Just before the entrance I turned back. Several bloody fights were in progress and the richer elements had already started to flee the scene.
I used my royal shout to be heard. “My grandmother’s troops will be burning the poppies by nightfall. Death warrants will be issued for Allus’s captains. I expect to see Alber Marks’s head on a spike by morning, Cutter John’s too, and there will be leniency for any man who helped put them there.”
I turned and left, exiting the main doors, with some of the lords who had wondered about my identity now sprinting ahead into the street, many others crowding behind me. I heard the mutter then, for the first time. “Red Prince.” And looking down at myself as I stepped into the light of day I saw that few parts of me weren’t crimson with Maeres Allus’s lifeblood.
I walked twenty paces and leaned against one of the great buttresses that support the slaughterhouse walls, forehead to the stonework, cool in the shade. I saw my knife cut Allus’s throat, again and again. On the third time I vomited until I was empty. At last I walked away, weak and shaking, wiping my mouth.
“Give him what he wants,” Jorg had said. “Then take what you want. Nobody is more vulnerable than in their moment of victory, and you know that whatever you do this man will never let you go while he lives.”
I walked away, coffer heavy in my arms, still a coward. Neither the old Jalan, nor the one who left Vermillion a year ago. Perhaps a little of each—still a coward, but when you’ve looked at your old life with eyes that have seen Hell you discover a new perspective and realize that you can only be pushed so far.
EIGHT
I walked to the palace. Three times city guards stopped me, concerned at the gore dripping from my finery.
“I’m Prince Jalan. A man tried to rob me. He won’t try again.” I said the same thing three times and passed on.
I met more soldiers than guards, units of them moving rapidly and offering me no more than curious glances. At last I came to the Errik Gate through which heroes enter the palace, and took instead the postern gate just as I had on my return from the North. The sub-captain on duty recognized me and admitted me without fuss once he’d established the blood wasn’t mine.
On the far side of the wall the palace waited, unchanged, baking in the late Vermillion summer. “What’s going on in the city?” I asked the sub-captain as I emerged. “Soldiers everywhere.” It had been like this before we moved out for the Scorron border. That had been war in earnest and there hadn’t been as many troops in the streets.
“It’s a campaign against Slov, my prince.”
“Why?” I cared little enough for politics but I was pretty sure Slov hadn’t offered Red March even a hint of aggression in my lifetime. I seemed to remember half their royal family were honoured guests of the March, hostages against the good behaviour of the current regime— though quite how much the current Slov royals would care about people they hadn’t seen in decades I didn’t know. “What have they done?”
The man wrinkled his brow as if the act might produce an answer. “They’re the enemy, sire.”
“By definition if we’re attacking them. But why are they the enemy?”
Again the frown, but this time relaxing into a smile as he remembered the fact he’d been hunting. “Harbouring a person of interest.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, Prince Jalan.”
“You’re dismissed, sub-captain.”
“But, my prince. We should escort—”
“I made it from here from the deserts of Afrique, sub-captain. I should be able to negotiate the next three hundred yards in my own home without mishap.”
The first two hundred and ninety yards went well. It was approaching the front steps of the Roma Hall that I ran into difficulty.
“Jalan? By Christ!” An angry roar from behind me. “It is you! Where the hell have you been you bankrupt little weasel?”
I paused. My big brother Martus. A man I’d not had to endure since that audience in the throne room the day I first laid eyes on Snorri. I made a slow turn and found myself in Martus’s shadow as he loomed over me.
“Killing people, brother.” I met his gaze squarely.
It took a moment for the words to sink in, another for him to take in the crimson state of me, one more for him to put the two together and take a sharp step back. “Dear God . . .”
“My debts have been paid in full.” I turned back and walked on up into the house.
Not strictly true but the arm-aching weight of gold remaining in the coffer I held before me would pay off the various wine merchants, tailors, and bawdy houses still holding my credit notes. It would be good to be free of the burden.
I won’t say the Roma Hall seemed small, because set against the places I’d been laying my head of late it was huge—but somehow it felt smaller than my memories of it. Fat Ned and young Double stood on guard at the front door, the former blanching at my approach and shaking so much the loose folds of his skin jiggled around his old bones.
“It’s Prince Jalan, Ned.” Double elbowed the old man, his dark eyes taking in more than just the gore drying across me. He bowed, the black locks of his hair falling across his face, eyes still studying me from behind this veil.
I favoured them with a brief nod and pushed on through, Fat Ned still gaping at me.
A couple of servants in the entrance hall ran off screaming murder, but Ballessa stood her ground, her expression disapproval and concern in equal measures.
“No errant peasant boys to take care of this time, Ballessa. Clean clothes will suffice.”
A frown at the memory of Hennan’s brief stay, then Ballessa gave a nod, rotated her matronly bulk and set off down the corridor to order up a bath and fetch a collection of suitable garments from my wardrobes.
I washed off the blood and left the water pink, the last of Maeres Allus swirling around, diluted, sluiced away, and beneath it Jalan Kendeth, clean and without stain. I’d killed a man with intent, done it in cold blood, or as cold as any human’s blood can be at such a moment. An evil son of a bitch, true enough, but it didn’t feel good, it didn’t feel right. No part of me felt the hero. I called for more water and washed again— though water will only take the stains you can see.
The clothes Ballessa brought still fitted me. They wrapped me, comfortable, familiar, rich, a second skin that completed my disguise—I stood before the mirror and Prince Jalan stared back at me, surprised. I looked the part, every inch of me, and every inch felt the impostor. Every step of my journey had taken me further from home, no matter the direction I took, and now, standing in my father’s house, I was further away than I’d ever been.
I made to turn away and in the last moment caught a flash of blue that drew my gaze back to the mirror, staring past myself into the room behind, the doorways, the windows, the shadows. There’d been a flicker of motion. I was sure of it. I wanted to whirl around and check that nobody stood at my back. Instead I stood there, without motion, studying the reflected room, hunting it, looking for that blue.
Finally I turned the mirror to the wall then did the same for the three others hung in my rooms. I hadn’t forgotten about the Lady Blue and much as I wanted her to forget about me that was unlikely to happen. She and Grandmother still had their war—and when the Red Queen crushed the witch the loudest cheer would come from me. She had the blood of my great-grandfather on her hands, a crime I could perhaps overlook, but the blood of my unborn sister, and the blood of my friend, Tuttugu, could not be washed away. Part of me, more than a small part, the pieces still burning with the memory of taking Maeres Allus’s corrupted life, wanted to be the one to stick the knife into the Lady Blue, and twist it.