The Fatal Child (23 page)

She was looking up the long blade of a sword, held point-down at her chin. The man who held it had dark, cold eyes. He was the soldier she had tried to shut out of the room. The torchlight played on his whiskered cheeks and on the fringe of his black beard. The point of the sword held her locked where she lay.

‘My lord, no,’ said the someone else who had just arrived. ‘But we have a petition for you to hear.’

‘What is it?’

‘A very delicate matter. If you will put your swords away and agree to listen, we will stand our men down. They will not molest your people.’

‘We will listen,’ said Ambrose warily.

‘And no tricks,’ said the pebble-voiced man. ‘That one on the floor there will be our hostage. If you go walking through a wall on me it will be the worse for her.’

‘I’ll talk to no one under threat of murder,’ said Ambrose. ‘There’s no need for it.’

‘No need,’ agreed the third voice, ‘if we have your word that you will hear us and give us a fair answer. No, it is enough, I think, Sir Caw. It is
my
message. Let
me
set the conditions for this parley.’

‘You have my word,’ said Ambrose.

Lying fixed as she was, Melissa missed the exchange of looks. But suddenly the blade was gone from her neck.

* * *

Padry settled himself on a rough wooden stool – one of the few bits of furniture in this bleak tower chamber. He tried to ease his limbs. It had been a long, hard ride from the spot on the lakeside where Caw, the new marshal of Develin, had brought their mission to land. He himself would have preferred to send a small party ahead with a flag of truce and come on with the main body at an easier pace. But that was not Caw’s way. ‘Do that and he’ll just give us the slip,’ he had said. Caw knew Tarceny and he knew their quarry. Moreover Develin was providing two-thirds of their force.

To give Caw his due, they had tracked the young witch-lord to his lair and caught him before he could escape. Now they just had to make him listen. The air in the chamber was thick with anger.

Ambrose and the Baron Lackmere stood by the hearth, whispering to one another. The baron was fingering the hilt of his sword. Caw was in the doorway, giving instructions to his men about stabling the horses, setting guards and all that. Padry knew he was still furious about being overridden on the hostage (really, this new marshal of Develin was even more difficult than his predecessor Orcrim had been!). The hostage herself – a peasant girl whom Padry vaguely remembered – was on her knees before the hearth, coaxing flame into the fire she had just built. He tried to give her a reassuring smile. She ignored him. After being banged on the head and having a sword held to her throat she must hate the lot of them. He could not blame her.

And Atti was there, too, standing against the wall. Padry fixed his eyes on his feet.

He had wondered if she might be here, camped with this young brigand-lord. He had sworn to himself that if she were he would not look at her. Not a hint of reproach, not an effort at recall, would escape from him. She would only treat him with the contempt he deserved. All he could do was bear himself with dignity in front of her so that she should see that there was nothing to fear from him any more.

He was holding rigidly to his determination.

Still she bulked in his mind, the strongest presence in the room. Sixteen years old she was now. No longer a child but a young woman: dark-haired, full-breasted, slim and beautiful – beautiful, with a forbidden grace that made him writhe inwardly as he looked at his toes. Ah, Thomas Padry – you used to think you were so wise and enlightened; and then you behaved like a slobbering old fool over a child a third your age! And still, two years on, sadder, more weary in your labours, you are vulnerable. You are wiser only in that you know your own weakness!

And did they know what it was like for him to be here? Did anyone? That he should come crawling back on his belly to these actors in the most shameful scene of his life! Wasn’t it enough that he should hate his own self-deceit? He carried it every day like an imp clinging to his back and whispering in his ear. It was with him when he rose in the mornings, when he lay awake at night, whenever he sought to clear his mind. Wasn’t that enough? Or was the drunk only cured
when he was made to sniff at the bottle and then could walk away?

Here he was, with the two of them again. The last of the men-at-arms had gone. The guards had been posted within call, but not within hearing of a low-voiced conversation. Caw remained, seated on a block of wood by the hearth. So did the baron and the maid. But they were insubstantial – creatures of smoke and shadow whose understanding would never matter. Atti, standing there at the corner of his sight, was a thousand times more real than they were. And so was the young man who settled cross-legged before him with suspicion in his eyes.

So you don’t like me, thought Padry bitterly. That’s fair enough, my boy. I don’t like you either.

No, I
don’t
like you! I don’t like your handsome face, your clear look, your clean, jowlless jaw. I don’t like the way you see into a man’s heart and find there the things that he hides even from himself!

And why should I? Why should I? Why should
you
be the Just, when I thought that I was? I saw the look in your eyes when you thought I had come for her. I felt it, like the stab of a knife! Can you truly be Just, if you feel like that about her?

(Ah, Thomas Padry …)

The flames were beginning to lick around the logs. Everyone was looking at him. Padry cleared his throat.

‘It is quite simple,’ he said. ‘We need a king.’

No one spoke.

‘It is two years since Gueronius sailed,’ he went on. ‘There has been no word of him. The mariners of
Velis have spoken with merchants from foreign lands at their usual meeting places. His ship has not been sighted since the first winter after he sailed. We are now approaching the third. Our seafarers say that ships cannot survive the winter storms. Even if his did, the last of his stores will have been exhausted long ago. In Tuscolo we have continued to say that he will return, because if we did not we would be kingless and on the brink of chaos. All but the most witless now know that we are telling a lie.

‘The two regents – I do not know how well you know my lords Joyce and Seguin?’

‘Not at all,’ said Ambrose coldly.

‘They are as honest as most lords of the Kingdom, which is to say that neither will trust the other, neither will give way to the other, and neither will wait for ever. The Tuscolo faction is split. Already blood has been shed among their supporters—’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ broke in Ambrose.

Padry lifted an eyebrow. Wasn’t it obvious?

