Split Heirs (16 page)

“Yeah. See you later!”

With that, Arbol departed, closing the door carefully behind herself.

Wulfrith snatched off the ridiculous hood he wore, and began prowling the stacks.

The books on magic were very tempting, but magic was not what was wanted, here at the palace. The prince apparently wanted adventure stories, or maybe books on combat or horsemanship; for himself, Wulfrith remembered that he was supposed to try to learn something about the business of being a prince.

He wasn't sure just where to start looking. There was so
much
here!

It was then that he noticed a small alcove at the back, one that was dimmer and more shaded than the rest of the room, half-hidden behind a particularly complex tangle of shelving. Curious, he picked up a candle and went to investigate.

At first glance the alcove was ordinary enough
—
three walls were lined with books, while a dusty table and threadbare upholstered chair stood in the center. Rather fewer of the spines had visible titles than the average, perhaps, but otherwise, Wulfrith saw nothing special about them.

Still, it was a bit cozier and less daunting than the remainder of the Royal Library, so Wulfrith decided to check out a few of the books. He put the candle on the table and studied the nearest shelf.

One title immediately caught his eye. Fortune was with him, he decided, as he pulled
The Prince and the Pretty Peasant
from its place. He blew off the worst of the dust, then opened it carefully.

There was a finely etched frontispiece. Wulfrith's eyes widened. He sat down suddenly on the chair, ignoring the cloud of dust and mildew that sprayed up on impact, and began turning pages. Choosing a paragraph at random, Wulfrith read:

“Oh, my Lord, the Wench gasped, I grow faint, for ne'er before have I glimpsed One so Large! Certes, I fear that such as That could make me great Harm, but by the Blessed Goddess Concupiscia, I swear, 'twould perchance be Well Worth It. And with those words, she laid her back upon the Couch, her Skirts flung up to her Thighs.”

Wulfrith looked at the illustration on the facing page.

This was a long way from spells or stories of heroic virtue, but there was certainly a fascination to it. Wulfrith saw readily that this might not teach him much about being a prince, but still, he thought it would be very educational indeed. Quickly, he flipped back to the beginning and settled down for a long read.

Chapter Seventeen

Prince Arbol leaped from the saddle and swaggered over to the fifth newly fallen foe of the afternoon. “Had enough, Pentstemon?”

“I had enough about three hours ago,” came the cranky reply. “What's gotten into you, my lord?”

Arbol just laughed and offered the fallen Companion a hand up. “You know I've always liked a friendly contest.”

“Friendly!” Pentstemon spat out two teeth and part of his horse's tail, which had somehow found its way into his mouth when Arbol's sideways blow with the practice lance sent him tumbling heels over head off the animal's rump. “If that was friendly, I'd hate to have you for an enemy.”

The prince leered. “Exactly. That's what Dad says is the whole idea behind kingship: Scare your allies into loyalty and your enemies into line.”

Pentstemon shook his head. Then he thought maybe he'd better not. Too many things besides his teeth felt loose and ready to give way. He was one of the Prince's favorite Companions
—
a corps of likely young men, all of the purest Old Hydrangean blood, all specially selected by Queen Artemisia herself.

(King Gudge didn't meddle much with the prince's upbringing. He had been heard to say during many a royal “council meeting” that he didn't much care what his queen did about bringing up Arbol so long as the prince picked up a proper measure of the traditional Gorgorian Three Bs: Beer-guzzling, Bashing-in-of-selected-skulls, and Bastard-begetting. “Otherwise I'll have to kill him.”)

Later on, after Arbol had dished out enough “friendly” wallopings for all of his Companions to have decided en masse that they had to leave him and go do their math homework (math homework was always done in the palace kitchens, where there were plenty of school supplies), Pentstemon held forth on the subject of the prince's new friskiness.

“I don't know what it is,” he told the other Companions, “but there's something odd about him lately.”

His friends were too busy studying the mysteries of Addition by seeing who could convince the harried kitchen-wenches to bring them another keg of beer. (“We've only had two, darling, and if we have just one more that'll just make four. No one'll notice.”)

Only young Salix felt like discussing the matter. (He'd had a bit too much to drink and had just demonstrated a Subtraction exercise all over the kitchen floor by taking away one lunch from one stomach.) Looking very pale and fragile he asked, “How d'you mean, odd? 'Shalf Gorgorian. Can' get mushodder'n
that
.”

“No, no, that's not it.” By this time Pentstemon's head felt secure enough for him to risk a dubious shake. “I can't put my finger on it.”

“Be'er no' try.” Salix giggled. “Cut'm ri' off, Arbol would.” He made a vicious slicing motion with his hand. “Kaplowie!” He stared at his hand then, surprised that it had made such an inappropriate sound effect. “No. No' kaplowie. I mean
skoosh
! Uh. Maybe I don'. Anyway.” He shrugged and toppled over backward.

