“There you are, Your Majesty!” she said.
“Here I am!” He nodded, wreathed in smiles. “And here you are! Isn’t this wonderful?”
“It’s certainly good to see you up and about,” she said. “But is this wise?” She took a breath herself before continuing, “You are quite flushed. I hope you haven’t overexerted yourself. You haven’t been outdoors for months now, have you? You have to be careful—”
“Careful! Pah! I’m sick to the core of being careful, of taking care. I need to feel alive again, Lydia. That’s no life up there in my chamber, surrounded by all kinds of medication that is no use to me… no damn use at all.”
Lydia frowned. “You have to be patient,” she said. “You do seem to be on the verge of recovery, so something must have helped—”
Leopold laughed. “Really? You think that I’ve managed to make it out of bed thanks to my son’s latest quack applying a dead cockerel to my ears?” He shook his head. “Come now, Lydia. I think we are both a little too rational to follow that line of thought.”
Lydia smiled. There was a certain brutal honesty to Leopold that she could not help but admire. “If it wasn’t the cockerels, then to what do you ascribe this turnaround, I wonder?”
He considered the matter for a moment. “Necessity. Willpower.”
She nodded. “I suppose that could be enough. But now, while it is wonderful that you managed to make your way down here today, I think it’s time we took you back inside to rest.”
But Leopold remained rooted to the seat. “What’s really going on here, Lydia? Where are my sons? And don’t toss me some lie that they are on army exercises, because I don’t believe that. I’ve seen the army massing through my own window. Something significant is about to happen, isn’t it?”
Lydia took a breath. “Let’s talk about this in your chamber,” she said. Seeing him frown, she added, “You are Prince of Paddenburg, and these are important matters. How do we know there is not someone listening to us on the other side of this hedge?”
He looked doubtful. “I suppose—”
“Come on, take my arm!”
She watched as he creaked upright, onto his legs. For all his fighting talk, he was still obviously frail.
“I might need your help finding our way out of this maze,” she told him.
“That’s not a problem,” he said. “I know these pathways like the back of my hand.”
But these words proved to be a vain promise. Perhaps Leopold had once known the maze well but, today, he seemed at a loss. Lydia began to wonder if he had genuinely lost his bearings or if he was playing another game—if he knew that time was ticking by and he was doing everything he could to delay her.
Through a combination of exhausting all other possibilities and sheer determination on her part, they finally caught sight of the entrance. “At last!” she exclaimed.
Leopold did not speak. His breathing was labored and Lydia was shocked by his pallor. She realized that he had not been playing a game, but putting on a brave face.
“Come on,” she said gently. “We need to get you back up to your chamber.”
This time, he offered no protest.
There were no maids to be found near the Prince’s bedchamber. Evidently, they were below stairs, discussing in excited tones Leopold’s miraculous recovery. As Lydia settled the Prince back in bed, she heard the sound of many horses outside. She knew she was running late. How long would it take to put on her armor?
“What are those noises?” Leopold asked.
“It’s the army,” she told him. She was past the point of lying.
“I knew it!” A brief flicker of his earlier fighting spirit returned.
“You were right,” Lydia said. “Something significant is about to happen.” She leaned across him and rearranged his pillows.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I am telling you,” she said, stepping back with one of the pillows in her hand. “Your sons are en route to Archenfield. They sent Prince Jared an ultimatum to surrender or prepare for invasion. Paddenburg is poised to take control of Archenfield.”
“No!” Leopold exclaimed, trying to sit up. “They have no right to issue ultimatums! Nor to mount an invasion! I am ruler of Paddenburg, not they.”
Lydia shrugged. “You know that and I know that. But no one outside beyond these walls knows that. They all think you signed over power to your sons months ago.”
Leopold made a fist. “Well, they are going to find out the truth. Get me Nikolai! Tell him to gather my council! I will stop this invasion in its tracks.” His eyes were full of rage.
Lydia shook her head slowly. “I’m afraid there isn’t time. The wheels are in motion. It is time I was going.”
“Going? Where?”
“I’m leading out the second movement of troops to meet Henning and Ven at the borders,” she said. “We will ride into Archenfield shoulder to shoulder, the standards of Paddenburg flying at our sides.” She saw the horror in Leopold’s eyes.
“You too? You are part of all this?”
Lydia shook out her hair. “Yes, I am very much part of this.”
Leopold tried to swing his feet out of bed. Lydia did not help him, and his movements grew more frantic with frustration.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said, determined to resolve this once and for all. They were so close to success; she wouldn’t let this old man stop them now. She’d been patient for too long. “You’re not strong enough.” She leaned in closer. “You’re a man on the verge of death.”
“No,” he said, spitting the word at her.
She brought the pillow she had been holding down over his face until his cries were muffled. She watched his hands flail about but then grow weak. Strangely, this sign of weakness only seemed to nurture her own strength. She increased her pressure on the pillow and held it down over his face until all sound, all movement, ceased.
At last, silence.
She lifted the pillow and reached out to check the pulse in his neck. Nothing. There was no life left in him.
