Crown Thief

by David Tallerman

  What did it mean? Would Alvantes have been foolish enough to fill Ludovoco in on my career history? Had my notoriety crossed the border into Ans Pasaeda? Yet the attention didn't seem aimed specifically in my direction; quite the opposite in fact. Perhaps it was just that Ludovoco's service to the King had made him unduly paranoid, even towards his own. After all, being guard-captain of the Castoval's only city might not carry much weight to an Ans Pasaedan.

  As it turned out, both questions came to a head late in the afternoon. We'd arrived at a junction in the river, an almighty confluence of fast-flowing water. The Casto Mara (called the Mar Corilus here, according to Alvantes), continued east towards the sea, already twice as wide as it ran anywhere in the Castoval. To the north-west, it was met by another river, narrower but still impressive, known as the Mar Paraedra. That was the course that would take us on to Pasaeda.

  On the left bank of the junction was a small harbour town, and here the Prayer at Dusk docked, for reasons no one felt the need to share with us. A few of the men immediately hauled the gangplank into place and descended.

  To my surprise, Alvantes left his place against the stern railing and strode towards the ladder joining upper and lower decks. It was the first time I'd seen him move purposefully since we'd come on board – and that immediately stirred my interest. Whatever he was up to, it might just help alleviate the day's tedium. I hurried to follow.

  Ludovoco had just arrived on deck. Alvantes swung down the ladder and came to a smart halt in front of his fellow officer. "I see we've stopped," he said. "Perhaps I could take a few minutes ashore to stretch my legs."

  "I'm sorry," said Ludovoco, "I can't spare anyone to accompany you."

  "I won't need any assistance."

  "Let me speak plainly. You are under the protection of the Crown Guard. As long as that remains the case, you're my responsibility. To have you wandering unescorted is a risk I'm not willing to take."

  "I've no intention of going far, let alone placing myself in danger."

  "Nevertheless…"

  "Commander, I must insist."

  The silence that followed was heavy as the minutes before a storm, as though the very air was holding still in anticipation. The moment seemed to stretch impossibly. Then, as if nothing untoward had been said, Ludovoco waved over one of the sailors. "Labro," he said. "I'm assigning you to Guard-Captain Alvantes. Take him wherever he'd like to go in town." He put particular emphasis on those last two words. To Alvantes he added, "Might I suggest you take your companion with you."

  "Fine by me," I agreed.

  "I can give you an hour. After that, Labro will escort you back."

  "An hour will be ample," Alvantes agreed.

  "Good." With a gesture somewhere between a salute and a wave of dismissal, Ludovoco turned and disappeared into the lower deck.

  I watched his retreating back in fascination. What I'd just witnessed was a pissing contest, pure and simple, and Alvantes had instigated it. I wondered if the results were what he'd hoped for. Ludovoco had given ground, but in such a fashion as to make clear who was in control – and that we were going nowhere without his say-so. If Alvantes had been feeling out the limits of his status aboard the Prayer at Dusk, he had his answer right there.

  Now it was time for me to do the same. I'd seen an opportunity that might not come again. "Just a moment," I said, "I've left my coin in my cabin. This is my first time in Ans Pasaeda. Who knows what I might find?"

  Labro wavered, obviously unsure how this fit into his orders. In the end, he looked to Alvantes.

  "Be quick," Alvantes told me.

  "I'm always quick."

  And I was – when I was up to something I didn't want to be interrupted.

  I scurried down into the aftcastle and on into our room, closing the door quietly behind me. Alvantes's bags were crammed into the slender gap between the bunks and the outer hull. I took a moment to memorise their precise position, then pulled them free.

  Now that I knew what to expect, it was easy to see which had the slight bulge at its base. I drew out the bag's contents, a blanket, a change of shirt and other personal effects, taking care to remember how everything was packed and piling them accordingly.

  The bags were leather, lined with heavy cloth. I could see immediately that the bottom of the other saddlebag's lining had been cut out and sewn into this one. Feeling around, it wasn't hard to detect a halfdozen shallow bumps beneath the fabric, or to identify them from shape and size as onyxes.

  Not bad. Quite clever even. Alvantes's ploy might have fooled anyone who didn't know what to look for – and hadn't been the one to educate him in the art of hiding things. With that in mind, it didn't take a genius to notice there was another thumb's length of space beneath the false bottom. My guess was he'd removed the bottoms of both bags and sandwiched them together, with the coins between and a shallow hiding place beneath.

  It would be tricky to investigate further without leaving evidence – and time was running out. I pushed one hand within the bag, placed the other on the outside and teased along the edge of the false bottom. Something solid ran around the circumference. It didn't give at all, but nor was it heavy enough to much affect the bag's weight. Perhaps some reinforcement for the compartment? Then again, the stiff leather outer would suffice for that. More likely, this was the hidden object itself. What could it be? A perfect ring of metal, thin, light, a thumb's length deep…

  I realised I wasn't breathing – hadn't been for I couldn't say how long. With a great effort, I forced myself to draw air.

  It was a crown.

