Blood of Ambrose (2 page)

But where should he go in the dark city before him? What was he to do? To find Grandmother's brother, of course. But he would have to ask someone. There were many people here, many of them from outside the city, some of them, perhaps, from very far away. This was the place to begin.

The King shrank from the thought of what he was about to do. But the memory of the lamp in the dark tunnel returned to him, renewing his hope and his strength. And there was a trembling exultation in the thought that if he succeeded, he would bring hope to his Grandmother as she had brought hope to him. He had never done anything like that before.

Not allowing himself to think, he leapt away from the wall and hopped from stone to stone across the intersection, as if they were the stepping-stones in his garden stream in the palace. A cart was slowly being pulled through the gap in the stones.

“The Strange Gods eat these roadblocks,” the driver was cursing. “They should make them all the same size. How's a man supposed to bring his goods to market?”

“We could market at Twelve Stones,” the driver's shadowy companion observed.

“They won't pay city prices, my lad. When you—Hey! What do you want?”

This last was addressed to the King, who had leapt over to cling to the side of the cart.

“Help me!” the King said.

The driver turned to look at him. He was a heavy-shouldered peasant in a dark smock. His face was sun-darkened; it had flat features and flat black eyes like stones, and a flat gray beard. “Help you what?” he asked reasonably. Beyond him the King could see his companion, a gaping young man with straw-colored hair and the barest beginnings of a beard.

“Help me find…” the King began, then stopped. Who?
Grandmother's brother.
But she wasn't really his grandmother—he just called her that because it was shorter than “great-great-great-great-etc. grandmother.” And what did you call the brother of your great-great-who-knows-how-many-greats grandmother? He didn't think there was a word for that.

“My…she…I'm…my…my…my—”

“Get your story straight,” advised the driver as the cart surged forward into the open; with dispassionate skill, he lifted his whip and cut the King across the face.

Too shocked even to scream, the King felt, as from a great distance, his nerveless fingers let the cart go; he fell to the filthy cobbles of the open square. Dazedly he watched the lamplit cart roll away in the dark toward the other lights clustering at the thoroughfare entrance.

Slowly the King rose to his feet. The whipcut was a red lightning-stroke of pain across his face, and other dark fires were burning on the side of his head, his right side and limbs where he had fallen. He did not fully understand why the driver had done what he did. But he guessed that the same thing would happen unless he did as the driver had advised, and got his story straight.

He would not tell them about his Grandmother. (That would only frighten them away, because she was the Protector's enemy, and the Protector ruled everything now.) He would not tell them anything—except what she had told him to say.
Say the name aloud…

He climbed back up on the stepping-stones and bided his time. Presently a cart came through and, while it was fully engaged in passing through the line of the stepping-stones, he jumped into the tarp-covered back of the wagon, landing on his feet, and prepared to dodge whip-strokes.

“Hey, thief!” shouted the driver, a heavyset elderly man raising his whip (as the King had feared).

“No, Rusk!” the passenger, a woman of the same age, cried. “It's a little boy!”

The King did not think of himself as “a little boy.” He had seen little boys from far off, playing in the streets below the walls of the palace Ambrose, and he was not much like them. He usually thought of himself as “a child,” since that was how others referred to him when they thought he was not listening, often quoting the ancient Vraidish proverb “the land runs red when a child is king.”

“They're the worst thieves of all!” Rusk grumbled, but lowered the whip. “Hey, boy! You're spoiling our vegetables!”

“I'm sorry,” the King said. “I need help.” He shifted to the side of the cart, to avoid treading on their goods. The cart jerked as it pulled free of the stepping-stones, and the King almost fell into the square again. “I need to find somebody!” he cried, clutching at the wagon's side.

“Who?” the woman asked.

The King paused. Now that he came to it, it was difficult to speak that awful name aloud. “The Crooked Man,” he said then; it was one of many euphemisms for Ambrosia's brother.

Rusk, looking forward now to guide the cart horses, gnashed his teeth in irritation. “Boy, you should know that beggars don't come out at night. Besides, we're not city people; we don't know any beggars, crooked or straight.”

