Authors: Alex Bledsoe
Then came the golden time, when Drake and his queen, Jennifer, naturally the most beautiful woman who ever lived, ruled in fairness and grace. Laws were passed to protect the common folk, and peace reigned for a generation.
But the brightest light casts the darkest shadow, and in that shade dwelled Ted Medraft, bitter knight and jealous nephew of the king. He fomented a rebellion and forced a final great battle. Drake killed him, but Medraft mortally wounded the king. Drake died, the land returned to chaos, and the great sword Belacrux disappeared, awaiting the hand of the next destined ruler, who had so far not appeared.
The ballads and broadsheets kept coming, though, embellishing the tale until it was an epic of how hubris and fate brought down even the loftiest men. In the seven years since Drake’s death, he’d become such a literary figure that some people believed he’d never existed. In another ten years, he’d be a full-fledged myth.
But he
had
existed, and the truth was a little different from how the ballads told it. I might be the last man living who knew it.
I continued, “My client was a Grand Bruan noblewoman named Fiona, and she had connections. As a result I found myself at a party given by Queen Jennifer Drake at Nodlon Castle on the island’s west coast.”
I paused long enough to take a long draft of my own ale. A lot of things in my past had grown hazy with the passage of time, but not this. The details all came back in a rush, from the odor of the banquet hall to the unmistakable coppery smell of blood thick on the wind. And the look on a king’s face as a woman rose from the dead before him.…
chapter
TWO
Nodlon Castle was built so close to the edge of the cliff overlooking the western ocean that first-time observers always wondered why it didn’t just fall off. Most assumed this precarious-looking position was due to erosion, but in truth it was entirely on purpose: the king’s former adviser Cameron Kern had designed it as a psychological ploy to prevent enemy troops from trying to scale those same cliffs in an attack.
That had been in the old days, during the wars of unification. And by
old,
I meant twenty years from the summer I arrived. That might not sound like much time, but the changes in Grand Bruan were so significant that its prior incarnation might as well have been a century ago.
Nodlon Castle’s big central hall was freshly and thoroughly scrubbed. Flowers, banners, and tablecloths tarted it up in anticipation of its royal guest, Queen Jennifer Drake. Chauncey DeGrandis, the castle’s current lord, lumbered about greeting people as if he were doing the queen a favor by allowing her to visit. I moved away whenever I saw his three-hundred-pound bulk approach, which was easy since his outfit was done entirely in shades of yellow.
At that moment I hid among a group of puffy-sleeved lords and ladies in pointy hats, all of us laughing at some story whose beginning I’d already forgotten. I hoped they didn’t laugh too hard: they had on so much makeup that if they cried, they might erode. And that included some of the men.
I wore no makeup, but in my new suit, fresh haircut, neatly trimmed beard, and expensive manicure, I blended right in; that was the point of a disguise, after all. Since I had no visible female escort, I was set upon like a ham bone tossed among starving dogs. There wasn’t a woman present who didn’t look me over as thoroughly as the weight guesser at a fair, as either a potential son-in-law or possible bedmate when her husband was away. This wasn’t because I was particularly handsome or noticeably wealthy; all that counted was that I was new meat. For those who never suffer from hunger, the only variety comes from taste.
And that was the source of the delicious irony. Long before I decided to become a private sword jockey, I’d grown up in an atmosphere identical to this. The court politics in far-off Arentia might be different in detail, but ass-kissers and sycophants were the same all over. Although I’d left behind that world of pomp and suck-uppery, I now relied on my memories of it to complete my current job. Oh, the delightful paradox.
It was hard not to tease these soft-bellied, overpainted glowworms. Heck, even the men wore too much eye shadow. A lot of them weren’t native to the island; they’d swarmed here from other kingdoms after the end of the wars, bringing gold to shore up the economy in return for status they could never achieve in their home countries. They taught the Grand Bruan nobles all the arts of courtliness, as well as its subdisciplines of gossip, polite treachery, and smiling through your fangs.
I took another drink of the free wine, top-barrel stuff only kings and high priests could afford. My head felt it a bit, and I knew I should slow down, but this wasn’t a dangerous assignment, or a complex one.
