The Born Queen (35 page)

The blood stopped. With a sigh, he stood and looked down at her pale corpse.

“You were always foolish,” he said. “You never minded your lessons.”

He hesitated, looking around at the sleeping courtiers. Could he keep them all thus until his army arrived and he could rule safely here?

Not without Anne’s gifts. He was going to have to leave, come back, and fight his way in. How annoying, when he was already here.

Ever pragmatic, Hespero turned and left the room, the castle, and Eslen. Time was short, and he had leagues to travel and much to do.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

L
EAVING

M
URIELE LIFTED
pen from paper and turned her head; she’d thought she’d heard a distant strain of music. She went to the balcony but didn’t hear anything other than birdsong in the valley. She glanced at what she’d been writing and found she wasn’t in a hurry to get it done. It was just something she was doing to pass the time.

There was a lot of time. Berimund had left men to serve and protect her, but he had departed more than a nineday ago. Her Hanzish wasn’t really good enough to have a decent conversation with any of her guards, not that any of them seemed all that interesting.

She wished she had Alis with her, but she had to face the fact that Alis and Neil were probably dead or at least imprisoned. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but she thought it best that she keep her feet on the ground from here on.

So she spent her time playing card games with herself, writing letters to Anne that she had no way to deliver, trying to puzzle through the few books available—all in Hanzish except one, a book of meditations on Saint Uni, which was in Church Vitellian.

She was still shocked at how wrong it had all gone. Was it her fault? Was it her own mouth that had condemned her? Maybe, but it seemed to her that Marcomir would have found an excuse even if she’d stayed as quiet as a mouse. No, it was the embassy itself that had been the mistake.

But the man at the table always knows what the cook should have done, and there was no going back.

Maybe Alis had at least had time to find the Hellrune and do whatever Anne intended. That seemed to have been the actual point of the delegation, for Anne, at least. But even that seemed terribly unlikely. It was true the girl had gifts—she could even render herself unseen in the right circumstances—but to make her way through an unknown castle to find an opponent who could see the future seemed as dubious as her own mission of peace.

She sighed and patted her belly, thinking it needed filling. Someone eventually would bring her something, she knew, but she had a taste for cheese and wine. She had the run of the pantry and nothing better to do, especially treading the same regrets and worries over and over again.

She went to the stairs and started up, as the balcony room was the lowest in the underearth structure.

She found the pantry and cellar and cut a slice of hard white cheese, poured herself some wine, and sat alone in the kitchen, eating and idly studying the hearth, marveling again at the craft involved in building this place. The kitchen was still some ten kingsyards beneath the surface, which meant a chimney must have been cut down to the fireplace, which drew perfectly.

That led her to muse about the possibility of cooking something for the evening meal. She hadn’t cooked in twenty years, but once she had rather enjoyed the alchemy of it.

She got up and started going through the pantry and was imagining what she might make from pork confit, pickled radishes, spelt flour, dried cod, and prunes, when she heard voices. She ignored them at first but noticed eventually that the language didn’t have the cadence of Hanzish. It sounded more like the king’s tongue.

She abandoned her exploration of dried goods and made her way down a short corridor that brought her to the great hall, a lovely chamber that must have been partly natural, for it had stone teeth depending from the ceiling, as she had heard existed in caves.

But the chamber didn’t hold her attention at the moment.

The many dead men on the floor did.

And Robert, talking to a fellow in a black jerkin. Robert, who now waved at her and smiled.

“We were just wondering where you were,” he said.

In the gray of almost dawn, Neil gauged the distance and wasn’t happy with what he thought.

“Is this the only way?” he asked.

“The only other way is down,” Brinna said. “There are twenty guardsmen between us and freedom there, and even at the peak of your fighting ability, I doubt you could manage that much killing.”

He nodded absently. He was standing on the casement of the only window in Brinna’s suite, which faced another tower and another window. The second building was perhaps three kingsyards away, the window around a yard lower than the one on which he stood. He was being asked to jump from one to the other.

Other towers jutted up all around, a virtual forest of them.

“Where are we?” he asked. “This doesn’t look like anyplace I saw in the city.”

“This is Kaithbaurg-of-Shadows,” she said.

“You live in the city of the dead?”

“I get my visions from the dead,” she said, “so it is convenient. Besides, haliurunnae are considered to be more dead than alive. Many people feel polluted by our presence.”

“That’s terrible,” he said.

“Can you jump that far?” she asked, passing the issue back into wherever seldom spoken of things belonged.

“Why not just lower us down to the ground?”

“The rope isn’t that long,” she said. “I took it from the boat, thinking I might have need of it one day, but I was only able to manage so much without it being noticed in my things.”

“Well,” Neil said, “I’ll jump it, then.”

He tossed the hauberk and sword first, worried at the echoing sound of their impact, and then flexed his knees.

He knew he wouldn’t manage to land on his feet, and he didn’t. He hit the bottom of the window with his breastbone and caught his arms over the edge. His left arm cramped up in a ball, and the right went weak, but he managed to get one elbow up, then the other, so that he could squirm through.

Alis tossed him the rope, and he tied his end on a roof beam above the window.

He waited impatiently as Alis tied off their end, then showed Brinna how to hang on the rope by her hands and knees. Even though it was a downward slope, he could see the princess was having trouble. Although she didn’t make a sound, tears were running from her eyes by the time Neil received her on his end.

He was astonished at the lightness of her body as he drew her in, at the feel of her. For an instant their gazes locked, and he wanted to brush the water that had collected on her cheeks.

He set her down instead and followed her gaze as she looked at her hands. They were bleeding, and he suddenly understood that she almost hadn’t made it, that what he thought of as a minor physical effort was at the further limits of her ability. Living one’s life in a tower didn’t do much to toughen the body.

