by Carol Berg
The bedraggled, furious person before me was a girl very near my own age. Though her fair hair was matted, and her face streaked with dirt, she was no Singlar. She had no obvious deformity, and her torn and filthy garment had once been white satin. Even more astonishing, she looked vaguely familiar.
She darted out from between me and the wall, and grabbed an ax from the implement rack, keeping her eyes on me the whole time. “Don’t touch me, you villainous scum. My father will cut off your hands. He’ll put out your eyes for looking at me. Don’t think he won’t.” Though her voice quavered a bit, she brandished the ax with some authority.
“Your father?”
“My father. The King of Leire.”
“Roxanne?” The rock-throwing prisoner was none other than my long-ago playmate, the Crown Princess of Leire. Though shorter than me by a handspan, she’d grown up considerably since I’d seen her last.
I had been eight or nine years old the last time King Evard had come to Comigor to visit. He had sent the two of us off riding with six grooms and six ladies-in-waiting. It had been a miserable afternoon. Roxanne spent the entire time tormenting her servants, arguing with her chaperones, and calling me names. I spent the hours mute and paralyzed with terror that she’d spot me working some sorcery and have her father burn me to death. A most uncomfortable acquaintance. Tomas and Philomena had planned that I would marry Roxanne, but on our return from our ride, the princess announced to her father that I was the stupidest boy in the world, and she’d sooner marry her horse.
“You needn’t be afraid,” I said, holding up my hands, palms open. “We’ll take care of you. My friend and I were prisoners here, too.”
She snorted as if she were sitting in her salon in Montevial. “You don’t look like you’re capable of caring for your boots, much less me. And as for him” - she glared at Paulo, who was looking like a particularly grotesque gargoyle on a castle battlement - “I’ve seen livelier fellows at their own hanging. If you want to ‘help,’ then you will show me where I can take a bath, find me a decent garment to put on, and send a message to my father to come for me. He’ll kill every nasty villain in this hellish place.” She did not lower the ax.
Paulo started choking, and I forgot all about the princess and hurried back to him, worried to death until I realized he was laughing and about killing himself with it. “Oh, damn… oh damn… ” He held his ribs, gasping for breath.
“Don’t turn your back on me, boy,” the princess yelled at me, brandishing the ax. “I said - ”
“You listen to me, Your Highness,” I said, crossing the space between us in two steps. We had no time for this.
Ready to dodge, I raised my hand as if to strike her. She swung the ax. Ax swings are not easily recovered… especially by someone inexperienced. In one swift movement, I ducked the blow, grabbed her arm and the ax handle, and yanked the ax from her hand, throwing it across the dungeon well out of reach. Though she wriggled and hissed, I gripped her arms tight while I gave her the rules.
“I don’t know if you have any idea where you are or how different is this place from anywhere you’ve ever been, but if you ever want to see Montevial again, you’d best take heed. I don’t give two coppers for you, your father, Leire, or anything else you’re likely to care about, so if you cross me, I’ll leave you behind. There are people here who would as soon eat you as look at you. By the remotest twitch of chance you’ve fallen in with someone who not only might be able to get you home, but also knows that when you were nine, you stuffed three cherry tarts into your jumper, and ended up with them leaking all down your leg. You were so angry at your own stupidity that you ripped your jumper and told everyone you’d been chased through the woods by bandits and fought them off with your riding crop. It was lucky a whole village wasn’t hanged for it. So I know you, and you’ll not pull your tricks on me.”
I don’t know whether it was the disarming, the threats, the sight of the two dead maintainers facedown in a pool of blood, or simple mystification at my familiarity with her past, but she stared at me speechless, an unaccustomed state for this particular princess as I remembered. I let her go and steadied her on her feet, gesturing toward Paulo. “My friend here needs care. You will help me carry him out of here, and you will help me tend him. Then maybe I won’t toss you back in that cell for our jailers to play with. Do you understand?”
