The Traitor's Heir

by Anna Thayer

  “You must choose.” Alessia’s words came to him again. He wished that she were there with him. No, not there; he wished that they were both far away. He wished that either the King or the usurper had claimed victory, and that he had been exiled to a distant land to live out the rest of his years. He was desperately tired. How could he face another day in Dunthruik, another day of treachery and torment? He wanted to be free – of the city and his oaths.

  It was the one choice from which he was barred.

  “Some of the men you brought back are very badly hurt,” Ladomer observed.

  Eamon had slept fitfully through what remained of that night and had risen with the dawn. He had spent a large part of the day signing and sealing dispatches on Cathair’s behalf – he had quill-ache. Having given the last papers to the last messenger he had been dismissed, and decided to see how Anderas was faring. Emerging from the Hands’ Hall he had met Ladomer. It was late afternoon.

  “Very badly hurt indeed,” Ladomer added.

  “Of course they are; it was a massacre,” Eamon answered, irked. Couldn’t his friend imagine what it had been like?

  “So was Ashford Ridge. Have you heard?” Ladomer shook his head. “I can’t understand how it can all have gone so wrong.”

  Eamon sighed. Any operation commanded by Ladomer Kentigern would, he supposed bitterly, have been completed without a single problem and brought glory down to the tenth generation of any man so much as loosely related to those who had followed him. He grit his teeth and said nothing.

  “Some of the Ashford Ridge survivors say that they were outnumbered, and ambushed and harried as they retreated,” Ladomer continued. “They lost more than a hundred and sixty men, and none of the Hands returned. It’s a disaster for the quarters’ Gauntlet groups. It’s a good job that the commander didn’t make it back alive – Cathair would have had his head, and might well visit his wrath on any survivor who comes back. And then, after all that, you,” he added incredulously. “What in the Master’s name happened to you?” Ladomer hefted his customary papers from one arm to another and looked Eamon squarely in the eye. “I’m surprised Cathair didn’t kill you on the spot! The Hands were convinced they sent the best man for the job.”

  “Told you that, did they? Don’t be an ass. You know as well as I do that they gave it to me because it was supposed to be an easy way to prove my credentials and Cathair’s praise. That’s why this is so awful.” He pressed at his head. It ached.

  “You’ve still got the cloak, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” For what good that did him.

  “Well, then, don’t make a catastrophe out of it,” Ladomer answered. “They can demote you, you know.”

  The thought sent a shiver down his spine.

  “Actually, I think Lord Tramist demanded that you be demoted,” Ladomer told him, “but he was overruled. Consider that, Eamon! Someone overruled Tramist in your favour. It implies that you have already proven something.”

  Eamon shuddered. It was not an encouraging thought; he didn’t want Tramist as an enemy.

  “Word has it that there was a snake in the ranks that gave your block away,” Ladomer persisted, lowering his voice conspiratorially.

  Eamon glowered. “Word has it wrong,” he spat. He wondered if he felt so wrathful because it should have been true. “Our information was wrong,” he thundered as Ladomer raised a placating hand, “and we didn’t expect bloody war wagons!”

  “That’s all that happened?” Ladomer seemed disappointed.

  “No, Ladomer, that’s not all that happened. Men died.”

  Ladomer didn’t answer. A few minutes later, he airily changed the subject.

  They reached the East Quarter College. Ladomer left him at the steps. Eamon quickly found out where Anderas was and went to see him.

  Despite his injuries, it had been deemed that Anderas was to continue acting as the East Quarter’s captain. He was being kept in his room. When Eamon entered he saw that the captain was on his bed, propped up and holding reports in his hand. His first lieutenant, Greenwood, stood next to his bed, studiously pointing out details on the papers.

  Greenwood immediately bowed when Eamon entered; Eamon had to actively forbid Anderas from clambering to his feet.

  “I hardly think that necessary, captain!”

  “It would be most improper of me not to, Lord Goodman,” Anderas insisted.

  “Let me rephrase my statement: do not trouble yourself!”

