The Assassin Princess (Lamb & Castle Book 2) (15 page)

Amelia didn't know what to say. She really shouldn't have let
anybody
see her roaming the corridors, but her own fairy tale logic dictated that this smiling round-cheeked cook might well be the one person in Ilgrevnia she could trust. And she was so very hungry… “Yes please,” she said. Stupid kept close to her, flickering green as grass in sunshine.

The cook looked momentarily taken aback at the sight of the disembodied flame, but seemed to recognise what he was. “Well, aren't you a handsome fellow?” she said.

Stupid bobbed, burning brighter with pride, quite at ease with the cheery red-haired woman, and Amelia took that as confirmation of her own judgement.

“Amelia, what are you
doing
?” Bessie asked in exasperation, having come back looking for her fellow escapee.

“She's just having some breakfast,” said the cook. “Would you like some too, lovey? Oh! But just look at your coat! Let me fix that up for you – I've got needle and thread somewhere about the place.”

Bessie, looking all around the kitchen for signs of impending doom, reluctantly shrugged off her ruined blazer and sat down. The kitchen was even more cramped than the interior of Meg's snailcastletank, undeniably taller than it was wide (although it was a
very
tall room) and it was with difficulty that the two girls managed to arrange themselves at the table. The kitchen was an incongruous little pocket of homeliness in the half-ruined City of Ilgrevnia: a fat black stove dominated the tiny kitchen; pans, utensils and ornaments hung from every available hook and beam; a string of tiny lanterns lit the windowless room, and somebody had painted the walls with funny fishy motifs. Looking up, Amelia could see a large opening high up in one of the walls, well above head height. A couple of cushions hung precariously over the edge, and having noticed the nook, Amelia could pick out what must be handholds and footholds in the wall beneath it. The chimney-shaped room was more than a kitchen; it seemed to be an entire self-contained dwelling.

“My name's Scarlet,” said the cook.

“Pleased to meet you. I'm Amelia, and this is Bessie.”

“You're meant to be locked away, aren't you?” said Scarlet, grinning mischievously. “But I won't tell anybody, don't you worry. You sit down and let me get you a nice breakfast.”

“Thank you,” said Bessie sincerely, although her expression remained anxious, “but we don't want to get you in any trouble.”

“Oh, bless your heart! You needn't worry about that – Master's too grand for my kitchen, and Mister Breaker's gentlemen don't have no use for it.”

Scarlet dished up plates of kippers for the two girls, then sat down and set to work on Bessie's ruined blazer. Her fingers flew and her needle flashed. “Did Master bring you two here?” she asked. “He wants the prettiest girl in all the three Kingdoms for his bride, so I heard.”

“Well I think he's found her,” said Bessie, watching the swiftly moving needle and perhaps wondering if she had time to let Scarlet sew up the holes in her blouse as well. “Can you help us get away from here?”

“Oh no. No, I can't do that.”

“You can't tell us the way out?” Amelia chimed in. “We just want to get back to our friends – we really don't want to get you in any trouble.”

The red-haired cook shook her head vehemently, looking frightened at the very thought.

“Only, the prince has already chosen some other girl to be his bride,” Amelia continued, “and we're afraid for our lives.”

Scarlet's eyes widened in shock. “Oh no! Master hasn't tried to hurt you, has he?”

“Not yet,” Bessie admitted, “but he won't want two extra queens running about and getting in his way, that's for sure.”

Scarlet shook her head. “I don't pretend to understand these things. Oh, it's a funny business, all right. Perhaps…” She bit her lip. “Perhaps I can find you a map. But right now you poor girls look all wrung out – why don't you stop here a bit longer, and rest? There's cushions and blankets up there,” she added, pointing to the nook high up the wall.

“Oh, yes please,” said Amelia. “Do you have somewhere for my fire sprite? A lamp or something?” Bessie opened her mouth to protest, but Amelia was ahead of her. “I've been up all night. I can't do magic when I haven't had any sleep,” she reasoned.

Bessie gave the red-haired servant a long and suspicious look. “All right, we'll rest a bit longer,” she said, when she realised she had no counter to Amelia’s argument. “But then we have to get out of here.” She helped Amelia up the wall, and climbed into the nook after her. The strange bedchamber was warm and cosy, lined with woollen blankets and soft down-stuffed cushions, and Amelia succumbed to sleep in minutes.