“So, Baron Rosselac, what do you think?”
I blinked. I had picked my alias, an anagram of my real name, without too much forethought and kept forgetting to respond to it. I used the arch, proper tone of someone showing off his education and said to the matronly woman, “Oh, I’m sorry, my lady. My thoughts must have been distracted by your overwhelming beauty. What were we discussing?”
In response, she made a noise I assumed was laughter. It sounded more like the defensive chatter of some small rodent. “Oh, Baron Rosselac, you’re making me blush.”
It was hard to tell; she wore enough white face powder to ballast a frigate. “More color to those cheeks will only add to your loveliness,” I said with a slight bow. “Were we still debating the necessity of adequate leisure time for serfs and vassals?”
“Why, no, we finished that discussion ages ago. I asked if you thought Queen Jennifer would wear her crown jewels tonight.”
“Oh, of course she will,” I responded with faux certainty. “Why, just today I heard from my friend Lord Huckleberry—you all know
him,
don’t you?”
They quickly affirmed they, too, were intimately acquainted with my oddly named and entirely fictional best pal.
“Well, he told me in confidence that the queen would be wearing a whole new set of jewelry tonight, some…” I stopped, looked around in mock discretion, and motioned them all in close. The tips of the women’s tall hats tapped against each other above me. “Some of the jewels worn in places where they can’t even be seen by anyone other than the king!”
Handkerchiefs flew to cover heavily painted mouths, and eyes widened beneath eyebrows plucked away and redrawn as thin arches. The men couldn’t repress lascivious grins and brow waggles. “Now, don’t spread it around,” I cautioned. “I wouldn’t want dear Huckleberry to think I’d broken confidence with him.”
“Oh, of course not,” a thin woman assured me.
“Won’t breathe a word,” added a corpulent fellow with bulbous, lavender trousers. Naturally, I knew my little rumor would be spread all over the hall before they tapped the next wine cask. Eventually someone would point out that there
was
no Lord Huckleberry, and a reverse wave of social reprisal would travel back along the gossip channel, with any luck crashing down on the very powder puffs around me. I’d be off the island by then, so I’d miss the ultimate punch line, but I got a warm feeling from setting it in motion.
My eye fell on the big Drake family banner stretched across the wall behind the throne Queen Jennifer would soon occupy. The red dragon emblazoned on it was not snarling or breathing fire, but instead held the island of Grand Bruan protectively in one claw and looked over the room with the steady, even gaze of a concerned but supremely self-confident nanny. The other claw held a sword with distinctive dragon designs along the blade: this was Belacrux, King Marcus Drake’s royal talisman, supposedly unbreakable and invincible. It was probably the best-known single weapon in the world.
Fame had come hard and sudden to Marcus Drake. He’d claimed the crown at fifteen, winning over the other warlords with both charm and force, and used this alliance to drive the mainland invaders back across (or into) the sea. Now Grand Bruan stood as a shining example of the way a kingdom ought to be run, and rulers the world over were being held to Drake’s considerable standard. He’d set the bar pretty high, especially with his insistence on a rule of law that applied to nobles as well as citizens, a clear path to justice for the peasantry, and over a decade of peaceful relationships with the island’s offshore neighbors. Even when they fought each other, they left Grand Bruan alone, because no one wanted Drake breathing fire down his neck.
That titter that made my teeth gnash broke my train of thought as someone else amused my rotund lady friend. It reminded me of the ways Grand Bruan was exactly like every other kingdom: no matter how noble the man at the top or how loyal the citizens at the bottom, those in the middle would always serve their own interests first. Every king learned that truth eventually, even Marcus Drake; and that same truth kept guys like me in business.
It was also the reason for the party I’d crashed. Given that Drake’s reign depended on a network of internal alliances, it made sense that he occasionally gathered his landed-gentry supporters for some free booze and a pep talk. With no legitimate complaint against him, any rebellion would be driven by purely personal malice, and he knew that no one stayed mad at a guy who regularly fed them and got them drunk. The pageantry on such occasions also let him show off his power and warned any potential insurgents that they’d have quite a fight.
