But now, just like that, he was back in the Palace. Goodwife Beth was in prison. Most of those who had held him were dead. And it sounded like Davydd Verdsmitt himself had pulled in his claws and was rubbing up against Falk like a house cat, purring and mewling for scraps from the MageLord’s table.
His own vehemence surprised him. The Cause was his enemy, and now it had been removed. He had been returned to his former life of indolence and indulgence, awaiting the sad demise of his father some unguessable number of years in the future. He should be pleased; hell, he should be ecstatic.
And yet… the people he’d met in the Cause had seemed more real, more alive, more important, in fact, than the lords and ladies at table with him.
Except… her. He gazed down the length of the table at the strange old woman seated at Falk’s left hand, across from Lord Athol (who had hurried down to offer his unctuous welcome as soon as the toast was finished). “Mother Northwind,” Falk had called her, some backcountry Healer from near his manor. He had offered no explanation as to why she was invited, when the First Healer himself had not been. But the dark eyes that peered back at him on either side of the prominent, blade-sharp nose did not seem to match the bent and wizened exterior. They did not look like the eyes of an old woman, they looked like the eyes of a hawk that had seen its prey, and Karl found himself profoundly uncomfortable under that gaze.
The other person notable by his absence was the First Mage, Tagaza. Karl wondered about that, and when Falk got up from his place at Karl’s right side to have a word with the head server, Karl leaned over to Lord Athol, seated at his left, and said in a low voice, “Lord Athol, where is Tagaza? Surely the First Mage should be here.”
Athol’s eyes widened. “Did you not hear, Your Highness?” he said, and perhaps he had had one too many glasses of wine, for his voice was loud enough that heads turned to look at him-including Falk. “The First Mage is dead. When the Common Cause sabotaged the MageFurnace, the spell he was attempting went fatally awry.”
Karl stared at him, shocked. Tagaza, dead? But-“What kind of spell?” he said. “What sabotage?” He felt anger rising in him, and turned his head toward Falk, now striding back in his direction. “Lord Falk, why was I not informed of these developments?”
“Your Highness,” said Falk, “you have barely been returned to us after a traumatic experience. I did not wish to trouble-”
“But I wish to be troubled, Falk,” Karl said, his voice rising. “I wish to be troubled with the affairs of the Kingdom I will one day rule!” He slammed his fist down onto the table. “You will not treat me like a child, my lord. You will treat me like the Prince and Heir I am, or when I am King, I assure you, you will no longer be Minister of Public Safety!”
All the Councillors were staring at him, almost comically frozen in place by his outburst. Mother Northwind’s expression remained unreadable. Nor was she watching him: she was watching Falk, and a moment later, every head turned in his direction as the Councillors awaited his response. They’re all terrified of him, Karl thought. He probably knows things about all of them that would prove embarrassing or worse if he released them. They will never support his ouster, if it really comes to that.
But at that moment, Karl didn’t care-didn’t care that all the careful political instruction Tagaza had given him over the years told him he was being a fool. He had been attacked, kidnapped, imprisoned, and almost killed by one of his own guards. Either he was the Prince, or he wasn’t: and if he was, then it was about damn time he acted like it.
Falk’s face was doing a very credible imitation of a thunderstorm. “Your Highness, this is neither the time nor the-”
“Then we will discuss it immediately following this dinner, Lord Falk,” Karl said with all the hauteur he could manage. “We will discuss it in detail. I want to know everything that has happened since I was kidnapped. I have heard some of what you have done in the Commons, and I have many questions about that, as welclass="underline" such as how you expect me to rule a kingdom you seem determined to plunge into civil war, Mageborn against Commoners.” He gave Falk his coldest stare, though his heart was racing in his chest and he knew if he took his hands off the table they would be trembling. “I hope you have answers.” And then he turned his head away from Falk to Lord Athol, and said, “And how has the ice-fishing been this winter, my lord?”
It had to be his imagination, but he could almost swear he felt Falk’s gaze burning into him like a pair of hot pokers.
CHAPTER 22
Anton knew Mother Northwind had done something terrible to him the first time they met, and he knew Brenna thought Lord Falk wanted Mother Northwind to do something more terrible yet, but though he was getting better at accepting the impossible things he saw everywhere around him in this strange country, the notion that someone could reach inside his brain and change everything he believed was so far outside his experience that he couldn’t take the threat as seriously as Brenna obviously wanted him to.
Like her, he had been shocked when High Raven handed them over to the Commoners who had come north to return them to Mother Northwind, but he understood Minik culture better than Brenna and knew that High Raven literally had no choice: Mother Northwind was obviously considered a member of the clan for all she had done for them years earlier, and the request of a clan member would always outweigh the needs or desires of someone outside the clan-another Minik, even, let alone Minik-na.
The ride south on the dogsled had been unpleasantly cold, and the sleds on the ice had made too much noise for easy talking-not that the men who had taken them showed much interest in playing tour guide, and Brenna had no more been to this part of the Kingdom than he had-but even without knowing what he was seeing, he had found it fascinating, watching the changing shoreline to his left and the unchanging ice to his right: not for the scenery, which after all wasn’t much, but simply because he knew he was the first person from the Union Republic to see it. The Professor would have loved this, he thought sadly.
The sudden violence on the shoreline horrified him as it had Brenna, but maybe not quite as much-it had been a while, but he was not exactly a virgin when it came to violence. You didn’t live as long as he had on the streets of Hexton Down without seeing things that Brenna had no concept of in her sheltered existence. It was so obviously terrifying for her, though, that almost without thinking he drew her to him for comfort-and was inordinately pleased when she returned the embrace.
But then had come her cryptic warning about the men who had been killed being Mother Northwind’s, and the men who had killed them being Falk’s, even though Falk and Mother Northwind were supposed to be allies in a plan to bring down the Anomaly…
Anton was way out of his depth. He didn’t know enough about, well, anything to guess who could be an ally and who an enemy. And since that hurried exchange in the blood-soaked camp, he had not even been able to talk to Brenna.
The carriage they had climbed aboard near the village of Foam River had its windows sealed against prying eyes, and so Anton had seen nothing of their approach to New Cabora. Now he heard the rumble of wheels on dirt change to the clatter of wheels on cobblestones, and felt the accompanying change in motion. He smelled smells he knew from cities back home, horses-lots of horses-wood smoke, coal smoke, outhouses and bakeries, frying meat and rotting meat, sweat and sweets, a cacophony of odors that suddenly made him feel homesick for the crowded, dirty streets where he had grown up.