LITMIR.BIZ

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The count went from standing to screaming in a heap of bloody pain as gleaming blades rose and fell in the dancing amber light.

      Chel watched this as numbness flooded from his ruined shoulder across his body. He watched Count Esen back away from the beggar, then throw his knife at him. The beggar caught it and threw it back. The flying blade carved the handsome count’s cheek wide open, and screeching, he ran. He fled like a panicked doe, fast and fleet, around the room’s edge, over Chel’s slumped form and out through the collapsed barricade before anyone could grab him.

      ‘Now that’s a fucking shame,’ Chel tried to say, then the blackness overcame him.

PART II

       SIX

      Every part of Chel’s body hurt, from the scrapes to his face through to his burning side and battered middle, down to the sour and aching muscles of his legs. His right arm was strapped across his body, bound tight, and its shoulder throbbed with menace. Hot blood pounded against his temples like a three-day hangover. He was very thirsty.

      He reeked of smoke, sweat and mule, and vague memories from the previous night floated through his wobbling mind. Flames, mostly, and blood. Firm hands, rough on his battered body, dragging him. Harsh voices and pain. The counts. The grand duke. The prince. Faces and shapes, unfamiliar, large and small. A mule. Bells.

      He opened his eyes.

      He was in a cramped store-room of sorts, piled with sacks and crates, with odd-pitching wooden walls. The only dim light came from a grille somewhere above, along with muted shouts and the occasional distant bell. The building around them seemed unsteady, as if it were shiftly slightly in a strong breeze. Someone beside him was snoring.

      It was Tarfel, nestled beside him on a bed of lumpy sacks, still in the remains of his evening finery, soot-streaked and ragged. The prince stirred and whimpered in his sleep. He had a graze on his cheek, a nascent bruise beneath it, but looked otherwise unharmed. Chel guessed that the dark spatters on the prince’s silken shirt were from elsewhere. Chel wondered if he should let the prince sleep. He looked so pale and feeble, his mousy hair flopped over his scrawny features, his fringe puffed up on every out-breath.

      Chel pushed himself to his feet and looked down at his own ruined clothes. The voluminous outer layers had been ripped away, leaving him in a dark snug tunic and trousers. He lifted his shirt to find the gash at his side bandaged, the skin around the dressing clear of crusted blood. Someone had cleaned his wounds and bound them, then left him here with the prince. That had to be a good omen. He tried to wring recollections from his brain. A woman’s voice, perhaps?

      He glanced around, ignoring the complaints of his grumbling neck and shoulder. A glimmer of light along the base of one wall revealed a door. Chel tried the handle with his good hand. It was resolutely locked. With a sinking feeling, he returned to the prince.

      ‘Your highness? Prince Tarfel?’

      Tarfel stirred, then rolled over. ‘I won’t!’ the prince said with remarkable clarity, and Chel blinked. ‘I won’t go! I don’t need lessons from those horrid old men.’

      He mumbled on with decreasing coherence, before finishing with a half-garbled demand for the servants to bring fresh pillows. Chel blew the hair out of his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with his good hand. ‘Prince Tarfel!’

      A rolling snore echoed around the store-room. Chel prodded the prince with a foot. He got no response.

      Shouts echoed overhead, followed by thumps and clunks in the structure around them, then the whole building lurched into motion, rocking gently as it went. After a moment of unsteadiness, Chel collapsed onto a sack beside the prince. Of course it was a bloody boat. No smell of brine, no great lurching waves. They weren’t at sea. They must be on the river, and that had to mean Sebemir. The only questions were: where were they going, and who were they with?

      Tarfel at last lifted his head, blinking in the gloom.

      ‘Whatever is going on?’ the prince said after a moment of dark, creaking quiet.

      ‘We’re on a boat, highness,’ Chel replied. ‘I think we’ve been kidnapped.’

      ‘Oh,’ the prince said. Then, after a moment, ‘What?’

      ‘Do you remember, highness? Someone tried to kill you last night, and someone else tried to kill me. Heali …’ Chel shook his head, numb at the memory. ‘The guards were gone, the Watch Commander with them, and those people in the palace weren’t Norts. Esen Basar killed his father, and I think he was trying to kill both of us. He had … he had a Nort mask, a pretend one. And … that pig-fucking beggar saved us.’ His shoulder pulsed at the memory. ‘But he ripped my arm out, and dragged us over the hills to what must be Sebemir, and now we’re locked in a cupboard on a riverboat. So I think it’s safe to assume that we’re still in trouble.’

      ‘Oh,’ the prince said. Then, after a moment, ‘What?’

      ***

      For a time, Chel slept. He woke to the sound of raised voices beyond the door. The sky visible through the grille still offered the crimson streaks of sunset. It could not have been long. The prince was snoring again beside him, and Chel nudged him with his good arm.

      ‘Voices.’

      Tarfel stirred and sat up. His bruise had darkened.

      ‘Who do you think they are?’ Chel said. ‘Those that took us.’

      ‘Oh, they’ll be mercenaries,’ the prince said with a grimace.

      ‘Not Rau Rel?’

      ‘Of course not, partisans would have murdered me immediately. You know, “death to tyrants” and all that nonsense.’ The prince shifted uncomfortably. ‘I imagine I’m to be ransomed. Question is, who would have the gall to order my abduction?’

      ‘Well, considering we’ve just seen Grand Duke Reysel murdered by his own son, perhaps the usual rules don’t apply right now, highness?’

      The prince put one hand on his weak chin. ‘A little patricide isn’t uncommon, especially among northern Names. Notoriously emotional bunch, prone to hysteria.’

      ‘Morara and Esen meant to kill you, too, highness, and make it look like the Norts were responsible. Unless … Unless …’ Chel had told no one of the confessors beneath the Nort masks, but he had announced in front of Count Esen that he knew that the Norts were false. Had he doomed all those present in doing so? Was this his fault?

      Tarfel ignored him. ‘Exactly, and now I’m kidnapped! Who would dare hold the kingdom to ransom?’

      ‘I’m not convinced that our kidnappers and your would-be assassins were working toward the same ends, highness.’ Seeing as one lot seem to have murdered the other.

      ‘Since Father’s Wars of Unity ended – the first time, at least – a few outposts of resistance to his rule have lingered: the southern territories, of course, the so-called free cities of the North, that grubby lot in the south-west … But none of them would risk bringing down the fury of the crown by stealing a prince.’

      ‘Are you sure it wasn’t the Rau Rel?’

      ‘Don’t be absurd. A gaggle of mud-farmers have no coin for mercenaries, even barely competent ones. Mud-farmers, dissidents, disgraced minor nobility, barely a name to their, er, name.’ He rubbed at his elbow, bruised from impact on a vegetable sack. ‘This was one of our continental rivals. They were imperial colonies when the Taneru ruled, and now witness their impudence. They shall pay for this, the moment I am freed. I shall not forget this insult.’

      Chel nodded, turning away and rolling his eyes. ‘Of course, highness.’

      Tarfel’s pout froze, gradually replaced by a faraway, fearful look. ‘Our

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