“What does the Grünwald court have against you?”
“I—ah—disrupted one of their ceremonies.”
“Disrupted?”
“I sort of . . . accidentally . . . stole the queen’s virgin sacrifice.”
“Accidentally?”
I swallowed and forced myself to bear the whole ugly truth. “Well the Ziggurat was supposed to be abandoned. But there they all were, chanting and waving sharp things around. I couldn’t leave the poor woman there . . . Elhared used that whole mess to con me into—”
“I’m sorry.”
“Trying and—What?”
“I misjudged you. I thought you were just trying to save me because of the so-called reward.”
“That’s what I was trying to say. I was in the Ziggurat because—”
“She wasn’t a princess, was she?”
“No, but what I’m trying to tell you is that I’m—”
“You’re a good man, Frank Blackthorne.”
“Uh, thank you?” I wanted to finish, I really did. But my courage fled me. I couldn’t bring myself to contradict Princess Lucille’s image of me. And it made me feel even worse for weighing the option of abandoning her.
“Anyway,” I said, changing the subject, “if we find Elhared and drag him before your father, then I think we can fix this.” I wasn’t a good man, and the sooner we unraveled this mess, the better.
“That makes sense.”
“Unlike us, he has no reason to return to Lendowyn Castle—not without me—you—in tow to get his reward. He’s probably laying low trying to figure out a way to make that happen.”
“So how do we find him?”
I had an answer, but I didn’t much like it. We had to talk to the last people who saw Elhared wandering around in my old body.
“Do you have any idea where the Grünwald diplomatic mission would be hanging out when they’re not making sacrifices to their Dark Lord?”
• • •
The Grünwald mission made its home in the northern palace, which used to be the summer home of Lendowyn royalty until the costs of upkeep became more than the treasury could handle. For the last decade or so, the property had been rented to various other kingdoms—Grünwald being the latest and most lucrative tenant.
My response upon hearing this was to ask if the king had any idea how they spent their spare time. Lucille responded with a massive shrug. They paid well.
Of course they did.
Lucille flew us there just before daybreak the next day, to avoid the rather obvious sight of a dragon flying across half the kingdom in broad daylight. She landed us on a wooded hillside overlooking the palace. Our timing was fortuitous, as dawn had barely begun to break when a caravan of men and exhausted horses came down the main road toward the palace.
There was no mistaking the horseman in the lead. Sir Forsythe the Good was the only member of the company who didn’t look dirty, exhausted, or wounded.
“That bastard’s still alive?” came a terrifying whisper from behind me. Lucille’s breath burned the back of my neck. I was about to say something about Sir Forsythe leading some sort of charmed existence, when I saw that the “good” knight was not who she referred to. In the midst of the party, Prince Dudley lay in a cart, bandaged from the waist down.
“I’ll incinerate him.”
I turned to her and said, “Not subtle, My Princess. Though I appreciate the thought.”
“He was going to rape and kill me.”
“I know, but he’s the best lead I have on Elhared. We need to talk to him, not slaughter him.”
“How do you intend to do that? Just sneak in there?”
“That’s pretty much my plan.”
“You’re kidding.”
I turned away from the palace to face Lucille. She had done her best to conceal herself behind the tree line, flattening her body against the ground so from a distance she’d just seem to be a small hillock nestled behind the trees. Her head lay on the ground next to me, tilted slightly in my direction, eyes staring right at me.
“I’ve broken into more secure places.”
“Maybe, but you aren’t built like a knight anymore, Frank.”
Was I ever?
I had the urge to try and tell her again who I really was, but this wasn’t the time for that. Instead I told her, “Sneaking, not fighting. And I think your body is better built for skulking around than my old one was.”
She said “Oh,” as if she wasn’t quite certain how to take my comment about the usefulness of her body.
“Be ready to fly us out of here if we need a quick getaway.” I didn’t give her a chance to talk me out of it. I just started climbing down toward one of the rear walls of the palace.
She called out after me, “You’re very brave.”
I didn’t know if that made me feel better or worse.
I wasn’t kidding when I’d told Lucille that her body was better suited to thievery than my own. While I had built a typical skill-set for my profession, from lock picking to pickpocketry, being tall and lanky had always limited my ability to hide in the shadows. The princess’s body, on the other hand, was petite, and not only made me much lighter on my feet, but also made it much easier for me to hide.
The princess’s low profile was half the reason I was able to make it down to the walls on the shaded side of the palace unseen. The other reason was the fact the inhabitants weren’t paying much attention. The palace appeared oversized for the Grünwald delegation, which meant they were understaffed for the size of the perimeter. Even with guards on the upper wall making rounds, there were four minutes out of twenty when my side of the wall was completely unobserved.
And again I found the princess’s body adept at climbing, even a wall that didn’t intend to have much purchase. I was able to inch up an inside corner where a tower met the outer wall, holding my weight up just with the pressure of hands and feet pressing against the angled walls. I just had to endure the sensation of the princess’s boobs rubbing against the stone.
To quote Sir Forsythe, I had to take the bad with the good.
