Prince Thief (22 page)

The instructions Gailus conveyed were clear: No horses; no carriages; an escort allowed, but numbering no more than fifty; we could keep our swords, except in the royal presence, but could carry no bows. Sensible precautions all – but whether for a conference or an ambush, who could say?

Thus it was that I found myself in the front line of a great throng of men and women packed before the northwestern gate. Behind us were a mixed crowd of Alvantes’s hardier guardsmen, Kalyxis’s bodyguards and a number of Altapasaedan soldiers, in their new and yet already well-worn uniforms. As the last remnants of the barricades were dragged away, as the gates began to part and I found myself edged forward by a sudden press of bodies from behind, I tried to imagine what a real army would look like by comparison.

The gates opened wider, the pressure against my back increased – and suddenly I was stumbling into the gloom of the gatehouse. I was vaguely aware of Malekrin to my left, and another man – Alvantes? – to my right.

Then we were through, into the light, into the slum known as the Suburbs – and into the territory that was now our enemy’s.

It had been one thing to know that an army was camped on the city’s doorstep, that nothing but stones and mortar separated me from thousands of bloodthirsty enemies. It was another thing entirely to see that horde with my own eyes.

The Suburbs had been evacuated days before: at first according to personal discretion, as its inhabitants came to realise that being between the King and the city had the potential to be bad for their health; then later, in the case of those too foolhardy or desperate to reach the obvious conclusion, with the encouragement of Mounteban’s soldiers. Some refugees had been allowed into the city, on the condition that they earned their keep by aiding in its defence. Others had decamped for who knew where, fleeing into the hills, or across the river in their shabby rowboats and coracles.

By the time the King had arrived, there would have been no one left but a few stragglers and strays: the mad, the lost and the severely unlucky. I didn’t want to think about what might have happened to them – for the Suburbs as I’d known it was no more.

Faced with the question of how to camp an army in the middle of a slum, the King and his generals had come to the obvious conclusion: use what they could and obliterate whatever they couldn’t. The buildings nearest the walls had been left alone, for they provided good cover. Beyond the reach of bowshot, however, the flimsy structures were simply gone, as though some monumental storm had swept through and carried its debris with it.

At first we’d marched through the remnants of the Suburbs, and aside from the sentries watching our passage from each shadowed doorway and alley, it had almost been possible to pretend the place was as it always had been. Then we came to the end of a crooked street between ramshackle walls and, abrupt as if a line had been carved into the ground, the remnants of the Suburbs ended and the camp of our enemy began.

Beyond that point, there was nothing to see but tents and fighting men. Everyone had come out to see the ambassadors of their foes, and to mock, perhaps, at how paltry our strength was; or else, more likely, the King’s first gambit was to show us how hopelessly outmatched we were, how badly a failure at the discussion table would cost us. For entering the enemy’s territory was like stepping into a sea: no sooner had the last of our number passed the edge of the camp then their lines closed around us and we were submerged.

Those around me, however, were showing no signs of fear: not Estrada, not Malekrin, and certainly not Alvantes or Mounteban. It was as though they were unaware of the hostile soldiery clustered so close to either side. And I was surprised to find that there was something infectious about their bravery; that despite my terror I was keeping my head up, my eyes fixed stubbornly ahead.

It helped that our destination was both clear and magnificent; it almost made it easy to focus upon that instead of the walls of meat and metal hemming us in. The King’s tent, dominating the centre of the camp, could only be described as palatial. It was impossible to conceive that it had been brought here and erected; for though its walls were of cloth, it looked as though it could only have been constructed through the months-long labour of architects and builders. It had wings. It had towers. Pennants flew from a dozen poles. Many a lord or lady in the South Bank would have traded their mansion for it without a second thought.

There were six guards on the entrance, an outstretched pavilion itself as large as a good-sized cottage, and as we approached they hoisted their pikes to their shoulders, in what might as easily have been a threat or a salute. “You’ll leave your escort here,” one said, “and your weapons too.”

We’d been expecting that, of course, and no one commented as they piled their swords, Alvantes, Estrada and Mounteban going first and then their followers in a long line afterwards – no one, that was, until it came to the turn of Kalyxis and her bodyguards. The beauty of the short, curved scabbard at her hip, all set with ebony and polished bone, did nothing to make me think that the blade within wasn’t sharp as any razor. Her men’s weapons were plainer and larger, altogether less subtle instruments; but not one of them made any move to discard their armaments with the others.

“I trust you’ll be disarming also?” Kalyxis asked the sentry who’d give the order.

