I spread my hands as far as the ropes allowed. “It’s only a hint of what’s coming if we don’t hold the Appan Gate. These are just scouts and still the palace walls mean nothing to them!”
“Necromancers and dead men on my very doorstep!” Hertet rose from the throne, colouring crimson, voice rising toward a shout. “And you try to send away my personal guard?”
“Vermillion will fall! You must—”
“Must?” Hertet swung his head left then right as if seeking echoes of his outrage. “Must? I am the king of Red March, from sea to sea, and there is no ‘must’!”
“Listen to me!” I shouted to be heard.
“Put Prince Jalan in the cells. Let him cool his temper and find his reason.” Hertet fell back into his chair, anger spent as quickly as it came. “Marshal Roland, gather fifty men of the grounds guard and take the situation at the Appan Gate in hand. I expect a report in the morning.”
“This is insane!” I made to climb the dais, but strong arms already had me, dragging me toward the exit. “You’ll all die here if you follow this idiot—” A heavy fist took the treason from my mouth and the rest of the world followed into darkness a moment later.
NINETEEN
As tyrants go, Uncle Hertet proved not to be too terrible. They dragged me dazed and disoriented into one of his grand drawing rooms where the “cells” proved to be a collection of large, comfortable armchairs to which eight or nine well-dressed men were lightly chained. I looked a beggar next to them and a housemaid rushed to get a dustsheet before the guardsmen thrust me into my own comfy chair.
“Hertet likes to keep his enemies close,” I said, reclining with a groan.
Few parts of me didn’t hurt.
“Prince Jalan?” A concerned voice from just behind me. “Are you injured?”
“I’m fine. The worst of the pain is in my . . . body.” I craned my neck to see who addressed me. Squinting against the remnants of double vision I made out a thin and balding man in the latest Rhone fashions, yellow buttons on a black velvet jacket. The two images joined to reveal him sharp featured, sporting a port-wine stain below one eye. “Bonarti Poe!”
On my list of likely rebels Bonarti Poe would be keeping me company in the weasel section at the very bottom. “What did you do? Rush my uncle screaming death threats?”
Poe gave a high-pitched and flustered laugh. “No! No, never!” He coughed into a lace-edged handkerchief. “The king considers me Count Isen’s man and mistrusts me.” Another cough and he raised his voice. “But there’s no man more loyal to the throne of Red March than Bonarti Poe!”
“Isen is against my uncle?” That sounded promising. Count Isen was madder than a bag of ferrets but very capable and with a standing army of his own.
“I’m sure the count’s loyalty is beyond reproach,” Poe replied. “But he cannot yet have expressed an opinion on the matter. Even with the swiftest of messengers and leaving his hall immediately the count can’t be anywhere near Vermillion. I fear the king has simply anticipated defiance where I’m sure none exists.”
I was far less sure, but the count’s opinion didn’t matter one way or the other if he was still down at his holdings in the south. “So we’re doomed to live out the rest of our lives in this damn awful dungeon then?”
I sunk further back into the chair and smiled at the maid standing attendance between two guardsmen at the door. A pretty girl with red curls. “They’ll move us to the Marsail cells come morning.” An ancient, crumbling lord I recognized but couldn’t name. “That silly boy’s too scared to spare the men right now.”
“Hmmm.” I tested my chain. It turns out that heavy chains are just for show. A light chain will hold a man. I had more chance of breaking off the chair leg that the other end was wrapped about. Actually, if not for the half dozen guards stationed around the walls, I could just turn the armchair over and slip the chain free. But with my sword gone, my knife confiscated, and the fact I had no intention of pitting myself against six trained guards, with or without a sword, my options were limited. “They seem to be having fun.” The sounds of conversation just reached us from Hertet’s court, a low continuous rumble interspersed with the occasional shriek of laughter or outburst of applause. “Scared out of their wits, most of them.” The Baron of Strombol, a portly but fierce little man governing a sizable territory in the mountains to the north. “Terrified of whatever is at our gates, frightened that the Red Queen won’t come back to save them, frightened that she will.”
“She isn’t dead?” I hadn’t believed it, not truly. I didn’t think she could die. Not a woman that tough. And the Silent Sister . . . she always seemed too old for death to bother with.
The baron threw up his hands, chain clattering. “Who knows? Hertet says she is, but I’ve had no word of it save his. Wishful thinking?” I pursed my lips. It was perhaps the best chance the heir-apparentlynot was ever going to get to wear the crown. Maybe he just decided to gamble. We both shared that weakness. I understood gambling. We sat and time passed. I took a goblet of wine and picked at a bowl of olives. I smiled at the maid and earned a scowl for staring. A few parts of me even stopped aching, though I knew I’d be walking like an old man tomorrow, if I could even stand. It would have been quite pleasant but for the nagging of an unwelcome conscience. I’d left Darin’s wife and child in the care of a necromancer and sent just a dozen men under the command of a shiny knight to save them. Along with a barbed conscience I also had “overwhelming terror” to spoil the evening for me. The certain knowledge that the forces at the Appan Gate would soon crumble if they hadn’t already, and the tide of dead citizenry would then swamp the palace walls and kill us all.
I had less than an hour’s uneasy rest before the screaming started. I recognized it immediately despite the sound reaching only faintly through the curtained windows. The death-scream, issuing from the mouths of corpses all across the palace compound.
“What the?” The baron shifted his bulk around in the narrow confines of his chair.
“The lichkin is here.” I’d intended it to be a resigned announcement but it emerged more as a squeaking whisper.
“The what?” Bonarti Poe looked as frightened as a man could be of something he knew nothing about.
“A bad thing,” I said.
By the sound of it the lichkin hadn’t come at the head of a breakthrough from the gate. The death-scream was too scattered and too quiet for that. Even so, there were many of the dead and the lichkin on its own was a thing to fear. In Hell a single lichkin had defeated Snorri ver Snagason in moments.
My chair seemed suddenly less comfortable, more like an anchor holding the lamb for the slaughter. The illumination from the new king’s candles and lamps seemed to grow more dim by the moment, as if a second sunset were upon us, one that cared nothing for the works of men, only that the light must die. Shadows lengthened and grew darker, twitching with possibility.
And then the lichkin drew near. I could almost taste it through the outer wall of Milano House, stalking the night. Colours died, shade by shade, leaving the room subdued, and a great sorrow fell across us, blacker than the blackest of black dog days—the certainty that joy had fled and nothing would ever be right in the world again.
It lasted an age, but at last the sensation lifted by degrees. Poe’s weeping quieted to a deep heaving. The oppression eased enough for me to wonder how bad it must have been for the men out there in the dark with just the feeble illumination of torch and moon between them and that stalking horror. It had been terrible even when safe in the light, comfort, and security of the house.