“You will be lucky if I do not have you both made into meat pies,” said Pasevalles as the guard captain handed over his charges. “Now, march to the Chancelry. And don’t dawdle.”
“Aren’t you going to take these fetters off?” asked Astrian.
“You must be jesting,” said Pasevalles. “I wish they were heavier.”
? ? ?
In the Chancelry, Pasevalles banished Father Wibert and his other secretaries and clerics to the outer chambers so he could be alone with the two soldiers. He had known Astrian for a long time, since his days in Nabban, and had known Olveris almost as long. He had seen them at their best and worst. He had never been so angry at either.
“What in the name of Saint Cornellis and all the other saints do you think you were doing?” He could barely keep his voice low to avoid sharing his anger with everyone in the great Chancelry building. “You know you are not to leave Morgan alone, and especially not when he’s getting into this kind of madness. He could have been killed! It is only by the grace of God that he was not!”
Astrian looked a little chastened, but not much. “You told us he was drinking too much, my lord. We tried to get him to come with us to Zakiel’s ceremony, but when he wouldn’t . . .” He shrugged. “Welladay, what were we to do?”
“What were you to do? Go with him! Stay with him! And when he said, ‘I’m going to climb that God-damned forbidden tower and fall off,’ you were to say, ‘No, you’re not, Your Highness. You’re to stay with us.’ That’s what you were supposed to do. What do you think I pay you lummocks for?”
“He’s stubborn,” offered Olveris.
“Stubborn? Of course he’s stubborn. He’s a spoiled boy barely into manhood, whose boon companions are drunken idiots. Young men his age do stupid things. It is your job to prevent him from doing them.”
“We try—” began Astrian in a put-upon tone.
“Don’t. Don’t even start to make excuses.” Pasevalles paced back and forth beside the table where months of accumulated work waited for him while he dealt with nonsense like this. “Do you not understand how important that boy is? He is the heir to Prester John’s kingdom—the whole of the High Ward. After the king and queen, he is the most important person in this world—more important than His Sacredness, the Lector of Mother Church!” He glared, daring either one of them to reply. Having caught the drift of the conversation, neither one did. “What do you think would happen if the Lector’s Horsemen’s Guard let the old man go climbing around on the roof of the Sancellan Aedonitis at night and fall off? Do you think they’d keep their posts? Or do you think they might be drawn and quartered in Galdin’s Square in front of a shrieking mob? Well? What do you think?”
“He didn’t really fall off the tower,” Astrian said quietly. “Not all the way off. Nothing around it but cobblestones. He’d have burst like a dropped egg.”
“So, is that your idea of successfully protecting the heir-apparent? He only smashed his ribs and nearly broke his jaw, but he didn’t burst like an egg?”
“That’s not what I mean,” murmured Astrian.
“We understand why you’re angry, my lord,” said Olveris.
“No, I don’t think you do,” said Pasevalles. “Because you seem to think you’re the only men I trust with this work. Believe me, I can find hundreds of men who could do a better job of it than you’ve managed. Do you really think I couldn’t find someone better in the short time it would take me to have you both taken to the headsman’s block?”
Olveris, at least, looked a little pale, and a faint sheen of sweat dotted his olive skin. “No, Lord.”
“No, Lord,” echoed Astrian. “But—”
“Enough. I am going to send you back to Zakiel. Wibert will take you, because I am sick to my guts at the sight of you. And if you give either one of them any trouble, or even speak rudely, I will insist that Lord Zakiel put you in the deepest prison hole beneath the castle, behind the biggest lock he can find, and leave you there until you have rotted. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Lord,” said Astrian.
“Yes, Lord,” said Olveris.
Pasevalles walked to the outer chamber and called for his chief secretary. “Go now,” he said when he returned with the cleric. “And whatever punishment Zakiel gives you, you will thank him and apologize. No, don’t bother to say anything. I am sick of the sound of you both.”
After the other hangers-on had dispersed, after Lady Thelía and Tiamak were convinced that they had done all they could and none of his injuries were serious, Morgan was left alone with only his squire, Melkin, a pair of servants, and his grandmother.
“I will never understand why you would do such a thing, Morgan.” The queen was not just disappointed but downright angry. As she had become more certain he was not badly hurt, her sympathies had dissipated. It had been a bit like watching a pot slowly boiling. Morgan could not even imagine what his grandfather was going to say, and was wondering how long he could avoid hearing it. “What were you thinking? Talk to me!”
“I don’t know.” He tried to roll over onto his side so he wouldn’t have to look at her flushed, unhappy face, but his ribs hurt too much. “I don’t know. I just . . . it just happened.”
“We will talk about this. Tomorrow, after you have had a night’s sleep.”
“It’s not even afternoon yet.”
“Then after you have had an afternoon’s and a night’s sleep. Your grandfather is very, very unhappy.”
“Well, that’s a surprise.”
“Don’t be rude, Morgan, and do not try to be humorous. It’s really not a good idea at this moment.” She put her hand on the side of his bed to steady herself as she stood. Sometimes the prince forgot that his grandmother was more than fifty years old, because she was quick to smile and almost girlish in her laughter. He knew he should feel bad for making her worry, but for some reason seeing how slowly she stood after a long time sitting just made him feel even worse. Even stranger, it made him as angry as if she thumped him in the jaw herself. Sometimes it seemed like people only cared about him so they would have an excuse to be unhappy with him. “Are you going now, Grandmother?”
“Yes. The life of the castle and the capital must go on, no matter what.” She shook her head. “I pray someday you will learn that truth, Morgan—how everyone else must labor to preserve the kingdom you take for granted. To preserve your birthright.”
“I don’t take it for granted.” But in fact, he could think of nothing worse than having to spend his days like his grandmother and grandfather did, listening to bishops and merchants and nobles, everyone with their complaints and requests for favors, all of them bad-tempered and selfish. He thought he would rather be the meanest peasant in Erkynland, mowing grass in the sweat of his brow all day. At least then he wouldn’t have to talk to fools. At least he wouldn’t have to do favors for ungrateful people. But that was what his grandparents and his mother wanted for him, and then they wondered why he wasn’t more pleased about it.
“Where is your mother?” said the queen as she paused in the doorway. “Why isn’t she here? Is it possible she hasn’t heard?”
Morgan knew the question wasn’t directed at him—he generally knew less about his mother’s whereabouts than anyone else in the Hayholt—so he didn’t even bother to shrug.
“Well, she should be here.” His grandmother sent one of the servants to the dowager princess to make sure she knew what had happened, then paused in the doorway again, this time because a small, stout figure was waiting just outside.
“I have come to see the prince,” said Little Snenneq. “I am wondering about his healthiness. If he is well.”
“He is, thanks to you,” Morgan’s grandmother said. “Although I’m sure the king and I would like to hear from you at some point what you were doing up there with him.”
“I am being as sad and angry as can be at myself.” The troll had an extremely serious expression on his round face. “You may ask me any questioning you wish, Queen Majesty. Ask and ask and ask, and still I will answer more.”
“Well, not now,” the queen said, slightly flustered, and went out.
Morgan sent Melkin and the remaining servants to wait outside. “What did you tell them?” he demanded of Snenneq when they were alone.
“I could not say nothing had happened, friend Morgan! You were blooding from your chin and elsewhere. I had to say you slipped and fell down, striking your head most painfully.”
“That was true. But they must have seen that door, that hatch, was open.”
Snenneq shook his head. “I closed it before I went for help.”