The Gypsy King

by Maureen Fergus

  Nodding wordlessly, Persephone watched as Azriel pulled a handful of something edible out of his pocket, held it under Fleet’s nose and started walking. With a soft whicker, Fleet eagerly began trotting after him and whatever was in his hand. A moment later, the night swallowed them both. Cur let out a soft whine. Suddenly feeling very alone, Persephone reached for Rachel’s hand just as Rachel reached for hers. Together, the two girls and the dog waited in tense silence for Azriel to return.

  A moment later, he was back with Persephone’s lowborn smock tucked under one arm.

  “Best luck,” he panted. “I found an untended stable with a bin full of turnips in one corner. There were sufficient to keep all the horses in the king’s own cavalry well fed for several long winters, so there just might be enough to keep your beast distracted for the next half hour or—”

  He stopped speaking abruptly and cocked his head to one side as though listening hard. Alarmed, Persephone did the same thing and that’s when she heard it: the distant but unmistakable murmur of a large crowd gathering.

  “Come!” ordered Azriel tersely. “There is no time to waste!”

  Reaching for Persephone’s free hand, he nearly wrenched her arm out of the socket in his haste to lead her and Rachel onward. The farther they ran, the louder the murmuring became. Soon, they were able to distinguish voices—hard male voices intermingled with pleading female ones.

  Then, just as they reached the entrance of a dark, unpaved and altogether unpleasant-looking alley, they heard the first scream.

  “What was that?” exclaimed Persephone, as the first scream was joined by another and then another.

  “What is going on?” cried Rachel softly.

  Instead of answering either of them, Azriel turned and plunged into the alley. Cur bounded after him. Persephone and Rachel stumbled blindly after him—slipping in unseen puddles of muck, tripping over repulsively soft things that stank of rot and trying not to hear the squeaks of vermin scuttling ahead of them—until Azriel stopped so abruptly that Persephone bounced off his back and had to throw her arms around him to keep from falling. Without thinking what she was doing, she held on tighter and leaned into the warm, solid strength of him.

  “Wait here,” he said, pulling away from her.

  Shocked by how empty her arms felt without him in them, Persephone shivered and watched as he silently and swiftly navigated around the precariously stacked crates, barrels and piles of old hay that cluttered the alley. He paused only briefly at the edge of the alley before turning and hurrying back with an urgency that set Persephone’s heart pounding.

  “The square is swarming with soldiers,” he whispered harshly. “They are driving people from the slum—it looks as though they mean to torch it!”

  “Torch it!” gasped Persephone, even as she caught a whiff of smoke. “But the child—”

  Before she could finish her terrible thought, there was a clatter of hooves at the far end of the alley. Jerking her gaze toward it, Persephone saw the silhouettes of a half-dozen men on horseback, several of whom were carrying torches.

  “You in the alley!” called a commanding voice. “Show yourself!”

  Instinctively, Persephone, Azriel and Rachel shrank back into the shadows and stood as still as death. Raising her hand to Cur, Persephone gave him a silent order to stay.

  “You would play with me?” continued the voice, which was now tinged with barely suppressed rage. “Even though I have personally gone to such heroic efforts to rid our fine city of that verminous eyesore you called a home? Even after I explicitly warned you and your kind against attempting to run amuck through the city offending the sensibilities of your betters? I warn you, whoever you are, come out upon the instant or I shall order my men in there to cut you down without mercy!”

  When there was no sign of surrender from the alley, the voice shouted an order. At once, several of the men slid out of their saddles, swords glinting in the torchlight.

  As they did so, without even realizing what she was doing—and before Azriel or Rachel could stop her— Persephone took three deliberate steps forward into the flickering light cast by the pitch torches. Looking up, she fixed her eyes upon the man to whom the voice belonged. He was clad entirely in black so that his body seemed to melt into the night, but his ageless face was clearly visible. So handsome that it seemed almost otherworldly, it radiated power and magnetism and … something else.

  Something terrible.

  For a long moment, his fathomless eyes bored into her.

