Allies & Assassins

by Justin Somper

  Queen Francesca frowned but Jared did not allow her to speak before continuing. “A dinner has been prepared for you. I do not doubt you will turn up your nose at all our gestures of hospitality. That is your prerogative. But I am ruler of this nation. So, wherever you and your family decide you want to wait to see Silva, you may. But wait you will until I tell you she is ready for you.”

  He felt flushed as he finished speaking. He was unsure how the others—both from his own family and the foreign court—would respond to his outburst. Had he overstepped the mark?

  He was met by utter silence. He took this to mean, if nothing else, that he had successfully asserted his authority. It was, if only they knew, nothing more than a charade. “Come Hal,” he said, seizing the moment. “Let’s lose no more time.”

  His bodyguard at his side, Prince Jared marched out of the Grand Hall. He felt flushed with anger but it was only partly toward Francesca and the severity of her words and much more at himself and the abhorrent lie he had agreed to endorse. A lie designed to safeguard the alliance. Well, it hadn’t worked and Jared couldn’t help wondering if he and his court had paid a fitting price for their horrid deception.

  As he departed, he heard Francesca address his mother once more. “That’s your idea of a ruler, is it?”

  “Yes,” he heard his mother say. “He is our ruler. And, as he says, you are guests in his court. Now, shall we show you to your rooms or would you prefer to wait in the courtyard? It looks to me like it has begun to rain but I’m sure that makes little odds to you.” She smiled coldly. “As I recall, it often rains in Woodlark.”

  As Jared stepped outside into the courtyard, Axel’s deputy, Elliot Nash, came running toward him out of the shadows.

  “Prince Jared,” he rasped, short of breath. “I came to find the Captain of the Guard. I’m afraid I have grim news.

  “The Captain of the Guard is tied up with the delegation from Woodlark,” Jared told him. “you had better tell me your news.”

  Axel’s faithful deputy seemed to consider the matter for a moment, then nodded. “yes, of course, your highness. I’m sorry to have to tell you this but there’s been another death.”

  Jared met Nash’s eyes. “Nova,” the Prince said. “It’s Nova, isn’t it?”

  Nash nodded, clearly taken aback. “How did you know?”

  “Just take me to her,” Prince Jared told him, feeling the all-too familiar knots of fear and grief and tension take possession of his stomach once more. When. When would this come to an end?

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Palace Ice Chamber

  PRINCE JARED FELT THE CHILL WITHIN THE ICE chamber and knew his shiver was not from the ambient temperature alone. This chamber brought him—sadly not for the first time—into unflinching proximity with death. All too vividly, he recalled coming there to see the bruised and bloodied body of his father, fresh from the battlefield. He remembered reaching for Edvin’s hand as they gazed at their father’s empty eyes and wondered where the light within them had fled.

  Now Jared was alone as he walked through the chamber. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Jared shuddered. In truth, he did fear evil. He feared it very much. After the conclusion of the war, there were those on the Twelve who had argued for the removal of the palace Ice Chamber—reserved as it was for members of the royal family and the Council of Twelve. They had argued that the Ice Chamber in the Physician’s village residence was sufficient for the needs of the court. But the second Ice Chamber had not been removed. It was as if they had all known, on some level, that peace was only ephemeral and that the familiar twins—chaos and confusion—would soon return to stalk the Princedom. And so they had. Walking forward, his legs heavy as oak, Prince Jared wondered how much more death he would be forced to confront in the course of his reign.

  He gazed at the three bodies, that lay before him, each on a separate dais. Prince Anders, naturally, occupied the central platform. Anders was always destined to be at the center. His face looked quietly peaceful. Five days of death had done nothing to erode his handsome features. Indeed, with his flesh now tinged blue and violet, he had the appearance of a marble statue. Nonetheless, in spite of having been in cold storage for several days, his body now emitted a pungent odor of decay. Jared knew, from what Asta had told him, that beneath his gilded shroud, Anders’s feet were shriveled and gangrenous. He wasn’t brave enough to take a look; the stench alone was enough to contend with. It pervaded the room, in spite of the burning incense that had been lit to mask the odor of decay.

  To Anders’s left was Silva, her fracture wounds almost invisible now that her pale golden hair had been plaited artfully across her forehead. After her death by drowning, and the Physician’s examination, she had been dressed in her finest ceremonial robes, in readiness for Queen Francesca and Prince Willem to view their daughter’s body. Jared imagined the hot tears in the eyes of Silva’s maid as she had combed the weeds out of her mistress’s silken hair, then dried and arranged it as carefully as if for a banquet. Laid out on the dais, Silva looked as beautiful—and as distant—as ever. Her tiny hands were clasped together, clutching a posy of wildflowers. Jared wondered if Silva’s devoted maids had been responsible for this detail. If so, it was a thoughtful touch.

  On Anders’s other side was the newest addition to the ranks of the dead. Like her companions, Nova Chastain looked as if she were sleeping, though Jared knew that beneath her customary dark robes lay a body fatally broken and contorted by her fall from the tower. Unlike her companions, the Falconer had not yet been subjected to the Physician’s blade. That would have to wait until morning. For now, her body had been hidden away as quickly as possible in case word of another death within the court reached the Woodlark delegation. Elias Peck, so Elliot Nash had informed him, had had the presence of mind to have guards rush Nova’s body here with little more than a preliminary examination.

