Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

Kel scratched at a bit of the black paint on the carriage window as Conor and Mayesh argued about whether House Aurelian was or was not universally beloved. Through the clear spot of glass, Kel could see that they were on the Ruta Magna. The last section of the Great Southwestern Road that ran from Shenzhou to Castellane, the Ruta Magna cut through the mountains from the Narrow Pass, crossed the city, and ended at the harbor. Kel often wondered what the other end of the Great Road looked like. He knew it dead-ended in Shenzhou’s capital, but did it become the main thoroughfare of that city, as it had in Castellane, or did it simply fade into a scatter of streets, like a river bleeding into a floodplain?

Conor always told him he was odd for wondering about such things. But Kel dreamed often of the far-flung corners of the world. From their window in Marivent, he could see the harbor and the great ships returning from Sayan and Taprobana, from Kutani and Nyenschantz. Someday, he told himself. Someday, he would find himself aboard one of those tallships, sailing across the raveled blue silk of the ocean. Hopefully with Conor beside him, though until now Conor’s promise that they would one day travel the world had yet to materialize. Not through any fault of Conor’s, Kel knew; House Aurelian had kept its Prince unusually close.

“Oh, very well,” Mayesh snapped. He showed annoyance rarely; Kel turned with mild surprise to see that the Counselor had taken out a new sheet. “If Malgasi displeases, here we have Prince Floris of Gelstaadt. Young, handsome, will one day control the largest banking empire in the world.”

Conor’s general preference was for women, but it was by no means a rule. If Conor married another man, a woman of good breeding would be chosen to be the Lady Mother who would bear Conor’s child, nurse it, and give it over to the two kings to raise. It had been the situation with Conor’s grandparents—a Prince of Castellane and a Lord of Hanse—and was generally not uncommon in Dannemore. Marriages between two queens were rarer but not unheard of, either.

“Banking empire?” Conor stuck his hand out. “Let me see.”

Kel looked over the Prince’s shoulder as he perused the sketch. The boy in it, depicted leaning against an alder tree, was good looking, with flax-colored hair and the blue eyes common to Gelstaadt—a tiny country whose liberal banking laws had made it one of the richest in Dannemore.

Conor glanced up. “What do you think, Kel?”

The atmosphere inside the carriage changed subtly. Kel, who had spent the past decade attuning himself to nuances of social interaction, felt it. He was the Sword Catcher, the Prince’s servant. It was not his place to give an opinion, at least not in Jolivet and Mayesh’s view. (It was, perhaps, one of the few things they agreed on.)

Kel was not sure why he should care. All who worked in the Palace were loyal to the Blood Royal, but he was loyal above all other things to Conor. It was the choice he had made long ago, as a small, grubby boy in borrowed clothes, facing the Prince of Castellane. Who had offered him an extraordinary life, and had given him that and more—an extraordinary friendship to go along with it.

“I think,” Kel said, “that either someone has drawn that tree very small, or Floris of Gelstaadt is a giant.”

“Good point,” said Conor. “I hardly want to marry someone who looms over me. How tall is he, Mayesh?”

Mayesh sighed. “Seven feet.”

Conor shuddered. “Mayesh, are you trying to torment me? An unpopular Princess, a giant, and a redhead? Is this your idea of an amusing jest? It is taking years off my life. This may be treason.”

Mayesh held up a new sheet of parchment. “Princess Anjelica of Kutani.”

Conor sat up, finally interested. Kel couldn’t blame him. The painting was of a dark-skinned girl with a cloud of black hair and luminous amber eyes. A cap of golden mesh set with star-shaped diamonds was her crown, and more gold glimmered at her wrists. She was luminously beautiful.

“Kutani?” said Jolivet, sounding dubious. “Would Castellane be able to afford such a dowry as they would certainly demand?”

Kutani was an island kingdom, a center of the spice trade—cardamom, pepper, saffron, ginger, and cloves: All grew or were traded there, making the kingdom spectacularly rich. According to Joss Falconet, whose House was granted the spice Charter, the island air was scented with cardamom, and the trade winds blew across beaches soft as powder.

“So true,” said Mayesh, setting the paper aside. “Probably not.”

Conor’s eyes flashed. “We are rich enough,” he said. “Give me that back.”

They had turned off the Ruta Magna onto a narrow lane behind the city’s central square, where a plaza was formed by four of the oldest buildings in the city. All were clad in white marble, veined with quartz that glittered in the sun; all boasted broad steps, columns, and arched porticoes in the style of the bygone Callatian Empire.

Valerian Square had once been the Cuadra Magna, the central hub of the Imperial port city. At each cardinal point stood a massive structure dating from the time of the Empire. To the north, the Tully; its steps were guarded by marble lions, their mouths wide open as if to catch criminals in their jaws. To the west was the Convocat; to the south, the Justicia. To the east, the Porta Aurea, the triumphal arch erected by Valerian, the first King of Castellane; citizens fondly called it the Gate to Nowhere.

Castellane had something of a confusing relationship with its past. Today marked the yearly anniversary of Castellane’s independence from Magna Callatis. The Castellani had fierce pride in their city-state, feeling it to be the most superior place in Dannemore. Yet they also prided themselves on their descent from Callatians, and on what they had kept from the time of the Empire: everything from the hypocausts that heated the public baths to the courts and the Council of Twelve. Independent but also tied to the glories of a domain long past; sometimes Kel thought he was the only one who observed the contradiction.

Kel and the others drew up behind the Convocat, where a hidden entrance would allow them to pass into the building without being seen. The lane had been closed off to all but royal traffic at both ends. As Kel swung down from the carriage, he saw a group of small children peer out from the shadows, wide-eyed. They were ragged—barefoot and scrubby, freckled by the sun. He thought of two small boys under a powderbark tree, playing at pirate battles, and flipped a copper coin in their direction. “Present my greetings to the Ragpicker King!” he called.

The smallest of the boys gave a frightened gasp. “They say he’s here today,” he said. “Somewhere in the crowd.”

“As if you’d know what he looked like,” scoffed a girl in a tattered pinafore. “You ain’t never seen him.”

The smaller boy puffed up angrily. “I does know,” he protested. “He goes round all in black, like Gentleman Death come to take your soul, and his carriage wheels are stained with blood.”