I motioned her to take Paulo’s ankles. Without a word, she did so, and we jostled him up three long nights of steps and through a maze of passages until we came to the rotunda and the spiral stair. The lamps were turned down, and I warned Roxanne to remain silent. I didn’t need to tell Paulo. He’d passed out the instant we moved him. The climb up the curved stair was awkward, but we reached my apartments without meeting anyone.
Once Paulo was on the bed and I had turned up the lamps, I set to work trying to clean him up a bit, pleased that we had made it so far without detection. My satisfaction was short-lived.
A sharp metal point pricked the skin over the heart vein in my neck. “You will take me back to Montevial immediately or to the nearest Leiran military post. Maybe I won’t have you hanged if you do it.”
It took me exactly two heartbeats to have her on the carpet with her hands twisted behind her and Paulo’s spare knife pointed at her eye. “If you ever do that again, I’ll cut out your eyes. It makes a very interesting popping sound when it’s done right.” Clearly you couldn’t mince words with a Leiran princess.
The knife that she’d snatched out of a bowl of fruit went back in its sheath and into my boot. Then I hauled up the princess and shoved her into a cushioned chair, untangled a sheet from the jumble of bedclothes, and dropped the sheet in her lap. “I need this torn into strips.”
She spat at me and threw the sheet on the floor.
I picked up the sheet and dropped it back in her lap. “Rip it up, or I’ll tie you up with it and hang you from the ceiling. We don’t have much time until the alarm goes out, and I’ve got to take care of him before anything, even before saving your royal skin. He will not die.”
She must finally have believed me, for she started tearing the sheet, grumbling to herself and shooting murderous glances at me as she did so.
I tied long strips tight about Paulo’s ribs, then cleaned and bandaged his hands. His worst injuries were those I couldn’t see; his heart was racing, his skin cold, his breathing fast and shallow, his belly purple and hard. I propped his feet up higher than his head and covered him, but I knew nothing else to do for him.
“Who are you? How do you know those things you said to me? No one knew of the tarts, not even my nurse.”
“Be quiet. I need to listen.” As always, soft noises filled the Blue Tower: unidentified creaks and shuffling that I always imagined were the sounds of its growing, wind sighing up the stair and under the doors, rain spattering in our slot window, distant doors closing. At any moment the alarm would be raised, and the place would come alive. I just wasn’t sure what I was going to do when it happened.
I tied off a bandage on Paulo’s left leg; with bandages around his chest, his head, his leg, and his hands, he looked like a stuffed doll. Just as Roxanne threw me another wad of narrow strips, a small lamp, sitting on our eating table, brightened on its own. I had left that one lamp turned down as I worked, so I would know when the normal change of the light occurred.
I untangled one of the new strips and soaked it in a cup of wine. No time to dawdle.
The princess’s mouth fell open when I pulled Paulo’s knife out of my boot and pressed the hilt into her hand.
“If anyone tries to touch him - or you - kill them. If he wakes, give him this cloth to suck on. Nothing else. His name is Paulo.” I threw the wine-soaked cloth on the table and shoved the bowl of fruit toward her. “You can have whatever you want of this. It’s not poison or anything. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“How do you know I won’t kill him myself and run away?”
Though I didn’t touch her,
I made sure she was looking at my face before answering. “I once cut the skin off a man and tied him to a stake in the desert for a week. He crossed me far less than if you even think of hurting Paulo. And you have no idea where to run.”
“Where are you going?”
“To kill a man if he doesn’t do what I want.”
She didn’t even blink. “Don’t you need this, then?” She waved the knife at me.
I shook my head. “A knife is too simple for him.”
“Is he the one responsible for all this?” She pointed to Paulo and to me, her gaze traveling up and down, taking in a full view of the blood and muck spread all over me.
“This is only one part of what he’s done.”
She lifted her chin. “I don’t believe you cut a man’s skin off.”
“You had best believe it.” I didn’t do such things any more, but then, it didn’t seem to matter what I really intended. Dieste the Destroyer, the Fourth Lord of Zhev’Na, was still with me.
