Dragonstar

8

Jenny couldn’t remember which of John’s crumbling old books those words had come out of. He had a scholar’s magpie memory, and would argue for hours about who said what and where he’d read it—and whether the Gantering Pellus who wrote the Encyclopedia was the same one who’d written A Treatise Upon Brewing, and why he didn’t think this was likely—if he could find anyone to discuss such matters with him.

She closed her eyes, smiling at the recollection of her erratic spouse trading old lore and granny-rhymes with the dotards of every village within riding distance, or getting herself and everything in the Alyn Hold kitchen covered in soot while trying to design a better drawing chimney.

What had he been doing in Ernine?

How had he come there, and when?

Where was he now?

Was he trapped behind the mirror, a prisoner in the terrible, shifting Hell there without the Demon Queen’s protection?

Was he, as Aohila had said, Folcalor’s prisoner, tortured and enslaved to force his help in trapping Ian? Folcalor had enslaved, and presumably could control, dragons, too. The thoughts went through Jenny like the cold scorch of the arrow poison, bringing sweat to her whole body and images that she could not force from her mind.

She opened her eyes. It didn’t matter whether they were open or shut. There was nothing to see. Only the silver walls of the catch-bottle, curving up to the dark, sealed neck overhead.

Would Aohila let her out if she unstoppered the bottle she still held in her hand? Would she be freed automatically? Did the bottle somehow work by magic drawn from her?

The fact that she was no threat to the Demon Queen—once she’d opened the bottle and dispelled the geas that had drawn Aohila into it—wouldn’t matter, of course. The Demon Queen was perfectly capable of keeping her sealed in simply to torment her—and to gain leverage over John. John had first entered the Hell behind the Mirror—had first put his soul in pawn to the Queen who ruled it—to save Jenny.

It is the whole aim and purpose of the Hellspawn to find in the world of the living a servant who will be theirs.…

Would he do that again? Now, after what had happened in between then and now? Always supposing he wasn’t a prisoner there already, always supposing he hadn’t already had his soul enslaved.…

Always supposing he wasn’t dead.

She didn’t know. She thought of the white shell into which Amayon had been magically drawn, sealed with red wax. Remembered it lying in the midst of the dark-glittering power circle in the mirror chamber at Ernine. Remembered Amayon screaming.

Closed her eyes. Opened them.

If I don’t get out of here I can never beg John’s pardon, for turning from him in the depths of my own pain.

He would never know. Gareth, and those in Bel who might save the Prince, would never know about the souls of the slaves, their deaths imprisoned in the crystals. How many more would be killed, with Trey’s mind and body inhabited by a demon?

And demons were haunting the Deep. Gareth needed to be told of that, as well.

There is no lawful reason for humankind to touch, or speak to, or have traffic with the Hellspawnkind. Rather should that man perish, and suffer his wife, or his son, or his goods all to perish utterly, than that demons be given a gate into this world.

Jenny leaned her head on her arm, stared at the curve of the wall, her heart pounding. The catch-bottle felt heavy now in her hand, and hot. What was Aohila thinking of, remembering?

What had she thought of, all those years behind the mirror?

The Star-Juggler, Aohila had spoken the name casually, as one who knew him well. Perhaps she had. Whoever he had been, he had learned somewhere the Demon Queen’s secret name, the shape of the true essence of her secret self. That argued acquaintance.

And knowing her that well, he had been ready to give up the remainder of his life to his empty, living Hell.

Had given up his life, trying to rush the mirror chamber. Had he written down that name somewhere, so that it could be reapplied to the bottle…?

Reapplied? If what? If I open it now … and she for whatever reason opens hers, and lets me free?

Why would she do that?

So she can use me as she tried to enslave John?

To share an enemy does not make of her a friend.

