by Glenda Larke
Ardhi settled down to wait.
Just after he’d made himself comfortable, there was a sudden change inside the room. First there was a popping sound, followed by a puff of smoke. Someone squealed. Voices were raised and several people moved, gesticulating. With his narrow view of the room and the distortions of improperly made glass, it was difficult to know who was shouting, let alone why. Nor was it possible for him to hear exactly what was being said, but it was clear Juster was in trouble.
For a moment, he hesitated. When the king scrambled to his feet, his expression furious, Ardhi decided the best thing he could do would be to let Sorrel know that he was there, and to show her the rope.
Holding on to the top ledge of the window, still upside down, he tapped on the glass behind her head. She didn’t look around. When the disturbance in the room ratcheted up a notch, he tried again. This time he knocked louder.
Just as his headband fell to the ground and his hair streamed free, she turned to look at him. Her mouth dropped open and she gave him a fleeting look of bafflement and alarm. Before he could show her the rope, she squealed and turned away leaving the window embrasure through the curtains.
Aghast, he saw her glamour slip and thought for a moment she’d given herself away, but no one appeared to notice. When she moved out from the embrasure, she left the curtains open wider and he had a better view of the room. No one was looking her way. Everyone was on their feet and Juster was using his sword to fend off a uniformed guard. A middle-aged cleric had hold of the king on one side, while a man in servant’s livery helped to hold him upright on the other. Edwayn’s face was twisted with rage and he appeared to be trying to throw himself at Juster.
Horrified, Ardhi could only watch as Sorrel launched herself across the room and grabbed the salt cellar ship. What the beggary was she doing? If anyone knew about glamours they might guess how the salt cellar was being moved.
Oh, of course. She’s creating a distraction.
One of the women fainted, several people screamed and everyone scattered. Even the black-clad cleric and the servant reeled away, leaving the king standing precariously, leaning on his staff. Given the ruckus, Ardhi half-expected other people to flood into the room, until he realised Juster was guarding the closed door. In fact, he had jammed a chair under the doorknob in case someone tried to enter from the outside.
Splinter you, cap’n. There’s no way you can extricate yourself without our help.
He gave the nightjar whistle, twice. Without waiting for an acknowledgement, he let go of the ledge and pushed himself away from the building as hard as he could. Swinging outwards on the rope, he raised his legs and aimed the soles of his feet for the centre of the casement, where the triangles of leaded glass would be weakest.
5
On the Run
In the gardens below, hidden from the window by overhanging foliage, Saker heard the two whistles. For a moment he hoped it was the actual call of a nightjar, but failed to convince himself. The call of a real bird would have meant something to him. This was an empty imitation and not a particularly good one either. Worse, it was followed by the sound of glass smashing and the patter of broken pieces falling on the garden. He peered upwards, aghast. There was a huge hole in one of the audience room windows and light and sound flooded out.
What the hells had happened? There was no sign of Ardhi.
Focus. Call up the birds.
He turned his mind to enticing the pigeons in the dovecote to fly out, even though he had no idea of how they were needed. The building was familiar to him from his time as a palace resident: a beehive-shaped structure four times the height of a man, a tower of cooing noise and pungent smells, its floor slick and slimy with droppings. A circular hole under a cupola in the centre of the corbelled roof was the entry and exit for the free-flying pigeons. The curving walls of the interior were dotted with gaps in the brickwork, hundreds of them, where the birds roosted and nested and lost their squabs or eggs to the harvesting, again and again.
Stirring the pigeons into wakefulness was easy; persuading them to venture out into the dark through the cupola ran counter to their instincts and was much more difficult. He closed his eyes and dismissed all thought of what had gone wrong in the audience room.
