The Sword-Edged blonde

by Alex Bledsoe

  “They knew who I’d been sent to fetch. People still talk about you here.”

  “They do,” I repeated. My stomach fell into a pit and I was suddenly queasy. “What do they say?”

  A spark flared in the darkness, and then a torch burst to life. Anders held it at arm’s length while the harsh residue burned away. “They talk about that day at the lake, when you fought all those guys,” Anders said as he waited for the flame to settle. “Whenever someone’s facing odds like that, they call it ‘getting LaCrossed.’ ”

  “I can think of a few better words for it.” Failure came to mind. “We’re not allowed to use the front door?”

  “People watch the front. The king wants your visit to be, ah . . . discreet.”

  We were at one end of a long passage. We walked down the tunnel to another door and Anders, still humming, tapped the stones in the wall, looking for the false one. I reached past him and pushed the correct one, which slid in to reveal a key in a small depression. The castle had dozens of these secret passages—every castle did—and it made me smile to think that I probably knew them better than Anders. After all, I’d grown up around them.

  The passage beyond was lit with widely spaced torches, so that we had to pass through deep pools of darkness between them. I knew that in some of these shadows, soldiers could hide in invisible notches in the wall, a security precaution to defend against enemy infiltrators. Heavy iron gates could also drop at a moment’s notice, trapping intruders between them. Ordinarily, though, these spots would be unmanned, because Arentia had been at peace with its neighbors for over forty years, since the reign of the previous king. Now, given all the precautions outside, would these niches be occupied by soldiers ready to defend the palace from attack? I thought about reaching into one just to see, but figured that was needlessly provocative. If I got run through before I even talked to the king, I’d never find out the truth.

  The tunnel dead-ended at yet another door. Anders knocked, and a slot opened. Hard eyes peered at us. Anders held up his identification ring again, and after a moment the slot closed, and the bolt inside slid back. Anders snuffed his torch in a bucket beside the door and gestured for me to precede him.

  We entered a small antechamber with a desk and two chairs. When the door shut behind us, it became almost invisible in the wall’s stonework. Another much more modern door was directly opposite the one we’d just used. A soldier, a major according to his uniform, sat behind the desk and looked up at us. When he saw Anders, he jumped to his feet and saluted. The man who’d opened the door stood at stiff attention beside it.

  “As you were,” Anders said calmly. “Has the king been informed that we’ve arrived?”

  “Yes, sir,” the major said. “He’s expecting you in his office.”

  “Very good.” The soldier who’d admitted us leaped to open the other door.

  I realized I was sweating, and my hands shook as we walked down the hallway whose every brick and tapestry was familiar to me. This was the passageway to the king’s private family quarters, and you could only enter through the secure door we’d used, or the two other hidden ones known only to the family and its closest friends.

  We reached the big double doors at the end of the hall. Anders knocked. The door opened partially, and a white-haired man peered out beneath thick, still-dark eyebrows.

  “Brought him,” Anders said simply, and stepped aside.

  The old man squinted at me. I knew him, of course—Emerson Wentrobe, advisor to the king of Arentia for the last sixty years, the one great constant in Arentian government. Some uninformed wags always insisted that Wentrobe was the apocryphal power behind the throne; the rest of us knew that, while his advice was often heeded, he never made the final decision. At least that had been the case with the previous king; I couldn’t imagine Phil being any different.

  Wentrobe had only been an advisor for forty years the last time I saw him, and his hair had been stone gray, not white. But his eyes were still as sharp as ever. “Young master Edward,” he said to me.

  “Not so young,” I replied, and offered my hand. “How are you, Mr. Wentrobe?”

  “Not so old,” he said with a grin. His grip was still firm, although not as bonecrushing as it had seemed in my youth.

  He stepped aside, and this time I gestured for Anders to precede me. But the young man shook his head. “I’m just supposed to deliver you. This is where I get off. It’s been a pleasure traveling with you, Baron LaCrosse.”

