Prince of Fools

SEVENTEEN

“Mired in sin!” The annoyingly judgmental voice rang behind my ears and sent shards of white pain into my head. “Deeper in deed than in thought! I hadn’t considered it possible.”

“Oh God!” Someone had turned my stomach inside out and filled it with eels. I was sure of it.

“How dare you call upon him!” Baraqel’s anger carried a hint of delight, as if nothing pleased him more than finding good fresh sin to condemn.

“Just kill me!” I rolled over. All of me hurt. I must have slept with my mouth open because by the taste of it the rats had been using it as a latrine all night.

“How a creature such as you came to the light. .” Baraqel’s imagination or eloquence failed him.

I cracked one eye open. Daylight streamed in like razors, slivers of it reaching through heavy shutters to illuminate a filthy chamber. I ran a hand across my chest, remembering somebody pushing me. Naked? My locket! I lurched up, my stomach lurched faster, and for a moment I struggled not to decorate the headboard. My clothes lay strewn over the floorboards, and an ill-advised lunge placed my hand over the comforting lump that the locket made in the shirt that I’d been wearing since Oppen. This time my struggle was in vain and I threw up what appeared to be everything I’d eaten the night before, along with a couple of other people’s meals and a bag of diced carrots I’d no memory of consuming.

“Cover yourself, man! There’s a lady present.” I winced at the angel’s voice, roaring like nails down the chalkboard of my soul.

“Uuuurgod,” proved to be my snappiest response. I wiped my mouth and hauled myself up so my head rose above the edge of the bed.

On the far side, across a wrinkled sea of soiled linen and grey wool, Emma was pulling herself back into a pair of worn leather trousers. Even in my delicate state I managed to admire the hard, if grimy, lines of her body before they were entirely hidden away. She turned, buttoning her jerkin over tight-wrapped breasts, her expression a mix of amusement and mild disgust. I took her to be somewhere in her thirties, towards the end of them perhaps. Even with her short hair and broken nose, I couldn’t understand how I’d not seen her for what she was before.

“My secret.” She grabbed herself between the legs, all traces of amusement dropping from her face. “Speak of it and I’ll cut you to look the same.” Suddenly I couldn’t see any trace of a woman in her at all.

“There’s no secret, Brother Emmer,” I said.

“That’s right.” She flipped a copper crown at me, pulled her knife from where it had been wedging the door shut, and left the room.

Alone in the unsavoury mess, I took a moment to reflect. “A helluva woman!” I crawled back onto the bed.

“Naked as the devil and clothed in sin!” Baraqel howled-or at least it felt as if he howled it. “Find a priest, Prince Jalan, and-” Somewhere the sun parted company with the horizon and shut him up. The daylight lanced ever more pointedly through the shutters and I pulled the blanket over my pounding head. The pounding got worse. After a few confused minutes of rolling about in misery, holding my temples, I figured out that a fair portion of the pounding was actually coming through the wall as a headboard struck against it repeatedly. I buried my head under my arms, then decided against it; the mattress was a long way from wholesome, several national boundaries away from it probably. Instead I just plugged my ears and hoped for the world in general to go away, and for whoever was having such a good time in the next room to run out of energy. Or die.

An indeterminate amount of time later the stink of the place drove me to stagger to the door, still reeling, half-drunk from the night before, wrapped in a thin blanket and clutching most of my clothes, my boots, my sword. I took Emma’s copper too. Waste not, want not. The shirt I left as a gift for the next occupant-minus Mother’s locket, of course.

“-royally fucked.” A man stood in the doorway to the next room, facing into it. From the back he looked a lot like the older of the two mercenaries in the alcove last night. “So, are we ready to go?” he asked.

“Tell them an hour. I’ll be ready in an hour.” A younger man, inside the room.

The other shrugged and turned to leave, pulling the door behind him. A woman in the room said something about a prince, but the rest of it was lost as the door closed. The man-it was the fellow from the alcove-strode past me, a slight smile twitching on his lips.

It occurred to me that I might wear my clothes rather than carry them. I dressed, somewhat gingerly, sore in all manner of places, and went down the stairs.

The bar was largely deserted-just a handful of Brothers slumbering at their tables with heads on folded arms, and Snorri in the midst of it all attacking a pewter plate mounded with bacon and eggs. The dark-haired man from the corridor sat beside him.

“Jal!” Snorri shouted, loud enough to split my head, and waved me over. “You look like hell! Get some food inside you.”

Resigning myself to his good cheer I sat at the table, as close to his breakfast as my stomach would allow.

“This is Makin.” He jabbed a loaded fork at the man beside him.

