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The Poison Throne (The Moorehawke Trilogy)

Celine Kiernan


  "I'd better dye my dresses black then, because that's not going to happen."

  It wasn't intended as a joke, but she sounded so forlorn and miserable that the two of them chuckled.

  "What earthly time is it?" she asked, raising herself on her elbow and looking around.

  Razi just patted her shoulder. "I have to go, sis. Will you come sit with him? I've ordered food and hot water for you from the kitchens. They should be here soon."

  She eyed him. He was dressed in his scarlet long-coat and black britches, his suede gloves in his right hand. He's going to the banquet, she thought with regret, it wasn't cancelled after all. Poor Razi.

  "You're wearing the scarlet," she said significantly, hoping that the King had relented. Razi looked down at his clothes.

  "Alberon's coats need to be adjusted for me," he said bitterly. Then he stood abruptly, dragging his gloves on with savage little jerks. "Apparently they have the purple robe waiting for me in the royal rooms. I need to go now. Take care."

  "Razi!" She slid from the edge of the bed, appalled that he was actually striding from the room with such a curt farewell.

  He looked around in surprise, then his face changed and he dashed back to her and pulled her into his arms. "Sorry," he whispered in her hair. "So sorry, sis. I'm all rage and fire at the moment. I'm not thinking clearly. I'm not angry at you, you know that?"

  She rubbed his back as he hugged her, trying to ease the iron-tight tension in his shoulders. "Have you had news of Christopher?" she mumbled.

  He pulled away, avoiding her eyes, adjusting his gloves again. "No news."

  She hesitated, then laid her hand on his, stilling his agitated fretting. "Perhaps I could take to the passages tonight," she offered. "I could see if..."

  "NO! No, Wynter. Promise me!" He grabbed her hand, his face and his voice stricken with panic and fear. "Promise!"

  She grinned at him, a watery, weakling grin. "Mother hen!" she chided. She punched his arm and he tried desperately to smile at her.

  "Promise," he said, shaking her gently.

  "I promise."

  "Good girl. Now, please don't leave your rooms." He gazed tenderly at her for a moment. "And don't worry about Lorcan. He'll be fine." He kissed her on the forehead. "I'll be back soon."

  And then he was gone, slamming the hall door behind him. The sounds made by a large body of guards retreated after him down the corridor, silence following on their heels like a curse.

  What Price to Pay

  Razi did not return that night, though Wynter waited until well past the first quarter. Lorcan continued to sleep peacefully and deeply, oblivious to her faithful vigil. Eventually discomfort and bone-weariness sent Wynter shuffling to her bed, where she dozed on and off in restless unease.

  She was just sinking into a true, deep sleep, her mind falling away, when her father frightened her by appearing at her door. He clung to the doorframe and peered in at her, his mouth moving wordlessly and she gaped at him, as if seeing him through gritty clouds of smoke.

  Eventually she rose to the surface of her fatigue, and Lorcan and the room snapped into sharp focus. It was early morning, just before sunrise and Lorcan was saying, "... darling? Wynter? Can you hear me?"

  His hands were gripping the doorframe so tightly that it looked as though his tendons were about to pop through his skin.

  "Wynter. I have a job for you today, if you're up to it?"

  She answered him dryly, without a trace of humour.

  "Get back into bed, you idiot. And I might come in and listen to your request. Otherwise, fall down where you are, and I'll step over you on my way to the privy."

  Lorcan scowled at her and began to grope his way back to his room. "You're just like your mother!" he rasped as he disappeared around the corner.

  She waited tensely as he laboured into his bedroom, then relaxed at the sound of him getting into bed.

  "She must have been a blessed saint!" she called out, and pushed back the covers and prepared to wash and dress.

  Beyond the window, shadows flickered across the fresh rose of the sky. Ravens again, but so many more this time. Jusef Marcos's body must have been added to the bloody remnants on the trophy spikes. She groaned in disgust and averted her eyes. There had been a time when robin-song and blackbirds woke her from her sleep. Now it was ravens, circling and cawing, their sharp feet scrabbling on the roof above her head.

