The Gypsy King

by Maureen Fergus

  ALSO BY MAUREEN FERGUS

  Ortega

  Recipe for Disaster

  Exploits of a Reluctant

  (But Extremely Goodlooking) Hero

  RAZORBILL

  an imprint of Penguin Canada

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published 2013

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)

  Copyright © Maureen Fergus, 2013

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  * * *

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Fergus, Maureen

  The Gypsy king / Maureen Fergus.

  (The Gypsy king trilogy ; 1)

  ISBN 978-0-14-318315-0

  I. Title. II. Series: Fergus, Maureen. Gypsy king trilogy ; 1.

  PS8611.E735G96 2013 jC813’.6 C2012-905153-5

  * * *

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  * * *

  For my daughter Sophie, who helped to get this story started

  PROLOGUE

  THE LAST SURVIVING Gypsy Seer struggled to her feet.

  An ancient crone, she’d sat alone beneath the banyan tree for a day and a night and another day. Not eating, not drinking, not sleeping—only emptying her mind and waiting to be shown the truth about things past and the promise of things yet to come.

  Now, filled with wonder and confusion at what she’d been shown, the old woman gathered up her charcoal and scrolls. Groping in the darkness for her cane, she slowly began hobbling toward the hidden camp where her beloved people were dancing, singing and feasting to honour the memory of the many who’d lately been murdered in the healing pool massacres.

  When she was nearly there, the mouth-watering scent of roast mutton caused her shrivelled stomach to clench painfully. As she crumpled to her knees, the thin, high-pitched scream of a small child pierced the night.

  As one, the Gypsies before her turned toward the sound, which ended with chilling abruptness.

  The next instant the horsemen were upon them, slashing and cutting. Dressed in darkest black from head to toe, they resembled Death, though they were neither as merciful nor as discriminating as Death. Even as the heartsick old woman watched, a tiny, toddling infant was trampled beneath pounding hooves, and a heavily pregnant woman was run through as though her swollen belly was nothing more than a piece of ripe fruit.

  While the brightly clad Gypsy men all turned to fight, the beautiful Gypsy women grabbed the children and ran into the bushes. One of these—a girl carrying a child in one arm and dragging another by the hand—almost tripped over the old woman kneeling in the darkness.

  Stifling a scream, the girl gasped, “Run, old mother! The men will not be able to hold the Regent’s soldiers off for long!”

  The distant crash of cooking pots being overturned made the girl jump and the children whimper. The old woman did not even blink.

  “I am too old and lame to run, Cairn,” she said.

  “But they will kill you!”

  “Then I will die—but first you will hear that I have Seen a king! A great king, a Gypsy King! A king whose coming will unite the five tribes of Glyndoria and set things to right for all people!”

  “I care not about all people or about uniting the tribes,” hissed the girl as she tightened her grip on the children she’d just seen orphaned. “I care only about our people and our tribe—what is left of it, anyway. Forgive me, old mother, but why could you not have had a vision of the healing pool? It would give us power over death!”

  “Balthazar swore he’d found it and yet it did not give him power over death. Indeed, it brought Death to his very doorstep—and to ours,” reminded the old woman. “If the Pool of Genezing is out there, Cairn, perhaps the coming king is meant to find it again—and to use the might of his great armies to protect us from those who would lust after the pool’s healing power.”

  The girl started to say something, but her throat closed in terror at the sound of someone large crashing through the bushes nearby.

  Swiftly, the old woman pulled two scrolls from the pouch at her waist. Unrolling the first, she handed it to the girl, who barely glanced at it before asking, “Who is she?”

  “I do not know. I know only that you must find her, for it begins and ends with her. As for the second scroll,” said the old woman, passing it over without unrolling it, “you are not to look upon it until the first anniversary of this night that follows the discovery of the girl. Only then will the words have any meaning at all.”

  Tersely nodding her understanding, the girl shoved both scrolls down the front of her shift, hoisted the smaller child higher on her hip, grabbed the hand of the child at her side and prepared to run. “I will come back for you if I can,” she said.

  “Do not come back for me,” said the old woman. “Only promise me that you will carry my last and best prophecy onward to those of our people who survive this night.”

  “But—”

  “Promise!” commanded the old woman, as the large, crashing someone drew nearer still.

  “I promise!” blurted the girl, with a terrified glance over her shoulder.

  “Now, go,” said the old woman, giving her a shove. “They are coming!”

  Without another word, the girl turned and fled with the children into the night. As soon as they’d been swallowed up by the darkness, the old woman lay back and moaned loudly in the hope of attracting the attention of the crashing someone—thereby giving the girl and the children precious extra moments to escape.

