Foul Tide's Turning (49 page)
Every evening Alexamir appeared in her tent and attempted to amuse Cassandra, make her forget her broken body and pointless existence. Briefly, she might succumb to the diversion. But each morning she awoke, forgetting who and what she was, until she first attempted to stand. Then her misery would come bursting upon her with all the fury of the flood waters of a broken dam. She came to depend on his evening visits, even as she loathed her weakness for doing so.
Was there ever so ill-fated a match?
A daughter of the mightiest imperium on Pellas and a ragtag rogue with barely a saddle and steed to his name. Except she was no longer the granddaughter of an emperor. She was an end without the knife to bring it about; dishonour awaiting a blade. She came to despise herself for the eagerness she felt when Alexamir arrived to talk with her. Lying there, trembling for his presence. The anticipation, followed by sorrow when he departed. Worst of all was when he left for a day or two to hunt wild steers with a few others, ranging off before returning.
What am I doing here? Why am I thinking about him so much?
Hers was a strange, intense sort of freedom. Exactly what the nomad had promised when he talked wildly about the joys of life with the Nijumeti, apart from the fear and bitterness of her crippled future. Cassandra had been raised on a merciless schedule without a free second to her name. When she hadn’t been training in armed and unarmed combat, physical skills of balance and poise, she had her nose pressed to books under the tutelage of the great Doctor Horvak, or was shadowing her mother to learn the duties of leading the house – commerce and trade, strategy and politics, ploys and scheming in the imperial court. Now the weeks were hers to do nothing but live and wander, without much purpose, without any hope.
What’s the use of being free without ambition or merit? At least with a schedule from dawn to dusk, my place was certain. I was what I did. What do I do now? Push on, broken
. She did. She had no choice.
When they finally reached the main body of the clan, the meeting was almost unexpected; such had been the slow drift of the days and Cassandra’s life. Oddly, the journey’s sudden end was the least of her surprises. They rounded a low rolling hill and Cassandra found a number of things before her that she had certainly never expected to see of a Nijumeti clan. From the gasp of shock from Sheplar Lesh and Kerge, mounted pillion to her right, what lay before them was obviously a revelation to them too.
A laugh rang from behind them.
Nurai
. ‘There,’ smirked the witch rider, cruelly, ‘did I not say you would see what we have become …’
TO KILL A PRINCE
Assemblyman Gimlette raised a glass of wine in his fat fingers while Thomas Purdell lifted his own, content to listen to the plump politician fill the air with bluster. Nobody had noticed that the main beneficiary of Thomas’s glass was the spittoon behind his divan. The windows of the prince’s quarters held the reflection of fireworks in the glass, a distant sound of cheering and singing from the streets of Midsburg.
This is a triumph, fat man. But the rebels outside are cheering for the wrong side
.
‘I told you, Your Highness, Charles T. Gimlette is just the man to bring you victory, and may this be the first of many.’
‘We need victories on the field as well as on paper,’ said Prince Owen from the divan opposite the politician’s seat. He raised a glass to Thomas and the assemblyman. ‘But I am grateful to you both for this. The assembly had been arguing about whether to offer peace terms before you escaped, but your testimony concerning my uncle’s crimes has stiffened their backbone.’
‘Bad Marcus dissolving parliament should have been sufficient warning of his intentions,’ said Anna Kurtain. She was sitting next to the prince, her face as worried and furrowed as always.
‘Ah, assemblymen, they love to bicker,’ said Gimlette. ‘That they do. Not all of my brothers and sisters in the party are for such decisive action. But you can count on me to herd them towards the right decision. You are Prince Owen no longer, sir. You are King Owen of Weyland, and we will bend our knees to you.’
‘I won’t be crowned a king until the usurper languishes in his own dungeon,’ said Owen. ‘And I will be King of the Weylanders, not King of Weyland. It is not I who has been elected sovereign, but the constitution. There will be no more prefects by royal appointment. Only the assembly and a lawful monarch governed by our laws. Never again will any citizen of this realm have to suffer from an unfit monarch’s whims.’
