Authors: Edward Lazellari
Reverend Grey didn’t miss a beat. He threw the car into gear and peeled out of the trailer park, leaving barely an inch between his door and the cruiser, with Daniel’s feet still dangling out the window. Gunshots hit the old station wagon as they turned onto the country road.
Daniel managed to right himself and get his seatbelt on. The reverend flew down the road like a bat out of hell. The minister wore a wild, fearful expression customary for a man who probably spent most of his day writing sermons and whose most excitement came from bingo night. Behind them, Daniel heard the screeching of tires as three sets of headlights peeled out of the trailer park and pursued them.
“Really can’t wait to meet your girl, padre,” the boy repeated shakily. “Please drive really fast.”
CHAPTER 30
FOOL’S ERRAND
The bandages around Tory’s eyes were soaked through with blood. Catherine unwrapped them gingerly. Not that it would have made any difference—Tory wasn’t all there anymore—he’d checked out right after Dorn’s horrendous act, when the fuel for his screams exhausted itself and he realized no quantity of crying would ever bring the light back. At least they provided Cat with a bucket of ice from the wetbar, which she put to good use. She even gave the boy a few shots of Macallan 12 to deal with the pain—both physical and otherwise.
Tory slept in short restless fits, whimpering every time he awoke. Cat’s heart broke for him each time as Tory’s anguish confirmed that the new darkness was not a horrible dream—a nightmare to be washed away by the dawn. Paralyzed and
blind
was the new normal. Tory slept constantly because reality had become unbearable. Cat spoke to him softly and often, exercising the one major sense he had left with which to connect to the world. The communication was one-way; Tory hadn’t uttered a comprehensible word in hours, and Cat was worried he may have had a stroke, but there was no way to tell.
She encouraged him to sleep. The loss of sight would be a life-altering tragedy for any full-bodied person. To a quadriplegic, someone who lived vicariously through his visual senses, experienced the world through the acts of others—the only recourse left in blindness was the cinema of his mind. This boy only had his dreams left to live through. Cat could not imagine the depths of Tory’s despair.
Dorn had threatened to next make the boy deaf if there was no progress on finding the prince. What would that drive Dretch to do? She was worried for her husband in a way she hadn’t been before. Cat knew, as only a fellow parent could, to what lengths a person would go to save their child. Her capture also put Cal in an impossible position. Dorn would leverage her to get the prince if Cal claimed him first.
Her husband was at a terrible disadvantage. Cat wasn’t confident that Cal could swap the boy for her. He’d been obsessed with the prince since his memories returned. The prince had displaced Cat and Bree as Callum’s topmost priority. But Cat couldn’t really blame him—if Daniel were not a prince, just a regular kid, Cal would not trade his life for Cat’s anyway … and she would never want to be responsible for a child’s death. But she resented the situation nevertheless. She was mad at Cal for events not of his doing. Her husband was a top agent in an alternate universe’s Secret Service, willing to throw himself on an assassin’s bomb to save a stranger instead of living to take care of his own family … and then there was the other woman.
If Cat was unreasonably angry with Callum for events not of his doing, she was doubly so for the events he had full control of, namely, not revealing that he had been betrothed in his other life. What was the difference between an engagement and a betrothal? she asked herself. The latter sounded a lot more serious—something permanent that involved serious penalties.
For the first time in her marriage, Cat felt vulnerable. Until a few days ago, she had been secure in Cal’s loyalty to her regardless of what the world threw at them. Cal was as emotionally solid and mature as men came. His mission to raise the prince was about duty and honor—she understood that part of him—she accepted it when they exchanged vows. Now there was this “betrothal” to a woman Cal could not even bring himself to mention. He never would have abandoned Chryslantha had he not lost his memory. Catherine Hill had been an accident—a sidebar to his picture-perfect Brad and Angelina existence in a magical far-off land where people curtsied to him and called him “lord.” Cat hated that tiny voice in her head telling her Cal’s life would be easier now if she ceased to exist. This situation had to be a nightmare for her loyal, truthful, honorable man. She loved him so much that it hurt Cat to know her existence in his life caused him any pain or complication. Between the prince, his duties, and his betrothal to Chryslantha, Cat felt expendable. And that was unfair to her … she’d done everything right.
