King Pinch (10 page)

"The great chief is honored to have a killer like Surrabak. He says you must always obey… little chief." The last words bit against Cleedis's pride. Nonetheless, he pointed to the four foreigners and continued, "Little chief -me, Cleedis-tells you to guard these little ones. Do not let anyone come here unless they show my sign. Do you remember the sign?"

With the hellhounds in a tense pack at his feet, the ogre scowled, flaring his lumpy nose as he tried to remember. Tusks curved out from under his thick lips. His dim eyes sank farther in as he pondered hard.

"Surrabak know little chief's sign."

Cleedis gave a sigh of exasperated relief. "Good. Guard them well, or big chief will become angry and punish you."

"Surrabak guard. No one get in." With that, the ogre barked to the pack and slouched back to the kennels, half-dragging the iron leashes still wrapped around his arm.

"Little chief, big chief… That thing doesn't know Manferic's dead, does it?"

Cleedis ignored Pinch's question and stopped at the entrance to the wing, a small cluster of rooms once the queen's summer rooms. "The servants will show you to your quarters." As Sprite and the others stepped to go inside, the royal bodyguards stopped them. "Not you three. There are other rooms in the west hall for you." As if to reassure them, the chamberlain nodded across the way to another colonnaded building.

"We should be with him," Sprite snapped. "We're his friends and it's up to us to stay together."

"Objections, Pinch?"

For a moment nobody said anything as Pinch looked to his companions. The Gur had his hand to sword, ready for the word if it were given. Maeve looked to Pinch for protection, while Sprite glared back with cold defiance. The Lord Chamberlain let a devil's smile seize his lips and turn up the corners.

"Well?"

"Take them. They're not a damn to me."

The bodyguards sidled forward, eager for the fight. If the wind had blown a leaf a different direction across the courtyard, there might have been battle, but it didn't and there wasn't. The three stood frozen as their regulator turned his back on them and went inside.

"We're not done with you, Pinch, you bastard!" Therin bellowed as the door slammed shut.

Inside, Pinch paused, waving off the valet who hustled forward. He strained his ears for the sounds of trouble, fearful there would be a fight. It was part of the playact to turn his back on them, but as he pressed himself against the wall, the rogue was assailed by doubts. Was he playacting? He might need them; that was as much as he understood friendship. The thought of risking his life to save them simply because they were his gang… They know the game, he reasoned to himself. They'll know the playacting from the real. And if they don't…

Pinch didn't know what he would do.

Finally, when it was clear nothing would happen, Pinch followed the servant to his rooms. A bath had been drawn and clothes already laid out: a fine, black set of hose with burgundy and white doublet and pantaloons of the best cut.

It wasn't until he was washed, shaved, trimmed, and dressed that a runner arrived from Lord Cleedis with orders to attend in the west hall. The timing was no accident, Pinch knew. No doubt the servants assigned him reported directly to Cleedis's ear. The rogue had no illusions about the degree of freedom and trust the Lord Chamberlain was allowing him.

Sauntering through the halls, the rogue took his time. No doubt everyone expected his appearance with whatever eager maliciousness they possessed. Certainly his dear, dear cousins were hardly reformed; kindness, love, and generosity were not survival skills in Manferic's court. The rogue guessed that things were only worse now; while he was alive, the fear of Manferic had always been a great restraint.

So Pinch ambled through the halls, refreshing his memory for the layout of the palace, appraising old treasures he once ignored, and admiring and appraising pieces new to him. It was almost fun, looking at his old life through the eyes of another. Portraits of the royal line, with their arrogance and superiority, were of less interest for him now than the frames that held them. Vases he rated by what a broker would pay, furniture by the amount of gilt upon it. Always there was the question of how to get it out of Ankhapur, where to find the right broker.

The tip-tap of feet across the age-polished marble broke Pinch's reverie. "Master Janol, the court awaits you in the dining hall," said the prim-faced Master of the Table, a post identified by his uniform.

Let them simmer in their pots. Without changing his comfortable pace, Pinch nodded that he would be coming. He was not about to be dictated to by a petty court functionary -or by those who sent him. He would arrive late because he chose to.

