“Gungnir!” Tuttugu started forward. I almost set my heels to Nor’s ribs, but in the end I reached down to pull loose the ties and took the spear in hand. The thing shivered in my grip as if half-alive, much heavier than it had a right to be.
I tossed it to Tuttugu. “Careful with that. I’ve a feeling it’s sharp both ends.”
That done and their bags removed, I saluted the table and set off at a trot along the gravelled road to Vermillion.
“We should have gone with them.” Hennan, his voice jolting to the beat of Nor’s gait.
“He’s going to ask some madman in a salt mine to show him the doorway into death so that he can unlock it. A madman who sent assassins after him. Does that sound like something anyone should be doing?”
“But they’re your friends.”
“I can’t afford friends like that, boy.” The words came out angry. “That’s an important lesson right there-learning how to let go of people. Friends are useful. When they stop having something you want-brush them off.”
“I thought we. .” Hurt in his voice.
“That’s different,” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re still friends. Who else am I going to pass my card tricks on to?”
NINETEEN
Hennan and I rode without conversation after parting with Snorri, Tuttugu, and Kara. I steered Nor through the thickening traffic converging on the Appan Way to enter the great city. The roadside houses were fully fledged taverns now, or shop fronts offering all a man might want for the highway. In the distance a glittering curve of the Seleen caught the sunlight and fractured it. My head had started to pound in the heat, and the stink of the capital reached out to us on the slightest of breezes.
• • •
The gates to Vermillion stand open year on year. By the time the Appan Way meets the great walls it has already passed through a quarter mile of the outer town, slum dwellings on the fringes, set back from the road, more gentrified homes further in, some two and three storeys intermixed with open tree-lined squares and public buildings. Grandmother regularly has notices posted reminding the inhabitants of these houses that the land will be cleared with fire should the city ever need to be defended-but each year the outer town spreads a little more, reaches a little further out along the five roads that feed Vermillion.
A scattering of guards endured the heat on the great gatehouse overlooking the Appan’s course north, more lurked in the shadow of the wall at ground level, but these would seldom stir for anything less than a laden cart. Hennan and I passed through on Nor’s back without challenge. Within moments we were clattering along Victory Street, past the Grand Old Stables, now given over to public use, and beside the cool delights of Fountain Square where cherry trees line the avenue to the new cathedral.
It seemed unreal-almost a dream-all this had been waiting here for me the whole time. While I shivered on the Bitter Ice, as close to death as a man can come, people strolled these streets, buying sweetmeats, watching the acrobats, letting the Seleen slip past, gambling, loving, getting drunk. . I’d covered three thousand miles and here, here in this small patch of stonework, this terracotta encrustation, lay my whole life.
I let the horse move with the pace of the city’s traffic and watched the buildings as we passed, at once familiar and strange.
A dark-faced man in the shadowed entrance to Massim’s marked my progress along the street with rather too much interest. Maeres Allus, so long an abstract worry, almost forgotten, suddenly loomed large once more in my thinking. I shook the reins and made Nor pick up his feet.
“We’ll go straight to the palace.” I’d thought perhaps to look in on a few places, drop the boy off, get the lay of the land, but now decided it was better first to learn whatever could be learned in the safety of the palace. Better to make my presence known to my family so that Maeres couldn’t have me dragged off to some lonely warehouse without anyone ever knowing I’d survived the fire at the opera.
Behind me Hennan said nothing. Eking a life from the wasteland around the Wheel of Osheim might prepare you for many things, but the city of Vermillion was not one of them. I felt his head turn this way and that, trying to take it all in. To me it seemed smaller than in my memory-to Hennan probably larger than in my tales. We build our expectations out of what we know already. I hoped he wasn’t going to prove clingy. A prince of Red March can hardly be expected to shepherd a beggar boy around the corridors of power. .
Passing along the grand streets around the palace we drew a few curious looks. Guards at the gates of mansion grounds narrowed their eyes and threw out their chests. Servant girls out on errands stared in surprise. In my country squire’s garb I cut a rather different figure to the kinds of visitors these houses were used to, and the pale beggar boy behind me added a further pinch of the exotic.
We clipped and clopped along the Kings Way, across the broad plaza before the palace, and at last came up to the Errik Gate, where once my thrice-great-grandfather Errik the Fourth came back in procession from the port of Imperia carrying the heads of Tibor Charl, Elias Gregor, and Robert the Black, the worst pirate lords the Corsair Isles spawned since the Suns. I remember their names because Martus once put three artistically decorated cabbages under my bed and claimed they were the severed heads of the trio, taken from the spikes on the Errik Gate, and that if I told or tried to move them they would come alive again. Bastard.
The guards before the Errik Gate came forward sharp enough, two of them ready to see me off, one standing further back with his pike lowered. On the gate towers archers paid an interest. The Errik Gate is for the highest of visiting dignitaries, for royal households, and it is seldom opened.
“Be off. If you’ve business at the palace you’ll want the Scullion Door, round past the old castle. See?” He aimed a finger at the Marsail keep.
At that point it occurred to me I should have bought a hood so I could have thrown it back dramatically and announced myself. As things stood I was starting from the position of having already gone unrecognized.
“I’m Prince Jalan Kendeth returned from the Utter North and I’ll have the head of any man who denies me entrance to my grandmother’s palace.” I let it come out with an air of weary irritation while praying none of them would call my bluff.
“Uh.” The younger of the pair, proclaimed the senior in rank by the star upon the shoulder of his tunic, sucked in his lips in consideration. I guessed that nobody had ever ridden up to the gates falsely declaring themselves related to the Red Queen. Perhaps some drunk too deep in his cups for self-preservation may have, but not a sober young man on a horse. A moment’s more cogitation and he frowned up at me. “I’ll go and check. If you could wait here, sir. Cogan, let them rest in the shade.”
And so we waited in the shadow of the walls, in silence save for Nor guzzling water from the trough. Not quite the entrance I’d hoped to make but Vermillion had a goodly number of princes and these weren’t my household guards.
It took longer than I felt it should but eventually the sub-captain returned with a familiar figure.
“Fat Ned!” I shouted, striding toward the man, arms spread.
Fat Ned, looking skinnier than ever, took one step back, then another. Overhead I heard the creak of bowstrings.
“It’s me, Ned.” I spread the fingers of both hands toward my face and gave him my winning smile.
“No?” Ned shook his head, loose skin flapping around his bones. “But you’re dead, Prince Jalan. . is it. . is it really you?” He tilted his gaze, looking more closely with those tired old eyes of his.