More memories. The Winterlands in summer, when the twilights dwindled endless and unextinguished and Jenny would lie on the thick turf below the harsh black rock of Frost Fell’s north face, watching birds dart above the pools of the moor. Ian when he was a small child, a thin little black-haired boy following her about the herb garden, breaking off leaves and crushing them in slender fingers, ecstasy in his face at the scents. The way Adric’s tongue protruded from the side of his mouth when he was concentrating on his shooting with that bow that was almost too big for a nine-year-old boy. Redhaired, black-eyed, silent Mag, sitting by a mouse-hole for hours, waiting for the mouse to emerge …

A rush of anger filled her, the mad desire to lurch to her feet, to pace … but the spurt of energy was no more real, or physical, than hunger would have been in that place, and she remained where she was.

Do you like games?

Was this all a game? Jenny had feared the Demon Queen’s taunting, but did not know what to make of her silence.

Is she waiting for me to say something stupid like, “Do you promise you’ll let me out…?”

Or is she that certain that I will not have the strength to endure?

The power that holds her in the bottle is being sourced from me. From my memory, from my anger, from my fear, from my jealousy … from my love for John and for my children.

Maybe from my life alone, like the power sourced from the gems by the demons.

Did Folcalor destroy the demon mirror, and devour the other denizens of Aohila’s Hell? Was John there when he did it? Is she alone now, an exiled Queen in flight from her enemies?

Would it make any difference to me if she was?

Only silence. Jenny closed her eyes, imagining the Winterlands again, and Morkeleb’s skeletal black silhouette high and tiny in the twilight sky. Dragons sang of past joys, resonating them through refined gold and drinking in the joy a thousandfold forever. She wondered if doing that would pass the time here.

If I go mad here in the silence, will she laugh?

Laugh forever?

Past and present and yet to come, this thou art.

Jenny got to her feet, drew a deep breath, and with a quick motion, pulled the stopper from the bottle.

John was pushing open the panel into Gareth’s room when a shadow appeared in the curtained chamber door. He stepped back quickly, pulled the panel nearly to. It was the nurse, her face troubled in the frame of coif and wimple. Millença pushed past her and ran to her father, holding out her arms. Gareth sat up and caught her to him, her face pressed to the fanciful trapunto of his blue-and-black velvet doublet, his fingers stroking the thick pearl-twined braid of her hair. His gray eyes, naked and vulnerable without the spectacles, blinked in the direction of the nurse with a kind of desperation, as if asking her to make what Bliaud had said be untrue.

In an almost inaudible voice the Prince asked, “Where’s her mother, Danae?”

Gaw, no, don’t send for Trey.…

“I don’t know, lord.” There was a world of private doubt and fear in that carefully expressionless voice.

“Dolly died of the plague, but the doctor brought her back to life,” Millença informed her father, holding up the lace-trimmed poppet in her arms. “See? He said she’s not going to die ever again.”

“That’s good.” Gareth pushed back the doll’s raw-silk hair, peered into the exquisitely painted face. “Yes, I can see she’s going to be alive forever now. And she’ll always be just as beautiful as she is now. As beautiful as you.”

“Silly,” said Millença gravely. “Dolls aren’t alive. She just isn’t dead anymore.”

Gareth kissed his daughter, then lifted her down from his skinny knee and looked around for his spectacles, which had dropped from his fingers when Danae and the child had come into the room. They lay on the floor beside the cushioned chest, within inches of his foot. In his situation John wouldn’t have been able to see them, either. The young man bent down, groping, and Millença said, “Warmer, Papa,” in the voice of one playing a familiar game. Gareth smiled in spite of his red-rimmed, swollen eyes, and began to hunt all around him in places that were obviously absurd: under his cloak, on the bed, in the bed curtains, with his daughter giving him hints. “Warmer—colder—warmer …” until he found them and put them on again.

“And now I can see my princess,” he said, and kissed her again. “Do you feel all right today?”

She nodded. “I just didn’t feel good yesterday, but I’m better, like Dolly.”

And Gareth’s eyes met the nurse’s, over the child’s head. “That’s good,” he said. “And we’ll … we’ll make you all better, like Dolly, so you’ll never die ever.”

As the nurse led the child from the room, Gareth settled again on his cushioned bench, looking after them with desperate longing in his face. Thinking back over the days just past—the long horror of the night in the prison, the stake and the fire and the despair in the desert—John reflected, Of the two of us, I’ve had the easier time. I didn’t have to make a decision. I didn’t have to try to figure out where I was bein’ lied to by those I love, with their lives at the stake if I guessed wrong.