  What had their lives come to? That death greeted them from sunrise to sundown, and they had no choice but to run alongside it, and hope not to be caught in its net?

  There was nothing edible remaining of the previous night's food, so she perched at the foot of Lorcan's bed in her work uniform, chewing on a stale crust of manchet, a beaker of water in her hand. Her father had refused anything to drink, and was huddled under his blankets, shivering despite the heat. He eyed her as she doggedly gnawed the hard bread.

  "Go to Marni," he urged. "Get yourself something proper to eat."

  She stopped chewing, and her hand dropped to her lap.

  Go to Marni. Get yourself something to eat. How many hundreds of times in her life had her father said that to her? She hadn't heard it for years now, of course, but up until their exile it had been a regular, daily order. It had been the beginning of so many journeys to the kitchen. Journeys which she had first tottered on fat little legs. Then skipped, scabby-kneed and blithe. And finally raced with all the bubbling exuberance of youth. Journeys she had almost always travelled alone, but that had always been bookended by those two eternal stalwarts, her father and Marni. Comfort and strength at both ends of the trip, the knowledge of their presence always enough to carry her through the intimidating, sometimes dangerous, corridors of state.

  How much longer do I have? she thought, looking at her father, with you as my fortress and my friend?

  "Stop writing requiems in your head," he murmured, his lips curving upwards. It was an old joke of his, whenever she drifted off. But it was a bit close to the bone today, and he knew it as soon as he said it.

  "Are you hungry, Dad?" she asked, as evenly as she could.

  "Yes! I'm bloody clemmed!"

  She laughed in delight and patted his foot. "How does scrambled eggs, manchet bread, and coffee sound?"

  He made a ravenous noise, and she hopped off the bed and headed for the door. But a thought struck her as she was leaving, and she paused at the threshold. Perhaps this wasn't the right time, but last night's terrible fight was gnawing at her, and she had to ask.

  "Dad," she said, "about that... about the..."

  "Don't!" he said fiercely, his eyes huge and frightened. "Wynter, you can never mention that machine again. Do you understand? Not even in private, not even just between the two of us. As long as last night remains unmentioned, you will be safe. But Wyn, you need to understand... if it ever came to light that you know more than this, or that you seek to know more than this, Jonathon will kill you. And he'll kill Razi too." Lorcan held her eyes with his own and his voice dropped almost to a whisper, as though the walls, the bed or the ravens on the roof might overhear and report their conversation.

  "He has already destroyed Oliver, and he is wiping Alberon from history. He has ruined everything he ever wanted for poor Razi. And he loved them, darling. He still loves them. But you are nothing to him. You understand? He would erase you, like that!" Her father clicked his fingers, his teeth bared. "And he would think nothing of your loss. So, please, do not give him cause. Do not let a mistake I made in my youth cost me the only life I hold dear."

  She blinked, but didn't reply. He raised his head from the pillow.

  "Wynter," he hissed, "Please!"

  "What if the King is wrong? What if..."

  "I don't care. He can't hurt you, I won't allow it." His voice was flat and filled with steel. "I don't care if he destroys the kingdom, Wyn. I don't care if he destroys himself; as long as he leaves you alone."

  Wynter knew that wasn't true - both those things would break Lorcan's
heart, but she knew what he meant. Unlike Jonathon, Lorcan was not willing to sacrifice that which he loved for the sake of a kingdom, no matter how unique, how bright and shining that kingdom might be. Lorcan would always put Wynter first. She was the price he would never be willing to pay.

  "All right, Dad," she said softly. "We'll never speak of it again." He relaxed his clenched fists and let his head drop back to the pillow. They smiled at each other: Then she scowled and jabbed a finger at him. "Stay in bed!" she ordered and headed out into the hall.

  There were three Maids of the Bucket coming from Razi's room and another three waiting to enter, their heavy buckets steaming gently into the early slanting sun. Wynter frowned. It was very early for Razi to be filling a bath. The boiler men couldn't be too happy with him. He must have had them up at all hours, heating the water.

