The Prince (Heirs of Legacy Book 1)

by Paul Lauritsen

  “They’ll let me in,” Relam said grimly. “And I’m not putting this off so that I can forget about it again.”

  “Have it your way,” Wil said, shrugging.

  Relam led the way out of the palace and into the cold, dark city. A stiff wind was blowing from the harbor, making Relam’s cloak billow around him and driving the cold into his bones. Few others were about on this wintry night. Anyone with any sense was huddled up inside against the unseasonable cold. But not Relam. He had a mission to fulfill.

  “Nice night for it,” Wil observed drily from somewhere behind Relam. The prince could hear the guard shivering slightly. “Who knew this city got so cold in the fall?”

  “It’s night,” Galen said patiently. Alone among the group, he was wearing a fur lined cloak for extra warmth. “That means no sun. It also means it’s going to be cold.”

  “Well, I know that,” Wil grunted.

  “Then why didn’t you-”

  “Enough,” Relam growled. The two guards shut up immediately and trudged along in silence.

  They reached the Citadel in no time, walking fast to stave off the cold. There were no guards in front of the gate with it being night, but there were plenty of guards pacing the wall above. One of them hailed Relam as he approached the gate.

  “And where do you think you’re going?” the guard shouted. Immediately, the other guards swung around, bows at the ready, arrows on the strings.

  “We request entry!” Relam called.

  “And who are you?”

  Relam sighed, wishing there was some secret code phrase or symbol he could use so that he did not have to go through this routine every time he wanted to visit. “Prince Relam of the Sthan Kingdom!” he shouted back.

  “The prince?” the guard leaned out, squinting into the night in a hopeless attempt to see Relam’s face. “What are you doing here at this time of night?”

  “There are prisoners I need to interrogate,” Relam called back, frustrated that he had to shout his purpose to the whole city. Anybody could have been listening, including whoever had hired the assassins in the first place.

  “Right, we’re coming down to let you in,” the guard said, shuffling out of sight. “Step back from the gate or we’ll fill you with arrows.”

  Relam stepped back obligingly, as did his two guards. From this new perspective, he could see the guard ambling back towards the nearest stairwell, waving languidly for others to join him and help open the gate.

  “Get a move on!” Relam roared.

  The shout caused the guard to jump visibly, and he disappeared into the Citadel quickly. Relam, fuming inwardly, tapped his foot impatiently as he waited to be let in.

  Finally, five agonizing minutes later, the gate of the Citadel began opening slowly. It paused when there was enough space for a man to step through, and several weapons bristled from the gap, along with an arm holding aloft a lantern.

  “Advance and be recognized,” the guard from the wall ordered.

  Relam snorted and stepped forward, throwing back his hood. “Do you believe me now?” he asked.

  “Yes, your highness, sorry,” the guard said quickly as the menacing weapons withdrew. “Come on in. Welcome to the Citadel.”

  Relam squeezed through the partially open doors, followed by his guards. As soon as the last man, Galen, was through, the Citadel guards hauled the gate shut again, sealing the entrance against any more visitors.

  The prince looked around to get his bearings, then moved quickly to a door to the right, just inside the gate. There was a flickering glow filtering through the opening.

  “Your highness, this is the guard room,” the sentry said anxiously, hovering behind him.

  “I know,” Relam said, stepping inside. The room was empty, probably because its occupants had been recruited to help open the gate. But there was a fire in the fireplace, and it was wonderfully warm.

  “We’ll stay here for a few moments,” Relam told the guard. “Then move on to our business.”

  “Why-?”

  “Because you left us out there in the cold for so long,” Relam grunted. “As you were, soldier.”

  The guard retreated quickly, pulling the door shut behind him.

  “Idiot,” Relam muttered under his breath, extending his bare hands towards the warm flames.

  “I c-couldn’t agree more, sir,” Wil said, his words garbled by his numb mouth.