  “Who are you?” he finally asked, his tone inscrutable.

  To Persephone’s horror, she found herself unable to move, unable to speak! Unable to do anything more than stand there gaping like an ignorant, ill-bred servant in disguise waiting for the accusation that would see her facade crumble and her trembling legs give way beneath her.

  Then she remembered the way Azriel had looked at her—as though it had never occurred to him that she wasn’t brave and strong and clever enough to do what had to be done—and her courage returned.

  “Who am I?” she echoed in a voice as haughty and cold and noble as could be. Desperately, she tried to remember the noble name that Fayla had used—the one belonging to the living noblewoman who was from such a distant branch of such a minor family as to be unlikely to be recognized—but it eluded her completely, so she latched on to the only other noble name that came to mind, the one Azriel had used with the owner.

  “Who am I?” she said again. “I am Lady Bothwell of the Ragorian Prefecture. Who, pray tell, are you?”

  Head bobbing slightly, the man awkwardly leaned forward in his saddle and hissed, “I am the Regent Mordecai.”

  NINETEEN

  STAGGERED THOUGH SHE WAS to discover that she was in the presence of the dreaded Regent Mordecai himself, Persephone did not gasp or cry out or swoon or otherwise exhibit any outward signs of shock and distress.

  Instead, she lifted her chin a little higher and dropped into a curtsey as low as befitted a man of such great station.

  “Your Grace,” she murmured, as she tried to ignore the increasingly loud and desperate cries of the nearby slum dwellers. “I am most pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “I am most … intrigued to make yours, my lady,” replied Mordecai, whose eyes had yet to leave her face, “for though I have never personally met the reclusive Lord Bothwell, I had understood him to be determinedly unmarried.”

  “He was,” agreed Persephone smoothly even as she silently cursed herself for not having considered the possibility that Lord Bothwell was a bachelor, “until he met me and—”

  “How did you meet?” interrupted the Regent.

  Afraid of hesitating even for an instant, Persephone gave the first answer that came to mind. “Hunting,” she said.

  “Hunting!” exclaimed Mordecai in a voice that told Persephone she’d made another mistake. “That is interesting indeed, my lady, for I had also understood Lord Bothwell to be of such advanced age that he was hardly able to tend to the call of nature by himself, let alone ride out to bring down game.”

  “Though you are correct that my husband is of great age, sir,” said Persephone, who’d begun to sweat freely, “you have been sadly misinformed as to his health and vigour.”

  Persephone saw the Regent’s eyes narrow. “Is that so?” he said. “But if he is as well as you say, why does he continually plead infirmity as a reason to avoid court?”

  Feeling as though she were up to her nostrils in quicksand and not knowing what else to do, Persephone shrugged prettily and curtseyed again—only this time as she dipped down she inhaled deeply and arched her back ever so slightly, so that the flickering light from the pitch torch might better illuminate her assets.

  “As a mere woman, I cannot speak for my dear husband’s actions, Your Grace,” she murmured as she peeked, wide-eyed and innocent, up through her lashes into the Regent’s disturbingly handsome face. “However, I can assure you that he is as loyal a subject as His
Majesty could hope for.”

  The Regent said nothing for so long that Persephone’s legs began to shake with the strain of holding her position and she began to fear that her ploy had been too obvious.

  Then, all at once, he indicated that she should rise. “Tell me, Lady Bothwell,” he said in a voice that sounded almost tender, “how is it that I find a beautiful woman of your great station in such a despicable place on a night like this?”

  “I was on my way to the imperial city to … to visit the markets when my cavalcade was set upon by bandits,” she explained haltingly, hoping that the Regent would take her hesitation for evidence that she’d been badly traumatized rather than as proof that she was making up the story as she went along. “Afterward, I was somehow able to make my way to the gates of the city but … but by that time darkness had fallen. The streets were deserted so there was no one from whom to beg safe haven or directions to respectable lodgings and … and then I heard screams and saw soldiers and … and I grew frightened and so … and so I ducked in here to hide alone until morning.”

