In truth, he always knew she needed little protection. Those few Faithful sufficiently deluded to imagine her some kind of substitute for her brother were sent away with implacable and waspish refusal, whilst the King never had reason to suspect her loyalty. She worked every day under Master Benril’s less-than-pleasant tutelage and spent her nights in this empty house, her charcoal and silverpoint crafting wonders from the parchment she starved herself to buy. It was parchment that bought her toleration, for he always had an ample supply and would bring some when he came, content to sit and watch as she worked, a bottle of Wolf’s Blood never far away despite her obvious disapproval.
“Every word she speaks regarding her brother and her father is to be recorded,” Malcius had told him that day he had been called to the palace, ostensibly to receive the queen’s endorsement of his latest collection of poems, but in reality to press him to a new duty. Malcius’s face had been grave as they walked together in the gardens, a king forced to reluctant necessity. “The identity of any and all visitors also. Lord Vaelin’s shadow was ever far too long, Alucius. Best if she’s not caught in it, don’t you think?”
He thought he was making me a spy, Alucius mused, glancing at the wall where she had pinned her sketches, bare now, save for the outline of parchment on whitewash. Little knowing the Meldeneans had got there first. Poor old Malcius, Janus would have known in an instant.
He climbed the creaking and partly missing stairs to the upper floor, Twenty-Seven following, hopping the gaps with nimble swiftness. He paused only a little at the door to Alornis’s room, as he had done at the end of many a drunken night, just to catch the soft whisper of her breath as she slept. Why did I never tell her? he wondered. Words spoken so easily to so many others, but I could never say them to her, the one time they would have been true.
The room where he had slept was mostly intact, his narrow bed still sitting against the wall complete with mattress, though the sheets were gone. He pulled it away from the wall and knelt, dislodging a fragment of plaster to reveal a small hiding place, missed by the Volarians who had come looting. He sighed in relief at finding the narrow leather bundle intact.
“Doesn’t seem much does it?” he said to Twenty-Seven, placing the bundle on the bed and undoing the ties, revealing a small dagger. The handle was undecorated whalebone and the sheath plain leather. He drew it, baring a well-made blade six inches long. “But,” he went on, “the man who gave it to me said the barest touch is enough to kill. Not instantly, but the poison on the blade will ensure a swift death.” He met the slave’s eyes, something he rarely did since there was nothing there to see. “What would you do if I tried to stab you with this? Kill me? I doubt it. Disarm me more likely, break my wrist perhaps. Or would you, I wonder, simply stand there and die, sure in the knowledge that I’ll find another just like you at my side before the day’s out?”
Twenty-Seven stared at him and said nothing.
“Don’t worry, my good friend.” Alucius returned the dagger to its sheath and pushed it into his belt. “It’s not for you. Besides, I find I’ve grown too fond of your company. Your conversation being such a delight.”
He pushed the bed against the wall and settled onto it, lying back with his hands behind his head. “How many battles have you seen? Ten, twenty, a hundred? I was in a battle once, well three times if you count the Bloody Hill and Marbellis, though my part was hardly worthy of note. No, my one true battle was in the Usurper’s Revolt, the High Keep. The first great victory in the illustrious career of our soon-to-be deliverer. There are songs about it, awful and dreadfully inaccurate, but I’m in them, most of them anyway. Alucius the poet-warrior, come to avenge his brother, ‘his sword like lightning from a righteous storm.’”
He fell silent for a moment, remembering. It was always the smell and the sound he recalled best, much more vivid in his mind than the images, which were just a red-tinged jumble. No, it was the sound of horses screaming, the stink of sweat, the odd crunch steel makes when it pierces flesh, voices begging their god for deliverance, and shit . . . the acrid, stinging perfume of his own shit.
“I made him teach me,” he told Twenty-Seven. “On the march. Every night we’d practice. I got better, good enough to fool myself I had some kind of chance, some hope of surviving what was coming. I knew I was wrong when Malcius ordered the charge. Knew in an instant I was no warrior, no avenging soul, just a scared boy with shit in his trews. I remember screaming, I suppose the others thought it a war cry, but it was just fear. When we charged the gate they sought to bar our entry with their bodies, linking arms, shouting prayers to their god. When we struck home the force of it sent me flying. I tried to get up but there were so many bodies pressing me down, I screamed and I begged but no one pulled me free, then something hard came down on my head.”