vere’s reputation would also be tainted, regardless of the identity of the murderer.

  Our clothes were returned, fresh and clean. While dressing, I wondered idly if the emperor’s favorite prince was also under house arrest.

  And what about Lady Phoenix? Had she returned to the starship? If so, was she under arrest as well?

  My Lord flung open his bedroom door and strode into the receiving room. “Ready for breakfast,” he said cheerily, his green eyes sparkling, and headed out the door.

  Once again, it was just Angels for breakfast.

  On the way to the dining room, we passed throngs of retainers, again jamming the palace hallways and great room far earlier than usual. A few of them whispered and pointed as we passed, but the bulk of them simply ignored us, despite the emperor’s guards trailing us. I thought I recognized some of the heirs, too.

  In the absence of his retinue, my Lord tried to stop for some valuable hobnobbing, but the imperial guards intervening, conducting us to the dining room instead. It was empty when we arrived.

  Lord Oswald turned to the guards. “In case you didn’t notice,” he said sarcastically, “nobody’s here. How about we go back out there again?”

  One of the guards put out a hand, checking my Lord’s movement toward the door. The guard shook his head, but remained silent. He nodded towards the table and dropped his restraining hand.

  “Fine,” Lord Oswald said, huffing his displeasure. “We’ll just take our seats up here again, okay?” His voice rose as we got farther from the guards, in an apparent effort to ensure the guards didn’t miss his intention.

  We took the same seats we’d had at the last meal. If my Lord had lost any favor with the emperor, at least he wasn’t going to show it in public.

  The royal couple showed up next, with Prince Vere and his wife on their arms. The emperor shuffled in slowly, tapping his cane and muttering as he came along. About halfway down the table, he paused and looked up briefly. He seemed surprised to see Prince Oswald at the table.

  “Adrian, my boy,” the emperor said, croaking with the effort required to be heard across the room. “What are you doing here so soon?”

  Shocked, my Lord’s eyes went wide, but he said nothing. He scrambled to his feet as the emperor approached, then pulled the end
chairs out for the royal couple. When the emperor reached the end of the table, he let go of Prince Vere’s supporting arm and allowed my Lord to help him into his seat.

  Empress Jewel stood by her chair and waited while her husband struggled to sit down. She shot me a hard look and raised an eyebrow questioningly.

  I jumped from my own chair and seated the empress quickly. I was about to return to my chair but she cleared her throat and said, “Napkin.”

  Turning back, I reached for her napkin. As I picked it up, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “In my lap.”

  I placed the napkin in her lap carefully, trying not to touch her in the process, but under the table she placed her hand over mine and pushed my hand down between her thighs. I could imagine her red crotchless panties, separated from my hand by mere inches and the thin fabric of her breakfast gown. “Thank you,” she said, smiling, and released my hand.

  I jerked my hand away and returned to my chair at the same time as Lord Oswald. He scrutinized me as we sat down. “You look pale again, Euclid,” he said. “You really need to make sure you’re eating right.”

  I thanked him for his concern and waited for the other heirs to arrive.

  The Ancel family was well known for its large numbers, long before my generation, so breakfast traditions in our family were somewhat informal. Generally, one of the Euclids would come into the kitchen each morning, scratching himself impolitely and yawning loudly and plop down into one of the chairs at the massive dining table. A few more Euclids would show up over the next several minutes, and all of them would find a seat at the table without making any move toward procuring food. Fifth Euclid had a habit of putting his head on the table and going back to sleep.

  Eventually, Hannah would show up, muttering a disbelieving scolding, though she’d seen the same scene played out every morning, and she’d just stand in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, glaring at us.

  She’d turn on her heel and disappear for a few minutes, during which it was my job to go and fetch the remaining Euclids. “Breakfast,” I’d whisper at each bedroom door, lingering only long enough to see that I’d been heard, and then I’d run back to the kitchen.