The Prince of Lies

by Anne Lyle

  “Nonetheless, I do not appreciate independence in my subordinates,” Grey said. “Next time you will follow your orders to the letter. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “And I want the names of these men of yours at the Tower. I trust they were included in your reports?”

  “Of course. If you have pen and paper to hand, I’ll make a list for you.”

  Grey gestured towards a cupboard on the far side of the room. “And when you’re done, I want a full written report of your doings in Kent. No, make that two reports. An official one for the Privy Council, leaving out all this conspiracy nonsense, and the real one.”

  “What would you have the official report say, my lord?”

  “Say whatever you like, as long as it puts them off the scent. For all we know, half of them could be in on the plot, eh?”

  “Indeed, my lord.”

  Mal found paper, quills and ink and set about scratching down a list of names. At this rate Selby would be tortured and executed before he got another look at him. Damn Grey and his reports! Should have run the bastard through good and proper instead of letting him live. Your honour will be the death of you, Mal Catlyn.

  Writing the reports for Grey took until nightfall, by which time Mal’s right hand was stiff with cramp and his head pounding like a war drum. He had considered going back to Southwark and calling upon Parrish’s talents once more, but the less his friends knew about the goings-on in Kent, the better. So he painstakingly composed each story in outline – with many crossings-out and amendments – then wrote them out in formal language before burning all his notes in the fireplace. Without their masters to run around after, the remaining servants would be even more likely to notice something amiss and use it to their advantage if they could.

  He found a manservant to bring him supper, and retired to the chamber he had slept in during previous sojourns at court. With a pleasantly full belly at last, and a final cup of wine to hand, he stripped to his drawers and lay down on the bed. He fingered the smooth round beads at his throat, remembering the dead skraylings he had found in the watchtower on Corsica, and his thoughts strayed eastwards to another tower, older but much closer. For one drunken moment he considered removing his spirit-guard and dreamwalking in search of Selby, of probing his enemy’s most secret thoughts as Sandy could do. With the palace empty, there might not be any other guisers in the whole of London, so now would be as good a time as–

  No, dammit. The villain would be in irons, cut off from the dreamlands as effectively as any mortal man. That was a vital part of the plan.

  No use for it; he would have to wait until the morrow. Yawning widely, he rolled over and surrendered to sleep.

  The Tower of London was silent but for the croaking of ravens and screaming of kites as they squabbled over the meagre pickings on Traitor’s Gate. There had been few prisoners here of late, and only one that Mal cared about.

  He spared a glance for St Thomas’s Tower, where the skrayling ambassador and his party had lodged several summers ago, then turned left into the inner ward and climbed the long slope to the green. An L-shaped timber-framed house was tucked into the corner of the south and west walls, facing the five hundred year-old bulk of the central keep. Mal went up to the front door and knocked. It felt like a lifetime since he had first come here, perplexed and unwilling, to discover he had been chosen as the ambassador’s bodyguard. There was another Lieutenant of the Tower now; they were never allowed to stay in their post long, lest complacency made them corrupt. The Tower was reserved for the kingdom’s most dangerous wrongdoers, many of whom were rich and powerful enough to bend even the most honest gaoler to their will.

  His knock was answered at length by a servant, who ushered him through the antechamber with its portraits of former custodians (including, Mal noticed, a new one, of the previous incumbent, Sir James Leland), through the dining chamber that Leland had favoured as his office and up a narrow oak staircase to the first floor.

  “Sir Maliverny Catlyn to see you, sir.”

  Mal bowed crisply, as befitted the situation, and straightened up.

  “Sir Richard Berkeley?”

  “The same.” The new lieutenant was a short, spindly-calved man of three score years or more. What remained of his hair was as grey as his full, pointed beard and curled moustache. Disappointing. They needed a ruthless ally in this fight, and Mal doubted they would find one in Berkeley.

