The gentle chatter of the court rose and fell as we approached. The soft hubbub of knife-edged comments, damaging sarcasm, honeyed insults. Here the sharp intake of breath at the Prince coming to court still wearing the road, there the mocking laughter half-hidden behind a silk handkerchief.
I let myself look at him then.
Four years had wrought no change in my father. He sat on the high-backed throne, hunched in a wolf-skin robe edged with silver. He’d worn the same robe on the day I left. The Ancrath crown rested on his brow: a warrior crown, an iron band set with rubies, confining black hair streaked with the same grey as the iron. To his left, in the consort chair, the new queen sat. She had Katherine’s looks, though softer, with a web of silver and moonstones to tame her hair. Any sign of her pregnancy lay hid beneath the ivory froth of her gown.
Between the thrones grew a magnificent tree, wrought all of glass, its leaves the emerald of Katherine’s eyes, wide and thin and many. It reached a slender nine feet in height, its twigs and branches gnarled and vitreous, brown as caramel. I’d never seen the like before. I wondered if it might be the Queen’s dowry. Surely it had the worth.
Sageous stood beside the glass tree, in the dappled green light beneath its leaves. He’d abandoned the simple white he’d worn when first we met in favour of black robes, high in the collar, with a rope of obsidian plates about his neck. I met his eyes as we approached, and manufactured a smile for him.
The courtiers drew back before us, Makin to the fore, Katherine and me hand in hand. The perfumes of lords and ladies tickled at my nose: lavender and orange oil. On the road, shit has the decency to stink.
Only two steps down from the throne a tall knight stood in magnificent plate, the iron worked over with fire-bronze, twin dragons coiling on his breastplate in a crimson inferno.
‘Sir Galen.’ Makin hissed the words back at me.
I glanced at Katherine and found her smile unreadable. Galen watched us with hot blue eyes. I liked him a little better for wearing his hostility so plainly. He had the blonde hair of a Teuton, his features square and handsome. He was old though. As old as Makin. Thirty summers at the least.
Sir Galen made no move to let Makin past. We stopped five steps down.
‘Father,’ I said. In my head, I’d made my speech a hundred times but somehow the old bastard managed to steal the words from my tongue. The silence stretched between us. ‘I hope—’ I started again but he cut over me.
‘Sir Makin,’ Father said, not even looking at me. ‘When I send the captain of the palace guard out to retrieve a ten-year-old child, I expect him to return by nightfall. Perhaps a day or three might suffice if the child proved particularly elusive.’ Father raised his left hand from the arm of the throne, just by an inch or two but enough to cue his audience. A scattered tittering sounded among the ladies, cut off when his fingers returned to the iron-wood of the chair.
Makin bowed his head and said nothing.
‘A week or two on such a task would signify incompetence. More than three years speaks of treason.’
Makin looked up at that. ‘Never, my king! Never treason.’
‘We once had reason to consider you fit for high office, Sir Makin,’ Father said, his voice as cold as his eyes. ‘So, you may explain yourself.’
The sweat gleamed on Makin’s brow. He’d have gone through this speech as many times as I had mine. He’d probably lost it just as profoundly.
‘The Prince has all the resourcefulness one might hope for in the heir to the throne,’ Makin began. I saw the Queen frown at his turn of phrase. Even Father’s mouth tightened and he glanced at me, fleeting and unreadable. ‘When at last I found him we were in hostile lands … Jaseth … more than three hundred miles to the south.’
‘I know where Jaseth is, Sir Makin,’ Father said. ‘Do not presume to lecture me on geography.’
Makin inclined his head. ‘Your majesty has many enemies, as do all great men in these times of trouble. No single blade, even one as loyal as my own, could protect your heir in such lands as Jaseth. Prince Jorg’s best defence lay in anonymity.’
I glanced over the court. It seemed that Makin’s speech had not deserted him after all. His words had an impact.
Father ran a hand over his beard. ‘Then you should have ridden back to the castle with a nameless charge, Sir Makin. I wonder that this journey took four years.’
‘The Prince had taken up with a band of mercenaries, your majesty. By his own skill he won their allegiance. He told me plain that if I moved to take him they would kill me and that if I stole him away, he would announce himself to every passer by. And I believed him, for he has the will of an Ancrath.’
Time to be heard, I thought. ‘Four years on the road have given you a better captain,’ I said. ‘There’s more to learn about making war than can be discovered in this castle. We—’
‘You lack enterprise, Sir Makin,’ Father said. His eyes never flickered from Makin. I wondered if I’d spoken at all. Anger tinged his voice now. ‘Had I ridden out after the boy, I would have found a way to return with him from Jaseth within a month.’
Sir Makin bowed deeply. ‘That is why you deserve your throne, majesty, whilst I am merely captain of your palace guard.’
‘You are the captain of my guard no longer,’ Father said. ‘Sir Galen serves in that capacity now, as he served the House of Scorron.’
Galen offered Makin the slightest of bows, a mocking smile on his lips.
‘Perhaps you would like to challenge Sir Galen for your old office?’ Father asked. Again he fingered his salt-and-pepper beard.
I sensed a trap here. Father didn’t want Makin back.
‘Your majesty has chosen his captain,’ Makin said. ‘I would not presume to over-write that decision with my sword.’ He sensed the trap too.
‘Indulge me.’ Father smiled then, for the first time since our entrance, and it was a cold thing. ‘The court has been quiet in your absence. You owe us some entertainment. Let us have a show.’ He paused. ‘Let us see what you have learned on the road.’ So he did hear me.
‘Father—’ I started. And again he cut me off. I couldn’t seem to rise above him.
‘Sageous, take the boy,’ he said.
And that was that. The heathen had his eyes on me and led me mild as a sheep to stand with him between the thrones. Katherine shot me a pale glance and hastened to her sister’s side.
Makin and Galen bowed to the King. They went out through the press of courtiers, breaking free and crossing to where an inlaid marble star, some ten feet across, marked the middle of the throne-room floor. They faced each other, bowed, and drew steel.
Makin bore the longsword Father gave him when he took captaincy of the palace guard. A good weapon, Indian steel woven dark and light, acid-etched with old runes of power. Our time on the road had left its history recorded in notches along the blade. I’d never seen a better swordsman than Makin. I didn’t want to see one here.
Sir Galen made no move. He held his longsword ready, but in a lazy grip. I could see no marking on the weapon, a simple blade, forged from the black iron of the Turkmen.
‘Never trust a Turkman sword …’ I spoke in a whisper.
‘For Turkman iron sucks up spells like a sponge and holds a bitter edge.’ Sageous finished the old line for me.
I had a sharp reply for the heathen, but the clash of swords rang out over it. Makin advanced on the Teuton, feinting low then swinging high. Makin had an elemental way with a sword.