The Gypsy King (21 page)

“He only wanted to bring me a gift—he didn't know it was one of your pigeons,” said Persephone quickly, before anyone could think to punish Ivan for his misdeed. “I'm sure if he'd known, he'd never have attacked her.”

Azriel started to snort in disbelief, but stopped in a hurry when he noticed Ivan ruffling his feathers threateningly.

Cairn was paying no attention to any of them. Walking over to where the murdered pigeon lay, she picked up the unfortunate creature with such gentleness that Persephone wondered if perhaps it was still alive and that Cairn meant
to somehow heal its terrible wounds. Then she saw the older woman carefully removing something from the pigeon's little stick leg.

“Of course,” whispered Rachel, giving Persephone's hand a squeeze. “It was a
carrier
pigeon.”

Persephone said nothing, only watched as Cairn unfolded a scrap of paper so tiny that Persephone could not imagine how anyone could have written anything at all upon it. But apparently someone had, for after she'd read its contents, Cairn sighed deeply and looked around the clearing, her expression an odd mixture of exultation and dread.

“It is a message from Parthania,” she announced. “Another family has been identified as Gypsies; another set of parents is dead and scalped. Three of their children were murdered alongside them; a fourth child, a boy, happened to be in the care of trusted friends at the time of the attack. He is being hidden still, but the family that hides him grows too fearful of their own safety to keep him.”

Rachel gave Persephone's hand another squeeze. Persephone said nothing, only watched as Ivan took flight and disappeared into the night.

The beautiful girl shifted the little boy in her arms to her hip. “What do you think this means, Cairn?” she asked. “Do you think this means that Rachel is meant to go to Parthania to rescue the child?”

“I do not think that Rachel
or
Persephone is meant to rescue the child, Fayla,” said Cairn thoughtfully, “for I cannot believe we are meant to risk a child's life on untried
rescuers. I do believe, however, that whichever one of them is the girl in the picture is meant to accompany you and the others to Parthania. I cannot guess what she is meant to do there nor how she is meant to do it, but now, more than ever before, I have faith that the answers we seek will be provided as they're needed.”

Almost all the Gypsies nodded in emphatic agreement: they'd looked up as they'd been bidden by a long-dead Seer and a clear message had been delivered from the heavens. Their faith had been affirmed in the most unequivocal terms; their hope that better days lay ahead had been renewed.

Only Azriel looked troubled. “Are you sure about this?” he asked, as the Gypsy girl Fayla edged forward to stand near his side. “Parthania can be a treacherous place.”

“That is true,” agreed Cairn, turning her dark eyes on Persephone, “but it is also the glittering imperial capital and the seat of all power in Glyndoria. Where better to forge the first link in the chain of events that will, at long last, see the great Gypsy King set upon his throne?”

FOURTEEN

S
EVERAL DAYS AFTER the disastrous Council meeting, Mordecai was still beside himself with fury.

In a dreaded place deep within the bowels of the castle, he raged on about the meeting—and about the great lords who
dared
to think themselves better than he.

“Their objection to my being named heir wasn't just a matter of my low birth, either,” he snarled as he hurled an oversized pair of rusted pincers at an iron cage that hung from the low ceiling. The repugnantly hairless inhabitant of the cage—having long since sunk into madness— grabbed the bars of its tiny prison with its yellowy pygmy hands, bared its crowded teeth at Mordecai and hissed loudly.

General Murdock—who'd always felt oddly at home in the foul, smothering darkness of the dungeon— nonchalantly waved a glowing-hot poker in the direction of the cage. The cage's inhabitant hissed more, then abruptly let go of the bars, shrank back and covered its milky eyes with its hairless arm.

Mordecai's sunken chest heaved beneath his robe. “I know what Pembleton was thinking—”

“Pembleton is the one whose only son will shortly be found guilty of treason and beheaded—the one whose newborn grandson will shortly thereafter fall ill and die?” said General Murdock, his rat-like face half-hidden in the shadow beyond the light from the fire that never stopped burning.

“You know he is,” spat Mordecai. “And I know what he was thinking—what they were all thinking! They were thinking that even if I bled purple, they would never in a thousand years allow me to be named heir because I do not
look
the part of a king! They were thinking that I would never be able to lead an army into battle, never be able to get a son upon a noble young wife. They were thinking that the proud,
proud
Erok would never accept a king whose body was a twisted wreck—would never line the streets of Parthania to cheer for a king whose head ducked and bobbed beneath the weight of the crown!”

“The people would do as you bid, Your Grace, else your army would destroy them,” put in General Murdock as he used the long, thin nail of his little finger to delicately pick a shred of old meat from between his long, yellow front teeth.

“But I want them to worship me as they would a prince of the blood!” cried Mordecai in an almost plaintive voice as he slumped against the bloodstained butcher block before him. “I want them to bow to me and know in their hearts that I am greater than the very greatest among them!”

Another of the inhabitants of the room laughed hoarsely at this—a fearless sound for which he would later suffer the violent loss of another small piece of himself. General Murdock briefly trained his beady eyes upon the hulking wretch chained to the glistening wet wall, then flicked his gaze onward to yet another cage. Shoved into the darkest corner of the low-ceilinged room—past the dusty remains of the one who'd long since withered in the darkness—this particular cage was currently empty but for a thin scattering of dirty straw, one filthy hair ribbon and a hastily discarded rag doll.