  “Has Selby confessed yet?” Mal crossed to the window, wondering which tower’s bowels contained the prisoner’s cries. He had given strict orders that no one except his tormentors was to be able to hear the man scream.

  “You young fellows nowadays don’t beat about the bush, do you?” Berkeley replied. “Here, see for yourself.”

  He handed Mal a sheet of paper. A list of names. Lots of names.

  “Damn it!” The paper crumpled in his hand, and it was all he could do not to throw it into the fire. “I thought I told you to get the truth out of him, not a list of every peer of the realm. This is useless.”

  “Topcliffe can be very… dedicated to his vocation,” Berkeley said, turning pale. “I regret I have not the stomach to supervise his work.”

  “And Lord Grey? Has he been here since the prisoner arrived?”

  “No, he has not. Should I have expected him?”

  I would have. But perhaps Grey’s appetite for causing pain died when he was forced to suffer it himself.

  “I think I had better go and see for myself.”

  He shoved the wad of paper into his pocket, gave Berkeley the curtest of bows and strode out of the room without a backward glance.

  Selby had been put in a small cell in the base of the Martin Tower; a filthy hole with naught but straw on the floor and a slop bucket in the corner. The prisoner was lying on a pile of straw like a discarded doll, evidently lacking the strength even to roll into a more comfortable position. If he could find one. England had only one torture implement in regular use – the rack – but Topcliffe had grown expert in its operation.

  Mal’s gaze fell upon Selby’s arm, lying flung out towards the door as if in mute supplication. A heavy iron manacle with a few links trailing from its staple had been locked around his wrist, but it did not hide the cruel rope burns where Selby had been tied to the rack. A quick survey showed all four limbs in the same state. Mal looked again. The position of the burns suggested that the ropes could not have been tied in place whilst the shackles were around Selby’s wrists and ankles. If it had been done one at a time, that would have been safe enough. If not…

  “Gaoler!”

  The prisoner did not stir. Mal went back to the door.

  “Gaoler!”

  A skinny Tower guard in ill-fitting livery shuffled into view. “My lord?”

  “Where’s Master Topcliffe?”

  “Gone home, sir. Said he was done here.”

  “What about…” Mal reeled off the names of his agents, plus a couple of commonplace surnames for good measure.

  “Off duty, sir. They was up all night with the prisoner.”

  He scratched a stubbly sideburn and flicked the results towards the prisoner.

  “All?” Mal asked, trying to rein in his impatience. “Is no one here that saw the interrogation?”

  “Yes, sir. Me, sir.”

  Mal looked him up and down. “You were called in to help subdue the prisoner?”

  “No need for no subduing, sir. He came quiet as a lamb.”

  “Really.”

  “Aye, sir. He even thanked us as we took off his shackles.”

  “You took off his shackles. All of them?”

  “Only for a moment, sir. Master Topcliffe said he couldn’t do the racking proper like, not in shackles, but Sir Richard told him he had to. So we took ’em off and tied him up, then put ’em back on again.”

  Mal suppressed the urge to slam the stupid little man’s head against the wall. It wasn’t his fault after all. Thank God Berkeley had
overruled Topcliffe. Still, it might have been enough.

  “Leave us,” he told the guard. “And close the door behind you. I may be in here some time.”

  “You’re not going to torture him, are you, sir? Only Master Topcliffe gets paid by the hour, and he won’t be too happy if someone else does his work for him.”

  Mal slammed the man against the cell wall.

  “You can tell Master Topcliffe,” he growled, leaning down so close he nearly gagged on the man’s foul breath, “that if he had done his job properly, I wouldn’t need to do it for him. Do you understand?”

  The guard nodded. “Y-y-yes, my lord.”

  Mal let him go and he scuttled out of the cell before he could be reprimanded further. When the door had closed, Mal turned back to the prisoner, whose eyes were now open.

  “I gather you heard all that?”

  “Most of it,” Selby rasped. “You were a fool to trust these feeble-minded creatures with such a task.”

