The Charnel Prince

by Greg Keyes

  “I have never loved anyone as I loved you,” Neil said. “I shall never love another.”

  “You will,” she said softly. “You must. But do not forget me, for I will forget myself, in time.”

  “I would never,” he said, vaguely aware that tears were coursing down his face. A drop fell into the wine, and the shade of Fastia gasped. “That is cold,” she said. “Your tears are cold, Sir Neil.”

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for everything, milady. I cannot sleep—”

  “Hush, love. Quiet, and let me tell you something while I still remember. It’s about Anne.”

  “The queen is here, asking about Anne.”

  “I know. She speaks to Erren. But there is this, Sir Neil, a thing I have been told. Anne is important. More important than my mother or my brother—or any other. She must not die, or all is lost.”

  “All?”

  “The age of Everon is ending,” she said. “Ancient evils and fresh curses speed it. My mother broke the law of death, did you know?”

  “The law of death?”

  “It is broken,” she affirmed.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Nor do I, but it is whispered in the halls of bone. The world is now in motion, rushing toward its end. All who live stand at the edge of night, and if they pass, none shall follow them. No children, no generations to come. Someone is standing there, watching them pass, laughing. Man or woman I do not know, but there is little chance they can be stopped. There is only the smallest opportunity to set things right. But without Anne, even that possibility does not exist.”

  “Without you, I do not care. I do not care if the world goes into oblivion.”

  The hand came onto his shoulder and stroked across the back of his neck. “You must,” she said. “Think of the generations unborn and think of them as our children, the children we could never have. Think of them as the offspring of our love. Live for them as you would for me.”

  “Fastia—” He turned then, unable to bear it any longer, but there was nothing there, and the touch on his shoulder was gone, leaving only a fading tingle.

  The queen was still staring at her wine, whispering.

  “I miss you, Erren,” she said. “You were my strong right hand, my sister, my friend. Enemies surround me. I don’t have the strength for it.”

  “There is no end to your strength,” Erren replied. “You will do what must be done.”

  “But what you showed me. The blood. How can I do that?”

  “You will make seas of blood in the end,” Erren said. “But it is necessary. You must.”

  “I cannot. They would never allow it.”

  “When the time comes, they cannot stop you. Now hush, Muriele, and bid me peace, for I must go.”

  “Do not. I need you, especially now.”

  “Then I’ve failed you twice. I must go.”

  And the queen, who these past months might have been forged of steel, put her head down and wept. Neil stood by, his heart savaged by Fastia’s touch, his mind burning with her words.

  He wished for the simplicity of battle, where failure meant death rather than torment.

  Outside, the sounds of the storm grew stronger as the dead returned to their sleep.

  Sleep never came, but morning did. By the sun’s first light the storm was gone, and they began the ascent from Eslen-of-Shadows to Eslen-of-the-Quick. A clean, cold sea wind was blowing, and the bare branches of the oaks lining the path glistened in sheaths of ice.

  The queen had been silent all night, but while they were still some distance from the city gates she turned to him.

  “Sir Neil, I have a task for you.”

  “Majesty, I am yours to command.”

  She nodded. “You must find Anne. You must find the only daughter I have left.”

  Neil gripped his reins tighter. “That is the one thing I cannot do, Majesty.”

  “It is my command.”

  “My duty is to Your Majesty. When the king knighted me, I was sworn to stay at your side, to protect you from all danger. I cannot do that if I am traveling afar.”

  “The king is dead,” Muriele said, her voice growing a bit harsher. “I command you now. You will do this thing for me, Sir Neil.”

  “Majesty, please do not ask this of me. If harm should befall you—”

  “You are the only one I can trust,” Muriele interrupted. “Do you think I want to send you from my side? To send away the one person I know will never betray me? But that is why you must go. Those who killed my other daughters now seek Anne—I’m certain of it. She remains alive because I sent her away, and no one at the court knows where she is. If I trust any other than you with her location, I compromise that knowledge and open my daughter to even greater danger. If I tell only you, I know the secret is still safe.”