  Almost immediately, she heard a gruff voice shout, “I’ve found another!”

  In the flickering light of a pitch torch, the Gypsy Seer looked up to see the soulless eyes of one who murdered infants and old women for profit leering down at her. And as she heard the slither of a sword being drawn from its scabbard and felt the cold steel pierce her belly, she smiled broadly at the thought of the Gypsy who would be king.

  And then she walked without fear into Death’s cold embrace.

>   Fifteen Years Later

  ONE

  PERSEPHONE AWOKE WITH A START.

  Even so, she moved not a muscle, having long ago learned the usefulness of controlling the twitches and fidgets that gave others away. Taking care to keep her breathing deep and even, she half-opened one violet eye and, through the thick tangle of dark lashes, scanned the dirty stall in which she lay for some sign of whatever it was that had jarred her from sleep. She couldn’t see much by the light of the moon that bled through the cracks in the walls, but she could see enough to assure herself that danger didn’t lie within gutting distance. Nevertheless, her fingers slid to the hilt of the stolen dagger in the makeshift scabbard strapped to her bare thigh. It was a good knife—well balanced, well pointed and sharp as a razor on two sides. It could be used to skin a hare as easily as to kill a man, which suited Persephone just fine. She enjoyed hare stew and had no use for men whatsoever.

  SNAP.

  There—at the far end of the barn.

  A sound that didn’t belong!

  Quick as a cat, Persephone tossed aside her thin blanket and rolled off the pile of old straw that served as her bedding. Too late, she remembered the heavy chain that hung between the cuffs of her leg irons. As it clinked and clattered to the hard-packed dirt floor, she gritted her teeth against the urge to curse aloud. What a fool the owner was to have clapped her in irons! True, she’d run away again after promising not to do so, and true, the ill-humoured old sow had used the opportunity to escape her pen and wreak havoc in the bean field again, but how could Persephone possibly be expected to protect the livestock if she could neither sneak up on thieves nor give chase to them?

  She listened now for the sound of this particular thief fleeing in a panic. When she heard nothing, she unsheathed her dagger and listened harder—this time for the sound of the thief trying to sneak up on her that he might slit her throat or force himself upon her or both. When she still heard nothing, she lifted the chain at her feet to prevent it from dragging, tiptoed toward the opening of the stall and cautiously peered around the rotting wooden half-wall.

  So confident was Persephone that the thief would be cowering behind a goat somewhere that she nearly bumped noses with him before realizing that he was, in fact, crouching motionless before her in the moonlit darkness, looking almost as startled as she felt. Actually, he did not look startled as much as he looked utterly astounded. With a gasp, Persephone dropped the chain in her hand, jerked her head inside the stall and pressed her back against the half-wall. On the other side of the divide, she heard an abrupt clanking sound—as though the thief had dropped something heavy—and then an anxious squawk. Persephone scowled as alarm gave way to indignation. So! He thought he’d help himself to one of the chickens, did he?

  Not if he wanted to live to see another sunrise, he wouldn’t.

  “Put down that chicken!” she ordered, her voice ringing with authority.

  “No,” said the thief.

  “Yes!”

  “No.”

  He sounded young, but annoyingly self-assured, and not at all frightened even though he had to know that one shout from her would bring the owner running, useless though he was.

  “Who are you?” asked the thief wonderingly. “Where did you come from? What is your name?”

  Persephone’s heart nearly stopped when she realized that these words had issued from high above her head. Flinging herself forward into the shadows, she rolled to her feet with surprising speed and grace for one so heavily fettered.

  Without taking his eyes off her, the thief—who’d been comfortably balancing upon the narrow half-wall—leapt lightly to the floor of the stall. The chicken tucked under his arm squawked once and then fell silent.

  Persephone dropped into a fighting stance. She’d been right—the thief was young, probably not much older than she, though certainly of an age to do the work of a man. Strong enough to do the work of a man, too, judging by the long, lean look of him. A white silk shirt open halfway to his waist revealed a smooth ridge of pectorals and a hard, flat belly; tight black breeches accentuated powerful legs. High boots and a dark headscarf knotted over long, unkempt curls completed the look, which was that of a pirate clutching a chicken.

  The thought brought a faint smile to Persephone’s lips, but it died the next second when her gaze drifted to the thief’s face and she realized with a start that he was staring at her even more intently than she’d been staring at him. Worse, there was a strange, rapt look in his eyes—a look that made her instantly, uncomfortably aware of the fact that beneath her thin nightshift, she was wearing nothing at all.

  Wordlessly, the thief took a step toward her.

  Heart thudding madly, Persephone stepped farther back into the shadows. “I have a knife,” she warned.

