The Gypsy King

by Maureen Fergus

  The truth—which was that the Gypsies could never risk releasing someone who could lead the Regent’s New Men to their secret camp—hung between them. But Persephone already had a plan to deal with that, so all she said was, “Even if all you say is true, Azriel, the path to setting a Gypsy upon a throne recognized by all tribes would be a dangerous and bloody one, indeed. What on earth makes you think that either Rachel or I would be willing to follow it?”

  Azriel slid his free arm around her waist so that he could pull her closer still. “The girl who is meant to follow the path will have no choice but to do so, for it is her destiny,” he whispered. “Now come. Let us fetch Rachel so that we may join my tribesmen by the fire and learn the answers my people have waited fifteen long years to know.”

  A few heartbeats later, Persephone was standing by the fire next to Rachel, the eyes of every Gypsy in the clearing upon them. Directly before her sat Cairn, still holding the canister and the dagger; beside Cairn sat an exceptionally beautiful Gypsy girl. Asleep in the arms of the girl was the little boy who’d earlier “brung them thupper.”

  To hide her sudden nervousness, Persephone lifted her chin and threw a cool look at Cairn. The older woman returned her look with an equal measure of coolness. For a long moment nobody moved, and the only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the whisper of the wind through the trees.

  Then Cairn began to speak.

  “A week ago, we received a message by carrier pigeon that this boy and his family had been discovered masquerading as Erok,” she said quietly, gesturing toward the sleeping child. “The family’s neighbours— people with whom they’d shared many years of good and hard times alike—had sent word to the Regent Mordecai, scalped the parents and the older siblings and shut away the child until the New Men could arrive to transport him back to Parthania and such horrors that his certain death—when it finally came—would seem a great mercy indeed.” Here she paused. “The Gypsy who sent the carrier pigeon could not intervene for fear of endangering his own masquerading family, so Azriel, Tiny and the others tracked the New Men, set fire to their camp and liberated the child.” She paused again. “It is our hope that it was one of the last such rescue missions we shall ever have to undertake.”

  Reaching into a small wooden chest at her feet, she brought forth an ancient-looking scroll. With painstaking care, she unrolled it and held it up so that Persephone and Rachel could see it. Drawn in charcoal, the bold, confident lines of the sketch were remarkably few, but the likeness to her and Rachel was so unmistakable that it made the hair on the back of Persephone’s neck stand on end.

  “While deep in her final trance, our last Seer drew this sketch,” began Cairn. “One of you is this girl, while the other is—”

  Persephone held up her hand. “Before you go any further, you should know that Rachel and I have sworn a blood oath that if harm should come to one of us, the other shall immediately impale herself upon the nearest sharp implement,” she lied.

  This announcement made Rachel gasp aloud and set the Gypsies to muttering among themselves. Cairn quieted her people with a sweep of her hand, then raised a fine, soot-coloured eyebrow at Rachel and asked, “Is this true?”

  Mutely, Rachel bobbed her head up and down even as her eyes darted about wildly as though in search of the implement upon which she might be forced to impale herself forthwith.

  Leaning forward slightly, Cairn gave Persephone a penetrating look and said, “You inspired her to lay down her life for your cause.”

  “It was she who inspired me,” corrected Persephone, who had no intention of letting Rachel be viewed as the “complication.”

  Half of the Gypsies nodded emphatically at the news that the blood oath had been Rachel’s idea; the other half frowned as though this made no sense at all. Azriel—who’d just eased himself down onto a seat beside the beautiful girl holding the sleeping child—looked at Persephone as if to say that he wasn’t fooled by her tricks for an instant.

  She ignored him.

  “As you can see,” said Cairn, “my people are divided on the issue of which one of you is the girl we seek, and we’ve not been able to agree upon a suitable manner by which to resolve our dilemma. So, for the time being, you are both safe, blood oath or not.”

  “For the time being,” echoed Persephone. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Azriel lean over and whisper something to the girl beside him. Probably his beautiful sweetheart, she thought irritably, before turning her attention back to Cairn.