I slipped into the passage and closed the door softly behind me.
I needed to get this business over with quickly, so I could find Paulo some help. It would have been far better if I could have hidden him somewhere other than our bedchamber, but I didn’t know anyplace else with water and blankets and a bed. His hold on life was precarious. That left me few options. No time for anything subtle.
The plan that came to me needed only a few preparations. Fortunately, the time was right, and the help I needed most would be waiting for me just outside the Blue Tower. I crept through the passage and down the stair to the ground floor without seeing anyone. Just as I reached the rotunda, doors slammed down below, and men started yelling. Footsteps pounded on the stairs up from the dungeon.
I crammed myself into a niche underneath the stair. Two maintainers burst through the door from the lower levels, passed within a rat’s tail of my nose, and raced up the spiral stair. I popped out again and watched their feet. To my relief they bypassed the second floor, heading for the Guardian’s apartments on the floor above, no doubt. I thought myself out into the commard, and hurried around the corner into a narrow lane. Vroon, Ob, and Zanore were waiting for me, as they did every morning.
Once I told them what I needed them to do, I hurried back into the Blue Tower and waited at the bottom of the stair, just long enough for another one of the Guardian’s thugs, a red-haired fellow with wiry tufts sprouting from his nose, ears, and lips, to trot up from the dungeon. He caught a glimpse of me and shouted the alarm. “The Impostor!”
I bolted for the staircase, mapping out the warren of the tower rooms in my head. The hairy maintainer lumbered up the steps behind me.
Vroon had promised to be quick. Half an hour should be all I needed.
More shouts rang out from both the third level and below. I sprinted up the stair to the fourth-level landing and into the deserted rooms, making sure the red-haired maintainer and the three others who had joined him saw where I went. I led them up and down and in and out, shoving furniture in their paths, throwing pots to lead them into blind corners, then dodging past them and into another passage. Before very long, ten maintainers were after me - the entire posting in the Blue Tower. I tripped the red-haired fellow, and he slammed his head into a marble column. Nine pursuers.
After a pass through every nook and niche on the fourth level, I raced up to the fifth, and then the next, leading them away from Paulo and Roxanne. Trying to use up time.
Afraid I’d be trapped there, I didn’t stay long at the uppermost level. Rather, as soon as I had led most of the party around a blind corner, I doubled back to the stair, dropped over the rail and past three twists of the stair, grabbing the rail and vaulting over it again onto the marble treads, just below the two maintainers posted to block my descent. Rather than running away as they would expect, I engaged them and toppled them both down the long stair. Seven in pursuit. The maintainers weren’t chosen for intelligence.
Level by level, I led them down again. Another speedy tour through the Guardian’s rooms, taunting the villain himself along the way. I shoved another pursuer into a wall and heard the satisfying crack and scream when I slammed my boot into his kneecap. Six left, plus the Guardian. Four would be better, but I was slowing down. Another drop and vault, skipping the second level, and skittering into the ground-level dining room. Careful now…
I deliberately slowed - not a comfortable situation, as it gave me leisure to note that the fiery cut on my throat was bleeding again and my skull on the verge of exploding. But then, things were not going to be comfortable for a while yet… if ever. My instincts were still good; I felt the pursuers closing in.
Wiping my hand across my throat, I smeared blood everywhere I didn’t have it already. As the chase caught up to me - six maintainers led by the scarlet-faced Guardian - I staggered backward through the short passage. There, in the doorway of the retiring room, the small room adjacent to the audience hall, I collapsed into a heap.
Things settled out rather quickly. Two maintainers grabbed my hair and arms and dragged me to my feet. The Guardian squeezed past us and sank into his chair, a grotesque grin baring his ugly teeth. I ignored the vigor with which the maintainers twisted my arms and shoved me into the retiring room. My only worry had been that they’d kill me right away.
