by Dave Duncan
“And we explain that to them how?” Sigfrith prompted.
“That’s where Grand Wizard had to do some guessing. He’s most confident about those accursed mirrors we’ve been lugging along. He thinks they will destabilize the spirituality, although he suggested we don’t try them in the dark. He also gave me some whistles he thinks may have a similar effect at close quarters, but may not, and some horrible- smelling biscuits. He warns that those will need time to act. Not much point offering Rover a cookie when he’s eating your windpipe.”
The answer was a sour silence.
“I did bring a few more tricks along,” Beau admitted. “I can open doors and I have a rope ladder that will climb up the stockade.”
“We can do that,” growled Alfgar, the largest thane of all.
“You can kill dogs, too. Just remember these ones are smart.”
“Listen!” Plegmund snapped.
It was less a noise than a trembling of the world. It was the thunder of many hooves. It grew louder, filling the forest, adding voices and jingling harness as the procession rounded the hill, then fading away westward along the road. It left all the Baels leering. Now the odds were better.
“Lackwit?” Sigfrith demanded, looking around. “Where’s Compass Man?”
He-who-had-been-Arkell was crouched behind a tree on the edge of the hollow, pouting. He had fouled himself and so was worse off than any of them. He didn’t understand the cold, the lack of shelter, the meager food.
“Lackwit, where is the Czar?”
Sulk.
Beau tried. “Brother, please show me where the Czar is. I really need to know.” But even Beau could not cajole a response. “Please, Lackwit? For Ironhall? For Starkmoor, Lackwit?”
It was unbearable. “Oh, stop it!” Swithin screamed. “How can you call him that? He’s a brother! Help him, for death’s sake, don’t mock him!” His own ward was in terrible danger. He might turn into a human mollusc too, very shortly.
Beau’s stare was cold as lead. “Help him how? You think we didn’t try?” He was in mortal peril, also, and for once he was not quite managing to hide his feelings.
“Why didn’t they try a reversion spell?” Swithin said. “I know it doesn’t always work, but anything would be better—”
“A reversion spell needs his sword, and he lost it somewhere here in Skyrria.” Beau knelt and took one of Arkell’s hands. “Brother, please help! You know which way the Czar is, don’t you? Show me, please?”
Scowling, Arkell turned away to stare eastward, toward Czaritsyn.
Beau sighed with relief. “Thank you, brother.”
Sigfrith chortled. “That makes things simpler!”
“It means another fifty defenders or more,” Dimitri said, alarmed.
“But if we can take him alive our problems are over. We’ll rush the stockade under cover of a flurry, find the Czar, and hold a sword to his throat. Let’s get in position. Starboard watch, bring the mirrors. Prince, I want you along to—”
“Not me!” Dimitri squealed. “I’m no traitor!”
Swithin’s hand reached for Sudden. This might be it …
The pirate snarled. “You could be real useful, Prince, making the Skyrrians see reason. I may call on the defenders to surrender and support the new Czar Dimitri; I may threaten to kill a prince if they resist. I would only be bluffing, of course! I can’t afford to lose men when we’re so outnumbered. Besides, bloodshed is a sign of incompetence. If anything regrettable happens to Igor you’ll come out of this as Czar.”
“I am not the heir.” Dimitri peered around. “Swithin? Swithin? Where—There you are. You got me into this. Now get me out!”
Swithin met the Atheling’s grass-green killer eyes. “I won’t let my ward go into danger, ealda.”
“We’ll take good care of him,” Sigfrith said. “I promise.”
“No.” Swithin would sooner trust a trapdoor when he had a noose around his neck. There were Baels all around him, no wall to back up to.
“He’s worried about his ward,” Beau said. “I’m worried about the Czar, so I won’t help you, either.”
“Igor?” Sigfrith scoffed. “Igor? You care about that murdering madman?”
“He’s a crowned monarch,” Beau said firmly, “and killing him would be assassination. Who’s going to stoop to that? I won’t, because Blades are not hired killers; if the Skyrrians didn’t chop off my head, Athelgar would. Swithin can’t, because the Czar’s men will retaliate against his ward. And if you do it what is your own king going to say? Baelmark fought a twelve-year war once over an assassination. What is your father going—”
“You leave my father out of this!”
Beau glanced quickly around the other angry Baels. “Atheling, the plan didn’t work! Admit it. It was a good gamble, but chance turned against us. We have to cut our losses and leave. Our agreement—”
“The deal I swore to, midget, was that I was going home to Baelmark and would drop you off halfway. You’re with us or you’re against us. Lackwit will be staying aboard. Now, you really going to cause me trouble?”
“Lackwit you can have,” Beau said sadly. “He’s as happy being a human compass as he ever can be, and he’ll be so valuable that I know you’ll take good care of him. For the rest, I suggest you put it to a vote of…Where is Arkell? Where did Lackwit go?”
“His tracks lead up the hill,” Wulfstane said from that side of the group.
“His sword!” Dimitri yelled. “The Czar wears Arkell’s sword.”