“I don't understand what you mean,” the King said slowly. “I mean…I am looking for…Ambrosia's brother. The Dark Man.”

The woman gave a sharp intake of breath, and Rusk shouted, “Lata, this is on your head. Throw that rat off our wagon before he says the name and brings a curse on us—”

“Morlock!” shouted the King in despair, as the woman reached back in a vague swatting motion. “Morlock! Morlock! Morlock! Your sister is in danger!
Morlock!
”

He had expected (well, half expected) the Crooked Man to appear in a gush of flame, as legends said he did when his name was spoken, to work dreadful wonders, or haul traitors off to hell. So he was half disappointed when nothing of the sort occurred. A cart with a lamp (Rusk and Lata's had none) passed them; a wash of golden light passed over the old woman's seamed face, catching a speculative wondering look on her features as she met the King's eye.

Rusk had reined in and was turning around, shouting, whip in hand. As he raised his arm to strike, Lata snatched the whip away from him and said in a breathless voice, “Shut up, Rusk, you fool—and you, too, sir, if you please,” she added, glancing back at the King. “Sit down there, out of the passing lights, sir, and you'll be quite comfortable.”

“
Sir!
” exploded Rusk.

“Don't you understand?” Lata said insistently. “It's the little King!”

Rusk drew himself up, then glanced back at the King, who had settled himself down obediently into the shadows. “It's impossible,” Rusk said, but his voice was quiet and lacked all conviction.

Lata, her voice equally quiet, drove the point home. “Who counts the coins on market day, Rusk? I do. If I've seen his face once I've seen it a hundred times. And you remember what the gate guard said, about the disturbance at Ambrose. If the Protector and old Ambrosia are finally having it out, she might call on her brother (the Strange Gods save us from him; I name him not). What'd be more natural?”

“'Natural!’
Those
ones…” Rusk's voice was sardonic, but held no disbelief. Hope beat suddenly in the King's heart.

“Then you'll help me?” the King said. “You'll help me find Morlock?”

“Shut that filthy-mouthed brat up.”

“Shut up yourself, Rusk. It's different for him; the Crooked Man (I name him not!) is his kin, in a manner of speaking. Yes, little sir, we'll help you as best we can. Bless you, it's our duty now, isn't it? Just pull some of these blankets over you and lie down on the side of the cart, there. There now. There now. That's fine.”

Lata and Rusk did a good deal of low-voiced talking, but the King didn't bother to listen to it. He had done his part; he had succeeded; it was up to the others, now. He hoped they would be in time to save Grandmother—how proud she'd be of him, for once! He wondered at the power of the Crooked Man's name, which frightened others even more than it did him. Lata had said,
it's different for him
, and he saw how true that was.

“Morlock,” the King muttered, and felt the ancient blood of Ambrosius glow in his veins. “Come help us, Morlock. Help Grandmother. Hurt the Protector. He killed my parents, Morlock, I'm almost sure of it….” The King whispered to Morlock in the dark what he had never dared to say aloud to anyone, even Grandmother. But he didn't have to be afraid anymore; it was a wonderful feeling.

He peered through the boards of the wagon side. Would Morlock appear magically out of the darkness, as he was supposed to do when someone said his name? Would he be hunched over and crooked, as the legends said? Would his fiery servants appear alongside him? Was his hand really bloodred, from all the killing it had done? But Morlock never appeared.

That was all right, though. The King knew it was because they were going to meet him. Lata and Rusk seemed to know more or less where to go. Rusk was expressing delight at how empty the streets were; the King guessed that people avoided the streets, because that was where Morlock lived.

After a while the King grew tired of muttering Morlock's name in the dark. He risked peering out of the wagon past Lata and Rusk. He saw the high twisting towers of a palace, the windows glittering with light. He wondered dimly if Morlock had his own palace, his own court, a kind of secret Emperor.…But that was impossible. He knew those towers. He had seen them, looking up from the palace walls, as he walked with the sentries…. It was Ambrose. They were taking him back to Ambrose.

“You're taking me back!” he shouted, throwing off the blankets. “You lied! You said you'd help!”

