One Good Knight (23 page)

“No heroes,” said Adam. “And though my brother might disagree from time to time, I'm not entirely mindless.”

“That's another thing. Why the spell?” asked Gina. “It doesn't even seem to have a purpose. Unless the purpose is for Adam to lay waste to the country until it can fall to the first outside force that crosses the Border.”

Andie snorted. “Nobody
wants
Acadia,” she pointed out. “Look at us! We're not particularly fertile, we have no wealth. All we have is a convenient port that a lot of traders can and do bypass. We're too small even to have a standing army. So if anyone really wanted to invade us, it wouldn't exactly be difficult.”

The courtyard was entirely in shadow now, and the last of the sun was sinking behind the mountains. The cloudless sky overhead had turned to a soft, dark blue; only in the west did some deep crimson light linger. And in the farthest east, the first stars had begun to emerge.

“And I am not exactly ravaging the countryside, either,” Adam said, raising his head. “We've been buying our meals, thank you. What's more, we never
did all that much ‘ravaging' in the first place. People were still coming to market days—we watched them. People were still raising crops, building things, making things.”

“He has a point,” Peri sighed. “Begging your pardon, maidens, but sacrificing one virgin girl a week does not ruin an economy.”

“Might even improve it in some areas,” Adam observed dispassionately. “Anti-lottery charms, fireproof roofs, dragon-repellent…”

Both Peri and Andie leveled glares at him, which he probably didn't see.

“And the Queen doesn't seem to be doing much, either, not even when her own daughter was selected,” one of the girls put in.

The fox trotted in and joined them at that moment, perhaps because he wanted company, perhaps because he was hoping for a snack, perhaps just because the fire had died out in the kitchen and company was better than cooling stone. He sat down with his tail wrapped neatly around his forepaws and listened to the conversation with all the interest of an observer at a sporting event.

Andie thought with guilt of the Queen's reaction to her selection. Cassiopeia had gone into immediate mourning, secluding herself, dressing in black…. She wished there was some way she could let the Queen know that she was all right. It didn't seem right that her mother should be left to grieve over something that hadn't actually happened.

Granted, probably every one of the other girls here felt the same, but still…

“My mother was absolutely stricken,” she said quietly.

“Stricken is one thing, but wouldn't you have thought she'd actually
do
something?” asked one of the other girls. Thalia. “She is the Queen after all. Couldn't she have mustered up an army or something?”

“Such as? She'd sent for a Champion,” Myrtle reminded them.

“Well, something. That adviser of hers is supposed to be so clever, you would be more than clever enough to find a way to save the Princess.” Thalia looked unconvinced. “Why didn't he try to find a Wizard or a Sorceress? A powerful one. There are Wizards that can defeat dragons. Why didn't he look for a Godmother? Why didn't he realize there was a spell on the Border?”

“Because,” Andie said with a touch of scorn, “Solon might have a reputation for cleverness, but quite frankly, I think he's too timid to ever go outside the Palace walls. Most of the powerful Magicians that I have ever heard of want you to come to them in person to prove your sincerity. I've never even seen Solon go down to the marketplace himself—he always sends a servant instead. As for mustering an army—” And there she had to pause because she couldn't think of any good reason why her mother had not put at least a small army together to hunt the dragon. After all, if a single Champion was supposed to be able to beat it, why shouldn't several hundred men?

“Oh, he's not such a weak-necked creature when there's no one around to see him,” the fox put in casually. “And he does go outside the Palace walls, a great deal in fact. He's the one that sent me, after all. There I was, minding my own business, and the next thing I know, I'm living in a cage in his rooms. I don't even remember how he caught me. And suddenly I'm stuck obeying his commands, he's promoted me to Familiar and stuffed all sorts of things in my head no self-respecting fox really needs to know.” But the fox seemed crestfallen, rather than proud. “Then, as if I'm just something to be used and thrown away, he sends me out chasing you to be sure you get into the dragon's claws. He's probably using that stupid toad now. The humiliation! Passed over for a toad!”

