Crown Duel

by Sherwood Smith

  He stopped before a dais, on which was a throne made of carved wood—a piece of gold wood so beautifully veined with golds and reds and umbers it looked like fire—and bowed low.

  I was tempted to try hopping on my one good foot in order to get a glimpse of the enemy on the throne, but I didn’t—and was glad I hadn’t when I saw the flash of a ring as Galdran waved carelessly at the guards. The four in front promptly stepped to each side, affording a clear field of vision between the king and me. I saw a tall, massively built man whose girth was running to portliness. Long red hair with gems braided into it, large nose, large ears, high forehead, pale blue eyes. He wore a long, carefully cultivated mustache. His mouth stretched in a cruel smile.

  “So you won your wager, Shevraeth, eh?” he said. The tone was jovial, but there was an ugly edge to his voice that scared me. An angry edge.

  “As well, Your Majesty,” the marquis drawled. “The dirt, the stretches of boredom…really, had it taken two days more, I could not have supported it, much as I’d regret the damage to my reputation for reneging on a bet.”

  Galdran fingered his mustache, then indicated me with a negligent wave of a beringed hand. “Are you certain someone hasn’t been making a game of you? That looks like a scullery wench.”

  “I assure you, Your Majesty, this is Lady Meliara Astiar, Countess of Tlanth.”

  Galdran stepped down from his dais and sauntered within about five paces of me, and his scornful gaze raked me from head to heels. The cruel smile widened. “I never expected much of that half-mad old man, but this is really rich!” He threw back his head and laughed.

  And from all sides of the room laughter resounded up the walls, echoing from the rafters.

  When it had died, Galdran said, “Cheer up, wench. You’ll have your brother soon for company, and your heads will make a nice matched set over the palace gates.” Once again he went off into laughter as he gestured to the guards to take me away.

  I wanted to yell a parting insult but I was jerked to one side, which hurt my leg so much all I could do was gasp for breath. The echoes of the Court’s laughter followed into the plain-walled corridor that the warriors took me down, and then a heavy steel door slammed shut, and there was no sound beyond the marching of the guard and my own harsh breathing.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The cell I was locked into seemed especially selected for its gloom and dampness.

  I didn’t hear any other victims in any of the surrounding cells, and I wondered if they’d put me squarely in the center of an empty wing. I could hear every noise down the corridor, for the dungeon seemed to be made of stone, save only the door, which was age-hardened wood with a grilled window. The cell’s furniture consisted of a narrow and rickety rusty iron cot with rotten straw-stuffed ticking inadequately covering its few slats. In the corner was an equally rusty metal jug half filled with stale water.

  Opposite the door was a smaller window set high up in the wall of the cell. Even without the grating, a cat would have had difficulty squeezing through the opening. The grating didn’t keep out the occasional spurts of dust that clouded in, kicked up by passing horses or marching guards. I wondered if the window was set at ground level, which would bring a spouting of water onto me during the next rain. It certainly didn’t keep out the cold.

  The day wore on, marked only by subtle changes in the gloomy light in the cell, and by the distant sound of time-change bells. By its end I almost wished I had been handed off to the torturers, for at least after the inevitable interval of unimaginable nastiness I would have been more or less insensate.

  Instead, what happened was a kind of refined torture that I hadn’t expected: People came, in twos and threes and fours, to stare at me. The first time it happened I didn’t know what to expect—except for those possible torturers—and I lay on the narrow, blanketless cot with my back to the door, my hands sweating.

  But the door didn’t open. Instead I heard the murmur of singsong, pleasingly modulated voices, and then the titter of young women.

  I kept my back to the door, glad they could not see my crimson face.

  At the end of the day, after countless repeats of the curiosity-in-the-cage treatment, I wondered why Galdran had bothered to have me locked up at all, if he was permitting half the Court to troop down to gawk at me.

  The answer came the next day. I might have understood it sooner, but by then the dampness and my continual fever had made it hard to think of much beyond my immediate surroundings. When the door first opened, I didn’t turn around, and other than a flash of fear, I didn’t really react.

