The Sword-Edged blonde

SIX

Wentrobe closed the door behind us. The office was decked out with all the gilt and glitter expected of a king, but for the moment we were alone in it. I dropped my saddlebags next to the door and hung my jacket on the coat rack. I felt seriously underdressed.

“Would you like a drink?” Wentrobe asked, moving to the bar.

“Sure. Rum if you have it.”

“We do indeed.” As he poured, he glanced at me. “You appear to have grown accustomed to hard work.”

“Yeah. Who’d’ve thought, huh?” I took the drink gratefully. “So. How are… things?”

Wentrobe sipped his own drink. “What do you know?”

“What was in Phil’s note, what Anders told me, and what I picked up from gossip on the way. Phil met some mysterious beautiful woman, married her, and now everyone thinks she killed their child.”

He nodded. “That’s what everyone thinks, all right. Almost everyone.”

“Is that what happened?”

He made a grand shrug. “Their son is dead. The queen was found with the body, covered in blood that wasn’t her own, inside a locked room. Those are the only facts everyone agrees on.”

“So the queen murdered the prince.”

He nodded and poured himself another drink. “There seems to be no other logical explanation.”

“But Phil doesn’t believe it.”

He looked down into the goblet. “No,” he said with the weight only a disillusioned elder can manage. “He doesn’t.”

I picked up a framed portrait from the big desk. About the size of my hand, it was a colored line drawing of a woman with wavy blond hair, blue eyes and a mouth that seemed about to smile. She had the look of fresh air and forests after a spring rain, probably because she wore a crown of flowers. “Is this her?”

“Yes,” answered a new voice. It had grown deeper, but I’d know it anywhere.

He stood across the room from me, in a casual jacket and shirt. He wasn’t wearing his crown, which for some reason surprised me, although I knew it was too heavy and uncomfortable to wear except on formal occasions. I guess I just expected him to look more royal, like King Philip, instead of so much like my old best friend Phil.

Phil. Fucking King Phil.

He grew taller than me when we were fourteen, and still was. His hair was cropped short, and touched with gray at the temples, but otherwise still had that annoying disheveled quality that made all the girls sigh. He wore a mustache, also shot through with gray, and there were deep lines at the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t fat, though, and he still moved gracefully.

Still looking at me, he said, “Pour me one of those, will you, Emerson?”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Wentrobe said.

I put the picture back on his desk. “Not bad. Not as cute as that Danner girl you chased after when we were fourteen, but not bad.”

“The picture doesn’t do her justice,” Phil said. He took the drink from Wentrobe, downed half of it and then managed a small grin. “Remember when we stole that bottle of rotgut from your dad’s wine cellar and drank it in the woods, then tried to sneak back in without anyone noticing?”

“Yeah. I’m a better drinker now.”

“Me, too.” A real smile finally cracked his cool demeanor, and suddenly there was my old pal Phil, who’d once puked in my lap and set me up with his sister and taught me to play cards and was the worst dancer I’d ever seen. Something fell away inside me, too, and we grabbed each other in a long, intense bear hug that once would’ve embarrassed us both. A whole bunch of emotions I’d stuck in that dark spot under my stomach threatened to burst out, but with great difficulty I kept them in their place. Finally we broke apart and just grinned at each other.

“You smell like a pond,” he said.

“Where I live, everything’s been flooded for two weeks. You smell like a damn bouquet.”

“It’s called bathing. All the kids are doing it. So did you have any trouble getting here?”

“Not with that super-patriot you sent to find me.”

Phil nodded. “He’s a good one, for sure. I’ve had my eye on him for a while.” He swallowed the rest of his drink and handed the goblet to Wentrobe for a refill. “Well, I’ll leave it up to you. We can drink and reminisce first, or I can tell you why I needed to see you.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you want while we drink?”

“That works.” He gestured at an overstuffed high-backed chair. I sank into it while he sat on the corner of the desk and picked up the picture of his wife. “You didn’t come to the wedding.”

“Had a previous engagement.” In truth, I avoided information about Arentia so successfully that he’d been married for eighteen months before I even knew about it.

“Well, that was six years ago, anyway. We tried to start a family right away, but it took a while. Eventually, though, we did have a son. Last year.” He met my eyes. “We named him Edward.”

I must’ve had a great expression, because Phil only kept a straight face for about ten seconds. “No, I’m just kidding, we named him Pridiri.”

“Good, that won’t get him picked on in school.”

“Ree wanted it. She said it means, ‘relief from anxiety,’ and it was very important to her. I call him ‘P.D.’ for short.” I assumed “Ree” was what he called his queen, Rhiannon. Girls could get away with strange nicknames like that, especially girls who looked like the one in that picture.

“So what happened to him?”

“The official version,” he said with a glance at Wentrobe, “is that she killed him.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. There are all sorts of rumors, including that she was a moon priestess doing a spell to bring down the government. My favorite is that she hated changing diapers so much that she lost her temper when she couldn’t find a nursemaid.” His smile was not amused. “But there’s no denying she was found covered in his blood, and the only remains were bones.” He said this with the practiced calm of royalty, betraying no emotion. “She was violently ill afterwards. The consensus is that she ate part of the corpse.”

“What does she say?”

“She says she can’t remember. We’d been at a state dinner, and she left early to go put him to bed. Her maids said they left her alone with P.D., and when they came back they found her passed out, covered in blood, surrounded by moon priestess paraphernalia. Candles, knives, incense, the works.”

“Could it be a setup?”

“I wish it could be, but how? She was in the nursery, in the middle of the most well-protected building in the whole country. And why? If someone breached our security and got into the castle, why kill a baby? Why not her, or me?”

I nodded. “Yeah. ‘Why’ is a good question, all right.”

He was silent for a moment as he met my eyes. “I was hoping you could find the answer to it.”

“Figured as much.”

“I need someone from outside, who I can trust, and who’s up to the challenge. Believe it or not, you’ve got quite the reputation for cleverness. In some circles, at least.”

I held my goblet out to Wentrobe for a refill, then tossed it down. “I don’t normally work in circles this high off the ground.”

“But I can trust you, Eddie,” he repeated, so simply that I was both touched and infuriated.

So this was it. My best friend, who I hadn’t seen in twenty years, wanted me to help prove his wife wasn’t a child killer when everyone else seemed sure that she was. To do that, I’d no doubt have to move around through these places loaded with memories for me, memories I’d gladly cut out of my brain with a rusty butter knife if I knew it would get rid of them. And I knew he wouldn’t offer me money, just like he knew I wouldn’t accept any. My only reward would be helping a friend.

I stood. “Well… ah, hell, you know I’ll do it, so we can skip all the hemming and hawing. I’ll need to see the official reports on it, the witness inquisition notes and everything.”

“All waiting for you,” Wentrobe said, “in your room.”

I managed half a grin at Phil. “Pretty damn sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“That’s why they let me wear the fancy hat.”

I put the goblet down on his desk despite the temptation to ask for another refill. “Okay, then. Guess I’ll go get cleaned up a little. Think I could get some food?”

“Yes. Emerson, I know it’s a little beneath your standard duties, but would you show Eddie to his room?”

“Certainly, Your Majesty. And I’ll send up something-ham and cheese were your favorite, as I recall.”

I nodded, and picked up my jacket and saddlebags. “Once I’ve read through this stuff, I’ll probably want to talk to the same people. Hopefully I’ll have some new questions for them.”

“Sure,” Phil said.

“And then… I guess I need to meet your wife.”