Thomas ignored the nobleman’s whining rebel treachery. He got to his feet and walked over to the table to lift the wine decanter, using it to refill the glasses of the assemblyman, prince and his woman. The only people who weren’t drinking were the two sentries standing sentry inside the double doors to the prince’s apartment. Loyalists, just like the soldier holding on to the reins of four fast steeds outside the mayor’s mansion. They’d be back in the south soon enough, escaping the siege at Midsburg before the town was cut off.
‘With such freedoms to lift our sails, the party will never let you down, Your Highness,’ drawled the assemblyman. Gimlette started to raise his fat hand in toast again, but the glass began trembling and he stared at it as though bewitched by the contents suddenly spilling across his wrist. Prince Owen had stopped pontificating too, his head falling against the leather of the divan and shaking madly as though in a fit. Assemblyman Gimlette attempted to stand, but he collapsed back, his heavy arms raised high as though in prayer, then slumped sideways, drool foaming across the seat.
‘Run for the garrison—’ snarled Anna Kurtain swaying up, but she dropped to her knees as she lost her footing, ‘—doctor.’
‘Did you hear something?’ laughed one of the sentries.
‘Not me,’ said the other. ‘Must be all that larking outside, I reckon.’
‘What is this?’ croaked the bodyguard, clutching at her throat as she tumbled off her knees. Kurtain lay sprawled across the room’s carpet, her hands twitching as she vainly attempted to move them towards her holstered pistol.
‘Tincture of Belladonna,’ announced Thomas, brushing his trousers as he stood up. Anna Kurtain had lasted a little longer than the fifteen minutes it should have taken from the first toast to paralyse her. The benefits of her size and muscles, no doubt, just like the fat fool’s cushioning. ‘Strong enough to make granite of your flesh for the rest of the hour. It’ll deaden your feelings, but not enough, I fear, to completely banish the pain of what this wicked pretender is about to do to you.’
Kurtain just managed to croak
assassin
, before Thomas’s poison fully froze her throat.
‘More of a torturer, usually,’ said Thomas. ‘I regret, sweet lady, that expediency requires I forgo my exquisite craft tonight.’ Thomas walked across to the king’s treasonous nephew, sprawled on the divan, and lifted the royal’s dagger from of his belt, inspecting its keen edge with interest. ‘You see, you’ve just presented the pretender with the shocking news that the Army of the Boles has crossed the river at Humont and is advancing on Midsburg. You and the good assemblyman tried to talk Owen out of abandoning the city and fleeing east like the coward he is. But the pretender took your advice as badly as your news.’
Thomas walked across to where the assemblyman sat slumped, eyes frozen wide and startled inside Gimlette’s heavily jowled face. He drew the blade across the assemblyman’s throat, stepping aside as a jet of blood spurted across the carpet. A vicious kick of Thomas’s boot sent the politician tumbling off his seat and into the floor’s embrace. ‘Calling for the true king’s death? You signed your own death warrant today, Gimlette. Along with everyone else sitting in your rebel’s parliament. How strange, I was certain it’d be hot air that escaped your foul fat neck, not blood. It’s the only surprise I ever had from you … everything else you did was so entirely predictable.’
Thomas clutched the king’s dagger and crossed to where the woman lay trembling on the floor. There he plunged the dagger deep into her chest, being careful to avoid the heart and leaving the blade’s hilt embedded inside her. Even paralysed, her face contorted in agony.
So beautiful. And so little time to play
. Thomas unholstered the bodyguard’s pistol and tucked it behind his own belt. A memento of this moment he would be sure to treasure. He signalled the two sentries. ‘Carry her to the bed chamber and toss her across the mattress. Make sure she bleeds copiously across the sheets. I want a nice dramatic death scene for the servants to discover tomorrow morning when they arrive to empty the fireplace. After you’re finished with her, come back and help me hoist the pretender’s flag.’
‘Sir.’ The soldier kicked the politician’s prone body as he passed it. A river of blood soaked the carpet around Gimlette. Thomas trusted it wouldn’t leak through the floorboards and bring the staff up early. ‘This one doesn’t just eat like a pig, he bleeds like one too.’
