Rafe winced. It did make him look the fool, but if it kept Roland from finding out about Tristan’s role in the antimachinist movement, he’d take whatever punishment his superiors meted out to him.
“Here.” Wil pulled out a damp linen cloth from a pouch at his belt. An herbal aroma rose into the air. “Put that against your eyes. It will help with the light sickness.” Tristan was still having trouble controlling his limbs, so Rafe tied the linen around the prince’s head, covering his eyes. Tristan pulled his knees up to his chest and pressed his face into his kneecaps.
“Stay here, you two,” said Wil. “When we’re sure that there is no one around to identify you or pose any danger, we’ll come back to take you to the palace. You’ll have to explain yourselves to the king, and I suggest you’d better work at presenting your story in more reasonable terms. What a scorched mess, Rafe! I’d have never thought—” He broke off, shook his head. Then he called to Swanson and Small to keep guard, and left.
After a while, Tristan said in a small voice, “I’m sorry, Rafe.”
Rafe laid a hand briefly on his cousin’s head. “Yes, it’s a thrice-fouled and plagued mess you’re in, but we may yet get you out of it.”
Even if Wil forevermore thinks I’m an irresponsible idiot who nearly got the heir to the throne killed.
That, more than anything else, stung.
Wil returned with the all-clear, and Rafe cupped a hand under Tristan’s elbow and helped him up. Tristan tossed away his blindfold. Surrounded by palace guards, they were hurried through an empty shop—Rafe thought it was a chain worker’s, though it had been kept dark to make it harder to see the prince—and out into a side street, guarded at both ends. A double chair waited, with four bearers to carry it. A guardsman stood holding aloft a shaded magelight. Its cold green light puddled into the street.
“Get in, and quickly,” said Wil, slapping his thigh with his gloves in uncharacteristic nervousness.
A guardsman came down the alley, struggling with a smaller figure that writhed and tried to claw his face. “Found another one, Captain!”
“Take him away. Put him with the other prisoners,” called Wil. “Don’t come down here.”
The prisoner, with one last heroic effort, kicked at the inside of the guardsman’s leg. The man cried out, and his captive twisted out of his hold. Everyone moved at once, but they were too slow, as if they were moving through honey.
Mahali, tear-stained, angry and disheveled, burst into the small globe of light. “You brainwashed ass-licking
lackeys
! Have you no idea how you’re being used and manipulated and…” Her gaze fell on Tristan, and her mouth dropped open. Wil and Rafe both stepped forward to shield Tristan, but it was too late. Mahali had recognized him.
“You! Traitor! Tris! How could you? I-we trusted you!” Mahali looked dazed and shocked, suddenly small and vulnerable, undone by this as nothing else had managed to do. She barely noticed when a guardsman grabbed her shoulders.
Wil started. “Tristan? What’s all this about?”
Mahali burst out, “I don’t know what honeyed words he’s spoken, but he’s no better than us. No, he’s worse, a twice-turncoat! He betrayed you to us, and when the going was rough, he betrayed us to you.”
Tristan looked sick, greenish and swaying in the ghostly light. “It isn’t… isn’t…” Rafe grabbed him to keep from collapsing.
Wil looked as though he’d swallowed one of his own stinging gas rounds. “This is between you and your father, Tristan. Save your words and your breath. Take them both to the palace under a doubled escort.”
Tristan made a noise that was a moan. Rafe whispered fiercely in his ear, “Just do as he says.”
Mahali said, “Tristan… father… palace? You’re the
Prince
?” Her eyes widened. Then she started to laugh, wild hysterical laughter, gusts of it that slapped their faces and echoed in Rafe’s ears, long after the chair had whisked them from the side street where the heir to the crown had been unmasked as a traitor.
“
T
RISTAN
BETRAYED US
? M
Y
son
?” whispered Roland, deflating like a punctured balloon. All the color had fled his face, leaving it pale, sagging, and
old.
Rafe had to look away; it was worse than seeing his king stripped naked.
Wil, who had made his report in wooden tones, stared at the wall-hangings above the king’s head. He did not say anything.
“It wasn’t like that,” said Tristan, white-faced himself, trembling like a weak sapling. “It wasn’t like that.”
Roland seemed too dazed to hear. “My son,” he said, slowly, wonderingly, “feeding information to base traitors—nay, haters of mankind! My son, my heir, the next Machinist, using his knowledge to destroy that which is the heart and blood of this entire city. This entire state.” The words fell like stones.
