Keris pressed his hands to his ears, trying to drown out the sound. Rain soaked through his cloak, but he still looked to the sky, allowing it to hammer against his face. Wishing it could wash away his mistakes.
A scuff of a boot against stone caught his attention, but Keris didn’t turn. It was one of Serin’s minions, tasked, as always, to follow him through the city. He knew their faces—knew how to lose them—but as he glanced down a dark alleyway that would allow him access to the rooftops of Vencia, a wave of vertigo nearly caused him to stumble.
Thud.
He didn’t want to climb. Climbing meant being up high. Being up high meant risking falling, and with the way he was feeling, it would almost be inevitable.
And maybe he deserved it.
Instead, Keris pushed open the door to a loud alehouse with a sign above it reading The One-Eyed Parrot. A wave of heat rushed over him, carrying with it the scent of spilled booze, sweat, and cooking, his ears filling with the raucous shouts of drunks and music played by a drummer with middling talent.
Spying a table with a group of men playing cards, he approached. “Room for another?”
Eyes flicked up, and Keris waited for them to recognize him. But Vencia knew Prince Keris as one always dressed in flamboyant attire, his hair perfectly coifed, and with an escort on his heels. Not a sodden man in shirtsleeves and a plain cloak, hair pulled back in a messy knot. “You got silver?” one of them, a thick man with a receding hairline that he made up for with a dense beard, asked. “We don’t play for coppers.”
Keris debated pointing out that the pot in the center was more copper than not, but instead said, “Yes.”
“Then sit. We’ll deal you in next round.”
Keris settled in the chair, motioning to the barmaid to bring him a glass of wine. From the corner of his eye, he saw Serin’s man take a seat at the bar, watching him in the tarnished mirror that sat behind the row of bottles. When the girl brought Keris his wine, he lifted it and smirked at the man, who only cast his eyes upward and took a drink from his own glass.
The bearded man won the hand, scooping the pile toward him. The skinny one sitting across from him shuffled and swiftly dealt. Keris glanced at his hand, then met the bet the bearded man placed, which was a single copper. “Don’t think your luck will hold another round?”
The bearded man spit on the floor. “Got nothing to do with my luck. Fault lies with the king and his taxes. If I don’t come home with the coin I left with, my wife will chop off my parts and sell them to feed our children.”
A complaint about his father that Keris had heard many times before, and he gave a sympathetic nod as he watched the other players for tells. Not because he cared about winning, but because he needed to keep his mind busy.
Thud.
He covered his flinch by drinking deeply from his glass, forcing himself to focus on the game and not the feel of his brother’s boot slipping through his grasp.
“Bastard will see us all starved and in the streets before conceding he’s bit off more than he can chew with that cursed bridge he stole from Ithicana.”
The other men nodded their agreement, the skinny one adding his own glob of spit to the floor as he muttered, “Back-stabbing Veliant thief.”
Keris had fueled this anger in the people with his rumors about Aren, and old habits died hard. “To the victor go the spoils, in cards and in war.”
He’d kept his voice light, but that seemed not to matter, for the faces of all three darkened, the bearded man saying, “This was no war. A war is fought face-to-face with weapons in hand, not by sending a princess with a pretty face and nice tits to stab a man in the back. Not only was there no honor in it, our beloved king has nothing to show for it but snake-infested islands and empty pockets.”
“And a royal prisoner,” Keris added. “You wouldn’t want to forget that.”
“He brings shame upon Maridrina,” the skinny man said. “The Ithicanian king treated us as true allies, and this was how he was repaid.”
Keris made a noncommittal noise, swapping out a card, then lifting a hand to the barmaid. “A round on me, love.”
She brought him a glass of wine and the men more ale, which went quickly down throats, the men’s grievances against the crown—and his father—voiced with increasing volume and intensity. And not just at his table, but at all of them, men and women alike crying foul against the taxes, the Endless War, the hunger, the invasion of Ithicana, and the imprisonment of Aren Kertell, all of them blaming one person.
His father.
For as long as Keris had been alive, there had been no love lost between his father and the people. But he was feared, which allowed him to maintain total control. In recent years, the people’s ambivalence had moved to dislike, and then, after the invasion of Ithicana, into outright hate. But still… fear had kept them in check. Yet listening to the players and the other patrons, feeling the roiling rise of fury in the room, Keris realized the balance had tipped so far that fear no longer had the power to silence them.
One man could not stand against a king and hope to win. But a nation…
Keris listened and played and bought round after round until the noise in the room was near deafening with shouts for the liberation of Ithicana and its king. Then he asked his now very drunk companions, “What do you see as a solution to Maridrina’s woes?”
“I say…” the bearded man drained his cup, “that Silas Veliant is not fit to reign. I say,” he shouted above the noise, “that Maridrina should pull him from the throne! I say, death to the king!”
“Hear, hear!” Keris said, then rose and went to the bar. Sitting next to Serin’s spy, he said, “I hope you’re taking notes of all this so you might accurately repeat it back to your master.”
The man twitched. “You incent them toward treason, Your Highness.”
“I merely listen to the voices of the people.” Leaning back against the bar, he rested his elbows on the damp surface, watching as his gambling companion’s cry for his father’s death spread through the room. “Their thoughts and actions are their own.”
“And will be punished accordingly,” he snapped. “They all deserve to be arrested. To have their heads removed and spiked on the gate as traitors to the crown.”
“Ah, yes. Because that will undoubtedly regain the goodwill of the people.”
The spy made a face. “Crawl back into your books of idealism, Your Highness. The people need not love their king; they need only fear the consequences of crossing him. Consequences, I might add, from which you are not exempt.”
Keris sipped at his wine, knowing he’d had too much but not caring, because the people had more power than he did. The power to see change accomplished.
They only needed someone to guide them in the right direction.
All his life, Keris had run from the crown, not wanting any part of it. Yet now he found that the desire to take that crown from his father burned like wildfire through his veins. Not only because it would give him the power to liberate Valcotta. Not only because he’d be able to free Aren Kertell and withdraw from Ithicana.