Kitabı oku: «A Jewel for Royals», sayfa 3

CHAPTER FIVE

Rupert stewed as he walked along Ashton’s streets, toward its docks. He should have been riding down the streets to the cries of a loving populace, celebrating his victory. He should have had the common folk cheering his name and throwing flowers. There should have been women along the route eager to throw themselves at him, and young men jealous that they could never be him.

Instead, there were only damp streets and people going about whatever dreary business peasants got up to when they weren’t cheering for their betters.

“Your highness, is everything all right?” Sir Quentin Mires asked. He walked as one of a dozen soldiers who had been chosen to accompany him, probably to make sure that he got to the ship without wandering off. Probably with orders to get Sebastian’s location before he left. It wasn’t even close to the same thing. It wasn’t even enough for an honor guard, not really.

“No, Sir Quentin,” Rupert said. “Everything is not all right.”

He should have been the hero in this moment. He’d single-handedly stopped the invasion, when his mother and his brother had been too cowardly to do what was needed. He’d been the prince that the kingdom had required in that moment, and what was he getting for it?

“What is it even like in the Near Colonies?” he demanded.

“I’m told that their islands vary, your highness,” Sir Quentin said. “Some are rocky, some are sandy, others have swamps.”

“Swamps,” Rupert repeated. “My mother has sent me to help rule over swamps.”

“I’m told that there is a wide variety of wildlife there,” Sir Quentin said. “Some of the kingdom’s men of the natural sciences spend years there in the hopes of making discoveries.”

“So infested swamps?” Rupert said. “You do know that you aren’t making this better, Sir Quentin?” He decided to ask the important questions, checking things off on his fingers as he went. “Are there any good gambling parlors there? Famed courtesans? Notable local drinks?”

“I’m told the wine is – ”

“Damn the wine!” Rupert snapped back, unable to help himself. Normally, he did a better job of remembering to be the golden prince that everyone expected. “Forgive me, Sir Quentin, but the quality of the wine or the plentiful wildlife will not make up for the fact that I am exiled in all but name.”

The other man bowed his head. “No, your highness, of course not. You deserve better.”

That was a statement so obvious as to be useless. Of course he deserved better. He was the elder of the princes and the rightful heir to the throne. He deserved everything that this kingdom had to offer.

“I’ve half a mind to tell my mother that I won’t go,” Rupert said. He glanced around at Ashton. He’d never thought that he would miss a stinking, squalid city like this.

“That might be… unwise, your highness,” Sir Quentin said, in that special voice he had that probably meant he was trying to avoid calling Rupert an idiot. He probably thought Rupert didn’t notice. People tended to think he was stupid, until it was too late.

“I know, I know,” Rupert said. “If I stay, I risk execution. Do you actually think that my mother would execute me?”

The pause was too long as Sir Quentin searched for the next words.

“You do. You actually think that my mother would execute her own son.”

“She does have a certain reputation for… ruthlessness,” the courtier pointed out. Honestly, was this the way men with connections in the Assembly of Nobles talked all the time? “And even if she did not actually go through with your execution, those around you might be… vulnerable.”

“Ah, so it’s your own hide that you’re worried about,” Rupert said. That made more sense to him. People, he found, mostly looked after their own interests. It was a lesson he’d learned early. “I would have thought that your contacts in the Assembly would keep you safe, especially after a victory like this.”

Sir Quentin shrugged. “In a month or two, perhaps. We have the support now. But for the moment, they are still talking about the overreach of royal power, about you acting without their consent. In the time it took for them to change their minds, a man might lose his head.”

Sir Quentin might lose his anyway if he suggested that Rupert somehow needed permission to do what he wanted. He was the man who would become king!

“And of course, even if she did not execute you, your highness, your mother might imprison you, or send you off to a worse place with guards to make sure that you arrived safely.”

Rupert gestured pointedly at the men who surrounded him, marching along in step with him and Sir Quentin.

“I thought that was what was happening already?”

Sir Quentin shook his head. “These men are among those who fought beside you against the New Army. They respect the boldness of your decision, and wanted to see that you did not leave alone, without the honor of an escort.”

So it was an honor guard. Rupert wasn’t sure that he could have taken it for one. Even so, now that he cared to look around at them, he saw that most of the men there were officers rather than common soldiers, and that most of them seemed happy to be accompanying him. It was closer to the kind of adulation that Rupert wanted, but it still wasn’t enough to offset the stupidity of what his mother had done to him.

It was a humiliation, and, knowing his mother, a calculated one.

They reached the docks. Rupert had been expecting that for this at least there would be a grand fighting ship waiting, cannon firing a salute to him in acknowledgment of his status, if nothing else.

Instead, there was nothing.