  Anderas relented. Eamon saw a strange look in his eyes. He wondered what it meant.

  “How are you feeling?” Though still pale, the fact that Anderas had considered standing boded well.

  “Much better,” the captain confessed. “They’re forcing me to imbibe some horrible substance that would probably be more at home in the city sewers, but cheerfully claim that it will clear the infection.”

  Eamon grinned for the first time in days. “I’m very pleased to hear it.”

  Anderas raised an eyebrow. “That the substance is horrible, or that it will clear the infection?”

  “Both,” Eamon answered with a smile. “Captains tend to arrogance unless kept in good check, I hear.”

  “Being on the mend, they have found me something to do,” Anderas told him, glancing at his papers. “We still haven’t selected a new college draybant but First Lieutenant Greenwood is good enough to keep me informed. He wanted a signature, for some of this culling nonsense…” Anderas paused, putting his name with a flourish. “There. Well, he has it now. Thank you, Mr Greenwood.”

  “Sir.” Greenwood saluted, bowed, and left the room. Eamon moved to the bedside.

  “Have you come to discuss the cull with me as well, Lord Goodman?” Anderas asked, leaning back with a weary sigh.

  “No,” Eamon answered with a laugh. “I’ve come to tell you about the weather.”

  “With all due reverence, I can keep a fair eye on those developments from here,” Anderas replied. “You’ll see that I have a window for just such a purpose.”

  “Ah, but you can’t trust your own eyes in this city,” Eamon remarked.

  “Do you mean to say that it handicaps us?” Anderas asked with a faint smile.

  Eamon groaned. “That, captain,” he said, “was a pun worthy of Lord Cathair.”

  “Then I’ve been in this city too long!” Anderas answered, and they laughed together. Soon Anderas sat back and looked at Eamon with tired but hopeful eyes.

  “I would be most obliged if you would tell me about the weather, Lord Goodman,” he said.

  The sky was beginning to darken when Eamon eventually left the East Quarter College. He felt better for having passed an hour in Anderas’s company.

  He heard thunder rolling over the sea and quickened his pace. The storm was far away, but it made him feel nervous. He hoped to close himself in his room and sleep.

  He followed the Coll towards the palace. The torchbearers were at work and the building took on an overwhelming shadow shape in the half-light.

  There were many men and women on the road that night. He noted none of them until one spoke to him.

  “Eamon!” it said, sounding surprised, overjoyed, and afraid all at once. He knew the voice.

  “Alessia,” he breathed. A moment later the hooded figure was caught about his neck, holding him tightly. He drew her to one side of the busy street. “What are you doing here?” he asked, hardly daring to let her go lest she should disappear into the night.

  “I came to look for you,” she answered, her voice hidden in his shoulder and the hood. It had imprisoned her dark hair, which seemed to him an intolerable crime.

  “For me?” He could barely believe it. “After what I did, you can bear to look for me?”

  “I always will,” she replied. “I’m so glad that you’re safe,” she added, holding him closer. “I heard that terrible things happened at the battle.”

  His heart pounding, Eamon clenched her to him as he had longed to do every night since he had l
eft the city. “They did,” he whispered. “I am so glad, Alessia, that you are here.”

  It seemed an eternity that they stood there together. He did not care who saw him. He drew strength and comfort from her.

  “I have something for you,” she said at last.

  He gazed at her curiously. “You do?”

  “Yes. Seats for the theatre.”

  “A gift better suited to victory than to defeat, surely!” Eamon asked – but he could not feel sorry about what had happened while she held him.

  “A gift to toast some greater, and as yet unknown, victory,” she countered. There was something strange about her voice.

  He lifted her face towards his. “Are you all right?” he asked, searching her eyes.

  She pressed his hand. “Will you come with me?”

  “Tonight?” Eamon asked, astonished. “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  Eamon laughed quietly and kissed her. How could he say no?