Though he scowled at her convincingly, I could tell he was thrown by the question. “We are protecting his highness King Panchessa.”

“I am a queen of Shoan,” Kalyxis replied, “and these men are
my
protectors.”

“I have my orders,” the sentry told her. He clearly didn’t like the way she was looking at him, for his eyes kept trying to dart from under her gaze. “No one goes before his highness armed.”

“My men have their orders also. It’s their duty to keep me safe.”

The sentry’s calm was rapidly disintegrating; I didn’t like to think what might have happened if Alvantes hadn’t stepped between them. “Kalyxis, give up your weapon now or my men will escort you back to the city,” he said roughly. “This meeting is for the sake of Altapasaeda and you’re here on my sufferance.”

Kalyxis gave Alvantes a smile that would have frozen fire. “Your sufferance?” she asked.

But Alvantes wasn’t as easily cowed as the sentry. “Precisely,” he said. “So choose quickly.”

The smile twisted a fraction. “Of course,” Kalyxis said. “I was merely seeking clarification.”

She drew her short scimitar, held it long enough that its wicked edge caught the morning light, and then dropped it upon the pile. Her men unstrapped both scabbards and swords, as everyone else had done, and added them to the summit of the heap.

By then the sentry had recovered his composure. He pulled on a silken cord hanging near to his hand, and via some hidden mechanism the nearer flap of the entrance furled up. Stepping in first he said, “This way,” as if this really was a palace and without his guidance we might have blundered off in the wrong direction.

Though no one seemed to have noticed I had it, I dropped my knife belt onto the weapons pile anyway, before slipping into line. The party that followed the sentry was significantly smaller than the one that had just traversed the Pasaedan camp, for Alvantes and Mounteban had both signalled their escorts to wait outside as instructed; it surprised me not at all that only Kalyxis had chosen to keep her personal guard with her. For my part, I stayed close to Malekrin; he might be the notorious Bastard Prince, son of Moaradrid and grandson of the formidable woman pacing before us, but I couldn’t help feeling that he was almost as out of place there as I was.

We passed through two rooms: first the entrance, decorated with shields and armour mounted upon frames, and then a sort of conference hall, with long tables and shelves lined with neatly piled scrolls. It took an effort of concentration to remember that I was still inside a tent, and that tent lay within what had been the Altapasaedan suburbs less than a week ago. The third room dwarfed the first two – but it wasn’t that that made me stare. Rather, it was the shock of familiarity. For the space we’d arrived in was clearly modelled on the audience chamber from the palace in Pasaeda, where I’d first encountered Panchessa. It was hexagonal, with curtained apertures in every wall, and though the central plinth from its sister-room in the Ans Pasaedan capital was missing, there
was
a throne – perhaps even the same throne, and my mind boggled at the thought of how it might have been dragged all the way here.

On the throne sat King Panchessa. If I’d been hoping he’d look pleased to see us, I was disappointed.

Everyone around me was falling to their knees, so I followed suit. Expecting a hard earth floor, I was startled when my forehead met a giving surface. With my view reduced to ground level, I saw that every speck of dirt had been hidden beneath luxuriant rugs, each as lovely as any I’d seen. You could say what you liked about Panchessa, but the man knew how to travel in style.

Then Panchessa said, in a voice both deeper and harsher than I remembered, “Rise all, and face your king.”

Grateful to stop staring at the mazy design of red and gold beneath my nose, I stumbled to my feet. Malekrin and I were over on the right side of the gathering, and Panchessa was facing ahead, to where Alvantes, Estrada, Mounteban and Kalyxis stood close together. While his attention was elsewhere, I studied the King’s face for signs of the sickness Gailus had spoken of. Might it be that traits I’d taken for evidence of bad character the first time I’d encountered Panchessa were in fact the symptoms of a more transient corruption? Could it be that the reason his deep-set eyes glittered so unnervingly, that his thick lips were set so grimly above his bloated chin, was that he wrestled with torments his position forced him always to hide?

Or perhaps both were true. Perhaps the King was a cruel, selfish man whose flaws were aggravated now by distemper eating at him from the inside. That was what my instinct told me, that and to not trust Panchessa – for I was certain beyond doubt that whatever he’d said, whatever agreement had been made, we were in dreadful danger. A man like him might have good intentions one moment, might even intend peace, but he could be relied on for exactly as long as it took some stab of pain or whim of vindictiveness to change his mind.