“Father—” began Tristan.
Roland turned on him, eyes ablaze. He strode over to Tristan and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Tell me it is not true! Tell me that the antimachinists are lying, tell me that my faithful Wil here is false, tell me that you were on some foolish escapade to infiltrate the traitors.” He punctuated each anguished
tell me!
with a shake of his son’s shoulders.
“I-you’re hurting me, Father,” said Tristan, trying to twist away from the king’s vicious grip.
Roland stared into his son’s eyes, then with a half-sob, half-snarl, thrust Tristan away from him. Tristan staggered back, and only Rafe’s steadying hand kept him from falling.
“Traitorous brat!” spat Roland. “I could wring your neck with my bare hands, and save us all the humiliation of your public execution! That would be a kindness to your mother.” Tristan scrambled back from the gleam in Roland’s eyes.
Rafe put the prince behind him. “Sire, please! He is young, foolish. He made a mistake.”
“You! What have you to do with all this?” Roland glared at Rafe. “Did you lead my son astray?”
Tristan, high-voiced and hysterical, spoke from behind Rafe’s shoulder. “He said not to tell you, he said that it was all right for me to experiment, he said that I could think as my conscience led me!”
An icy hand squeezed Rafe’s heart. For an instant, he was tempted to turn around and smack Tristan hard. Reading antimachinist tracts was one thing, scheming to sabotage public works and kill several citizens into the bargain was entirely another.
“I trusted you!” bellowed Roland. “I trusted you to keep my son straight, and all the while you’ve been feeding him poison—”
“Sire,” broke in Leonius, who had been at the fringes of this highly uncomfortable scene. He wheeled forward. “I’m sure Rafe would not have countenanced such a thing. Rafe understands that young men are curious about dissident opinions. He understands that to know one’s enemy’s position is a good thing. Tristan may have misunderstood how much leeway he could safely take, he must’ve started off as merely curious, only to be drawn in by subtle wiles and arts—possibly drugs were used. I beseech you to consider the folly of youth, Sire!”
Some of Rafe’s tension drained away. Tristan gave an audible sigh. Leonius was defending them, Leonius was a trusted counselor; the king would have to listen.
Roland’s gaze darted from Leonius to Tristan to Rafe, to back again. “I remember being a young man, Leo, and I remember the tricks we got up to. Nonetheless, the worst of our tricks was never on the same level as treason.” His tones were clipped. “We shall see if these two are as misguided and naïve as you paint them. Everything will have to come out at a trial. Even the prince is not above the king’s justice.”
“Of course, Sire. I have had men search their rooms for any evidence of their motives,” said Leonius. “I’m sure that we will find that this was all innocuous curiosity gone horribly wrong. No doubt the antimachinists misrepresented themselves to the prince.”
The rest of Leo’s speech was lost on Rafe. His attention was caught by a guardsman entering and crossing the room to speak to Wil. The guardsman looked even grimmer than the rest of the men in the room. He held some papers in his hand as if they were rats, and his tone and gestures were urgent. His gaze kept drifting towards Rafe, and the expression in it was one of loathing.
Prickles went up and down Rafe’s spine. His sense of danger, honed keen in recent months, caused him to shift away from the prince, edge towards the doorway at his back. His hand slid into his pocket and gripped his lighter.
Wil’s face resembled nothing so much as a stone mask, created by some uninspired sculptor and forever fixed in bland remoteness. He marched over to the King and Leonius. “Permission to speak, Sire.”
“Granted.” The King eyed him. “What have you discovered?”
Rafe noted more guards quietly filling the doorway. Rafe tucked his other hand into his pocket and teased out the firecracker’s cap.
“My men conducted a thorough search of Lord Rafael Grenfeld’s rooms.” Wil might’ve been an automation for all the expression in his voice. Would his face crack with the strain of moving his lips? “They found coded letters from the Blackstone ambassador, hidden under his mattress. We have long known the cipher, and the letters promise Grenfeld substantial moneys in return for secret information and for his help in fomenting internal troubles in Oakhaven.” Rafe’s heart fought against the bands squeezing it, fluttering and beating at his ribcage as if it would escape. “Specifically, his orders were to remove Prince Tristan somehow—making it look accidental.” All eyes in the room were on Rafe.