  Jared’s head was still spinning from all the mental adjustments he’d had to make as one day had chased away another, bringing fresh secrets to the surface. At first, Jared had thought Anders’s killing was a political act. They had shut down the borders and launched a manhunt for an assassin or assassins, imagining crumbling alliances and a fresh descent into war. But there was no assassin, and no assassination. Anders’s murder, Silva’s too, was a crime of passion.

  The phrase hung uneasily in Jared’s mind. For how could passion—something as pure and good as love—lead someone to take another life? Nova’s calm visage yielded no answers. She looked at peace. And he hated her anew for that. He realised that, in truth, he had never before felt genuine hate for anyone, but Nova Chastain had taught him how to hate just as adeptly as she had schooled his brother in love.

  Jared shook his head sadly at the three corpses laid out before him—together yet alone, in death as in life. He couldn’t have asked for a more poignant visual depiction of the tragedy that had lately befallen Archenfield.

  He was in no doubt that his brother had loved Silva. In his way. It was curious that he knew this less from anything his brother had ever confided to him in life, and more from the conversations Asta had relayed to him, following her own startlingly intimate encounters with Silva. But, whatever love Anders had felt for his wife, it had clearly been eclipsed by the magnitude of his feelings for the Falconer and, it would seem, by hers for him.

  Jared glanced at Nova’s masklike features. She had been an enigma all her life and, by removing herself from life at this juncture, ensured she would always remain one.

  There was enough of a gap between the three daises for Jared to walk between them and stand at his brother’s shoulder. Trying to keep from inhaling the pervasive stench of death, Jared looked down upon Anders, addressing his brother, face-to-face.

  “Why?” he found himself asking. “Why wasn’t Silva enough for you? You had the most beautiful girl in Woodlark and all of Archenfield in your hands. Why wasn’t that enough?” He received no rep
ly. Nothing had altered in his brother’s face and Jared thought he detected there lingering traces of arrogance. Prince Anders had been born with a sense of entitlement. He had expected to have every last thing he wanted, failing to give sufficient thought to the consequences of his selfish actions.

  Jared made a promise to himself then and there. When he married, it would be for love. He could imagine those, including his mother, who might find it a naïve notion. But that was how it was going to be. Perhaps he wouldn’t deliver another strategic alliance to the princedom but at least he’d save Archenfield another almighty mess like this.

  Jared turned from Anders and caught sight, once more, of Silva’s childlike hands, filled with the posy of wildflowers and resting on her belly. Now he understood. The flowers were not just for decoration—they were to mark the unborn baby’s place of death. Feeling overwhelmed by sadness, Jared walked back to the feet of the corpses. He thought he might be about to be sick.

  He was distracted by a knock at the door. He turned to see it open and Hal Harness enter the Ice Chamber.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Prince Jared, but the guards have come to collect Silva and take her to the viewing chamber.”

  Jared nodded, feeling grateful at the sight of other living beings. “Come in,” he told Hal, stepping aside as Hal beckoned the guards into the room. They worked fast and efficiently. Prince Jared stood to one side as Silva’s body was borne away on a beier, on the shoulders of the guards.

  “Would you like me to stay, your highness?” Hal asked him now. Prince Jared wondered if he looked as queasy as he felt. He gritted his teeth. However hard it might prove, he had one more piece of business to conclude here in this chamber of horrors.

  “Just give me another moment here. I’ll be out shortly.”

  Hal nodded and exited the chamber. Jared heard the solid door close behind him. There could be no delaying the moment anymore. He came to stand at Nova’s feet. In many ways, he reflected, everything that had happened over these past few days had been leading him to this point; this confrontation with his brother’s—and sister-in-law’s—murderer. He was filled with frustration and anger toward Nova. And not the least of it was that she had taken her own life and thereby denied him the chance of hearing her reasons.

  “Damn you, Nova,” he said, hearing the visceral fury in his own voice. “Couldn’t you have waited one more day—until we had the chance to talk? Didn’t you owe me that at least?”

  He could feel the hot tears in his eyes. As quickly as he blotted them away, fresh tears took their place. His vision became blurred but he stopped trying to fight it. At least he’d be spared the sight of Nova’s beautiful, calm, mocking face. What was he even crying for? For his dead brother? For Silva’s unborn child, denied the gift of even one Archenfield sunrise? For this whole, horrible, unnecessary situation? For how it had turned his own life upside down? Perhaps for all these things. And none of them.

  He took a deep breath and pulled himself together. Lifting his shirt cuff to his eyes, he determined to cry no more tears. Why had he even come here, to visit with the dead? His place was with the living. These hollow corpses had no answers for him, only riddles. And he was sick and tired of riddles. He needed truth. It was the only possible anchor in this terrible storm they’d all been swept up in.

  He turned his back on the dead and looked toward the door. He knew Hal was waiting for him just outside, in the shadow of the stone stairwell. He felt pathetically grateful for this.