  I winced a little; it was the first time anyone had ever used that title in reference to me. “Yeah, well, you can still call me Eddie. Thanks, Mike.”

  SIX

  Wentrobe closed the door behind us. The office was decked out with all the gilt and glitter expected of a king, but for the moment we were alone in it. I dropped my saddlebags next to the door and hung my jacket on the coat rack. I felt seriously underdressed.

  “Would you like a drink?” Wentrobe asked, moving to the bar.

  “Sure. Rum if you have it.”

  “We do indeed.” As he poured, he glanced at me. “You appear to have grown accustomed to hard work.”

  “Yeah. Who’d’ve thought, huh?” I took the drink gratefully. “So. How are . . . things?”

  Wentrobe sipped his own drink. “What do you know?”

  “What was in Phil’s note, what Anders told me, and what I picked up from gossip on the way. Phil met some mysterious beautiful woman, married her, and now everyone thinks she killed their child.”

  He nodded. “That’s what everyone thinks, all right. Almost everyone.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  He made a grand shrug. “Their son is dead. The queen was found with the body, covered in blood that wasn’t her own, inside a locked room. Those are the only facts everyone agrees on.”

  “So the queen murdered the prince.”

  He nodded and poured himself another drink. “There seems to be no other logical explanation.”

  “But Phil doesn’t believe it.”

  He looked down into the goblet. “No,” he said with the weight only a disillusioned elder can manage. “He doesn’t.”

  I picked up a framed portrait from the big desk. About the size of my hand, it was a colored line drawing of a woman with wavy blond hair, blue eyes and a mouth that seemed about to smile. She had the look of fresh air and forests after a spring rain, probably because she wore a crown of flowers. “Is this her?”

  “Yes,” answered a new voice. It had grown deeper, but I’d know it anywhere.

  He stood across the room from me, in a casual jacket and shirt. He wasn’t wearing his crown, which for some reason surprised me, although I knew it was too heavy and uncomfortable to wear except on formal occasions. I guess I just expected him to look more royal, like King Philip, instead of so much like my old best friend Phil.

  Phil. Fucking King Phil.

  He grew taller than me when we were fourteen, and still was. His hair was cropped short, and touched with gray at the temples, but otherwise still had that annoying disheveled quality that made all the girls sigh. He wore a mustache, also shot through with gray, and there were deep lines at the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t fat, though, and he still moved gracefully.

  Still looking at me, he said, “Pour me one of those, will you, Emerson?”

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” Wentrobe said.

  I put the picture back on his desk. “Not bad. Not as cute as that Danner girl you chased after when we were fourteen, but not bad.”

  “The picture doesn’t do her justice,” Phil said. He took the drink from Wentrobe, downed half of it and then managed a small grin. “Remember when we stole that bottle of rotgut from your dad’s wine cellar and drank it in the woods, then tried to sneak back in without anyone noticing?”

  “Yeah. I’m a better drinker now.”

  “Me, too.” A real smile finally cracked his cool demeanor, and suddenly there was my old pal Phil, who’d once puked in my lap and set
me up with his sister and taught me to play cards and was the worst dancer I’d ever seen. Something fell away inside me, too, and we grabbed each other in a long, intense bear hug that once would’ve embarrassed us both. A whole bunch of emotions I’d stuck in that dark spot under my stomach threatened to burst out, but with great difficulty I kept them in their place. Finally we broke apart and just grinned at each other.

  “You smell like a pond,” he said.

  “Where I live, everything’s been flooded for two weeks. You smell like a damn bouquet.”

  “It’s called bathing. All the kids are doing it. So did you have any trouble getting here?”

  “Not with that super-patriot you sent to find me.”

  Phil nodded. “He’s a good one, for sure. I’ve had my eye on him for a while.” He swallowed the rest of his drink and handed the goblet to Wentrobe for a refill. “Well, I’ll leave it up to you. We can drink and reminisce first, or I can tell you why I needed to see you.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you want while we drink?”

  “That works.” He gestured at an overstuffed high-backed chair. I sank into it while he sat on the corner of the desk and picked up the picture of his wife. “You didn’t come to the wedding.”