“Charmed,” I said, feeling anything but.

“Likewise.” Makin nodded politely. “I see they have fearsome bedbugs in this establishment.” His gaze slid to where my jacket hung open, exposing chest and belly.

“Christ on a bike.” Something had bitten me all right. Emma’s tooth marks left me looking like I had some kind of giant pox all over.

“One of the women said you had some trouble with Brother Emmer last night?” Snorri shovelled half a sliced pig into his mouth, tucking in stray ends of bacon with a finger.

“That Emmer’s a tricky sort,” Makin said, nodding to himself. “Lightning fast. Some smarts too.” He tapped his forehead.

“No.” I avoided squeaking the denial. “No trouble.”

Snorri pursed his lips around his mouthful, peering down at my bites. I clasped my jacket closed over them. “I’m not judging,” he said, one eyebrow elevating.

“Man’s free to choose his own path.” Makin rubbed his chin.

I shot to my feet, immediately wishing I’d taken more time over it. “Damned if I’m sitting here watching you stuff down pig like a. . like. .”

“A pig?” Snorri suggested. He lifted his plate and scraped several fried eggs towards his mouth.

“I’m getting some decent clothes and a bath, and a meal at some half-civilized establishment.” My headache appeared to be trying to split me down the middle and I hated the world. “I’ll meet you at the castle gates at noon.”

“It’s noon now!”

“Three hours!” I called it from the doorway and staggered out into the sunshine.

• • •

The sun watched from the west as I climbed the long hill to the outer gate of the Tall Castle. I’d soaked off the road stink at a bathhouse, leaving the waters black; had my hair cut and tamed; and calmed my head with some powders the barber swore were good for the easing of pain, also beneficial in cases of plague and dropsy. Finally I had purchased a fresh linen shirt, adjusted to my size with a few well-placed stitches; a cloak of brushed velvet, trimmed with something claimed as ermine and probably squirrel; and a silverish clasp mounted with a piece of rubyish glass to round it off. Not quite princely garb, but enough to pass muster as gentry on casual inspection.

Snorri hadn’t turned up. I considered going on without him but decided against it. Apart from the show of having a bodyguard, I’ve always been in favour of having one, for guarding my body. Especially a maniac over six and a half foot tall, packed with muscle and with a vested interest in not letting me die.

It took perhaps another half hour before I saw the Norseman on the broad street below. He had Sleipnir and Ron in tow but at least hadn’t managed to have any of the Brothers tag along.

“You should have left the nags where they were.” I knew better than to upbraid him for being late. He would just grin and slap me on the back as if I were joking.

“I thought only beggars arrived on foot in these flat countries.” Snorri grinned and ran a hand through Sleipnir’s mane. “Besides, I’ve grown fond of the old girl, and she’s carrying all my stuff.”

“Better to let them think I’ve a decent horse stabled somewhere nearby than to march up to the gates with this mangy pair and suffer the pity of guardsmen.”

“Well-”

“Look, never mind, just pretend they’re both yours.” I walked on, letting him follow at a respectful distance.

I presented myself at the appropriately named Triple Gate to the most senior of several chain-armoured guards standing to vet potential visitors. There’s a certain arrogance expected of aristocracy, and a life of service had trained men such as the ones before me to respond to it. My brother Martus had a marvellous way of looking down his nose at even the tallest of underlings, and I do a decent job of it myself. I summoned my reserves and radiated disdain. Snorri would of course assert, and frequently did, that I’d never let go of my royal superiority-though his turn of phrase would run something along the lines of “still got the sceptre up your arse”-but he’d yet to see me in full flow.

“Prince Jalan Kendeth of Red March, scion of the Red Queen, heir deximal to Vermillion and all its domains.” I paused to let the “prince” sink in. “I’m travelling north and have detoured from the Roma Road to pay a courtesy call on King Olidan. In addition to the normal pleasantries, I will be offering to bear back to the Red Queen any diplomatic correspondence subsequent to the recent visit of my brother, Prince Martus.” For once in my life I had cause to be thankful that Martus and I looked so alike.

“Welcome to the Tall Castle, Your Highness.” The man, a sturdy fellow with steel-grey hair escaping his helm, took a step towards me. He ran his beady black eyes over my attire and peered pointedly behind me as if looking for my retinue.

“I’m travelling in haste. This man here is my personal guard. We’ve rooms down in the Old Town.” I left hanging the suggestion that more retainers might be occupying those rooms.

“Of course, Prince-” He frowned. “Jalan?”

“Yes. Jalan. Now tell Olidan I’m here and be quick about it.”