Courage, he reflected, was a relative thing.

Alis came across as quickly and surely as a spider while Neil armed and armored himself.

They had no choice but to untie their end of the rope and let it dangle on the other side to inform pursuers of where they had gone. Not that there was anywhere else to go, really.

Alis had brought a lantern, which she unshuttered to reveal three rickety chairs and rotting tapestries on the walls.

“Down,” Brinna said.

They had to cross the next room to continue, and there they were greeted by a skeleton in a rotted gown looking very relaxed in an armchair.

“My great-grandmother,” Brinna informed them. “When we die, our rooms are sealed off, and we remain in them.”

That seal was their next obstacle; a wall obstructed the stairs; fortunately, it was of rather desiccated wood rather than brick or stone. Neil was able to smash through it with the hilt of the broadsword he had chosen, and they continued down through the crypt until they reached the lowest level, which was sealed by an iron portal that, also fortunately, was not locked.

The northern wall of Kaithbaurg loomed a few kingsyards away, casting a permanent shadow on the bases of the cluster of fifteen towers that formed the heart of the shadow city. Moss was thick and springy underfoot, jeweled with colorful mushrooms.

“Quickly,” Brinna whispered.

They set off north on a path paved in lead brick, through the mansions of the dead that crowded up to the Hellrune towers, into the meaner dwellings beyond, and finally to the tombs of the poor, mass graves with nothing more than dilapidated wooden huts to act as shrines. It began to rain, and the path, no longer paved, quickly turned to viscous mud.

They came at last to a large iron gate flanked by stone towers in a wall that enclosed the necropolis and went around to join the one guarding Kaithbaurg.

A man in lord’s plate stepped from the gatehouse, raising his visor so that Neil could see the aged features within. His breastplate bore the hammer of Saint Under, marking him as a Scathoman, a guardian of the dead.

“Majesty,” the knight said, his voice formal and quavered by the rain. “What brings you here?”

“Sir Safrax,” Brinna said. “It’s raining. I’m cold. Open the gate.”

“You know I can’t do that,” he said apologetically.

“I know you will,” she replied.

He shook his head. “Princess you may be, but my holy task is to see to the dead and keep you where you belong.”

Neil drew his sword. It was heavier than Battlehound.

He didn’t insult the older knight by saying anything. He just took a stance.

“Alarm!” the knight shouted, then drew his weapon and came at Neil.

They circled for a moment before Neil took the first swing, stepping in and cutting hard toward the juncture of neck and shoulder. Safrax turned so that the blow glanced from his armored shoulder and cut back. Neil ducked that and went under his arm and behind him. His arms already were aching, so he spun and hammered the blade into the back of the other knight’s helm, sending him down to his knees. Two more strokes ended it.

But by then three more knights had come clattering out of the tower, and he heard a horn blowing to broaden the alarm.

Robert smiled and gestured toward an armchair.

“Have a seat, my dear,” he said. “We should chat, you and I.”

Muriele took a step back, then another.

“I don’t believe I will,” she said. Every fiber of her wanted to run, but she knew that she would only sacrifice her dignity if she did so. Robert would catch her.

She tightened her belly and stood her ground.

“I don’t know how Hansa has put up with you this long,” she said, “but now you’ve killed your host’s men. I think you’ve worn out your welcome.”

“I’m going to sit,” Robert said. “Join me if you wish.”

He folded his lean frame into a second armchair. “There are a few things wrong with your supposition,” he said. “The first is that anyone will ever find these bodies. The whole point of this place is that it is secret, yes? And if Berimund returns—and that is itself a very large if because his father is quite mad with rage at him—there is no reason for him to suspect my hand in this. But a much more profound trouble with your reasoning is the fact that I’m leaving Hansa anyway. It proved a useful haven, but I’m not so foolish as to believe that Marcomir would put me on the throne.”

“What are you up to, then? Where could you possibly go?”

“Crotheny. I have one small thing in Newland to tidy up, and then I’ll be on to Eslen.”

“Anne will execute you.”

“You know I can’t die. You tested it with my own knife.”

“True. So your head will live after it’s struck off. Perhaps Anne will keep it in a cage as an amusement.”

“She might, but I don’t think so. Obviously, or I wouldn’t go back there. It’s all about to happen, Muriele. I’ve no idea how things will turn out, but I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

“What’s happening?” Muriele asked. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing for you to worry about,” he said. “I didn’t really come here to drag you back into politics. I’m here to bring you a gift.”

“A gift?”

“A musical gift from your own court composer.”

Music started then, a soft chord growing louder, and she saw that Robert’s companion was playing a small thaurnharp.

Neil sighed and backed toward the gate, hoping to keep from being surrounded.

“Lady Berrye,” he said softly. “I can only hold them for a moment. Do what you can.”

“I will, Sir Neil,” she said.

“Do not die cheaply, Sir Neil,” Brinna said. “A little time should help.”

“It will be very little,” Neil said.

Alis laid her arm on the princess, and they suddenly became difficult to look at. He couldn’t put his gaze on them, but that was just as well, because he had a lot to pay attention to.

The lead knight cut at him, and Neil dodged to the side so that the weapon scraped through the metal bars of the gate. Neil hit the outstretched arm with his off-weapon hand, forcing him to lose his grip on the sword. With his weapon hand he cut at the knee of the knight to his right and felt it shear through the joint, setting the man—quite understandably—to screaming. Neil suppressed a shriek of his own as his arm shot with the pain of the blow, and his fingers loosened their grip. Gasping, he lunged at the third knight, wrapped his arms around the knight’s knees, lifted him and dumped him on his head. He fell, too, rolled, and came back up. The first man had recovered his sword and was advancing on him.

He heard horses blowing behind him and the thump of hooves.