A second later the pilot called for the stern lines to be secured, and these were tossed to those waiting below. The ship had lost almost all its forward movement and, when the lines went taut, stopped altogether. Amos shouted, “Secure all lines! Run out the gangplank!”
Turning toward the dock, he peered down into the churning water between the ship and the dock. Seeing bubbles amid the floating wood, line, and sail, he yelled to the dock gang, “Lower a rope there to those two idiots swimming beneath the dock before they drown!”
By the time Amos was off the ship, the two wet youngsters had climbed up to the dock. Amos came to where they stood and regarded the soaked pair.
Nicholas, youngest son of the Prince of Krondor, stood with his weight shifted slightly to the right. His left boot had a raised heel to compensate for the deformed foot he’d possessed since birth. Otherwise Nicholas was a well-made, slender boy of seventeen. He resembled his father, having angular features and dark hair, but he lacked Prince Arutha’s intensity, though he rivaled him in quickness. He had his mother’s quiet nature and gentle manner, which somehow made his eyes look different from his father’s, though they were the same dark brown. At the moment he looked thoroughly embarrassed.
His companion was another matter. Henry, known to the court as Harry because his father, the Earl of Ludland, was also named Henry, grinned as if he hadn’t been the butt of the joke. The same age as Nicholas, he was a half-head taller, had curly red hair and a ruddy face, and was considered handsome by most of the younger court ladies. He was a playful youngster who often let his adventuresome nature get the better of him, and from time to time his sense of fun took him beyond the limits of good judgment. Most of the time, Nicholas traveled beyond that border with him. Harry ran a hand through his wet hair and laughed.
“What’s so funny?” asked Amos.
“Sorry about the boat, Admiral,” answered the Squire, “but if you could have seen the assistant pilot’s face…”
Amos frowned at the two youngsters, then couldn’t hold in his own laughter. “I did. It was a sight to behold.” He threw wide his arms and Nicholas gave him a rough hug.
“Glad you’re back, Amos. Sorry you missed the Midsummer’s Feast.”
Pushing the Prince away with exaggerated distaste, Amos said, “Bah! You’re all wet. Now I’m going to have to go change before I meet with your father.”
The three began walking toward the wharf next to the palace. “What news?” asked Nicholas.
“Things are quiet. Trading ships from the Far Coast, Kesh, and Queg, and the usual traffic from the Free Cities. It’s been a peaceful year.”
Harry said, “We were hoping for some rousing tales of adventure.” His tone was slightly mocking.
Amos playfully smacked him in the back of the head with the flat of his hand. “I’ll give you adventure, you maniac. What did you think you were doing?”
Harry rubbed at the back of his head and attempted an aggrieved expression. “We had right-of-way.”
“Right-of-way!” said Amos, halting in disbelief. “In the open harbor, perhaps, with ample room to turn, but ‘right-of-way’ doesn’t halt a three-masted warship bearing down on you with no place to turn and no way to stop.” He shook his head as he resumed walking toward the palace. “Right-of-way indeed.” Looking at Nicholas, he said, “What were you doing out on the bay this time of day? I thought you had studies.”
“Prelate Graham is in conference with Father,” answered Nicholas. “So we went fishing.”
“Catch anything?”
Harry grinned. “The biggest fish you’ve ever seen, Admiral.”
“Now that it’s back in the bay, it’s the biggest, you mean,” answered Amos with a laugh.
Nicholas said, “We didn’t catch anything worth talking about.”
Amos said, “Well, run along and change into something less damp. I’m going to refresh myself, then call upon your father.”
“Will you be at dinner?” asked the young Prince. “I expect.”
“Good; Grandmother is in Krondor.”
Amos brightened at that news. “Then I will most certainly be there.”
Nicholas gave Amos a crooked half-smile that was the image of his father’s and said, “I doubt anyone thinks it coincidence that she chose to visit Mother just in time to be here for your return.”
Amos only grinned. “It’s my boundless charm.” With a playful slap to the heads of both boys, he said, “Now go! I must report to Duke Geoffrey, then I’m off to my quarters to change into something more fitting for dinner with…your father.” He winked at Nicholas and strode off, whistling a nameless tune.