  She had clearly foreseen his answer, for beneath her brown mantle she was already finely dressed in a long, purple dress that suited her as perfectly as everything did. They walked and talked quietly together. Eamon thought that her pace seemed swifter than he knew it – and her voice less free. Perhaps she feared to be seen with him after all. But she held his hand unbearably tight and stayed close by him. He felt unpolished and under-dressed beside her.

  Dunthruik’s Crown Theatre lay on the Coll in one of the most affluent parts of the West Quarter. It was a tall building with a rounded, gilded roof supported by columns capped with crowns. At the entrance to the theatre stood two enormous eagles, crowns on their heads and breasts, and crushed between their stony talons crawled the frail, twisted bodies of snakes. Enormous braziers hung down from the rooftop; they burned like the fallen stars of an apocalypse.

  Everyone going to the theatre was decked in finery. Eamon supposed that it was not an occasion for just anyone. Not since the ball at the palace had he seen such clothes, or so many servants scurrying along beside their masters and mistresses. Why had Alessia come to him alone – not even attended by Lillabeth?

  People stopped to stare at him. He tried to hold his head aloof as he had often seen Cathair do. What right had they to judge him? He had done everything he could have done for the throned. Men, some likely better men than he, had died doing it; the swarming gentry could not say as much.

  Alessia led him through the theatre gates. A swathe of steps rose to the doors. Other Hands ascended them, along with lords, ladies, and rich artisans or merchants.

  The steps led up to a grand entry hall, with a floor patterned with coloured stones that traced soaring eagles and crowns. There were two tall staircases leading off to each side – Alessia took him to one of them. An attendant bowed to them.

  “My lord; Lady Turnholt.”

  Alessia gave him the markers that denoted their seats. The servant led them to the next floor of the building. There was a hallway in which were a dozen numbered doors. Eamon realized that they led to the separate boxes on the upper balconies of the theatre – they were reserved only for the noblest. Somewhere nearby would be the Eagle’s Box, used by the Master and his closest Hands.

  The attendant escorted them to a door and opened it, bowing grandly. Alessia thanked him for his service before he left.

  Their box was high, with a dazzling view of the theatre. The gentry were beginning to fill the other boxes; those across from them were crammed full of exquisite dresses and cloaks. Each box had a few seats – tall, comfortable, cushioned affairs, red and bearing crowns. The stage was draped with thick red curtains. Casting light from above was a chandelier shaped like a towering golden crown. Candles burned at each point, shining through golden and reddened glass to touch the stage far below. The light picked out paintings on the upper parts of the theatre’s dome.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said, turning to look at her. There was no one in the world as beautiful as she!

  She sat slowly, the red chair seeming to engulf her. He sat beside her. They could see the stage clearly and could be seen by all below them. Some seemed appalled to see him; women leaned across to their companions and pointed towards him as they muttered behind their fans. He shuffled uncomfortably. He could imagine what they were saying, and knew that rumour was never kind to the truth. How could he dare to show his face at so public a place, and with so distinguished a lady? It was outrageous.

  Attendants began dousing some of the lights. The murmur of people rumbled all around them and Eamon felt the building of old excitement in him. His father had sometimes taken him to the theatre when he was younger, though never to the Crown. They had certainly never sat in a box – though sometimes they had stood in the pit, right up against the stage. He vividly remembered his first visit to a small, round theatre in the North Quarter; he could have been no older than seven, scrabbling to sit on his father’s knee so that he could drink in every drop of what he saw and heard. It had been a play where two Gauntlet officers duelled over a woman. He could still conjure the clash of the painted swords.

  He felt a light touch on his arm. “Eamon,” Alessia whispered. Her face seemed pale in the flickering light. Something about her expression worried him.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, catching her hand in his own. It was chilled; he covered it with both of his. “You’re frozen!” he exclaimed, leaning down to kiss her fingers.

  “Eamon, I need to speak with you,” she said, her voice strange and urgent.

  “Of course,” he answered, wondering at her words. “What is it?”

  Alessia smiled, seemingly reassured, and drew breath to speak.

