My Lord didn’t miss a beat. “But you refused.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yup. I like my head attached to my body. Besides, those red crotchless panties scared the hell out of me.”
Lord Oswald’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Red crotchless panties, my boy?”
I told him about the incident with the earrings. My Lord listened intently, nodding continuously, an amused smirk plastered on his face. When I finished, he continued, nodding and thinking.
“This could be a problem,” he said after a few moment’s reflection. “If Jewel is mad at me — or you, of course — she might convince Seraphim that I’d be better off far away from the empire. And, if the rumors are true, she might just tell Vere to have me executed after he inherits.”
I hadn’t considered those possibilities.
“All in all, my boy, maybe you should have taken her on.” Lord Oswald grinned wolfishly.
“And get my head chopped off? I don’t think so.”
My Lord’s grin disappeared. “It might come to that, anyway, if anyone saw us coming out of her suite.”
He had a point, but I wondered if he had seen Noir in the hallway, too. “Noir?” I mused, flatly. “And I didn’t even get anything for my trouble, either; I’d hate to be accused of some pleasure I never got. Maybe I should have done it, just in case someone complains.”
We laughed about it, but we both knew I’d made the right decision. Courting the imperial jewels was just too dangerous.
Foster knocked on the door and peeked in. “Lord Noir is here to see you, Prince Oswald.”
My fingers constricted into fists and my heart skipped a beat. At a time like this, a visit from Lord Noir couldn’t be good news.
Lord Oswald sighed disinterestedly, apparently unconcerned. “Show him in, Foster. I’ll see him in the rec room.”
We tramped unhurried to the recreation room. I, for one, wasn’t anxious to see Noir any quicker than necessary, nor was I especially eager to split my pants on the way.
The room was still empty when we arrived, so my Lord sat, waiting for Lord Noir. I stood.
The albino senator slithered in a few minutes later, trailing a feeling of doom like slug trails slime. “Good afternoon, Prince Oswald,” he said, bowing slightly. “I trust that you’ve had a relaxing afternoon?”
“Indeed,” my Lord said. “Thank you for your concern.” Lord Oswald stood up and gestured to the door. “If you’ll excuse us....”
Lord Noir narrowed his eyes and a grim smile spread along his lips. “I’m so sorry to impose,” he said, “but I do have a rather delicate matter to discuss with you.”
“Really?” Lord Oswald feigned surprise. “Has another heir sprouted another of my supposed arrows?” he asked sarcastically.
Lord Noir’s hands lifted to the sides of his head. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples. “Murder,” he said, “is not a joking matter.” He dropped his hands and opened his nearly colorless eyes to stare at Lord Oswald. “Even for a blood prince.”
My Lord nodded almost imperceptibly, but said nothing. His mouth took a slightly harder set, though.
“So, what did you wish to discuss?” I asked.
Lord Noir turned slowly and looked at me. His clear white-blue eyes bored into me while he studied me. “Is this ... gorilla ... really necessary here, Prince Oswald?” Noir asked, still staring directly at me.
I tensed automatically. With my build, I was used to being treated as a bodyguard, but Noir’s slur was intentionally designed to provoke a reaction from me. A bad reaction. But such an outburst would also give Noir more leverage in his case against the prince.
“His man attacked me,” Noir could say afterward, “when I merely mentioned the murder. It’s obvious Prince Oswald is hiding something.”
Unwilling to give Noir the satisfaction of goading me, I relaxed with an effort of will.
“Euclid isn’t my bodyguard,” Lord Oswald said firmly. “He’s my personal secretary. Anything you have to say to me, he can hear. So, Noir, what did you wish to discuss?”
“Very well, Oswald,” Noir said, still glaring at me. “If you insist on being uncooperative....” He turned away from me at last, focusing his attention on the prince.
“Prince Oswald, if you please, Senator Noir.” Lord Oswald spared a casual glance at Noir before sitting down again and leisurely inspecting his fingernails.
