The Palace of Impossible Dreams (19 page)

“No princess, no wedding,” Boots said with a shrug. “No wedding, no taking the throne. What's the problem?”

“I was there when they were discussing the problem yesterday. Tryan has suggested the queen bear another daughter to inherit her crown.”

“Well, that buys us nine months at the very least.”

“You don't understand,” he said, keeping his voice low. Although they were alone in their cell and the walls were several feet thick, he didn't want this conversation to be overheard. “Tryan has
proposed
to the queen and with the succession so doubtful, and the Privy Council so nervous about the future, I fear she's going to accept him.”

“Then more fool her . . .”

“No, you still don't understand, Boots. Tryan doesn't need to father a child on the queen. He just needs to be her husband. After that, for all intents and purposes, the throne is his for the taking.”

“We should never have come here,” she said, stroking Missy's forehead. “I don't know why we let those fools from Hidden Valley talk us into it.”

“Because you hate the suzerain as much as I do,” he reminded her. “You wanted to help bring them down.”

“And yet here I am, with my pups given the worst names imaginable by the Immortal Maiden and my mate hiding bodies for her. Things aren't really going as we'd planned, I have to say.”

“I'm so sorry, Boots,” he said, reaching out to stroke her. “I'd do anything to roll back time and tell Declan Hawkes where he could shove his Cabal and their grand plans to save the world.”

Boots nodded in agreement, and for once she didn't shirk from his touch. “Well, how about you find a way to save your family, Farm Dog. The flanking Cabal of the Tarot can take care of itself.”

Elvere was still recovering from an unseasonable storm that had caused serious damage to much of the city, when Declan arrived. The wharf where his ship was docked had been hastily repaired and many of the buildings were still unroofed, the gaping holes covered in tarpaulins that snapped in the sharp breeze coming off the harbour.

Declan made his way into the city, hoping to establish contact with a member of the Cabal who had a shop in the clothing district. A tailor of some note, the man served a broad clientele in the city, and was able to pass messages to foreigners without being remarked upon. When Declan found the shop, however, it was a wreck. The building had obviously been flooded and on the footpath outside the shop was a gelatinous stinking pile that might have once been bolts of material Pollo the Tailor kept in his shop.

“He's gone to his mother's house.”

Declan turned to find a young boy tugging on his sleeve. He seemed to be no more than eight or nine years old.

“What?”

“The tailor. Mister Pollo. He's gone to his mother's house.”

“How do you know?”

“ 'Cause he told me he did,” the boy replied. “For a copper bit, I'll tell ya how to get there.”

Declan smiled at the enterprising lad. “Is that right?”

“For a silver bit, I'll take you myself.”

Declan fished around in his pocket for a silver fenet and offered it to the lad, snatching it out of reach as the boy tried to grab it from his hand. “You get this
after
we've found Master Pollo's mother's house.”

The boy glared at him for a moment and then shrugged. Clearly, his plan had been to take the money and run. “Come on, then,” he said with a heavy sigh. “It's this way.”

Almost an hour later, the lad stopped in front of a tidy house in a narrow street lined by identical tidy houses, all joined together in a row. Only the different coloured front doors and the occasional window box differentiated the houses. The house the boy led Declan to, had a blue front door
with a brass knocker on it. Declan banged the knocker as the boy tugged at his sleeve. “You can pay me now.”

“When I'm sure this really is Pollo's house.”

A few moments later a swarthy woman, who looked so much like the tailor Declan was looking for that he didn't even need to ask, opened the door. He flipped the silver coin to the lad, who caught it, bit into it to ascertain its authenticity, and then disappeared down the street at a run.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked.

“I'd like to see your son, madam. Pollo the Tailor.”

She frowned at him. “If you're after a refund, you're wasting your time. The shop is ruined. Everything is gone. He has nothing left to give anybody.”

“On the contrary, madam. I'm here to pay him money I owe him. Is he home?”

She glared at Declan suspiciously, debating the issue, and then nodded, standing back to let him enter. The hall of the house proved to be small, dark and cluttered with what Declan guessed must be all Pollo had been able to rescue from his ruined shop.