  Someone prodded me in the shoulder, and when I turned a grim-faced guard said, “Drink it. Fast.” She held out a battered metal-handled mug.

  Surprised, I took the mug, and smelled a soup whose main component seemed to be cabbage. By then cabbage smelled more delicious than any meal in memory, and I downed the lukewarm soup with scarcely a pause for breath. The warrior grabbed the mug from my hands and went out, locking the door hastily.

  Not too long after, another one came in, this time with a mug of steep, which I also had to gulp down. I did—and happily, too. Then, shortly after dark, two warriors stood in the doorway holding torches while a healer—an elderly man this time—with practiced haste unwrapped the bandage on my leg. Much as it hurt, I knew I needed a change, so I gritted my way through. I couldn’t look at my own flesh, but kept my gaze on his face. His lips were pruned in heavy disapproval, and he shook his head now and then but didn’t speak until he was done.

  “The keem leaves have kept infection out,” he murmured, “but it’s not healing. Have you fever?”

  “My closest companion,” I said hoarsely—and realized it had been two days since I’d spoken.

  “You’ll need an infusion of willow bark…” He stopped, grabbed up the mess with a quick swipe of his hand, then left without another word.

  The throbbing was settling into a dull ache when the door opened again, and this time a completely new warrior came in, bearing a mug and a bundle under his arm. The bundle was a blanket, and the steam from the mug smelled familiar…The first refreshingly bitter sip revealed that here was my infusion of willow bark, and it finally sank into my fevered brain that Galdran probably didn’t know about any of this. For the past two days, from the gawks to the gifts, I had experienced the effects of bribery. Those Court people paid to get a look at me—and, it seemed, some had for whatever reason bought me what comfort they could.

  Bribery! If things could come in, couldn’t something go out? Something like me? Except I had nothing at all to bribe anyone with. And I suspected that the going price for smuggling somebody out would be a thumping great sum beyond whatever anyone had paid to slip me a cup of soup.

  A half-hysterical bubble of laughter tried to fight its way up from somewhere inside me, but I controlled it, afraid once I began I might start wailing like a wolf when it sees the moon.

  After a short time the willow did its work upon me, and I fell into the first good sleep I’d had in days.

  oOo

  Sleep ended abruptly the next morning when the cell door opened and my blanket was unceremoniously snatched off me. Within a short space I was shivering again, but I did feel immeasurably better than I had. Even my foot ached a bit less.

  That day it rained, and the window leaked. Ignoring the twinges in my foot, I dragged my cot away, which was a mistake because its legs promptly collapsed. I sat on it anyway, more or less out of the wet.

  More gifts that day: some hot stew, more steep, and a castoff tunic that smelled of mildew and was much too large, but I pulled it on gratefully. At night, another blanket, which disappeared the next morning—this time with an apologetic murmur from the guard who removed it.

  The gifts helped, but not enough to counteract the cold or my own state of health. Somewhere in the third or fourth day infection must have set in, for the intermittent fever that had plagued me from the start mounted into a bone-aching, chill-making burner.r />
  I was sicker than I’d ever been in a short but healthy life, so sick I couldn’t sleep but lay watching imaginary bugs crawl up the walls. And of course it had to be while I was like this—about the lowest I’d sunk yet—that the Marquis of Shevraeth chose to reappear in my life.

  It was not long after the single bell toll that means midnight and first-white candle. The door opened and a tall, glittering figure handed something to the silent guard, who vanished. I heard footsteps receding as I stared blankly at the torch-bearing aristocrat framed in the doorway.

  He was resplendent in black and crimson velvet embroidered over with gold and set with rubies. More rubies glittered on his fingers and in his pale braided hair. My gaze rose to the rakish hat set low over the familiar gray eyes.

  He must have been waiting for me to recognize him.