Lord Noir sniffed haughtily. “Very well, Prince Oswald, I’ll come straight to the point. Your standing with His Grace, Emperor Seraphim VI, is in serious jeopardy. Several witnesses believe you murdered a fellow heir in cold blo—”
“Circumstantial,” Lord Oswald broke in, dismissing the allegation with a wave of his hand. “There are no witnesses.”
“Withdrawn,” said Lord Noir, bowing slightly. “I see no point in debating the issue at this time; my investigation has not concluded.” Noir’s face darkened. “Yet.”
Lord Oswald looked annoyed. “Is that all, Noir? I’m a busy man.”
“Not quite, Prince. There also seems to be a matter of a certain ... well, indiscretion.”
So, that’s what Noir was driving at. Some foolish oversight, perhaps? Or something else?
My blood ran cold suddenly.
Maybe my seeing Noir in the hallway hadn’t been my imagination after all? Had Noir seen us leaving Jewel’s suite? I tried to tell myself that it shouldn’t matter? Leaving her room hardly constituted proof of any impropriety.
Lord Oswald studied his fingernails unconcernedly, pointedly ignoring Lord Noir’s vague remark.
“It appears that you were seen in a restricted area of the palace,” Noir said. “A ... lady’s chambers, perhaps?”
I stopped breathing.
“Lady Redwing is my fiancée, Noir,” Prince Oswald said flatly. “You could hardly consider that indiscre—”
“Yes, yes,” Noir cut in. “But visiting the empress….”
“Nothing happened!” I shouted.
Lord Noir glanced at me and smiled evilly. Prince Oswald shot me a reprimanding look. I lowered my eyes and tried hard not to speak again.
“I was summoned,” said Lord Oswald. “The empress merely wished to thank me for bringing along her old friend, Lady Phoenix Redwing.”
Noir cringed momentarily at the reminder of Lady Redwing’s influence with the royal couple, but he recovered in a heartbeat. “Be that as it may, when I visited the empress only moments after you left, I found a most disturbing scene inside her chambers.”
“Oh?” Lord Oswald looked genuinely interested.
“When I entered her receiving room, a woman came in from another room without the benefit of clothes.” The albino senator sneered. “She was, to say the least, quite surprised to see me. She departed rather quickly, I must say.”
Lord Oswald snickered. “That doesn’t sound too disturbing to me, Noir. Rather commonplace on Oasis.”
“Indeed,” Noir said. “Nor was that what disturbed me.” The senator paused for a moment, building up the tension.
“What, then?”
“It was the empress. When I peeked in on her, she was ... shall we say, somewhat casually attired.” Noir paused again and waited for a reaction, which my Lord didn’t provide. “She was covered in sweat and her hair was in disarray. I was dismissed immediately, of course.”
Lord Oswald laughed out loud. “You get your jollies playing Peeping Tom to the empress, and you think I’m indiscreet?”
Noir turned red, which was quickly noticeable with his pale coloration. I wasn’t sure if it was from embarrassment, anger or just frustration at failing to bait the prince.
“Perhaps Prince Oswald would care to attend an execution tomorrow?” Noir said caustically.
“Not particularly,” my Lord said, glaring at Noir. “Executions bore me.”
Noir glared back at Lord Oswald. “It seems that a certain Lord Trentant of New Rome … seduced … our fair and innocent Empress Jewel last month, an indiscretion that
he’ll surely regret tomorrow, just before his head is forcibly separated from the rest of him.”
I swallowed hard. Even with Noir’s rather roundabout way of threatening, this came through loud and clear.
But Lord Oswald seemed unconcerned. He adjusted his seat slightly and settled in again, ignoring Noir, which only angered the ranking senator even more.
Noir turned to me. “Perhaps your Prince Oswald is considering a trip in the next week?”
I glanced at Lord Oswald, but he remained absorbed in his personal grooming. I shook my head in answer to Noir. So far as I knew, we were planning to stay in New Rome until the succession announcement.
“The emperor will be announcing his successor in one week. Prince Vere has favor with both the emperor and his wife; he will likely be named. Now would be an extremely unfavorable time to make an enemy.”
“Quite right,” said my Lord casually.
