by J. B. Lucas
“Really?” Loreticus sat back in a soft chair by the wall and folded his arms. He stared at the window opposite, lips pursed.
“So?” asked Alba after a moment. Loreticus raised his eyebrows and stuck his chin out at her. He and Alba had a decades-long tradition of nagging and being nagged for her one-word questions. “So, what do we do?”
“We bring back Marcan,” Loreticus said with a half-smile, standing again and coming near her.
“Regardless of whether he’s the original Marcan or not?”
He looked down at the map once more, tapping his finger.
“I need to talk to Demetrian,” he replied. “First, I need to confess something to you. We think that we know the culprits behind this grand scheme.”
“Who?”
“Let’s go for a walk in your garden. This palace has perforated walls and you never know who’s behind them.” Loreticus took Alba’s elbow, guiding her through her entrance hall and out in to the thick foliage of her outdoor reception.
Alba had hidden from Loreticus for almost the entire summer, embarrassed and uncomfortable. Now she let him set the scene. She was angry, bothered that he had bought her connivance for his grand plan, but was now deserting her to his own adventures. She sat with a thump on a marble bench between the leaves. If Loreticus did not share what he knew now, Alba could easily step in to learn what she needed. Loreticus’s expression showed that he understood that. She thought that he had always been rather studied in his mannerisms, and she waited as he returned his gaze with the appropriate mood created.
“A messy business,” he said. “Not a sordid one?”
“No,” hesaid. He walked up to her low stone bench, which sat in the warm breeze, which circulated in her private garden. Lifting her hand from the arm, he encouraged her to stand and laid her fingers on his forearm as they walked into the sunlight. Whenever he spoke, he tended to lean his head to her as he had done when she was twelve and she needed the obvious intimacy. “Staged, I believe. I don’t know how but I’ll find out.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think, princess?”
The warmth of the sun radiated on their ankles and calves from the sandstone path. Broad leaves either side of them mixed the air like blades.
“Why?”
“Because they could,” he said in a resigned voice. “I think–and this is without proper consideration or evidence–I think he had isolated himself from you, from me, from Demetrian, and from his favourite informer, my little Darcy. He was tired, lax and running in circles.” He stopped, picked the leaf from a small plant and popped it in his mouth. “Life is so much clearer when you’re chasing things. You have a goal and therefore an advantage over those who must manage everything. I’m not sure how Iskandar is involved, or whether he employed any of his brains in this tavern farce, but the rest bears the typical stamp of Antron.”
“Loreticus, there are some things I can do which you can’t.”
“That I know, my lady, but perhaps you might give me an indication of what you mean.”
“I’ll ask one of them quite directly.”
“Oh, well I could do that,” considered Loreticus.
“No, you couldn’t. Firstly, it’s not in you. It’s not in the rules of your game. Secondly, they are quite comfortable killing you. I’m a different target however.”
“Very true. So who is your victim?”
“The weakest, of course.”
Alba knew she would draw a punishment down on the generals and the jezebel who sabotaged her husband, but first she needed to know everything, every small grimy detail.
And so, she called Iskandar to an audience. The great general stood awkwardly upon arrival, caught somewhere between reverence for royalty and self-confident pride. As a military man, he was unmatched with his striking physique and fighting ability. But it was clear when he had joined the court that he might be the best of the soldiers but nowhere near the best of the courtiers. His influence had been assumed by Antron, often against Marcan.
Thus, the veteran general stood, unsure of whether Alba was enemy or neutral, whether her blood and her marriage gave her authority or a handicap. But like most new men he was more eager to obey than to be cast out as a country fool.
“Do you have anything to tell me about the scandal?” asked Alba directly. She left him standing as she poised on a giant ceremonial chair.
“I don’t understand, your highness,” he retorted. “I am at as great a loss as yourself.”