“What's the matter with
him
?” asked Prince Arbol, joining the keg crowd.

“The usual,” Pentstemon replied, a little puzzled by the question.
Everyone
knew about Salix. His drinking was as regular as clockwork
—
more regular, since the night King Gudge got it into his head to dissect every clock in the palace. Busy councilors had been known to tell the time by whether or not the lad was still standing, and if he was down by measuring the length of the shadow cast by his nose.

“Is he drunk?” asked the prince, kneeling beside the fallen Companion.

Pentstemon frowned. He wondered whether he'd gotten more than his teeth knocked loose in that last bout with Arbol. “You don't
know
, my lord?”

The prince seemed to rouse himself from some sort of waking dream. “Well, of course I
know
he's drunk!” Arbol leaped up and strode back and forth beside the gently snoring body. “I just meant shouldn't we
do
something for him is all!”

Pentstemon smiled. This was more like it! Last time the prince had found Salix in this state, he had arranged an inspirational tableau. On waking from his stupor, the victim found himself wearing a chamberpot on his head, hollowed-out pumpkins on his feet, and a frilly lady's undergarment just barely covering his body. There was also a prize Hydrangean hog sharing his bed. Only Prince Arbol's inability to find a voice-throwing mountebank in time for Salix's awakening prevented the beast from asking, “Was it good for you, too?”

“By all means, Highness,” Pentstemon said, offering Arbol free access to poor, unwitting Salix. “You get started, I'll bring the hog.”

“Hog?” the prince repeated, somewhat distracted. “Hogs are for swamp-cough. This won't take but a moment.” He knelt beside Salix and passed one hand over the lad's body. His fingers twitched and wiggled strangely.

Salix's eyelids fluttered, then lifted sharply. With a loud war-whoop, he sprang to his feet, thumped his chest, took several deep breaths and leap-frogged his way over every kitchen servant until he vanished up the stairs.

Two of the remaining Companions ran after him. They returned shortly to report: “He's galloped out over the drawbridge and into the fields. Last we saw of him, he was catching rabbits.”

“Well, a little hunting's good for clearing the head,” Pentstemon said.

“He wasn't on a horse,” said one.

“He was catching them in his teeth,” said the second.

Penstemon and all the other Companions stared hard at their prince. “What did
I
do?” Arbol demanded.

“That's what we'd like to know,” Pentstemon replied.

Before Arbol could reply, a soft, sweet voice came purring out of the shadows. “Now, now, boys, we can't have you fighting down here. It upsets the cooks. When they're upset, they make mistakes; untasty mistakes. You
do
know how our beloved king hates untasty mistakes. And you know what he does to the cooks who make them. Good help is so hard to keep, these days, especially when it's been minced into very small pieces.”

A dark, voluptuous woman in Gorgorian ceremonial dress emerged from the archway leading to the banquet-hall stairs. Around her neck she wore the heavy gold seal of the King's Foreteller, the only office of high responsibility that the Gorgorians allowed a woman to hold. (Gorgorian men might disdain magic as a weak and silly woman's plaything, but it was handy to have one of the ladies around who could accurately tell the king what he'd be getting for his dinner a few days in advance, so he knew what to kill
—
the wild game or the cook.)

Pentstemon felt his mouth go dry. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that this woman had affected all of the other Companions in the same way. Even Prince Arbol was licking slightly parted lips in a nervous manner. Those Companions who were older than the prince knew just why the lady's presence was making them sweat. Those of an age with the prince, or younger, didn't know why, but they surely did think it would be fun to find out.

The Gorgorian woman drifted across the kitchen floor like a cloud of musky smoke. Her eye lit upon the prince and she smiled. “Ah, there you are, Your Highness,” she breathed. “I've been hoping to find you alone.”

“But I'm not…” The prince swallowed his own words of protest as she leaned forward just enough to tilt her low-cut neckline to an attractive angle. “Oo,” said the prince.

The lady's smile widened for a moment, then snapped into a bud of annoyance. “I
said
I was hoping to find him
alone
.” Her cool gaze swept the circle of lip-licking Companions. It was a very meaningful gaze. All of a sudden, Pentstemon seemed to recall wild rumors about how Gorgorian women were supposed to be able to perform magic
—
not just fortune-telling. He was too young to remember the Old Hydrangean wizards and their showy, useless spells. All he knew about magic was what he'd read in tale books, and in these the magic was always used to turn people into things. Green things. Slimy things. Things that went “Kneedeep! Kneedeep!” in bogs.

“We were just going, Lady Ubri,” he said hastily. Apparently his fellow-Comapnions had read the same books as Pentstemon, because they all fled the kitchen at once.

