Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War)

by Lawrence, Mark

  • • •

  I came back to consciousness lying horizontal once again, and hurting in so many places that I missed out the blissful ignorance stage and went directly into the asking of stupid questions.

  “Where am I?” Nasal and hesitant.

  The bright but flickering light and the faint unnatural whine helped me to remember. Somewhere with Builder-globes. I made to sit up and found myself tied to a table. “Help!” A little louder. Panicked, I tested my strength against the ropes and found no give in them. “Help!”

  “Best save your breath!” The voice came from the shadows by the door. I squinted. A thickset ruffian leaned against the wall, looking back at me.

  “I’m Prince Jalan! I’ll have your fucking head for this! Untie these ropes.”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” He leaned forwards, chewing something, the flickering light gleaming on his baldness.

  “I’m Prince Jalan! Don’t you recognize me?”

  “Like I know what the princes look like. I don’t even know the princes’ names! Far as I’m concerned you’re some toff who got juiced up and went swimming in a sewer. Just your bad luck to end up here. Horace, though, he did seem to know you from somewhere. Told me to keep you here and off he went. ‘Keep an eye on that one, Daveet,’ he said. ‘Keep a good watch.’ You must be some kind of important or you’d be floating down the river by now with your throat cut.”

  “Kill me and my grandmother will raze this quarter to the ground.” A blatant lie, but, spoken with conviction, it made me feel better. “I’m a rich man. Let me go and I’ll see you’re fixed up for life.” I’ll admit I have a gift for lying. I sound least convincing when I tell the truth.

  “Money’s nice an’ all,” the man said. He took a step away from the wall and let the flickers illuminate the brutality of his face. “But if I let you go without Horace’s say-so then I wouldn’t have no fingers to count it all with. And if it turned out you really were a prince and we let you go without the boss’s say-so, well me and Horace would think having our fingers taken was the easy part.” He bared his teeth at me—more gaps than teeth, truth be told—and settled back into the shadow.

  I lay back, moaning from time to time, and asking questions that he ignored. At least the strange compulsion that had me running headlong into this mess in the first place had now faded. I still had that sense of direction, but the need to pursue it had lessened and I felt more my old self. Which in this instance meant terrified. Even in my terror, though, I noticed that the direction that nagged at me was changing, swinging round, the urge to pursue it growing more faint by the minute.

  I drew a deep breath and took stock of my surroundings. A smallish room, not one of those long galleries. They’d been growing plants there? That made no sense. No plants in here, though. The broken light probably meant it wasn’t suitable. Just a table and me tied to it.

  “Why—” The door juddered open and cut through my nineteenth question.

  “Good lord, it stinks in here!” A calm and depressingly familiar voice. “Stand our guest up, why don’t you, and let’s see if you can’t sluice some of that filth off him.”

  Men loomed to either side, strong hands grasped the table, and the world turned through a right angle, leaving the table standing on end, and me standing too, still bound to it. A bucket of cold water took my breath and vision before I had a chance to look around. Another followed in quick succession. I stood gasping, trying to get a breath—no mean task with your nose clogged with blood and water everywhere—whilst a fragrant brown pool began to spread around my feet.

  “Well, bless me. There seems to be a prince hidden under all this unpleasantness. A diamond in the muck, as they say. Albeit a very low-carat one.”

  I shook the wet hair from my eyes, and there he stood, Maeres Allus, dressed in his finest as if bound for high company . . . and an opera perhaps?

  “Ah, Maeres! I was hoping to see you. Had a little something to hand over towards our arrangement.” I never called it my debt. Our arrangement sounded better. A little more as if it was both our problems, not just mine.

  “You were?” Just the slightest smile mocking at the corners of his mouth. He’d worn that same smile when one of his heavies snapped my index finger. The ache of it still ran through me on cold mornings when I reached for the flagon of small beer they put by my bed. It ran through that same finger now, secured at my side.