Then the stone corridors echoed with a crackling chuckle as Pinch laughed at his own conceit. There was no choice for him. He would be late because they all expected him to be late. Anything else and the royal ward Janol would not be the prodigal scoundrel they all envisioned -rebellious, unrepentant, and unsubtle. Let them imagine him how they wanted; he'd play the part -for now.

By the time he pushed open the ridiculously tall doors and strode into the magically lit dining hall, the diners had dispensed with acceptable gossip and were now trapped listening to the Lord Chamberlain describe his journey. The old chamberlain looked up as the doors creaked open and, barely breaking his tale, nodded for Pinch to come to the center of the great curved table and present himself to the royal heirs.

The old rogue, a man of steady balance on a rooftop, icy nerve in a knife fight, and sure wit to puzzle but a magical ward, felt the thick, slow-motion dread of stage fright. It was a decade and more since he'd last been in such company, and suddenly he was worried about forgetting all the subtle niceties and nuances of courtly etiquette. It's not that he minded insulting some portentous ass, it's just that doing so accidentally took all the fun out of it.

Consequently, to hide the feeling of self-conscious care, Pinch studied those at the table as hard as they studied him. Passing the outer wing, the rogue gave only cursory interest to faces that confronted him, concentrating on guessing rank and position by their dress and badges. These were the minor lords of the court, those who wanted to be players in the intrigues but were only being used by the masters. For the most part these factotums and their ornaments were dull as cattle, unaware of who he was and content with their petty positions and their ordained superiority over the common masses. They worried over who sat next to whom, dripped grease into their ruffed collars, and catted about whose looks had been enhanced tonight by some illusionist's hand.

Still, here and there, a pair of bold eyes met Pinch's or a snide comment was whispered to a neighbor as he passed. Pinch took special note of these: the forthright showed some hopes of cunning or fire, the gossips were clued enough to have heard already who he was. Both might be valuable or dangerous in times to come.

Past these room-stuffers, invited mostly to fill the table, was the second tier, and now Pinch's interest became keen. Here the rogue noted faces and made brief nods to ladies and lords he remembered. Every lord and lady sitting here was a prince's ally. Pinch recognized the proud Earl of Arunrock, commander of the navy, by the out-of-fashion goatee he still kept trimmed to a point. Farther along, the rogue almost gave a start to see the merchant Zefferellin, who used to broker loot from an inn near the market. Judging from his robes of severe opulence, business must have been good enough to buy respectability. Next there was a lady he didn't know but definitely wanted to. She had a refined elegance that suggested she could break the spirit of the purest man. Finally, there was the Hierarch Juricale, a woodcutter-sized man whose black eyes glowered at people over his long bent nose and spreading white beard. He was a man whose word could inspire the faithful to kill for his cause. Even at the table he sat aloof, apart from all the others as if he alone were above all this. It was a lie, Pinch knew. There was no man more directly involved in the court's intrigues than the Red Priest.

These were the hands that held the knives of the princes and the Lord Chamberlain. There was nothing to distinguish them in dress from the pawns of the lower tier -who believed that clothes determined rank through the strange alchemy of fashion-but this inner tier knew where the true power lay. They had chosen their sides. Which wing, which side, how close to the center of table, all these were clues waiting to be deciphered.

At last the regulator reached the center, where he turned to the table and casually bowed. Along the opposite side of the curving main table sat the princes four, their backs safely to stone walls. Interspersed between them were the rest of the family: Duke Tomas and Lady Graln. At the very center, in the king's normal seat, sat Cleedis, Lord Chamberlain and Regent of the Assumption.

Pinch waited to be recognized, but now it was their turn to make him wait. Cleedis continued with his story.

Unlike the others, Bors the idiot prince, was the only one who seemed to show interest. He was still an idiot, that was clear. Flabby faced and jaundiced, he dumbly mouthed Cleedis's words, barely understanding most of it. His napkin, tied under his chin, was awash in soup spill and crumbs, and it seemed to take most of the First Prince's effort to get his spoon to his lips. Every once in a while, he would giggle softly about something that amused only him.