“I do doubt that,” snapped Alba. Iskandar’s face registered surprise at her anger. “General, I have extended periods of being a princess but it isn’t a permanent affliction. Be aware that I won’t put up with any of your politicking.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“So, I’ll ask you again. Were you involved in that spectacle with your wife?”
“I didn’t know anything about her activities,” he responded, gaze down. He was a better general than liar.
“So, this was all those two?”
“I must presume so, my lady.”
“And where is he now?”
“We don’t know, my lady.”
“You don’t know? Did you lose the emperor so quickly?” Silence. “I assure you, general, if my husband is hurt in any way my father’s temper will come out in me. I am not without influence and you should remember that. I shall wield that authority like an axe should I find myself a widow.”
Iskandar stood straight, not pride but challenge in his gaze.
“I exiled your wife and I control her visits. She is now kept under guard by the imperial cohort in one of my family’s forts. She’ll not be back soon, but then I should imagine that is a blessing for you. She did, after all, break your heart.”
No response. Alba watched for a moment, reading his eyes as they stared at something behind her.
“Don’t think that you can rescue her. After all, I am still the empress and you remain my obedient general.”
His eyes moved to connect with her own.
“Did the generals tell you otherwise? That she would be protected afterwards? I’m afraid, my dear Iskandar, that you seem to have some tuning required in your little choir. The trouble with military types is that you think only of the battle and not the day afterwards. You should have planned a cleverer exit for her than into the middle of my guards.” She folded her slender arms, sharp elbows protruding. “She will remain safe as long as he is. When he is back, you can find out your emperor’s decision yourself.” There was an impatience, an anger in Iskandar, and Alba enjoyed watching him for a moment. This was her empire, her blood in the red of this palace. Perhaps it was time that Loreticus, Marcan and the generals understood that. She sent him away to his urgent matters.
Chapter 15
“So, the actor isn’t Marcan?” asked Darcy later that afternoon. The sun was an hour away from setting and families were retreating in to their homes to cook and rest. “No,” said Demetrian, cutting something in front of him on the counter in his kitchen.
“Yes, he is Marcan,” retorted Loreticus, eying the veteran. “But he’s changed quite a lot after a summer on the road. He’s skinnier and scruffier.”
“Why do you do women’s work?” Darcy enquired. “You’re questioning my manliness?” said Demetrian, turning to Darcy with the knife in his hand. “No, no, not at all.”
“When did you find out about the actor?” croaked Selban. He sat in the darkness of the corner of Demetrian’s table. A cloud of sweet pipe smoke hovered in a halo over his head. It spread, drifting in to the late sunbeams on the far side of the room.
“Who? Me?” responded Darcy. “Less than an hour before you did. I was having breakfast with one of my lovely informants. Why?”
“What he’s asking you, Darcy, is whether you told Antron or Ferran about Marcan’s location,” said Loreticus from his seat. He spoke gently, angling to diffuse the long-brewing spat between his agents. Loreticus punched the tobacco into his pipe bow
l, and watched in irritation as Darcy and Selban swapped looks of dislike.
“Of course not. Isn’t it more likely that you have a spy in your offices?” asked Darcy of Loreticus.
“Graceful gods, no,” replied the tall man. “Pello doesn’t have the wit and no-one else was there. It was just us lot.” He paused. “Sorry, Pello, I didn’t mean to be rude.”
Pello smiled.
Demetrian lifted a plate of pale meats over to the smoking skillet by the window and laid slabs on to the burning metal. Quickly a smell of frying gammon went to battle with the pipe smoke.
“I don’t know how you two can smoke those pipes in this heat,” said Demetrian. “It’s cloying. But to answer the question you’re all dancing around, Saguinas obviously got paid twice.”
“And that’s not the only question,” stated Loreticus. “Saguinas said that it was only Antron who offered the bounty?”
“Yes.”
“Then I wonder whether that was because neither of the other two were in the room or because they didn’t know about it. I’ll have to twist handles and push doors to find out. This party was not built to last.”
