Bad Prince Charlie

by Moore, John

  “What?” Charlie turned around. Catherine and Rosalind were both staring at him in shock. He looked behind him. “What?”

  “That’s my underwear drawer. You can’t handle a lady’s unmentionables.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  Catherine took his hands and pulled him away from the bed. “Rosalind will pack those. But, Charlie, why do I need to leave? Abe isn’t going to harm me.”

  “My uncles will. They’re the ones who signed your death warrant. They never intended to sell out to Noile. They want to take it over. Sure, they’ll reunify the two countries, but under Damask’s rule. If they get to the WMD before I do, that’s exactly what they’ll do. And they don’t want you in their way.”

  “The Weapon of Magical Destruction? You mean it really exists? You found it?”

  “Tell her, Pollocks.”

  The Faithful Family Retainer nodded. “It’s hidden in the Temple of Matka.”

  “Fortescue’s camped in a shallow valley just over the border. If the WMD is detonated there, his whole army will be wiped out. Noile will be defenseless. Even Damask will be able to take it over, and our troops are already mobilized.” He gave Pollocks a stern look. “If you had confided in me right from the start, Pollocks, all this could have been avoided.”

  Pollocks looked contrite. “I’m sorry, Your Highness. But we didn’t know if you could be trusted. Perhaps if you had confided more in me . . .”

  “Yes, well, what’s done is done.” The noise from outside was growing louder. He ran to the window. The others followed him. “They’re coming here. A mob has formed. It’s all like we planned.”

  “I’m largely responsible for that,” said Pollocks. “It was news of my noble death that pushed their simmering resentment to the boiling point.” He took a clipping out of his wallet. “I don’t know if you saw this in the paper. ‘The tragic and valiant death of the late king’s Faithful Family Retainer has stirred the passions of every soul in Damask.’ ‘Stirred the passions,’ did you hear? That’s what a good performance can achieve.”

  “Yeah right,” said the prince. “You nearly gave the whole thing away with your cheesy acting.”

  “You nearly gave the whole thing away with the smell of garlic and oregano! What possessed you to fill the knife with marinara sauce?”

  “I’m the prince regent! It’s not easy for me to slip down to the kitchen without being noticed. I had to grab the first tomato sauce I could find.”

  “Gentlemen,” Catherine interrupted. “They’re heading this way. Do we have a plan, or what?”

  “Your suitcase,” said Rosalind, holding it up. Charlie took it from her. He led them out the door and back the way they came, stopping once to look in the direction of the city. There was a cloud of dust where horses’ hooves had thrown up the dry dirt, and emerging from it they could see the gray-and-green uniforms of the Royal Guard, fighting a defensive retreat back to the castle. Already the guards remaining at the castle had thrown open the gate to let them in. Charlie nodded, then motioned for the others to follow him. He took them back to the west wall, where Rosalind and Catherine had left the rope ladder pulled up. He pointed to the horses below.

  “Those are for us. Oratorio is just fighting a delaying action, keeping the mob from getting here too soon. But he’s also trying to minimize casualties, so the guard isn’t fighting too hard. Once he’s sure we’re away, he’ll open the gates to Gagnot’s men and surrender the castle. If he can slip away later, he’ll catch up with you and escort you to Bitburgen. It’s in a neutral country, and there are lots of unattached young women going to the university, so it’s a good place to lay low for a while and not be noticed.”

  “Where are you going, Charlie?”

  “To Matka. I’ve got to destroy the WMD. I’ll join you later in Bitburgen.”

  “Why Bitburgen? Why not Noile? Fortescue will protect me.”

  Charlie shook his head. “I don’t trust Fortescue, either. If he manages to get the WMD, he won’t need you. You’ll just be more competition. After this blows over, you can decide if you want to join him in Noile. Or . . .”

  He stopped, swallowed hard, and looked at Pollocks. Pollocks discreetly turned away. Charlie took Catherine’s hand. “Or you could stay with me,” he said uncertainly. “It doesn’t have to be Bitburgen. Any country, any city, I can take you there. Or we could travel. The Twenty Kingdoms, or overseas, even to the Far East. I’ve got plenty of money. It’s all invested in . . . invested in . . . Hey, Pollocks? What did my mother invest her money in, anyway?”