“Where is the ship?” Rupert demanded, looking around. As far as he could see, the docks were merely bustling with the usual selection of ships, merchants getting back to their trade after the retreat of the New Army. He’d have thought that they, at least, would thank him for his efforts, but they seemed too busy trying to earn their coin.

“I believe the ship is there, your highness,” Sir Quentin said, pointing.

“No,” Rupert said, following the line of the other man’s pointing finger. “No.”

The boat was a tub, suitable for a merchant’s journey, perhaps, and already partly loaded with goods for the journey back to the Near Colonies. It was anything but suitable to carry a prince.

“It is a little less than grand,” Sir Quentin said. “But I believe Her Majesty thought that traveling without attention would lower the chances of danger along the way.”

Rupert doubted that his mother had been thinking about pirates. She’d been thinking about what would make him the least comfortable, and she’d done a good job of judging it.

Still,” Sir Quentin said, with a sigh, “at least you will not be alone in this.”

Rupert stopped at that, staring at the other man.

“Forgive me, Sir Quentin,” Rupert said, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off a headache, “but why exactly are you here?”

Sir Quentin turned to him. “I’m sorry, your highness, I should have said. My own position has become… somewhat precarious at the moment.”

“Meaning that you’re scared of my mother’s anger if I’m not around?” Rupert said.

“Wouldn’t you be?” Sir Quentin asked, breaking free from the carefully considered phrases of the politician for a moment. “The way I see it, I can wait around for her to find an excuse to execute me, or I can pursue my family’s business interests in the Near Colonies for a while.”

He made it sound so simple: go to the Near Colonies, release Sebastian, wait for the furor to subside, and come back again looking suitably chastened. The trouble with that was simple: Rupert couldn’t bring himself to do it.

He couldn’t pretend to be sorry for something that had clearly been the right decision. He couldn’t release his brother to take what was his. His brother didn’t deserve to be free when he’d all but executed a coup against Rupert, using some ruse or trick with their mother to persuade her to give him the throne.

“I can’t do it,” Rupert said. “I won’t do it.”

“Your highness,” Sir Quentin said, in that stupidly reasonable tone he had. “Your mother will have sent word to the governor of the Near Colonies. He will be expecting your arrival, and will send back word if you are not there. Even if you were to run, your mother will send soldiers, not least to find out where Prince Sebastian is.”

Rupert barely, barely, restrained himself from hitting the other man. It wasn’t a good idea to strike your allies, at least while they were still useful.

And Rupert had thought of a way that Sir Quentin could be very useful. He looked around the accompanying group of officers until he found one with blond hair who seemed to be around the right size.

“You, what is your name?”

“Aubry Chomley, your highness,” the man said. His uniform had a captain’s insignia.

“Well, Chomley,” Rupert said, “how loyal are you?”

“Completely,” the other man said. “I saw what you did against the New Army. You saved our kingdom, and you are the rightful heir to the throne.”

“Good man,” Rupert said. “Your loyalty does you credit, but now, I have a test of that loyalty.”

“Name it,” the other man said.

“I need you to swap clothes with me.”

“Your highness?” The soldier and Sir Quentin managed to say it almost in unison.

Rupert managed not to sigh. “It’s simple. Chomley here will go with you to the boat. He will pretend to be me, and go with you to the Near Colonies.”

The soldier looked as nervous at that as if Rupert had commanded him to charge a horde of the enemy.

“Won’t… won’t people notice?” the man said. “Won’t the governor notice?”

“Why would he?” Rupert asked. “I’ve never met the man, and Sir Quentin here will vouch for you. Won’t you, Sir Quentin?”

Sir Quentin looked back and forth from Rupert to the soldier, obviously trying to calculate the course of action most likely to keep him his head.

This time, Rupert did sigh. “Look, it’s simple. You go to the Near Colonies. You vouch for Chomley as me. Since I’m still here, that gives us a chance to get together the support we need. Support that could bring you back far quicker than if you start waiting for my mother to forget a slight.”

That part seemed to catch the other man’s attention. He nodded. “Very well,” Sir Quentin said. “I’ll do it.”

“And you, Captain?” Rupert asked. “Or should I say General?”

It took a moment for that to sink in. He saw Chomley swallow.

“Anything you require, your highness,” the man said.

It took a matter of minutes to find an empty building among the warehouses and the boat sheds, changing clothes with the captain so that now Chomley looked… well, frankly, nothing like a prince of the realm, but with Sir Quentin’s recommendation it should be enough.

“Go,” Rupert commanded them, and they went, accompanied by about half of the soldiers to make it seem more authentic. He looked around at the others, considering what he would do next.