But he said gently, as he pushed opened the panel in the wall, “It’s only demons that don’t die ever, Gar.”

Gareth turned his head. He didn’t even seem surprised—not at John’s survival, not at his return—and it crossed John’s mind belatedly to wonder what Trey—and doubtless others—had told him over the past eight days.

If he screams for the guards, I’m a dead man.

But the young man said nothing, only averted his face quickly, though not quickly enough to conceal his tears. John stepped over to him and took him in his arms, as simply as he would have taken one of his own sons. With a dry sob, Gareth turned in his grip and clung to him, his whole beanpole body shaking with grief. Weeping in desperation and in fear, for perhaps the first time since Trey’s death.

John held him for a long time, saying nothing, his head bowed over Gareth’s. The long curtains drawn over the doors drowned the room in shadow—now and then voices filtered in from the terrace, and the Long Garden outside. By the look of it the young man had spent hours here alone: The floor around the bed, and the coverlet itself, were littered with the books and scrolls that John knew were Gareth’s primary joy. Cups, dishes, writing tablets strewed the small marquetry table, the seat of the chair. There was no sign of Trey’s presence, not even of a visit. John wondered how soon after her “resurrection” Gareth had ceased to seek her company and her bed.

“You have to get out of here,” he said gently, when Gareth’s sobs ceased and the young man only held to him, rocking a little in his arms. “You know Trey isn’t Trey anymore.”

He felt the young man struggle to form the words I don’t believe you, and let them trickle away unsaid. The realization must have been growing on him for a week, desperately shoved aside.

At least I was able to get Jenny back. At the cost of dealing with demons—of putting my soul in pawn and endangering God knows how many others …

But I did get her back.

And then like an imbecile lost her …

Trey, he knew, would not be coming back.

“They said you were possessed.” Gareth sat up and fumbled his spectacles straight, then took them off again to wipe his eyes. “That you’re in league with demons.”

“D’you think that’s true?”

“A dragon rescued you.”

“A dragon rescued you, me hero, once upon a time. I begged this one not to—said I could never hold me head up as a dragonsbane again if he did.… Have you caught Trey at anything?”

Gareth didn’t ask, At what? By the look in his eyes he knew exactly what John was talking about. That was answer in itself.

After a time he said, “Not really. Only I found … this sounds stupid. To suspect Trey … to suspect my wife …” He shook his head and dug around in the purse that hung at his belt for a kerchief to wipe his eyes.

“You know how gentle Trey is, how considerate. You remember when first you came here she lent Jenny a dress, so she wouldn’t be mocked by Zyerne and her ladies, even though Zyerne would never have let Trey hear the end of it if she’d found out. But now she’ll say things to me, cruel things, things that hurt. Even perfectly normal things for someone else. She’ll watch me out of the corners of her eyes, as if she’s laughing.”

His jaw clenched hard and he made a business of wiping the tear spots and smudges from his spectacle lenses so as not to meet John’s compassionate eyes. He was twenty-four and looked forty, a thousand times worse than he had, John thought, only nine days ago, when he’d come to the prison.

“She disappears for hours at a time, I don’t know where she goes. Some of the servants … I’ve heard rumors … they can’t be true. This whole city is a cesspit of rumors now, about this person or that person seen running mad, or being caught drinking blood or running through the streets with dead cats or dead rats strung around their necks like amulets. Trey keeps telling me it isn’t true, that she loves me, that I have to trust her, and I keep thinking, I don’t know this person. I’ve never met this woman before in my life.”

His hand tightened frantically on John’s sleeve, his shortsighted gray eyes pleading. “But if I don’t trust her, what are we? What has our love meant?”

“Your love meant that you were one of the lucky ones in this world,” said John quietly. “Lucky to find love at all, and to know enough not to bugger it up when you did. But it’s gone, Gar. Trey is gone. What was it you found?”