Scaling the wall took me the better part of half an hour, most of it spent halfway up, waiting for the guards on the wall to pass by my position. Near the top, I pulled myself up and through one of the tower windows. It was a maneuver I would have never attempted in my old body; the window was much too narrow. It was almost too narrow for the princess. While I could mash her breasts to fit through the opening, I discovered that her hips were not subject to that kind of deformation. I had to corkscrew myself to align her pelvis with the long axis of the window before I could slide myself through.
But I made it. I was in the palace.
Now I just needed to find Prince Dudley.
CHAPTER 13
It must say something about my state of mind, or my less-than-reputable history, but as I hunted through the half-used hallways of the Lendowyn Summer Palace, I felt more at ease then I had since I’d broken into Lord Nâtlac’s Ziggurat. Despite being in an alien body, I finally felt as if I was in my element and I knew what I was doing.
It was just too bad that, given their financial situation, there’d be no priceless Lendowyn royal artifacts laying around for me to liberate—though, considering my legal status as described by Lucille, I wondered if I did take anything if it would count as theft anyway. I only appropriated a single dagger from a weapon display. I wouldn’t have bothered, since I didn’t even have a proper sheath for it, but the princess had omitted any arms from the wardrobe she had scavenged for me.
I slipped through the maze of hallways, operating counter to my own instincts, moving toward where I sensed people. After nearly fifteen minutes, I finally came to the portion of the palace that showed signs of habitation—furniture recently dusted, lamps and candles that had seen use in the last few hours.
My luck held, as I heard a whispered conversation before I came upon the speakers. The sounds came from around the corner of an intersecting ha
llway ahead of me and I edged up on the corner slowly as I tried to make out what was being said.
I heard an old woman’s voice. “The soulless little twit has no respect for his elders.”
“Agatha! Mind your words,” someone else snapped in a loud whisper.
“She’s right, Beatrice.”
“I’m not saying she’s wrong, Mabel. There are simply things that do not profit us to say.”
I looked around the edge of the wall, ducking my head below eye level to avoid a casual glance. In the hallway beyond, I saw a trio of black-robed, white-haired old women. To my eye they looked exactly alike.
“Should I hold my tongue before my sisters? Will you tell the queen I think her son has less use than half a bag of fresh pig manure and is less pleasant company? Or that I’ve seen headless chickens with more aptitude? Or that the better part of him ran down his father’s leg?”
“Agatha, please.”
“Sister, I did not grow so old to be afraid that someone might take offense that I noticed that the prince has the intellect of a moldy turnip and the disposition of a leprous frog.”
The third woman sighed and said, “Come, sisters, we have a poultice to brew.”
As they walked on, away from me, I heard Agatha whisper, “If there is any justice in the world, it will sting.”
I watched them walk away, and then looked up the hallway in the other direction. There was one ornate door that may have been where they’d just come from. Judging by Agatha’s complaining, they most likely had just had to deal with Prince Dudley.
If my luck held, he was behind that door.
I edged up on the door, undoing the latch and allowing it to drift silently open. Beyond was a bedroom with a roaring fireplace, ornate tapestries, and a giant bed with a tasseled canopy. The bed’s single occupant lay half-sitting on a mound of silk cushions. He didn’t look in my direction. Instead, he stared into a teacup with obvious distaste.
“Crone! This tea is lukewarm!”
If I had any doubts of the bed’s occupant, that put them to rest.
“Do you hear me?” Prince Dudley raised his voice as I slipped quietly into the room and edged to the side of the bed. “I need hot tea. Hot!” He fidgeted a bit, shifting his legs under the sheets. “And you bound my wounds too tightly. My leg itches.”
He continued complaining, covering the sound of my approach, until I was within arm’s reach. He turned in my direction and yelled, “Crone!” at me.
“Nope,” I responded. With a quick one-handed gesture, I lassoed Sir Forsythe’s binding charm around his neck.
His eyes went wide and he opened his mouth to scream for help. With one hand I raised my stolen dagger as I covered his mouth with the other. That knocked the teacup from his now-paralyzed hand, spilling the contents over the sheets. His eyes went wider, began watering, and he started screaming against my palm.
“Oh, come on. You said it was lukewarm.”
Muffled screams of agony kept coming from under my hand and I raised my dagger up to eye level. “What do I have to cut off to make you shut up?”
He shut up.
“Now, Prince Dudley, I’m going to lower my hand. As I do that, I want you to remember that you are more concerned with keeping all your pieces attached than I am. Understand?”
He nodded and I lowered my hand.
“W-what do you want?”
“Elhared.”
“Elhared?”
“Are you hard of hearing as well as being a half-assed necromancer?”
“I don’t know what you—”
I pressed the blade of the dagger against his throat and he sucked in a breath as he winced from the neck up. I noticed now that my weapon was more ornamental than anything else. I cursed under my breath as I realized that I’d be better off clubbing him with it than trying to use the sorry excuse for a blade.
Fortunately for me, the prince didn’t know any better.
“Oh, yes. You mean the Lendowyn court wizard, don’t you?”
“You know I do.”
“Have you tried Lendowyn Castle? He has been known to frequent there.”
“You’re stalling.”