Darcy stood up and moved next to Demetrian. He looked in the pan and pointed.
“That one, please.” Demetrian eyeballed him. The shorter man looked back. “I like the edges crispy, please,” said Darcy.
“Pello, I need your help with something . . . personal. Would you mind straying slightly from your usual tasks?”
“Of course not, Loreticus. Is it about Alba or Dess?”
“Neither, of course,” snapped Loreticus and peered at Pello from under his eyebrows, not in reproach but in concern at how much he, the spymaster, was letting slip. He must be tired because he thought he had always been scrupulous with his words.
He didn’t continue the conversation, but instead led Pello at pace towards the broad avenue where the grander residences stood. Behind, his cohort of guards creaked and rustled in their leather armour, the noise of their impending approach parting the crowd in front of them.
The buildings were the oldest in the capital, some as old as the palace itself. The walls were smooth, the roofs shallow peaks, and everything about their architecture implied years of basking in the golden sun. The crowd in front were also different to the usual citizens. They were taller, healthier, gentler in their gestures. They didn’t turn to see who the guards were escorting because here everyone had protection.
Loreticus led them to one large building, set back slightly from its neighbours, well appointed and well maintained. It was painted in a dark apricot hue, the borders to the windows and its first-floor balconies in white. Something of the house radiated a spiritual warmth, a rich homeliness contained but not brazen. As Loreticus went to the servants’ entrance along the side of the building, he saw Pello’s confusion.
“Insightful in some things and surprised by others, eh?” He chuckled. “You really are my piecemeal spy.”
Two guards went in, checking the rooms for unwanted visitors, then came out and fell in line with their colleagues. Loreticus and Pello entered.
The kitchen was still dark and they walked slowly as their eyes became accustomed to the shadows. Loreticus split a blind open a small amount to let in a beam of light, enough now to illuminate the whole room.
He sat at the long, smooth table and started prodding his pipe bowl. Pello stood for a moment watching, then pulled out a chair and sat.
“Pello, what do you want to ask me?”
“I don’t think that I have any burning questions,” said the boy.
“You do. What do you not understand?”
Loreticus watched as Pello traced the grain of the wood with his fingers.
“The generals killed the emperor?”
“The generals ordered Marcan to be drugged, but they didn’t anticipate that they would kill him. The fools hired incompetents, and between them they assassinated our emperor. I have seen the body of Marcan with my own eyes,” replied Loreticus.
“Why are they still looking for him then?” “Why do you think?” returned Loreticus. “Because they don’t know that he’s dead?”
“That’s right. The poison they gave him to sleep wasn’t good. He didn’t last until midday. He managed to escape from Antron’s supervision and get word to me. By the time I arrived, he was already dead.” Loreticus looked up to see the effect that this was having on the boy. “Can you imagine the bloodshed if it was known that one, or all three, of the generals had poisoned the anointed emperor? The civil war we struggled through with the zealots would be nothing in comparison to the great armies fighting each other. The empire would have committed swift, brutal suicide within a season and history would remember us forever as fools.”
Pello’s face was pale, completely without expression as he worked through the logic.
“If he died, how did the physician not recognise him?” Pello enquired.
“I made sure that he wouldn’t be recognisable,” responded Loreticus, and for a moment he watched his hands on his knees. “No-one else could know.”
“Balthasar?” he asked. Loreticus nodded. “Alba?” Loreticus nodded again. “Demetrian?”
Loreticus didn’t respond at first, but puffed on his pipe. “This isn’t something to discuss with Demetrian. He is a loyal man, as he must be, and his logic works in different ways to mine.”
“But he is at fault as well,” stated Pello. “He let the emperor get taken.”
“His guards were murdered, which was something no-one could foresee,” said Loreticus slowly. Even though it hadn’t been his hand which had cut their throats, he felt a deep guilt at putting them in harm’s way.