  “The king will summon you at first-green tomorrow,” the marquis said quickly, the drawl gone. “It appears that your brother has been making a fool of Debegri, leading him all over your mountains and stealing our horses and supplies. The king has changed his mind: Either you surrender, speaking for your brother and your people, or he’s going to make an example of you in a public execution tomorrow. Not a noble’s death, but a criminal’s.”

  “Criminal’s?” I repeated stupidly, my voice nearly gone.

  “It will last all day,” he said with a grimace of distaste. It was the first real expression I’d ever seen from him, but by then I was in no mood to appreciate it.

  Sheer terror overwhelmed me then. All my courage, my firm resolves, had worn away during the time-measures of illness, and I could not prevent my eyes from stinging with tears of fear—and shame. “Why are you telling me this?” I said, hiding my face in my hands.

  “Will you consider it? It might…buy you time.”

  This made no sense to me. “What time can I buy with dishonor?” All I could imagine was the messengers flying eastward, and the looks on Bran’s and Khesot’s faces—and on Julen’s and Calaub’s and Devan’s, people who had risked their lives twice trying to rescue me—when they found out. “I know why you’re here.” I snuffled into my palms. “Want to gloat? See me turn coward? Well, gloat away…” But I couldn’t say anything more, and after about as excruciating a pause as I’d ever endured, I heard his heels on the stone.

  The door shut, the footsteps withdrew, and I was left in silence.

  It was then that I hit the low point of my life.

  oOo

  I don’t know how long I had been sniffing and snorting there on my broken bunk (and I didn’t care who heard me) when I became aware of furtive little sounds from the corridor. Nothing loud—no more than a slight scrape—then a soft grunt of surprise.

  I saw nothing in the darkness.

  Someone whispered, “Countess?”

  A voice I recognized. “Azmus!”

  “It is I,” he whispered. “Quickly—before they figure out about the doors.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been shadowing this place for two days, trying to figure a way in,” he said as he eased the door open. “There must be something going on. The outer door wasn’t locked tonight, and neither is this one.”

  “Shevraeth,” I croaked.

  “What?”

  “Marquis of Shevraeth. Was here gloating at me. The guard must have expected him to lock it, since the grand marquis sent the fellow away,” I muttered as I got shakily to my feet. “And he—being an aristocrat, and above mundane things—probably assumed the guard would lock it. Uh! Sorry, I can’t walk—”

  Azmus sprang to my side. Together we moved into the corridor, me hating myself for not even thinking of trying the door—except, how could I have gotten anywhere on my own?

  At the end of the corridor a long shape lay still on the ground. Unconscious or dead, I didn’t know, and I wasn’t going to check. I hoped it wasn’t one of the nice guards.

  Outside it was raining in earnest, which made visibility difficult for our enemies as well as for us. Azmus took a good grip on me, breathing into my ear: “Brace up—we’ll have to move fast.”

  The trip across the courtyard was probably fifty paces or so, but it seemed fifty days’ travel to me. Every step was a misery, but I managed, heartened by the reflection that each step took me farther from that dungeon and—I hoped fervently—from the fate in store if Galdran got his claws into me again.

  We went through a discreet door in a low, plain side building. Lamps glowed at intervals on the walls, seeming unnaturally bright to my dark-accustomed, feverish eyes. Breathing harshly, Azmus led the way down the hall and up some narrow stairs to a small room.

  As soon as the door was shut he touched a glowglobe on a table, and in its faint bluish light, he sprang to a long cupboard and yanked it open. Shelves and shelves of folded cloth were revealed. “Here,” he said. “Put this on, my lady. Quickly—make haste, make haste. We can get through the grounds as servants only if a search is not raised.”

  I held up the gown he had handed me. It was much too wide. As I held it rather helplessly, he bit his lip, his round face concerned; then he grabbed it and pulled something else out. “There. That’s for a stable hand, but it ought to fit better—they are mostly young.”

  He was already wearing the livery of a palace servant. Not the fabulous green and russet and gold livery of the foot servants who waited on the nobles in the palace, but the plain brown garb of the under-servants. Short, stocky, with an unprepossessing face, Azmus was easily overlooked in any crowd. I didn’t know his age, and it was impossible to guess from his snub-nosed face, all of which made him the perfect spy.