  Before another word could leave her mouth the door to the box opened. They looked back towards it and then rose swiftly to their feet. Eamon let go of Alessia’s trembling hands to bow.

  “My lord,” he said.

  “Lord Goodman; Lady Turnholt,” said the Right Hand. He was framed in the doorway by the tall lights beyond and his face chilled Eamon to the very heart. “I hope you will excuse this interruption?”

  He wished he could refuse it. “Of course, my lord.”

  The Right Hand gestured for them to sit. They did not dare. “It is very brave of you, Lord Goodman, to attend a dramatic performance such as this, given your own recent theatrics,” he commented. His smile seemed placid, but Eamon calculated intent behind it. It terrified him. What did the Right Hand want?

  “It is dramatic that you, my lord, should appear publicly with me.”

  “If such is shameful to you, my lord, we will leave,” said Alessia. Eamon glanced at her – she quivered.

  “Oh, you need not take such a departure on my account, Lady Turnholt,” the Right Hand told her. “It seems only right that such dramatic souls as ours take company together.”

  “You will not sit in the Eagle’s Box?” She seemed nervous.

  The Right Hand offered her a smile. “I will sit here. Besides,” he added, “there is no company here more beautiful than your own, lady.”

  Eamon could only watch as the Right Hand took the seat beside his. He arranged himself comfortably in the chair as he spoke again. “I am the patron of this theatre, Lord Goodman, and I like to attend performances from time to time, to ensure that my name births good things.”

  “You do rightly, my lord,” Eamon answered. Alessia shivered at his side. She could no longer speak to him. What plagued her?

  The Right Hand smiled again. “Please, do sit.”

  Eamon lowered himself into his seat. Alessia sat beside him, still trembling. He reached across the dark to press her hand.

  The stage curtains drew back. The Right Hand began to applaud and the rest of the theatre followed suit, an ocean of noise following the first crest. Eamon heard the Right Hand’s palms beating strongly together; the noise was deafening. There was no doubting the man’s power.

  The stage was deep and scenes representing a battlefield had been erected at its back. At the front was a tall pole, on
which hung an eagled banner. Three actors, dressed as Gauntlet soldiers, entered from different directions. Each bore an injury and the same eagle as the standard. Stepping to the front of the stage, one called to the audience: “To his glory!”

  The whole theatre answered him: “To his glory!”

  The soldier stepped back; the drama could now begin. One of the other actors hurried over to him. “What news?” he asked. “The Serpent is fallen and his brood is fled, but I fear for our noble captain!”

  “Did you not see? Have you not heard? What a captain! He came alone from the press, badged in the blood of the viper’s brood, bearing the standard of the Serpent himself. He will carry it to the Master!”

  “Do you know this play, Lord Goodman?”

  Eamon started: the Right Hand spoke softly in his ear.

  “I do not believe I do, my lord,” he answered. He was aware of Alessia watching him.

  “Ah! Let me explain it to you!” The Right Hand spoke with relish. “Its historical accuracy is, of course, questionable – as is so often the case with drama – but it is the story of a captain who fought for the Master at the battle of Edesfield. I am reliably informed that it is a town you know well,” he added with a small smile, “so I will not describe it to you.”

  Eamon nodded silently.

  “The captain,” the Right Hand continued, “a man of lowly birth but promoted for good service, is honoured for capturing the standard of the enemy, and rewarded for his deed by betrothal to the only daughter of a noble family, a woman he has always loved and never dreamed of obtaining. But,” he went on, “another loves her and, to spite him, his aspiring rival lays proofs showing her to be of the Serpent’s pay. The captain marries the noblewoman, a moment of utter bliss for him, and then finds the false proofs. Deeply grieved, he goes to his rival – once his closest friend – for counsel, dressed still in his wedding robes. His rival encourages him to take the life of his wife and offer it as a gift to the Master.”

  Eamon wondered at the growing delight with which the Master’s closest told the story. He could see the actors moving and speaking on the stage but could not take his attention from the Right Hand.