  “If you believe her secure where she is, should you not leave her there?”

  “I cannot be sure. Erren intimated that the danger is still great.”

  “The danger to Your Majesty is great. Whoever employed the assassins that slew your husband and daughters meant to kill you, as well. They still do, surely.”

  “Surely. I am not arguing with you, Sir Neil. But I have given my command. You will make ready for a long journey. You will leave tomorrow. Pick the men who will guard me in your absence—I trust your judgment more than my own in such matters. But for your own task you must travel alone, I fear.”

  Neil bowed his head. “Yes, Majesty.”

  The queen’s voice softened. “I am sorry, Sir Neil. I truly am. I know how badly your heart has been hurt. I know how keen your sense of duty is and how terribly it was wounded at Cal Azroth. But you must do this thing for me. Please.”

  “Majesty, I would beg all day if I thought you would change your mind, but I see that you won’t.”

  “You have good vision.”

  Neil nodded. “I will do as you command, Majesty. I will be ready by morning.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Z’ESPINO

  ANNE DARE, YOUNGEST DAUGHTER of the Emperor of Crotheny, Duchess of Rovy, knelt by a cistern and scrubbed clothes with raw and blistered hands. Her shoulders ached and her knees hurt, and the sun beat her like a golden hammer.

  Only a few yards away, children played in the cool shade of a grape arbor, and two ladies in gowns of silk brocade sat sipping wine. Anne’s own dress—a secondhand shift of cotton—hadn’t been washed in days. She sighed, wiped her brow, and made sure her red hair was secure beneath her scarf. She sneaked a longing glance at the two women and continued her work.

  She cast her mind away from her hands, a trick she was becoming quite adept at, and imagined herself back home, riding her horse Faster on the Sleeve or eating roasted quail and trout in green sauce, with gobs of fried apples and clotted cream for desert.

  Scrub, scrub, went her hands.

  She was imagining a cool bath when she suddenly felt a sharp pinch on her rump. She turned to find a boy about four or five years younger than she—perhaps thirteen—grinning as if he’d just told the best joke in the world.

  Anne slapped the clothes onto the scrubbing board and spun on him. “You horrible little beast!” she shouted. “You’ve no more manners than—!”

  She caught the women looking at her then, their faces hard.

  “He pinched me,” she explained. And just to be sure they understood, she pointed. “There.”

  One of the women—a blue-eyed, black-haired casnara named da Filialofia—merely slitted her eyes. “Who exactly do you think you are?” she asked, her tone quite flat. “Who, by all the lords and ladies in earth and sky, do you think you are that you can speak to my son in such a manner?”

  “Wherever do you find such servants?” her companion Casnara dat Ospellina asked sourly.

  “But h-he—,” Anne stuttered.

  “Be silent this instant, you little piece of foreign trash, or I will have Corhio the gardener beat you. And he will do quite more to you there than pi
nch it, I daresay. Forget not whom you serve, whose house you are in.”

  “A proper lady would raise her brat to have better manners,” Anne snapped.

  “And what would you know of that?” da Filialofia asked, crossing her arms. “What sort of manners do you imagine you were taught in whatever brothel or pigsty your mother abandoned you to? Certainly, you did not learn to mind your place.” Her chin tilted up. “Get out. Now.”

  Anne picked herself up from her kneeling position. “Very well,” she said, facing them squarely. She held out her hand.

  Da Filialofia laughed. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to pay you for insulting my house, do you? Leave, wretch. I’ve no idea why my husband hired you in the first place.” But then she cracked a faint smile that didn’t even hint at good humor. “Well, perhaps I do. He might have found you entertaining, in a barbaric sort of way. Were you?”

  For a long moment Anne was simply speechless, and for a moment longer she was poised between slapping the woman—which she knew would earn her a beating—and simply walking away.

  She didn’t quite do either. Instead she recalled something she had learned in her last week working at the triva.