‘He said they need a king,’ grunted Lackmere. ‘They want it to be you.’

Ambrose scowled at the fire.

‘If matters in the Kingdom are allowed to run their course, there will be war,’ Padry persisted. ‘One party will win – eventually. There may be peace for a while. But once again the throne will have gone to the strongest. And every strong man in the Kingdom will think that he may seize the throne at the next opportunity. You, on the other hand, are the last heir of Wulfram. Your house has worn the crown
more than once before this. You have what no other possible contender now has – legitimacy. Kingship
with law
is the only kingship that may last.’

There, he thought. I’ve done it. I’ve offered him the throne. And he’ll be good. He’ll be good at it, this boy who dragged me through the mud. Umbriel, write what it cost me!

‘My lady is convinced of this,’ said the gaunt-faced marshal of Develin. ‘Also, she remembers you well and thinks you a better choice than either regent, or any other. Her strength – which is not small now – she will lend to you, if you will agree.’

Still Ambrose would not look up.

‘My lady also bids me say,’ said the marshal slowly, ‘that
if necessary
, and for the sake of peace, she would now be prepared to offer to a good king not only her soldiers, but herself also.’

Ambrose sprang to his feet. His stool clattered on the wooden floor. ‘Yes,’ he said, glaring at them. ‘Yes, you were right. If I had known what it was you were coming for, I
would
have slipped away!’

‘For the sake of peace in the Kingdom—’ Padry began.

But Ambrose did not listen. He strode to the door and out of it. The wood banged. They heard his feet thumping down the stairs towards the hall.

In the silence Lackmere chuckled. ‘I could have told you he would do that.’

Padry heaved a long sigh. Caw said nothing.

‘It’s not just fear for his neck,’ said Lackmere. ‘Though that may be part of it. He doesn’t like
Tuscolo, he doesn’t like what comes from kings, and he most certainly doesn’t want to be one. Which is why he lives in rags and ruins and takes no profit from his courts. You’ll have your work cut out to persuade him otherwise.’

‘Persuade him we must,’ said Padry, wiping his brow with his sleeve. ‘Or carry him back with us in a sack for my Lady Develin to persuade, if we cannot.’

‘She’s set on it, is she? Very good. But who else is with her?
He
may or may not care for his neck, but I do. I’m not having him adventure after a crown unless there are very good odds on his side.’

‘I have letters from the bishops of both Tuscolo and Jent.’

‘Show me.’

Padry fumbled inside his shirt and drew out the wallet he carried next to his skin. From it he drew the letters that the bishops, meeting in secret, had written for him with their own hands. He broke the outer seals and handed them across. Lackmere peered at them.

‘They are discreetly worded, of course,’ said Padry.

‘It doesn’t matter how they are worded, since I don’t read,’ said Lackmere. ‘But I know their seals and I judge that there’s enough in here to hang a man.’ He folded the letters away inside his tunic. ‘So. You have the Church, or a good part of it. They must want us badly indeed if they are willing to overlook certain matters in Tarceny’s past. Last time I saw you I think you were threatening us with a holy war.’

Padry swallowed and nodded. He knew that he had
just let the old baron pick his pocket. Yes, in the wrong hands those letters could certainly cost the lives of two princes of the Church! He should have been more wary. If he hadn’t been so obsessed with Atti and Ambrose, he would have been. Damn it, Thomas Padry! Wake
up!

‘Times change,’ he said. ‘Or rather, they bring new necessities. And – whatever one may think of your lord’s practices – his public doings over the past few years have made him a number of friends east of the lake.’

‘What kind of friends? Who would come out for him, if we landed?’

‘For a good, lawful candidate, backed with enough force – many. Even the regents might give way. Lord Joyce has said as much to me.’

‘Joyce? He’s a bantam – all crow and no kick. I suppose he is weaker than Seguin, and his fear of Seguin is greater than his hope to come out on top. Did he know what you had in mind?’

‘He – may have guessed.’

‘Well then,’ said the baron, and pursed his lips. ‘Well, it may be worth the gamble. We will need to let the boy calm down first. Try him again in the morning. But if I were you, I would not mention the possibility of marriage. Not unless he does. No disrespect to my lady, but I have a notion that his affections lie elsewhere.’

Padry could not help himself then. He looked for Atti. But she was no longer in the room. She must have slipped out after Ambrose had left them.

The maidservant had gone, too.

elissa saw Atti leave, and followed.

Atti had made no sign to her. She did not even look round to see that Melissa was there. But Melissa did not want to stay in the tower room with those scheming old men. The side of her head still throbbed from the impact of the door.

Atti led the way down the stairs to the hall gallery. There was a sentry here, one of the intruders, with his weapon in his hand and a lamp at his feet. It was the very man who had put his sword at her throat.

He caught her look. ‘Sorry about your ear, girl,’ he said, and winked. ‘Better now, eh?’

She ignored him.

Atti led on, down into the long hall itself. The tall windows were pale with moonlight. The light gleamed on the chequered black-and-white flagstones of the floor, so that the white tiles seemed to float in a sea of darkness. And Atti floated across them with no sound but the rustle of her gown and the whisper of her feet. She stopped in
the middle of the empty room, looking around her.

There were two doors out of the hall. The further led to the upper courtyard, the other – the nearer one – to the fountain court. The fountain court was one of Ambrose’s favourite places.

Melissa pointed towards it. ‘He’ll be—’

Atti was already moving. Melissa followed her out into the night.

It was past midnight. The old moon was high above them, its crescent like a crooked finger beckoning the hidden sun. The black outlines of the living quarters, the hall and the high keep bulked against the sky. The paving showed faintly in the dull grey-silver of the light. The colonnades were deep in shadow. The great crumbling pots with their half-dead herb trees threw shadows, too.