The Girl of Fire and Thorns Complete Collection (23 page)

He means it sincerely, I can tell. The king’s seal is sacred to him.

When he hands it back to me, I tear it open at once.
Come immediately
is all it says in Alejandro’s fluid, elegant scrawl.

“Damn it,” I say.

A half dozen possibilities run through my mind. Chief among them is an early morning tryst. I used to deliver messages to coordinate his assignations with the court ladies—the errand I hated most. But that can’t be it; he ceased all such behavior after marrying Rosaura.

The collective stares of the Royal Guardsmen press in around me, and I realize it doesn’t matter why I’m being summoned. Everyone will see this as confirmation that I’m the king’s flunky, exempt from the usual standards and behaviors expected of a Royal Guard.

With the seal broken and the message read, Mandrano casts his reservations aside and tears it from my grasp again. “Well, then,
squire
,” he says, turning the title into an insult. “You’d better go at once.” He stuffs the summons back into my hand and shoves me toward the door. It feels like a permanent dismissal.

The scent of hot, honeyed porridge follows me out of the mess. I’m in the hallway heading toward the palace proper when I hear two Guardsmen talking at my back, loud enough for me to hear.

“Less than a day,” the first one retorts with a sneer.

“He hasn’t washed out yet.”

“He’s walking out the door before he’s sworn in, and that means that he’s washed out. Pay up.”

I’m only a Guard recruit because of Alejandro.

And now, because of him, I may have already failed.

4

I
can’t imagine that the barracks will ever feel as much like home as the palace halls, with their worn cobbled floors and sandstone walls warm with torchlight. I pass the kitchens, waving to the staff. They’re doling out leftover bread and cheese from breakfast to children of the palace servants. When the kitchen master sees me, he brandishes a heel of bread at me. My mouth waters, but I keep going.

I stop at a well-lit archway framed with block quartz. Centered in the archway is the desk of Vicenç, Alejandro’s mayordomo—though it is empty. A Royal Guard stands rigid beside it, his face stony. In the hallway just before the desk are several plush couches arranged around a thick rug.

This is the waiting area where all visitors to the royal quarters are received. As a page, I spent hours here, waiting to escort guests as needed. But there are no pages here now. Even the mayordomo is absent. But then I notice the Invierne ambassador sitting on one of the couches, his legs elegantly crossed, and I realize their absence is a deliberate snub.

The ambassador stands upon seeing me. He’s taller even than Enrico, with pale flowing robes, hair like molten gold, and upturned eyes the color of an emerald cove. Like all Inviernos, he has an ageless quality about him that makes him seem unknowable. He is newly appointed, just since the old king’s death, and I don’t remember his name. I resist the urge to back away as he gazes at me with haughty disdain.

I hear voices coming toward us from beyond the desk.

A moment later, Vicenç emerges from the shadows, accompanied by General Luz-Manuel, Conde Treviño, and Lord-Commander Enrico. Three of the five Quorum lords.

Lord-Commander Enrico is out of uniform. His civilian clothes are carefully cut to resemble those of the general and conde, though adorned with gold threads and jeweled buttons to emphasize wealth and station.

“Thank you for your reports, gentlemen,” Vicenç says. He is a sharp-featured man who probably should not have made the decision to draw attention to his nose with a large, gleaming nose ring. “I assure you the king and queen will announce the birth of their heir very soon.” The last statement is the kind of practiced theater that the Invierne ambassador is meant to overhear while he waits. If the royal succession is secure, Joya d’Arena will
not
be weakened by internal conflict. The message is that we are as strong as ever, and now is a very bad time for Invierne to attack.

“I hope they choose a good name for the child. A strong name,” says Luz-Manuel. The general is a small, balding man, carried to his position by ambition and wits rather than physical prowess. He proved to have a knack for strategy during the skirmishes with Invierne, and Alejandro’s father valued him highly—until one of those skirmishes got King Nicalao killed. Some say the general made a poor decision to flank a smaller, oncoming force, leaving the bulk of his men—including the king—exposed to the larger threat. Luz-Manuel insists the king himself gave the order.

I’ve always wondered about that.

“Perhaps they’ll name him Nicalao,” the general continues, “to honor the martial spirit of the late king.” I barely refrain from rolling my eyes. What if they have a daughter? Then I realize his comment was merely intended to remind the ambassador of Joya d’Arena’s military strength.

Enrico jumps in on cue. “The kingdom will remain stable and strong if— Hector! What in seven hells are you doing here?”

Vicenç appears indifferent to Enrico’s unplanned outburst. After serving three kings, it takes an extraordinary event to rouse him beyond bemused detachment. But the conde is openly furious.

Conde Treviño of Basajuan is a self-aggrandizing man who likes to overspend—thus the problem of Lucio, whom he can neither handle nor dispose of without upsetting the boy’s wealthy father. He seldom leaves Basajuan to come to the capital, and I’m never glad to see him.

Ignoring the conde’s glare, I say to Enrico, “I was summoned, my lord.” I hold up my note.

Enrico snatches it from my hands. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“I don’t know, my lord.”

The general reads over his shoulder. He glances at the Invierno ambassador, who suffers the scrutiny unflinchingly. “Let the boy go, Rico,” the general says after a moment. “We have other things to discuss.”

“And I could use a smoke,” Conde Treviño says. “Let’s talk about that little problem you’re taking care of for me over cigars.”

