It was a riddle. This man, born with no advantages, believed in something so much he was willing to die for it. Orso, born with everything, could scarcely make himself get out of bed of a morning. Or, indeed, an afternoon.
‘Bed is warm, though,’ he murmured.
‘Certainly is, Your Highness,’ cooed the other whore in his ear. Her perfume was so sickeningly strong, it was a wonder pigeons didn’t drop stunned from the sky around her.
The Inquisitor gave a nod.
Rather than needing strong men or horses to haul up the condemned, some enterprising fellow had devised a system whereby prisoners could be dropped through the scaffold floor at a touch upon a lever. There was an invention to make everything more efficient these days, after all. Why would killing people be an exception?
A strange sound rose from the crowd as the rope snapped taut. Part cheer of joy, part hoot of derision, part groan of discomfort, but mostly gasps of relief. Relief that it wasn’t them at the end of the rope.
‘Damn it,’ muttered Orso, working a finger into his collar. There was nothing even faintly satisfying in this. Even if these people really were enemies of the state, they hardly looked like very dangerous ones.
The next in line to receive the king’s justice was a girl who might not yet have been sixteen. Her eyes, wide in bruised sockets, flickered from the open trapdoor to the Inquisitor as he stepped towards her. ‘Have you anything to say?’
She appeared hardly to comprehend. Orso found himself wishing the vapours were thicker, and that he could not see her face at all.
‘Please,’ said the man beside her. There were tears streaking his dirty cheeks. ‘Take me but, please—’
‘Shut him up,’ snapped the Inquisitor, not at all enjoying his part in this grisly pantomime. A few desultory vegetables were being tossed at the scaffold, but whether they were intended for the accused or those carrying out the sentence, it was hard to say. There was a dark stain spreading down the front of the girl’s dress.
‘Yuck,’ said Yolk. ‘She’s pissed herself.’
Orso frowned sideways. ‘That’s what disgusts you?’
‘I’ve seen you piss yourself often enough,’ sneered Tunny at Yolk, and the whores spilled more false laughter. The side whiskers of the man in front twitched as he ground his teeth.
Orso gritted his as he looked to the scaffold. Hildi had been right, he could stop this. If not him, who? If not now, when?
There was some problem with the girl’s noose, the Inquisitor hissing furiously at one of the executioners as he dragged his hood up over his sweaty face to peer at the knots.
Orso was just about to step forward. Was just about to roar, Stop!
But circumstances always conspired to stop him doing the right thing. He heard a soft, high voice in his ear. ‘Your Highness.’
Orso turned to see the broad, flat and decidedly unwelcome face of Bremer dan Gorst at his shoulder.
‘Gorst, you tiresome bastard.’ The insult caused not the slightest reaction. Nothing ever did. ‘How did you track me down?’
‘Just followed the stench of disgrace,’ said Tunny.
‘It is quite powerful hereabouts.’ Orso reached for the pearl dust and realised it was gone, snatched Yolk’s bottle from his hand instead and took a swig.
‘The queen has sent for you,’ piped Gorst.
Orso blew out through his pursed lips to make a long farting sound. ‘Hasn’t she better things to do?’
Yolk chuckled. ‘What could matter more to a mother than the welfare of her eldest son?’
Gorst’s eyes slid across to him, and stuck there. All he did was look, but it was enough to make Yolk’s laughter sputter into nervous silence. He might sound a clown, but His Majesty’s First Guard was not a man you trifled with.
‘Any chance I can bring the whores with me?’ asked Orso. ‘I’ve paid for the whole day.’ It was his turn to face Gorst’s fish-eyed stare. He sighed. ‘Would you conduct the ladies to their residence, Tunny?’
‘Oh, I’ll conduct a symphony with ’em, Your Highness.’ More false giggling.
Orso turned away without much reluctance. He hated bloody hangings, but the girls had wanted to go and he hated disappointing people, too. As a result of which, it seemed, he disappointed everyone. At his back, there was that strange sound between gasp and cheer as the next trapdoor dropped open.
Orso tossed his hat onto the bald head of a bust of Bayaz, congratulating himself that it came to rest on the legendary wizard at a pleasingly rakish angle.
The tapping of his boot heels echoed in the vast spaces of the salon as he crossed a sea of gleaming tiles to the tiny island of furniture in its centre. The High Queen of the Union sat fearsomely erect there, dripping with diamonds, growing out of the chaise like a spectacular orchid from a gilded pot. It hardly needed to be said that he’d known her his whole life, but the sheer regality of the woman still took him aback every time.
‘Mother,’ he said, in Styrian. Using the tongue of the country they actually ruled only aggravated her, and he knew from long experience that aggravating Queen Terez was never, ever worth it. ‘I was just on my way to visit when Gorst found me.’
‘You must take me for a rare kind of fool,’ she said, angling her face towards him.
‘No, no.’ He bent to brush one heavily powdered cheek with his lips. ‘Just the usual kind.’
‘Really, Orso, your accent has become appalling.’
‘Well, now that Styria is almost entirely controlled by our enemies, I get so little chance to practice.’
She plucked a minute tuft of fluff from his jacket. ‘Are you intoxicated?’
‘Can’t think why I would be.’ Orso picked up the decanter with a flourish and poured himself a glass. ‘I’ve snorted just the right amount of pearl dust to even out the husk I smoked this morning.’ He rubbed at his nose, which was still pleasantly numb, then raised his glass in salute. ‘Bottle or two to smooth off the rough edges and it should be straight sailing till lunch.’
The royal bosom, constrained by corsetry that was a feat of engineering to rival any wonder of the new age, inflated majestically as the queen sighed. ‘People expect a certain amount of indolence in a Crown Prince. It was quite winning when you were seventeen. At twenty-two, it began to become tiresome. At twenty-seven, it looks positively desperate.’
‘You have no idea, Mother.’ Orso dropped into a chair so savagely uncomfortable it was like being punched in the arse. ‘I have long been thoroughly ashamed of myself.’
‘You could try doing something to be proud of. Have you considered that?’
‘I’ve spent whole days considering it.’ He frowned discerningly through the wine as he held it up to the light from the giant windows. ‘But doing it really feels like such a lot of effort.’
‘Frankly, your father could use your support. He is a weak man, Orso.’
‘So you never tire of telling him.’
‘And these are difficult times. The last war did … not end well.’
‘It ended pretty well if you’re King Jappo of Styria.’
His mother pronounced each word with icy precision. ‘Which you … are … not.’
‘Sadly, for all concerned.’
‘You are King Jappo’s mortal enemy and the rightful heir to all he and the thrice-damned Snake of Talins have stolen, and it is high time you took your position seriously! We have enemies everywhere. Inside our borders, too.’
‘I am aware. I just attended the hanging of three of them. Two peasants and a girl of fifteen. She pissed herself. I’ve never felt prouder.’
‘Then I trust you come to me in a receptive mood.’ Orso’s mother gave two sharp claps and Lord Chamberlain Hoff strutted in. With waistcoat bulging around his belly and legs stick-like in tight breeches, he looked like nothing so much as a prize rooster jealously patrolling the farmyard.