  Galen looked back and forth between the two younger men, then snorted. “Amateurs,” he muttered, rolling his eyes.

  Chapter 34

  It took a full fifteen minutes for Relam to warm up sufficiently to feel ready to move on from the guard room and interrogate the assassins. Wil kept looking longingly back at the guard room as they crossed the entrance hall, and the prince couldn’t blame him. The Citadel was terribly cold, the floors, the walls, everything.

  It didn’t get any better as they climbed the stairs to the guard tower, ascending ever higher into the sky. The guards they passed were huddled by the nearest torches for warmth and bundled in fur cloaks like Galen’s. When they transitioned to the Eyrie tower, the temperature dropped even further until they found themselves at the very top level, in the circular room that the cells branched off from. Two palace guards waited there, looking half-frozen themselves.

  “Hey,” one of them said thickly, stirring. “Nobody is allowed to be up here.”

  “It’s me,” Relam said pushing his hood back to reveal his face.

  “Oh,” the guard muttered. “Sorry, your highness, didn’t recognize you.”

  “No matter,” Relam replied. “You have the keys to the prisoners’ cells?”

  “Here,” the other guard said, fumbling in a pocket. He tossed a ring of keys to Relam. They fell far short of their intended target, and Galen stooped to retrieve them, then passed them to Relam.

  “Thanks,” the prince muttered, shivering slightly. “Let’s get this over with. “Which cells have our men in them?”

  “These two,” one of the guards said pointing. “They’re asleep at the moment.”

  “Then we’ll wake them up,” Relam said grimly.

  The prince fumbled with the keys for a moment, then found the right one and opened the cell door. The smell of the unwashed occupant hit him first, a terrible wall that seemed to block out all else. Galen entered first, putting himself between the prince and the prisoner. Relam gagged at the smell, then mustered his resolve and stepped closer to the filthy figure, lying on his side in a corner of the cell.

  “Get up,” Relam commanded.

  The prisoner slept on.

  “Wake up,” Relam growled.

  Still no response. Relam sighed, then let out a tremendous roar that shook the cell. The prisoner seemed to levitate right off his filthy blankets, scrabbling around in the corner frantically, whimpering with fright.

  “That’s better,” Ream muttered. “Look at me,” he said to the prisoner.

  The assassin glared up at him through sunken eyes, matted hair hanging around his pallid, thin face. “Princeling,” he hissed. “Back again?”

  “Again?”

  “You came to visit once. A year ago was it? Promised us protection if we would betray Him.” The assassin laughed hollowly, dropping his eyes to the floor of his cell. “We knew better though, yes we did. We shuts our mouths and we stays here, safe from the one who hired us.”

  “You were hired to kill us,” Relam said. “My family and I.”

  “Yes. We told him that, yes we did.”

  “Were there any plots going on at the same time?” Relam asked hopefully. “Any mention of the queen or poison or some sort of illness?”

  “No,” the assassin whispered. “He had great faith we would succeed. And we should have. We would have, if not for . . . for the servant,” he growled. “With his secret exit. You were trapped, then gone.”

  “Yes,” Relam agreed. “I rather appreciated that secret exit personally.”

  The assassin curled his l
ip disdainfully. “Did you wake me just to gloat, princeling? Or did you have some purpose when you came here?”

  “My mother is dead,” Relam said flatly. “She was murdered. I want to know who did it and why.”

  “Not us,” the assassin hissed. “No, not us.”

  “I gathered that,” Relam muttered. “Seeing as you’ve been locked up in here. Could it have been the same man who hired you and your comrades?”

  “Could have been,” the assassin murmured, slumping back against the wall. “He was very determined, he was. He does not fail. He told us as much. One way or another, he will eventually succeed in his quest.”

  “To kill the royal family?”

  “To replace them,” the prisoner replied. “He wants to take over.”

  “He expects to just inherit the throne if the line is broken? Is that it?”

  “Not inherit,” the prisoner snorted. “Seize it.”

