The Gods of Amyrantha (17 page)

'If she isn't, then she attracts them like a magnet attracts iron filings,' Tiji warned, her expression grim. 'Maybe if you want to trap the Tide Lords, Declan, you don't need a great master plan. You just need Arkady Desean as bait.'

CHAPTER 15

Despite Declan Hawkes's dire warnings of what might happen when he entered the service of the Crown Princess Kylia, nothing terrible happened to Warlock when he joined the palace staff. Jaxyn didn't order him to murder another Crash, or carve a baby into bite-size pieces, or any of the other dire fates Tiji and the spymaster had warned him about. The crown princess had smiled and clapped her hands delightedly when Lord Deryon announced that Lady Ponting had sent her and her husband, Prince Mathu, a wedding present in the shape of this exceptionally well-trained canine Crasii slave. She sent him along with a note saying she hoped he would serve them well, and how she was sure he would be an excellent addition to their staff.

For the most part, Diala paid little attention to her new slave. She was too busy playing the ingenue princess for her new in-laws, the King and Queen of Glaeba, to be bothered tormenting a mere canine. Of course, none of the humans surrounding her — with the exception of the spymaster and the King's Private Secretary — knew the seventeen-year-old Princess Kylia was in fact a ten-thousand-year-old immortal, known to the Cabal as the Sorceress and to her fellow immortals as Diala, the Minion Maker. King Enteny and Queen Inala had no reason to suspect their son's wife was anything but what she appeared — young, in love, and excited to be living in the royal palace with her new husband.

It astounded Warlock that nobody saw through her.

To the Crasii — whose race was created by the immortals, consequently they could smell one across a room — every word she uttered seemed false, every smile cynical, every action contrived. When she clung to Prince Mathu's arm, laughing at his jokes, staring up at him with wide, adoring eyes, Warlock didn't see a young woman in love. He saw an evil, manipulative bitch, using an essentially decent young man for her own amusement.

The presence of the Tide Lord Jaxyn was even harder to stomach. Posing as the Duke of Lebec's envoy to the royal court, he'd made a point of becoming Prince Mathu's newest best friend, which kept him close to Diala, as well as the young and credulous prince. When Jaxyn wasn't playing cards with the other courtiers or malletball on the lawns with the court ladies, he was sneaking Mathu out of the palace to visit a bear baiting, or a cockfight, and probably the odd brothel or two into the bargain. The king didn't know anything about Mathu's extracurricular activities, of course, and wasn't likely to, unless Mathu got into trouble.

Far from complaining about it, Kylia actually encouraged him, making noises about a how a good wife would never stand in the way of her husband enjoying time out with his friends. Warlock suspected her tolerance was inspired by impatience with her immature young husband, rather than any desire to be an understanding wife. For a woman as old as Diala, with her tastes and experience, Mathu must seem a trying prospect, indeed.

Not quite as cavalier as Diala regarding the dedication of all Crasii slaves, Jaxyn had made himself known to Warlock within days of his arrival, to ensure the Crasii would do what his companion had not bothered to ask. As Warlock was taking a tray back to the kitchens from the royal apartments one evening, about three days after he'd joined the royal household, the Tide Lord had cornered him in a quiet hallway.

He'd glanced up and down the hall to be sure they were alone and then stepped so close to Warlock the big Crasii was forced back against the wall.

'Do you know what ... and who ... I am, Cecil?' Fearful Jaxyn might remember the name Warlock from Arkady Desean's anecdotes around the dining room table in Lebec Palace while she'd been interrogating Cayal, he'd agreed to be known as Cecil while spying for the Cabal. Hearing Jaxyn call him by that name just made Warlock hate it even more.

The question was asked with quiet menace, Jaxyn's eyes boring into Warlock's as though
they,
and not the returning Tide, were the source of his power. Although he was taller than the Tide Lord, at that moment, Warlock didn't feel like it.

'To serve you is the reason I breathe,' Warlock had replied. Then he'd added for good measure: 'My lord.'