Nicholas and Harry hurried along, stockings squishing in their boots, toward the Prince’s quarters. Harry had a small room near Nicholas’s, as he was officially Prince Nicholas’s Squire.
The Prince’s palace in Krondor rested hard against the bay, having in ancient times been the defensive bastion of the Kingdom on the Bitter Sea. The royal docks were separated from the rest of the harbor by an area of open shoreline that was contained within the walls of the palace. Nicholas and Harry cut across the open expanse of beach and approached the palace from the water.
The palace rose majestically atop a hill, outlined against the afternoon sky, a sprawling series of apartments and halls grafted around the original keep, which still served as the heart of the complex. Dwarfed by several other towers and spires added over the last few centuries, the old keep still commanded the eye, a brooding reminder of days gone by, when the world was a far more dangerous place.
Nicholas and Harry pushed open an old metal gate, which provided access to the harbor for those who worked in the kitchen. The pungency of the harbor, with its smells of fish, brine, and tar, gave way to more appetizing aromas as they neared the kitchen. The boys hurried down past the washhouse and the bakehouse, through a small vegetable garden, and down a low flight of stone stairs, moving among servants’ huts.
They approached the servants’ entrance to the royal family’s private apartments, not wishing a chance encounter with any of Prince Arutha’s staff or, more to the point, with the Prince himself.
Reaching the doors used by the serving staff closest to their own rooms, Nicholas opened it just as a pair of the palace serving girls approached from within carrying bundles of linens bound for the washhouse behind the palace. He stood aside, though his rank gave him precedence, out of respect for their heavy loads. Harry gave both the girls, only a few years older than himself, his version of a rakish grin. One giggled and the other fixed him with a look appropriate to finding a rodent in the larder.
As the young women hurried off, conscious of their impact on the two adolescent boys, Harry grinned and said, “She wants me.”
Nicholas gave him a hard push that sent him stumbling through the door, saying, “Just about as much as I want the belly flux. Keep dreaming.”
Hurrying up the stairs to the family’s quarters, Harry said, “No, she does. She hides it, but I can tell.”
Nicholas said, “Harry the lady’s man. Lock up your daughters, Krondor.”
After the bright afternoon sunlight, the hallway was positively gloomy. At the end of the hall, they turned up stairs that took them out of the servants’ area to the apartments of the royal family. At the top of the stairs, they opened the door and peeked through. Seeing no one of rank, the two boys hurried to their respective doors, located halfway down the hall from the servants’ door. Between this door and his own a mirror hung, and, catching his own reflection, Nicholas said, “It’s a good thing Father didn’t see us.”
Nicholas entered his own quarters, a large pair of rooms, with enormous closets and a private garderobe, so he didn’t have to leave the room to relieve himself. He quickly stripped off his wet clothing and dried himself. He turned and caught sight of himself in a large mirror, a luxury of immense value, as it was fashioned from silvered glass imported from Kesh. His body—that of a boy on the way to becoming a man—show
ed a broadening chest and shoulders; he had a man’s growth of body hair, as well as a need to shave daily. But his face was still a boy’s, lacking the set of features that only time can give.
As he finished drying, he looked at his left foot as he had every day of his life. A ball of flesh, with tiny protuberances that should have been toes, extended from the base of an otherwise well-formed left leg. The foot had been the object of medicine and magic since his birth, but had resisted all attempts at healing. No less sensitive to touch and sensation as the right foot, it nevertheless was difficult for Nicholas to command; the muscles were connected incorrectly to bones the wrong size to perform the tasks nature intended. Like most people with a lifetime affliction, Nicholas had compensated to the point of rarely being aware of it. He walked with only a slight limp. He was an excellent swordsman, perhaps the equal of his father, who was counted the best in the Western Realm. The Palace Swordmaster judged him as already a better swordsman than his two elder brothers were at his age. He could dance, as required by his office—son of the ruler of the Western Realm—but the one thing that he could not compensate for was a terrible feeling that he was somehow less than he should be.