She had to get out. As much for basic survival and the desire not to be used as leverage against her husband as to satisfy the nagging urge to punch Cal in the nose—and that wasn’t going to happen from this sorry room. She finished wrapping Tory’s new bandages and looked around, wishing for some secret door into existence. If she could just get to the street, get to a cop, she could return for Tory and the other woman on the couch. They were in an opulent hotel in the middle of the city. The phone had been removed from the room. Above and below her were other patrons of the Plaza. There wasn’t anything to start a fire with, and truly, such a thing did not guarantee her survival. Dorn might just let her and the hotel burn. She thought of screaming out the window, but they were high up and facing north toward the park. She’d only succeed in getting gagged. She could smash the window, but it occurred to Cat she might only succeed in getting whoever came to rescue her killed. Dorn was a sorcerer.
Maybe …
Cat went into the bathroom and plugged the bathtub drain. She shoved a hand towel into the overflow hole and ran both the hot and cold water full blast. If she could flood the room the water would drip into the units below, they’d send maintenance and security to Dorn’s suite. Maybe she could get a message out to them or create an opening for herself. Cat didn’t know how effective that would be, but any disruption might offer an opportunity to run. She heard the bedroom door creak open. Footsteps approached the bathroom and Oulfsan walked in and joined her.
“I thought I’d take a bath to calm my nerves,” Cat said. She silently cursed herself for sounding guilty. The tub was past its halfway point, and she needed him to leave before it topped off.
Oulfsan looked at the tub and back at Cat. Despite his formal dress, his manner was seamy, sordid. He hunched, as though uncomfortable with his height, and moved uncomfortably, as though he wore an ill-fitting suit. Cat waited for his exit.
Oulfsan put down the toilet’s lid and sat.
“I’d like some privacy,” she insisted, eyeing the water level.
He leered at her. He went so far as to smack his lips. She felt naked before him, fully dressed. Oulfsan jerked his head toward the tub as if to say,
go ahead
—but remained on the toilet. Cat turned the water off, lest her true intentions come to light.
“I’m not going to bathe with an audience,” she told him.
“In Aandor, the common folk bathe once a week,” he said. His voice was a smooth pleasant tenor, but his speech was guttural, his vernacular lowbrow compared with the other times she’d heard him speak. “Rich folk can have their flowery maidens. I like me a greasy wench … musky snatch, the salty tang of their—”
“Please,” Cat said, holding up her hand. “Why stay then if you like the dirt? I’ll only end up clean in the end.”
“I’m studying me canvas,” he answered.
Paint with your blood,
is what Cat heard in his subtext. His tone was cold, demented—he reeked of ultraviolence. “Does Dorn know you’re in here?” Cat asked.
“His lordship’s in a pleasant mood. Our suspicions about the detective have borne fruit. He’s hidden the boy, and our men now descend upon the prince as we speak. Hesz’s return from Baltimore with the prince’s personal effects is now irrelevant. You see the justice in our having blinded Dretch’s brat now.”
“Justice? You mutilated an innocent boy!” Cat shouted. “What does he have to do with your war?”
“In Farrenheil the sins of the father are visited upon the sons. The hunt will soon be over—Captain MacDonnell will have nothing of value to bargain for your return.”
Cat stormed out of the bathroom afraid that Oulfsan would grab her as she passed. She caught a different fright once in the bedroom, a familiar voice in conversation through the partly open French doors. She marched up to them and threw them open.
“YOU!” she said.
A mildly surprised Balzac Cruz gave her a courteous nod.
“Lady MacDonnell. I hope you are well.”
Catherine let fly the right hook she had cocked for her husband, catching the side of Balzac’s ample nose. Balzac stumbled but recovered before falling down entirely. His nose was a red splatter. She immediately regretted the punch, shaking her hand to diffuse the pain. He whipped a handkerchief from his jacket and pressed it to his injury. Oulfsan standing behind her laughed, as did Kraten, Lhars, and the recently returned Hesz in the common room. It was a stupid act, but Catherine was satisfied at having wiped the smug look off Balzac’s traitorous face. Balzac pushed Catherine back into her gilded cell, joining Oulfsan, and shut the French doors behind him.
“A peasant’s reaction from an overly common woman,” he said, trying to regain his pride.
