Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War) (5 page)

Barras grunted. “Let’s hope so. Let’s hope she’s not back in Scorron stirring up that little war again.”

I could agree with him there. Barras’s father negotiated the peace and treated it like his second son. I’d rather a close relative came to harm than that particular peace deal. Nothing would induce me back into the mountains to fight the Scorrons.

We left the palace by the Victory Gate in fine spirits, passing our flask of Wennith red between us while I explained the virtues of wooing sisters.

As we entered Heroes’ Plaza the wine turned to vinegar in my mouth. I half-choked and dropped the flask.

“There! Do you see her?” Coughing, wiping tears from my eyes, I forgot my own rule and pointed at the blind-eye woman. She stood at the base of a great statue, the Last Steward, sombre on his petty throne.

“Steady on!” Roust thumped me between the shoulders.

“See who?” Omar asked, staring where I pointed. Dressed in tatters, she might in another glance be nothing more than rags hanging on a dead bush. Perhaps that was what Omar saw.

“Nearly lost this!” Barras retrieved the flask, safe in its reed casing. “Come to Papa! I’ll be looking after you from now on, little one!” And he cradled it like a baby.

None of them saw her. She watched a moment longer, the blind eye burning across me, then turned and walked away through the crowds flowing towards Trent Market. Jostled into action by the others, I walked on too, haunted by old fears.

We approached the Blood Holes in the early afternoon, me sweating and nervous, and not just because of the unseasonal heat or the fact that my financial future was about to ride on two very broad shoulders. The Silent Sister always unsettled me, and I’d seen entirely too much of her today. I kept glancing about, half-expecting to spot her again along the crowded streets.

“Let’s see this monster of yours!” Lon Greyjar slapped a hand to my shoulder, shaking me out of my rememberings and alerting me to the fact that we’d arrived at the Blood Holes. I made a smile for him and promised myself I’d fleece the little fucker down to his last crown. He had an annoying way about him, did Lon, too chummy, too keen to lay hands on you, and always snipping away at anything you said as if he doubted everything, even the boots you were standing in. Fair enough, I lie a lot, but that doesn’t mean cousins of some minor princeling can take liberties.

I paused before approaching the doors and stepped back, casting my gaze along the outer walls. The place had been a slaughterhouse once, though a grand one, as if the king back in those days had wanted even his cattle murdered in buildings that would shame the homes of his copper-crown rivals.

On the only other occasion I’d seen the blind-eye woman outside the throne room, she had been on the Street of Nails up close to one of the larger manses towards the western end. I’d come out of some ambassador’s ballroom with an enticing young woman, got my face slapped for my efforts, and was cooling off, watching the street before going back in. I had been wiggling one of my teeth to check that the damned girl hadn’t knocked it loose when I saw the Silent Sister across the broadness of the street. She stood there, bolder than brass, a bucket in one white hand and a horsehair brush in the other, painting symbols on the walls of the manse. Not the garden walls facing the street but the walls of the building itself, seemingly unnoticed by guard or dog. I watched her, growing colder by the moment as if a crack had run through the night, letting all the heat spill out of it. She showed no sign of hurry, painting one symbol, moving on to the next. In the moonlight it looked like blood she was painting with, broad dark strokes, each running with countless dribbles, and coming together to make sigils that seemed to twist the night around them. She was encircling the building, throwing a painted noose about it, patient, slow, relentless. I ran back in then, far more scared of that old woman and her bucket of blood than of the young Countess Loren, her overquick hand, and whatever brothers she might set upon me to defend her honour. The joy of the night was gone, though, and I left for home quick enough.

A day later I heard report of a terrible fire on the Street of Nails. A house burned to ash with not a single survivor. Even today the site lies vacant, with nobody willing to build there again.

The walls of the Blood Holes were blessedly free of any decoration save perhaps the scratched names of temporary lovers here and there where a buttress provided shelter for such work. I cursed myself for a fool and led on through the doors.

The Terrif brothers who ran the Blood Holes had sent a wagon to collect Snorri from the Marsail keep earlier in the day. I’d been particular in the message I dispatched, warning them to take considerable care with the man and demanding assurances of a thousand in crown gold if they failed to ensure his attendance in the Crimson Pit for the first bout.