Gareth was silent for a long time, his mouth working a little with distaste. Then he said, “The wings of insects. Flies—we had some warm days here, and spring is close. Roaches. The legs of crickets. All laid out along the windowsill in her room. From the garden I’d seen her sitting in the window only a few minutes earlier, and there had been no one else in the room. I found one of the flies, too, crawling around.…” He shuddered.

“You have to get out,” repeated John. Under his hands the young Regent’s shoulder bones felt like velvet-covered sticks. “Get out before the thing that’s livin’ in her body gets you, too.”

“Her child—”

“There is no child. That child died when Trey died. The thing she’ll birth will be a demon like herself.”

“No.” Gareth’s gray eyes turned bleak and moved aside. “You can’t know that. You’re only guessing. A child is innocent. I felt her baby move this morning, I felt—”

John put his fingers to the young man’s lips. “D’you really believe that?”

Footsteps sounded in the anteroom. John reached the servants’ door in one panicky bound and flattened himself into the corridor beyond. Voices murmured on the other side of the painted and gilded paneling, Gareth said, “No, nothing, thank you.”

“You father wishes to see you after dinner, sir. I must say, his reassurances to the people were well received.” The chamberlain Badegamus sounded both tired and relieved. “He’s ordered a celebration—free wine in every public square. That should cheer the people, help them forget.” His voice had the ring in it of a man trying to convince himself. “I venture to say things will be better now that he’s himself again, sir. And I never thought to see that day—never thought to see it at all. You could have heard the cheering in Halnath. Not that you haven’t done wonderful work, sir,” added the chamberlain hastily. “How you’ve kept the Realm together …”

“Thank you, Badegamus,” said Gareth. “Tell my father I’ll be there. But now I just need to rest.”

“Of course, sir. While you’re at dinner, shall I have someone tidy up here a little? I understand how you’ll have needed to rest, after all the terrible things that have gone on.…”

John wondered, hearing the faint jingling of shoe-bells retreat, whether the stout, meticulously correct chamberlain also had “died” and been resurrected by Bliaud’s magic. Once Amayon/Trey came into the palace, such things could have taken place in the dead of night, without a soul knowing.

As they would, beyond the smallest doubt, if Millença went to stay at Bliaud’s house.

“You have to get out of here.” John stepped back through the hidden door after silence returned to the room.

“And go where?” Gareth’s voice was listless, worn out with struggling, as if it were simpler just to die. John understood the feeling, but wanted to take him by the neck and shake him, anyway. “Flee to Halnath, as I did before? Polycarp urged me to. He—he tried to tell me that Bliaud was in league with demons, that Trey—” He shook his head and looked down at his hands again, turning the ruby ring around his thumb as if it were some complex rite demanding all of his attention. “I couldn’t listen. I suppose I should have. I ordered him out of my sight, out of the city. Now they tell me that the Master was in league with the gnomes, kidnapping people and selling them to them.…”

“If the Master was doin’ that he’d be here at Court swearin’ loyalty to your father an’ tellin’ Trey how pretty she is,” said John bluntly. “What’s this about the gnomes, then? Are there demons in the Deep as well as here?”

“I don’t know. No one knows.” Gareth gestured helplessly. “One hears all kinds of things, terrible things. There was a riot in the Dockmarket, and people marched on the Deep of Ylferdun, but the gnomes turned them back. People were killed. My father’s meeting with a representative of the King today to—”

More voices, this time on the terrace. Though the curtains were shut, John made a lunge back to the panel and stood close beside it, ready to vanish again, until they passed.

“Here.” Gareth got to his feet, seeming to suddenly piece together John’s disguise, his shorn hair, and the circumstances under which they’d spoken last. “You can’t stay. They’ll kill you if you’re seen. I saved the things you asked me to, the bone-and-silver box, and the silver bottle—your spectacles, too, and your sword.” He led the way into the anteroom where the children and their nurse had been, and through it to his library. This chamber, too, was cluttered thick with parchments, books, lamps, and all the paraphernalia of scholarship, pumice and pounce and uncut quills in a crystal vase, untidy in spite of servants’ ministrations. Here, too, the curtains were drawn, as if Gareth’s battered spirit could no longer tolerate light. At least here the dishes had been taken away.