  “So do I,” said the thief. “Now, tell me who you are.”

  Shaking her head, Persephone tried to take another step backward, but stumbled over the chain of her leg irons. When the thief reached out to steady her, she jerked her arm away with such vehemence that she accidentally struck herself in the face.

  The thief didn’t smile, but Persephone could tell that he wanted to smile, so she slashed the air with her dagger and snapped, “I’m not afraid to use this, you know!”

  “And I’m not afraid to use this,” he replied genially as he reached over his broad shoulder to pull a much larger dagger from the scabbard that was evidently strapped to his back. “In fact,” he added, in an almost nostalgic voice, “I’ve seven corpses to this blade.”

  “Really?” sniffed Persephone, feigning indifference. “I’ve ten to this one.”

  The thief grinned at the lie. “Excellent!” he said. “We’ll be well matched then. Come, step out of the shadows. Let us fight to the death. If I win, I get myself a fine, fat chicken dinner and if you win—”

  “You will leave Mrs. Busby alone and depart at once!” said Persephone fiercely.

  There was a long moment of silence. Then, in a rather mystified voice, the thief asked, “Who is Mrs. Busby?”

  Without thinking, Persephone gestured toward the chicken in his arms.

  “I … see,” said the thief. He looked to one side and then to the other before tilting his head toward her and solemnly inquiring, “Tell me, Mistress, do you name all creatures or just the ones that taste good with gravy and potatoes?”

  Persephone’s cheeks burned with embarrassment as the thief began to chuckle. “Stop laughing,” she muttered. “It’s not funny.”

  But the thief wouldn’t stop laughing, and the longer he laughed, the more irritated Persephone became. Finally, heedless of the danger and not knowing how else to get him to shut up, she lunged at him with her dagger. She was quick, but he was quicker. Dropping his own knife and flinging the startled Mrs. Busby to one side, the thief deftly sidestepped Persephone’s attack and grabbed the wrist of her knife hand. Yanking her forward, he spun her around, caught her around the midsection with his free arm and dragged her back until she was pressed against him.

  “Never attack in anger,” he whispered, his lips so close to her ear that she could feel his breath on her skin. “And never start a fight you can’t win.”

  “Let … go … of … me,” she panted, as she twisted and struggled in his arms.

  “That’s quite a temper you’ve got there,” the thief continued, in a voice that was almost a purr. “Is that why you’re in irons? Because I must say, I never expected—”

  Persephone cut him off with a heel stomp to the foot.

  “Ow!” cried the thief. Angrily, he spun her back around so that she was facing him. With one hand, he forced her knife hand behind her back; with the other, he held her so close that she could hardly breathe.

  Persephone glared up at him in defiance. Then, as though in a swoon, she let her head fall back and her body go limp. The instant the thief loosened his grip on her in order to accommodate the sudden shift in her weight, she drove her knee upward into his groin with all her might.


  He didn’t let go of her knife hand, but his eyes did bulge alarmingly. Slowly sinking to the ground, he clutched his mangled vitals with his free hand and wheezed, “I cannot believe … that you … of all people … did that … to me! It would bloody well … serve you right … if I … if I.…”

  Persephone watched with some apprehension as the furious thief cast about for something truly terrible to do to her.

  “If I up and gave you a good, sound spanking!” he finally exploded.

  For a moment, Persephone just gaped at him.

  “A spanking?” she finally spluttered. “A spanking?” She started to laugh. “That is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard in my life. A spanking? You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Oh, wouldn’t I?” cried the thief, who suddenly looked more like an outraged boy than a powerful stranger.

  Persephone continued to laugh as he staggered to his feet.

  “Stop laughing!” he ordered, giving her knife hand a little shake. “I warn you—I’ll do it, I’ll spank you! I don’t care who you are, I’ll—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, from the threshold of the stall there came a wet snarl.

  It was Cur, back from the hunt. The fur on the back of his thick neck bristled menacingly, his jaws were dark with fresh blood, and his fearsome canines glinted in the thin shaft of moonlight. A dead hare lay at his feet.

  “My dog,” said Persephone, by way of introduction.

  “Oh,” murmured the thief. And then, almost casually, he added, “I … I don’t much like dogs.”

  Cur snarled again and snapped his teeth.

  With comical swiftness, the thief moved to put Persephone between him and the beast. “He, uh, looks vicious.”

  “He is vicious,” said Persephone with relish. “Moreover, he is extremely protective of me.”

  “Humph,” said the thief.

  “If I order him to attack, he’ll rip out your throat,” she confided as she wrenched her knife hand from the thief’s grasp. “He’s killed dozens of men at my behest.”