The birds rustled and fussed, anxious, alert. One by one they started to leave their roosts and spiral upwards out of the hole in the roof. Most of them, confronted by the darkness, promptly landed on the sloping top of the dovecote and murmured their unease to one another. He pulled at their will, enticed and cajoled. One broke free of its fear and flew towards him through the darkness. As soon as it was overhead, he sent it up to the shattered window to look inside. As the others straggled up to where he stood, he allowed them to land on the lawn, where he soothed them with comforting thoughts, telling them there was nothing to fear.
Soon he was surrounded by a raft of pigeons, all of them facing him, pressing close. He opened his mind to the bird now perched on the ledge of the broken window, one eye angled to stare inside.
Gradually a picture formed in his head, but it was a pigeon’s-eye view, not his. The bird focused on movement and little else, and its interest leaped from one vignette of motion to the next. A single image captured his appalled attention: a bejewelled hand – Juster’s, because he recognised the rings – holding a naked blade.
Cankers ’n’ galls, he’s gibbet-bait. No one pulled a sword in the king’s presence unless it was to defend him, and he didn’t think that was what was happening.
Juster, not even that salt cellar can help you now.
Everyone in the audience room froze when the window shattered, turning their heads in time to see Ardhi hurtle through the broken gap in a shower of splintering glass and snapped pieces of lead framing. He landed on his feet, skidded on the polished oak floorboards and came to a halt with his dagger already in his hand.
Sorrel’s thoughts were mired in her disbelief. Ardhi? What the pox—?
Lady Nerill, who had been revived, now fainted again, crashing to the floor in an inelegant heap. Her companion lady fell to her knees beside her, but she was shaking so hard she was incapable of helping anyone.
“Exquisitely well-timed, sailor,” Juster said with a grim smile. While everyone else was still too shocked to react, he coolly removed the chair under the knob of the reception room door and pushed a heavy walnut side table to take its place. “But Ardhi, have you any idea of how we can effect a tactical retreat?”
Masterton, who had a moment before been shouting at the clerics to destroy the moving salt cellar, was the next to move. Bravely, he stepped between Ardhi and the king, holding out his arms wide as if that could stop an armed man.
“Grab him!” he yelled at Brace.
Brace dithered, apparently uncertain whether to abandon his attempt to disarm Juster in order to pursue the intruder. He looked towards the king for orders.
Sorrel was just as confused about what to do as anyone. Still carrying the salt cellar, her arms sagging under the weight, she’d been heading for the second door in the room, guessing it led into the king’s more private chambers. She’d hoped to lead the clerics and servants there, deposit her burden and double back to help Juster. Now she quickly jettisoned that plan and raised an eyebrow at Ardhi in question instead, knowing he could see it through her glamour.
Someone started to knock at the barricaded door, politely at first, then hammering with more resolution.
“Rope, outside the window,” Ardhi said to her in his own tongue. “You go first. Now.” When Juster glanced at him, not understanding the language, he said, “Backstay to the deck on your portside, cap’n.”
Oh, clever Ardhi.
Wilting under the weight of the salt cellar, she thought of lowering it gently to the floor, but no sooner had she made that decision than the king pushed past Masterton, waving his staff. “Blasphemy! Abomination!”
For a moment she thought he was addressing her, but his words were for the salt cel
lar. He still had no idea she was there. Straightening up, he took a deep breath, reversed his staff and swung its polished head parallel to the floor in a sweeping two-handed blow. She bent away in shock, utterly unprepared, but still gripping the clam shell hull tightly. The brass knob smashed into the carved figurehead on the prow, and was deflected upwards. Its destructive path plunged on through the superstructure of the ship, splintering the masts into glass slivers, crumpling the silver flags, disintegrating the delicate curve of the sails into multi-hued snowflake shards that caught the candlelight and danced with colour as they fell. Pearls dropped to the floor and bounced like fresh-fallen hail.
Shocked, Sorrel dropped the remains of the hull.
The clockwork within the clam shell, jarred by the fall into one final task, created a spark which set fire to the residue of gunpowder within. The explosion lifted the deck from the hull and hurtled the fifteen onyx cannon and their carved gun carriages in all directions, peppering the room with pieces of stone and wood.