The spoils of John’s adventurings through Hell—duplicate box and bottle, notes and sword—were where John had glimpsed them through Corvin’s rememberings, concealed behind the books on a high shelf. Gareth brought a ladder over to get to them, and handed them down one by one. “This wasn’t open when I brought it here,” he said worriedly, turning in his hand the box that the un-wizard Shamble had made for John in that stuffy and bug-ridden apartment in the 79th District. The chip of dragonbone on which Shamble had written the Rune of the Gate was still there, but cracked through and charred nearly black.

“Don’t worry about it.” John took the box, stuffed his packet of much-crossed and overwritten notes into his servant’s red doublet, and looked around the library. One of the small panes of the window out onto the terrace was recently repaired, its frame bright with new putty. “Was that broken, then?” That would be where Corvin pushed through. Tiny, as he’d seen Morkeleb shrink himself to the size of a cat.…

Gareth nodded. “I don’t remember—when Trey was … was ill, I think, or just after she … she got better. It’s all right. I mean, Badegamus tells me nothing was taken.” He handed him down the sword Shamble had wrought, covered with runes that had no virtue in the world where the League of the White Black Bird were condemned to live and die. Runes for the murder of demons, handed down through generations of sterile magery and rote repetition. Not being a mage himself, John hadn’t the faintest idea whether they’d work or not, but the sword balanced well in his hand. He put his own spectacles on and blinked gratefully. Maybe the headache he’d had for days now would go away.

He tuned and regarded his friend for a quiet moment, then asked, “What about Jen?”

The bruised-looking gray eyes avoided his. “I—I don’t know. She was here—I spoke to her—the day Trey … Trey was so ill. I was so tired. I hadn’t slept, I was half-distracted.…” A quiver ran through him, and he bowed his head, as if expecting anger or blows. After a moment he looked up and went on: “I know I told Badegamus to prepare a room for her, and he told me she went there. But someone said they saw her, that evening, in the First Hall of the Gnomes’ Deep, just as the gnomes were closing up the gates. No one has seen her since.”

She is dying … the Demon Queen had said. Dying in the Deep …

So the part about her being in the Deep at least hadn’t been a lie.

And Corvin, bad cess to him, had only blinked up from his bed of gold: I cannot see her; I have tried.…

If she had no more magic in her, the dragon should have been able to find her.… Unless she was in some place that was scry-warded. Was the Deep? Or parts of the Deep?

Only ten minutes ago he had said to Gareth, It’s only demons that don’t ever die.

Why couldn’t his heart accept that she was gone?

He glanced at the angle of the sunlight through the slit in the curtains, heard the tread of the guards on the terrace, the creak of battle-harness and mail. Badegamus had come here from the King, who must be back from the market square. That meant more guards about the palace, more servants tending to their duties, more people who were likely to recognize him, spectacles or no spectacles, dye or no dye …

The King would be going in to dinner soon, and bidding his son to his side.

“Meet me at moonrise where the road goes into the woods along the Clae,” said John, forcing the image of Jenny from his mind. First things first. “Bring Millença, and as much money as you can scrape up without callin’ attention to yourself. We can hire a nurse in the countryside, where there won’t be tattlin’ tongues. Have you a place you can go? Not one of the royal manors—Trey and your dad’ll have word of it, and find some damn good reason for bringin’ you back, an’ then you’ll never get out.…”

“I won’t leave the baby. Trey’s baby,” Gareth added, seeing the blank look momentarily in John’s eyes. “Trey will be brought to bed in a few weeks. After that I can—”

“That baby’s dead.” John hated the words as they came out of his mouth, hated the way those too-soft gray eyes hardened with anger. But there was nothing else that he could say to make Gareth understand. “When Trey gives birth it’ll be to a demon like the demon that’s livin’ in her flesh now. The demon that you see when you look into her eyes.”

Gareth’s gaze flinched away. “I can’t.… If the child is human when she bears it, I can’t leave it in her care, to be … to be taken that way. Millença and Danae, I’ll move to a different establishment, one under my control—”

“And what good’s that like to do you …?”