  “A chain of coffee shops, Your Highness.”

  “Really? Huh. Anyway, what do you think?”

  Catherine took his other hand in hers. “Charlie, do you remember the night we went out to dinner?”

  “I’ll never forget a moment of it.”

  “Do you remember what we talked about?”

  “Um, maybe I’ve forgotten that part.”

  “I asked you if you ever considered petitioning the Council of Lords to declare you legitimate, so you could inherit the throne of Damask?”

  “Oh, right. I laughed, because it was such a silly idea. Ruling isn’t really my sort of thing.”

  Catherine gave him a sad little smile. “No,” she said. “It really isn’t.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Go now. Find the WMD. Don’t worry about me. I know what I have to do.”

  “I’ll see you later then.” Charlie swung his leg over the parapet and was down the rope ladder in less than a minute. He untethered two horses, sprang onto one, and took off up the mountain road leading the other.

  “We need to be going, too,” said Pollocks.

  “Wait,” said Catherine. “Let him get a good start. Then if there are any pursuers, we can lead them off in the other direction.”

  “Ah. Good thinking.”

  “Or . . .” said Catherine. She stared after the retreating figure.

  “Or what?”

  Catherine was silent for a while, her brow creased in thought. She watched Charlie until he disappeared around a turn. “I really did think about marrying him, you know. Do you think Charlie would have made a good king?”

  Pollocks looked at the now empty road. “I suppose,” he said doubtfully. “He’s smart enough, and he’s willing to make unpopular decisions. But he is not an ambitious man.”

  “Sometimes a man just needs a woman to give him direction in life.”

  “Yes, that would be Charlie. He would do very well with the right woman. But King of Noile? His heart wouldn’t be in it.”

  “No,” said Catherine. She still had Pollocks’s dagger tucked in her sash. She pulled it out and toyed with it. “But I would make a good queen.”

  “I’m sure you’d have been very popular here in Damask.”

  “Noile, too.”

  “I suppose you would, but that’s little more than a day-dream. It’s not like Damask, where the line of succession is muddled. There are at least four people, perhaps five, in Noile who very definitely stand between you and the throne.”

  “Things can change,” said Catherine. She held the dagger up to the sun. A bright line of light gleamed on the sharp edge near the hilt. “There might be accusations of treason. There might be arrests. It wouldn’t be difficult to arrange. A few accidents, a few executions, and there I am.”

  Pollocks looked shocked. “It is true that those things can be made to happen, my lady. But our Prince Charlie would never do such things.”

  Catherine was leaning over the parapet, looking at the rope ladder stretching nearly to the ground, and at the remaining horses grazing on the brown grass. “No,” she said, almost to herself, and so low that Pollocks couldn’t hear her. “He wouldn’t.” With her hands out of sight behind the stone, she sliced through one side of the rope ladder. “But Fortescue would.” In a quick motion she severed the other half and watched it fall silently to the grounds. She tossed the dagger after it. It clattered on the stones.

  “What was that?” Poll
ocks came up to her. He looked over the wall. “What! What happened to the ladder? What did you do?”

  Catherine took off running.

  She ran along the parapets, back to the main gate. Rosalind, too surprised to follow, stayed behind. Pollocks tried to catch Catherine, but couldn’t keep up with the much younger woman. She reached the front of the castle and leaned over the top of the wall, trying to make sense of the confusion below. A short, double line of the Royal Guards had formed up in front of the gate. A dozen or so mounted knights were riding back and forth in front of them, trying to break the line, but held at bay by the foot soldiers’ pikes. Behind them circulated a vast and disorganized melee of foot soldiers, foot guards, mounted guards, mounted knights, and armed commoners, all shouting, shoving, brandishing swords, threatening each other, and choking on dust. In back of all that, a royal carriage with Packard and Gregory had pulled off the road. Charlie’s uncles stood on the roof of the carriage, where they could get a better view of the action.