  “Yes.” I didn’t even stutter. “Had it with me at the opera.” By my reckoning the business with Snorri had bought me in the region of six months’ grace, but it never hurts to sound willing. Besides, the main thing when tied to tables by criminals is to remind them how much more valuable you are to them when not tied to a table. “The gold was right in my pocket. I think I must have lost it in the panic.”

  “Tragic.” Maeres lifted a hand, cupped his fingers, and a man came from the shadows to stand at his shoulder. A dry rustling accompanied his advance and stopped when he did. I didn’t like this one at all. He looked too pleased to see me. “Another fire with no survivors.”

  “Well . . .” I didn’t want to contradict Maeres. My eyes slid to the man beside him. Maeres is a slight fellow, unremarkable, the kind of little man you might find bent over the ledgers at some merchant’s office. Neat brown hair, eyes that are neither kind nor cruel. In fact, remarkably similar to my father in age and appearance. Maeres’s companion, though, he looked like the sort of man who would drown kittens recreationally. His face reminded me of the skulls in the palace catacombs. Stretch skin over one and press in some pale staring eyes, and you’d have this man, his smile too wide, teeth too long and white.

  Maeres clicked his fingers, snapping my attention back to him. “This is Cutter John. I was telling him as we came in just how unfortunate it is that you’ve seen my operation here.”

  “O-o-operation?” I stuttered the question out. Victory could be measured now by a lack of soiling myself. Cutter John was a name everyone knew, but not many claimed to have seen him. Cutter John came into play when Maeres wanted to hurt people more creatively. When a broken finger, amputated toe, or good beating wouldn’t suffice, when Maeres wanted to stamp his authority, set his trademark upon some poor soul, Cutter John would be the man to do the work. Some called it artistry.

  “The poppies.”

  “I didn’t see any poppies.” Row upon row of green things growing, here under Builder-lights. My Uncle Hertert—the heir-apparently-not, as Father liked to call him—had made countless initiatives to cut the opium supply. He’d had town-law out on boats patrolling God knows how many miles of the Seleen, convinced it came upriver from the port of Marsail. But Maeres grew his own. Right here. Under Hertert’s nose and ready to go up everyone else’s. “I didn’t see a thing, Maeres. I ran into a door, for godsakes. Blind drunk.”

  “You sobered up remarkably well.” He lifted a golden vinaigrette to his nose, as if the stink of me offended him. Which it probably did. “In any event it’s a risk I can’t run, and if we have to part company we may as well make it a memorable event, no?” He tilted his head at Cutter John.

  That was enough to let my bladder go. It wasn’t as if anyone would notice, soaked and reeking as I was. “C-come now, Maeres, you’re joking? I owe you money. Who’ll pay if I . . . if I don’t pay?” He needed me.

  “Well, Jalan, the thing is, I don’t think you can pay. If a man owes me a thousand crowns he’s in trouble. If he owes me a hundred thousand, then I’m in trouble. And you, Jalan, owe me eight hundred and six crowns, less some small amount for your amusing Norseman. All of which makes you a small fish that can neither swallow me nor feed me.”

  “But . . . I can pay. I’m the Red Queen’s grandson. I’m good for the debt!”

  “One of many, Jalan. Too much of any denomination waters down the currency. I’d call ‘prince’ an overvalued commodity in Red March these days.”
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  “But—” I’d always known Maeres Allus for a businessman, a cruel and implacable one of a certainty, but sane. Now it seemed that madness might be spiralling behind those dark little eyes. Too much blood in the water for the shark in him to lie quiet any longer. “But . . . what good would killing me do?” He couldn’t ever tell anyone. My death wouldn’t serve him.

  “You died in the fire, Prince Jalan. Everyone knows that. None of my doing. And if a hint of a rumour floated behind Vermillion’s conversations, a whisper that you might have died elsewhere, in even less pleasant circumstances, over a matter of debt . . . well then, what new heights might my clients reach in their efforts not to disappoint me in future? Might there be ladies of ill repute who would recognize Cutter’s latest bracelet and spread the word as they spread their legs?” He glanced towards Cutter John, who raised his right arm. Dry bands of pale gristle encircled the limb, rustling against each other, dozens of them, starting at his wrist and reaching past his elbow.