The woman led him into the kitchen out back, where Pollo was sitting at the table, nursing a mug of steaming tea. Slender, swarthy and normally dressed to perfection, the tailor was unshaved and bedraggled, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He looked up morosely as Declan entered the room, his eyes widening in surprise as he realised who his visitor was.

“Tides! I never expected to see you again!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “I heard you were dead.”

“A vicious rumour put about by my enemies,” Declan replied with a smile, as he accepted the tailor's handshake. “I saw your shop. What happened?”

“Terrible storm, it was,” Pollo's mother said before her son could answer. “Went on for days. Ruined half the folk with shops near the seafront.”

Pollo nodded in agreement. “It was worse than a hurricane. They, at least, move on. This one just sat over the city for days. Like it had a score to settle.”

“A hurricane? At this time of year?”

Pollo turned to his mother. “Could you leave us for a few minutes, mother? This gentleman and I have some business to discuss.”

Pollo's mother eyed Declan speculatively before she answered. “Says he
owes you money. Make sure he pays up before he leaves.” With that, she gathered up her skirts and left them alone.

Pollo shut the door behind her and then turned to look at Declan. “Sorry about mother. Tea?”

Declan shook his head. “No, thanks. Tell me about this storm.”

“It wasn't natural,” Pollo said, resuming his seat at the scrubbed wooden table, indicating with a wave of his hand that Declan should do the same. “And it stopped almost as unexpectedly as it started.”

“Who was it?” There was no need to explain anything further. Pollo was a member of the Cabal of the Tarot. He knew as well as Declan did that unexplained hurricanes when the Tide was on the way back were likely to have more than one cause.

“Hard to say,” Pollo said with a shrug. “I doubt it was Brynden. He doesn't usually mess with the weather like that.”

Declan wasn't so sure. “The last cataclysm happened because he threw a meteor into the ocean,” he reminded the tailor. “He's more than capable of it.”

Pollo shook his head. “He had a reason for that. No, I think it was one of the others.”

“The Immortal Prince was in Ramahn until recently, and rumoured to be headed this way.”

“Then I'd say you've found your culprit,” Pollo said with a nod. “Storms are his speciality, aren't they?”

“But why would he do it? Something must have set him off.”

Pollo shrugged. “Who can say with an immortal? They're capable of anything and after all this time, most of them are more than a little touched in the head.” Pollo grinned. “I'd kill myself if I discovered I was immortal.” The tailor fell about laughing for a few moments at his own wit, and then brought his mirth under control when he realised Declan didn't seem to share his amusement. “That was a joke, Declan.”

“I know.”

“You're not laughing.”

“It wasn't that funny.”

Pollo sighed heavily. “What are you here for then? If you didn't know about the storm before you got here, I'm guessing it's not because of that.”

“I'm looking for someone.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“A Glaeban woman. I think she was headed for Brynden's abbey.”

Pollo's smile faded as he shook his head. “She won't be at the abbey. Brynden has a strict ‘no women' policy. Or at least, the monks there do. If your Glaeban woman was headed to the Abbey of the Way of the Tide, she'd more than likely have been turned back at the main gate.”

“Would she have come here to Elvere?”

He nodded. “Unless she headed back to Ramahn via the Tarascan Oasis. I could find out easily enough.”

“How?”

“My cousin works for the caravan outfit that makes the regular supply run to the abbey. He'll know if a woman was with any of the caravans coming out of the desert. How long ago are we talking?”

“A couple of months at most.”

“Then we're in luck,” he said rising to his feet. “Brell's been in charge of the passenger manifests since the new year.” He walked to the kitchen door and opened it. “Mother!” he called. “I'm going out for a while.”

“You make sure you get the money he owes you,” a disembodied voice yelled back from somewhere upstairs.

Pollo turned to Declan with a grin. “You really are going to have to give me some money, you know.”

Declan nodded. “The Cabal will see you're taken care of. That shop of yours is too convenient for them to let it go out of business.”