Lady Ubri's smile returned as she watched them scamper. It was amusing to toy with these pathetic Hydrangean puppies. Unfortunately it was almost too easy to do. Ubri always enjoyed a challenge
—
but she was a very poor loser. When she looked back down to where Prince Arbol still sat on the kitchen floor, where he'd remained ever since Salix's remarkable recovery, she was painfully reminded of her biggest
—
and only
—
loss.

Damn! How could Gudge have been such a fool as to marry that prissy, petal-soft Hydrangean princess when he could have had
her
? Ubri did not understand much about politics and dynastic marriages, but she knew what she didn't like.

She didn't like Artemisia.

She did like power.

It was a bitter memory indeed, learning that Gudge preferred the pale, golden doll-queen. More bitter, because he'd told her all about it by yanking the sheet out from under her and saying, “You'd better get out of here, uh, what'syourname, Uka? I'm getting married in the morning. Come back day after tomorrow.”

Well, she
hadn't
come back, not in
that
capacity. She remained in the palace, hoping Gudge would come to his senses. After awhile she understood that Gudge had no senses to come to. By this time, Artemisia had given birth to the royal heir, Prince Arbol. As day followed day and Ubri jealously watched her rival's child grow up, Ubri's rage grew too.

Then one day, it stopped. For the first time in years, the Gorgorian noblewoman smiled.

The prince was growing up! And a grown-up prince will some day be a king. And a king needs…

“A queen,” she whispered to her self. “Arbol's queen, if not Gudge's.” She glanced at her reflection in one of the palace mirrors. She might be old enough to be Arbol's mother, but you couldn't guess it by looking at her. The years had been very good to Ubri. Stay-at-home Hydrangean customs were so much kinder to the skin than the old Gorgorian way of tramping across mountains, rivers, steppes and such, all with the merciless sun beating down and ruining a girl's complexion. Ubri's face was dark, but not leathery, her black hair still silky, her generous curves enhanced by the healthier diet available to her since the conquest and settlement of Hydrangea.

“I really owe a lot to these people,” she mused. “When I am their queen, I shall try not to slaughter too many of them right away.”

Now that she was a woman with a plan, Ubri was happy. “The way to a prince's heart is through his stomach…and points south,” she said. She set out to put that plan into action right away, by cozying up to the prince every chance she got. It wasn't easy. He wasn't often alone, and when he was, he just didn't seem interested. Arbol was always charging around the palace, scattering guardsmen left and right, or else romping through his military lessons. Ubri knew you can't seduce what you can't catch.

There was the time he'd gone off to war with his royal father and no one had seen him for months. Ubri figured on taking advantage of that trip. She'd disguised herself as a man, hoping snag the prince on the march. He'd be alone, homesick, maybe a little frightened. She'd be the only woman for miles around
—
the minor army of camp-followers didn't count, as far as she was concerned. She would reveal herself to him and let Nature take care of the rest. If Arbol had a single drop of Gudge's blood in him, he'd do her job for her.

It was a lovely plan and Ubri was sure it would've worked, except for some reason the prince had his very own tent and allowed no one else to enter, not even his page. Something to do with royal Hydrangean modesty, rumor claimed. When Arbol did emerge, Ubri managed to sidle up and whisper, “Your Highness, I am in truth a woman in man's disguise. I have done this dangerous thing
—
following you into the teeth of battle
—
for love of you.”

“You're a
girl?
” the prince responded, eyeing her from top to toes. He laughed. “A girl disguised as a man! That's funny. What a great game, dressing up like the opposite sex. I'm going to have to tell the Companions all about it. We've got to try it ourselves, some day, and see if we can get away with it. Will you lend me a dress when we get home?” He tipped her three silver Gorgorian
gexos
and went off to kill some more enemies. Ubri was fit to be tied.

Which was why she was so pleasantly surprised now. Arbol was staring at her. She knew that breed of stare; she'd gotten it many times over the years, from many men. It was better than central heating. (The Gorgorians might be barbarians, but they understood central heating. You conquered a city and set fire to the biggest building in the center of it.)

Ubri sank down to the floor beside Arbol. “It's such a nice change to find you by yourself, Your Highness,” she murmured in his ear. The kitchen servants milling about were just as invisible to her as the camp-followers. “If you're not loitering with those silly Companions you're dawdling around that fusty old book room with your new food taster. Why do you waste so much time with him? He's only a servant.”

“Oh, he's all right,” the prince said rather uneasily.

“You know, if he becomes too great a pest, I could always prepare him a little...
snack
, Gorgorian style.” Her smile was as bright as a bear-trap.

“I wish you wouldn't,” the prince replied. “We're…we're rather attached to him.”