  Wincing, I pulled off the mildewed tunic some unknown benefactor had gifted me with, and I yanked the sturdy brown tunic over my filthy, rumpled clothes. I left my braid inside the tunic, pulled a cap on, and shoved my feet into a pair of shoes that were much too big. The tunic came down below my knees. We both looked at my trousers, which were not unlike the color of the stable hands’, and he said with a pained smile: “In the dark, you’ll pass. Our only hope of making it is now, while no one can see us.” He bundled my mildewed tunic and my one moc under his own clothes.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as he helped me down the stairs.

  “Stable. One chance of getting out is there—if we’re fast.”

  Neither of us wasted any more breath. He had to look around constantly while bearing my weight. I concentrated on walking.

  At the stable, servants were running back and forth on errands, but we shuffled along the wall of a long, low building toward a row of elegant town carriages.

  I murmured, “Don’t tell me…I’m to steal one of these?”

  Azmus gave a breathless laugh. “You’ll steal a ride—if we can get you in. Your best chance is the one that belongs to the Princess of Renselaeus—if we can, by some miracle, get near it. The guards will never stop it, even if the hue and cry is raised. And she doesn’t live within Athanarel, but at the family palace in the city.”

  “Renselaeus…” I repeated, then grinned. The princess was the mother of the marquis. The prince, her husband, who was rumored to have been badly wounded in the Pirate Wars, never left their land. I loved the idea of making my escape under the nose of Shevraeth’s mother. Next thing to snapping my fingers under his nose.

  There was an increase in noise from the direction of the palace. A young girl came running toward us, torch hissing and streaming in the rain. “Savona!” she yelled. “Savona!”

  A carriage near the front of the line rolled across the courtyard toward the distant great hall.

  Keeping close to the walls, we moved along the line of carriages until we neared a handsome equipage that appeared comfortable and well sprung, even in the dark and rain. Around it clustered servants dressed in sky blue, black, and white.

  Two more names were called out by pages, and then came, “Renselaeus!”

  But before the carriage could roll, the page dashed up. “Wait! Wait! Get canopies! She won
’t come out without canopies—says her gown will be ruined.”

  One of the servants groaned; all except the driver dashed inside the stable.

  Azmus drew in his breath in a sharp hiss. “Come,” he said. “This is it.”

  We crossed the few steps to the carriage. A quick look. Everyone else was seeing to their own horses, or wiping rain from windows, or trying to stay out of the worst of the wet. At the back of the coach was a long trunk; Azmus lifted the lid and helped me climb up and inside. “I do not know if I can get to the Renselaeus palace to aid you,” he warned as he lowered the lid.

  “I’ll make it,” I promised. “Thanks. You’ll be remembered for this.”

  “Down with Merindar,” he murmured. “Farewell, my lady.”

  The lid closed.

  Lying flat was a relief, though the thick-woven hemp flooring scraped at my cheek. Outside, muffled voices arrived. The carriage rocked as the foot servants grabbed hold. Then we moved, slowly but smoothly. Then stopped.

  Faintly, beckoning and lovely, two melodic lines traded back and forth between sweet wind instruments, and the thrumming of metallic harp strings. That had to be the concert the aristos were leaving.

  A high, imperious voice called over the music: “Come, come! Closer together! Step as one, now. I mustn’t ruin this gown…The king himself spoke in praise of it…I can only wear it again if it is not ruined…Step lively there, and have a care for puddles. There!”

  I could envision a crowd of foot servants holding rain canopies over her head, like a moving tent, as the old lady bustled across the mud. She arrived safely in the carriage, and when she was closed in, once again we started to roll.

  “Ware, gate!” the driver called presently. “Ware for Renselaeus!” The carriage scarcely slowed. I heard the creak of the great iron gates—the ones that were supposed to be sporting my head within a day. They swung shut with a graunching of protesting metal, and the carriage rolled out of Athanarel and into the city.