  “Interesting,” Relam muttered. “You’re very afraid of him, aren’t you?”

  “You should be too.”

  “And you don’t know who he is?”

  The prisoner hesitated, then shook his head.

  “Not even a guess?”

  The assassin looked away, not meeting Relam’s gaze.

  Relam knelt in front of the man. “If you don’t tell me everything you know or suspect, I will release you from here to fend for yourself.”

  “You can’t!” the prisoner protested, shrinking back into the wall as far as he could. “You wouldn’t!”

  “I’m desperate too,” Relam growled. “I’m not planning on dying, or watching my father die. Now tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”

  “I never saw his face,” the prisoner said quickly, his desperation giving him focus and making him more lucid. “I only heard his voice.” The assassin shuddered. “He spoke in a hiss, like a snake.”

  Relam felt gooseflesh rising on his arms and the back of his neck. “Go on,” he whispered.

  “I don’t think it was his real voice,” the assassin continued. “I think he was trying to disguise it. Which leads me to believe that normally he thinks his voice would be recognizable. So, a high-profile person. Maybe of the nobility.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “Mizzran.”

  “When?”

  “A month before the job,” the assassin replied, shrugging. “That timing is pretty standard, gives us some time to do reconnaissance on the targets and decide how to attack.”

  “I see,” Relam said, thinking. How could he find out what nobles that had been at the banquet had traveled to Mizzran nearly sixteen months prior?

  “Anything else?” Relam asked.

  “He warned us what would happen if we betrayed him or failed him,” the assassin added, shuddering. “Though I’m not sure how he expected us to betray him, seeing as we don’t really know who he is.”

  “Yes,” Relam muttered. “And therein lies the problem. Was there anyone else involved? Someone who paid you or fed you information or something?”

  “There was a man that helped us scout the palace,” the assassin said. “Gave us a map. He was a quiet type, all cloaked up, short and round. Not a fighter.”

  “A spy?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t met many round spies,” the assassin said, shrugging. “Most underworld types tend to be in reasonably good shape.”

  “Interesting,” Relam muttered. “No name?”

  “Not that he gave us. We were to refer to him only as ‘scout’.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “Not far from here, just on the other side of the river,” the assassin said helpfully. “Damned if I remember the street though. West side is a maze.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Relam said, waving aside the last observation. “Is that everything you can tell me?”

  “Other than the fact that I am most certainly dead if you put me outside these walls, yes,” the assassin confirmed, looking around fearfully.

  “Good. Then you stay,” Relam told him. “Under guard and protected.”

  “Thank you,” the prisoner sobbed, breaking down into a whining mess. “This life isn’t much but it’s all I have left. And if he is caught-”

  “You’ll still be left here to rot,” Relam told him firmly. “You tried to kill me and my parents.”

  “But if my information helps-”

  “Good night,” Relam said, backing out of the cell. “Rest, keep your strength up. I’ll be back some time to see if you remember anything else.”

  The prisoner sighed and rolled over, putting his back towards the entrance. Relam shut the cell door and locked it, moving on to the cell of the second prisoner. He peeked inside to make sure the man wasn’t waiting to ambush him and frowned. The second remaining assassin was curled in a tight little ball, shivering uncontrollably, teeth chattering together.

  “Guards,” Relam said quickly. “Fetch blankets and see what you can do to warm this tower. These prisoners are freezing and we need them alive.”

  The palace guards on duty stumbled down the stairs, muttering to themselves. Relam watched the prisoner in the second cell for a moment, then turned away.

  “He won’t be much use,” the prince observed to Wil and Galen, who had remained behind. “But I got some new information out of the other one.”

  “Anything likely to help us catch the master of the assassins?” Wil asked eagerly.

  “No,” Relam replied. “At least, not right now. We have more clues, but no answer.”

  The guards returned, arms piled with blankets and a stack of firewood. “Building is stone,” the first grunted. “So, we figure there’s no harm in lighting a fire indoors.”