  “Oh, no, he has no time for me,” she said sweetly. “He’s been much too busy with Casnara dat Ospellina.”

  And then she did walk away, smiling at the furious whispers that began behind her.

  The great estates lay on the north side of z’Espino, most of them overlooking the azure water of the Lier Sea. As Anne passed through the gate of the house, she stood for a moment in the shade of chestnut trees and gazed out across those foam-crested waters. North across them lay Liery, where her mother’s family ruled. North and east was Crotheny, were her father sat as king and emperor, and where her love, Roderick, must be giving up hope by now.

  Just a little water separating her from her rightful station and everything she loved, and yet that little bit of water was expensive to cross. Princess though she was, she was penniless. Nor could she tell anyone who she was, for she had come to z’Espino with terrible danger on her heels. She was safer as a washerwoman than as a princess.

  “You.” A man on a horse rode up the lane and sat looking down at her. She recognized by his square cap and yellow tunic that he was an aidilo, charged with keeping order in the streets.

  “Yes, casnar?”

  “Move along. Don’t tarry here,” he said brusquely.

  “I’ve just come from serving the casnara da Filialofia.”

  “Yes, and now you’re done, so you must go.”

  “I only wanted to look at the sea for a moment.”

  “Then look at it from the fish market,” he snapped. “Must I escort you there?”

  “No,” Anne said, “I’m going.”

  As she trudged down a lane bounded by stone walls topped with shards of broken glass to prevent climbing, she wondered if the servants who worked on her father’s country estates were treated so shabbily. Surely not.

  The lane debouched onto the Piato dachi Meddissos, a grand court of red brick bounded on one side by the three-story palace of the meddisso and his family. It wasn’t so grand as her father’s palace in Eslen, but it was quite striking, with its long colonnade and terrace gardens. On the other side of the piato stood the city temple, an elegant and very ancient-looking building of polished umber stone.

  The piato itself was a riot of color and life. Vendors with wooden carts and red caps hawked grilled lamb, fried fish, steamed mussels, candied figs, and roasted chestnuts. Pale-eyed Sefry, hooded and wrapped against the sun, sold ribbons and trifles, stockings, holy relics, and love potions from beneath colorful awnings. A troop of actors had cleared a space and were performing something involving sword fighting, a king with a dragon’s tail, Saint Mamres, Saint Bright, and Saint Loy. Two pipers and a woman with a hand-drum beat a fast melody.

  In the center of the piato, a stern-eyed statue of Saint Netuno wrestled two sea serpents, which twined about his body and spewed jets of water into a marble basin. A group of richly dressed young men lounged at the edge of the fountain, fondling their sword hilts and whistling at girls in gaudy dresses.

  She found Austra near the edge of the square, almost on the steps of the temple, sitting next to her bucket and scrub brush.

  Austra watched her approach and smiled. “Finished already?” Austra was fifteen, a year younger than Anne, and like Anne she wore a faded dress and a scarf to cover her hair. Most Vitellians were dark, with black hair, and the two girls stood out enough without advertising their gold and copper tresses. Fortunately, most women in Vitellio kept their heads covered in public.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Anne said.

  “Oh, I see. Again?”

  Anne sighed and sat down. “I try, truthfully I do. But it’s so difficult. I thought the coven had prepared me for anything, but—”

  “You shouldn’t have to do these things,” Austra said. “Let me work. You stay in the room.”

  “But if I don’t work, it will take us that much longer to earn our passage. It will give the men who are hunting us that much more time to find us.”

  “Maybe we should take our chances on the road.”

  “Cazio and z’Acatto say the roads are much too closely watched. Even the road officers are offering reward for me now.”

  Austra looked skeptical. “That doesn’t make sense. The men who tried to kill you at the coven were Hansan knights. What do they have to do with Vitellian road officers?”

  “I don’t know, and neither does Cazio.”

  “If that’s the case, won’t they be watching the ships, as well?”

