Alex Bledsoe - The Sword-Edged blonde

Anders was clearly on familiar ground, because even though we were in total darkness, he began humming. I said, “What the hell was that all about?”

“They knew who I’d been sent to fetch. People still talk about you here.”

“They do,” I repeated. My stomach fell into a pit and I was suddenly queasy. “What do they say?”

A spark flared in the darkness, and then a torch burst to life. Anders held it at arm’s length while the harsh residue burned away. “They talk about that day at the lake, when you fought all those guys,” Anders said as he waited for the flame to settle. “Whenever someone’s facing odds like that, they call it ‘getting LaCrossed.’ ”

“I can think of a few better words for it.” Failure came to mind. “We’re not allowed to use the front door?”

“People watch the front. The king wants your visit to be, ah… discreet.”

We were at one end of a long passage. We walked down the tunnel to another door and Anders, still humming, tapped the stones in the wall, looking for the false one. I reached past him and pushed the correct one, which slid in to reveal a key in a small depression. The castle had dozens of these secret passages-every castle did-and it made me smile to think that I probably knew them better than Anders. After all, I’d grown up around them.

The passage beyond was lit with widely spaced torches, so that we had to pass through deep pools of darkness between them. I knew that in some of these shadows, soldiers could hide in invisible notches in the wall, a security precaution to defend against enemy infiltrators. Heavy iron gates could also drop at a moment’s notice, trapping intruders between them. Ordinarily, though, these spots would be unmanned, because Arentia had been at peace with its neighbors for over forty years, since the reign of the previous king. Now, given all the precautions outside, would these niches be occupied by soldiers ready to defend the palace from attack? I thought about reaching into one just to see, but figured that was needlessly provocative. If I got run through before I even talked to the king, I’d never find out the truth.

The tunnel dead-ended at yet another door. Anders knocked, and a slot opened. Hard eyes peered at us. Anders held up his identification ring again, and after a moment the slot closed, and the bolt inside slid back. Anders snuffed his torch in a bucket beside the door and gestured for me to precede him.

We entered a small antechamber with a desk and two chairs. When the door shut behind us, it became almost invisible in the wall’s stonework. Another much more modern door was directly opposite the one we’d just used. A soldier, a major according to his uniform, sat behind the desk and looked up at us. When he saw Anders, he jumped to his feet and saluted. The man who’d opened the door stood at stiff attention beside it.

“As you were,” Anders said calmly. “Has the king been informed that we’ve arrived?”

“Yes, sir,” the major said. “He’s expecting you in his office.”

“Very good.” The soldier who’d admitted us leaped to open the other door.

I realized I was sweating, and my hands shook as we walked down the hallway whose every brick and tapestry was familiar to me. This was the passageway to the king’s private family quarters, and you could only enter through the secure door we’d used, or the two other hidden ones known only to the family and its closest friends.

We reached the big double doors at the end of the hall. Anders knocked. The door opened partially, and a white-haired man peered out beneath thick, still-dark eyebrows.

“Brought him,” Anders said simply, and stepped aside.

The old man squinted at me. I knew him, of course-Emerson Wentrobe, advisor to the king of Arentia for the last sixty years, the one great constant in Arentian government. Some uninformed wags always insisted that Wentrobe was the apocryphal power behind the throne; the rest of us knew that, while his advice was often heeded, he never made the final decision. At least that had been the case with the previous king; I couldn’t imagine Phil being any different.

Wentrobe had only been an advisor for forty years the last time I saw him, and his hair had been stone gray, not white. But his eyes were still as sharp as ever. “Young master Edward,” he said to me.

“Not so young,” I replied, and offered my hand. “How are you, Mr. Wentrobe?”

“Not so old,” he said with a grin. His grip was still firm, although not as bonecrushing as it had seemed in my youth.

He stepped aside, and this time I gestured for Anders to precede me. But the young man shook his head. “I’m just supposed to deliver you. This is where I get off. It’s been a pleasure traveling with you, Baron LaCrosse.”

I winced a little; it was the first time anyone had ever used that title in reference to me. “Yeah, well, you can still call me Eddie. Thanks, Mike.”

Wentrobe closed the door behind us. The office was decked out with all the gilt and glitter expected of a king, but for the moment we were alone in it. I dropped my saddlebags next to the door and hung my jacket on the coat rack. I felt seriously underdressed.

“Would you like a drink?” Wentrobe asked, moving to the bar.

“Sure. Rum if you have it.”

“We do indeed.” As he poured, he glanced at me. “You appear to have grown accustomed to hard work.”

“Yeah. Who’d’ve thought, huh?” I took the drink gratefully. “So. How are… things?”

Wentrobe sipped his own drink. “What do you know?”

“What was in Phil’s note, what Anders told me, and what I picked up from gossip on the way. Phil met some mysterious beautiful woman, married her, and now everyone thinks she killed their child.”

He nodded. “That’s what everyone thinks, all right. Almost everyone.”

“Is that what happened?”

He made a grand shrug. “Their son is dead. The queen was found with the body, covered in blood that wasn’t her own, inside a locked room. Those are the only facts everyone agrees on.”

“So the queen murdered the prince.”

He nodded and poured himself another drink. “There seems to be no other logical explanation.”

“But Phil doesn’t believe it.”

He looked down into the goblet. “No,” he said with the weight only a disillusioned elder can manage. “He doesn’t.”

I picked up a framed portrait from the big desk. About the size of my hand, it was a colored line drawing of a woman with wavy blond hair, blue eyes and a mouth that seemed about to smile. She had the look of fresh air and forests after a spring rain, probably because she wore a crown of flowers. “Is this her?”

“Yes,” answered a new voice. It had grown deeper, but I’d know it anywhere.

He stood across the room from me, in a casual jacket and shirt. He wasn’t wearing his crown, which for some reason surprised me, although I knew it was too heavy and uncomfortable to wear except on formal occasions. I guess I just expected him to look more royal, like King Philip, instead of so much like my old best friend Phil.

Phil. Fucking King Phil.

He grew taller than me when we were fourteen, and still was. His hair was cropped short, and touched with gray at the temples, but otherwise still had that annoying disheveled quality that made all the girls sigh. He wore a mustache, also shot through with gray, and there were deep lines at the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t fat, though, and he still moved gracefully.

Still looking at me, he said, “Pour me one of those, will you, Emerson?”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Wentrobe said.

I put the picture back on his desk. “Not bad. Not as cute as that Danner girl you chased after when we were fourteen, but not bad.”