Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

She interlaced her hands in her lap. “Very well,” she said. “Tell me of his injuries, this Kel Anjuman.”

The story came out as the carriage wound its slow way up the steep rise to the Palace gates. There had been a meeting that day, of the Charter Families. Afterward this cousin of the Prince’s had left Marivent for the city. No one knew where he had gone, specifically. (The Temple District, Lin thought. Drinking, whoring, like his cousin. What else did nobles do?) Mayesh had been working late into the night, some issue with the Treasury, when he had seen a commotion at the front gate. Arriving there, he had found that Anjuman’s unconscious, bleeding body had been dumped at the threshold of the Palace. The guards had not seen who had left him: He had appeared between one moment and the next, they swore, as if carried there by a ghost. Mayesh had been forced to half carry, half drag the young man’s limp body to the Prince’s apartments, where the extent of his wounds became clear. Soon after, Mayesh had left for the Sault.

Probably stabbed by someone he cheated at gambling, Lin thought. Or a courtesan he’d wronged. But she quickly told herself not to judge this Kel Anjuman. He was her patient, and besides, he was not responsible for Mayesh’s injustices toward her. He was not an Aurelian.

By this time they had reached the North Gate of Marivent—the threshold Mayesh had spoken of, where Anjuman had been dumped. It certainly did not look as if acts of high criminality and drama often played themselves out here: It was a quite ordinary stone arch, with lion flags flying from the vaulted top. Torches burned along the ramparts of the white walls surrounding the Palace. They illuminated the night, blotting out the stars.

Lin watched silently as Mayesh leaned from the carriage window, exchanging words with the Castelguards who stood ranged at their posts like stiff wooden statues painted in red and gold. Lin tried and failed to imagine her grandfather kneeling here at the gate, amid the green grass, cradling the body of the Prince’s cousin. Getting bloodstains all over his Counselor’s robes. It did not seem possible, unless Mayesh was leaving out some part of the story.

And no doubt he was, she thought. If he did not need her help, he would have told her nothing; as it was, he was surely only telling her what he felt he must.

The carriage rattled through the archway. The gate was behind them; they were in the Palace proper. Much as Lin did not want to be excited about it, she felt her pulse jump: She was here. Here, inside Marivent, the beating heart of Castellane.

Long ago, Lin and Mariam had followed the tale of a particular Story-Spinner on the Ruta Magna, an unfolding fable titled The Taming of the Tyrant. Lin still remembered the moment the story’s heroine had entered the Palace for the first time. How a gasp had run through the listening crowd. Most people lived all their lives in Castellane, with Marivent shimmering above them like a star, knowing they would never enter its gates. Knowing that beyond those gates lay a sort of a magic, of a type that had not been lost in the Sundering. The magic of power, of glamour and riches, luxury and influence. The destinies of nations turned on House Aurelian’s whim. That was itself a kind of sorcery.

Various of the smaller palaces rose around them, white in the moon. Lin knew a few of their names, from stories: the Star Tower; the Sun Palace, shaped like a rayed orb; the Castel Antin, where the throne room resided. To the southwest, at the edge of the sea cliffs, rose the black needle of the Trick. Many a Story-Spinner’s tale involved a daring escape from the Trick, but in reality no one had ever managed the feat.

They rolled through a second archway, this one a vine-wrapped trellis, and into a courtyard surrounded on three sides by stone walls. Mayesh murmured that this was Castel Mitat, where the Prince lived. The carriage drew to a stop near a tiled fountain and they disembarked quickly.

The moment they were out of the carriage it sped away. Lin only had time to note that the walls of the Castel were set with great, arched windows and embellished with long balconies, before Mayesh hurried them through a double door set below a wall-mounted sundial.

Inside was a steep staircase of old marble, the center of the steps worn to deep indents by the passage of feet through the years. Few lamps were lit. They raced upstairs through the shadows, their footsteps echoing. Nearly empty at this hour, the place felt oddly abandoned, the air catching chill from so much marble cladding.

They reached the final landing and turned onto a hallway of more white stone. Rugs from Marakand unrolled in deep jewel tones all down the passage. Arched windows cast back Lin’s own reflection as they approached a pair of double doors made of wood and hammered metal. An intricate pattern of crowns and flames had been etched into their design.

Mayesh put his hand to the door, paused, and looked at Lin. “These are the Crown Prince’s apartments,” he said. “He shares them with his cousin. They have lived in the same rooms, like brothers, since they were children.”

Lin said nothing. It struck her as odd that Conor Aurelian was willing to share his rooms—or share anything, for that matter—but she supposed he liked his cousin’s company, and the apartments were surely vast. The Prince likely only noticed his cousin’s presence when he felt like it.

Mayesh rapped hard on the door before swinging it open and ushering Lin inside. Tense as a bow strung tight, she stepped into the Crown Prince’s apartments.

It was a large space, though not as enormous as she’d imagined. The floor was made of alternating squares of marble as if it were the board of a Castles game: black and white, with an occasional splash of red quartz. There was a raised dais in one corner of the room, on which rested a vast bed with black and white velvet hangings. Another bed, smaller, had been set near the steps of the dais, and all around the room were ranged massive divans piled with cushions gloved in raw Shenzan silk. Marakandi lamps of hammered silver and stained glass shed a warm light over the room, and as Lin’s eyes adjusted to it, she saw a tangle of bloody sheets on the smaller bed, where the figure of a young man lay motionless. Beside the bed, another young man, this one wearing black and silver, paced back and forth almost frenetically, muttering what sounded like curses under his breath.

“Conor,” Mayesh said sharply, and Lin felt a faint surprise that her grandfather would call the Prince by his given name. She was heartened to hear no sound of fear in his voice. She had always wondered if he was different in the Palace; if the proximity of royal blood and power cowed him. It seemed not. “Where is everyone?”