Tristan stepped away from his cousin. “Y-you were… to…
kill
me?’ he asked, eyes wide and hurt.
“It’s all a lie. A scorched lie,” said Rafe, through clenched jaws. Tension made it hard to speak.
“They also found correspondence from the antimachinists, and herbs that are used to manipulate minds,” went in Wil inexorably. “The antimachinists admit to having received funds from a high-placed secret donor, one who went by the name of Cavalier. Their story matched the one revealed in these letters.”
“It’s a setup,” said Rafe, trying not to look guilty or a threat.
Keep calm, keep cool.
“Why would I go to all the bother of hauling Tris out of that antimachinist hole, if I meant to see him dead?”
The King looked at Rafe as if he were a pebble blocking up his Machine, then turned to his uncle. “Leo?”
Leonius’ head was sunken, chin almost touching his chest. His great voice was shaken and hollow. “Recently, he has pressed me most unusually for unfettered access to the Renat Keys in my possession. I don’t know what to say, Your Majesty.”
“Uncle!” It came out pleading, before Rafe could stop himself.
Roland ignored the interruption. “I also understand that Grenfeld’s performance of late has been unsatisfactory. An apparent failure to meet with an informer. Mysterious dealings with a woman of unknown allegiance. Not to mention Ironheart burned down while he was on his mission.” The sneer in his voice made Rafe clench his fists.
“I am forced to consider that there might be some truth to these allegations.” Leonius’ voice came from far away, weighty and slow.
“Yes,” said Tristan, squeaky with astonishment. “Rafe-he made me walk out with him in the Hour of Dead, when we saw the antimachinists that first time. Before we returned to the palace, he took me to a tavern and bought me a drink, to brace me, he said. I felt fuzzy, then. He must have others involved, though! He can’t have been the only one poisoning my food and drink!” He turned his head from side to side, as if conspirators were lurking in the shadows, with “I Did It!” emblazoned on their foreheads.
Rafe felt oddly detached, like a spectator at a tragic play, watching while his whole life, his name, and his reputation cracked and broke and fell to pieces all around him.
“We will get to the bottom of this,” said Roland. “In the meantime, take Grenfeld to the Citadel.”
The Citadel. Levels of prison blocks, all underground. He could be forgotten there, buried under stone and rock, or meet with an accident. It was easy enough to bribe a guard to look the other way while someone added poison to a prisoner’s lunch.
Wil nodded to his guardsmen. Rafe ducked behind some statuary, and pulled out the firecracker and lighter.
“Watch out!” cried Tristan. “He has…”
The lighter snapped, a spark leapt to the top of the fuse, and everyone covered their faces as Rafe lobbed the firecracker into the middle of the room. Sparks rained down. Amidst the cries and orders of “Get him!”, Rafe bulldozed Tristan out of the way and ran through a doorway into the rest of Roland’s private rooms.
Behind him, Roland shouted, “He’ll never get out that way! Send guards outside, under the windows.”
That’s what you think.
Rafe had played in the palace as a child, when Roland had been a newly-crowned harassed young king. It was amazing what sorts of things an adventurous child with lots of time in his pocket managed to find.
He wrenched open the door to a closet—even kings needed somewhere to keep their bed linens. The closet was the size of a Blackstone drone’s bedroom—small, without windows, and unlit. The only difference was that it consisted of rows and rows of shelves, and smelled of camphor and lavender. Rafe shut the door behind him and dragged a linen press to block it. A stuffy warm darkness settled over him like a muffler, dampening the shouts outside.
Rafe stumbled over to the far end of the closet, and swept piles of crisp lace-edged pillowcases and sheets off the shelves. His searching fingers found the tarp tacked up for insulation, worked at a corner, and pulled it loose from the wall. There was a grate, covering a large disused vent, right behind it and yes, the screws were still loose, just as he had left them more than fifteen years ago. Rafe breathed out a sigh of relief. He would’ve looked very foolish trying to unscrew the grate with his pocket knife attachment when the guardsmen burst into the linen closet.
Rafe was no longer as small as he used to be. Two strong tugs brought the shelving out of the wall, and the screws fell to the floor with small tinkles. The door handle rattled, someone hammered and called out as Rafe pulled out the grate. The linen press was not going to hold the determined guardsmen back for much longer. He flung the grate aside with a crash and threw himself feet first into the vent.