“This coming from a clown.” Cat spat back. She checked on Tory. He was asleep again.
“Jester,” Balzac corrected. “A clown works in circuses and birthday parties. A jester performs for the benefit of a ruler at court. He’s witty and knowledgeable, makes the politically incorrect quips his king cannot say in public—and he is plugged in to
everything
at court.”
“You sold out your kingdom for a sack of gold,” Cat said. “How original.”
Balzac looked genuinely offended.
“Ball Sack is the richest man in Aandor,” Oulfsan interjected through a seedy grin.
Balzac conveyed his displeasure at Oulfsan by ignoring him. But was it the play on his name or the revelation of his wealth that the jester objected to?
“Farrenheil would have attacked eventually,” Balzac said. “It would have taken them a few more years to muster the coin for twenty thousand soldiers, and they would have squandered it in pointless battles along the fringes of their kingdoms. I supplied the coin for ships, food, and siege weapons, for spies and alliances to force other kingdoms’ neutralities. It was simply a push out the door.”
“How can you work with these people … murderers, sadists…?”
“Spare me,” he said in dramatic fashion. Balzac checked the flow from his nose, and satisfied with its progress, dumped the handkerchief in the trash bin. He turned back to Cat. “By the tender age of twenty-one, Callum MacDonnell—as his men boasted, for we know the virtuous captain would never do such a thing—had killed over a hundred adversaries in battle. Did
his
victims not have mothers, fathers, wives, sons … pets, who would miss them? Aandor is the Middle Ages … death is arbitrary, political; your husband, noble and good as he professes to be, is a virtual killing machine with sword in hand. The status quo’s instrument of power retention.”
Cat was shocked to hear anyone speak of her husband in that way. Cal had never killed anyone while on the force. He was truthful and lawful and the only time he’d bent a rule was to preserve life, shooting someone in the leg instead of the chest, which is where the academy trains you to aim.
“He—he … plays by…”
“The rules? But that, my dear, is the point. Does society make the man or the man the society? Your husband is no less a murderer for the people he killed in an alternate universe. It’s just that his skills are not as appreciated here. Not unless Mayor Bloomberg sends him to Hoboken to cut the mayor’s throat over a bridge-and-tunnel dispute.”
“Just a fucking comedian,” Cat said.
Balzac laughed until the sharp pain in his nose stifled him. He went to the wetbar and plunked some ice into a doily that he wrapped up and placed on his nose.
“Why? What’s it all for?” she asked.
“All revolutionaries are fools,” Balzac said. “And all fools revolutionary. Reunification is a step backwards. I originally hail from Teulada, a small kingdom of modest means and great passions. We had, on occasion, experimented with the idea of the republic as the means by which to govern ourselves, but each time it failed against the pressure from the other kingdoms that would ply men and gold against our success and place on the throne yet another despot with the right lineage. It’s one bloody family running the whole continent after all, you see, and if a nation showed that it did not need kings and aristocracy to be prosperous, it would inspire revolutionaries across the continent to get rid of this family. All of this posturing to get the prince back … the wealth spent, the wars, the bickering, the destruction, the lives ruined … it’s all bad for business. How can you build an enterprise when it could all be coopted or burned to the ground over the whims of an inbred egomaniac?”
“Heh,” grunted Oulfsan, seeing the humor. “He set a continent to the torch to save it from being burned to the ground. And he did it with bells jingling on his head.” It came out of Oulfsan’s mouth
En’ ’eee di’ i’ wit’ belz jinglin’ owoo o’ ’iz ’ed.
“No one ever suspects the fool,” Balzac said. “How do you think I came to be in this party of guardians? I have access to the inner sanctums … I attend meetings, yet no one notices me. No one suspects that my mind is as sharp as any general’s or as ruthless as any king’s. I’m the perfect shadow in a lighted room. I know when there’s about to be war, peace, scandal, treaties, colonization, annexing, power marriages, coups. All my businesses have royal warrants, which is to say I pay protection money to the royal mafia and I get the top contracts. I own taverns, brothels, ships, warehouses, and shops throughout the twelve kingdoms. I run a protection service for trade routes. I am the triple agent who navigates his interests safely through the rocky waters of these mewling despots and their breeding programs.”