  “There is no use trying to cross bridges until we come to them,” said the older woman, as though plans to indefinitely detain or dispose of one girl or the other was an issue of minor importance. “Tonight, there is but one bridge to cross.”

  The flames of the bonfire seemed to leap higher with these words. Somewhere in the darkness, an owl hooted.

  Persephone said nothing, but her gaze darted to the leather canister clutched tight in the older woman’s hand. Obviously, it contained a message from the long-dead Seer explaining how the girl in the sketch was meant to fulfill her destiny. What the message was going to say, Persephone could not imagine—except for imagining that it was going to spell grave danger for her and Rachel.

  Suddenly fearful of where this tribal madness was about to lead, Persephone cast a desperate glance at Azriel, but he was too busy listening to the whispered response of his beautiful sweetheart to notice. Before she could even begin to resent this, however, the drums began to beat once more. Rachel whimpered softly and reached for Persephone’s hand. As she did so, Cairn slowly rose from her seat and held the stiff leather canister aloft for all to see. With trembling hands, she lifted the dagger she’d been holding, cut through the wax that sealed the canister and pried off the top. Eagerly, she removed and unrolled a scroll. When she read the words written upon it, however, the eagerness in her eyes abruptly faded. Frowning, she gazed up at the night sky for a long moment before handing the scroll to Azriel. With a puzzled expression, he, too, looked up. Then he held the scroll out to Persephone, who took it and studied it very closely before showing it to Rachel.

  “I don’t understand,” said Rachel, after she’d laboriously sounded out the words under her breath. “What does this mean?”

  The beautiful Gypsy girl stood up. “What does what mean?” she asked impatiently. “What does it say?”

  “I think … I think it says ‘Look up,’” said Rachel doubtfully.

  The Gypsies stared blankly at her for a moment. Then they all looked at each other. Then, rather uncertainly, they all looked up.

  Even as they did so, there came a loud screech from high overhead. The next instant, Ivan swooped down, dropped a bloody bundle of feathers at Persephone’s feet and did several spectacular loop-the-loops before finally alighting upon her shoulder and moodily glaring at the Gypsies as though he would gladly peck out all of their eyes.

  “Is that your hawk?” asked Tiny in a hushed voice.

  “No,” said Persephone. “He is my friend.”

  “He has killed one of our pigeons,” observed Cairn, who was staring fixedly at the bloody bundle of feathers on the dusty ground at Persephone’s feet.

  “He only wanted to bring me a gift—he didn’t know it was one of your pigeons,” said Persephone quickly, before anyone could think to punish Ivan for his misdeed. “I’m sure if he’d known, he’d never have attacked her.”

  Azriel started to snort in disbelief, but stopped in a hurry when he noticed Ivan ruffling his feathers threateningly.

  Cairn was paying no attention to any of them. Walking over to where the murdered pigeon lay, she picked up the unfortunate creature with such gentleness that Persephone wondered if perhaps it was still alive and that Cairn meant to somehow heal its terrible wounds. Then she saw the older woman carefully removing something from the pigeon’s little stick leg.

  “Of course,” whispered Rachel, giving Persephone’s hand a squeeze. “It was a carrier pigeon.”

  Persephone
said nothing, only watched as Cairn unfolded a scrap of paper so tiny that Persephone could not imagine how anyone could have written anything at all upon it. But apparently someone had, for after she’d read its contents, Cairn sighed deeply and looked around the clearing, her expression an odd mixture of exultation and dread.

  “It is a message from Parthania,” she announced. “Another family has been identified as Gypsies; another set of parents is dead and scalped. Three of their children were murdered alongside them; a fourth child, a boy, happened to be in the care of trusted friends at the time of the attack. He is being hidden still, but the family that hides him grows too fearful of their own safety to keep him.”

  Rachel gave Persephone’s hand another squeeze. Persephone said nothing, only watched as Ivan took flight and disappeared into the night.

  The beautiful girl shifted the little boy in her arms to her hip. “What do you think this means, Cairn?” she asked. “Do you think this means that Rachel is meant to go to Parthania to rescue the child?”

