Mark Lawrence - Prince of Fools

“You heard those men-”

“Have you ever seen a dead man walk? Forget distant deserts and ice wastes. Here in Red March, has anyone ever seen such?”

Darin shrugged. “Grandmother says at least one unborn has entered the city. That’s something to be taken seriously.”

“A what?”

“Jesu! Did you really not listen to a word she said? She is the queen, you know. You’d do well to pay attention from time to time.”

“An unborn?” The term rang no bells. It didn’t even approach the belfry.

“Something born into death rather than life, remember?” Darin shook his head at my blank look. “Forget it! Just listen now. Father expects you at this opera of his tonight. No showing up late, or drunk, or both. No pretending nobody told you.”

“Opera? Dear God, why?” That was the last thing I needed. A bunch of fat and painted idiots wailing at me from a stage for several hours.

“Just be there. A cardinal is expected to finance such projects from time to time. And when he does, his family had better put in an appearance or the chattering classes will want to know why.”

I had opened my mouth to protest when it occurred to me that the DeVeer sisters would be among those chattering classes. Phenella Maitus too, the newly arrived and allegedly stunning daughter of Ortus Maitus, whose pockets ran so deep it might even be worth a marriage contract to reach into them. And of course if I could have Snorri make his debut in the pits before the show started, then I would likely find no end of aristocratic and mercantile purses opening in the opera intermissions to wager on this exciting new blood. If there’s one good thing to be said about opera, it’s that it makes a man appreciate all other forms of entertainment so much more. I closed my mouth and nodded. Darin left, still munching his egg.

The appetite had left me. I pushed the plate away. Idle fingers discovered my old locket beneath the folds of my cloak and I fished it out, tapping it against the table. A cheap enough thing of plate and glass, it clicked open to reveal Mother’s portrait. I snapped it shut again. She last saw me when I was seven; a flux took her. They call it a flux. It’s just the shits, really. You weaken, fever takes you, you die stinking. Not the way a princess is supposed to die, or a mother. I slipped the locket away unopened. Best she remember me as seven and not see me now.

• • •

Before leaving the palace I picked up my escort, the two elderly guardsmen allotted to the task of preserving my royal hide by my father’s generosity. With the pair in tow I swung by the Red Hall and collected a handful of my usual cronies. Roust and Lon Greyjar, cousins of the Prince of Arrow, sent to “further relations,” which seemed to entail eating all our best vittles and chasing chambermaids. Also Omar, seventh son of the Caliph of Liba and a fine fellow for gambling. I’d met him during my brief and inglorious spell at the Mathema, and he’d persuaded the caliph to send him to the continent to broaden his education! With Omar and the Greyjars I headed up to the guest range, that wing of the Inner Palace where more important dignitaries were housed and where Barras Jon’s father, the Vyene ambassador to court, kept a suite of rooms. We had a servant fetch out Barras and he came sharp enough, with Rollas, his companion-cum-bodyguard, trailing behind.

“What a perfect night to get drunk on!” Barras saluted me as he came down the steps. He always said it was a perfect night to get drunk.

“For that we’d need wine!” I spread my hands.

Barras stepped aside to reveal Rollas behind him carrying a large flask. “Big goings-on in court today.”

“A meeting of the clan,” I said. Barras never stopped fishing for court news. I had a hunch half of his allowance depended on feeding gossip to his father.

“The Lady Blue playing her games again?” He flung an arm around my shoulders and steered me towards the Common Gate. With Barras everything was a plot of nation against nation or worse, a conspiracy to undermine what peace remained in the Broken Empire.

“Damned if I know.” Now he mentioned it, there had been talk of the Lady Blue. Barras always insisted that my grandmother and this purported sorceress were fighting their own private war and had been for decades-if true, then to my mind it was a piss-poor excuse for one as I’d seen precious little sign of it. Tales about the Lady Blue seemed as doubtful as those about the handful of so-called magicians who seemed to haunt the western courts. Kelem, Corion, half a dozen others: charlatans the lot of them. Only the existence of Grandmother’s Silent Sister lent any credence at all to the rumours. . “Last I heard our friend in blue was flitting from one Teuton court to the next. Probably been hung for a witch by now.”

Barras grunted. “Let’s hope so. Let’s hope she’s not back in Scorron stirring up that little war again.”

I could agree with him there. Barras’s father negotiated the peace and treated it like his second son. I’d rather a close relative came to harm than that particular peace deal. Nothing would induce me back into the mountains to fight the Scorrons.

We left the palace by the Victory Gate in fine spirits, passing our flask of Wennith red between us while I explained the virtues of wooing sisters.

As we entered Heroes’ Plaza the wine turned to vinegar in my mouth. I half-choked and dropped the flask.

“There! Do you see her?” Coughing, wiping tears from my eyes, I forgot my own rule and pointed at the blind-eye woman. She stood at the base of a great statue, the Last Steward, sombre on his petty throne.

“Steady on!” Roust thumped me between the shoulders.

“See who?” Omar asked, staring where I pointed. Dressed in tatters, she might in another glance be nothing more than rags hanging on a dead bush. Perhaps that was what Omar saw.

“Nearly lost this!” Barras retrieved the flask, safe in its reed casing. “Come to Papa! I’ll be looking after you from now on, little one!” And he cradled it like a baby.

None of them saw her. She watched a moment longer, the blind eye burning across me, then turned and walked away through the crowds flowing towards Trent Market. Jostled into action by the others, I walked on too, haunted by old fears.

We approached the Blood Holes in the early afternoon, me sweating and nervous, and not just because of the unseasonal heat or the fact that my financial future was about to ride on two very broad shoulders. The Silent Sister always unsettled me, and I’d seen entirely too much of her today. I kept glancing about, half-expecting to spot her again along the crowded streets.

“Let’s see this monster of yours!” Lon Greyjar slapped a hand to my shoulder, shaking me out of my rememberings and alerting me to the fact that we’d arrived at the Blood Holes. I made a smile for him and promised myself I’d fleece the little fucker down to his last crown. He had an annoying way about him, did Lon, too chummy, too keen to lay hands on you, and always snipping away at anything you said as if he doubted everything, even the boots you were standing in. Fair enough, I lie a lot, but that doesn’t mean cousins of some minor princeling can take liberties.

I paused before approaching the doors and stepped back, casting my gaze along the outer walls. The place had been a slaughterhouse once, though a grand one, as if the king back in those days had wanted even his cattle murdered in buildings that would shame the homes of his copper-crown rivals.

On the only other occasion I’d seen the blind-eye woman outside the throne room, she had been on the Street of Nails up close to one of the larger manses towards the western end. I’d come out of some ambassador’s ballroom with an enticing young woman, got my face slapped for my efforts, and was cooling off, watching the street before going back in. I had been wiggling one of my teeth to check that the damned girl hadn’t knocked it loose when I saw the Silent Sister across the broadness of the street. She stood there, bolder than brass, a bucket in one white hand and a horsehair brush in the other, painting symbols on the walls of the manse. Not the garden walls facing the street but the walls of the building itself, seemingly unnoticed by guard or dog. I watched her, growing colder by the moment as if a crack had run through the night, letting all the heat spill out of it. She showed no sign of hurry, painting one symbol, moving on to the next. In the moonlight it looked like blood she was painting with, broad dark strokes, each running with countless dribbles, and coming together to make sigils that seemed to twist the night around them. She was encircling the building, throwing a painted noose about it, patient, slow, relentless. I ran back in then, far more scared of that old woman and her bucket of blood than of the young Countess Loren, her overquick hand, and whatever brothers she might set upon me to defend her honour. The joy of the night was gone, though, and I left for home quick enough.