‘Leave him,’ said the other sentry. ‘He’s filling his face in hell now, right enough.’
Thomas watched in satisfaction as the soldiers dragged the dying bodyguard into the adjoining rooms. He ripped a cord from the curtains alongside the window, flexing it between his hands.
Fine thick knotted cotton.
A balcony lay beyond the cold pane of glass, a view of the city stretched out in the flicker of lamp light and fireworks. He slipped the rope around the pretender’s neck and tied into a neat noose while the prince glared hatred up at him.
Too late, my treacherous friend. The truth always appears too late
. Thomas smiled back and patted the pretender’s cold cheek. ‘I can see the disgrace now, killing your woman and the fat man for daring to bring you the truth. Don’t worry; your dishonour will be banished soon enough. Along with the last flickers of your failed rebellion. My two friends here will travel south and inform the news sheets all about your double-murder and shameful suicide. Their distress when Miss Kurtain arrived with the news of the southern advance. How the men heard a struggle and had to break the doors in. Your guards discovered you dead, your friends’ corpses scattered around you, before they fled the city for failing in their sworn duty. You’ll be remembered as a slaver and a coward who led the nation into destruction, following his mad ambitions. How do you think scholars will record you in the annals of history? Insane Owen, the one-day king, the pitiful pretender? You won’t care after you’re in the dirt with the worms, I know. But I’ll peruse those books. When I’m an old man. I’ll read about you and remember the fine sight of your boots jerking as my men tug on your feet to finish you off. It’s not every day I get to watch a prince hang, even a treacherous pretender like you. How well do you think the king will reward me for this night’s work? I’ll live like a prince, I reckon, for executing one.’
Thomas’s soldiers returned, the pair’s grey uniforms stained crimson with the woman’s blood.
Well, they’ll be turning those coats for the blue soon enough anyway
. ‘She’s not dead yet, I hope?’
‘Still shaking,’ said one of the men.
Excellent
. Thomas tossed the cord over the heavy chandelier above. Six brass arms bolted into the ceiling in a dozen places. It wouldn’t do to allow such expensive crystal to fall and shatter.
More than strong enough to break this dog’s neck
. ‘Let’s raise our royal standard, then. I’d best take my sport quickly before we quit this place.’
I’ll give the woman a traitor’s end for daring to call the king Bad Marcus
. A swift leaving present to stir the salacious pens of the newspapers.
Each sentry seized a leg and began to lift the pretender up while Thomas hauled on the rope. Owen was starting to gargle, and the sentries hadn’t even dropped him yet, let alone heaved on his boots to speed the process. Well, the noose had to be tight to kill a man.
‘That’s it, my lord,’ said Thomas, dragging the rope back as the sentries lifted Owen high. ‘You’re the standard saluting our true king.’ The tincture of Belladonna would keep the traitor from singing properly, but that couldn’t be helped. This night’s work was more functional than for Thomas’s amusement.
‘He’s bloody heavy,’ complained one of the sentries. ‘When do we let him go?’
‘A condemned man often is,’ smiled Thomas. He left the two dolts struggling to hold the prince while he mounted the table to tie the noose off against the chandelier, then jumped down to remove a chair and overturn it below the rebel leader. Setting the stage, everything had to appear just so. ‘And a dead man, always. You’d think that a corpse should be lighter, when its soul blows out, but the bodies of the dead are always so heavy. I wonder why that should be?’
The soldiers were still clutching Owen when the door splintered behind them. Quick as a snake, Thomas had the pistol out and spun the nearest sentry in front of him as a human sandbag, just in time for the turncoat to shriek as a pistol fanned through the room, a volley of shots walked expertly across the soldiers, missing Owen by a hair. The sentries weren’t holding the prince’s legs anymore; they were tumbling dead to join the assemblyman across the carpet. Thomas Purdell back-stepped and hurled himself through the window and out onto the balcony, shards of glass biting and slicing at his body. He shot widely as he rolled, not trying to aim, but accurate enough to give everyone breaking into the quarters pause to do something other than worry about him. After all, they had the choking traitor dangling from the chandelier to worry about. He raised his pistol to put a bullet into the prince’s heart and had a second to realize that it was Jacob Carnehan he faced.