  “I do not think that Rachel or Persephone is meant to rescue the child, Fayla,” said Cairn thoughtfully, “for I cannot believe we are meant to risk a child’s life on untried rescuers. I do believe, however, that whichever one of them is the girl in the picture is meant to accompany you and the others to Parthania. I cannot guess what she is meant to do there nor how she is meant to do it, but now, more than ever before, I have faith that the answers we seek will be provided as they’re needed.”

  Almost all the Gypsies nodded in emphatic agreement: they’d looked up as they’d been bidden by a long-dead Seer and a clear message had been delivered from the heavens. Their faith had been affirmed in the most unequivocal terms; their hope that better days lay ahead had been renewed.

  Only Azriel looked troubled. “Are you sure about this?” he asked, as the Gypsy girl Fayla edged forward to stand near his side. “Parthania can be a treacherous place.”

  “That is true,” agreed Cairn, turning her dark eyes on Persephone, “but it is also the glittering imperial capital and the seat of all power in Glyndoria. Where better to forge the first link in the chain of events that will, at long last, see the great Gypsy King set upon his throne?”

  FOURTEEN

  SEVERAL DAYS AFTER the disastrous Council meeting, Mordecai was still beside himself with fury.

  In a dreaded place deep within the bowels of the castle, he raged on about the meeting—and about the great lords who dared to think themselves better than he.

  “Their objection to my being named heir wasn’t just a matter of my low birth, either,” he snarled as he hurled an oversized pair of rusted pincers at an iron cage that hung from the low ceiling. The repugnantly hairless inhabitant of the cage—having long since sunk into madness— grabbed the bars of its tiny prison with its yellowy pygmy hands, bared its crowded teeth at Mordecai and hissed loudly.

  General Murdock—who’d always felt oddly at home in the foul, smothering darkness of the dungeon— nonchalantly waved a glowing-hot poker in the direction of the cage. The cage’s inhabitant hissed more, then abruptly let go of the bars, shrank back and covered its milky eyes with its hairless arm.

  Mordecai’s sunken chest heaved beneath his robe. “I know what Pembleton was thinking—”

  “Pembleton is the one whose only son will shortly be found guilty of treason and beheaded—the one whose newborn grandson will shortly thereafter fall ill and die?” said General Murdock, his rat-like face half-hidden in the shadow beyond the light from the fire that never stopped burning.

  “You know he is,” spat Mordecai. “And I know what he was thinking—what they were all thinking! They were thinking that even if I bled purple, they would never in a thousand years allow me to be named heir because I do not look the part of a king! They were thinking that I would never be able to lead an army into battle, never be able to get a son upon a noble young wife. They were thinking that the proud, proud Erok would never accept a king whose body was a twisted wreck—would never line the streets of Parthania to cheer for a king whose head ducked and bobbed beneath the weight of the crown!”

  “The people would do as you bid, Your Grace, else your army would destroy them,” put in General Murdock as he used the long, thin nail of his little finger to delicately pick a shred of old meat from between his long, yellow front teeth.

  “But I want them to worship me as they would a prince of the blood!” cried Mordecai in an almost plaintive voice as he slumped against the bloodstained butcher block before him. “I want them to bow to me and know in their hearts that I am greater than the very greatest among them!”

  Another of the inhabitants of the room laughed hoarsely at this—a fearless sound for which he would later suffer the violent loss of another small piece of himself. General Murdock briefly trained his beady eyes upon the hulking wretch chained to the glistening wet wall, then flicked his gaze onward to yet another cage. Shoved into the darkest corner of the low-ceilinged room—past the dusty remains of the one who’d long since withered in the darkness—this particular cage was currently empty but for a thin scattering of dirty straw, one filthy hair ribbon and a hastily discarded rag doll.

  The General then flicked his gaze back to Mordecai. “Surely you’ve not lost hope of growing well and strong someday, Your Grace,” he murmured. “After all, one only has to look at how remarkably well your facial treatments work to know that true healing power courses through the veins of Gypsy whelps. Surely it is just a matter of time before you discover the key to unlocking its power for greater uses.”