She closed his eyes. Rising to her feet, she lifted old Leopold’s head and placed the pillow under his neck. Then she smoothed down his hair and turned away from the bed.
The door was ajar. A figure stood close by the chamber entrance.
“Nikolai!” she said as he stepped out of the shadows.
“Lydia,” he said. “You have played your part beyond all expectation. Now it is my turn to do mine.”
EIGHTEEN
The Physician’s Surgery, the Village of the Twelve, Archenfield
“REMIND ME,” AXEL SAID. “HOW MUCH IS A PAIR OF testes worth these days?”
The Physician smiled at his inquiry. “That all depends, doesn’t it?” Elias turned toward Axel. “On whose testes they are, I mean.”
The two members of the Twelve were standing before a bank of glass jars of various sizes, in which different parts of the human body were suspended in alcohol. The preserving liquor had a purplish-blue tinge to it. Coupled with this, this part of Elias’s surgery was lit by a strange, watery blue light. It seemed to Axel as if he were standing at the bottom of the fjord, watching this jumble of mortal flotsam and jetsam float before his eyes.
“As you may remember from your schooling,” Elias said, “just as there are twelve members of the Prince’s Council, so there are twelve parts of the body of equal rank—the two hands, the two eyes, the two ears, the upper lip and the lower lip, the two feet, the neck and the nose.” At the mention of each body part, Axel’s eyes darted from jar to jar as if playing a macabre game; from the pair of hands that rested upon one another, as if in prayer, to the mouth that looked like no more than a lump of gristle. Axel had a memory of one of Vera’s more unsavory stews; it was only Elias’s neatly written label that gave the game away.
“The value of each of these twelve separate parts is a cow and three copper ingots if the victim is a commoner, but the Blood Price soon rises if the victim is a m
ember of the Twelve, and then again if he or she is a member of the royal family.”
“Six kine and ten silver ingots for the hand of a member of the Twelve,” Axel calculated. “And a dozen kine and twenty gold ingots for the hand of a prince.” He paused. “Though, of course, these are values attributable during times of peace and order. The traitor Logan Wilde took much more than the hand of Prince Anders but he has not paid the Blood Price—and perhaps he never will, if we hand him back intact to his comrades from Paddenburg.”
Elias nodded. “To your earlier question about the testes…” He paused to approach the relevant jar and inspect its meager contents. “The value of a pair is equivalent to that of a hand or any of the other parts of equal rank.”
“Another dozen kine and another twenty gold ingots,” Axel calculated.
“Indeed,” Elias said. “I’m curious to find you so interested in the value of the human body today,” he said.
Axel shrugged. “We are poised on the edge of another conflict, Elias… no, not even poised. The conflict has already begun, but it will soon get much worse. We must anticipate the broken bodies piling up once more all across the Princedom. This is the price of war when it comes.”
Elias’s eyes clouded. “It is my fervent hope that we avoid war, that your defense of the borders prove watertight until Prince Jared succeeds in coming home with the necessary alliance.”
Axel nodded. “Our hopes rest with Prince Jared and his team.” He tapped the jar of testes. “He’s certainly going to need those.” He turned back to Elias. “You didn’t seem overly enthused by the idea of Prince Jared embarking on this mission.”
“That’s true,” Elias said. “Prince Jared is young and new to his role, and all it demands of him. All things considered, I would have preferred Queen Elin, with her greater experience in cross-territory diplomacy, to have undertaken such an important journey.”
Axel folded his arms, observing the disjointed images of his reflection and the Physician’s in the glass jars before them. “You speak almost as if Cousin Jared’s youth precludes him from doing a good job as Prince.” He paused. “But he is the very same age as your niece, and look how capable she has turned out to be.” His tone softened further. “She does you much credit in the way she has moved on so effortlessly from being your apprentice to taking up her new and unexpected position on the Twelve.”
Axel saw, exaggerated in the curve of a jar, the change in Elias’s expression.
“You might praise her, Axel, but I see things somewhat differently. Where you see credit, I see another person of youth and inexperience who has arguably moved too far, too fast.”
Axel was surprised at the Physician’s frankness, though not the import of his words. Elias had always been a stickler for tradition. His one departure from this stance had been his offer to give Asta a role in court; it seemed like this was a lapse he was now regretting.
“You sound disappointed in Asta,” Axel observed. “I must confess I’m surprised,” he lied.
Elias shook his head. “I’m not disappointed in her,” he said. “I’m disappointed for her. But it was the Prince’s decision to promote her.”
“I’m sure that Prince Jared was acting in good faith,” Axel said. “Just as I am equally sure that it must be most… inconvenient to you to have trained an apprentice for—what?—six months, and now find her taken away from you.”
“Bah! I have no real need of an apprentice, Axel! I never did and I certainly don’t now. Of course, it was useful for me to have someone to help with my notes and so forth, but Asta’s position was never about my needs. It was about giving something to her—getting her out of the devastation of the settlement of Teragon and opening up a window on a different kind of life.”
“You sound almost sorry that you gave this chance to her.”