A solitary wyvern sailed the stormy sky, bright flame jetting from its jaws, marking its right to the sky for all to see. Meg, with her fists on her broad hips, stood and watched. She knew better than to call the creature. Since she'd sent Amelia up to Ilgrevnia, she'd seen the wyvern more than once, embattled with a griffin white as a ghost, and she knew she'd get no sense out of it while it fought to settle the old score and stake its claim on the territory. She could have used magic to force the beast to come to her and do her bidding, but that was no way to win or keep its loyalty. If she tricked the wyvern into submission, it would be gone forever as soon as her control of it slipped. What’s more, she’d have Sir Percival’s strong disapproval to contend with…

She glanced at Harold, sitting close by and staring sullenly at the ground. Though he might have given over to childish sulking now, Meg had to admit that he was not so much of a lad, and more of a man. A bit less pudge and a bit more muscle, and something of a more serious look in his eyes. Fighting and adventuring would make him into a different kind of man than one who worked in the fields or at an anvil, and most certainly a different kind of man than one who spent his days in books…

As if he felt Meg's gaze upon him, Harold looked up, sullen and resentful still. “How can I do a proper job of bein' Amelia's Paladin when I'm stuck down on the ground and she's up there?” he demanded. He pulled up a handful of the sparse yellow-green grass, scattering it to the wind. “This is all wrong. I should be up there with her.”

And how do you think
I
feel
? Meg thought,
being the girl's own mother, and nothing I can do to help her…
“You're the one who decided we should stay hidden for now,” she reminded him. It hadn't been a bad idea, and Percival at least had been impressed with his pupil's ability to think beyond the next battle, but Meg really was beginning to fear that Amelia had been captured. Maybe she should send Perce and Harold away to fetch a sturdy birch broom from some nearby village, and then she'd bind enchantments into the twigs and fly the thing up to Ilgrevnia herself, since wyvern and fire sprite and Amelia herself had all fallen silent and left her in less-than-blissful ignorance. She was at a loose end herself… Beyond a low rocky ridge that lay to the south-west, she could see a thin column of smoke curling up to join the clouds: maybe a traveller's campfire, but maybe a cottage's hearth smoke. “Perce!” she shouted. “Perce! We've got to find this boy something to do!”

Sir Percival appeared at the mouth of the cave. “Meg, please, keep your voice down,” he pleaded. The enormous construct they'd seen the night before still roamed the moor, evading capture by the twin gentlemen, although it seemed to have no will to escape far.

Meg looked around at the shallow, grey-green bowl of land that extended from jagged hill to jagged hill. There might well be golems about, but for the time being nothing looked like troubling them besides possibly the shaggy red cows. “We're off to beg, steal or borrow a good birch broom,” she said. “It could be a long walk, and it'll seem longer with bad company, so tell this boy to stop sulking that he's got no chances to swing a sword at anything.”

“I'm supposed to be the Paladin!” Harold protested, his round face reddening. “I'm supposed to protect Amelia!”

“And I should be the White Commander,” said Percival, “leading an army fit for a queen. But if Meg and Amelia have their way, there will be no army for our Side.
Stealth
is not one of the virtues expected of the White Queen,” he pointed out primly, for Meg's benefit.

“Oh, put a sock in it,” said Meg, stomping off in the general direction of civilisation. What did he want from her? To build an army of golems to rival the ones that had hunted them? She didn't know how, and wouldn't do it even if she could. Far better to spend her time teaching Amelia to defend herself. In the old days, when the Queens' Contest had been new, it would have been expected for each candidate queen to be accompanied by a small army, but then the contest had run on for hundreds of years – something nobody had predicted – and the powerful, wealthy family of the White Queen's line was not so wealthy nowadays. Nevertheless, Amelia had a Mage, a Paladin, a Commander, a Warship of sorts… well, a battlesnail, anyway… They would just have to make do. Meg spared a glance over her shoulder to be sure that the White Paladin and the White Commander were following. They were: reluctantly and at a distance. For the players who supported the White Queen now, their titles were little more than symbolic, like the elaborately carved pieces on her old chessboard. “You should count yourselves lucky if this
doesn't
turn into a real war,” she warned the pair of them. “Neither of you are cut from the right cloth for it.” She picked her way carefully up the wet and rocky slope, keeping an eye on the distant smoke. Crows cawed and the red cows lowed, cowbells clanking, sounds carrying far on the speedy squealing wind. The presence of cows meant a farm somewhere close by, and even a small cottage should have a broom of some description… Then the capricious wind turned, pulling the streak of smoke into a pirouette, and brought with it the ring of steel on steel. Meg crouched and crept closer, to the brow of the rocky ridge, and looked down into the valley below.

The two swordsmen fought like cats, in short and vicious clashes almost impossible to follow with the eye. As Meg watched, the duellists soon broke apart. One familiar dark-haired gentleman in fancy clothes, and one fellow dressed in an outlandish outfit of long padded black coat and some sort of black scarf that covered his hair and most of his face. A short distance from the duellists, a third figure stood holding the reins of two marbled grey horses, which stood ambivalent to the fighting. The golem twins had found a diversion from their hunt.