  “I have spilled an ocean of the most potent Gypsy blood in the kingdom and have discovered nothing but that Gypsy infants squirm and squeal like piglets when stuck!” snapped Mordecai. “Even so, it is true that I have not lost hope of growing well and strong, Murdock, because liar though he was, I know Balthazar spoke the truth when he spoke of discovering the Pool of Genezing. It is out there somewhere, Murdock. I know it is! And you must find it for me!”

  General Murdock gave his nose a dainty scratch. “Of course I and my men will continue to search for it,” he said diffidently, “but I must remind Your Grace that no Gypsy, nor any of the tribal animals who knew Balthazar”—here, he nodded casually in the direction of the hulking wretch, the mad caged creature and the corpse—“has ever been persuaded to reveal what—if anything—Balthazar told him about the location of the pool. Moreover, in all our long years of searching Glyndoria, neither I nor my men have ever come across any trace of it.”

  “Oh? And how can you be sure that one of your men has not found it and kept the information to himself?” demanded Mordecai.

  General Murdock smiled thinly. “The men have no idea what they’re looking for, Your Grace,” he reminded. “There has never been any reason to tell them, for they are all so greedy and lacking in discretion that if one were to find something as miraculous as healing waters, he would fall all over himself in his haste to tell me of his amazing discovery and receive his just reward.”

  “And what would be his just reward, Murdock?” breathed Mordecai, who already knew the answer.

  “Death, of course,” replied the General with a gleam in his eye. “Death to him and to every man he told, so that none but you and I would ever know the true location of the pool.”

  “Very good,” murmured Mordecai. Not for the first time, he marvelled at what a perfect henchman he’d found in General Murdock. Murdock himself wasn’t perfect, of course—as his most recent failure to guard against the escape of the Gypsy prisoner had proven—but he was strong and loyal and ruthless, and amazingly, he never sought any reward but to be allowed to continue to serve. Plus, he was so repulsive to look upon that, ruined body notwithstanding, Mordecai always felt more gloriously handsome by contrast.

  All in all, he was such a perfect henchman that if Mordecai were someday strong and well and capable of leading the New Man army himself, he thought it possible that he might even keep General Murdock around.

&n
bsp; It was unlikely that he would, of course—but it was definitely possible.

  “You will redouble your efforts to seek out the Pool of Genezing, Murdock, and you will find it,” ordered Mordecai now. “In the meantime, I will show the great lords that a king is not the only one who can ride among the people like a majestic young god.” Absently, he picked up an odd-shaped implement from a nearby tray and began tenderly fingering its razor-sharp edge.

  In spite of his great bravery, the wretch chained to the wall gave a small moan.

  “I will show them,” continued Mordecai softly, as he turned and began slouching toward his unfortunate victim, “that though I am yet a cripple, I am stronger than they think.”

  FIFTEEN

  PERSEPHONE AWOKE EARLY to the quiet sounds of the Gypsy camp slowly coming to life. As she stared into the pre-dawn gloom of the hut, listening to the crackle of kindling catching fire, the muted clink of cooking pots being set to simmer and the slosh of water being hauled, she thought back to all that had transpired the previous night. Though she’d admit that the arrival of Ivan and the dead pigeon at the exact moment that the Gypsies had looked up had been a rather remarkable coincidence, she refused to believe it had been anything more than that. The idea that a Gypsy King was coming—and that he was somehow meant to lead the Gypsies to their mythical healing pool—was preposterous. And though she’d initially balked at Cairn’s presumptuous announcement that she and Rachel would accompany the orphan rescuers to Parthania, she’d quickly come to realize that the journey to the imperial capital would be the perfect opportunity to escape. After all, she and Rachel would be well provisioned and heading toward settled country where even a pair of nearly identical runaways might find a way to get lost in the crowds. Moreover, they wouldn’t need to suffer a moment’s guilt over abandoning an orphan to his death because the Gypsies didn’t expect them to have a hand in rescuing the child. Best of all, since Persephone knew the way to the Gypsy hideout, there even existed the possibility that she might someday, somehow, be able to return for Fleet and Cur—if they didn’t manage to track her down first.