Mark Lawrence - The Liar's key

“Elias is watching her,” Alica says, and Garyus blinks, looking across the room to where a man stands by the wall in the shadows, away from the diners, ostensibly filling his pipe. There’s something familiar about the fellow. It’s in the swift and restless movement of his hands. He reaches up to light a taper from the wall lantern and his upturned face catches the glow.

“Taproot! By Christ!” They don’t hear me of course. I’m not here, just a dreamer floating in the memories my blood carries. It can’t be Taproot. This man is in his forties, and the Dr. Taproot I know can’t be past his fifties. Besides, how would my great-grandfather’s courtier be traipsing across the Broken Empire at the head of a circus? This must be an ancestor of his. But just observing him, seeing the quick and bird-like motion of his head as he scans the tables, always returning to our lady beneath her net of sapphires, I know it’s him. I know when he opens his mouth I’ll hear “watch me” and restless hands will conduct the conversation.

“Elias will-”

“This woman is beyond him. - says she’s here to kill. . someone.” Garyus cuts Alica off, waving her away with irritated jerks of his over-tight arm. Again their sister’s name escapes me, just a silence where it should sound.

“I didn’t hear her say anything,” Alica says, peering at her sister who is still fixated upon the woman below, her gaze unwavering. “Who is this woman to kill?”

“Grandfather,” says Garyus, half a whisper. “She seeks to change the destiny of our line.”

“Why?” It’s not the question I would ask, certainly not at eleven. I’d be asking where we should hide.

“- won’t say,” Garyus replies.

The Silent Sister breaks her staring at the woman below to glance my way. For an instant I’m sure she sees me-I’m transfixed by those mismatched eyes, the blue and the green. She returns to her study.

“She doesn’t know?” Alica asks.

“Be quiet, child,” Garyus says, though he’s just a boy himself. He looks serious now, old beyond his years, and sad, as if a great weight has been laid upon him. “I could have been king,” he says. “I could have been a good king.”

My grandmother frowns. She hasn’t it in her to lie to him, even this young when the whole world is half make-believe. “Why are we talking about that again?”

Garyus sighs and sits down. “- needs my strength. She needs to see, or this woman will kill us all before we can stop her.”

Alica’s frown deepens. “-’s done that before. . hasn’t she?”

Garyus’s nod is slight enough to be missed. “Even before we were birthed.”

“Don’t do it.” Alica is speaking to them both. “Tell Father. Set the guards on her. Have her thrown in-”

“- needs to see.” Garyus hung his head. “This woman is more than she seems. Much more. If we don’t know her before we act, we will fail.”

The Silent Sister leans over the balustrade now, staring at the woman with such intensity that it trembles in each line of her over-thin body, staring so hard that I almost expect to see the path between them light up with some recognition of the energies being spent. Garyus hunches in on himself, a slight gasp escaping his lips.

Unseen forces mount. My skin crawls with them, and I’m not even there. Down below the sapphires in the woman’s hair seem to return more than the light of lanterns, sparkling with some inner fire, a vivid dance of blue across the blackness of her hair. She sets down her goblet, and looks up, half a smile on wine-dark lips as she meets the Silent Sister’s gaze.

“Ah!” Garyus cries out in pain, limbs drawn tight to him. The Silent Sister opens her mouth as if to scream but, though the air seems to shake with it, there is no sound. I watch her face as she stands, her gaze still locked with the woman’s. For a second I could swear there is steam rising from the Silent Sister’s eyes. . and still she won’t break away. Her nails score the dark wood as some invisible pressure forces her back, and finally, like a branch snapping, she is flung back, reeling, arrested only by the wall behind her. She stands bent double, hands on thighs, pale hair about her face, drawing in shuddering breaths.

“What. .” Garyus’s voice is weak and croaky-more the voice I know. “What did you see?”

There is no answer. The silence stretches. I’m turning back to see what the woman is doing when suddenly the Silent Sister straightens up. Her hair parts and I see that one of her eyes is pearly blind, the other darkened beyond any memory of blue skies.

“Everything.” The Silent Sister speaks it as though it is the last word she will ever utter.

“We need to do something.” Alica, seeming a child for once, states the obvious. “Get me close enough and I’ll stick a knife in her.” The illusion evaporates.

“It won’t be easy.” Garyus doesn’t raise his head. “- saw enough before to poison her drink.”

“And?” Alica turns back to observe the feast.

“The man slumped on the table beside her? He’s dead. She swapped goblets.”

I don’t ask myself how the Silent Sister had known hours before which goblet to coat with venom, or where she’d obtained such a thing, silent and young as she is. She knew the same way the woman below knew to exchange with her neighbour. Both of them carry the same taint.

“Jesu.” Alica leans against the banister, eyes hard. The woman hasn’t moved: she picks a last sweetmeat from her plate as she talks to the man beside her-the one who’s not dead. She laughs at whatever he just said. “So if not poison, then what?”

Garyus sighs, an unutterably weary sound, and lifts his head as though it weighs a man’s weight. “The men I have around me-they’re mine. I replaced Father’s with hires of my own, expensive, but they’re mercenaries of the highest quality, and their loyalty runs as deep as my pockets. We’ll wait for her in the Sword Gallery and. . she won’t leave.”

Alica raises an eyebrow at this piece of information. A moment later she hastens to the door and raps against it. A man in palace livery enters, pushing a wheeled chair. He’s a solid fellow, watchful, a thin white seam of scar below his right eye as if underscoring it. I’d like to say I would have spotted him as more than a flunky, but I don’t know if that’s true.

The Silent Sister helps Garyus into the chair and he waves to be wheeled out. He’s weaker now, more twisted. It’s more than exhaustion-his sister has spent his health to buy what she needed. A second hard-man waits in the chamber beyond amid the instruments too large to be taken away with the musicians, a harp, drums, long tubular bells. He helps carry the chair down the stairs. Any aristocracy who are staying at the king’s pleasure will be housed in the guest wing, and to reach that from the royal banquet hall requires you walk the length of the Sword Gallery. If the woman is planning murder she must have been invited to stay the night, or else she is cutting things fine.

I wonder for a moment that neither of Garyus’s men are armed-but of course he’s unlikely to have permission to have his own hires wearing blades in the king’s house, relative or not, especially not as a displaced heir. The mercenaries may be paid well enough to risk concealed knives, but they’d have to be damn small to pass unnoticed. It seems unlikely that my great-grandfather or his sire are so lax as to not have regular inspections-certainly Grandmother has become very keen on them in later life. Still, the pair of them could strangle this woman with a cord swift enough.

We walk through the palace, Garyus trundled ahead, rattling in his chair, taking familiar passages that have changed remarkably little in sixty years. Just before we reach the gallery Alica pauses, then the others, then me. The Silent Sister has stopped some way behind us, beside a black oak door. She’s pointing.