  Catherine took out a handkerchief and waved it, hoping to draw attention. “Abe! Albemarle Gagnot!”

  A mounted knight detached himself from the mob and rode to the castle wall. “Lady Catherine?” The knight tilted up his visor just as Pollocks arrived at the gate, so the old man could clearly see that it was Albemarle Gagnot who was looking at them. And it was Albemarle Gagnot that Catherine was calling to.

  “Abe, he’s gone up the mountain road. Prince Charlie. He’s on his way to Matka. You’ve got to stop him!”

  Charlie knew he was being pursued and had little time. He rode his horses until they faltered and abandoned the last one on the shores of Lake Organza, reaching the temple on foot. It seemed deserted. The monks in their sky-blue robes were gone. The bright silk banners had been taken away, the fountains were still and sprinkled with dry leaves. There was no smell of incense, no chiming of bells, no eerie atonal music. The coffee shops were boarded up. He was not surprised. He understood now that the so-called Cult of Matka had completed its mission. But the Prince Regent of Damask was not completed with his. Not yet.

  He found the building where he had met with Fortescue, and the larger building with the oracle’s rock, where the monks developed their predictions. He found Xiao’s private boudoir. All of these rooms were empty, the furniture and tapestries stripped away. A cold wind blew through the empty corridors. The Temple of Matka had been abandoned once again. Already green shoots were growing up through the blocks of paving stone.

  He’s here, said Charlie to himself. He’s got to be here. He can’t take it with him and he wouldn’t leave it behind. He ran back to the main gate and looked in the direction of Damask. A faint cloud of dust was rising over the mountain ridges. It was enough to tell him that the castle had been taken and the army was after him.

  He ran to the main temple, under the great, pale gray dome. It, too, was deserted, and when he called “Thessalonius?” the words echoed off the stone walls. He pushed open the door to the Great Hall. It had no windows and, without torchiers or candles, was too dark to see. “Thessalonius, I know you’re here.” He stood in the darkness, listening. He couldn’t hear anything, not breathing or movement, nothing more than the rustle of insects and the gentle hiss of the wind, yet he felt that indefinable presence that always exists when a second person is with you in a room. He was about to go back out and search for a lantern, when a spark was struck on the other side of the hall, and a candle sputtered to life.

  The prince let out a breath of relief. He walked toward the light. From this distance he couldn’t see the man behind the candle, but he was sure he knew who it was. “Hey, Thessalonius. It’s me, Charlie. Where have you been hiding all this time?” When he got closer, he could see a figure sitting on a low chair, tightly wrapped in one of the blue monk robes, with the hood pulled close around his face. Charlie looked around for a second chair as he crossed the Great Hall. Not seeing one—not seeing anything, in fact, in the cavernous dark room—he settled to the floor to sit cross-legged. As he did so, the man in the robes casually set the candle on the ground, so that Charlie’s face was illuminated while his own face remained in shadow.

  “It’s been a long time, Thessalonius,” he started out. “How have you been?” The man in the robes didn’t answer this, but acknowledged Charlie’s presence with a nod. “I’m an idiot. I should have figured this out earlier,” the prince went on. “Jeremy was right. You have more skill than anyone alive in predicting the weather. The whole history of the Twenty Kingdoms hasn’t produced more than a handful of people who could make any kind of prediction with any kind of reliability. There’s no way a whole succession of young girls would all be able to prophesy. If they were making accurate predictions—and they had to make at least a few, to keep the cult going—it was because you were feeding predictions to them. You started this place, didn’t you? I should have seen that right away.”

  “People see what they want to see.” The voice in the darkness was low, dry, and raspy.

  “Yeah, maybe. Not all the time, though. I came here expecting to see a scam. I thought I was so smart. I didn’t realize how brilliant you were. You were actually running an intelligence network.”

  The man in the hood let out a short, hoarse laugh. “Now don’t pretend you figured that out yourself, young Charlie. Pollocks told you all about it, I’m sure.”

