The Liar's key

NINETEEN

Hennan and I rode without conversation after parting with Snorri, Tuttugu, and Kara. I steered Nor through the thickening traffic converging on the Appan Way to enter the great city. The roadside houses were fully fledged taverns now, or shop fronts offering all a man might want for the highway. In the distance a glittering curve of the Seleen caught the sunlight and fractured it. My head had started to pound in the heat, and the stink of the capital reached out to us on the slightest of breezes.

• • •

The gates to Vermillion stand open year on year. By the time the Appan Way meets the great walls it has already passed through a quarter mile of the outer town, slum dwellings on the fringes, set back from the road, more gentrified homes further in, some two and three storeys intermixed with open tree-lined squares and public buildings. Grandmother regularly has notices posted reminding the inhabitants of these houses that the land will be cleared with fire should the city ever need to be defended-but each year the outer town spreads a little more, reaches a little further out along the five roads that feed Vermillion.

A scattering of guards endured the heat on the great gatehouse overlooking the Appan’s course north, more lurked in the shadow of the wall at ground level, but these would seldom stir for anything less than a laden cart. Hennan and I passed through on Nor’s back without challenge. Within moments we were clattering along Victory Street, past the Grand Old Stables, now given over to public use, and beside the cool delights of Fountain Square where cherry trees line the avenue to the new cathedral.

It seemed unreal-almost a dream-all this had been waiting here for me the whole time. While I shivered on the Bitter Ice, as close to death as a man can come, people strolled these streets, buying sweetmeats, watching the acrobats, letting the Seleen slip past, gambling, loving, getting drunk. . I’d covered three thousand miles and here, here in this small patch of stonework, this terracotta encrustation, lay my whole life.

I let the horse move with the pace of the city’s traffic and watched the buildings as we passed, at once familiar and strange.

A dark-faced man in the shadowed entrance to Massim’s marked my progress along the street with rather too much interest. Maeres Allus, so long an abstract worry, almost forgotten, suddenly loomed large once more in my thinking. I shook the reins and made Nor pick up his feet.

“We’ll go straight to the palace.” I’d thought perhaps to look in on a few places, drop the boy off, get the lay of the land, but now decided it was better first to learn whatever could be learned in the safety of the palace. Better to make my presence known to my family so that Maeres couldn’t have me dragged off to some lonely warehouse without anyone ever knowing I’d survived the fire at the opera.

Behind me Hennan said nothing. Eking a life from the wasteland around the Wheel of Osheim might prepare you for many things, but the city of Vermillion was not one of them. I felt his head turn this way and that, trying to take it all in. To me it seemed smaller than in my memory-to Hennan probably larger than in my tales. We build our expectations out of what we know already. I hoped he wasn’t going to prove clingy. A prince of Red March can hardly be expected to shepherd a beggar boy around the corridors of power. .

Passing along the grand streets around the palace we drew a few curious looks. Guards at the gates of mansion grounds narrowed their eyes and threw out their chests. Servant girls out on errands stared in surprise. In my country squire’s garb I cut a rather different figure to the kinds of visitors these houses were used to, and the pale beggar boy behind me added a further pinch of the exotic.

We clipped and clopped along the Kings Way, across the broad plaza before the palace, and at last came up to the Errik Gate, where once my thrice-great-grandfather Errik the Fourth came back in procession from the port of Imperia carrying the heads of Tibor Charl, Elias Gregor, and Robert the Black, the worst pirate lords the Corsair Isles spawned since the Suns. I remember their names because Martus once put three artistically decorated cabbages under my bed and claimed they were the severed heads of the trio, taken from the spikes on the Errik Gate, and that if I told or tried to move them they would come alive again. Bastard.

The guards before the Errik Gate came forward sharp enough, two of them ready to see me off, one standing further back with his pike lowered. On the gate towers archers paid an interest. The Errik Gate is for the highest of visiting dignitaries, for royal households, and it is seldom opened.

“Be off. If you’ve business at the palace you’ll want the Scullion Door, round past the old castle. See?” He aimed a finger at the Marsail keep.