  “Wh-what?” I didn’t understand what I was seeing, or perhaps some part of my brain was sensibly stopping me from understanding.

  Cutter John circled his own lips with one finger. The trophies along his arm whispered together as he did so. “Open wide.” His voice slithered as though he were something not human.

  “You shouldn’t have come here, Jalan.” Maeres spoke into the silence of my horror. “It’s unfortunate that you can’t unsee my poppies, but the world is full of misfortunes.” He stepped back to stand by Daveet at the door—the lights flickering across his face providing the only animation, a shadow smile there and gone, there and gone.

  “No!” For the first time ever I wanted Maeres Allus not to leave. Anything was better than being abandoned to Cutter John. “No! I won’t talk! I won’t. Not ever.” I put some anger into it—who would believe a sobbing promise of strength? “I’m saying nothing!” I strained at my ropes, rocking the table back against its legs. “Pull my nails. I won’t talk. Hot pincers won’t drag it from me.”

  “How about cold ones?” Cutter John raised the short-handled iron pincers he’d been holding all this time in his other hand.

  I roared at them then, thrashing, useless in the ropes. If one of Maeres’s men hadn’t been standing on the table legs, it would have tipped forwards and I’d have gone face first into the flagstones, which bad as it sounds would have been far less painful than what Cutter John had in mind for me. I was still roaring and screaming, working my way rapidly towards sobbing and pleading, when a hot wet something splattered across my face. It was enough to make me unscrew my eyes and pause my bellowing. Although I’d stopped yelling the din was no less deafening, only now it wasn’t me screaming. I’d drowned out the crash of the door bursting open, too far gone in my terror to notice it. Only Daveet stood there now, framed in the doorway. He turned as I watched, slit from collarbone to hip, spilling coils of his guts to the floor. To the left a large figure moved at the edge of my vision. As I turned my head the action shifted behind the table; another scream and a pale arm wrapped in bracelets made from men’s lips landed on the flagstones about a foot from where Daveet’s head hit the stone when he tripped on his intestines. And in one moment there was silence. Not a sound save for men shouting far down the corridor outside, echoey in the distance. Daveet appeared to have knocked himself out or died from sudden blood loss. If Cutter John missed his arm, he wasn’t complaining. I could see one more of Maeres’s men lying dead. The others might be dead behind me or taking a leaf from my book and sprinting for the hills. If I hadn’t been tied to the damn table I would have been overtaking them on the way to the aforementioned hills myself.

  Snorri ver Snagason stepped into view. “You!” he said.

  The hooded robe he’d been wearing when I ran into him was half-torn from his shoulders; blood splattered his chest and arms and dripped from the scarlet sword in his fist. More of the stuff ran down his face from a shallow cut on his forehead. It wouldn’t be hard to mistake him for a demon risen from hell. In fact, in the flickering light, blood-clad and with battle in his eyes, it was quite hard not to.

  “You?” The eloquence Snorri had demonstrated in Grandmother’s throne room had wholly abandoned him.

  He reached for me, and I shrank back, but not far because that fucking table was in the way. As that big hand came close, I felt a tingle on my cheekbones, my lips, forehead, like pins and needles, a kind of pressure building. He felt it too—I saw his eyes widen. The direction that had led me, the destination that had drawn me on . . . it was him. The same force had led Snorri here and set him amongst Maeres’s men. We both recognized it now.

  The Norseman slowed his hand, fingers an inch or two from my neck. The skin there buzzed, almost crackling with . . . something. He stopped, not wanting to find out what would happen if he touched me skin to skin. The hand withdrew, returned full of knife, and before I could squeal he set to cutting my bonds.

  “You’re coming with me. We can sort this out somewhere else.”

  Abandoning me amongst loops of sliced rope, Snorri returned to the doorway, pausing only to stamp on someone’s neck. Not Maeres’s, unfortunately. He ducked his head through, pulling back immediately, a quick bobbing motion. Something hissed past the entrance, several somethings.