Flanked by my entourage I strode into the Blood Holes, enveloped immediately in the sweat and smoke and stink and din of the place. Damn, but I loved it there. Silk-clad nobles strolled around the fight floor, each an island of colour and sophistication, close pressed by companions, then a ragged halo of hangers-on, hawkers, beer-men, poppy-men and brazens, and at the periphery, urchins ready to scurry between one gentleman and the next bearing messages by mouth or hand. The bet-takers, each sanctioned and approved by the Terrifs, stood at their stalls around the edge of the hall, odds listed in chalk, boys ready to collect or deliver at the run.

The four main pits lay at the vertices of a great diamond, red-tiled into the floor. Scarlet, Umber, Ochre, and Crimson. All of a likeness, twenty foot deep, twenty foot across, but with Crimson first amongst equals. The nobility wound their way between these and the lesser pits, peering down, discussing the fighters on display, the odds on offer. A sturdy wooden rail surrounded each pit, set into a timber apron that overlapped the stonework, reaching a yard down into the depression. I led the way to Crimson and leaned over, the rail hard against my midriff. Snorri ver Snagason glowered up at me.

“Fresh meat here!” I raised my hand, still staring down at my meal ticket. “Who’ll take a cut?”

Two small olive hands slid out over the rail beside me. “I believe
I
will. I feel you owe me a cut, or two, Prince Jalan.”

Aw hell. “Maeres, how good to see you.” To my credit I kept the blind terror from my reply and didn’t soil myself. Maeres Allus had the calm and reasonable voice that a scribe or tutor should have. The fact that he liked to watch when his collectors cut the lips off a man turned that reasonable tone from a comfort to a horror.

“He’s a big fellow,” Maeres said.

“Yes.” I glanced around wildly for my friends. All of them, even the two old veterans picked specially by my father to guard me, had slunk off towards Umber without a word and let Maeres Allus slide up beside me unannounced. Only Omar had the grace to look guilty.

“How would he fare against Lord Gren’s man, Norras, do you think?” Maeres asked.

Norras was a skilled pugilist, but I thought Snorri would pound the man flat. I could see Gren’s fighter now, standing behind the barred gate opposite the one that Snorri had come through.

“Shouldn’t we call the fight? Get the odds set?” I shot Barras Jon a look and called out to him, “Norras against my fresh meat? What numbers there?”

Maeres set a soft hand to my arm. “Time enough for wagering when the man’s been tested, no?”

“B-but he might come to harm,” I flustered. “I plan to make good coin here, Maeres, pay you back with interest.” My finger ached. The one Maeres had broken when I came up short two months back.

“Indulge me,” he said. “That will be my interest. I’ll cover any losses. A man like that . . . he might be worth three hundred crowns.”

I saw his game then. Three hundred was just half what I owed him. The bastard meant to see Snorri die and keep a royal prince on his leash. There didn’t seem to be a way past it, though. You don’t argue with Maeres Allus, certainly not in his cousins’ fight hall and owing him the best part of a thousand in gold. Maeres knew how far he could push me, minor princeling or not. He’d seen past my bluster to what lies beneath. You don’t get to head an organization like Maeres’s without being a good judge of men.

“Three hundred if he’s not fit to fight wagered bouts tonight?” I could slip back after Father’s ridiculous opera and buy into the serious fights. This afternoon’s exercise had only ever been intended to whet appetites and stir up interest.

Maeres didn’t answer, only clapped his soft hands and had the pit guards raise the opposite gate. At the sound of iron grating on stone and chains ratcheting through their housings, the crowds came to the rail, drawn by the pull of the pit.

“He’s huge!”

“Handsome fella!”

“Norras will ugly him up.”

“Knows his stuff, does Norras.”

The beefy Teuton came out of the archway, rolling his bald head on a thick neck.

“Fists only, Norseman,” Maeres called down. “The only way out of that pit for you is to follow the rules.”

Norras raised both hands and balled them into fists as if to instruct the heathen. He closed the distance between them, swift on his feet, jerking his head in sharp stutters designed to fool the eye and tempt an ill-advised swing. He looked rather like a chicken to me, bobbing his head like that, fists at his face, elbows out like little wings. A big muscular hen.