He didn't try to hide his terror. Jaxyn not only sensed it, he probably expected it.

'Then you understand my presence here is a secret until I choose to make it otherwise?'

'I assumed as much, my lord,' he agreed, 'when I noticed nobody showing you or your companion the respect you truly deserve.'

Warlock had no idea why he'd tempted fate so blatantly with that reply. When he thought about it afterward, he realised he'd been behaving as if he wanted the immortals to know they had no power over this particular Crasii, even though he knew the knowledge would kill him.

Fortunately, Jaxyn seemed oblivious to the irony in Warlock's tone. 'You will say nothing until I command it,' he'd ordered. 'About me or the Lady Diala.'

'To serve you both is the reason I breathe, my lord,' Warlock assured him solemnly, while noting that Jaxyn had, in his arrogance, given away the identity of his immortal companion. 'I will await your command.'

Jaxyn had studied him closely for a few moments longer, as if trying to decide how genuine Warlock's subservience was, before stepping back to let the slave continue on his way.

With admirable calm, his heart pounding in his chest so loudly it was a wonder Jaxyn couldn't hear it thumping, Warlock had walked back along the hall, only just beginning to realise how dangerous a game he had been coopted into.

The immortals were biding their time — even without Jaxyn admitting as much to him, Warlock knew that — waiting for the Tide to return sufficiently so their powers were unassailable. They were old hands at this. The immortals knew the perils of making their move too soon. It might take the Tide years to return fully. In the meantime, they were prepared to play a waiting game.

Jaxyn and Diala had designs on the Glaeban throne. That was a given.

All that remained was to discover exactly how they intended to go about taking it and then he could go home to Boots and be there when his pups were born.

Warlock agonised over the Tide Lords' intentions every time he was forced to spend time in their company, fearing it would take too long to discover their plans, or that they were so complex and devious, Declan Hawkes would keep finding reasons to delay his return to Hidden Valley. This morning was particularly trying and a complete waste of time. He wasn't learning anything useful. He was playing fetch for Diala — or rather Princess Kylia, he reminded himself — in the gardens below the palace bordering the lake, during her game of malletball with Jaxyn and Queen Inala.

Malletball involved players trying to hit a wooden ball through a series of wooden arches set into the lawn in a very specific sequence. The player who managed to get their balls through the course in the

fewest number of hits was the winner, but one could score extra points by knocking an opponent's ball out of the way. This was Kylia's favoured tactic, and one she frequently misjudged, which meant the ball often went wildly off course. Every time it happened she would laugh delightedly, turn to Warlock, point in the direction of the ball and say, 'fetch, Cecil, fetch!'

As Crasii were supposed to consider it an honour to be singled out by a suzerain, rather than an insult, Warlock had no choice but to hurry eagerly after the ball and retrieve it for his mistress, placing in on the ground by her feet, his tail wagging, all but panting for her approval, giving the impression he hungered for nothing more than a pat or a kind word from her.

In truth, Warlock wanted to tear her throat out with his teeth.

It wouldn't have killed her, he knew that, but it certainly would have made him feel better in the thirty or so seconds he'd have to live after attacking a member of the royal family before the felines of the royal guard cut him down.

Warlock lost count of how many times he'd played 'fetch' by the time Prince Mathu arrived. The young man was looking bleary-eyed and more than a little worse for wear, squinting in the bright summer sunlight reflecting off the raindrops glistening on the grass from an earlier rain shower. Kylia thrust her mallet at Warlock and ran to him, the moment she spied her husband, leaving the Crasii standing there fantasising about how it would feel to crush a suzerain's skull with it.

'Mathu! You're up!' She stood on her toes, kissed his check and beamed at him. 'Good morning, my love.'

'And about time, I would have said,' Queen Inala remarked with a disapproving frown. The king might not be aware of Mathu's night-time forays into the city, but it seemed Queen Inala wasn't so ill-informed.