There was no question of leaving Ashton, but he would have to move carefully now until he was ready. Sebastian was safe enough where he was for the time being. The palace was big enough that he would be able to keep away from his mother for a while at least. He knew he had support. It was time to find out how much, and how much power it could buy him.

“Come on,” he told the others. “It’s time to work out how we take what should be mine.”

CHAPTER SIX

“I am Lady Emmeline Constance Ysalt D’Angelica, Marchioness of Sowerd and Lady of the Order of the Sash!” Angelica shouted out, hoping that someone would hear her. Hoping that her full name would demand attention if nothing else did. “I am being taken to be killed against my will!”

The guard dragging her didn’t look concerned by it, which said to Angelica that there was no real chance of anyone hearing her. No one who would help, at least. In a place with as many cruelties as the palace, the servants were long used to ignoring cries for help, to being blind and deaf unless their betters told them not to be.

“I will not let you do this,” Angelica said, trying to dig in her heels and hold her ground. The guard simply pulled her along anyway, the size difference too great. She struck out at him instead, and connected hard enough that her hand stung with it. For a moment the guard’s grip relaxed, and Angelica turned to run.

The guard was on her in moments, grabbing at her and striking her so that Angelica’s head rang with it.

“You can’t… you can’t strike me,” she said. “People will know. You want to make this look like an accident!”

He slapped her again, and Angelica had the feeling that he did it simply because he could.

“After you’ve fallen from a building, no one will notice a bruise,” he said. He snatched her up then, carrying her over his shoulder as easily as if she were a wayward child. Angelica had never felt as helpless as she did in that moment.

“Scream again,” he warned, “and I’ll hit you again.”

Angelica didn’t, if only because it didn’t seem likely to make any difference. She hadn’t seen anyone on the way here, either because everyone was still busy with the wedding that hadn’t happened or because the Dowager had carefully kept them out of the way in preparation for this. Angelica wouldn’t put that past her. The old woman planned as patiently and as cruelly as a cat waiting outside a mouse hole.

“You don’t have to do this,” Angelica said.

The guard replied with just a shrug that jostled her in her place on his shoulder. They went up through the palace, along winding staircases that narrowed more the further up they went. At one point, the guard had to set Angelica down just to get through, but he kept a cruel hold on her hair, dragging her along with a sharpness that made Angelica cry out in pain.

“You could just let me go,” Angelica said. “No one would know.”

The guard snorted at that. “No one would notice when you just popped back up at court, or in your family’s home? The Dowager’s spies wouldn’t know you were alive?”

“I could leave,” Angelica tried. The truth was that she would probably have to leave if she was going to live. The Dowager wouldn’t stop at just this attempt on her life. “My family has interests so far across the sea that there’s hardly ever news. I could disappear.”

The guard didn’t seem any more impressed by that idea than the last. “And when some spy mentions you? No, I reckon I’ll do my duty.”

“I could give you money,” Angelica said. They were getting higher now. So high that, looking out of the slender windows, she could see the city arranged like some child’s toy below. Maybe that was how the Dowager saw it: as a toy to be arranged for her amusement.

It meant that they must be almost at the roof, too.

“Don’t you want money?” Angelica demanded. “A man like you can’t earn much. I could give you enough wealth that you’d be a rich man.”

“Can’t give me anything if you’re dead,” the guard pointed out. “And I can’t spend it if I am.”

There was a small door ahead, iron bound, with a simple latch. Angelica thought that the route to her death should have more drama to it, somehow. Even so, just the sight of it made her fear rise again, making her pull back even while the guard dragged her forward.

If Angelica had possessed a dagger, she would have used it while he unlatched the door and opened it to let the cold air beyond rip at them. If she’d had so much as a sharp eating knife, she would have at least tried to cut his throat with it, but she didn’t. In her wedding dress, she didn’t. The most she had were a couple of powders designed to refresh her makeup, a sedative snuff that was supposed to be there for the threat of nerves, and… that was it. That was all she had. Everything else was below somewhere, tucked away against the conclusion of her wedding.

“Please,” she begged, and there didn’t have to be much acting to it to look helpless, “if money won’t do it, then what about decency? I’m just a young woman, caught up in a game I didn’t want. Please help me.”

The guard pulled her out onto the roof. It was flat, with crenulations that had nothing to do with real defense. The wind whipped at Angelica’s hair.

“Do you expect me to believe any of that?” the guard asked. “That you’re just some innocent little thing? You know the stories they tell about you around the palace, milady?”

Angelica knew most of them. She made a point of knowing what people said about her so that she could have revenge for the slight later.

“They say that you’re vain and you’re cruel. That you’ve ruined people just for speaking to you in the wrong tone, and arranged for rivals to be shipped off with a mark of indenture tattooed on them where it wasn’t before. You think you deserve mercy?”