“Wait—” Andie stared at the fox in astonishment. “Are you saying that Solon is a Magician?”

“A good one, if I'm any judge,” the fox replied. Then he added, “But then again, you know, he's the only one I've ever seen, so I'm not sure I'm that good a judge. Still, he does do quite a bit. He can keep track of people and know where they are, for one thing. He can send birds and animals to find things out for him. He can turn some things into other things.”

“The Queen's Adviser is a Magician. And no one knows.” Periapt stared off into the darkness. “You know,” he said after a long pause, “Traditionally when one's Adviser is a secret Mage, he's generally a bad one, and generally intent on stealing your throne.”

“Well, he's the one that sent me with the dragon
scale to keep leading you to the dragon,” the fox pointed out, as if he assumed they had already known this rather crucial fact.

“He sent
you
with a dragon scale?” Periapt yelped. The dragon reared up to his full height, dark against the rising moon, his wings half mantled in surprise.

His reaction made Andie jump; truth to tell he looked terribly dangerous at that moment.

The fox leapt back, startled, landing on all fours with his fur bristling. “Of course. Where did you think I'd gotten it? Or didn't they tell you they were following what they thought was a trail of scales?”

“For the record,” Gina said tightly, “I
never
thought I was following a trail of scales. I knew it was the same scale being moved. But I knew someone was watching us and I didn't want to betray myself or what I knew. So we acted as if we thought that there was a trail of scales to follow.”

“You have one of our scales?”
The otherwise mild-mannered Peri was not going to let the fox off this particular hook. The voice was that of a roaring fire increased a hundred times.

And the fox knew perfectly well by the reaction that Peri was not going to allow him merely to brush this off. Not when flames were curling around Peri's nostrils and flickering at the corners of his mouth.

Not when his eyes had begun to glow an ominously darker red.

He began to edge his way out of the courtyard. Backward, which is difficult for a four-legged crea
ture. “I'll—uh—be fetching it then, shall I? Right away. Don't mind at all. Know right where it is—”

He was snatched off his four feet and into the air by Gina, who held him up by the scruff of the neck. He hung limply from her grasp as she shook him slightly. “You will be getting the scale, of course,” she said pleasantly. “But not just yet, I don't think. First you'll be telling us everything you know and observed of the Queen of Acadia's Chief Adviser who just
happens
to be a Magician. Won't you.”

It wasn't a question.

 

And it turned out that the fox knew a lot more than anyone had ever dreamed possible. In fact, he was a veritable cornucopia of information.

Some of the other girls had gotten torches, lit them and stuck them in the rusted sconces still attached to a few of the pillars around the courtyard. There was plenty of light to see by, and now that the fox knew he wasn't going to be incinerated, he had regained his aplomb.

“Cats,” he said succinctly. “You two-legs think they're so inscrutable. They are the world's worst gossips. And they are everywhere.”

Andie had to agree to that statement. The Palace was full of cats. Lean, hardworking cellar cats, energetic kitchen cats, pampered, aloof darlings of Cassiopeia's ladies—you couldn't walk ten feet without seeing a cat somewhere. The Queen didn't mind, because cats didn't demand attention the way
dogs did, nor were they noisy, and as long as her maids could keep her gowns cat-hair free, she tolerated the creatures.

And as if they understood the limits of that tolerance, they kept their territorial squabbles and amorous serenades out of earshot of the Queen's Wing.

“I'm not a dog, but I'm not a cat, either, which makes me a kind of neutral party,” the fox went on. “So they like to come to me and gossip about each other, and I nod and make all the right sorts of noises in the right places, and that kept me from going crazy with boredom, locked up in that little cage in Solon's quarters. But as well as gossiping about each other, they like to gossip about the humans.” He tilted his head to the side. “Oh, did you know there's a hidden passage that connects Solon's rooms with the Queen's? I bet people have been wondering for years if they were lovers.” He made a kind of snickering sound. “They are. Oh, yes, indeed they are. Have been for years as far as I can tell.”