'Good morning, mother,' Mathu replied over the top of Kylia's head. He kissed his wife on the mouth and then turned to Jaxyn. 'I see you're out and about early, Lord Aranville. I'm impressed.'

'Never was one for lying in late,' Jaxyn said with a laugh. 'Life's too short to waste it sleeping.'

Life's too short,
Warlock echoed silently, trusting in the human inability to read Crasii facial expression to hide his scorn. By all accounts, Jaxyn was the better part of nine thousand years old. To hear him mocking mortality so openly made Warlock grip the handle of the mallet tighter. The urge to hit something immortal with it was proving almost too hard to resist.

'Pity my son doesn't seem to share your enthusiasm for life, Lord Aranville,' the queen remarked with a frown. 'How late were you out last night, Mathu?'

'Don't know,' the prince shrugged.

'Oh, mother!' Kylia said with a laugh. 'Don't pick on him! Mathu's allowed a little fun, isn't he? Once he's a father, he'll have to be quite boringly responsible.'

'She has a point, your majesty,' Jaxyn added. 'You shouldn't blame him for wanting a little freedom now.'

'Once he's a
father?'
the queen repeated with a raised brow. 'Is there an announcement you're planning to make, Mathu?'

Mathu looked down at Kylia in surprise. 'I don't know, is there?'

'Not yet,' the young princess replied with a coy smile. 'But we've been practising a lot, so maybe soon ...'

As Warlock watched the humans talking among themselves as if the Crasii wasn't even there, he was struck by how easily the immortals lied, how easily they were able to slip into the skins of their stolen identities. They never once hesitated, never once faltered. Had Warlock not known every word coming out of Jaxyn's and Diala's mouths was false, he would have been just as fooled as were the queen and Prince Mathu.

I have to get a message to Declan Hawkes,
he reminded himself, as Kylia flirted with Mathu and Jaxyn needled the queen for entertainment.

Since Jaxyn had confirmed the identity of the female immortal impersonating Princess Kylia, Warlock had not had an opportunity to pass the message along. He'd barely stopped working, in fact, and time off was not something one bothered to award their slaves unless they were sick.

Warlock gripped the mallet handle wistfully, wondering if he could arrange to get a message to the spymaster the next time he was sent to the kitchens. Or maybe he'd run into Tiji. There were no other Scards he knew of in the palace, and he was fairly certain it was because there weren't any other Scards, not that he was being kept ignorant of their identities. Scards were rare; that's what made him and Boots so valuable to the Cabal.

If Declan Hawkes had access to more Scards,
Warlock reasoned,
he'd have the palace riddled with them.

And maybe I'd be allowed to go home to Boots.

It was all just speculation, though, so Warlock stood there on the damp grass, waiting for the humans to resume their game, imagining he had some power to save the world from the devastation these Tide Lords would bring down upon his world once their powers returned.

And trying to convince himself that even if he couldn't stop them, perhaps the Cabal of the Tarot had something up their sleeve; some way of preventing these amoral, unfeeling monsters from once again destroying Amyrantha.

When that proved to be too depressing, he tried to cheer himself up by imagining what his pups might look like when they were born.

CHAPTER 16

It wasn't often that Tilly Ponting came to Herino to visit Declan. Although she kept a house in the capital, it was used mostly by her son, Aleki, when he was in town for various business reasons relating to his estate.

The wedding of the Duke of Lebec's niece to the Crown Prince of Glaeba had been sufficient incentive to bring her south from her home in Lebec, but as a rule, if one wanted to see Lady Ponting, one expected to visit her, not the other way around.

When Declan received her summons — as any request to visit the Guardian of the Lore invariably was — he was still debating which was more important: visiting Caelum in the north to see for himself if the Empress of the Five Realms and her dangerous Tide Lord offspring were making themselves at home there. Or dropping everything to travel south to Torlenia to warn Arkady that in all likelihood her new best friend, the Imperator's Consort, was the immortal Kinta in disguise.