Even from a distance, Meg could see that the stranger in the padded coat was flagging, while the golem looked unconcerned with anything other than seeking that moment of unguardedness when he might move in for the kill. His opponent stumbled, only just raising his sword arm in time to block the next blow. If he was a mortal man, the golem would surely kill him – it was only a matter of when.

“Damned if I'm going to sit here and watch you die,” Meg muttered. She raised her fist and hurled lightning into the valley, throwing the golem backwards. “Get out of here!” she shouted at the man in the black coat. “That's no fair fight you've got yourself into!” A moment later the golem was back on his feet. Meg had been expecting that this time, readying a second lightning bolt to follow the first, but the strange gentlemen must have learned from their encounter with the witch at Ilamira: they leapt onto the backs of their marbled horses and urged the fine beasts into a gallop, soon out of range of Meg's wrath.

The man in black sheathed his sword and began to hike slowly towards Meg, who scrambled down the hillside to better ask him what on earth he thought he was doing, facing up to such opponents alone.

“Are you out to get yourself killed?” she demanded. “Who do you think you are?”

Worn, breathless, and baffled by this mad mistress of lightning bolts who had appeared out of the sky to save his skin, he stared at her with steel-blue eyes. “I am Master Greyfell of the Antwin Academy of Iletia,” he said. “Paladin in service of the Candidate Black Queen, Elizabeth Jane Castle of the Iletian Castles.” He unwound the black scarf, revealing a scarred face impossible to mistake for anybody else.

“Oh. You again.” If Meg had recognised him earlier, she might well have left him to his futile battle with the tireless automatons. “Meg Spinner,” she introduced herself, more brusquely. “White Mage.”

“Ah yes: I thought I knew that voice.”

Percival came clanking down the hill with Harold in tow, careful on the slippery rocks. “What's going on here?”

“How'd you get him off his horse?” asked Harold, ever keen to learn more about being a knight.

“I challenged him to a duel,” said the Black Paladin, as if this was the most natural and reasonable thing in the world.

“Why?” said Meg, who didn't much care for the ways of most knights.

“My rival was a gentleman in service of Prince Archalthus,” said the Black Paladin, “suitably armed for duelling, and therefore I was quite within my rights to –”

“Wait,” Meg interrupted, “those golems belong to Prince Archalthus, so I thought. But you don't?”

The man in black looked highly offended. “I am the Black Paladin,” he said again. “If it can be said that I belong to anyone, then it is Miss Castle, the Black Queen. Of course, after our defeat at the jade temple, I wanted Miss Castle out of the contest, as per the rules, but the prince's men pursued her to her home. We set out to discover what they want from her, and I elected to act as an agent of the night, striking down my Queen's enemies one by one if necessary.” He studied the blood on his blade a moment before wiping it on the grass.

Meg thought she understood his plan, even if it wasn't working. She raised an eyebrow at her own gleaming knight. “Stealth, Perce,” she said, meaningfully. And if Prince Archalthus and his rotten golems threatened both Black and White Queens, then perhaps a temporary truce was in order.

The Black Paladin narrowed his fierce eyes at the figure in armour. “Sir Percival Wintergard: so it
is
you, after all.”

“The White Mage wanted no-one else,” said Sir Percival, haughtily.

“Hmm. I'd heard rumours you were making inquiries about certain rebel Cities, seeking illegal maps.”

“But where could a son of the noble house of Greyfell
possibly
have heard such distasteful rumours?”

Meg rolled her eyes, not bothering to ask what ancient bad blood existed between the houses of Wintergard and Greyfell. “All right,” she said to the Black Paladin, “I’ve seen how brave your girl is, but she's young and green. If you sent her into Ilgrevnia alone, it might well be more than she can handle.”

“I instructed Miss Castle to return to me before first light,” the Black Paladin admitted. And now the weak shadows were short, and the sun sailed towards the western horizon. He glanced skyward, at the looming bulk of the Flying City half-obscured amongst the grey clouds. “I fear she's been captured.”

“I 'spect something's gone amiss for our Amelia, too,” Meg admitted. “How about we put aside our differences long enough to get the girls back safe and sound?” She jumped when Percival’s gauntleted hand closed like a vice on her arm.

“Have you run mad?” the knight hissed, “Or have you merely forgotten that this man tried to kill us before?”

Meg scowled at him. “Yes, yes – at that nice pebbly beach. I do remember, Perce.” They'd have to be on their toes if they allied themselves with the Black Queen's men, but she could see clearly enough how the Black Paladin cared for his young charge, and she hoped he would see that Prince Archalthus was the greater enemy for all of them.