  “No, you’re wrong. I did figure it out, after my second visit. I wasn’t sure about Pollocks then. I didn’t know whose side he was on, until my uncles caught him sending you a message by carrier pigeon. But running a string of spies in Damask—and I’m sure you have them in Noile also—was just supplementary information. The real beauty of this thing was that people came here and told you their secrets. Military secrets, business secrets, personal secrets, they told everything and they even paid to have someone listen. You had a whole team of people to compile the information. To top it off, you had a sequence of hot girls as priestesses. That made it perfect. Guys can’t resist showing off their knowledge to a pretty girl. Dammit, I was doing it myself.”

  “You were a lot more careful than most men, Charlie. There have only been two men who figured out my little game so quickly. And while I’m sure you won’t appreciate this comparison, your father was the other one. In fact, he’s the one who really took my simple oracle cult and built an intelligence network around it. It allowed him to follow what was going on in Noile during the time of troubles. He was able to keep Damask independent without spending a lot of money on the military.”

  “Oh, I never said that my father was a stupid man. Just that I didn’t like him. But he, or his ghost, told me something I do agree with. This project you’ve been working on. It’s too dangerous to let it fall into the wrong hands. And there are no right hands for something like that. You have to let me destroy it.”

  There was a long silence. Charlie forced himself to keep quiet, to let the older man speak first, although he couldn’t refrain from a nervous glance at the door. He didn’t know how long he had before the army got here. Thessalonius finally said, “I’ve given my life to that project, Charlie.”

  “I know you put a lot of work into it, Thessalonius. But sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to. Think about the chickens. If you don’t . . .”

  “Shut up about the chickens!” The sorcerer’s voice held a surprising vehemence. Charlie slid back on the floor. “All my life I’ve been hearing about the chickens. You make one mistake and they never let you forget about it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that maybe that was all to the good? That Damask is better off without chickens? Do you know how many people choke to death on chicken bones each year?”

  “No. How many?”

  “I don’t know. But I bet it’s a lot. And then there’s feather allergies and avian influenza and . . . and . . . lots of other stuff.”

  “Okay, okay.” Charlie didn’t want to get the old man upset. “Let’s talk abou
t the rain. Can you make it rain or not?”

  “Rain? What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, Thessalonius. Don’t be coy with me. You were building a rain-making device, right? That’s why it had to be up here in the mountains, right? The WMD isn’t meant to be a super weapon. Did you finish it? Can you make it rain? If you can, we have to set it off now, because two armies are on their way to grab it. The crops aren’t going to last another week without it anyway.”

  “Charlie, if I could make it rain on demand I would be the greatest sorcerer who ever lived.”

  “Some people think you are the greatest sorcerer who ever lived. I asked Jeremy if it was possible for a sorcerer to make it rain. He said no. He said that the power in a single thunderstorm was greater than all the magical spells ever cast. Now, I know that for decades sorcerers have been talking about tapping into some tremendous source of magical power, something that would be used to make a super weapon.”

  “The infamous Weapon of Magical Destruction that everyone is searching for.”

  “Yes.” Charlie allowed a touch of smugness to creep into his voice. “Except Dad would not have backed a weapons project like that. He had no interest in war or conquest. But he was always trying to get more water into Damask. Everyone knew you were working on a big, secret project. That had to be it. Something so powerful it could change the weather.”

  “Very reasonable.” Thessalonius shook his head admiringly. “I must admire your deductive powers, Charlie. The way that you sorted out the clues and came to a logical conclusion is quite admirable.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It is, however, completely wrong. I haven’t the slightest idea how to make it rain. It’s quite impossible. I never even considered it for a moment.”

  Charlie lay back on the floor and stared in the direction of the ceiling, which was invisible in the darkness. For a long time he was silent. Eventually he said, “Okay, I’m not too surprised. I guess in the back of my mind I always knew that I was indulging in wishful thinking. I wanted a peaceful solution to our problems. And . . . I wanted . . . to think that my father had something better going on than building a weapon.”