At that point it occurred to me I should have bought a hood so I could have thrown it back dramatically and announced myself. As things stood I was starting from the position of having already gone unrecognized.

“I’m Prince Jalan Kendeth returned from the Utter North and I’ll have the head of any man who denies me entrance to my grandmother’s palace.” I let it come out with an air of weary irritation while praying none of them would call my bluff.

“Uh.” The younger of the pair, proclaimed the senior in rank by the star upon the shoulder of his tunic, sucked in his lips in consideration. I guessed that nobody had ever ridden up to the gates falsely declaring themselves related to the Red Queen. Perhaps some drunk too deep in his cups for self-preservation may have, but not a sober young man on a horse. A moment’s more cogitation and he frowned up at me. “I’ll go and check. If you could wait here, sir. Cogan, let them rest in the shade.”

And so we waited in the shadow of the walls, in silence save for Nor guzzling water from the trough. Not quite the entrance I’d hoped to make but Vermillion had a goodly number of princes and these weren’t my household guards.

It took longer than I felt it should but eventually the sub-captain returned with a familiar figure.

“Fat Ned!” I shouted, striding toward the man, arms spread.

Fat Ned, looking skinnier than ever, took one step back, then another. Overhead I heard the creak of bowstrings.

“It’s me, Ned.” I spread the fingers of both hands toward my face and gave him my winning smile.

“No?” Ned shook his head, loose skin flapping around his bones. “But you’re dead, Prince Jalan. . is it. . is it really you?” He tilted his gaze, looking more closely with those tired old eyes of his.

I lowered my arms. I hadn’t been intending to hug the man in any event. “Really, truly. And not risen from the grave either.” I thumped my chest. “Hale and hearty. Reports of my death have been much exaggerated!”

“Prince Jalan!” Fat Ned shook his head in amazement, drawing his hands down across his face. “How-”

The gate captain emerged now from the postern gate, hastening across to us, sword rattling in its scabbard. “Prince Jalan! My apologies! We were told that you’d died. There was a day of mourning. .”

“A day?” One lousy day. .

“By order of the queen for all the victims of the great opera house fire. Many highborn died that day-”

“One day?” And not even just for me. “Wait-did my brothers survive?”

“You were the only member of the royal family in attendance, my prince. Your brothers are well.” The man bowed his head and took a step back, gesturing to the postern gate, inviting me to precede him.

“A prince of Red March doesn’t return from the dead to re-enter the palace after six months by a side gate, captain.” I waved to the Errik Gate, my voice imperious. “Open it.”

The guardsmen exchanged a glance or two at that. The captain, looking somewhat uncomfortable, cleared his throat. “The key to the Errik Gate is kept in the treasury, Prince Jalan. It has to be released by special order of her majesty, and-”

“Well run to my grandmother and let her know that I am waiting!” Somehow I was digging myself into a hole before even getting inside the palace but I was damned if I’d have some jumped-up gate captain and his men sniggering at my back as I squeezed in through the postern gate.

“-and the gate is currently closed for maintenance in any case. Several hundredweight of gravel would have to be moved and one of the hinges replaced before the gate could be opened. .”

Curse the man. “Don’t they open out?” I only had the vaguest of recollections of anyone using it. The Florentine duke, Abrasmus, visited when I was ten but I was busy causing mischief at the back of the royal stands when he rode through. .

“My apologies, highness.” He didn’t look apologetic enough though, not by half.

“All right, dammit. Lead me in through your mouse-hole.” I dismounted and, with a shake of my head, started off toward the postern. “You.” I pointed to the sub-captain. “See that my horse is delivered to the Roma Hall. Ned you go along and make sure they don’t get lost.”

Hennan stood from crouching beside the wall and made to follow me.

“Take the boy, too.” I waved Ned at him. “Tell Ballessa to give him a meal.”