Rusk said nothing, flicking the reins to make his horses go faster. But Lata turned toward him, her etched face expressionless in the shadows, her voice troubled and concerned. “Now, now, young sir. We
are
helping. It's best you not be mixed up in that nasty old witch's plots. And you can't be wandering the streets at night, no, no. Why, who knows what might happen? You'll be safer at home in…in the palace, there. Let the grown-ups settle things between themselves. Now, don't be afraid. Don't cry. No matter what happens, they won't hurt a boy like you.”

The King was crying, in fear and frustration. If the Protector had murdered the Empress, his own sister, why would he stop at killing anybody? They had killed Master Jaric and drained him like a pig, and who did Jaric ever hurt? The King wanted to call out Morlock's name again—Morlock who was death to traitors—but the power to do so had left him.

He wondered, briefly, fearfully, what would happen if he jumped away from the wagon and ran away into the dark streets. He didn't know. He didn't know. He didn't do anything. There was no point in doing anything. He had done something and it hadn't worked. The King sat, weeping as the wagon pulled up in front of Ambrose's City Gate. He did not even listen as Rusk and Lata began their marketplace chaffering with the guards on duty.

“Wait, wait, wait!” the guard captain said finally. “You two—go over there and claim that person these two are talking about. You see him there, in the back?” The King heard booted feet approaching, and felt himself lifted gently out of the wagon by his shoulders, then carried bodily to the gate. He opened his eyes to meet those of the guard captain, who swore furiously, “Death and Justice! It's true. Thurn and Veck: take His Majesty back to his apartments and stay with him. Don't be drawn off
by anyone
or I'll feed the one ball you have between you to the goats. Carnon: notify the Protector's Man napping upstairs in the inner guardhouse that we have recovered the King. I know; I know! Then you go
with him
while he reports to the Protector, and just you mention it to everyone you meet. Nobody's falling down a stairway on my damn watch.”

“Wait, now!” Rusk said hoarsely. “Little sir, won't you speak up for us? This soldier man is trying to cheat us of our reward! Didn't we help you get home safe, all right? Won't you mention us to your Protector?” And through this the King saw Lata tugging at Rusk's arm, begging him to be quiet and come away. Then the soldiers carried the King through the gate, onto the open bridge over the river Tilion, toward the yawning gate of Ambrose on the far side of the river, and the darkness, and the fear.

The guard captain's voice, now lazily threatening, echoed back through the City Gate. “Hold on. This isn't some sack of beans you've brought to market. It's the royal person, His Majesty Lathmar the Seventh, the King of the Two Cities and (the Strange Gods willing) your future Emperor. As to the Protector hearing your names, there's little doubt of that. Now—what
are
your names? Where do you live? How did you become involved in the abduction of His Majesty? Which one of you slashed his face?” The gate of Ambrose shut behind the King.

Grandmother was condemned to death the next evening, along with all the people the Protector's Men had killed the night before, in a special session of the Protector's Council. The King never remembered much about the ceremony, just that Grandmother (in the plain brown robe of the accused, her empty hands hanging loose from the wrist as if they had been broken), looked at his face once and turned away.

They had given him a statement to read before the Council, but he burst into tears and couldn't say anything. They took him away and put him to bed. After a while he stopped crying or moving so that they would think he was asleep and go away. When they did, he lay there in the dark room, thinking.

The last thing he thought, many hours later, when he really was falling asleep, was that the things they said about the Crooked Man were all lies. He would never believe a legend again, or his Grandmother either.

As for Lata and Rusk, they had been released that morning, after a bitter night of questioning. It soon proved that no one really believed they were involved in a plot to abduct the King. The guard captain, Lorn—not a Protector's Man, one of the City Legion—who assumed charge of their interrogation, was simply furious at them. He referred several times to their attempt to “sell the King like a sack of beans.” But he kept the Protector's Men away, and finally dismissed them when it was too late to make it to the Great Market (which ceased to admit vendors at dawn), contemptuously declining to confiscate their goods. As they drove their wagon away from Ambrose, Lata felt obscurely ashamed, yet intensely angry—as if she had tried to cheat someone, only to find herself cheated instead.