How did that devil get here?
The pastor clutched at one of Owen’s legs, trying to save the choking traitor from death. A man Thomas dimly recognized as the speaker of the assembly, Augustus Sparrow, was mounting the table to cut the cord. Jacob Carnehan swivelled the pistol towards Thomas with his spare hand. Thomas shot wildly at the pastor as he hurdled the balcony, wood splintering where the agent had just been kneeling. Quicksilver, that had been Carnehan’s name when he’d fought as a mercenary commander across the ocean.
Well earned
. More shots cut through the air as Thomas spun towards the hedges in front of the mayor’s mansion, gravity only just faster than the pastor’s aim, a bullet grazing Thomas’s shoulder in mid-air. He grunted as he collided with the greenery, hardly feeling the impact with the burn of adrenaline coursing through his flesh. The gunfire merely added to the explosions of fireworks above the grounds. Oil-fired lampposts lined the wall inside the grounds and Thomas shot them out with his stolen pistol’s remaining shells, plunging the lawn into darkness as he limped as quickly as he could towards the street corner where the horses waited.
So close
. How would King Marcus reward him now? As the man always rewarded failure? A garrotte screw turned by another torturer’s hand? Thomas cursed the pastor. A blunt, brutal savage. Not an inch of sophistication in his methods. To be stymied by such a brute, to have a so-nearly slain prince’s fortune snatched from his fingers.
I’ll be back for you, Quicksilver. After the siege, if not before. I’ll take my time with you. Yes, I think there’s a way I can even the score
. Thomas disappeared into the night, where he was wholly at home.
The
Raven
followed the line of mountains on Weyland’s side of the border until they reached the ancient trade road north running towards the Rodalian capital, Hadra-Hareer. It seemed a sensible course to Carter, avoiding the unpredictable winds over the sharp heights of Rodal. Below their aircraft, the trade road snaked like a river through the thick forests of Gaskald, a veritable green sea, impenetrable to caravans hoping to make anything approaching a decent pace of travel. Skyguard officer Beula Fetterman hadn’t proved good company. Maybe it was Carter, or perhaps it was her resentment of flying cargo, rather than combat, with her comrades in the rebel squadron, but she refused to engage in banter with Carter. In the end, he stopped bothering to try. Beula didn’t even show any curiosity about who it was they were flying to collect.
It’s almost as if she already knows
. The
Raven
was oversized for their mission. Large enough to carry twenty passengers in comfort, plus an empty cargo hold. Even their cockpit had positions for three crew and a gunner for the rear-facing turret, currently shut to the cold and the wind. Beula had made sure Carter couldn’t sit next to her by folding out her navigation charts across the spare pilot’s seat. If he wanted to watch the landscape slide by, he had to take the seat behind her or climb up into the gunner’s position. They weren’t about to encounter enemy kites flying along Weyland’s northern border. Every plane either side’s skyguard possessed was wheeling above the Spotswood River right now, scouting for ground forces trying to sally across the water, or the regiments trying to halt them … looking to blind the enemy and notch a few kills on the side of the fuselage. Eventually the trade road ran into the mountains of Rodal proper, winding its way through the valleys and canyons of their northern neighbour.
The Walls of the League. Well named
. Carter wondered how well named the mountain nation’s capital would prove.
Hadra-Hareer, the Valley of the Hell-winds
. His father had talked about his travels to Hadra-Hareer, but Carter had never seen the city. Beula took the
Raven
higher to avoid the turbulence below, growing with every mile north they flew until the plane was trembling as though it was alive, fierce winds making the canvas around their plane’s wooden frame undulate and snap. Skyguard Officer Fetterman was attempting quite a balancing act, keeping the plane intact and an eye on the trade road winding below. Gravity’s hold lessened as they climbed, leaving Carter with a familiar sick floating feeling in his gut. No wonder he didn’t like it.
Too similar to being on the sky mines
. They were flying solely by chart and compass now, lost in the cloud cover.