  “Crossbows.” Snorri spat on Daveet’s corpse. “I hate bowmen.” A glance back at me. “Grab a sword.”

  “A sword?” The man clearly thought he was still in the wilds amongst the overly hairy folk of the North. I cast my eye across the carnage, looking behind the table. Cutter John lay sprawled, the stump of his arm barely pulsing, an ugly wound on his forehead. No sign of Maeres. I couldn’t imagine how he’d escaped.

  None of them had any weapon more offensive than a six-inch knife; carrying anything larger within the city walls just wasn’t worth the trouble from town-laws. I took the dagger and kicked Cutter John in the head a few times. It really hurt my toes, but I felt it a price worth paying.

  I hobbled back round the table holding my new weapon and earned a withering look from the Norseman. He picked up the door. “Catch.” I didn’t quite manage it. Whilst I hopped on my good foot, clutching my face and swearing nasally, Snorri quickly hacked the legs from the table and, bearing it like a huge shield, advanced towards the corridor. “Get my back!”

  The fear of being left behind, and finding myself in Maeres Allus’s clutches again, spurred me into action. With some effort I picked up the door and together we propelled our shields into the corridor before stepping between them. Crossbow bolts thudded into both immediately, iron heads splintering partway through.

  “Which direc—” Snorri was already too far away to hear me even if he hadn’t been shouting his battle cry. He’d stormed off down the corridor behind me. I followed as best I could, trying to hold the door across my back while I stumbled after him, keeping my head down, reaching over my shoulders to hold the door in place. Shouts and screams ahead indicated that Snorri had gotten to grips with his hated bowmen, but by the time I got there it was all blood and pieces. The main difficulty lay in not slipping over in the gore. Several more bolts hit the boards across my back with powerful thuds, and another skipped between my ankles, letting me know that I’d left a gap. Fortunately I had just ten yards to reach the exit. With the door scraping the floor behind me, and just the tips of my fingers exposed, I broke out into the night air. My traditional moment of triumph at escaping yet again was curtailed by a muscular arm that reached from the darkness and yanked me to one side.

  “I’ve got a boat,” Snorri growled. Normally when you say someone growled something it’s just a turn of phrase, but Snorri really put something feral into his words.

  “What?” I shook my arm free, or he let it go, a mutual thing, neither of us liking the burning needling sensation where his fingers gripped me.

  “I’ve got a boat.”

  “Of course you do, you’re a Viking.
” Everything seemed rather surreal. Perhaps I’d been hit in the face one too many times since Alain made a grab for me in the opera house only an hour or two earlier.

  Snorri shook his head. “Follow. Quick!”

  He took off into the night. The sounds of men approaching down the warehouse corridor convinced me to give chase. We crossed a wide space stacked with barrels and crates, passed dozens of hanging nets, the sails of riverboats poking up above the river wall beside us. By moonlight we crossed a quay and descended stone steps to the water, where a rowing boat lay tied to one of the great iron rings set into the wall.

  “You’ve got a boat,” I said.

  “I was a mile downstream, free and clear.” Snorri tossed his sword in, stepped in after it, and picked up an oar. “Something happened to me.” He paused, staring for a moment into his hand, though it held only darkness. “Something . . . I was getting sick.” He sat and took both oars. “I knew I had to come back—knew the direction. And then I found you.”

  I stood on the step. The Silent Sister’s magic had done this. I knew it. The crack had run through us, the light through me, the dark through him, and as Snorri and I separated, some arcane force tried to rejoin those two lines, the dark and the light. We had drawn away from each other, the river carrying Snorri west, and those hidden fissures started to open again, started to tear us both apart just so they could be free to run together once more. I remembered what happened when they joined. It wasn’t pretty.

  “Don’t stand there like an idiot. Loose the rope and get in.”

  “I . . .” The rowing boat moved as the current tried to wrest it from its mooring. “It doesn’t look very stable.” I’ve always viewed boats as a thin plank between me and drowning. As a sensible fellow I’d never entrusted my safety to one before, and close up they looked even more dangerous. The dark river slurped at the oars as if hungry.