David Tallerman - Prince Thief

Seeing me, Alvantes’s eyes widened. “Damasco!”

Ludovoco glanced at him with disdain. “You seem surprised. Are we to believe this wasn’t part of your plan?”

“If it was, I’d hardly have meant to get caught,” I pointed out.

Ludovoco ignored me. “Is that his?” he asked, nodding towards something behind me.

“His pack, sir,” explained my guard. “I think he was taking something out of it, maybe.”

I hadn’t even considered what had become of my bag. Evidently the guard had been attentive enough to bring it with him.

“Check it,” Ludovoco told him.

I heard a dull clink as my guard flung the pack upon a low table beside the door, a scuffing as he drew open the cover. I still couldn’t see his face, but a little of his stoic professionalism had slipped as he said, “A rope, Commander, and… er… bottles, mostly. Lots of little bottles.” He obviously hadn’t taken any time to wonder what I’d been doing in the Prince’s bath chamber.

“A saboteur, is it? Or an assassin?” Ludovoco contemplated me, as if I were a slug crawling across his dinner plate. “Are they poisons? Some incendiary, perhaps?”

Perhaps my guard was ignorant of royal bathing practices, but I doubted very much that Ludovoco couldn’t recognise bath oils when he saw them. Likewise, he had no reason to be quite this suspicious of Alvantes’s motives. In any case, we were on Ondeges’s turf, not his; what was Ludovoco doing, coming here and pulling rank like this?

Alvantes scowled. “I assure you,” he said, “I knew nothing about this. I came here in good faith, to try and…”

“Spare me,” said Ludovoco. “Please. I’m a busy man. In fact, to move matters to a swift conclusion, I’ll propose a deal. Tell me, without prevarication, what your scheme here was and I’ll let your men go.”

“I’ve told you,” said Alvantes with dignity, “I knew nothing of this degenerate’s actions. Moreover, I won’t bargain with the fates of my men, who are servants of the crown every bit as much as…”

Ludovoco cut him off with an upraised hand. It said a lot about the man that he could silence Alvantes so easily. With the same hand, he picked out one of Alvantes’s entourage, a man I knew vaguely as Godares. To the palace guard beside him, Ludovoco said, “Kill that one.”

The crossbowman hesitated — but only for an instant. In one economic motion, he lodged the bow against his shoulder and pulled the trigger.

Godares’s mouth was just opening, perhaps to protest. It formed into a perfect “O” as the bolt struck. At such close range, the impact lifted him from his feet and carried him with it. By the time his body finally struck the ground, it was brokenly splayed, with his own blood already pooling beneath him.

Alvantes had made three swift steps towards Ludovoco before the other crossbowmen realised what was happening. Once they did, however, they were quick enough to aim their weapons at him. Alvantes’s weathered face seemed black with rage. My mind threw up an image, so clear that I could barely doubt its reality, of him pressing on, his body tattered with bolts, to crush Ludovoco’s throat with his one good hand.

If Ludovoco was pondering a similar scene, he hid his unease perfectly. He didn’t so much as consider Godares’s corpse; his eyes held Alvantes pinned. “So you see,” he said, “I don’t make threats, idle or otherwise. You’ll tell me what I want to know.”

“You’ll pay for that.” Alvantes’s voice was a growl, the words almost lost in the depths of his hate.

“Unlikely,” said Ludovoco. “And again, you’re wasting time.” He raised a hand once more. His eyes strayed idly over Alvantes’s surviving men.

“Wait!” Alvantes cried.

Ludovoco didn’t lower the hand. “You have something to tell me? You didn’t come here to make peace. So what was it? Quick now.”

“I know your type,” said Alvantes. His voice had returned to something like normal — except that now it was almost too normal.

“Do you really?” asked Ludovoco, without much curiosity.

“Good family. Wealthy. Close to the royal court. Yes, I know your type,” Alvantes repeated. “We’re not so different, you and I.”

“Hardly a compliment,” Ludovoco observed, “coming from a former provincial captain to a commander of the Crown Guard.”

“Perhaps. But I did attend the Academy. I’m sure you did too. I was in a duelling circle; who wasn’t? You though, I think you were one of the serious ones. Those who were in it for the blood. Am I right?”

“That I duelled at the Crown Academy?” said Ludovoco. “That I enjoyed it? Certainly.”

“Then I challenge you, Commander Ludovoco,” said Alvantes. “By the bonds of the Academy and for the murder of guardsman Pietto Godares. If you have any spark of honour left in you, you’ll fight me now.” Alvantes looked around the room, his gaze taking in faces, weighing them. “Or shame yourself in front of these men.”

Ludovoco’s lips curled in a tight smile. “I don’t know what you imagine you’ll achieve. Other than a swift and bloody death, that is.”

“Justice,” said Alvantes. “For the good man you just killed.”

“Really? If you say so.” Ludovoco reached one hand to his waist and, seemingly without conscious thought, loosened his sword in its scabbard. “And when I win, you’ll tell me what I want to know.”

“ If you win.”

Ludovoco stepped down to the lower level. “I’ll be careful to wound you. In the gut, perhaps. It will provide a focus for our conversation.”

His tone was so casually sadistic that I couldn’t resist a shudder. How long before his attentions turned in my direction? Alvantes, however, seemed unconcerned. In fact, he was looking not at Ludovoco but at me — really looking at me, I realised, for the first time since I’d entered the room. As he saw that I’d caught his gaze, he let it drift to my left, and my own eyes followed automatically. Yet all I could see was an alcove carved into the wall beside the entrance. A fat vase sat there, glazed in yellow and umber, resting upon a pedestal at roughly waist height.

It only occurred to me then that my guard was no longer holding my arm. He was hovering close, to be sure — but I had both my hands free. And that vase looked heavy.

Alvantes drew his sword, tapped the flat to his forehead in salute.

Ludovoco mimicked the gesture with his hand, but contemptuously — a parody. Then he dropped the hand to his waist and flicked his blade loose, raising it in one neat motion and at the same time relaxing into an on guard stance, as though it were all the most natural thing imaginable.

Alvantes took a step back, squared up. He had none of Ludovoco’s grace. Before it, his one-handedness looked horribly disabling — more than I’d ever have thought it could. I’d seen him fight, seen how little he’d let his injury slow him. This was different, though. If what he’d said were true, Ludovoco was a stone cold killer, trained to hunt out any weakness and use it to demolish his opponent. And one hand against two was a very great weakness indeed.

Alvantes was many things, but he wasn’t a fool — at least not the kind of fool who would jeopardise the lives of his remaining men to revenge the death of one. Which meant that whatever he had in mind, it was more than a simple duel.

Or so I hoped. There was hatred enough in Alvantes’s eyes to make me think that he’d really convinced himself he could beat Ludovoco, and maybe his men as well. Ludovoco, meanwhile, was edging in a slow semicircle around the makeshift arena, the faintest of smiles on his lips, the rest of his face dreamily sedate. I thought of a cat toying with its prey — but this was something even worse than that. Ludovoco was taking pleasure in imagining just how he’d play, once the time came.