• 3 •
The pirate gang went up the hill at the double and Dimitri managed to keep up with all but a few of the youngest. He felt pleased by that. Overall, he was proud of the way he’d stood up to his ordeal so far—no groveling or sniveling, just dignified defiance, worthy of his ancestry. Now he could look forward to watching the Baels being hanged in a row. He even hoped Igor would let them off with that and not get too creative.
They reached the crest in a streaming snow shower, which had been almost undetectable down in the forest. Up there on the exposed edge, even giant conifers faded to ghosts. The Bael sentries had not seen Arkell go past them; his tracks vanished down the steep face into blankness. The universal dismay was most satisfying.
“Death and fire!” Beaumont said. “You were right, Your Highness. He sensed his sword. He’s gone to get it. Oh, spirits!”
“We must catch him,” Sigfrith said. “He’ll betray us.”
“Too late.”
They couldn’t find him until they could see him and by then he would be out in the meadow, visible to the garrison also. Seeing that the Baels were doomed, Dimitri was tempted to scream in triumph.
“Now what?” he asked.
“We must attack at once,” Atheling Sigfrith said. “The moment the Czar knows we’re here, he’ll send men to recall his main force of streltsy and hunt us down.” He fancied himself as a great raider, but he was obviously sounding out Beaumont’s opinion.
“Ambush,” the Blade said absently. “Stop his couriers on the road. Oh, brother Arkell, what have you done this time?” He sighed. “All right, Atheling, you win. There is one other thing we can try, although I don’t like the odds. Brother?”
Swithin said, “Yes?” warily.
“You and your ward wait here. I’ll be right back.”
He led the Baels off, leaving Dimitri and Swithin on the ridge. In a few moments the sun emerged from the murk like a giant pearl, then the snow swirled away like a curtain to reveal the meadow below and the walled village within it. Horses were pawing the snow in the pasture. Dimitri could make out groups of men in the streets, but not isolated guards on the ramparts, although he knew there would be some. Igor always had guards.
“There he is!” Swithin looked sick with worry. “See him, down there? In twenty minutes he’ll be rapping on the gate. Blast him!”
“What’s Beaumont planning?”
“I have no idea. I don’t think I’m going to like it.”
>
Dimitri felt nauseous thinking about it. The astrologers and witches had predicted that the Blade who killed Fedor would return to claim his sword. That he had lost his mind would make no difference to Igor. That he had unwittingly betrayed the pirates would not stop Igor, either. Igor would destroy him by inches. Igor, who had been quite mad enough before Fedor’s death and was much worse now, was still the Czar, so Dimitri must suppress such disloyal thoughts. If not for honor’s sake, then for Yelena and Bebaia.
Beaumont came panting back up the hill carrying a sack that contained something large and flat and square. It would be one of the remaining mirrors, of course, and the thought of trying to stop Igor’s monsters with that chilled Dimitri’s blood.
“Let’s go!” the Blade said.
“Go where?” Swithin said.
Was Beaumont’s smile a little forced now? “To call on the Czar.”
“No! You said—”
“Four’s company.”
Swithin turned even paler. “Never! You think that Igor will let me be if he has you and Arkell to torture? That’s obscene! I won’t stand for it.”
Dimitri jumped over the lip of the cliff and went leaping and slithering down through the scrub, soon falling and starting his own avalanche. He was genuinely surprised to reach the bottom alive, although badly scraped and bruised, half buried in snow and dirt. His right knee and both elbows hurt like fire; he had torn an ear. As he lay there panting, he heard the two Blades following him down, but he was too battered to make any more effort to escape.
He had no need to. Without comment they helped him up and all three of them set off across the pasture—he limping, his lanky Blade plodding along on the left wearing an expression of grim fury, the shorter one being inscrutable. The slushy snow was calf-deep and flakes were swirling again. He could not remember the last time his feet had been dry.
“What’s going to happen?” he demanded.
“You’re going to report to your royal uncle,” Beaumont said. “Tell him what a nice time you had, present your Blade. He knows me already.”
“I will warn him about the Baels!”
Beaumont smiled politely. “You could not explain your presence here otherwise.”
“And what are they doing meanwhile?” Getting no answer, Dimitri looked to his Blade.
“I don’t know!” Swithin snapped.
Evidently those two were no longer on speaking terms. Could Beaumont truly be so crazy as to give himself up to the Czar?
They followed Arkell’s track at first, but lost it as soon as they scrambled over a rail fence into the trampled pasture. The weather closed in, returning the world to an eye-stinging white blur. This quickly disoriented Dimitri, but the Blades pushed on confidently until the stockade appeared as a vague grayness on their left; then they kept their distance, going parallel to it.
“You honestly think a mirror will save you from those hounds?”
“I honestly hope it will, Your Highness,” Beaumont said. “As Grand Wizard explained it to me, a mirror is composed of silver, whose elements are earth and fire, and also love, which is why we see ourselves in it. He enchanted the mirrors he gave me with additional love, so that conjured hounds looking in them will see themselves as they should be, not as they are. Once they are reminded of that, Grand Wizard thinks, the conjurement will start to unravel.”
Evidently Chivian conjurers were as crazy as Skyrrian witches.
“What about the other things?” Dimitri asked. “Whistles, was it? And biscuits?”