Snorri clearly had the reach, so Norras came in fast. He ducks his head, does Norras—takes punches on his skull. That’s what I was going to say. I’d seen men hurt their hands on the Teuton’s thick and bony head before. I didn’t have time to get the words out. Norras jabbed and Snorri caught the man’s fist in the flat of his palm, closing his fingers to trap it. He yanked Norras forwards, punching with his other arm, brushing aside the wild swing of the Teuton’s left with his elbow. The Norseman’s huge fist hammered into Norras’s face, knuckles impacting from chin to nose. The man flew back a yard or more, hitting the floor with a boneless thump, blood spattered on his upturned face, mixed with teeth and muck from his flattened snout.

A moment of silence, then a roar went up that hurt my ears. Half delight, half outrage. Betting parchments flew, coins changed hands, all informal wagers made in the moment.

“An impressive specimen,” Maeres said without passion. He watched while two pitmen dragged Norras away through the double-chambered exit valve. Snorri let them do their work. I could see he’d calculated his chances of escape and found them to be zero. The second iron gate could be raised only from the outside and then only when the first had been lowered.

“Send in Ootana.” Maeres never raised his voice but was always heard amidst the din. He offered me a thin smile.

“No!” I strangled back the outrage, remembering that I had seen lipless men even in the palace. Maeres Allus had a long arm. “Maeres, my friend, you can’t be serious?” Ootana was a specialist, with countless knife bouts notched onto his belt. He’d sliced open half a dozen good knife-men this year already. “At least let my fighter train with the hook-knife for a few weeks! He’s from the ice. If it’s not an axe they don’t understand it.” I tried for humour, but Ootana already waited behind the gate, a loose-limbed devil from the farthest shores of Afrique.

“Fight.” Maeres raised his hand.

“But—” Snorri hadn’t even been given his weapon. It was murder, pure and simple. A public lesson to put a prince firmly in his place. The public didn’t have to like it, though! Boos rang out when Ootana stepped into the pit, his hooked blade held carelessly to the side. The nobles hooted as if we were watching mummers in the square. They might hoot again tonight with equal passion if Father’s opera contained a suitably villainous party.

Snorri glanced up at us. I swear he was grinning. “No rules now?”

Ootana began a slow advance, passing his knife from hand to hand. Snorri spread his arms, not fully but enough to make a wide man wider still in that confined space, and with a roar that drowned out the many voices above, he charged. Ootana jigged to one side, intending to slash and dodge clear, but the Norseman came too fast, swerved to compensate, and reached with arms every bit as long as the Afriqan’s. At the last Ootana could do no more than attempt the killing blow; nothing else would save him from Snorri’s grapple. The exchange was lost in the collision. Snorri pounded into his man, driving him back a yard and slamming him into the pit wall. He held there for a heartbeat—perhaps a word passed between them—then stepped away. Ootana slid to a crumpled heap at the base of the wall, white fragments of bone showing through dark skin at the back of his head.

Snorri turned to us, shot an unreadable glance my way, then looked down to inspect the hook-knife driven through his hand, hilt hard against his palm. The sacrifice he’d made to keep the blade from his throat.

“The bear.” Maeres said it more quietly than ever into the noise of the erupting crowd. I’d never seen him angry, few men had, but I could see it now in the thinness of his lips and the paling of his skin.

“Bear?” Why not just shoot him with crossbows from the rail and be done! I’d seen a Blood Holes bear once before, a black beast from the western forests. They set it against a Conaught man with spear and net. It wasn’t any bigger than him, but the spear just made it angry and when it got in close it was all over. It doesn’t matter how much muscle a man may carry, a bear’s strength is a different thing and makes any warrior seem weak as a child.

It took them a while to produce the bear. This clearly hadn’t been part of the plan that involved Norras and Ootana. Snorri simply stood where he was, holding his injured hand high above his head and gripping the wrist with his other hand. He left the hook-knife where it was, embedded in his palm.

The fury the crowd had shown at Ootana’s entrance flared to new heights when the bear approached the gate, but Snorri’s booming laugh silenced them.

“Call that a bear?” He lowered his arms and thumped his chest. “I am of the Undoreth, the Children of the Hammer. The blood of Odin runs in our veins. Storm-born we!” He pointed up at Maeres with his transfixed hand, dripping crimson, knowing his tormentor. “I am Snorri, Son of the Axe. I have fought trolls! You have a bigger bear. I saw it back in the cells. Send that one.”