Noir turned back to Prince Oswald. “After the announcement, the emperor’s enemies might find their life expectancies to be longer should they arrange to be somewhere other than New Rome.”
And leaving before the prince’s name had been cleared in the matter of Lord Sumter’s murder would immediately brand Lord Oswald as guilty by the emperor’s courtiers — and, by extension, the emperor. I wasn’t sure what game Lord Noir was playing with the prince, but he didn’t seem to be taking any chances. With this veiled threat, Noir was clearly trying to force Prince Oswald into making a stupid move.
Fortunately, my Lord wasn’t that inept. “Did I ever tell you,” Prince Oswald said to Noir conversationally, “that I used to be a trapper?”
“What?” Noir looked truly perplexed at this unexpected turn.
I smiled. Lord Oswald certainly knew how to disarm a conversation when he wanted to. His stories were always exciting to hear, and I didn’t know this one.
“Out on Eden,” my Lord said, “the Pelinese Snowman population was out of control."
Noir started to protest. “I hardly see wha—”
“The Snowmen had eaten all the Walking Cucumbers in Turtle Swamp, with a very strange effect — the Cukes acted like an aphrodisiac. The Snowmen tripled in a matter of months. They were everywhere.”
“Why are you tell—”
“The beasties have six legs, you know,” Lord Oswald continued, seemingly oblivious of Noir’s protests. “Two beady little black eyes, a pointy red nose, white fur and somewhat pear-shaped. When they rear up on just two legs — they’re about the size of a man — they look a bit like snowmen.”
Lord Noir blinked his eyes.
“Hence the name. Anyway, they don’t attack humans, but they like our crops. All the Cukes were gone, and there were a lot of Snowmen looking for a meal. They stripped Turtle Swamp of pretty much all its edible vegetation, then went after the crops. The Overlord there declared open season on the Snowmen.”
Lord Oswald took a breath before continuing. Lord Noir was speechless for a change. I just wanted to hear the rest of the story. Listening to Noir gave me a headache.
“The Overlord was a friend of mine from the legion, so he invited me and some other legion buddies over for a little trapping.” Lord Oswald stared off into the distance dreamily. “Snowmen taste a bit like a cross between—”
I cleared my throat. My Lord’s story was wandering too far afield. Even I didn’t know where my Lord was heading with this story, but I didn’t want Noir to get a chance to jump in before Lord Oswald found the end.
“It doesn’t matter,” my Lord said, winking at me. “They’re good eating and they freeze well, that’s the important thing. Now, we all did some trapping in the legion, for a very different kind of prey — the two-legged kind, as you know.” He glared at the albino and nodded a slight acknowledgement to their shared history.
Lord Noir paled.
“Your basic Snowman isn’t much different. He’s an intelligent bugger, and he can smell a tigerbear trap across the swamp. See, the key to trapping that Snowman is making him walk into the trap thinking it’s something else.”
Noir grimaced. “I don’t hav—”
“Misdirection, that’s how you beat that Snowman. You make him avoid what he thinks is a trap, and get him to walk right into the real trap.” Lord Oswald’s emerald-green eyes took on a hard edge, like the gemstone they resembled.
First and Second Euclids used to play a game with Mama. The twins were identical, so much so that even Daddy couldn’t tell them apart. Mama always said she knew which one was which, that every child of her womb was special and unique, and she knew us all by sight instantly.
Second always said Mama was full of it, and one day he set out to prove it. First and Second had completely different personalities, and Second was convinced that the differences gave Mama enough clues to differentiate them. So he hatched this elaborate scheme to trap Mama. The two Euclid twins spent six months in preparation, learning each other’s gestures, boning up on the preferences that they’d spent a lifetime ignoring in each other in an effort to retain their individuality. By the end of the six months, they could imitate each other perfectly. Even First was convinced that Mama wouldn’t be able to tell who was whom.
The day came when the twins decided to spring the trap. They swapped lives for a day. From what they said afterward, even their girlfriends didn’t detect the switch. After dinner, Mama asked Second to clear the dishes. She looked straight at Second when she asked him. I knew they’d switched for the day, so I also knew it was really First, not Second. But Mama must have thought he was Second.