  “Alone?” grunted the Regent, wincing and snatching awkwardly at his horse’s mane as the creature shifted beneath him without warning.

  Persephone’s heart leapt into her throat at the thought of Azriel, Rachel and Cur who were hiding just three steps away. “Of course,” she said as she gestured to the darkness around her.

  “But why alone?” persisted Mordecai, who was now glaring at his horse with undisguised loathing. “What happened to your attendants?”

  For one awful moment, Persephone could think of nothing to say. Then, “Murdered, Your Grace!” she cried in a voice bursting with genuine distress. “Their throats slit! Their bodies dumped where none but the wild beasts would ever find them!”

  Mordecai’s gaze slid from the despised horse to Persephone. Lifting his bobbing head a little higher, he cocked it to one side and said, “But how did you escape, Lady Bothwell? I would have thought that the brutes would have torn the clothes from your ripe young body and ravished you until you begged for death.”

  The lust in his voice was so obvious that Persephone’s fingers itched to reach for her dagger. Instead, she clasped her hands demurely before her, bowed her head and murmured, “Luck, my lord. As it happened, I was some distance away attending to private functions when the bandits descended. I am ashamed to admit that I hid while they went about their terrible business and—”

  “Well, what else should you have done?” interrupted Mordecai with more than a trace of impatience. “Seen your noble blood spilled and your virtue destroyed for the sake of a handful of servants that could be replaced as easily as smashed dinner plates?”

  “No, of course not,” said Persephone hastily. “I only meant—”

  “Lady Bothwell, I do not wish to linger here any longer,” he announced imperiously. “The routing of the lowborns from the slum is more or less complete. Those that now hide within their hovels in the vain hope that we will forget them shall shortly be in for a very warm surprise, and though I know it will be nothing less than the wretches deserve for defying my personally proclaimed orders to quit that miserable place, I confess that I am soft-hearted enough to find that the screams of those being burned alive rather … interferes with my digestion.”

  The men around him all guffawed in appreciation.

  “I understand,” said Persephone, trying not to visibly shudder. Curtseying deeply, and with great dignity, she said, “In that case, I bid you good night, Your Grace.”

  Mordecai stared at her for a moment before he burst out laughing. “My dear Lady Bothwell, you don’t actually imagine that I am going to leave you here, do you?” he asked, still chuckling as he gestured toward the alley. “Though my men are doing an admirable job of rounding up the slum’s erstwhile inhabitants, there will be some that refuse to meekly accept the fact that they are to be transported to where they can actually be of some use. They will be out here this night—seeking to escape my men, yes, but also seeking to wreak vengeance upon anyone who does not share their fate. You escaped ravishment once, my lady—I do not think your luck would hold a second time.” Here he paused in a manner that suggested to Persephone that he was once again imagining her ravishment—and savouring the image. “Besides,” he continued at length, “what would you propose to do for the balance of the night? Stand ankle deep in muck trying to look poised? Lie down upon the vermin-infested filth and attempt to catch up on your beauty sleep?”

  “Well, I—”

  “No, Lady Bothwell,” he said firmly. “You will come with me now. I will find you a suitable suite of rooms at the palace. You will bathe and rest and in a few days, once you’ve fully recovered from the various traumas and hardships that you have endured this day, I will send word to your husband that you are safe and well and ask him to send men to fetch you.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Persephone said quickly. “I can make my own arrangements—”

  “As you wish,” said Mordecai with a careless wave of his hand. Glancing sourly at the strapping young soldier next to him, he snapped, “You! Get down and assist Lady Bothwell up onto my horse, behind me. I will personally see to her safety during the ride back to the palace.”

  After a moment of hesitation that betrayed the young soldier’s surprise that the Regent would offer to protect anyone—and perhaps his skepticism that the ruined man had the ability to do so—the soldier gave a brisk nod, leapt down off his own horse and held his black-gloved hand out to Persephone. She stepped forward and tentatively took it because, really, what choice did she have? As she could think of no reasonable basis upon which to offer protest, to do so would only have aroused suspicions.