  “A mistake I will not make again,” Mal replied. He hunkered down, just out of Selby’s reach. Even in his present enfeebled state, the man might still be desperate enough for a last attack.

  “Shall I tell you what I told my friends about you?” Selby said with a sly smile.

  “Everything you’ve said here is a lie. I have no wish to hear more such.” Mal drew his dagger.

  “I told them… Aaah!” Selby gasped as the dagger blade slid between his ribs. His smile faded to a look of hatred, then of panic as he realised Mal had not withdrawn the dagger.

  “I’ll just leave it there for a while, shall I?” Mal said, getting to his feet. He retrieved the unused slop-bucket, turned it upside down and sat on it. “This time I want to make sure you are absolutely, certainly dead. For all time.”

  It was but a short walk from the Tower to Saint Katherine’s Stairs, and from there an equally short journey by wherry to the skrayling camp on the opposite bank. The camp was busier than Mal had seen it for a long time: several small boats were moored on the riverward side of the stockade, and the gates were wide open, albeit still guarded.

  “Kuru-an rrish.” He made obeisance in the skrayling fashion, holding his hands palm forwards at his sides and turning his head to present his bare throat.

  “Kaal-an rrish, Catlyn-tuur.”

  “Adjaan-tuur is here?”

  One of the guards inclined his head and waved Mal through the gate. Mal thanked him and made his way through the camp, ignoring the inquisitive and sometimes admiring looks he got from some of the inhabitants. Since meeting Adjaan he had come to understand why human males looked feminine to skrayling eyes, but it was still disconcerting.

  The outspeaker herself was not in her cabin today. Eventually Mal found her seated under a beech tree at the other end of the camp, watching a group of skrayling men play a fast-moving ball game that looked like a cross between tennis and football. Adjaan hardly seemed to notice his arrival; her eyes were fixed on the players, a look of fierce concentration on her face. Mal sat down quietly next to her and waited.

  After a few more tense passes, one side erupted in cheers, which Mal supposed meant they had won the game. The losers abased themselves and walked away, whilst the winners approached Adjaan. She scanned them all for several moments, and at last pointed to one of them and snapped her fingers.

  The young skrayling flushed beneath his tattoos and bared his fangs in a grin. His team mates dispersed, their shoulders drooping in disappointment. Adjaan beckoned her chosen one forward and said something to him in low tones. He nodded and left, with a cocky swagger to his gait that Mal had never seen before in a skrayling. At last Adjaan turned to him.

  “Kaal-an rrish, Catlyn-tuur.”

  “Kaal-an rrish, Adjaan-tuur.”

  “Did you enjoy the game?” She craned her neck, her eyes following the young skrayling as he disappeared between the tents.

  “I… Yes, I suppose so. Though I cannot remember the rules.”

  Adjaan made a face. “Do not tell my kinfolk, but neither can I. Still, one cannot argue with tradition, eh? Not when the outcome is so pleasing.”

  Mal recalled something that Kiiren had once told him, about the skraylings using games and competitions to choose mates. Was that what had just happened here?

  “You are well?” Adjaan asked, breaking into his train of thought. “And Erishen and Kiiren-tuur also?”

  “Ah, yes, thank you, honoured one,” he said, struggling to bring his thoughts back to the matter in hand. “Or at least, so I believe. I have not heard from Sandy – I mean Erishen – for a few weeks, but my wife sent his greetings in her last letter. And Kit too.” He smiled to himself, remembering the inky scratch vaguely resembling a K at the bottom of the letter, guided by an adult’s hand.

  Adjaan nodded. “You are here on dreamwalker business.”

  So much for the pleasantries. “Am I so easy to read?”

  “Yes.”

  There was no polite answer to that. Mal had to remind himself that this was not his old friend, but a stranger who had taken over his role within the clan.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “Let us get down to business.”

  He told Adjaan about Selby: his capture and interrogation, and the unfortunate removal of his irons for a brief but unknown period.