Nicholas was a soft-spoken, reflective youngster who preferred the quiet solitude of his father’s library to the more boisterous activities of most boys his age. He was an excellent swimmer, a fine horseman, and a fair archer in addition to being skilled at swordplay, but all his life he had felt deficient. A vague sense of failure, and a haunting guilt, seemed to fill him unexpectedly, and often he would find his mind seized by dark brooding. With company, he was often merry and enjoyed a joke as well as the next boy, but if left alone, Nicholas found his mind seized by worry. That had been one reason Harry had come to Krondor.
As he dressed, Nicholas shook his head in amusement. His companion for the last year, Squire Harry had provided an abrupt change to Nicholas’s solitary ways, forever dragging the Prince off on some foolish enterprise or another. Life for Nicholas had become far more exciting since the arrival of the middle son of the Earl of Ludland. Given his rank and two competitive brothers, Harry was combative and expected to be obeyed, barely observing the difference in rank between himself and Nicholas. Only a pointed order would remind Harry that Nicholas wasn’t a younger brother to command. Given Harry’s domineering ways, the Prince’s court was probably the only place his father could have sent him to have his nature tempered before he became a regular tyrant.
Nicholas brushed out his wet, neck-length hair, cut in imitation of his father’s. Alternately drying it with a towel, then brushing it, he got it to some semblance of respectability. He envied Harry his red curls, hugging his head. A quick toweling and a brush, then off he went.
Nicholas judged himself as presentable as he was likely to make himself under the circumstances, and left his room. He entered the hall to discover Harry already dressed and ready, attempting to delay another serving woman, this one several years his senior, as she was bound upon some errand or another.
Harry was dressed in the green and brown garb of a palace squire, which in theory made him part of the Royal Steward’s staff, but within weeks of his arrival he had been singled out to be Nicholas’s companion. Nicholas’s two older brothers, Borric and Erland, had been sent to the King’s court at Rillanon five years before, to prepare for the day Borric would inherit the crown of the Isles from his uncle. King Lyam’s only son had drowned fifteen years earlier, and Arutha and the King had decided that should Arutha survive his older brother, Borric would rule. Nicholas’s sister, Elena, was recently married to the eldest son of the Duke of Ran, leaving the palace fairly empty of companions of suitable rank for the young Prince before Harry was sent into service by his father.
Clearing his throat loudly, Nicholas commanded Harry’s attention long enough for the serving woman to make her getaway. She gave the Prince a courteous bow coupled with a grateful smile as she hurried off.
Nicholas watched her flee and said, “Harry, you’ve got to stop using your position to annoy the serving women.”
“She wasn’t annoyed—” began Harry.
“That wasn’t an opinion,” said Nicholas sternly.
He rarely used his rank to command Harry about anything, but on those rare occasions he did, Harry knew better than to argue—especially when his tone sounded like Prince Arutha’s, a sure sign that Nicholas wasn’t joking. The Squire shrugged. “Well, we have an hour to supper. What shall we do?”
“Spend the time working on our story, I should think.”
Harry said, “What story?”
“To give to Papa to explain why my boat is now floating across half the harbor.”
Harry looked at Nicholas with a confident smile and said, “I’ll think of something.”
—
“YOU DIDN’T SEE it?” said the Prince of Krondor as he regarded his youngest son and the Squire from Ludland. “How could you miss the biggest warship in the Krondorian fleet when it was less than a hundred feet away!” Arutha, Prince of Krondor, brother to the King of the Isles, and second most powerful man in the Kingdom, regarded the two boys with a narrow, disapproving gaze they had both come to know well. A gaunt man, Arutha was a quiet, forceful leader who rarely showed his emotions, but to those close to him, old friends and family, the subtle changes in his mood were easy enough to read. And right now he wasn’t amused.
Nicholas turned to his partner in crime. Whispering, he said, “Good story, Harry,” in dry tones. “You obviously spent a lot of time thinking about it.”