A voice boomed on the terrace, deep and melodious and unmistakable: “… keep the feast with us, my lord Goffyer. Tomorrow you and I can speak about this rumor of slavebuying, which I doubt not was begun by those whose intention has always been to cause confusion and strife in the Realm. Maybe later you and I can have a quiet talk together. Perhaps I can show you some things here that would amuse you.…”

John bolted through into the bedroom, Gareth at his heels; nipped through the concealed door into the servants’ passage again. “Tonight,” he breathed. “Moonrise. At least bring Millença to me.”

Gareth opened his mouth, shut it again, helpless uncertainty in his eyes.

“And when you’ve a minute,” John added grimly, leaning around the panel, “search about the palace for the special room Trey asked for, the ‘secret boudoir’ or ‘meditation chapel’ or whatever it was.…”

“How do you know she asked for a meditation room?” The young man stared at him, amazed.

John tapped the side of his nose, an ironic twist to his lips. “It’s what demons do,” he said. “Search for it and have a look inside—if you can do it without her knowin’ of it.”

“My son?” The King’s voice raised in jovial cry, and one of the terrace doors opened in the next room. “Don’t worry, Badegamus,” he added, “I should think I know my son’s rooms.…”

“My darling?” A woman’s voice, lilting and sweet. “Lord Goffyer is here, sent by King Balgub of the Deep.…”

Amayon.

John’s blood turned cold and he closed the door, barely breathing, wondering if the pair of demons could hear the pounding of his heart, or the smell of his blood or the fear-sweat that poured down his face. But Gareth’s feet retreated from the wall and John heard the former Regent’s light voice, “I’m here, Father.” If John had ever doubted Gareth’s courage he had proof of it now, for there wasn’t a trace of fear in his speech. “Badegamus tells me you’ve made festival in the streets.”

John moved away from the door, trembling a little with panic and fright. Dear God, did I remember to take away the old specs…?

He groped in his doublet pocket, then found them, exhaled.

And the dragonbone box, and the silver bottle, and the sword belted at his waist.

Voices in the other room, the King’s and the lovely trained mellifluousness of Badegamus, interrupted now and then by the cautious gruff alto of a gnome. Though his hands were shaking so he could barely fumble the door-catch, John pushed the door far enough to glimpse the King through the connecting archway of the anteroom. Uriens had clearly just come from the pulpit above the market square, still clothed in the somber hues of half-mourning, his body framed in an aureole of wired and stiffened Court mantlings that set their wearer off as if against a private backdrop of color and movement.

Trey had gone to clasp Gareth’s hand, dainty as a roe deer in blue velvet and garnets—how could anyone not see Amayon in the way she titled her head, in the ironic smile? Badegamus, stouter than ever with his enormous, waxed, and wired golden mustache, kept glancing at her as if he’d heard some rumor about her that he didn’t wish to believe.

Beside him—and only a little shorter than the tubby Chamberlain—was a gnome John vaguely recognized. Barrel-chested and harsh-featured, Goffyer wore the usual gnomish profusion of jewelry, his long hair of faded pink wound up in silver pins and the familiar demon glitter in his eyes.

So they’re in the Deep as well, John thought, and drew the door closed again. Where have I seen that one? Goffyer … He couldn’t recall a gnome named Goffyer among those his gnome friends had introduced to him in Ylferdun Deep. Not that Goffyer was his actual name, of course, any more than Miss Mab’s real name was Miss Mab: Taseldwyn, she was called among her own people, and by those humans not too lazy to deal with gnomish names.

He moved off a few yards, then halted, listening. Trying to get his bearings, to locate if he could the woman who had cried out in despair and pain. With the King and Trey back, not to speak of a hundred servants who’d recognize him from his amiable habit of talking with anyone he met, he knew the danger of remaining, but he couldn’t leave her without searching.

The door at the far end of the corridor was locked, barred from the other side. It butted, he knew, onto the old palace, a logical place for Trey to have her “meditation chapel”: There were courtyards, and gardens, and pavilions in that rambling stone warren that hadn’t been entered or used in years.