“Of course,” the lord-commander says. He takes one last glance over his shoulder at me as the general and conde lead him away.

The gem dangling from Vicenç’s nose ring winks in the torchlight as he sits down to work. He pulls reports from a locked drawer and gets busy ticking off numbers and accounts. I approach him. He barely glances up, grumbling, “What now?”

“I’ve been summoned to the king,” I say.

“Well, fetch yourself to him, boy.”

“That’s not proper procedure, and you know it,” I say, unable to keep the anger from my voice. I am not, at the moment, technically a member of the palace household, and security protocol demands that I be escorted.

He doesn’t look up a second time. “If I don’t have a page or squire to spare at the moment for Ambassador Wafting . . . er, Wind and Thunderstorm”—he makes a vague waving gesture—“then I don’t have one for you. So you can stand there all day, or you can obey his summons.”

“Yes, my lord,” I say, and turn to go.

The Invierno ambassador blocks my way.

“Perhaps I could go with the young gentleman,” he says in a fluid, hissing voice. I’m careful not to make eye contact. “It’s important that I speak to the king today. It will only take a moment.”

“I’m terribly sorry, my lord-ambassador,” Vicenç says, “but this is just an errand boy, not even a member of the palace staff. Look at his uniform! I would never embarrass you by sending you without a worthy escort.” To me, he says, “Hurry on, boy.”

I dash past the Guard, who curls his lip at the sight of my recruit uniform, and I leave the ambassador fuming at my back.

The private quarters of the palace are a maze, deliberately so—no assassin or enemy could make their way in quickly—but I know each turn well, and I head left, past the nobles’ quarters, up the stairs, and around the corner to the queen’s chambers.

5

D
R. Enzo, the royal physician, is leaving as I arrive. He wipes sweat from his forehead, looking preoccupied, but forces a smile when he notices me. A smile from Enzo is never a good sign.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I should be asking you that,” he says with forced conviviality, his razor-thin mustache twitching. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the barracks? I didn’t expect to see you again until the inevitable training accident. Did you know that training accidents are disfiguring twenty-three percent of the time?”

“The king summoned me.”

“He’s in there.” He rests a hand on my forearm. “Speak quietly,” he says in a low voice. “And do not upset the queen.”

I frown. This is a worse sign.

Inside, Queen Rosaura is propped up in her bed, which has been pushed to the glass doors overlooking the balcony. Before her pregnancy, she spent all day outdoors, in the garden or on horseback, and the enforced bed rest has not sat well with her.

One of her maids, Miria, wipes her forehead. When Miria sees me, she makes quick, tiny adjustments to the queen’s gown so that it lies flawless and smooth. Miria is about thirty years old, a trusted servant who has lived her whole life in the palace. I don’t know much about her except that she is Vicenç’s grandniece and she is married to a soldier, either someone in the Royal Guard or the palace watch.

I notice Alejandro last because he sits shadowed in the corner, gazing at his wife. His arms are crossed pensively, and one hand covers his mouth.

“Hector,” the queen says, smiling warmly as she always does, as if nothing is wrong. Alejandro jumps from his seat, startled by the sound of her voice.

“Your Majesty,” I say, bowing. “You don’t look a day older than when last I saw you.” My face flames, and I wish I could suck the words back. I never know what to say around women.

But she laughs anyway. “You saw me two days ago!” It’s a weak laugh, and I tell myself it’s because it was a weak joke. She glances meaningfully at Alejandro. “Shouldn’t he be with the recruits?”

“I summoned him,” Alejandro says. He strides over and grasps my arm. “Thank you, Hector.”

“I just witnessed an interesting bit of theater,” I say before I forget. “Vicenç and the Quorum Lords were performing for the new Invierne ambassador, making a big deal about your heir.”

Alejandro’s face tightens. “Of course,” he says, glancing at his wife. “An internal war of succession would provide an opportunity that Invierne’s sorcerers could not resist.”

Which is why the young king married and set about producing an heir as soon as his father died.

“It’s just that . . . well, their performance gave away Her Majesty’s exact state of health. Now everyone knows you’ll be here together more often than not for the next several days. In the interest of safety, I don’t think . . .” Too late, I realize I’m criticizing superior officers—Quorum lords, no less—not to mention possibly upsetting the queen. I give Rosaura an apologetic look.

But she still smiles. “I told you,” Rosaura says to Alejandro. “He’s too clever to waste in the Guard.”

“Which is why I summoned him,” Alejandro replies. “Even if, in this instance, he’s probably overthinking things. Allow me to borrow him for a moment, ladies.”

Taking my arm, he pulls me to one side of the chamber, where he angles our bodies away from the queen and Miria.

“I need you to go to Puerto Verde for me,” Alejandro says in a low voice.

Anger boils up in me, combining with exhaustion and hunger, and I can’t stanch the flow of words. “You summoned me away from recruiting day to
run errands
for you? Like when you were courting half the eligible women of the kingdom?”

“I need you, Hector.”

“You don’t!” My voice is getting too loud. I glance at the queen, who is exchanging an alarmed look with Miria. In a softer voice, I add, “You have a thousand men you could send to Puerto Verde instead of me.”

Alejandro rubs at his chin. He hasn’t been shaved yet today.

“I’ve sent numerous messages through regular channels, and received no response. I had Enrico send members of my Guard, but they also returned without replies. Then, last week I finally sent my own squire. I received word this morning that he was murdered on the highway.”