  As he stood there, between the platforms, he suddenly felt a touch as cold as the East wind on his hand. He jerked around. Was it his imagination or had Nova’s left hand moved slightly? Of course, it couldn’t have, he told himself. I have to get out of this godforsaken place; its madness is contagious.

  Nova lay in the exact same position as before. It was nothing more than a trick of the candlelight and his feverish mind. He glanced briefly at her placid face. As he did so, he felt the same coldness as before on his wrist. It shot through him, like the shock from an electric eel, slipping through his limbs in the river. The shock now took hold of his whole body until he was trembling, eyes closed tight shut.

  When he dared to open them again, he saw that Nova’s hand had indeed moved toward his. He calmed himself, remembering something Elias had once said about the erratic reflexes of the body in the hours following death. After all, Nova was barely an hour dead. Jared turned once more toward the door, renewed in his determination to rejoin the living and put these morbidities behind him. But walking to the door was like moving against the force of the rapids. Thinking of Asta, and what she’d put herself through for him—for the cause of truth—he proceeded with grim purpose.

  As his hand made contact with the door—he was close enough to hear Hal’s footsteps on the other side of the slab of oak—something compelled him to turn and glance back one last time.

  His eyes were met by the sight of the latest twist in this macabre freak show.

  Nova’s head had turned toward him and her eyelids were flickering open. Was this another postmortem reflex? Jared stumbled back toward her. Her eyelids closed again but now he saw her hand move, just as it must have moved before. Next her mouth opened and a low, terrible, animal moan was emitted from her lips.

  “Good God!” Jared rasped. “You’re alive.” He felt sick and giddy once more.

  Minutes earlier, it was what he had wanted more than anything in the world. Now, seeing her looking helplessly up at him, he was filled with doubt. Maybe it was better never to know her dark secrets. But as he stood looking down at her in shock, Jared realized that it no longer mattered what was better and what wasn’t. There was no getting away from her now. The Prince and the Falconer were bound together on this hellish voyage. The only way out of it was through it.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Palace Ice Chamber

  JARED WAS ROOTED TO THE SPOT AS NOVA’S LIPS emitted another low moan.

  “Is everything all right?” Hal’s voice came from the other side of the door.

  “Yes,” Jared called back anxiously. Then, with a more commanding note to his voice. “Wait there, Hal!”

  “Yes your highness!”

  “Nova,” he hissed, perhaps more loudly than was prudent. “It’s Prince Jared. I know you’re alive. It might not be what you wanted but you are still alive.”

  She made another sound, softer now, and he could see the faint rise and fall of her diaphragm. The movement was minimal but there all the same. He glanced up and saw her eyes, half open, as if caught on the brink between death and life.

  “Don’t try to speak,” he told her. “You’re too weak.” He hated himself for natural inclination towards kindness.

  Her eyes and lips closed and her diaphragm shuddered. Jared realized that simply mustering these animal noises had necessitated a huge effort on Nova’s part. She might not be dead but she was still far from a living, functioning creature.

  “I’ll send for help,” he said decisively, resting his hand on her robe. “Elias will know what to do.”

  These words had been intended to calm her but they seemed to have the opposite effect. Her hand began to judder. Reflexively, he took it in his own. “It’s all right,” he said. “But I think you need to stay still.”

  It was awkward for him to stand and maintain his grip on her hand at the same time so he found himself making room on the dais to sit. Glancing across at his brother’s corpse, Jared wondered if this moment could possibly be any more surreal. Here he was holding hands with the woman who had taken the lives of his brother and sister-in-law; a woman who herself had one foot in this world and the other already planted in the next. A big part of him wanted to just withdraw his hand and walk away, allowing her to die a second time. It didn’t seem like she had much fight left inside her. But he knew he couldn’t do anything but stay at her side. He had virtually prayed for her return. Now he had to deal with the consequences.

  He withdrew his hand. “How cou
ld you do such terrible things?” he asked her, angrily. “You are responsible for four deaths. My brother. His wife. Their unborn child. And the steward.”

  His words prompted another animal moan. Shorter than the previous ones.

  “I told you before, don’t try to speak. Save what strength you have. You’re certainly going to need it.” He stared down at her face. “I just can’t believe it was you all along.”

  This prompted a fresh moan, more of a whimper. At the same time, her hand became agitated. Her mouth and eyes were closed tight but her hand was trying to make contact with his. Against all his better instincts, he found himself making physical contact once more.

  “Nova, are you trying to tell me something?”

  He wasn’t sure where his words had come from but, as he finished speaking, she gave a sharp squeeze of his hand. He was surprised at the strength she had been able to muster.

  As her hand relaxed its grip again, he found himself trembling. “Is that it?” he asked. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  Once again, her hand squeezed his own, then released it again.

  “Don’t expect any pity from me,” he said. “Or forgiveness. I know that you killed my brother and Silva, and I know why.” He shook his head sadly. “Don’t you feel any level of guilt for what you have done?”

  He waited, somehow expecting her to react to this. Her hand remained limply in his own.

  “No,” he continued, angrily. “Of course you don’t feel any guilt. How could you have done the things you have done if you…” He broke off. “And I always thought you were a person of honor.”