That got his attention. There aren’t many who’d lose King Olidan his title when face to face with his guards. Even fewer who would want an audience with the king under false pretences. By all accounts King Olidan was not the nicest of men.

“I’ll send a messenger immediately, Your Majesty. Perhaps you would like to wait in my chamber in the gatehouse. I can have a man stable your. . horses.”

I considered waiting in the shade of the wall. It promised to be a nice night, but if he kept us waiting too long we’d be standing on our dignity to the amusement of gawkers. “Lead on,” I said. It’s always better to sit on your dignity in private than to stand on it in public.

We followed on beneath the gates to a small door in the thickness of the wall. The stairs behind led upwards. The Captain of the Triple Gate had himself a garret above the entranceway, tucked behind the fearsome winding gear and the recesses in which the three portcullises rested when not keeping people out. It proved clean and boasted a table and chairs. I doubted many foreign princes had been entertained there, but probably rather few arrived unannounced and all but unaccompanied.

Snorri squeezed his knees in under the table. “A beer wouldn’t go amiss.”

The gate captain raised a brow at that and looked to me. I nodded. Not that I was going to touch the stuff. I’d sworn off it for good that morning. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, and went out the door. We heard him bellowing in the stairwell a moment later.

“Seems to be going all right.” Snorri reached out for the hunk of bread at the table’s centre and started filling his beard with crumbs.

“Hmmm.” He had no worries. The risk would all come my way. I had to trust that Olidan would know I wasn’t important enough to rank as a hostage and that even a man as cold and ruthless as the King of Ancrath was reputed to be would think twice before earning my grandmother’s displeasure. Grandmother was my best chance. There were plenty of stories about how she had made Red March feared amongst its neighbours, and some of them, whilst hard to believe, were the sort that give a man nightmares. In any event, I judged the risk of Ancrath’s court worth the chance that I might be released from the chains that bound me to Snorri and set free to scuttle away south once more.

The beer arrived with a jug and two pewter tankards. I watched Snorri savour his while my stomach attempted various feats of acrobatics. Despite the Norseman’s easy way, I could see the impatience banked behind his gaze. He ached to be back on the road, riding for the coast with all haste, and I could only delay him in Ancrath so long.

The captain returned an hour or so later to say that we were to be given quarters in the keep and most likely summoned to court on the afternoon of the next day. Better than I’d hoped.

We trailed down the narrow steps once more to the entrance, where the captain gave us into the care of a velvet-clad page boy, and we finally emerged from the gate tunnel and went on into the Tall Castle.

You could tell at once that the keep was Builder-work; it was ugly, angular, and resilient. The Thousand Suns had scorched the earth all across the Broken Empire. In many places the soil had burned to the bedrock and the bedrock had melted into glass. But the Tall Castle had survived. The fact that the Ancraths made their home here said a lot about their character and intentions.

The curtain wall set about the compound and the various outbuildings-barracks, a smithy, stables, and the like-were all three or four centuries old, but the keep, that was stone poured a thousand years ago. I recall from my lessons that the Builders seldom held on to buildings long. They threw them up, then tore them down as if they were no more than tents. But for things not intended to last they did a damn good job of it.

The page boy led us on towards the keep under the watchful eyes of various guards at station, men patrolling on the walls, and passing knights. It was Snorri who drew their attention, of course: not the blasted prince of Red March deigning to grace their mean halls, but some freakishly large Norseman with ten acres of slope to his name. Something about the braids in his hair, or the arctic flash of his eyes, or perhaps the bloody great axe across his back, is apt to make any castle dweller think for a moment that their defences have been breached.

The keep stood in clear ground with courtyards marked out for training at horse and arms. It made an alarming contrast with the palace at Vermillion, and I suspect Grandmother would have swapped in a heartbeat. This was a place built for war, not built to look like it. A castle that had withstood sieges, and fallen to at least one of them, for if Snorri’s tales were to be believed, the Ancraths weren’t the first to reclaim the place after the tribes of men spread back into the poisoned lands.

“Nice castle.” Snorri gazed up at the Tall Castle while we waited for the great door of iron-banded oak before us to be opened.

The castle was tall. I couldn’t complain about that. Though it looked unfinished or more likely broken off. The thing didn’t taper or show any concession to height at all as a tower might these days. It simply launched itself straight up at the heavens and gave the impression that before the Thousand Suns had cut short its ambition, nothing shy of hitting the clouds would stop it.

“I’ve seen better,” I lied.

The door swung open and one of Olidan’s table-knights, in gleaming half-plate, offered me a bow.