  “Careless,” Adjaan said. “You should have brought him to us for questioning.”

  “That would have been… difficult. The Huntsmen would never have willingly handed him over to you.”

  Adjaan muttered something under her breath. Mal wasn’t sure the skraylings understood the concept of swearing, but the outspeaker’s words had not sounded polite.

  “And now you expect my people to… how do you say it? ‘Clean up after you’?”

  “Of course not, honoured one. But I thought your dreamwalkers might have observed something.”

  “When did this occur?”

  “Yesterday, a little after sunset.”

  Adjaan took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Mal waited. And waited. He was tempted to remove his own spirit-guard and try to follow her into the dreamlands, but suspected that would not be considered polite.

  Eventually Adjaan’s eyes snapped open again.

  “There was something, just the other side of the river.”

  Mal’s heart sank. “What kind of ‘something’?”

  “Njaaren could not be certain. Our patrols pay little attention to what goes on in the city itself, unless it appears to be a direct threat to us.”

  “Please, honoured one; any information could be valuable.”

  “Yesterday Njaaren saw a white light flare and dance amongst the souls within the Tower, and when it was gone, so were some of the others.”

  “What others?”

  “The off-duty guardsmen. They had woken.”

  “That could just have been devourers,” Mal said with a shudder. He had once been chased across the dreamscape by the creatures, and seen them crash into the other dreaming minds around him, leaving nightmares in their wake.

  “True. If this guiser was being hurt, as you say, the hrrith would have been drawn to him, and may have disturbed the sleep of the others. Or…” The skrayling gestured helplessly.

  “Or it could have been Selby himself,” Mal said.

  “Yes. It would depend upon his skill, of course. You are sure the senzadheneth here are young and inexperienced?”

  “For the most part, yes. Jathekkil…” Mal forced out the name of his enemy. “Jathekkil turned to dream-magic only as a last resort, after he had failed to learn what he wanted from me through more… mundane means. I have no reason to believe that any of the others are markedly more skilful than he.”

  “Then it seems unlikely he could have impressed a strong enough compulsion on any of the guardsmen.”

  “A compulsion to do what?”

  Adjaan shrugged again. “To do whatever he needed.”

  “Like, tell the other guisers?”

  “Yes. A simple
image of the truth might suffice. If it was strong enough to make the man speak of it to those who might want to know.”

  Mal swore under his breath, earning an icy look from the outspeaker.

  “Thank you for your help, Adjaan-tuur,” he said, getting to his feet. “I will leave you to your meditations.”

  He left the camp deep in thought. If only he had been able to call on the skraylings to fence Selby in, none of this would have happened. But he doubted they would have agreed to it, and in any case it would surely have attracted the attention of the others. No, the plan had been a good one, given the tools at hand. He would simply have to rethink his next move.

  CHAPTER V

  Ned perused the printed sheet, chewing at his moustache. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the apprentice, Jack, who had brought him the piece. The lad looked fit to wet himself with fear.

  “Well,” he said at last. “It’s better than your last attempt.”

  “Yes, sir. T-t-thank you, sir.”

  “But see here.” Ned laid the sheet down on the table. “The spacing on the first word is all wrong. You want a number three ‘A’ on a word like that, then the ‘W’ will fit all snug against it. You have to take extra care with the capitals, or it looks a right old mess.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll try, sir.”

  Ned handed him the sheet. “Do it again. And start with an empty frame this time. You’re going to have to reset nearly every line anyway, once you’ve got that first one right.”

  Jack scurried away, the offending sheet clutched in his hand. Ned sighed. He had no idea what the other apprentices had been telling the boy – some gruesome but all-too-believable story about how their master had come to lose his hand, perhaps – but he appeared terrified of Ned. Perhaps Jack’s father beat him too often, or without reason. That sort of thing could make a boy fearful, if it did not make him a bully in his turn.

  The doorbell jingled, and he looked around. A man in a sergeant’s steel gorget and kettle helm stood in the doorway.