Second left the kitchen to gloat, waiting, I’m sure, for a good opportunity to embarrass Mama with her mistake.
First started doing the dishes after a token protest, but you could see he wasn’t happy about it. First had done dishes the night before, per the family schedule, and I think he realized just then that Second had picked that day on purpose, so he could avoid doing dishes as a kind of special bonus from the deceit.
Mama stopped him after he’d picked up the first plate.
“What’re doing, boy?” Mama asked First. “You know it’s your brother’s day for dishes.” She took the plate from his hands, all the while staring deep in his eyes, and yelled, “Second Euclid Ancel, you get your butt in here and do your chores.”
Second raced in, realizing that his trap had sprung and missed, and sheepishly took over the dishes from First.
“You think I don’t know my own children,” Mama said sternly to both of them. “It’s in the eyes, boys, the eyes. You can never fool your own mama.”
The Euclids nodded and hung their heads in shame.
Mama smacked Second in the back of the head. “That’s for trying to trick your mama. I know you’re behind this.” She smacked First, too. “And that’s for going along with his tomfoolery.”
She stalked out of the kitchen, but I saw her smile once her back was turned to the twins.
First and Second never realized that Mama had set her own trap for them. In a large family, it’s hard to keep secrets for very long, and Mama had found out their attempted subterfuge pretty quickly. So she kept a careful eye on the twins, waiting for them to make a mistake.
Mama knew their different personalities as well as they knew them themselves, and she knew that Second’s pride would be the driving force in the game. When First protested the dishes, he walked into her trap; when he sulked about it — even for a moment — the trap was sprung, and Mama knew they’d switched that day. The rest of her display was a psychological reverse on the twins, so they wouldn’t try it again.
Lord Oswald knew Lord Noir was setting a trap for him, too, and he wanted to foil his plans and make sure Noir didn’t try it ever again, so he set his own trap for Noir.
The ingenuity of the prince’s trap was that it wasn’t actually a trap at all. By warning Noir about the Snowman trapping, he was actually applying the misdirection. Noir would be on the lookout now for my Lord’s trap, and would think he saw decoy traps everywhe
re. He’d never know that Prince Oswald hadn’t set a trap for him at all, yet he’d spend a considerable amount of time trying to avoid being led by those phantom traps.
Lord Noir cleared his throat. “Yes, well, that’s all very interesting, Prince Oswald, but I really must be going now.” Noir turned to leave, but stopped. “Perhaps you should reconsider the ramifications of your indiscretion with the empress.” He slipped out before the prince responded.
“I’ll see him out personally,” I said to Lord Oswald.
My Lord nodded and smiled at me impishly.
I dashed down the hallway to make sure that Noir was heading out the hatch, but I stopped dead in my tracks when I found him. He was speaking to Lady Redwing near the hatch door, using animated gestures to make his point. After a few seconds, he left, leaving Lady Phoenix standing alone in the hallway.
The lady looked in my direction, and caught my eye for a few seconds before storming down another hallway. From the piercing look she gave me, I had no doubt that Noir had told her about seeing us leaving Empress Jewel’s bedchambers.
I sprinted down the hallway, but Lord Noir stepped back into the starship just before I reached the hatch. Amazingly, my ill-fitting pants were still intact, despite the workout I’d given the seams in the last few minutes.
“Oh, good,” Noir said when he saw me. He smiled malevolently. “Please tell your prince, I forgot to mention what Empress Jewel’s lady visitor called out when I arrived.”
“What was that?” I said, breathing a little hard.
“’Oz, is that you again?’” Noir said ominously, and slipped out the hatch.
Chapter 11
Jealous Redwing
I NOTICED THAT, SINCE OUR ARRIVAL IN NEW ROME, every time we boarded the Phoenix, something painfully bad happened after leaving the homey, apple-pie atmosphere of the starship. I wasn’t sure if we were being jinxed by the Phoenix or saved by it from a worse fate.
After I told Lord Oswald about my run-in with Lord Noir, he decided we would be better off staying at the palace suite, at least until the succession announcement at the end of the next week.
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