“No, really. I’m trying to help. Why would I know anything about Lendowyn wizards?”
“‘That explains the other one,’” I quoted back to him.
“Oh. Uh.”
“What ‘other one,’ Dudley?” I pressed the dull dagger into his throat.
“Ack. Please, the whole ceremony—that wasn’t personal. You just were in the wrong place at the wrong oof.”
Cutting something off would have taken too long with the blade I had, so I’d just punched him in the groin with my off hand. Unfortunately, the princess’s body couldn’t put much force behind it. Fortunately, Prince Dudley could probably have been brought to tears by a five year old yanking his hair and kicking him in the shins.
“Elhared, Dudley. You know what happened to him, and to me. And you were the last to see him in his new body.” I punched him again for emphasis. “You’re going to tell me where the wizard went.”
“Please, stop,” he whispered, sounding as if he was on the verge of strangulation.
I held my position, my left fist raised. I glanced at the blade at his neck, and saw a deep dent where the dull blade pressed into his flesh. My knuckles were white, and I had forced it against him hard enough that the so-called point had actually drawn a bead of blood. If the dagger had any edge at all, Dudley would probably have been decapitated by now. I eased up a bit so I could understand what he was trying to say.
“Fell Green,” he choked out.
“What?”
“Try searching. In Fell Green,” he said between gasps.
“Never heard of it.”
“Market town. Border. Sells things. You can’t get. Elsewhere.”
“Elhared went there?” I was wondering why I hadn’t heard of this town “Fell Green,” given the source of my livelihood. I made it my business to know every black market and smuggler’s haven for two or three kingdoms in every direction. If some town specialized in marketing contraband anywhere in the area, I should have at least heard of it.
Then it struck me that the contraband I thought about, and the contraband Elhared and this little necromantic twerp would be in the market for, would be two very different things.
“You’re talking about a wizard town?”
“What else?”
That did make sense. Though, despite Dudley having the backbone of a hardboiled egg, I couldn’t help but think the information came a little too freely. Trusting anything this guy said seemed a fool’s game.
I started to lean into the knife again, to press him for more details, when the door to the bedroom swung open letting in a stench reminiscent of what the gastric result of overindulgence of Mermaid’s Milk must smell like.
I turned to see a familiar trio of old women, standing frozen in the doorway, staring at me with my knife at Prince Dudley’s throat. The one in the lead, Mabel I think her name was, held a small cauldron the size of a human skull, from which drifted green-tinted steam.
“Ma’am,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “As you can see, I have the prince hostage. If everyone stays calm and quiet, he won’t get hurt. Do we understand each other?”
The three women looked at each other, then at me, and finally at Prince Dudley. I could swear I saw the ghost of a smile on Mabel’s face before she dropped the steaming cauldron with a crash, spilling the foul brew everywhere. The women turned and ran down the corridor screaming, “Help! Murder!”
So much for stealth. I looked at Dudley, who was still gaping at where the women had been, and said, “I think you need to work a little harder on motivating your people.” Then I clobbered him on the side of the head with the hilt of the dagger and retrieved the binding charm.
The princess may have had a shorter stride than I used to have, and probably wouldn’t have been able to beat me at a flat run, but her body was nimble, a
nd my escape through the suddenly populated halls of the Lendowyn Summer Palace was all dodging and quick shifts in direction. One corridor was blocked by rushing guards and I was able to quickly dive through a closing door, dodging servants as I ran across a banquet table to slip out the kitchens before the old me would have been able to turn around.
When I finally came to a door leading to the battlements outside, coming in was a giant bearded man holding a battle-axe. He wore the skin of a wolf tied around his neck as a cloak. The wolf looked as if it had been bigger than me in life and on this guy it looked small.
He grinned at me, taking a confrontational stance and readying his axe before the open doorway, the door swinging shut behind him.
I did something I never would have attempted in my old body. I rushed him. The giant’s eyes widened, as if this was the one thing I could have done that would have surprised him. He raised his axe, but he reacted too slowly to stop me.
I dove between his legs, rolled across the threshold onto the battlement, and leaped up to my feet before the guy knew what was happening.
My victory was short-lived. I was brought up short by a familiar voice coming from the other direction. “Hold, intruder!”
Of course Sir Forsythe was up here.
He ran toward me, across the battlements, shouting something about the fruits of deception. I looked behind me and, small consolation, the giant I had dodged had contented himself with blocking my retreat, leaning against the door to enjoy the show.
He had every reason to expect that show to be a short one. Sir Forsythe charged me, all blade and glinting armor, and I stood there in salvaged clothing holding a dagger that would do better service as a tent peg. I yelled at the charging knight. “You know, by Lendowyn law, I am the princess now. You don’t want to cause an incident, do you?”
Sir Forsythe seemed unconvinced as he swung his sword at me. I dodged under his swing and jumped up on the outer wall, jumping from merlon to merlon around him, thanking whatever deity was listening that Lucille’s body had good balance even when taking the top-heavy additions into account.
His sword chipped stone at my feet and I jumped again, yelling back. “Attacking me could be seen as an act of war, you know.”
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