I followed Grecht into the hallway, keeping Cricket close beside me. The hall was as empty as the night before, and we didn’t pass a single soul until we descended the stairs down to the ground level. The castle was even emptier than the day before. I supposed everyone was sleeping. Shafts of dusty light sliced through the hall from the slender arrow-loops. The hall led us out into daylight, into the arched colonnade I’d watched from our chamber. I took a deep breath to clear the smell of the castle from my lungs, grateful just to be outside again. The colonnade circled the back of the castle, away from the front courtyard and the wind of the mountains. The peace disarmed me. There were no slaves, no skulls, no half-dead soldiers, just old stones, grass, a few struggling trees. Wonderfully boring things. I began to relax.
Until a cry knifed through the silence.
Cricket stopped with a gasp. “What was that?”
When the noise came again I listened closely. “An animal?”
“Oh, that damn noise,” grunted Grecht. “Come. Don’t worry. Come.”
Maybe a cat, I thought, remembering the way I’d heard them scream with heat in the streets of Koth. The silence of the morning made the cry seem ten times louder. Yet, my heartbeat calmed and we followed Grecht down the colonnade until we reached a lawn of overgrown grass and dead flowers. Out in the center of the scrubby lawn squatted Diriel, smack in the sunlight, petting a big, regal-looking peacock. The sight so stunned me, I went mute. Cricket peered at him, then declared him completely mindless.
“Now we know, huh?” she scoffed. “As though we doubted it.”
He looked like a child, his knees smudged with dirt, his fingers gentle over the feathers. A big, insane child. He didn’t even notice us watching him. The bird let out another of its piercing cries, and Diriel soothed it, talking to it like a baby and stroking its back. Grecht nervously cleared his throat before stepping on to the lawn.
“Unrivaled?” he called. “He’s here.”
Diriel didn’t even stand up but waved me over like a playmate. “Come over here,” he shouted.
“He means you, Sir Lukien,” said Grecht. “Just you. Not the girl.”
“Why? What’s the problem? I keep telling him-”
“No, it’s all right,” said Cricket. “I’m fine. I’ll wait here.” She glared at Grecht. “Is that okay with you?”
Grecht held up his little hands. “He’s the ruler not me.”
“All right, just stay where I can see you,” I told Cricket. “Let me get this over with so we can leave. Grecht, where’s Wrestler?”
“Somewhere else. King Diriel only comes here himself. The cloister is forbidden to Wrestler.”
I stooped all the way down, face to face with him. “If you’re lying to me, Grecht, you should know I have no conscience about killing midgets.”
Grecht raised his chin at me, then pointed with his flapping sleeve to Diriel. “Go.”
He wasn’t afraid of me. No one here was. I walked across the grass to where Diriel was waiting, digging in to a sack at his belt for feed for the peacock. He scattered the seeds or whatever they were on the ground, then stood to meet me.
“Have you made your decision?” he asked.
I stalled, because I hadn’t. “Is that a pet?”
“No,” said Diriel. “A prize. I wanted you to see it. Have you seen a peacock before? They used to be all over this part of the Bitter Kingdoms. No more though.”
I knew he wanted me to ask, so I did. “Why? What happened to them?”
“War happened. The same thing that happened to all the people. Siege. Starvation. You must have wondered, yes? I saw you sitting by the window all night. You must have been thinking about something.”
“You were down in the yard?”
“I wasn’t spying, if that’s what you’re thinking. I walk every night through the yards.”
“Bad dreams?” I asked. “I wonder why.”
Diriel wiped the seed from his palms. He squatted down next to the peacock and ran his fingers over its long, back feathers. “People think this is a tail, but it isn’t. It’s called a covert. He doesn’t always raise it up like this, but he’s looking for a mate.”
“Like a cat,” I said. “That noise he makes.”
“He won’t find one, though. Not in Akyre. They’re all dead. Haven’t you noticed how quiet it is here? When you were on the road here, did you see peacocks? Or anything?”
I thought about it but couldn’t recall seeing even a flock of starlings. The landscape was a rugged one, but even deserts had animals in them. “You said starvation. You ate them?”
“Everything that could walk, crawl, or fly through the sky,” said Diriel. “And then anything else.” He looked up at me with his pointed teeth. “The Kassens started it. You should know that. Always wanting war. Drin, too. They went along like lap dogs. They love to burn things, the Kassens. The farms were gone in a month. This castle was where they made their siege. We held them, though. They never made it across the bridge. It took almost a year, but eventually they gave up. Retreated back to Kasse. We had so many dead we tossed them into the ravine by the hundreds.”
“When did you start. .”
I stopped. I just couldn’t say it. But I really didn’t have to. Diriel took my meaning. He took my hand in his own claw-like fingers and guided them to the peacock.
“Like this,” he said, directing my hand as we stroked the beautiful bird. When he let go I kept stroking, understanding instantly his connection with the creature, the only thing of any beauty for miles. I was in for a story whether I liked it or not, and petting the peacock somehow made it more bearable.
“When the siege broke we realized the Kassens had taken or destroyed everything. Anyone who didn’t make it into the castle had scattered. The land was burned. Useless. They call these lands the Bitter Kingdoms for a reason. Even good years here have droughts, blight, every curse the gods know how to give. The year I was born, they tell me there were so many locusts you couldn’t even see the sky. Those bastard bugs ate everything that year, but even then we didn’t eat people.”
Diriel prodded me suddenly with his finger.
“You getting what I’m saying, Liirian? You imagining how bad things were?” He pointed at his sharpened teeth. “You see these? I was the first. I filed them down and sucked the meat off the first Kassen’s bones I could get my lips around, just to show my people I wasn’t afraid. Scared the livin’ shit out of the Kassens. Told them we were coming for them.”
I kept petting the bird as calmly as I could. Just past Diriel I saw Cricket in the colonnade, puzzling over what we were saying.
“Is that when you asked Fallon for the mummia?”
“Not at first. At first I didn’t need it. My legionnaires were starved but hungry for revenge. We broke over the border like a wave! And when those Kassen pigs saw us, all screaming and bloody, they ran. So we went after them. That’s when I remembered. The old Akyren kings knew about magic. They called upon the powers of the dead. That’s my bloodline. It’s my right! I gave everything I had left to that skunk Anton Fallon. And you know why he took it? Because he doesn’t care about anything but money. He didn’t lift a pinky finger to stop the slaughter in Akyre. Just kept right on selling his spices from Zura, silks for his fancy-boy friends, everything.”
“That sounds like Fallon all right.”
“Sounds like a Liirian, too,” spat Diriel. “I sent emissaries to Liiria. And to Reec and Norvor. Do you know what I heard back? Nothing. I told them how the Kassens were murdering us. I sent them a cloth from my own daughter’s dress with a note about how she starved to death. You have some cold-hearted kings on the continent, Sir Lukien. They could’ve helped us. But they didn’t. So piss on all of them!”
Slowly, I stood to face him. For a moment I’d thought his madness had passed, but now it was all over him again. Cricket looked nervous. I shook my head to ease her worry.