“Prince Jalan, an honour to meet you. I am Sir Gerrant of Treen.” As he straightened I took a half step back. They’d obviously noted Snorri’s stature and decided to put forwards their biggest man to receive us. Sir Gerrant stood near as tall and broad with it, a handsome face divided by an ugly scar. He spread his arm out to the side, inviting us in. The smile on his scar-split lips looked genuine enough. “I’ll show you to your rooms. You come too, Stann.” He glanced back at the page. “Prince Jalan will need someone to fetch and carry for him.”

Sir Gerrant led us up a wide flight of steps and along several corridors. The architecture had an alien quality to it, as if those who made it a thousand years before were not men. Everywhere I saw the signs of more recent work, of efforts made to construct a more human habitation. Floors had been removed, rooms broadened and heightened, curves introduced with carved timber supports, though nothing the Builders made needed any reinforcement.

“I had the honour of meeting Prince Martus during his mission the summer before last.” Sir Gerrant opened another set of doors and held them for us. “Your family resemblance is remarkable.”

I bit back a sharp reply and grimaced. It’s true my brothers both share something of my looks-which came from Father’s side of the family, the gold in our hair at least-the height from Grandmother and the handsome from Mother, our father being a short and unprepossessing fellow who would look as suited to being an office clerk as he does to wearing the cardinal’s hat. Martus, though, was shaped with a blunt hand. Darin a touch better. The artist had perfected the design by the time he got to me.

We passed through one hall where ladies watched us from a high gallery. I rather suspected Sir Gerrant had been induced to parade us for their inspection. I played the game and affected not to notice. Snorri, of course, stared up openly, grinning. I heard giggles and one of their number stage-whispered, “Not another vagabond prince?”

My room, where we finally arrived, was well appointed and, whilst not quite as grand as a visiting prince might expect, a hundred times better than any accommodation I’d seen since hastily exiting Lisa DeVeer’s bedroom what seemed like a lifetime before.

“I’ll show your man here to a servant’s chamber, or Stann here can do it later,” Sir Gerrant said.

“Take him away,” I said. “And don’t let any of your men mess with him. He’s not house-trained and he’ll end up breaking them.” I shooed Snorri back into the corridor with fluttering motions of my fingers. He made no reply, only grinned infuriatingly and set off after Gerrant.

I slumped down in an upholstered chair. The first comfortable seat I’d sat in for an age. “Boots.” I lifted a leg and the page came over to start tugging off the first of them. That was something I’d really missed on the road. Being bone idle. Father was too cheap to staff the hall properly, but when we had important visitors he would import a decent number of servants. The ideal level is where if you drop something there’s a maid on hand to scoop it up almost before it hits the floor, and if you’ve an itch that might otherwise require a twist or a stretch, you have only to mention it before indentured fingernails have scratched it for you.

The boot came free with a jerk and the child staggered away, then returned for the next. “And then you can bring me some fruit. Apples and some pears. Conquence pears, mind, not those yellow Maran ones; all mush they are.”

“Yes, sir.” The second boot came free and he took both off to wait beside the door. Hopefully someone would give them a good polish before the morrow, or better still replace them with a nicer pair. The boy opened the door and stepped out. “I’ll get the fruit.”

“Wait a moment.” I leaned forwards in my chair, wiggling my toes. “Stann, ain’t it?” It occurred to me the scamp might prove useful.

“Yes, sir.”

“Fruit, and some bread. And find out where this lost prince everyone’s celebrating has got to. What’s his name, anyway?”

“Jorg, sir. Prince Jorg.” And he was off without waiting for a dismissal, or even shutting the door behind him.

“Jorg, eh?” It struck me as odd now that I thought about it. Last night none of the Brothers had so much as mentioned this lost prince, gathered anew to his father’s bosom. The whole of Crath City had seemed wrapped in the celebration of the prodigal’s return and somehow we had found the only tavern in sight of the Tall Castle where nobody wanted to talk about it. Most odd.

A shadow at the doorway caught my attention and I let go my musings. “Yes?” Had young Stann been running from rather than running to? The man in the doorway didn’t look very frightening, but he must have been approaching along the corridor when Stann broke and ran. .

The fellow before me would have been the most unremarkable of men, giving even my dear father some competition in the “ordinary” stakes, if not for the fact that every inch of his exposed skin, which amounted to hands, neck, and head, was tattooed with foreign scrawl. The letters even crawled up across his face, crowding his cheeks and forehead with dense calligraphy.