Sorrel lost her balance and her hold on her witchery, and thumped down on her backside amid the wreckage. Before she could gather her wits, she found herself face to face with King Edwayn, who was also now sitting on the floor, legs inelegantly sprawled. He wiped a trickle of blood from his face and looked at it on his hand with a puzzled expression. Then his gaze met hers, and he snarled, “Devil-kin!”
Or that was what she thought he said. Her ears were ringing and her head ached. Her eyes were gritty, and when she touched her face, her hand came away blackened with gunpowder.
Then Ardhi was there, hauling her to her feet, whispering something into her ear.
“I can’t hear you,” she said. She looked around to find everyone except Juster was staring at her, their expressions a mix of fear and disbelief.
Oh, pox. Everyone could see her.
She reached for her witchery.
From somewhere she dragged the power, but her thoughts and skills were in disarray as Ardhi tugged her across the room towards the window. Her glamoured self flickered in and out of sight, arms and legs fading into the background and reappearing, her clothes and body just ragged bits and pieces.
“Well, that would give me nightmares, certainly,” Ardhi said, as they reached the window. He thrust away some of the broken glass edges to make it easier for her to climb out.
She glanced back. Lord Juster Dornbeck had sent Brace sprawling and was now using his swordpoint to winkle the bodyguard’s weapon out of his grip. It skidded under a chair. Masterton and the manservant were helping the king to his feet. The earl knelt at Lady Nerill’s side with her attendant lady. Pedding was jumping from foot to foot, flapping his hands like a demented hen. One of the clerics had a long splinter of glass in his eye and was squawking in pain while the other lay flat on his back, unconscious. The two servants had run to the door, where the pounding and cries on the other side grew more insistent by the moment, and together they were pushing the table aside.
Juster strode across towards her, saying calmly, “Let’s remove ourselves from this madhouse.”
Clambering out on to the window ledge, she saw the rope dangling just a stretch away. Her hands were gritty with splinters of glass, so she gingerly brushed them together to dislodge the larger pieces.
Rot it.
She reached out and grasped the rope. Pain jabbed into her palms as she stepped into space, holding tight. The rope spun around and she had one last view of the room. She saw past Ardhi, crouched on the window ledge, to where Lord Juster Dornbeck stood, gazing back at his king.
His voice carried into the night, full of grief even as his words resonated with rage and repugnance. “Sire,” he said, “you destroyed something of great beauty here tonight, an artefact crafted with love and artistry. That was unforgivable. But your real crime was to destroy the loyalty and fealty given to you by one honour-bound.”
Hugging the rope to her body, she began to slide.
Saker was waiting for her at the foot of the rope, surrounded by a flock of restless birds.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” she said in an annoyed whisper, stepping over a pigeon.
“Just as well we came, by the look of it.”
“We would have managed,” she snapped.
“Really?”
“Probably.”
Well, possibly.
She looked down at her bloodied hands, wincing. Juster joined them then, saying, “Ardhi’s untying the rope. He said he’d meet us at the wall – and to use the birds as necessary. It seems my third mate is giving the orders tonight.” He glared at Saker. “Certainly it appears that my orders have been universally disobeyed!”
They followed Saker at a run, while he used his hold over the pigeons to obfuscate any attempt by guards to find them. The birds flapped and blundered around the garden in the dark, their noise and movement drawing attention away both from their escape and from Ardhi’s climb down the side of the palace with the rope over his shoulder. While they waited for him at the wall, Sorrel did her best to extract the splinters of glass from her hands, dreading another climb – up the rope this time. Her palms were slick with blood and she couldn’t see what she was doing, but throbbing pain told her she had to extract all that glass before clutching a rope again.