  "Are we almost done?" whispered one of the waiting maids to the others as they exited Razi's suite, their empty buckets clonking hollowly against the yoke.

  "Aye, thank Jesu. You lot'll be the last. Bloody ridiculous, a bath at this hour! Couldn't he have used the bathhouse like the rest of the court?"

  The two of them noticed Wynter passing by, and ducked their heads in silence as she went on her way. Razi would want to be careful, she thought, people will say he's grown tyrannical. It was so unlike her friend to make unreasonable demands on the staff that she paused at the corner of the hall uncertainly, wondering if she should go check on him, but then she thought better of it and proceeded down the gallery towards the main stairs.

  The kitchens were buzzing and Marni growled at Wynter, muttering about "folk too good to dine in the hall". But she made up a generous tray of breakfast for herself and Lorcan, and mixed a real heft of cream into the coffee jug.

  "Off with you," Marni snapped and turned her attention to the barely contained pandemonium behind her.

  The tray was heavy and Wynter walked slowly, carefully balancing it as she went. The palace was waking up, the corridors beginning to hum gently with the early morning traffic of pages and maids and fire-tenders and slops-carriers. Wynter made her way smoothly through the lot of them.

  She was coming up from the back stairs and had just turned right into the lesser hall, when two maids ahead of her, their arms piled high with clean linen, paled and stopped in their tracks. As she passed them by, Wynter saw that they were gaping past her to the junction at the end of the hall. Whatever they saw horrified them, and as she watched, they backed slowly away and tried to disappear into the shadows of a deep alcove. Both of them were obviously distressed and one of them in particular welled up into tears which rolled fatly down her cheeks and spattered the neatly folded linens in her arms.

  A vile and horribly familiar smell assailed Wynter's nostrils, and with it, all of yesterday's terrible events washed over her in a cold tidal wave of memory. She recalled, in a sudden trembling rush, the one thing that had slipped her mind this morning and her eyes filled with guilty tears. How? How could she have forgotten? She bit her lip and fought hard to keep her composure.

  Down the hall, two of Jonathon's personal guard were walking slowly towards her. They were matching their pace to that of their prisoner, and it was clearly much too slow for them. Christopher Garron was stumbling along between them, and despite her best efforts, Wynter couldn't help but gasp at his wretched condition.

  His hands were bound before him and secured to his waist with a shackle belt. His feet were restrained with a leather hobble and he was shuffling along with all the care of an extremely ancient man, as if every movement might cause pain. Both of his eyelids were grossly swollen and bruised, and he kept his head tilted back, stiff necked, his eyes slits against the light. He was breathing carefully through his partially opened mouth, his nose being completely clogged with dried blood. The entire lower half of his face was coated in rusty smears and his long hair was a tangled, ratty mess of blood from his scalp wound, debris and sweat. His clothes were filthy and spattered in dark stains.

  As Christopher got closer, the smell became almost unbearable. Stale piss and damp, mouldering straw: the unmistakable reek of a dungeon cell. All prisoners smelled the same no matter where you went, but by any standards the stench off Christopher was appalling. They must have thrown him into the filthiest pit they'd had available. The two maids lifted their bundles of linens and buried their noses in the fabric.

  He didn't see her as he shuffled past. Wynter thought that maybe he couldn't see much through those partially closed eyes. Even this dim light was obviously bothering him.

  They turned him roughly at the bottom of the stairs to the middle gallery and he stumbled against the hobble as he tried to take the first step. The guards paid no heed to Christopher's stifled moan of pain at the jarring misstep. They just grabbed an elbow each and one of them said gruffly, "Step up." They waited till his groping foot found the step and then pulled him onto it with a rough jerk. He gasped, found his balance and groped forward with his foot for the next rise. "Step up," the guard instructed again and they repeated the movement all the way up the stairs.

  By the time they disappeared round the bend at the top of the steps, Wynter was shaking so badly that she had to lower the tray to the floor and kneel there for a moment, her hands clenched together in an effort to get herself under control. The two little maids remained in the alcove, staring at nothing, saying not a word. They were still there a good four or five minutes later when Wynter picked up the tray and continued on up to her suite.