“Did you give them leave that night?” “Not directly.”
“So you knew of the plot against Marcan?” It was the first time Loreticus had heard judgement in Pello’s voice, and it was the first time for a long time that he accepted that he needed judging.
“I am the imperial spymaster, Pello. I know almost everything of importance in this barren, immature little country of ours. Yes, I had heard. Yes, I share the blame. But no, I am not like them.”
He paced over to the kitchen door, which led to a shadowy hall.
“Have you an idea of where we are, Pello?”
“Your old house,” replied the boy. “Mother brought me here on my first trip to the capital.”
Loreticus nodded at the memory.
“I come here to think. When your logic forces you to do things that go against the very fabric of your person, it is easy to doubt yourself. Here I can sit and remember that an intelligent person, someone far wiser than me, believed in me.”
“Aunt Dhalia?”
“She loved this kitchen. She loved the subtlety of cooking, and seeing how her creations captivated her guests. Dhalia rarely told them that she had been involved; simply seeing them happy and at peace was enough.” He smiled as a thought matured, his old smile which spread and closed his eyes. “The spymaster and the secret cook. Rather ironic, don’t you think?”
Chapter 16
There was no sense of satisfaction at hearing his suspicion confirmed. He felt a fool, unworthy of even his own skin, and he couldn’t be around these people who had laughed with him over the summer. He shrank into himself, his thoughts sprinting into each other as he tried to make sense of everything. Balthasar had told him to go back the next day, and they would arrange the details as the troupe set off after breakfast. Demetrian’s man would come back to find him.
Marcan lay under a wool blanket and a waxed cloth, his sleeping mat flat against the grass of the field, feeling like a toy passed from one child to the next. A deep impatience churned his thoughts, an annoyance at these flawed men who seemed intent on handicapping his destiny. But then he considered that maybe it was his cowardice that gave them that influence, maybe he needed to deserve his destiny. It seemed now that he had run out of time. This week or next he would pack his bags and find his way on his own, either further so
uth or up to the capital. Whichever way would shed him of Balthasar and his grubby network. Long gone was the day when he would open the door to a stranger because a coin toss told him so. Now he would only act when he had one option, and then it was hesitantly.
With that resolved in its own involuntary way, a sense of longing urged him to capture these final moments of freedom and he stared at the stars.
A scuffling stabbed at his attention and his ears strained to grasp the detail. He could feel his breath wheezing and his heart tumbling inside his ribs. The rest of the troupe slept under a communal tarpaulin twenty feet away, out of earshot and out of thought.
Again, something like the drag of feet on the grass. Marcan reached for the stick which he used for walking, clutching it as if he had drawn it from a scabbard. Once more the noise, and this time with purpose. His ears were aching with concentration, and reactively he leapt up, stick poised.
A whistle, which he realised too late was something thin whipping past his face. He lashed out in the direction of the attacker’s legs, made contact and provoked a yelp. Rapidly he snapped his arm in short arcs, bashing the attacker’s ankle and knee.
“Ow damn, ow bollocks.”
Marcan’s excited blood gave him a sharper vision in the dark and he started to make out an uncertain silhouette. He saw the head and reflex turned his hand, his own knee leading the swing and drawing the torsion of his body into a thunderous blow. Bones cracked and flesh split. The attacker sat backwards.
“Owwwwwwww daaaaaaaaaaamn,” he whined resignedly.
A torch was lit and Balthasar stormed over. The hand that held the stem of the light was shiny with blood. He swept light over Marcan, looking for puncture marks, then turned to the sitting figure.
“What the hell did you think, Jed?” he shouted incredulously. “That you were going to get rich from a dead man in a field? You’re both damned idiots.” He kicked the man in the shoulder with the heel of his boot, flattening him against the ground. “This is his blood. Samwer’s blood. He’s lying over there by the tarpaulin and I have no idea whether he’s alive or dead. But he’s certainly moving less than you.”