  “Should be fine,” Relam agreed. “Build it between the cells, that way they can both reach the warmth if they want.”

  One of the guards shoved blankets through the bars, which the two prisoners snatched up eagerly. The other guard busied himself making a fire, piling tinder and kindling in an organized heap. A few sparks from his flint and steel kindled a tiny, orange flame, which steadily grew into a cheerful fire.

  “Much better,” Relam muttered. “I think we’ll stay a moment longer before returning to the palace.”

  “I second that,” Wil said eagerly, sitting down beside the fire. Galen followed suit, as did the palace guards. The prisoners crawled forward in their cells, pressing against the doors to get as close as possible to the fire.

  “I don’t understand,” the man Relam had interrogated earlier said, frowning. “You’re helping us?”

  “Yes,” Relam said simply. “You are my only link to the man behind all of this.”

  The prisoner nodded thoughtfully. “Thank you,” he said at last, drawing his blankets closer around him.

  Relam nodded, then fell silent, thinking as he gazed into the flames. He would update Narin next time he saw him. This was real information to work with, not some rumor that a random informer had happened across. If they could find a way to use the information, it might just make a difference.

  “Sir,” Galen said, interrupting his thoughts. “We should be getting back.”

  Relam sighed. “You’re right, of course. Come on Wil.”

  “I was nearly warm for a moment there,” Wil complained. “But I guess I can light a raging fire when we get back to the palace.”

  “In the fireplace,” Galen added.

  “Where else would I light it?” Wil asked, puzzled.

  “Just making sure,” Galen replied, shaking his head.

  Relam smiled and drew his cloak closer about him. “Let’s go,” he said to his guards. “Before it gets any colder outside.”

  The prince led his guards back into the bowels of the Citadel, down staircase after staircase until they reached the entrance hall once more. The guards at the gate readily opened the portal for them, just a crack, and Relam and his companions slipped out, making their way back to the palace.

  The next morning Rel
am woke to find frost coating the windows of his room and the roofs of the city, covering everything in a shimmering blanket. There was no ice forming yet, but the cold weather of the previous night had apparently carried into the morning.

  Relam emerged from his room to find his father eating breakfast in front of the fireplace, leafing through a stack of reports with various seals at the top.

  “Morning,” the king said briefly, taking an enormous bite out of a muffin.

  “Morning,” Relam replied sleepily. “Anything interesting in there?”

  “Another message from Ishkabur,” his father replied, holding up a sheet marked with the southern lord’s blue wolf. “Begging me to send someone to investigate, along with supplies and reinforcements.”

  “Reinforcements? You mean they are asking for soldiers to defend themselves?”

  “Yes,” his father muttered, polishing off the last crumbs of his muffin. “We’ll see what Clemon has to say before we do anything though.”

  “He’s already left?”

  “Yes, early this morning, on the first ship out of the harbor,” his father confirmed, setting aside the blue wolf report for further analysis. “Ah, here’s an interesting one. From Ostgard. They’ve received warnings from a village or two as well.”

  “This just keeps getting better and better,” Relam muttered, moving to the dining alcove, where breakfast was set up buffet style. He wrapped several slices of bacon in hot bread and returned to his father’s side. “Is there any good news in all of that or just portends of disaster?”

  “Good news isn’t worth writing about,” his father replied distractedly. “No, only bad news makes its way to me. Hmm, the north is snowed under already. Could be another hard winter on the way.”

  “Did you see the frost this morning?”

  “Yes, unusually early in the year for that. Hopefully there won’t be a hard freeze for a while yet.”

  “Hopefully,” Relam agreed, chewing thoughtfully.

  “Trouble continues in Mizzran,” the king added. “The miners are continuing to revolt.”

  “Maybe a royal decree to pay the miners would fix things?” Relam asked.

  “Maybe,” his father agreed. “I’ve got to move carefully right now though. I’m sure something is brewing in the Assembly, or at the very least the High Council.”