“I do not have children of my own,” Elias said. “I have devoted my life to my calling and my duties to the court. I have no regrets. It was a sadness to me that my wife died so young but that is what fate determined. I understood that. I threw myself into my studies and my duties, and I woke up, one day, twenty years later, all alone in my home. I thought of my brother’s child and the chance I now had to make a difference to her.”
Axel had never heard Elias speak so openly before, in all the years he had known him—the Physician was almost trembling from the release of pent-up emotion when he finished speaking. But, after only a moment, he resumed in a far more controlled tone of voice.
“I do not mean to sound rude, but I am surprised that you have time to linger with me here, when there must be other, far more important conversations for you to be having with others.”
Axel shook his head. “In my view, there are no more important conversations than this. I have given my team very clear instructions and they are executing my plans as we speak. If there is one thing I have learned from my experience as Captain of the Guard, it is to delegate what you can and ensure you always have time to check in with your allies.”
“Well, I’m certainly glad you think of me that way.”
“Of course I do,” Axel said silkily. “Our friendship has always been founded on the utmost mutual respect, has it not? Throughout our lives, we have done many things for one another—from the stitches you threaded through my brow when I was just five years old”—he saw Elias nod at the memory and squint to seek out the now faint scar above his right eye—“through to the discussion we had after Prince Anders’s assassination about the presence of savin in the Physic Garden.” Elias squirmed at the mention of this—just as Axel had intended. “My point, my good friend, is that we have always looked out for and helped one another whenever the need has arisen.”
“This is true,” Elias said. “And I sense from your words now that you feel that this need has arisen once more. What I’m less sure of is how you would like me to help.”
Axel nodded, turning in the underwater light toward the Physician. “I believe we share a common view,” he said, “which is that there is a regrettable void of experience on the throne at a time when experience is most necessary.” He waited for Elias’s response, hoping he had not gone too far.
After a moment’s pause, Elias nodded. “We do share the same view. But what do you propose to do about this?”
“Regrettable though it is, I fear Prince Jared must be removed.”
Elias stared sightlessly for a few moments at the bank of jars in front of him—the strange mosaic of severed limbs and other, less substantial, body parts. “You are right,” he said. “It is regrettable. But we have to think, first and foremost, of the value of a stable Princedom, and of peace.”
“I couldn’t have expressed that any better myself, good Elias.” Axel rested his hand lightly on the older man’s shoulder. “I knew I could count on you. Such loyalty is beyond value.”
“Nothing is beyond value,” Elias said, with a slight shake of the head. “There is just one thing.”
“Go on.”
“I need your assurance that my niece will be protected. Whatever I have said to you here—in complete confidence, of course—I only wish the best for Asta.”
Axel nodded. “Of course you do,” he said. He paused, allowing the Physician’s tension to rise. “And, of course, I readily give you my word. I will take good care of Asta. Have no fear about that.”
NINETEEN
Rednow
JARED COULD BARELY COMPREHEND HOW MUCH the landscape had changed since they had crossed the border from Woodlark into Rednow earlier that morning. If he hadn’t witnessed the gradual shifts in terrain with his own eyes, he’d have thought that he’d somehow been transported to another planet, rather than another Princedom.
Rednow could not have been more different from the lush green topography he was used to. As they had journeyed north, the verdant landscape had steadily given way to first brown, then ochre, ground. Lost in his own thoughts—and sometimes with no thoughts at all, but simply the meditative rhythm of Handrick’s ho
oves—he had suddenly become aware that there were no longer any trees. They had been replaced by ragged shrubs, clumps of dry, spiky grass and, as far as the eye could see, an expanse of orange scrubland, met at the horizon by a bright blue sky.
The tinkling of bells had made them aware of goats and goatherds quietly going about their business in this strange hinterland. The muffled music of the bells was the only thing to break the unearthly silence. It made Jared feel like they were less alone in this vast open space. Still, the goatherds seemed intent on keeping themselves to themselves, probably fearing that four strangers on horseback could mean only one thing—danger.
But, all the time, they had followed the river—the very same river that fed the swollen fjords of Archenfield and Woodlark, traveling down from the higher grounds to this alien land. Now, still riding along the riverbank, they had entered a deep gorge with majestic walls rising up high on either side, the rock surface shifting from orange to red to purple with the patterns of light and shadow. The canyon was so deep that he could no longer see out of it—only the sky above. Jared had never felt so small or insignificant.
“Spectacular, isn’t it?” Kai said, bringing his horse up alongside Jared’s.
“Yes,” Jared agreed. “It’s a landscape I could never have imagined. It’s so different from Archenfield.” He nodded to himself, thinking of the vast canyon walls bearing witness to the four riders making their trail of hoofprints in the dust. In the stiff, circling breeze, though, even that trail of prints would disappear before the setting of the sun.
There would be no evidence at all that they had traveled this way.
Jared turned toward Kai. “It’s strange, but I have the sense we are being watched.”
Kai nodded, seeming pleased. “Your senses are alert, Prince Jared. Of course we are being watched.”
As Jared gazed at Kai in confusion, the Huntsman instructed him. “Look up to the higher reaches.”