Hennan shot me a betrayed look at that and followed on behind the men and Nor, head down. I raised my hands toward the captain in exasperation. What the hell did the boy expect? I was hardly going to introduce him around the palace. Cardinal Kendeth, Hennan, Hennan, the cardinal. Prince Martus, Prince Darin, this is Hennan, he tends goats. . Madness. The captain just gave me the same impenetrably bland look he’d shown ever since I arrived, nodded and turned away to lead me through the door. And so at long last I returned to the palace, squeezing my way through the narrow and doglegged passage from the postern gate. We emerged into the dazzle of sunlight on the far side and squinting against it I looked about, getting my bearings. I supposed I should present myself to Father and find something suitable to wear before making the rounds. Everyone would want to hear my story and whilst telling it in my unkempt road clothes would lend a certain something to the imagery of it all, I preferred the comfort and splendour of my court dress. A bath wouldn’t go amiss either. And maybe a housemaid to pour for me and recover the soap when I dropped it.

“I will escort you to your father, highness.” The captain waved a couple of his men to join the guard. I would have preferred to be asked where I intended to go rather than be told, but I nodded my permission.

“First, if I’m dead, show me my grave.” I was interested to see what lasting memorial they had erected to the hero of the Aral Pass.

The captain made a short bow and we set off across the palace compound. With the sun blazing there were few people on the move. Small black-clad figures made leisurely progress along the shadowed sides of the Poor Palace, Milano House, and the Marsail keep, servants bound on various errands. Apart from that our audience consisted of scattered wall guards and a small contingent of crows, moulting feathers in the heat and looking distinctly ragged.

We came through the furnace of the West Courtyard to the palace church, actually the south wing of the Roma Hall. Father might be inside, though he spent less time in the halls of Christly worship than some pagans-which for a cardinal was no mean feat.

We approached the doors to the church foyer, the twin spires rising on high to either side of a peaked roof. A wall of saints looked down upon us, their disapproval set in stone. I started up the steps.

“Here, highness,” the captain called out before I reached the top stair.

I turned. The man was indicating a plaque set in the outer wall, amid a host of others, markers for lords and generals of yesteryear, some weathered beyond reading. I re-trod my path, outrage building. The royal family were always laid to rest inside the church, our tombs crowding the margins of the aisles to either side of the nave, princes and princesses of the realm buried beneath black slabs of marble set into the floor, more renowned figures in their own sepulchres beneath their likenesses idealized in alabaster. For kings and queens they found space in the chancel. The slow tide of years moved forgotten royals down into the catacombs, freeing space for more recent departures. . but even the most lowly prince got to have the church roof keep the rain off his title. My plaque was set between two other newish ones, on the left General Ullamere Contaph, Hero of Ameroth Keep, 17–97 year of Interregnum, on the right Lord Quentin DeVeer, 38–98 year of Interregnum. I set a hand to my own.

“In memoriam: Jalan Kendeth, third son of Cardinal Reymond, 76–98 year of Interregnum.” I read the words aloud. “That’s it? Cardinal’s third son?” No prince? No hero of Aral Pass? Bastards. “I’ll see the cardinal now. If he’s sober and not abed with some choirboy.” I found my hand resting on my knife, palm to pommel. “Now!”

The guardsmen snapped erect at that last barked command. The captain, standing to attention, gestured at the church doors with his eyes.

“I very much doubt I’ll find him in there, captain!” But I returned up the steps in any case and set both hands to the left door, pushing through with a measure of violence.

For a while I stood blind, waiting for my eyes to adjust from the brilliance of the day to the softness of candles and the muted spectrum of stained glass. Dim shapes resolved and I stepped in. Three old ladies kneeling at the pews, an ancient bent over the bank of votive candles, and a stooped grey figure standing facing the wall about halfway along the north aisle. I hadn’t really expected to find my father among them. At the far end beneath the mandala window a black-frocked priest stood turning a page at the lectern. I took another step forward. There wouldn’t be any point asking if Father was hidden away in the transepts, but even so something drew me in. Perhaps just the coolness. The day outside was starting to get hellish hot. Maybe my time in Norseheim had lowered my tolerance for Red March summers because it proved a blessed relief to get out of the glare for a moment.