“Those are lies,” Angelica said. “They’re – ”

“I don’t much care either way.” He pulled her over toward the parapet. “The Dowager has given me my orders.”

“And what will she do when you’ve fulfilled them?” Angelica demanded. “Do you think she’ll let you live? If the Assembly were to find out that she murdered a noblewoman, she’d be deposed.”

The big man shrugged. “I’ve killed for her before.”

He said it as though it was nothing, and Angelica knew then that she was going to die. Whatever she said, whatever she tried, this man was going to murder her. By the look of it, he was going to enjoy it as well.

He pushed Angelica back toward the edge, and she knew it would just be moments before she fell. Inexplicably, she found herself thinking about Sebastian, and the thoughts weren’t the hate-filled ones they should have been, given the way he’d abandoned her. Angelica couldn’t understand why that would be the case, when he was nothing but the man she’d targeted as a husband to further her position, a man she’d been prepared to lure into bed with a sleeping powder…

An idea came to her. It was a desperate one, but right then, everything was desperate.

“I could offer you something more valuable than money,” Angelica said. “Something better.”

The guard laughed, but even so, he paused. “What?”

Angelica reached down to her belt, drawing out the small snuff box of sedative, lifting it as if it were the most precious thing in the world. The guard let her, staring almost entranced as he tried to work out what it was. Very delicately, Angelica opened the box.

“What is it?” the guard demanded. “It looks like – ”

Angelica blew sharply, sending a scattering of powder into his face as he gasped. She cut left as he grabbed for her, hoping to dodge past while he was still dealing with the powder in his eyes. One meaty hand clamped on her arm, and the two of them pressed back toward the edge of the palace’s roof.

Angelica didn’t know what effect the sedative would have. It had worked quickly whenever she’d used it, but it was normally a thing of small doses and minor effects. How much would such a large dose do to a man that size, and would she have enough time before it happened? Already, Angelica could feel the edge of the roof against her back, the sky visible as the big man pushed at her.

“I’ll kill you!” the guard bellowed, and the best Angelica could say about it was that his words came out slightly slurred. Was his grip weakening? Was the pressure pushing her back any less?

She was tilted back so much now that she could see the ground below her, and a scattering of servants and nobles. Another second, and she would be falling, to crash to the cobbles of the courtyard and smash as surely as a dropped goblet.

In that second, Angelica felt the guard’s grip weaken. Not much, but enough for her to twist and slip by him, putting him with his back to the empty sky.

“You should have taken the money,” she said, and charged forward, shoving with all her might. The guard teetered on the edge for a second, then toppled back, his arms flailing at the air.

Not just the air. One managed to catch at her, and Angelica found herself jerked forward, to the edge and over it. She screamed, grabbing for anything she could find. Her fingers found a piece of stonework, lost their grip, and then found it again while the guard continued to tumble below her. Angelica looked down just long enough to follow his fall to the ground. She felt a brief moment of satisfaction as he hit, quickly replaced by the terror that came from hanging from the side of the castle.

Angelica scrabbled for handholds, trying to find something more to hold onto. Her feet hung in thin air for a moment, then managed to find purchase on the rough sides of a stone-wrought heraldic shield. Angelica noted with faint amusement that it was the royal crest, but also couldn’t help feeling relief at the fact it was there. Without it, she would undoubtedly now be as dead as the Dowager wished her to be.

The climb back up onto the roof seemed to take forever, Angelica’s muscles burning with the unexpected effort. Below, she could hear screams now, as people started to gather around the fallen guard. No doubt, some of them would be looking up, seeing her as she made it back onto the roof, toppling over and lying there, breathing hard.

“Get up,” she told herself. “You’re dead if you stay here. Get up.”

She forced herself to her feet, trying to think. The Dowager had tried to kill her. The obvious thing to do was run, because who could stand up to the Dowager? She needed to find a way out of the palace, perhaps make it to the docks and set off for her family’s lands overseas. That or sneak out through one of the city’s smaller routes, avoiding any watchers that had been set and making it out into the country. Her family was powerful, with the kind of friends who could raise questions in the Assembly of Nobles over this, who would —

“They’ll do what the Dowager tells them,” Angelica told herself. If they acted at all, it would be so slowly that she would undoubtedly be murdered in the meantime. The best she could hope for was to run and keep running, never being safe, never being at the heart of things again. It was an unacceptable solution to it all.

Which brought her back to her earlier question: who could stand up to the Dowager?

Angelica dusted herself off carefully, rearranging her hair as neatly as possible as she nodded to herself. This plan was… dangerous, yes. Unpleasant, almost certainly. But it was the best chance that she had.

While the people below shouted, she set off at a run back through the palace.