  “Had a previous engagement.” In truth, I avoided information about Arentia so successfully that he’d been married for eighteen months before I even knew about it.

  “Well, that was six years ago, anyway. We tried to start a family right away, but it took a while. Eventually, though, we did have a son. Last year.” He met my eyes. “We named him Edward.”

  I must’ve had a great expression, because Phil only kept a straight face for about ten seconds. “No, I’m just kidding, we named him Pridiri.”

  “Good, that won’t get him picked on in school.”

  “Ree wanted it. She said it means, ‘relief from anxiety,’ and it was very important to her. I call him ‘P.D.’ for short.” I assumed “Ree” was what he called his queen, Rhiannon. Girls could get away with strange nicknames like that, especially girls who looked like the one in that picture.

  “So what happened to him?”

  “The official version,” he said with a glance at Wentrobe, “is that she killed him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. There are all sorts of rumors, including that she was a moon priestess doing a spell to bring down the government. My favorite is that she hated changing diapers so much that she lost her temper when she couldn’t find a nursemaid.” His smile was not amused. “But there’s no denying she was found covered in his blood, and the only remains were bones.” He said this with the practiced calm of royalty, betraying no emotion. “She was violently ill afterwards. The consensus is that she ate part of the corpse.”

  “What does she say?”

  “She says she can’t remember. We’d been at a state dinner, and she left early to go put him to bed. Her maids said they left her alone with P.D., and when they came back they found her passed out, covered in blood, surrounded by moon priestess paraphernalia. Candles, knives, incense, the works.”

  “Could it be a setup?”

  “I wish it could be, but how? She was in the nursery, in the middle of the most well-protected building in the whole country. And why? If someone breached our security and got into the castle, why kill a baby? Why not her, or me?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. ‘Why’ is a good question, all right.”

  He was silent for a moment as he met my eyes. “I was hoping you could find the answer to it.”

  “Figured as much.”

  “I need someone from outside, who I can trust, and who’s up to the challenge. Believe it or not, you’ve got quite the reputation for cleverness. In some circles, at least.”

  I held my goblet out to Wentrobe for a refill, then tossed it down. “I don’t normally work in circles this high off the ground.”

  “But I can trust you, Eddie,” he repeated, so simply that I was both touched and infuriated.

  So this was it. My best friend, who I hadn’t seen in twenty years, wanted me to help prove his wife wasn’t a child killer when everyone else seemed sure that she was. To do that, I’d no doubt have to move around through these places loaded with memories for me, memories I’d gladly cut out of my brain with a rusty butter knife if I knew it would get rid of them. And I knew he wouldn’t offer me money, just like he knew I wouldn’t accept any. My only reward would be helping a friend.

  I stood. “Well . . . ah, hell, you know I’ll do it, so we can skip all the hemming and hawing. I’ll need to see the official reports on it, the witness inquisition notes and everything.”

  “All waiting for you,” Wentrobe said, “in your room.”

  I managed half a grin at Phil. “Pretty damn sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  “That’s why they let me wear the fancy hat.”

  I put the goblet down on his desk despite the temptation to ask for another refill. “Okay, then. Guess I’ll go get cleaned up a little. Think I could get some food?”

  “Yes. Emerson, I know it’s a little beneath your standard duties, but would you show Eddie to his room?”

  “Certainly, Your Majesty. And I’ll send up something—ham and cheese were your favorite, as I recall.”

  I nodded, and picked up my jacket and saddlebags. “Once I’ve read through this stuff, I’ll probably want to talk to the same people. Hopefully I’ll have some new questions for them.”

  “Sure,” Phil said.

  “And then . . . I guess I need to meet your wife.”

  SEVEN

  I hadn’t enjoyed such swanky accommodations in a long time. When we were kids, Phil and I watched his father’s guests go in and out of these elaborately appointed rooms, often accompanied by a train of assistants and servants. Once we planned to sneak our dates into one of them, but his mother busted us and we both got grounded. And once I had sneaked into one, with Janet. So even though I was a grown man, I still felt like I was about to get in trouble as I sat on the edge of the ridiculously soft bed.