It wasn’t until I made my way along the north aisle that I realized the stooping man was facing my mother’s stone-a plaque bearing her name and lineage, and behind it, buried in the thickness of the walls, her remains. And-as I now remembered and perhaps no one else knew-those of my unborn sister.

“Prince Jalan?” The man looked up at me, grey and old before his time, lined with pain. He took a step toward me, hobbling, his right leg ruined. For some reason I matched his advance with a step back.

“Robbin?” One of my father’s retainers, though at first I hadn’t been sure of it in the gloom. He stood with his head bathed in green light. It streamed down through the serpent in the high window where Saint George battled the dragon. Now though I saw past his stoop and his old man’s hair, I looked beyond one decade and half of another. “Robbin?” Once more, for a moment, I couldn’t see him properly-damned incense in these churches stings your eyes something rotten. I squeezed my eyes against the tears and saw Robbin as he’d been fifteen years before, battling Edris Dean, putting himself between the assassin and Mother and me. The wound that crippled him he took in my service. I pressed fingers to my eyes to clear them, wondering how many times I’d mocked or cursed him for his slowness over the years as he hobbled about on errands for my father.

“Yes, highness.” He started struggling to go down on one knee like men do before the throne. “Th-they said you were dead.”

I grabbed him and hauled him up before he fell on his face or did something more embarrassing. “I don’t feel dead.” I let him go and took a step back. “Now, unless my father is lurking in here I’ll go off and look for him somewhere he’s likely to be. Our good cardinal should be able to settle the matter of whether I’m dead or not once and for all.”

I straightened the front of Robbin’s jerkin where I’d grabbed it to pull him to his feet, and with a curt nod I left him standing there, still half-stunned. My footsteps echoed loud among the pillars and the old widows amid the pews watched my departure, judgement written in every wrinkle.

• • •

“He’s not there. Let’s try the house.” I waved the captain and his men after me and led the way to the grand entrance of Roma Hall. A carriage and four stood in front of the steps, the driver head down as if he’d been waiting a while. I ignored it and hurried up to the doorway.

I didn’t recognize the flunky who opened the doors in response to my pounding, but I knew the two guards behind him, squinting against the brightness of the day in their house uniforms.

“Alphons! Double! Good to see you. Where’s my father?” I pushed past the butler and on into the hall, its niches filled with those Indus statues the cardinal still collects to the vexation of his priests. The doormen fell in with me sputtering all the “but you’re dead” nonsense that I could tell was going to become quite tiresome over the next few days.

“Jalan!” My brother Darin striding toward me, dressed for travel, a man beside him heaving a chest. “I knew you’d jump out of that fire into some frying pan!” He looked pleased, not overjoyed, but pleased. “There was a rumour running in the wine halls that you’d joined the circus!” Darin opened his arms to embrace me, handsome face split by a wide and apparently genuine grin.

“Fucker!” I punched him in the mouth, hard enough to knock him on his arse and to cut my knuckles on his teeth.

“What?” Darin stayed where he was, sitting on the floor and spitting blood. He shook his head clear and looked up at me. “What was that for?”

“Father expects you at this opera of his tonight,” I mimicked the deep and condescending voice he had used when instructing me to go and burn to death. “No showing up late, or drunk, or pretending nobody told you!”

“Ah.” Darin held up a hand to his bagman who hauled him to his feet. He wiped his mouth. “Well obviously I didn’t know-”

“You didn’t go!” I roared, remembering the screams. The fierceness of my anger took me by surprise. “Martus wasn’t there! Dear Father forgot his own opera? Not a single one of Grandmother’s brood in attendance?” I raised my fist again and Darin, though two inches taller and always the better brawler, stepped back.

“It was opera for God’s sake. I didn’t expect you to go! If you hadn’t vanished the night of the fire I would have put money against you being there. . and I was right, you weren’t!” He wiggled his jaw with his hand, wincing. “I was just doing my duty by telling you yours. Father drank too much that evening and had to excuse himself. Martus turned up for the second half and found the place in flames. .”