  No. It was Panchetto's crown.

  To all intents and purposes, Alvantes had been carrying round the princedom of Altapasaeda.

  Mounteban would kill without hesitation to have it.

  So would many others – maybe even Ludovoco. Who knew what nest of political vipers we might have stumbled into?

  Using the tiny portion of my mind still functioning, I heaped Alvantes's belongings into the saddlebag, put both bags back as I'd found them. It was tricky to remember how to walk, but I managed it. I left the cabin, climbed the stairs to the deck. Alvantes gave me a brief glance of suspicion but said nothing.

  "Shall we go?" I asked. I felt as if I was trying to talk around a mouth full of treacle, but if either of them noticed, they hid it well.

  Panchetto's crown.

  He'd been wearing it when I first met him. It had been exceptionally shiny. In bare weight of gold and jewels, it would be worth a fortune. Symbolically, it was worth a city, perhaps the fate of the entire Castoval.

  No wonder Alvantes had taken pains to hide it.

  The remainder of the day passed in a blur.

  Before I knew it, we'd returned to the Prayer at Dusk. I couldn't recall a thing I'd seen, or any detail of the town we'd walked through, not even its name. On the rare occasions Alvantes or our "escort" Labro had bothered to speak to me, I thought I'd managed a coherent response. I couldn't remember the conversations any more than I could anything else.

  As I lay in my bunk that night, my mind was a whirlpool, broken debris of thoughts whipping about its rim. How had Alvantes come upon the crown? It could only have been during the interval between Panchetto's murder and our escape from Altapasaeda. Knowing him, he had some high-minded idea about keeping it from falling into the wrong hands.

  Probably that was all this trip had ever been about. Alvantes's talk of bearing the news of Panchetto's death and recruiting the King's help against Mounteban had been little more than a smokescreen. In truth, he was striving to return the crown to the safety of royal hands.

  What an appalling waste!

  By the third day, I felt I was behaving more or less normally again. It helped that normality involved sitting in silence on the aftcastle deck, watching Ans Pasaeda drift by.

  Here at least the landscape was moderately diverting. To either side were vast and almost level plains, so boundless that they made my eyes ache with their magnitude. S
cattered upon them were groves of unfamiliar willowy trees, great grazing herds of cattle, goats and sheep and endless farms, each in its own rectangular compound. There were villages too, a few larger towns, and a couple of far-distant places that must surely have been cities. Perhaps they were as big as or bigger than Altapasaeda, yet the sense of scale made even the largest communities seem insignificant.

  I had to gaze far westward to see the land rise up, where it finally gave way to the incline of the mountains. Even farther to the north, it was just possible to make out the point where a great ridge of mountainside jutted outward. According to Alvantes, our destination lay at the lowest tip of that spur. If the wind continued to favour us through the night, we'd be there by early morning.

  I slept restlessly. Numbing tedium and then the thrill of Alvantes's secret had served to quieten my other worries for most of the journey. As I lay there, wondering what the morrow would bring, they returned in force. I might have evaded Synza once again, but it was hard to escape the sense that I'd only swapped one threat for another. I was friendless and far from home. In fits of madness, I'd given away most of my money. Even finding one of the greatest treasures imaginable within my reach offered scant comfort, for what hope did I have of separating the crown from Alvantes before he hurled it away upon the King? All told, I could see no grounds for optimism.

  When I woke, Alvantes was gone from his bunk. I'd grown accustomed enough to the sounds aboard boat to realise I'd overslept. Perhaps it was my troubled night, but I couldn't resist a creeping sense of anxiety, which worsened when I saw Alvantes had taken his saddlebags with him. That could only mean we were in or very near Pasaeda.

  I hurried on deck – just in time. As I'd guessed, we were drawing into harbour. The walls of a colossal city were visible in the near distance, a city far greater than anywhere I'd seen, with the mountain outcrop rising dramatically behind. Alvantes stood against the port rail. Seeing me, he gave a terse nod. Then, as the men tied off against a bollard onshore, he moved to intercept Ludovoco.

  "Commander… thank you for allowing us to travel with you. We can make our own way from here. I have a brief visit to make before I speak with the King."

  Ludovoco eyed him coldly. "I'm afraid that won't be acceptable."

  "It wasn't a suggestion," replied Alvantes, holding his gaze.

  "Nor is this. You'll come with us now, to the palace."

  "I came here of my own free will, in service to the King, and…"

  Ludovoco silenced him with an upturned palm. "Guard-Captain," he said, "I hoped this needn't become difficult, but you leave me no choice. Henceforward, it will be easiest if you consider yourself under arrest."

  CHAPTER TEN

  I suspected I was taking our detention better than Alvantes.

  Arrest, after all, was hardly a novelty. In fact, there was something almost comfortingly familiar about the presence of armed guards. Given the turmoil and uncertainty I'd endured in recent days, there was a lot to be said for knowing exactly where I stood.