The General then flicked his gaze back to Mordecai. “Surely you've not lost hope of growing well and strong someday, Your Grace,” he murmured. “After all, one only has to look at how remarkably well your facial treatments work to know that true healing power courses through the veins of Gypsy whelps. Surely it is just a matter of time before you discover the key to unlocking its power for greater uses.”

“I have spilled an ocean of the most potent Gypsy blood in the kingdom and have discovered nothing but that Gypsy infants squirm and squeal like piglets when stuck!” snapped Mordecai. “Even so, it is true that I have not lost hope of growing well and strong, Murdock, because liar though he was, I know Balthazar spoke the truth when he spoke of discovering the Pool of Genezing. It is out there somewhere, Murdock. I
know
it is! And you must find it for me!”

General Murdock gave his nose a dainty scratch. “Of course I and my men will continue to search for it,” he said
diffidently, “but I must remind Your Grace that no Gypsy, nor any of the tribal animals who knew Balthazar”—here, he nodded casually in the direction of the hulking wretch, the mad caged creature and the corpse—“has ever been persuaded to reveal what—if anything—Balthazar told him about the location of the pool. Moreover, in all our long years of searching Glyndoria, neither I nor my men have ever come across any trace of it.”

“Oh? And how can you be sure that one of your men has not found it and kept the information to himself?” demanded Mordecai.

General Murdock smiled thinly. “The men have no idea what they're looking for, Your Grace,” he reminded. “There has never been any reason to tell them, for they are all so greedy and lacking in discretion that if one were to find something as miraculous as healing waters, he would fall all over himself in his haste to tell me of his amazing discovery and receive his just reward.”

“And what would be his just reward, Murdock?” breathed Mordecai, who already knew the answer.

“Death, of course,” replied the General with a gleam in his eye. “Death to him and to every man he told, so that none but you and I would ever know the true location of the pool.”

“Very good,” murmured Mordecai. Not for the first time, he marvelled at what a perfect henchman he'd found in General Murdock. Murdock himself wasn't perfect, of course—as his most recent failure to guard against the escape of the Gypsy prisoner had proven—but he was strong and loyal and ruthless, and amazingly, he never
sought any reward but to be allowed to continue to serve. Plus, he was so repulsive to look upon that, ruined body notwithstanding, Mordecai always felt more gloriously handsome by contrast.

All in all, he was such a perfect henchman that if Mordecai were someday strong and well and capable of leading the New Man army himself, he thought it possible that he might even keep General Murdock around.

It was unlikely that he would, of course—but it was definitely possible.

“You will redouble your efforts to seek out the Pool of Genezing, Murdock, and you
will
find it,” ordered Mordecai now. “In the meantime, I will show the great lords that a king is not the only one who can ride among the people like a majestic young god.” Absently, he picked up an odd-shaped implement from a nearby tray and began tenderly fingering its razor-sharp edge.

In spite of his great bravery, the wretch chained to the wall gave a small moan.

“I will show them,” continued Mordecai softly, as he turned and began slouching toward his unfortunate victim, “that though I am yet a cripple, I am stronger than they think.”

FIFTEEN

P
ERSEPHONE AWOKE EARLY to the quiet sounds of the Gypsy camp slowly coming to life. As she stared into the pre-dawn gloom of the hut, listening to the crackle of kindling catching fire, the muted clink of cooking pots being set to simmer and the slosh of water being hauled, she thought back to all that had transpired the previous night. Though she'd admit that the arrival of Ivan and the dead pigeon at the exact moment that the Gypsies had looked up had been a rather remarkable coincidence, she refused to believe it had been anything more than that. The idea that a Gypsy King was coming—and that he was somehow meant to lead the Gypsies to their mythical healing pool—was preposterous. And though she'd initially balked at Cairn's presumptuous announcement that she and Rachel would accompany the orphan rescuers to Parthania, she'd quickly come to realize that the journey to the imperial capital would be the perfect opportunity to escape. After all, she and Rachel would be well provisioned and heading toward settled country where
even a pair of nearly identical runaways might find a way to get lost in the crowds. Moreover, they wouldn't need to suffer a moment's guilt over abandoning an orphan to his death because the Gypsies didn't expect them to have a hand in rescuing the child. Best of all, since Persephone knew the way to the Gypsy hideout, there even existed the possibility that she might someday, somehow, be able to return for Fleet and Cur—if they didn't manage to track her down first.

Jostling Rachel awake, Persephone quickly explained all this, then sat back and waited for Rachel to clap her hands with excitement at the prospect of freedom.

To her surprise and dismay, however, Rachel only frowned and said, “I don't know.”

“What don't you know?” asked Persephone, trying not to sound impatient.

“I don't know if I want to escape,” said Rachel. “Last night, when I overheard Azriel speaking of the destiny of the girl who looked like us, I thought … well, I thought that I should like to have a destiny such as that.”

Persephone stared at her blankly.

“I want my life to matter, Persephone,” explained Rachel. “My father died of the Great Sickness when my mother was with child, but before he did he told me that he believed I was meant to do something important with my life. When my mother came to her time, I thought that perhaps helping to deliver her baby was the important thing I was meant to do. But the child—my brother—was born dead. So then when my mother fell ill, I thought perhaps that saving
her
was the important thing I was
meant to do. But she died, too, and since then I have done nothing but survive. I do not know if the prophecy of the Gypsy King is a true one or not, but I think that I would happily lay down my life in the pursuit of it.”