She was also happy to talk about the Whites, Morr Town and Malth Elelane.
‘My brother’s seen the king,’ she said, ‘tall man, he said he was, dark-haired like they all are, very stern. Rode a huge horse and dripped with jewels. And the queen: beautiful, he said she was, all golden and pink and sparkling. He married her for love, after all. But stern too. Didn’t see them very close, mind. And it was years ago, too. He doesn’t leave Malth Elelane much, now, King Illyn.’
‘No?’
‘Not been a happy place, they say, the court, these last few years. And San says the mood in Morr Town’s bitter as knives, since the prince died. The story is the king’s quicker to anger than ever, now, and even the court fears him. Not that it was unexpected,’ she went on, ‘the stories that went round about him. The prince, I mean. San had it on good authority that— ’
‘Yes, yes.’ The last thing he wanted was to sit here being told gossip about bloody Marith.
‘Most people are interested,’ said Raeta irritably. ‘Kind of thing you have to take pride in.’
Tobias shook his head. Suppose you did, in a strange kind of way.
‘But he’s dead now.’ She sighed almost wistfully. ‘My mother met the last king, Nevethlyn. Claims he stuck his hand up her dress, in fact, which really isn’t the kind of thing a woman wants to hear from her aged mum.’
Tobias must have looked disbelieving, because she frowned at him and went on, ‘My mother was a maidservant to Lord Reven before she married. When King Nevethlyn paid a visit to Fealene, she brought his bath water every night.’
‘Charming man.’
‘You wouldn’t do that, of course, you were king?’
‘Course I bloody would. Can still hold it against someone else for having the power to do it, though, can’t I?’ Tobias thought a moment. ‘Nevethlyn’s the one who … you know?’
‘Opened his own throat on the eve of the current king’s eighteenth birthday, five days after his army had been routed in Illyr? Bled to death slowly over the course of the next three months, rot setting into the wound and making it ooze black pus? Oh yes. That’s him. My mother wasn’t exactly upset, as you can imagine.’
One of those hilarious military debacles a professional never heard about without shuddering. The most recent of the long line of attempts by Amrath’s descendants to take back Amrath’s kingdom. Or the blasted wasteland of barely civilized sheep-shaggers it now consists of, anyway. Assembles a crack army, a couple of mages, warships, the works. In the face of all evidence to the contrary, sails off kind of expecting said sheep-shaggers to either fall to their knees in rejoicing at the return of their rightful king or at least just give in and die horribly. Kind of ends up totally wrong, like always. Nobody could ever really say what the fault was, even. The army just … didn’t win. Somehow ended up penned in between a cliff top and a swamp with half the soldiers dying of marshfever. And, curiously enough, being penned in between a cliff top and a swamp with half your soldiers dying of marshfever turns out to be a really bad place from which to attempt a panicked midnight retreat.
And the king, heart-broken and alone with his failure, shamed in the eyes of his people and his ancestors, but cursed with the Altrersyr propensity not to die easily …
Got a couple of good ballads out of the mess, at least, same as the last four times they tried it. The kind that made you either weep copiously or piss yourself laughing. Hadn’t really clicked it was Marith’s grandpa.
Raeta nodded at the darkening sky. ‘It’s getting late. I’m turning in. We’ll pass Third, tomorrow, if the wind holds. Could reach Seneth by next dawn. Night.’
‘Night.’ He sometimes wondered if she’d be interested in fucking him. Had concluded almost certainly not.
Tobias sat up a little longer, looking at the sky. It still felt strange, having no role on the ship, no jobs to attend to. No men looking to him for orders or reassurance or a good bollocking when they fucked something up. No need to keep looking out himself for someone in need of a good bollocking for fucking something up. Just sitting around, waiting. Waiting, with Prince Marith and King Illyn ahead of him. Gods only knew what that would bring. Gods only knew why he was doing all this.
A nice little house in the sunshine, a nice little girl to clean it, beer every evening, a fat soft bloated gut …
Gods only knew what he’d been doing getting into any of this. It had all seemed so easy, at the time. Neat and clever and give yourself a big pat on the back for initiative. Now he was fucked and fucked and fucked again. Revenge. Futility. Prince Marith. The ultimate pointlessness of everything in his life, that he’d come through near-on twenty years of war and killing and ended up like this. Absolutely nothing to do to take his mind off it all, either, apart from chat away to a pretty woman who quite obviously had no interest in sleeping with him and was just as bored as he was. He rolled himself up and went to sleep, still with his sword next to him and his knife under his pillow in case Raeta decided she’d got bored of talking to him.
Three days later the ship docked at Morr Town, and he set off slowly up the hill to Malth Elelane, the Tower of Joy and Despair, to see the king.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Orhan walked across the Court of the Fountain, watching the water dance. No one was fighting there tonight. Very few people about. A street seller was offering candied rose petals; he bought a bag and ate them slowly. Pale pink, like the dawn. The crystals of sugar crunched in his mouth. He’d walked here with Darath, meat fat dripping nastily down his chin, sighing at his beloved’s elaborate overdramatics. He wondered if their desire would wane again, now Darath no longer had the game to play with him. Building up was always less erotic than tearing down.
He rested against the lip of the fountain, his guards stopping puzzled around him. He had more, now, six large men, hard-faced, who had cost him a huge amount to hire in order to cost him a huge amount more to keep. Cold, like metal. He couldn’t imagine Bil bedding any of them. They had been taken on at short notice: he felt nervous around them, in a way he never had with Amlis or Sterne.