“No, Edyon.” This wasn’t going to plan at all. March shuffled closer to Edyon so he could speak more quietly. “There’s a man from Calidor: Lord Regan. He’s here at the fair and he’s here to kill you.”
Edyon gave a sharp laugh. “Well, he’ll have to join the queue.”
“This is serious, Edyon.”
“Well, I see you’re serious.” Edyon flopped back on the ground and turned his head to March. “I don’t feel at all serious. This smoke is amazing. Much better than last time. My body’s been floating among the treetops and . . . how can I tell you? . . . My body feels happy. I mean every muscle and every bone is smiling. Does that make sense?”
March shook his head. “First you’re covered in piss, now you’re drugged.” But what could you expect from the son of a prince?
“I’m merely happy and relaxed, my friend. Very, very wonderfully relaxed.” Edyon put his hand on March’s knee. “And you are just as handsome as I remember. I do hope I’m looking better too. The betterest of betters. I feel incredibly better. My bruises have gone, and even my wobbly tooth seems to have stopped wobbling.”
March looked down at Edyon’s hand on his knee. He needed to stop this, to tell his story. He did it the only way he knew how, by becoming the servant. He stood and bowed.
“My name is March, sir. I’m here to bring you a message.”
Edyon raised his head to look, then let it fall back, saying, “A message, hurrah!”
“Sir. Edyon.” March kept his servant voice together. “This is serious. The message is secret, and to give it to you I need to be sure of your identity. Can I ask about your parents . . . ?”
Edyon sat up again. “You are real, aren’t you, March? Absurd, handsome, foreign . . . but real? Not a smoke dream?”
“Please, sir!”
Edyon frowned but said, “You want to know about my parents? Well, my mother is a trader. Erin Foss. She buys things and sells them a short while later. Generally for a lot more than she buys them.”
“She’s always done that? And you’ve always been with her?”
“Since the womb. That answer applies to both your questions.”
“And your father?”
Even in his sleepy state, Edyon seemed to tense at the word.
“It’s no secret that my mother was never married. She says she loved my father for a while, but he left. Since then she’s never found a man that meets her standards. I’m the man in her life now, though I sometimes think she’d prefer me to be an ivory-inlaid walnut chest of drawers. So, anyway, I have no father, at least none that’ll own up to it.” Edyon shrugged and added, “I assume he’s dead.”
“Dead? Why?”
“Because my mother said that he was noble and good. And anyone good and noble would not ignore his blood.”
“That is what I believe too, but sometimes there are . . . circumstances, difficulties—”
“As far as I’m concerned, the only acceptable difficulty is death. So that is what I choose to believe.”
“So you don’t know your father’s identity?”
“Look, March, I’ve answered your questions. Now tell me the message or change the subject to something more interesting.”
“Your father is not dead, sir. He wants to meet you.”
Edyon gave a short laugh, but he looked nervous. My father’s presence, he thought. “You haven’t been sent by Madame Eruth to torment me, have you?”
“I’ve been sent by your father, sir.”
Edyon looked March in the eye, and the gleam of hope that March saw there struck him dumb for a moment.
Eventually Edyon said, “This is the strangest of days. And you really do have the most amazing eyes. Say that again.”
“Your father is alive. I’ve been sent by him. He wants to see you, and I am to take you to him. If you wish to go.”
Edyon blinked, the smoke fog seeming to clear from his brain. “You’re being serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” March said this as gently as he could, and was surprised how tender it sounded. And he began to tell his story.
“I am a servant to the prince of Calidor, Prince Thelonius. I’ve been his servant for eight years, since I was a boy. I think perhaps because I was young he talked to me more as a boy than as a servant, and he still talks to me as he talks to no one else except his closest family.” March paused. “But recently I have been the only one he could talk to. You may have heard that his wife and two sons died not long ago?”
Edyon didn’t say anything, so March pressed on, “As a prince, he must have an heir. The prince is under pressure from his ministers to marry again, to have more children, but he cannot face that. He loved his wife and children dearly. He doesn’t want another wife. But he does want another child . . . his long-lost, illegitimate son. You.”
Edyon stared at March and then shook his head. “This has to be the smoke.”
March carried on. “The prince asked me to find you. He trusts me like no other, because I’m only a servant, no threat to him. This information is important and dangerous. There are those in Calidor who would see you dead before they bow to you as the prince’s heir.”
“I see death all around you,” murmured Edyon.
March could see that Edyon’s breathing was fast and shallow.
“You are very like the prince. Your hair, your stature, your skin color. You are like a younger version of him. Do you know nothing at all about your father?”
“My mother told me that he was a nobleman from another country. They met at one of the fairs and were happy together for a few months one summer. Then he was called home. She realized she was pregnant after he left and didn’t tell my father about me until after I was born.” Edyon shook his head. “By then he was married to another woman. He wrote back to her only once, to send a gift for me.”
That gold chain about your neck, thought March.
“And your mother never indicated who this nobleman was?”
“Never. She said it didn’t matter, that I was hers.”
“You are the prince’s too. That is the truth. I can see it just by looking at you.”
Edyon laughed nervously and looked at his hands. “I’m shaking. I don’t think it’s the smoke.”
“The prince wants you to come to Calidor.”
“And what about my mother?”
“The prince talked only of you.”
Edyon ran his fingers through his hair. “Is he . . . what sort of man is he?”
A lying traitor, were the words on March’s lips, but he swallowed them and said, “He’s respected by his people.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“He knows his duty. He left you alone because of his duty. But he also believed it was best for you to find your own life here in Pitoria. Now he is older, though, and he has lost all those he loved, he wants to meet you.”
“And we should all do as he wants?”
“He’s a prince.” March shrugged. “That is his way.”
“And I’m the son of a prince, so you say. But why should I believe any of this? Why didn’t you tell me when we met before?”
“I judged the time wasn’t right. It is momentous news and”—March extended his hands, palms open—“I didn’t think you should hear it while you were lying in a pool of piss.”
“You know, that might actually have been more appropriate. My life is . . . a bit of a mess at the moment.”
March’s face was serious again. “You have a new life to think of now. This is momentous news for you, sir, but not just for you: for all of Calidor. As I said, some in the prince’s court think he should remarry and have more children. Others see his sons’ deaths as an opportunity to take more power for themselves. Lord Regan is one of them. He has been a loyal friend to the prince, but on this matter, the matter of an illegitimate son being made heir, he is not happy. While the king remains without a son, Regan will have an opportunity to seize the throne. Lord Regan is here at the fair to prevent you going to Calidor.”
“Pain, suffering, and death.”
March nodded gravely. “Death is his aim.”
“And what’s yours?”
“I have been instructed to guide you safely and secretly to your father.”