“His explanations of those didn’t make a great deal of sense to me.”
“Astonishing.”
“It’s too quiet!” Swithin said. “Why hasn’t Arkell set off alarms and bugles?”
“If he merely wandered away for a leak, I will be seriously pissed,” Beaumont muttered.
“Madman! Your Highness,” Swithin said, “for your own safety you must insist your Blade remains armed.”
“Nobody insists on anything around the Czar, lad.”
“I will fight to keep my sword.”
“I will try to explain.”
The sun was coming out again when they turned toward the gate, fighting through drifts. They were seen, resulting in shouts and running footsteps. Helmets, pikes, and bows appeared over the palisade.
“Halt and identify yourselves!”
“Where is Arkell?” Swithin muttered angrily.
“I bring an urgent warning for His Majesty. I am Prince Dimitri Temkin, the Czar’s nephew.” A likely tale!—had he just wrestled ten goats in a pigpen, he could look no less like a prince.
After an understandable hesitation, the shouter commanded, “Wait there!” More voices, more running. At last a bugle sounded, calling out the full guard.
Just when Dimitri was certain he was going to freeze to death, a new speaker called: “The one who claims to be Prince Dimitri advance. The other two stay there.”
“No. Where I go, my bodyguard goes. Now let me in and inform the Czar that his nephew is here and Czaritsyn is about to be attacked by Baelish raiders.”
“Then advance and be recognized.”
The visitors plodded forward to be inspected by eyes behind a grating. The timbers of the gate were thicker than a man’s head.
“What color robe did Princess Yelena wear to the Czarevich’s naming?”
“How the stars should I know?” Dimitri roared. “She wears a hundred gowns a year. Admit me or suffer the consequences.”
The man laughed. “It was blue. Open the side gate for His Highness.”
Dimitri vaguely recalled the officer’s face when he saw it, but not his name. He evidently knew Dimitri and seemed to know about Blades, too, for he did not push the argument over their swords. Swithin said simply that he would not be disarmed and, while he could no doubt be overpowered, he would fight to kill. Beaumont had more of a choice in the matter, but no one said so and he retained his sword also.
“How many Baels, Your Highness?” the officer said.
“About fifty. I’m not certain they’re going to attack, but they are in the vicinity and certainly dangerous.”
“Thank you. Vladimir, escort His Highness and his men to the palace and ask them to wait in the throne room.”
The Czar’s secret dacha was the size of a small town, but tidier and cleaner, and laid out with rigorous straight streets between very long buildings like barracks or stables. Dimitri could hear voices, pigs grunting, men chopping wood, and even a mill grinding, yet he saw almost no one except the thirty or so of his pike-bearing streltsy escort.
The prospect of an audience with his ferocious and unpredictable uncle made him taut as a bowstring. He had obeyed orders exactly, delivering the hostages to Chivial and returning with a Blade, but obedience was no guarantee of favor in Skyrria. The day was still young; by rights he should soon be riding off to Kiensk with Swithin at his side to be reunited with Yelena. He kept trying to imagine that, but the picture refused to form.
The palace, predictably, was the high-roofed building in the center of the settlement. The honor guard lined up smartly on either side of an entrance, whose massive timber door stood open. Swithin’s hand locked on Dimitri’s shoulder.
“Wait! Beau, will you investi—”
The streltsi officer barked. Thirty pikes swung down to the attack position, a cordon of steel teeth enclosing the visitors. Swithin and Beaumont whipped out their swords.
“Stop!” Dimitri bellowed. “Are you crazy? Put those away! We are being watched! Not just watched by this rabble, I mean.” He strode forward into the palace and heard the Blades’ boots follow. The door boomed shut like thunder behind them.
A short, dark corridor led through to light, to a great hall, very high and rainbow bright. As soon as the visitors had entered, the corridor door shut behind them also, with a sound of bolts thudding home. There were several exits in sight, but all were closed.
This was the throne room, and very splendid in a manic, siniste
r fashion. Light poured down from stained glass windows to shine on mosaics of gold and precious stones on roof and walls—not all the walls, for some parts were not yet tessellated, and the presence of scaffolding, ladders, and buckets showed that workmen might have been evicted only moments before. The floor was paved with irregular black slabs, in stark contrast to the rigid, formal figures of the mosaics. A balcony ran the dull width of the hall at the far end, and on that stood a replica of the ancient ivory throne of Kiensk.
Beaumont said, “Oh, spit!”
He was undoubtedly commenting on the high steel fence that divided the hall into two, making it seem more of a giant jail than an audience chamber. Dimitri shuddered, remembering gruesome rumors about Czaritsyn. He wondered what sort of reception the Czar offered his visitors that he needed such a defense.
“Come forward, if you please, Your Highness.” The low, hoarse words came from a tall man in streltsi black, standing beyond the central divider.
“Is this how my uncle greets all his guests?” Dimitri tried to bellow and achieved little more than a whimper. He strode forward and the Blades followed.
“Many of them. I am Boyar Kuraka Saltykov, having the honor to be castellan of Czaritsyn.” Saltykov bowed; he had the bleached, drained features of a consumptive. “Your uncle requests that you wait here.”