Even the great King Marc couldn’t be everywhere at once, though, so today Queen Jennifer would take up the slack. Her grand entrance would mark the beginning of the festivities and mean we could finally get something to eat. I looked forward to her arrival not just because I needed something in my stomach to pad out the wine, but because Jennifer Drake was, by conservative estimate, one of the two or three most beautiful women in the world. I wanted to verify that for myself.
I also kept my eye on the far side of the room, tracking the skulking form of the man who’d brought me here. Kenneth Spinkley, aka the Lord Astamore, leaned against the stone wall. His gaze flitted around the room. Astamore was a skinny, pasty-faced guy with the twitchy demeanor of a ferret. He wore ritzy clothes in the latest Bruanian style, something that did not accent his best qualities. A huge tapestry hung beside him, its life-size depiction of warriors in battle making him look as if he were fleeing the carnage. I could’ve quietly confronted him at any time and done what I was hired to do, but I held off to see who approached him. My client would definitely want to know.
“I heard,” said the spindly man beside me, “that dear Marc never lets Jennifer take her real jewels on these jaunts. He doesn’t trust his subjects in these outlying castles, even this one, which trains all his knights.”
“Does your friend Huckleberry have any insight on that?” the blushing woman asked me.
“I imagine Jennifer does what Jennifer wants,” I pooh-poohed, and batted my eyes for emphasis. When I turned away from the smug chuckles, Astamore had vanished. That figured; the instant I take my eye off the little dung beetle, he finally makes his move. “You’ll excuse me,” I said with a bow, “but I must find the nearest water closet.”
“Do return,” the matron said. “We have so much more to discuss.”
“And you must tell us more about that old rascal Huckleberry!” the man beside her called after me. “I’m dying to know what he’s been up to of late.”
It may have been the “great hall,” but it wasn’t that big a room; where the hell did Astamore go? The main doors were barred and guarded; along the walls were discreet service entrances, and behind the raised throne platform a guarded door led to the private chambers. I trusted that my peripheral vision would’ve alerted me if Astamore had moved toward any visible exit, but it was as if he’d just melted away where he stood.
Trailing muttered
Pardon me’
s, I went to the last spot I’d seen him. I confirmed that he couldn’t have reached any door without my noticing. Finally the obvious occurred to me and I peeked behind the tapestry. Sure enough, there was yet another service doorway.
I slipped behind the cloth, opened the door, and entered the small room. Although not stocked for this particular banquet, it was getting plenty of use. A young lady was bent forward over a table with her huge dress pushed up to her waist. Astamore stood behind her, his frilly pants down around his knees. They had their backs to me—not an appetizing sight—and were so single-minded they didn’t hear me enter.
“Oh, yes!” the girl cried in that fake, ego-stroking way some women use in a clinch. “Lance me, sir!
Lance me!
”
Now I
did
need that water closet. I said, “Let’s hope they wash that table before they use it again.”
It’s always fun interrupting an illicit tryst. Astamore had such a firm grip on the young lady’s waist that when he turned toward me, he inadvertently dragged her off the table, toppling a neat stack of ale mugs onto the stone floor. The lovers fell in a loud tangle of expensive silk, pasty flesh, and shattered crockery.
“Who the hell are you?” Astamore demanded as he struggled to fasten his trousers.
“The name’s LaCrosse, Eddie LaCrosse. I was hired to keep an eye on you, Lord Astamore.”
“Hired?” he exclaimed. He got to his feet and, ignoring the disheveled girl, tried to salvage his dignity. “By whom?”
As if he didn’t know. “Fiona. The
Lady
Astamore.”
He bit back whatever else he was about to say. The girl finally got to her feet, turned to me, and cried, “Oh, thank you, sir! He was compromising my honor!”
“Compromising the hell out of it, from what I saw,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Deborah,” she said, managing a curtsy despite the unmentionables around her ankles. “My father is—”
I nodded toward the door. “Save the damsel act, sweetheart, this has nothing do with you. Hit the flagstones.”
She scurried for the opposite door that led into the kitchens. “Keep your mouth shut, whore!” Astamore cried after her, but his voice cracked on the last word.
We stood quietly for a long moment, the noise of the party audible outside. Finally he said with a gulp, “So did Fiona send you to … kill me?”