Arutha turned to his wife, his disapproval giving way to resignation. Princess Anita fixed her son with a scolding look that was mitigated by amusement. She was upset with the boys for acting foolishly, but Harry’s blatantly artless pose of innocence was entertaining. Though she was past forty years of age, there was still a girlish quality about her laughter, which she fought hard to keep reined in. Her red hair was streaked with grey, and her freckled face was lined from years of service to her nation, but her eyes were clear and bright as she regarded her youngest child with affection.
The evening’s meal was a casual one, with few court functionaries in attendance. Arutha preferred to keep his court informal when possible, quietly enduring pomp only when necessary. The long table in the family’s apartment in the palace could comfortably hold a half-dozen more people than dined tonight. While the great hall of Krondor housed most of the Western Realm’s battle trophies and banners of state, the family’s dining hall was devoid of such reminders of wars, being decorated with portraits of past rulers and landscapes of unusual beauty.
Arutha sat at the head of the table, with Anita at his right hand. Geoffrey, the Duke of Krondor and Arutha’s chief administrator, sat in his usual chair on Arutha’s left. Geoffrey was a quiet, kind man, well liked by the staff, and an able administrator. He had served for ten years in the King’s court before coming to Krondor eight years previously.
Next to him sat Prelate Graham, a bishop of the Order of Dala, Shield of the Weak, one of Arutha’s current advisers. A gentle but firm teacher, the Prelate had ensured that Nicholas, like his brothers before him, would become a man of broad education, knowing as much about art and literature, music and drama, as he did about economics, history, and warcraft. He sat beside Nicholas and Harry, and showed by his expression that he did not find the excuse remotely amusing. While the boys had been excused his tutelage while he attended the Prince’s council, he had expected them to be studying, not crashing their boat into warships in the harbor.
Opposite the boys sat Anita’s mother and Amos Trask. The Admiral and Princess Alicia had enjoyed a playful relationship for years, which court gossip claimed was far more intimate than simply flirtation. Still a handsome woman of a like age to Amos’s, Alicia positively glowed from his attention. Anita’s resemblance to her mother was clear to see, although Alicia’s once red hair was now grey and her features revealed life’s passage. But when Amos told a quiet joke to make her blu
sh, her sparkling eyes and embarrassed laughter made her seem girlish again.
Amos squeezed Alicia’s hand while he whispered something to her, probably off-color, and the Dowager Princess laughed behind her napkin. Anita smiled at the sight, for she remembered how dreadfully her mother had missed her father after his death, and what a welcome addition to Arutha’s court Amos had become after the Riftwar. Anita was always pleased to see her mother smile, and no one could make her laugh like Amos.
To the Admiral’s left sat Arutha’s military deputy, William, Knight-Marshal of Krondor, a cousin to the royal family. Cousin Willie, as everyone in the family called him, winked at the two boys. He had been serving in the palace for twenty years, and over that span of time had seen Nicholas’s older brothers, Borric and Erland, discover every possible way to incur their father’s anger. Nicholas was new to causing his father to lose his temper. William reached for a slice of bread and said, “Brilliant strategy, Squire. No unnecessary details to remember.”
Nicholas attempted to look properly chastised, but failed. He quickly cut a piece of lamb and stuffed it in his mouth to keep from laughing. He glanced at Harry, who was hiding his amusement behind a cup of wine.
Arutha said, “We’ll have to think up a suitable punishment for you two. Something to impress the value of both the boat and your own necks on you.”
Harry threw Nicholas a quick grin from behind the wine cup; both boys knew that they stood half a chance of Arutha’s forgetting any serious punishment if the press of court business was heavy, as it often was.
The Prince’s court was the second busiest in the Kingdom, and only by a little after the King’s. Effectively a separate realm, the West was governed from Krondor, with only broad policy coming from King Lyam’s court. In the course of one day, Arutha might have to see two dozen important nobles, merchants, and envoys, and read a half-dozen important documents, as well as approve every regional decision involving the Principality.
A boy in the purple and yellow livery of a palace page entered the room and came to the elbow of the Royal Master of Ceremony, Baron Jerome. He whispered to the baron, who in turn came to Arutha. “Sire, two men are at the main entrance of the palace, asking to see you.”