  And so, not daring to risk even a glance behind her for fear that the Regent would wonder what—or whom—she was looking at, Persephone followed the soldier out of the alley to where the Regent’s horse stood tossing its head with impatience. Aware that all eyes were upon her, she did her very best to take the graceful, mincing steps of a noblewoman and not the long, practical strides of a slave girl. She felt that she was putting on a pretty fair show until they reached the Regent’s horse and instead of tossing her into the saddle—a prospect she hadn’t been looking forward to but which she’d at least been expecting—the soldier laced his fingers together, leaned over and looked up at her with an expectant look on his dirty face.

  “What … what is the meaning of this?” Persephone blustered, folding her arms tightly across her heaving chest. “I am accustomed to being tossed into the saddle!”

  Everyone but the Regent snickered.

  “Yes, ’course you are, m’lady!” said the soldier amiably. “Excepting that if I toss you into the saddle while His Grace is still sitting in it, you’re as like to knock him to the ground as end up there yourself. This way, see, you can use my hands as a step and throw your leg over the back of the beast without risking life and limb.”

  “I knew that,” muttered Persephone. “I only meant that I am not used to this manner of mounting”—more snickers from the men, this time tinged with lewdness— “because it is not seemly for a woman of my station to ride astride like a man or a common wench,” she continued with a glare that quieted the men at once. “However, under the circumstances it seems I have no choice but to do so.”

  “Very good, m’lady,” said the soldier, who did not seem to care overly much for Persephone’s reasons and explanations. “Up you go, then.”

  Awkwardly, Persephone placed her foot in the cradle formed by the soldier’s laced fingers. Then, having no idea what to do with her hands, she was about to gingerly rest them on the soldier’s greasy head when he straightened up without warning, sending her flying into the air. Somehow, she had the presence of mind to fling her right leg sideways, but that only meant that when she landed askew on the horse’s back and started to fall, her skirts were in such disarray that they very likely would have ended up around her ears if she’d not prevented herself from falling by grabb
ing on to the only thing within reach: the frail, crippled body of the Regent. Stifling a gasp of pain, the Regent immediately flung himself to one side in an attempt to counterbalance her falling weight. The two of them hung, one on either side of the saddle, for a long, breathless moment before Persephone finally managed to grunt and wriggle her way upright, forcibly hauling the Regent upright as she did so. As soon as they were both out of danger of plummeting to the ground, Persephone—acutely aware of how very un-noble she’d just looked—rounded angrily on the soldier.

  “Clumsy fool!” she said severely. “How dare you treat me so crudely—I could have fallen and been injured! Or worse—I could have injured the Lord Regent! Is that what you were hoping for? Well, is it?”

  The strapping young soldier seemed to shrink before her very eyes. “No, m’lady!” he cried, his eyes darting to the Regent in such fear that Persephone suddenly felt guilty for having implied treachery on his part. “No! I swear! I meant no harm—to you or to His Grace. I swear! I would never—”

  “Oh, enough,” muttered the Regent distractedly. Sitting up a little straighter he grabbed the reins and was about to dig his razor-sharp spurs into the alreadybleeding flanks of his mount when there came a loud clatter from the alley. “What was that!” he snapped, wheeling back around.

  To Persephone’s horror, the strapping young soldier immediately unsheathed his sword and ran toward the alley and those it sheltered. Luckily, he hadn’t taken more than three steps when a hundred pounds of hurtling dog flesh violently swept his legs out from under him. As he crashed to the cobblestones, Cur continued on and was about to skid to a halt beside the Regent’s horse—at Persephone’s feet—when he saw the surreptitious but unmistakable order hidden in the flick of her fingers. Veering sharply without breaking stride, he bounded off into the night even as the furious soldier scrambled to his feet and ran for his bow.

  “No!” cried Persephone, her entire body stiffening as the first arrow pierced the darkness into which her friend had vanished.