She had a sudden vision of Ardhi in the reception room, barefoot, unflinching as he crossed the glass-littered floor towards her…
“The dinghy is nearby,” Saker told Juster. “We left it tied up near the palace wharf, right near the wall to the keep. You and Ardhi and Sorrel can go straight back to the ship and get her prepared for sailing. If you tell me where the pinnace and our sailors are, I can tell them we all have to return to the ship in a hurry.”
Sweet oak.
Piper.
No…!
“No,” Juster said, and then added, in tones that boded ill for them all, “We’ll all go in the dinghy. In this breeze we can sail around to where we left the pinnace. It won’t take as long as a man on foot.”
“You – you intend to sail from Throssel tonight?” she asked him, feeling the leaden weight of despair even before he answered.
“If we don’t get blown out of the water first. And some time or another when we all have a spare moment, I’m going to have a discussion about shipboard discipline and exactly who commands my vessel.”
Ardhi reached them then, saying, “We’ve got to be quick. It’s a hornets’ nest back there. Armed guards pouring into the gardens.” He was already climbing before he finished speaking.
Sorrel grabbed Saker by the arm, forgetting her own pain. “Piper…”
“I know.”
“I’m the only mother she’s ever known!”
“Golden Petrel might be blown out of the water before sunset tomorrow. She’s safer where she is.”
“Then I’ll stay onshore too.”
He said nothing to that idea, asking instead, “What did Barklee’s brother-in-law say about Fritillary Reedling?”
“He thinks she’s dead too.”
Ardhi whistled softly from the top of the wall, and Juster grabbed the rope to climb up. In the garden behind them, the blaze of torches danced and flickered as men searched.
“We’ve got to get out of here now,” Saker said. “And I doubt she’s dead.”
She fingered the bambu locket around her neck. “I can’t leave Piper. I want to stay behind.”
“Sorrel, the ternion, remember?” His voice broke. “We need you to defeat Fox and his sorcery. There has to be the three of us.”
“No! You can’t ask this of me…”
To lose another daughter. Another Heather… “I won’t. I can’t… We don’t know when we’ll ever be back!”
“Quick, your turn. Climb the wall.”
She climbed, heartbroken, her hands feeling nothing of the cuts or the grit of glass jabbing at the flesh of her palms. Ardhi hauled her up on to a crenel. Juster was already at the base on the other side. She could see guards beginning t
o exit the main gate further along the wall.
Ardhi grabbed her wrists. “I’ll lower you over the edge. The rest of the way, you jump.”
He gave her no time to think. He swung her over the side and for a moment she was suspended there, safe in the strength of his hold.
Then he let go and she fell.
6
The Prince Besieged
The debris from the yawl bobbed on the water, mostly planks from the hull, although there was also rope tangled up in what could have been part of the mast. That was all that was left of the small sailboat and the men who’d crewed her. A cannonball filled with gunpowder had ploughed through the stern and then exploded.
Yesterday, they’d been alive, fishermen at home with their families perhaps, doing all the normal things normal people did. Perhaps they’d even laughed about sneaking in to the cliff-side landing stage in the dark, ridiculing the inability of the larger ship, the naval sloop which patrolled the coast, to prevent the smuggling of supplies to Gromwell Holdfast. They’d done it so many times before, successfully. The rocks that guarded the coastline were Gromwell’s most stoic sentries, armed with jagged edges and barnacled ledges to fend off the sloop with its deeper keel.
Prince Ryce had seen the yawl’s demise. A break in the clouds at the crucial moment, an alert sentry on the king’s sloop-of-war spotting the tiny boat in the moonlight as it threaded its way through the rocks, a lucky shot. Hideously unlucky for those in the yawl.
He wrenched his gaze away from all that remained of their vessel, visible now in dawn’s light. “I hated this place as a child,” he remarked. “I swore I would never live here.”
His words were addressed to the only other person on the open roof of the seaward tower of Gromwell Holdfast: his wife Bealina, princess of Staravale, now seventeen years old. He still found it hard to believe how much she’d come to mean to him when he’d once found her childish and dull.