An uncomfortable silence built in the aftermath of his arrival, and certainly at home I would have been tempted to damn his eyes and demand that he speak up or get out, possibly encouraging him to one or the other with the aid of whatever was close enough at hand to throw. I’d spent too long on the road, though, where any given peasant might stab me for looking at his sister wrong, and my old instincts had rusted up.

“Yes?” Even though it was his place to explain, not mine to ask.

“My name is Sageous. I advise the king on more. . unusual matters.”

“Hallelujah!” Perhaps not the thing to say to someone with such heathen looks, but in the joy of discovering a man who might undo my curse, I was prepared to overlook shortcomings such as being of distinctly foreign origin and failing to worship the right deity. Snorri shared those faults, after all, and despite my misgivings had proved to have several redeeming features.

“People are not always so pleased to see me, Prince Jalan.” A small smile on his lips.

“Ah, but not everyone needs a miracle.” I got to my feet and advanced on the man, pleased to find I towered over him. I guessed him to be about forty and from my vantage point I could read what was written on the top of his head. Or at least I could if I knew the script. I guessed the writing to be from somewhere east and maybe south too. A long way east and south. A place where the writing looked like spiders mating. I’d seen the like before in my mother’s chambers. Sageous tilted his head to meet my gaze and I forgot all about his inconvenient script, lack of stature, even the spice-stink of him that had just reached my nostrils. All of a sudden those unremarkable eyes of his became everything that mattered. Twin pools of contemplation, calm, brown, ordinary. .

“Prince Jalan?”

I shook my head to find the damnable little man snapping his fingers in front of my face. If I hadn’t wanted something from him, I’d have kicked his arse all the way to the Triple Gate. Well, if he hadn’t been a sorcerer as well. Not people to rub the wrong way. Rubbed the right way, though. . as with Aladdin’s lamp, I might get my wish. At least I knew now that he wasn’t a charlatan with the mirrors and the smoke and the quick hands.

“Prince Jal-”

“I’m fine. Came over dizzy for a second. Come in. Sit. I need to ask you about something.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and blinked a few times to refocus as I walked a less-than-straight path back to my chair. “Sit.” I waved at another seat.

Sageous took an elegant ladder-back but stood behind it rather than following my bidding. Tan fingers ran over wood so dark as to be almost black, investigating each polished and gleaming curve as if seeking meaning. “You’re a puzzle, Prince Jalan.”

I bit back on my opinion and resisted damning him for his impudence.

“A puzzle of two pieces.” The heathen watched me with those placid eyes of his. He released the chair and ran his fingers over his forehead, brows, cheekbones, cheeks. Everywhere his fingertips touched it seemed that for a heartbeat the tattooed script grew darker, like fissures through his flesh into some inner blackness. He cocked his head, then looked back towards the corridor. “And the second piece is close by.”

“I would have expected no less of someone from whom a king such as Olidan seeks counsel.” I flashed my best grin, the one that says “amiable bluff hero with the common touch.” “The truth is I got caught up in some foul spell along with the Norseman I’ve brought with me. We’re bound together by the magics. If we get too far apart, bad things happen to us. And all I want to do is have someone unbind us so we can go our separate ways again. The man who could do that would find me a very generous prince indeed!”

Sageous looked far less surprised than I had expected. Almost as if he’d heard the story already. “I can help you, Prince Jalan.”

“Oh, thank God. I mean, thank any god. You don’t know how hard it’s been, yoked to that brute. I thought I was going to have to trek all the way to the fjords with him. Cold does not agree with me at all. My sinus-”

Sageous raised a hand and cut off my babbling. Unconscionable that he should interrupt a prince, but it’s true that the relief of it all had overloosened my tongue.

“There is, as in many things, an easy way and a hard way.”

“The easy way sounds easiest,” I said, leaning forwards, for the heathen spoke very soft.

“Kill the other man.”

“Kill Snorri?” I jolted back, surprised. “But I thought if he-”

“On what grounds did you think this, Prince Jalan? A sensible man may fear certain possibilities, but don’t let fear turn possibility into certainty. If either of you dies, the curse will die with you and the other may carry on unencumbered.”

“Oh.” It did seem silly that I had been so sure of what would happen. “But I can’t kill Snorri.” I didn’t want him dead. “I mean, it would be very difficult. You’ve not met him. When you do, you’ll understand.”

Sageous shrugged, the slightest raising of shoulders. “You are in King Olidan’s castle. If he commanded the man dead, then the man would die. I doubt he would refuse a prince’s request for the life of a commoner. Especially a man from the ice and snow, given to the worship of primitive gods.”

My early enthusiasm escaped me in a long sigh. “Tell me the difficult way. .”