As the two pressed me toward the Guardian’s desk, the rest of the chase party tried to crowd through the door behind us. But the retiring room was small, and the Guardian sent two men to guard the main entry of the tower, left two outside the door we’d just come in to prevent my escaping that way, and kept just the two close at hand to prevent my exiting by way of the gold curtain and the audience hall.
“We have unfinished business, Guardian,” I said, wrenching my right arm from one of my captors and using my shirttail to blot the blood dribbling down my face.
A brutish Singlar did his best to break my arm while recovering his grip on it. I resisted… moderately.
Smugly, the Guardian motioned the two maintainers to leave off. “He can’t get away.”
They released their hold, but stayed close, growling under their breath.
Eyes glittering, the Guardian leaned forward on his elbows, his knobby fingers twined in a knot under his square chin. “We have no business, impostor. We will continue exactly where we left off, but with better supervision and better result.”
The gold curtain that closed off the audience hall swayed slightly.
I raised my voice. “You mean where you left me to die in your dungeon?”
“Your dying is your own business,” said the Guardian. “I will just give you ample opportunity.”
“Yet when I made claim to be your king, you did not deny it.”
The Guardian motioned one of the maintainers to close the door to the outer passage. “It is no matter who you are. I rule the Bounded, and that will not change. Not ever.”
“Yet I showed you my scarred hands, and you noted the color of my hair and my age, and you agreed that all is exactly as prophesied by the Source.”
The Guardian’s pale skin stretched tight over his bones. His smile lost its mirth. “That makes no difference.”
“And so, when the firestorms come again, the Singlars will do as they have always done. Mourn their neighbors. Rebuild. You will allow them no king who might help them change their fate. You will allow them no names.”
He jumped from his chair and moved around the desk to stand between me and the gold curtain. He towered over me. “This conversation is at an end. Maintainers, take this impostor back to the dungeon and seal it closed forev - ”
“Hold, Guardian!” I yelled it loud enough to make the two brutes stop. Time to play my last card. “If I’m an impostor, then you must slay me immediately. I’ve escaped from your prison once and may do so again. What if I found the Source and listened to what it had to say? You claim I tried to destroy it before. What if I tried again? Surely it is your duty to execute anyone who might damage the Source. Maint
ainers, give the Guardian a weapon so that he can perform his duty.”
The Guardian, skin flaming, spluttered incoherently as one of the Singlars, accustomed to instant obedience, pressed a sword hilt into his hand.
“You have the power to pass mortal judgment on anyone save your rightful king,” I said. “Surely that could not be causing your hesitation?”
I dropped to my knees before the astounded man, spreading my arms wide as did the Dar’Nethi slaves in Zhev’Na. “Before these witnesses, I lay claim to the throne of the Bounded. I say that I am the one spoken of by the Source. I have granted names. I quelled the firestorm. If I am an impostor, a danger to the Source, it is your duty as Guardian to slay me. But, of course, if I am your king, then you are forbidden to take my life. Make answer, Guardian. Choose my fate, for there are witnesses to your deeds.”
And so, I laid down my wager. I believed the Guardian to be a cruel despot. But I also believed him driven by his ignorance, too fearful to blatantly disobey the Source.
The Guardian’s big hands massaged the sword grip, and his face twisted slowly into a feral snarl. “Hold his arms. Spread them wide so I can take him cleanly.”
The brutish pair had me before I could move, each taking a firm hold of one of my arms and stretching it so far to the side, I could not shift a finger’s breadth. With an experienced two-handed grip, the Guardian raised the sword, a wide, efficient-looking edged blade.
So my gamble had failed. I whispered a quick apology to Paulo.
But as the air shivered with the passing blade, my neck remained intact. Amid spouts of gore, the red-haired head of the guard on my left thumped to the floor and the massive body slumped. Then the dripping sword slashed again, severing the neck of the surprised maintainer on my right. The Guardian was astonishingly quick, and I was astonishingly unlucky that the grossly heavy left maintainer fell on top of me, pinning me to the floor.