Next to Bors, and looking none to happy for the seat, was Duke Tomas. Had he been two seats over, Pinch would have mistaken the duke for Manferic, his late brother, even though the duke was gleamingly bald where the late king had had a full head of hair.

"Dear coz, the years have made you forget your manners." The jab brought Pinch back to the front and center, and he bowed quickly before even looking to see who had stung him. It didn't matter; even after fifteen years it was impossible not to recognize the voice, a baritone of biting silk ripe with arrogance.

"Quite true, Prince Vargo. Otherwise I would have remembered your impatience, too."

Across the table glowered a muscular man, Vargo, second son of Manferic. He was several years Pinch's younger, although his face was hard and sharpened to a point by his impeccably trimmed Vandyke. His casually tossed blond hair offset the red of his beard, and he easily could have been a dashing cavalier if it weren't for the unsatiated savagery that twisted even his brightest smile.

"I present myself, Lord Chamberlain," Pinch-now-Janol continued before his adversary could recover from the rogue's
bon mot.
"I am Master Janol, royal ward of the late King Manferic."

A susurration of muted surprise trickled from the outer wings, as those guests previously clueless of Pinch's identity grasped the import of his arrival.

"I… beseech… your permission to join you at table as was the courtesy my late guardian extended to me." This part of the ritualistic greeting came hardest for the regulator. It was galling to go through the show of asking the favor after the old man had forced him here in the first place. Hiding a grimace, the prodigal courtier bowed once again, this time with more flamboyance. The fear that threatened to paralyze him was fading as the familiarity with the air around him grew.

Lord Cleedis raised a glass of amber wine as if this were the first time he had seen Pinch in years. The gold elixir sparkled in the light from the mullioned windows that lined the base of the dome above.

It was all a conceit. Everyone at the table knew the old man had gone to fetch the errant ward, though the thief couldn't imagine why the chamberlain had risked absence from the court for so long. Gods knew what the princes had done -or might have done-in the regent's absence.

"Truly we are pleased to see our long-absent cousin. I, who was your guardian's servant, will not dishonor his name by sending you from this hall. Prepare a place for Master Janol where he can sit with honor."

In an instant the servants silently swooped on the diners, producing a chair, linens, goblet, and trencher. It had all been prearranged, of course, so there was no need for direction as they uprooted the foremost noble of the second tier and laid a place for the rogue. This displacement triggered a chain reaction of shifting and squeezing as each noble vainly refused to relinquish his position in the chain of importance. At the very end of the semicircular table, the lowest courtier of the lot found himself dangling off the end, trencher perched on his knees.

Pinch squeezed himself into place between Prince Marac and a glistening courtier simmering at the insult of being supplanted by a mendicant relative. The man sipped his wine through clenched teeth and eyed Pinch in way that was reminiscent of the lizards he used catch. Pinch considered being friendly, but the man was a reptile and hardly worth the effort. Instead the rogue ignored him, because it made Pinch's presence all the more stinging and that made Pinch happy.

"Prince Marac…" The rogue's cup raised in a genial toast.

Marac, youngest of Manferic's sons and the one Pinch liked the best of the slippery lot -because the youth had been easy to intimidate-eyed Pinch the way one neighbor eyes the other when his best hound has disappeared. He tried to look for the evidence of a bloody knife while trying not to seem like he was looking.

Marac was no longer the ten-year-old youth that Pinch remembered. That one had been replaced by a poor imitation of Prince Vargo. His face was fuller and rounder than sharp-cheeked Vargo, and his beard had the thin, brushed softness of youth, but already the eyes were hidden barbs. His straw-blond hair was longer than his brother's and straight where the other's was tangled. With all these differences, there was still a foundation that was Manferic's bloodline. Perhaps the two weren't Manferic progeny, but unfinished duplicates the wizard-king had fashioned in some long-forgotten laboratory, and their lives from childhood to death were one vast experiment. It would be so like the way he raised me, just to see what he could build, Pinch thought.