While I’d studied him, Panchessa’s own gaze had been roving over the assembly beside me. Abruptly, as if we’d arrived in the middle of a conversation, he said, “Some of you I know,” (and I couldn’t but notice how his eyes snared on Kalyxis,) “and some of you are unfamiliar to me. But all of you are my citizens, under my law. Thus it follows that by raising your hands against me, all of you are traitors. The city of Altapasaeda is mine and you have barred its doors to me.”

Only then did I wonder if our delegation had decided in advance just who would do the talking – for it occurred to me, far too late, that the wrong choice of speaker would doom us all. I was relieved when it was Estrada who stepped forward and not Alvantes or Mounteban. “Your highness,” she said, “there’s been a terrible misunderstanding here.”

“A king does not misunderstand,” said Panchessa. Now that I knew he was Moaradrid’s father, the similarities between them were unmistakeable; and it was hard to say whether Panchessa’s aloof indifference was less daunting than his son’s barely checked madness had been.

Before Estrada could reply, to my horror, Mounteban had pushed forward. “What the lady Estrada means to say is that the only traitor here is me. I was the one who dared to think that Altapasaeda could stand alone. It was Mayor Estrada and Captain Alvantes who stood against me, and in your name rather than their own. They have shown me how wrong I was, so if my death is the price of peace, I willingly accept it. I brought this crisis on Altapasaeda. Let me be the one to end it.”

“No!” Estrada clutched Mounteban’s arm, hard enough to turn him towards her. “Absolutely not, Castilio. Your highness, Castilio Mounteban has no right to speak for our party, or to make offers without consulting us.”

My attention had been so taken up with Panchessa that I’d hardly noticed there were other figures standing in the shadows behind him. I’d taken them for guards, and it was only when a familiar voice burst from the gloom that I realised how mistaken I’d been. “Rights? Offers? Is this how you dare speak to your king?”

It was Ludovoco – who I’d last seen as we fled the palace, who had felt the need to deliver the King’s declaration of war with his own hands all those days ago. And it was only then, seeing how very close he stood behind Panchessa’s shoulder, exactly as he had at the royal court in Pasaeda, that it occurred to me to wonder what part one militant commander of the Crown Guard might have played in the events of recent weeks.

Could Ludovoco have taken the notion of defending the Crown a leap too far? Or have forgotten his duties altogether in favour of a personal agenda? If Panchessa was ill, unstable, distressed by the death of one son and by the other raising an army against him, it wouldn’t have been difficult to manipulate him.

As the toll of Ludovoco’s words died away, I recognised someone else amongst the shadowed figures who I now realised must be the King’s generals and advisors. Near Ludovoco stood Ondeges, captain of Altapasaeda’s Palace Guard – and unlike Ludovoco, he didn’t look happy to be there. In fact, he seemed every bit as discomforted by his colleague’s words as Mounteban and Estrada did. I thought of what Gailus had said, that Ondeges had been our advocate in the royal camp, and seeing the anxiety in his face I could readily believe it.

But it was Ludovoco who stood at the King’s side. It was Ludovoco who had the gall to pronounce in his place. And even as I thought it, Panchessa raised a hand to silence his errant commander – but that was all he did. Ludovoco had dared to speak on behalf of his king, and his punishment was not flogging but hand-waving.

“Castilio Mounteban,” Panchessa said, “we have heard of you. A felon with notions of grandeur.”

I’d never known Mounteban to let an insult go, not from anyone. Yet it was with perfect serenity that he replied, “Just so, your highness. Whatever has happened in Altapasaeda, whatever has been done, it was my crime, committed for my own ends. Being a simple thief, I thought I could steal a city from under a king’s nose and get away with it.”

Had Mounteban really just described himself as a
simple thief
? It was like hearing a mountain lion claim to be a toothless old mouser. What was his angle here? I couldn’t believe that Mounteban would do anything without one, but I was struggling to see what he imagined he could gain here.

“And now,” said Panchessa, “with my armies at the gates, you see the error of your ways?”

“Exactly,” said Mounteban. “I was a fool.”

To Mounteban’s and my surprise both, Panchessa stood up then, started with slow steps to cross the space between them. Was it my imagination or did he limp a little? He was dressed in a heavy robe, but within its loose, concealing folds I felt sure he was carrying his weight wrongly.

Panchessa stopped halfway, just far enough away that Mounteban couldn’t possibly reach him before Ludovoco or someone else from the King’s faction intervened. “A fool?” he said. “Is that what you are, Castilio Mounteban? Or, better yet, tell me this: do you also take me for an imbecile?”

Mounteban flinched as if stung. “I don’t understand, your highness.”