If he recalled correctly, he thought, backtracking through the service passage toward the main laundry and scullery, he could get to the old palace through a small courtyard that had once served the Queen’s Wing. A small gate opened onto a minor street called the Cooksway at the foot of the palace hill, which would serve for a quick getaway if necessary. The gate was bolted from the inside, without a more modern key, and the courtyard was used to store fuel these days. Nobody went there.…

But as he descended the enclosed stair to that small court, the stone walls around him picked up voices. Ahead of him, and, a moment later, behind as well. The voices behind him were accompanied by the ominous creak of sword belts and the clank of weapons. John removed his spectacles, shifted the wicker basket into both hands, assumed the rather haughty mein of a servant going about the business of his betters, and strode down the stair, praying nobody was going to ask him what business he had transporting laundry around an area of the palace generally given over to baskets of charcoal and cords of wood.

Nobody asked, for very good reason. When John stepped through the arch at the bottom of the stair he found half a dozen men just coming into the wood-court through the little Cooksway gate, men who wore the sable robes and black mail of the scholar-soldiers of the Master of Halnath. One of them he was almost certain—by the way he stood, and his height, though a hood covered his head—was in fact Polycarp of Halnath, but John didn’t dare stop for a closer look. He knew Polycarp quite well, and the Master knew him, and had been one of the votes cast in favor of his execution: Given what John knew about demons, he didn’t blame him one bit for it. It was a struggle not to break into a run, but he only passed across the corner of the court, and not a man of them turned to observe him.…

Mostly because a squad of guards emerged from the stairway a few paces behind him, coming into the court as John barely made it through a gateway at the other side.

“Lord Polycarp?” demanded a harsh voice—Guessed right, thought John, and sneaked his spectacles back on as he turned and flattened himself behind the nearest buttress. “You and your companions are to come with me.”

Polycarp turned with truly commendable presence of mind and pulled open the postern-door that led back out into the Cooksway. He stopped and fell back as several more armed men came through it wearing, like the first group, the crimson leather cuirasses and gold plumes of the House of Uwanë. Their halberds were leveled within inches of his breast. Polycarp turned back to the original guards, asked, “By whose authority, Captain Leodograce?” His voice was light, like Gareth’s; husky and rather high. “I came here to speak with the Prince.…”

“You came here to murder the Prince,” retorted the commander of the guards, and though John was too far away—and at the wrong angle—to see the man’s eyes, he heard something in the tone of his voice that made him think, He’s one of ’em. “Having sent him messages to lure him here.…”

“That’s ridiculous.” It was, too: Polycarp, Master of Halnath, had been Gareth’s friend and counselor for years.

“Then why send him a note to meet you in this place, far from help? Take them!”

Polycarp drew his sword, but the conclusion was foregone. He and his companions were outnumbered, their swords outreached by the longer weapons of the guards. Watching the brief struggle among the stacked cords of wood, John was almost confirmed in his guess that Captain Leodograce was possessed—he didn’t fight like a man who had the slightest concern about either wounds or death, not even taking elementary precautions—and probably three others among the guards were demons as well. Two of Polycarp’s men were killed outright, the rest, and the Master himself, disarmed and bound, and dragged back up the covered stair by which John and later the guards had originally come. Polycarp said, “I demand to speak to the Prince,” and Leodograce struck him across the face with the back of his hand, knocking him against the wall.

John stood for a few moments in the concealment of the little inner gateway, watching them go and wondering what he should do now. Try to return to Gareth and let him know of Polycarp’s arrest? If he could make it back that far, the Prince would almost certainly be with the King—or with Trey. Leave a message in his rooms via the service corridor?

Would Amayon be able to sense John’s presence in Bel by touching the paper? Quite possibly. In any case, he’d speak to Gareth tonight, on the edge of the woods, if Gareth brought his daughter.…

If he brought his daughter.

And if he didn’t …

“Lord Aversin?”

John turned—and cursed himself as he turned—to find himself looking at the tattooed southern merchant who’d stared at him in the square.