Pollo's cousin Brell turned out to be even more like Pollo's mother than Pollo was. Short, thin and swarthy, had he been wearing a dress, Declan thought he'd be hard pressed to tell them apart.

“A woman, you say?” he said, as they followed him along a long line of kneeling camels as he ticked off things on the list he was carrying.

“She was Glaeban,” Declan said, waving away the myriad flies that buzzed around the camel dung while waiting for a human to chance by. “Very beautiful. Dark hair. Blue eyes.”

Brell rolled his eyes at Declan. “She would have been shrouded, particularly if she was coming from the abbey. How do you expect me to know what she looked like? Or if she was Glaeban? Or beautiful. Or ugly. Or had two heads. She could have been another lizard, for all I know.”

“
Another
lizard?” Pollo asked, glancing at Declan.

Brell shrugged and moved on to the next camel. “Had one through here ‘bout the time you're talking about. Tiny little thing she was. Shrouded, of
course, but you could see it round her eyes. The scales, you know.” He shuddered and returned to ticking things off his list. “Can't remember if it was before or after the other woman came through.”

“What other woman?” Declan asked, resisting the temptation to relieve Brell of his wretched list so he could shove it somewhere that might get his undivided attention.

“It wasn't a woman,” Brell said. “It was a slave.”

“What did she look like?”

“Like every other wretched female slave I've ever seen,” Brell snapped. “Tall and covered in a flanking shroud. Tides, man, what do you expect?”

“You say she was tall?” It wasn't much to go on, but if she was shrouded, Arkady's height might be the only thing that differentiated her from any other slave.

“Taller than me,” Brell confirmed, moving to the next beast, who spat at them just on principle. “But then, that's nothing special. I have twelve-year-old nephews who are taller than me. And she might have had blue eyes, but I really can't remember.”

“What happened to her?” Pollo asked.

“She was batch-bought by the Senestrans, as I recall.”

Declan looked to Pollo for an explanation. “What's he mean? Batch-bought?”

“The Senestrans buy all their lower echelon slaves in bulk. They don't care about looks or skills. They just order a certain gender or age and let the slavers put the order together.”

“Where would they have taken her?”

“To the slave markets, of course.” Brell looked at Declan as if he was a little bit slow. “That's where they take all the slaves, you know.”

Declan took a threatening step closer to the trader, who cowered back in fear. Pollo put an arm out to restrain him, and turned to his cousin. “My friend has no sense of humour, Brell,” he warned. “Please, just tell us what you know.”

“I
have
told you what I know,” Brell said, sniffing indignantly. “I delivered her to the markets. I'm pretty sure they shipped her out within a matter of days, because Hento was anxious that he couldn't make up the order before the ship left, and those Senestran traders are tight bastards at the best of times. He paid me a bonus for delivering her the same day she arrived.”

“Who is Hento?” Declan demanded, feeling sick to the pit of his stomach.

“Was,” Pollo corrected. “He was a slaver. Worked for one of the biggest
slave outfits in the city. He was killed in the storm. In fact, most of the slave markets were blown away. Gonna make business hard for everyone until they're rebuilt.”

That was suspiciously coincidental, but hardly proof of anything. Declan turned to Brell. “Are you sure she shipped out for Senestra before the storm?”

“Not one hundred per cent sure,” Brell said. “But Hento would never have paid me a bonus for merchandise he planned to have sitting around in the pens for weeks at a time.”

Pollo smiled at Declan encouragingly. “Which means your friend probably wasn't killed in the storm and is still alive. That's a good thing.”

“Just shipped off to Senestra as a slave. Not such a good thing,” Declan said, his threatening gaze still fixed on Brell. “You said you saw a lizard Crasii. What happened to her?”

“I have no idea. I only saw her the one time. I swear.”

Declan stepped back from the man, silently cursing.
Tides, what was Tiji up to? Why hasn't she contacted me? And how had Arkady managed to get herself sold into slavery?
Was Kinta responsible? Brynden? Or had Cayal found her and taken his revenge on her for . . .
what
? Declan had no idea.