  In credit to Alvantes, however, for a man who'd just had the fundamentals of his existence turned on their head, he was bearing up as well as could be expected. I'd imagined he'd pick a fight with Ludovoco, or start raving about his honour. Instead, he'd clammed up completely. His mouth was set in a jagged line; his eyes were the barest slits. He followed directions with only the most terse of nods.

  Ludovoco had made no attempt to explain our unorthodox treatment. My knowledge of local customs might have been meagre, but it didn't seem to make much sense. As we set out towards the capital, I amused myself with the possibility that this was what passed in Ans Pasaeda for humour; that at any moment Ludovoco and his men would break down in fits of laughter. As they marched us along the grand treelined boulevard joining harbour and city, I imagined giggling courtiers behind each tree. Drawing near the walls, I pictured the King himself leaping out, amidst general hilarity.

  Needless to say, none of those things happened. Instead, we were forced to wait while the sentries in the gatehouse, who must have recognised Ludovoco, laboured to open the titanic portals via some mechanism inside. That it would have been far easier to let us through the smaller side gate apparently occurred to no one. The impracticality and needless ritual of it seemed a clear indication of the authority Ludovoco wielded.

  While the gatekeepers struggled to make way, I craned my neck to gain my first direct impression of Pasaeda. Like Aspira Nero, the capital was built with its back to the mountain. Here, however, the diminishing crags split in a great crook that the city nestled within. From above, Pasaeda would appear as a rough diamond, with the fortifications completing the other two sides and this gate at its lowest tip.

  And they were most certainly fortifications. No other word would do. They were higher even than the ramparts of Aspira Nero, receding in a series of shallow indents with a tower at every junction. There was no point on our side that couldn't be observed clearly from left or right. I caught glimpses of men within the towers, and others upon the walls – more than I'd have expected of any peacetime city.

  Before I had time to wonder at that, the gap in the gates widened enough to admit us, and Ludovoco waved us on.

  It was dark within the gatehouse and the day was bright. I was half-blind as I first stepped into Pasaeda. All I could see was a collage of incandescent shapes. Slowly, my eyes focused. Still I found I was hesitant to trust them. It was easier to believe I was still dazzled than that anything made by the hands of men could be so splendid.

  I'd always thought the wealthier portions of Altapasaeda were the height of opulence. Now I realised that even at its grandest, Altapasaeda was only a shadow of the place it was named for. Here were no cramped alleys, no shabby markets, no homes that could possibly stoop to accommodate the poor – or if there were, they were well hidden.

  Every house within view could have competed with and bested the finest of Altapasaeda's mansions. The reason the city blazed beneath the morning sun was that every single wall and roof was startlingly white. Unlike the buildings south of the border, however, that whiteness wasn't the result of stucco or paint but of luminous stone. Every surface was then carved into friezes, porticoes and columned arcades, which in turn were enriched by subtle designs in silver and gold. Gates and sections of ornate ironwork offered glimpses into meticulously tended grounds, where lush blooms bigger than my head tumbled amongst wide-fronded trees and mammoth, wavering ferns.

  I continued to gape as Ludovoco marched us through the city streets, all thoughts crammed out of my mind by the desire to soak in every detail. Who could have imagined there was so much money in the world? Truly, the thieves of Pasaeda must live like lords.

  Then again, maybe thievery in Pasaeda might not be such a lucrative career after all. There were armed guards everywhere, all robed and turbaned in the same smoke grey the gatekeepers had been wearing. On the face of it, they actually seemed to outnumber the populace, for aside from their presence the streets were all but deserted. We saw only a few passing rich folk, travelling without much apparent sense of purpose on foot or horseback. Men and women both were dressed in long pale-shaded robes much like the guards, though in their cases jewellery and the obviously fine material set off any hint of austerity.

  For people who lived amidst such magnificence, they didn't look particularly grateful, or even very happy. Certainly, they were quick to look away whenever their eyes chanced on Ludovoco and his men.

  Which made it all the more startling when someone nearly rode into our small convoy. The guards snapped to attention and Ludovoco looked furious – at least until he recognised the rider. The man was advanced in years, though well preserved in the fashion only wealth could accomplish, and dressed in robes of crisp crocus yellow. He was flanked by two guards of his own, their outfits a more muted shade of the same.

  Something about him put me in mind of a tall water bird, perhaps a crane, and his voice – a little high pitched and warbling – did nothing t
o dispel the image. "Commander Ludovoco," he cried gladly.

  Ludovoco considered the new arrival with barely stifled distaste. "Senator Gailus."

  "And who's this with you? The aspect seems familiar. Do my eyes deceive, or is that Furio Alvantes's boy?"

  "We're accompanying Guard-Captain Alvantes to the palace," replied Ludovoco, leaving no doubt in his tone as to whose business he considered the information.

  "On royal affairs?"

  "Are there any other kind?"

  Gailus gave a shrill chuckle, though there'd been no hint of humour in Ludovoco's question. "Not for the likes of us, eh?" He trotted his horse leisurely around our little gathering, as though we were street sellers and he was appraising our goods. "If I didn't know better," he said, "I'd think you had our friend here under armed guard."