  She took the winding back stairs. She couldn't stand the thought of having to pass Christopher on the main stairs, or in the halls. She didn't want to see the way people would look at him, the mixture of triumph and pity that she knew would paint the many faces he'd have to endure on his way to Razi's room.

  Why had they left the shackles on him? And why hadn't they brought him around in private? She groaned. Why was she even bothering to ask herself these questions? When she knew the one and only answer to them all. They had done this on Jonathon's orders, to humiliate Christopher, to send a message to others and to put Razi firmly in his place.

  By the time she got to her suite there wasn't an iota of expression on her face or the slightest trembling in her hands. Razi's suite was silent, Christopher's clothes lying in a foetid pile in the corridor outside the firmly closed door. Jonathon's soldiers were gone and the hall guards watched her blandly as she let herself into her rooms.

  She went straight to her father's bedroom. He was asleep again and she set the tray down on his bedside table and went to leave.

  "Where are you going, darling?"

  She knelt down by his bed, bringing her face level with his. "I thought you had gone back to sleep."

  He frowned and his eyelids fluttered and she saw him struggle to open them again. "Damn Razi and his bloody potions."

  She chuckled. "He'll be very peeved. That was meant to keep you under until at least noon!"

  Lorcan cleared his throat and went to sit up. She laid her hand on his shoulder. "Dad, they brought Christopher back. I want to go to see him, then I'll come have breakfast with you, all right?"

  His eyes were suddenly clear and alert. "Did you see him? The Hadrish?"

  Wynter's reaction shocked even herself. Her eyes filled with tears and overflowed, her lips began a stupid, girlish trembling, and she had to clench her hands together to disguise another bout of hectic shaking. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek and nodded.

  "Darling," murmured Lorcan. "You should stay away from that boy."

  "I just want..."

  "I know, but he's a dangerous boy to hang your hat on, baby-girl."

  She straightened, shocked. "Dad! I'm not...!" She swiped furiously at her eyes and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "I don't have any feelings for him! It's just... he's Razi's friend. And he's a good man! I only..."

  "It's all right to have feelings, darling. But you might want to pick someone less... that lad has no future here, you know that."


  And do we? thought Wynter suddenly. Do we have a future here? Instead she said, "I'm only going to see if they need anything. I'll be back in a moment."

  Lorcan grabbed her hand as she stood to go, "Wyn," he said, hunting for words. "He... the Hadrish. He's been through a bit, by the sounds of it. Sometimes, when a man has been through something bad, he... when he gets somewhere private and safe, he might react in a way that he may not want a woman to see."

  He looked up at her, frustrated at his inability to explain to this suddenly adult version of his little girl how unmanned Christopher would feel at a display of weakness in front of her. And she looked down at him, shocked at his uncertainty, and thrown by the fact that he had just called her a woman.

  "All right, Dad," she patted his hand awkwardly. "I'll be back in a minute."

  "Wynter..."

  She turned at the door, wary. "Yes?"

  "You shouldn't let the guards see you. You should take the secret passage."

  Her shocked surprise made him chuckle and he curled around himself a little in delight.

  "Who told you?" she asked.

  He chuckled again, a rusty version of his usual rolling laugh, and waved her on with a breathless gesture. "Who told me?" he wheezed. "Who told me! Hah... what a tonic! Who do you think built them, girl... oh... who told me, indeed!"

  He was still chuckling away to himself when she turned the cherub sconce in the retiring room and slipped into the darkness of the secret passage.

  "Razi?" she knocked at their wall and gave the panel a little push. To her surprise, it slid open and she hesitated, wary of walking in on top of them. She could hear low murmuring from the far bedroom, Christopher's bedroom. The air was sharp with a high, medicinal odour, which did nothing to mask the residual stench of the dungeon. The shutters were obviously drawn, and dim candlelight softened the gloom.

  "Razi!" she called, a little louder this time, and moved cautiously over the threshold.