  “Yes, but Cazio says he can find a captain who won’t ask questions or tell tales—if we have the silver to pay him off.” She sighed. “But that’s not yet, and we have to eat, too. Worse, I was paid nothing today. What am I going to do tomorrow?”

  Austra patted her shoulder. “I got paid. We’ll stop at the fish market and the carenso and buy our supper.”

  The fishmarket was located at the edge of Perto Nevo, where the tall-masted ships brought their cargoes of timber and iron, and took in return casks of wine, olive oil, wheat, and silk. Smaller boats crowded the southern jetties, for the Vitellian waters teemed with shrimp, mussels, oysters, sardines, and a hundred other sorts of fish Anne had never heard of. The market itself was a maze of crates and barrels heaped with gleaming sea prizes. Anne looked longingly at the giant prawns and black crabs—which were still kicking and writhing in tuns of brine—and at the heaps of sleek mackerel and silver tuna. They couldn’t afford any of that and had to push deeper and farther, to where sardines lay sprinkled in salt and whiting was stacked in piles that had begun to smell.

  The whiting was only two minsers per coinix, and it was there the girls stopped, noses wrinkled, to choose their evening meal.

  “Z’Acatto said to look at the eyes,” Austra said. “If they’re cloudy or cross-eyed, they’re no good.”

  “This whole bunch is bad, then,” Anne said.

  “It’s the only thing we can afford,” Austra replied. “There must be one or two good ones in the pile. We just have to look.”

  “What about salt cod?”

  “That has to soak for a day. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry now.”

  A low feminine voice chuckled over their shoulders. “No, sweets, don’t buy any of that. You’ll be sick for a nineday.”

  The woman speaking to them was familiar—Anne had seen her often on their street, but had never spoken to her. She dressed scandalously and wore a great deal of rouge and makeup. She’d once heard z’Acatto say he “couldn’t afford that one,” so Anne figured she knew the woman’s profession.

  “Thanks,” Anne said, “but we’ll find a good one.”

  The woman looked dubious. She had a strong, lean face and eyes of jet. Her hair was put up in a net that sparkled with glass jewels, and she wore a green gown, which, though it had seen better days, was still nicer than anything An
ne owned at the moment.

  “You two live on Six-Nymph Street. I’ve seen you—with that old drunkard and the handsome fellow, the one with the sword.”

  “Yes,” Anne replied.

  “I’m your neighbor. My name is Rediana.”

  “I’m Feine and this is Lessa,” Anne lied.

  “Well, girls, come with me,” Rediana said, her voice low. “You’ll find nothing edible here.”

  Anne hesitated.

  “I’ll not bite you,” Rediana said. “Come.”

  Motioning them to follow, she led the two back to a table of flounder. Some were still flopping.

  “We can’t afford that,” Anne said.

  “How much do you have?”

  Austra held out a ten-minser coin. Rediana nodded.

  “Parvio!” The man behind the tray of flounder was busy gutting a few fish for several well-dressed women. He was missing one eye, but didn’t bother to cover the white scar there. He might have been sixty years old, but his bare arms were muscled like a wrestler’s.

  “Rediana, mi cara,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Sell my friends a fish.” She took the coin from Austra’s hand and passed it to him. He looked at it, frowned, then smiled at Anne and Austra. “Take whichever pleases you, dears.”

  “Melto brazi, casnar,” Austra said. She selected one of the flounders and put it in her basket. With a wink, Parvio handed her back a five-minser coin. The fish ought to have cost fifteen.

  “Melto brazi, casnara,” Anne told Rediana, as they started toward the carenso.

  “It’s nothing, dear,” Rediana said. “Actually, I’ve been hoping for a chance to talk to you.”

  “Oh. About what?” Anne asked, a tad suspicious of the woman’s goodwill.

  “About a way you could put fish like that on the table every day. You’re both quite pretty, and quite exotic. I can make something out of you. Not for those oafs on our street, either, but for a better class of client.”