  After a bath I changed into clean clothes and ate two of the huge rolls, packed with ham and cheese and brought by a serious-looking, matronly servant. Two thick parchment folders were stacked next to the reading lantern on the desk. I finished the second roll, opened the top folder and began to read.

  Two hours later I’d finished the files, and the rolls weren’t sitting too well alongside what I’d learned. I closed the second folder, walked to the window and opened the wooden blinds. It was dark, and although the night was filled with city sounds, the breeze seemed cool and clean. I certainly didn’t feel the same way.

  All the guests at the state dinner the night of the murder agreed that Queen Rhiannon had seemed in her usual good spirits, charming the visiting bigwigs and even, once the after-dinner wine started flowing, favoring them with a song. She’d left at around 9:30 and gone upstairs, ostensibly to feed her son before retiring.

  The head nursemaid, Beth Maxwell, reported that the queen arrived just before ten. I knew something about the layout of this castle, and nearly thirty minutes seemed a long time to get from the dining room to the nursery. Still, why would she hurry? Dawdling certainly wasn’t a crime.

  Nurse Maxwell left the baby with his mother and went to fold some linen in the laundry. Next, one of the maids, Sally Sween, entered the nursery to refill the night lamps with oil; the queen appeared to have dozed off in her rocking chair, with young Pridiri asleep in her arms. This, evidently, was not unusual, and the maid left them alone. And they stayed alone for the next hour. So from about 10:30 to 11:30, the queen could’ve done anything.

  At 11:30, Nurse Maxwell returned to the nursery to put away the fresh bedclothes and diapers. She found the door locked, which according to her had never before happened. Miss Sween joined her in pounding on the door, but they got no answer. When they smelled smoke, they summoned a captain of the guard, Thomas Vogel, who forced the door open.

  Here I fo
und the guard’s report most illuminating, because he was a trained soldier who could observe accurately in a crisis. The queen lay on the floor, naked, covered in “a red substance that appeared to be blood.” Marked on the floor was a circle, with “various ideograms inscribed along its border with chalk.” He also described a knife, a stick with three feathers attached, and a bundle of what he correctly judged to be sage. In the center of the circle, a cauldron had been set up over a small brazier. This, plus the incense, supplied the smoke the two women smelled.

  As the women attended to the fallen queen, Vogel examined the cauldron. Inside it he saw “boiling water and several pieces of bone, one of which appeared to be an infant human skull.” The window was open, but he stressed that no one could have gained access through it, as the window was barred and opened onto a sheer four-story wall well inside the castle’s guarded perimeter.

  The queen awoke then, and was immediately violently ill. Vogel, in some sort of triumph of observational skill, mentioned that “she expelled large chunks of what appeared to be boiled meat.”

  Vogel dispatched Nurse Maxwell, the calmer of the two women, to immediately fetch King Philip. He then shut the door to the room and insisted nothing be touched. He spent the few minutes before the king and Wentrobe’s arrival sketching the designs and placement of items within the circle. He also provided a list of banquet guests, along with capsule summaries to help jog people’s memories: Lady who bark-talked to her poodle, Blond man with the ugly chimpanzee, Countess with flatulence problem, Baron and young footman with family resemblance.

  I smiled; with a dozen men as cool-headed as Vogel, I could rule the world.

  And so the king and Wentrobe arrived, and pieced together—no pun intended—what must have happened. The queen, who had never before shown any interest in mooncraft, had, for reasons unknown, ceremonially sacrificed her son and cannibalized his corpse.

  The queen claimed to remember nothing other than falling asleep while she nursed. This obviously wasn’t much of an alibi, and the scrutiny Phil knew he’d face if he tried to delay action left him with only one option: he arrested her for murder and had her held in the prison tower reserved for the most dangerous, or most important, criminals. And then secretly, he sent for me.