Andie nodded numbly. Her mother and—Solon?
Nasty.
She shook her head.
Just—nasty.

And then, suddenly, she wondered. How long had that been going on? Because it would not be the first time that a lover had killed an “inconvenient” husband.

She did not like where that thought was going and resolutely shoved it aside. It was no business of hers if her mother took a lover. Her mother had every right. It wasn't as if she was being untrue to anyone.

“Now Solon is under the impression that he is a very cunning fellow. And you have to admit that he's cunning enough to have made all of you underestimate him,” the fox continued with relish. “The thing is, he is not really prepared to be the power behind the throne. He wants to be the power
on
it.”

Andie started at that, and stared at the fox. The fox gave her an odd look. “I thought for certain you must know all about this, Princess. You are not only a human, you were raised in the Court.”

She shook her head. “Never an inkling,” she said, feeling horribly naive, not to say stupid.

“Well, he talks to his Familiars. Or rather, he talks
at
his Familiars, since we really can't answer him back, and even if we could, he's never drunk dragon's blood so he wouldn't understand us. Not that he would listen.” The fox sighed theatrically. “He's tried to get dragon's blood, but every time he bought what he thought was the right stuff, he was cheated.”

“Not surprising,” Adam rumbled. “We good and decent dragons don't give ours up except to those we trust. And the blood of the slain…well, it's really hard to kill a dragon, and harder still to collect the blood of a dead one.”

The fox nodded. “Well, to make a long story far too short, he wants to sit on the throne. To do that, he first has to marry the Queen, then get rid of her somehow. Which, given that the man has more bottles of potions and ingredients than I have hairs in my tail, makes me think that he would not have a lot
of trouble doing that. Then he has to get people to follow him. That is likely going to be the hardest part, if he's as disliked as the cats think.”

“In every coup or assassination attempt,” Periapt said, though he was showing some signs of boredom, “there is generally a point where the first strong voice to be heard will be the one that is followed. If that voice is also that of the Prince-Consort, who better to follow?”

Someone who isn't her murderer?
Andie thought, her blood running cold at all of this.

But she didn't say it aloud.

“Well, Solon was fairly sure that under the right circumstances he could arrange that it would all fall into place,” the fox said. “Personally the cats and I think he's being far too overconfident about all this. Still—”

“Still,” Peri put in, “he has The Tradition behind him. It is quite the classic story, really. The trusted Adviser who really intends to usurp the throne…”

“But what is really funny is the Queen,” the fox said with relish, the tip of his tail swishing back and forth. “She intends to do away with him, as well. Or so the cats tell me. She thinks he is getting arrogant and dangerous.”

“Which of course, he is,” Andie murmured.

“And she wants to be rid of him as soon as he is no longer useful—the cats said, anyway. She is going to replace him with someone younger.” The fox opened his mouth in a silent laugh.

Andie was feeling rather sick at this point. This was a side of her mother she had not expected. She knew, of course, that Cassiopeia was calculating, but she had not dreamed that her mother was so ruthless. She knew the Queen was manipulative. She'd never guessed just how cold-hearted.

“Let me put the pieces together here,” Periapt said, sounding more alert. “The sorcerer has every intention of wedding the Queen, then eliminating her, in such a way that the throne is offered to him. While the Queen, growing weary of his arrogance, fully intends to eliminate
him
at her earliest opportunity.” He cocked his head as Andie swallowed. “What a charming game of double deception those two are playing on one another. If the circumstances were not what they are, it would even be worth watching them. But as things stand, too many others are likely to be hurt.”

“I would say that is an understatement,” said Gina into the silence.

“Now since the fox has one of my brother's scales, we can probably assume it is
the
scale and act accordingly.” Periapt nodded graciously. “You may go, fox, and bring back the scale so that we can destroy it. That, at least, will put an end to the compulsions to go and carry off maidens, which in turn will put an end to the sacrifices.”