“Well I did go, and I damn near burned!” I lowered my hands a touch. “And someone’s to blame!”

“Someone is. Just not me.” He wiped at his mouth with a red hand. “Quite a punch there, little brother.” He grinned. “It’s good to see you!” And somehow he still managed to look as if he meant it.

“You-” I remembered Lisa and bit off the accusation. “Were the DeVeers there that night?”

Darin wiped away his smile. “Alain DeVeer was. The shock of it killed his father, Lord Quentin-died abed later that week. Fortunately there was some kind of scandal at the house the day of the performance and the sisters were kept in. Very fortunate in fact as I’ve married Micha, the youngest of them. Just off to our country house now as it happens.”

I kept my face blank. Too blank in fact.

“Micha! You know her, surely? You must have met her?” Darin said.

“Ah, yes. . Micha.” A good half-dozen times. Most of them in her bedroom after a difficult scramble up an ivy-clad colonnade. Little Micha, a beauty whose face shone with the innocence of an angel and whose tricks I’d had to teach the ladies down at the Silken Glove and at Madam LaPenda’s. “I remember the girl. Congratulations, brother. I wish you joy of each other.”

“Thank you. Micha will be glad to learn you survived. She was always anxious to hear the rumours about you. Perhaps you’ll come to visit when you’re settled? Especially if you’ve any words of comfort to offer about poor Alain’s last night. .”

“Of course. I’ll make a point of it,” I lied. Micha was probably checking I was dead to set her mind at ease regarding any tales I might tell her new husband. And I doubted she wanted to hear that her brother died in a toilet after I kicked him in the face while he hauled my trousers down. “I’ll visit first chance I get.”

“Do!” Darin grinned again. “Oh! I forgot, you won’t know. You’re going to be an uncle.”

“What? How?” The words made sense individually but didn’t add up into anything comprehensible.

Darin threw an arm over my shoulder and put on a mock-serious voice. “Well. . when a daddy and a mummy love each other very much-”

“She’s pregnant?”

“Either that or she swallowed something very big and round.”

“Christ!”

“Congratulations is what most people say.”

“Well. . that too.” Me an uncle? My Micha? I felt a sudden need to sit down. “I’ve always thought I’d make a great uncle. Terrible. But great.”

“You should come with me, Jalan. Recover from your ordeal and all that.”

“Maybe.” Watching Darin and Micha play happy families was not how I anticipated spending my first few days back in civilization. “But right now I need to see Father.”

“Back on your travels so soon, Jal?” Darin cocked his head, puzzled.

“No. . why?” He wasn’t making sense.

“Father’s in Roma. The pope summoned him for an audience and Grandmother said he had to go.”

“Hell and fire.” I had questions that wanted answers and I might have squeezed them out of Father more easily than elsewhere. “Well. . look, I’m going to get cleaned up and-wait, you didn’t throw out my clothes, did you?”

“Me?” Darin laughed. “Why would I go touching your peacock feathers? It’s all there as far as I know. Unless Ballessa took it upon herself to clear your rooms out. Father certainly won’t have got around to giving any instructions. Anyhow, I’d best go. I’m late as it is.” He motioned for his man to start hauling the chest again. “Visit us when you get the chance-and don’t rile Martus, he’s in a foul mood. Grandmother appointed Micha and Alain’s elder brother, the new Lord DeVeer, to captain the infantry army that’s been put together these past few months. And Martus had already decided the post was his. Then a few days ago some other calamity or indignity. I wasn’t really paying attention. . something about a huge bill from a merchant. Ollus I think the name was.”

“Maeres Allus?”

“Could be.” Darin turned at the doorway. “Good to see you alive, little brother.” A wave of his hand and he was off and gone. I stood, watching, until the carriage took them from sight. He hadn’t even asked where I’d been. .

Alphons kept his gaze front and centre at the door. The less ancient guard, Double, a dark fellow with bags beneath his eyes, watched me with undisguised curiosity. I let the insolence slip. It was good to see that at least one person found the returned adventurer fascinating.