At last I replaced the scroll, relocked my office, and returned to the tavern. By then even more people waited for me. Not much happened in Neceda on its best day, and there had been little entertainment during this brutal winter. The coffin made me the main attraction.
As I settled back onto my stool, Liz leaned close and said, “You don’t have to tell anyone, you know. Not even me.”
“I know. But what the hell, it beats more talk about the weather.” To Angelina I said loudly, “A round for the house first, Angie. On me.”
A grateful cheer went up. Angelina scowled, knowing she’d have to add it to my already-lengthy tab. But she poured the drinks, and Callie distributed them.
I faced the room with my back against the bar. I said, “This all happened seven years ago, before I came to Neceda. Before,” I said to Liz, “I met you.”
“Oho,” Angelina said knowingly. “So there’s a girl in this story.”
“I knew somebody had to teach him what he knows,” Liz said teasingly. “He’s not a natural talent.”
I winked at her, then continued, “I hadn’t officially been a sword jockey for very long, so I was still building my reputation. I’d go somewhere for a client, and when I finished, I’d look around for another one that would take me somewhere else. That’s how I got word that my services were needed in Grand Bruan.”
My listeners exchanged looks. These days the island kingdom of Grand Bruan was primarily known as the site of the most vicious ongoing civil war in the world. Unofficial estimates said more than half its population had fled or been killed, and the land was overrun with invaders, mercenaries, and pirates. But it hadn’t always been that way, and they knew the story behind that, too. Hell, everyone did.
The tale of King Marcus Drake and the Knights of the Double Tarn had passed into legend almost before the great ruler’s corpse was cold. Thirty years earlier the island of Grand Bruan, a chaotic place of warring petty kingdoms, was on the verge of total chaos when a young boy did something no grown man had ever been able to do: he withdrew the magical sword Belacrux from the ancient tree where it was embedded. This signified that he was the true, rightful ruler of all the land.
Naturally there were those who disagreed, but they hadn’t reckoned with young Marcus’s determination, and his core allies: the wise adviser Cameron Kern, the great knight Elliot Spears, and the brotherhood of warriors known as the Knights of the Double Tarn. Every child could recite their great deeds of arms in unifying the island.
Then came the golden time, when Drake and his queen, Jennifer, naturally the most beautiful woman who ever lived, ruled in fairness and grace. Laws were passed to protect the common folk, and peace reigned for a generation.
But the brightest light casts the darkest shadow, and in that shade dwelled Ted Medraft, bitter knight and jealous nephew of the king. He fomented a rebellion and forced a final great battle. Drake killed him, but Medraft mortally wounded the king. Drake died, the land returned to chaos, and the great sword Belacrux disappeared, awaiting the hand of the next destined ruler, who had so far not appeared.
The ballads and broadsheets kept coming, though, embellishing the tale until it was an epic of how hubris and fate brought down even the loftiest men. In the seven years since Drake’s death, he’d become such a literary figure that some people believed he’d never existed. In another ten years, he’d be a full-fledged myth.
But he had existed, and the truth was a little different from how the ballads told it. I might be the last man living who knew it.
I continued, “My client was a Grand Bruan noblewoman named Fiona, and she had connections. As a result I found myself at a party given by Queen Jennifer Drake at Nodlon Castle on the island’s west coast.”
I paused long enough to take a long draft of my own ale. A lot of things in my past had grown hazy with the passage of time, but not this. The details all came back in a rush, from the odor of the banquet hall to the unmistakable coppery smell of blood thick on the wind. And the look on a king’s face as a woman rose from the dead before him…
TWO
Nodlon Castle was built so close to the edge of the cliff overlooking the western ocean that first-time observers always wondered why it didn’t just fall off. Most assumed this precarious-looking position was due to erosion, but in truth it was entirely on purpose: the king’s former adviser Cameron Kern had designed it as a psychological ploy to prevent enemy troops from trying to scale those same cliffs in an attack.
That had been in the old days, during the wars of unification. And by old, I meant twenty years from the summer I arrived. That might not sound like much time, but the changes in Grand Bruan were so significant that its prior incarnation might as well have been a century ago.
Nodlon Castle’s big central hall was freshly and thoroughly scrubbed. Flowers, banners, and tablecloths tarted it up in anticipation of its royal guest, Queen Jennifer Drake. Chauncey DeGrandis, the castle’s current lord, lumbered about greeting people as if he were doing the queen a favor by allowing her to visit. I moved away whenever I saw his three-hundred-pound bulk approach, which was easy since his outfit was done entirely in shades of yellow.
At that moment I hid among a group of puffy-sleeved lords and ladies in pointy hats, all of us laughing at some story whose beginning I’d already forgotten. I hoped they didn’t laugh too hard: they had on so much makeup that if they cried, they might erode. And that included some of the men.
I wore no makeup, but in my new suit, fresh haircut, neatly trimmed beard, and expensive manicure, I blended right in; that was the point of a disguise, after all. Since I had no visible female escort, I was set upon like a ham bone tossed among starving dogs. There wasn’t a woman present who didn’t look me over as thoroughly as the weight guesser at a fair, as either a potential son-in-law or possible bedmate when her husband was away. This wasn’t because I was particularly handsome or noticeably wealthy; all that counted was that I was new meat. For those who never suffer from hunger, the only variety comes from taste.
And that was the source of the delicious irony. Long before I decided to become a private sword jockey, I’d grown up in an atmosphere identical to this. The court politics in far-off Arentia might be different in detail, but ass-kissers and sycophants were the same all over. Although I’d left behind that world of pomp and suck-uppery, I now relied on my memories of it to complete my current job. Oh, the delightful paradox.
It was hard not to tease these soft-bellied, overpainted glowworms. Heck, even the men wore too much eye shadow. A lot of them weren’t native to the island; they’d swarmed here from other kingdoms after the end of the wars, bringing gold to shore up the economy in return for status they could never achieve in their home countries. They taught the Grand Bruan nobles all the arts of courtliness, as well as its subdisciplines of gossip, polite treachery, and smiling through your fangs.
I took another drink of the free wine, top-barrel stuff only kings and high priests could afford. My head felt it a bit, and I knew I should slow down, but this wasn’t a dangerous assignment, or a complex one.
“So, Baron Rosselac, what do you think?”
I blinked. I had picked my alias, an anagram of my real name, without too much forethought and kept forgetting to respond to it. I used the arch, proper tone of someone showing off his education and said to the matronly woman, “Oh, I’m sorry, my lady. My thoughts must have been distracted by your overwhelming beauty. What were we discussing?”
In response, she made a noise I assumed was laughter. It sounded more like the defensive chatter of some small rodent. “Oh, Baron Rosselac, you’re making me blush.”
It was hard to tell; she wore enough white face powder to ballast a frigate. “More color to those cheeks will only add to your loveliness,” I said with a slight bow. “Were we still debating the necessity of adequate leisure time for serfs and vassals?”