‘That I could do this. Heal. It’s one of the rarest of all Gifts.’
‘It’s a great Gift.’
‘Yes . . . I’m glad . . . I was so afraid . . .’
‘I’ve found more of your arrows, embedded in the chests of some of our men!’ Zed came angrily towards them, holding three more grey-fletched arrows in his hand. ‘All of them would have survived if not for the arrows!’
Liliana and Merry both looked at him in surprise.
‘I didn’t kill them!’ Liliana protested. ‘My bow and arrows were taken from me, before I was dragged away. How could you think I was the one who killed them?’
‘It was someone else . . . I didn’t see their face . . . I saw them stabbing someone else and then they stabbed me,’ Merry managed to say.
‘My bow is over here,’ Liliana said, retrieving it from by the wall. ‘But look, all my arrows are gone!’ She looked round in a sudden panic, and saw her discarded satchel lying on the trampled grass. She snatched it and looked inside, and by the expression on her face, Merry knew the cloak and feathers were still safely concealed inside, and he felt his own body sag in relief. She slung it over her shoulder and began to systematically search the battlefield for her arrows, cleaning their sharp iron points of blood before stowing them away in their quiver.
‘Stab jab,’ Tom-Tit-Tot whispered, creeping forward across the stones, dragging one wing. ‘Slash gash.’
‘Are you hurt?’ Merry asked anxiously, and leant on one elbow while he examined the omen-imp carefully. Tom-Tit-Tot had a nasty cut above his eye, and was generally bruised and shaken up. Liliana came at once to lay her hands on him, and was relieved to see her magic worked on omen-imps as well as on people. It seemed, though, that she drew power from the wounded as well as from herself to work the healing, since Tom-Tit-Tot grew limp and weary as his cut closed over and lay weakly beside Merry, his eyes shut.
‘Did you see who stabbed Merry?’ Zed demanded. When the omen-imp shook his head, whimpering, ‘Head clouted, knocked outed’, Zed hurried on, exclaiming in relief when he found Priscilla, bound and gagged with her own scarf, and tossed down at the foot of the wall. He unbound her rapidly and soothed her frightened sobbing. ‘Wait here!’ he ordered. ‘I need to see who else is hurt.’
Only a few steps away he found Annie, sprawled on the earth, an arrow fletched with an owl feather through her back. Frowning, he rolled the maid-servant over gently, but there was nothing he could do. She was dead.
Zed laid her down and moved on. The next three figures were their own soldiers, all dead, their corpses strewn about the unmoving form of Count Zygmunt, lying crumpled in his new red brocade coat. Zed cried out and knelt beside his uncle, lifting him up. He had received several stabs and cuts, but the killing wound seemed to be another owl-fletched arrow, driven through the count’s heart. Zed turned and stared at Liliana.
‘But I didn’t . . . I swear . . .’ Liliana stammered. Zed said nothing, just gently laid his uncle down and continued his melancholy search.
All of their guards were slain, or badly injured. Aubin the Fair was alive, but bleeding from a dozen shallow wounds. His sword was slick with blood to the hilt. Even his moustache was stained red. Zakary was found slumped against the wall, unconscious. Zed examined him gently at first, but when he found no sign of any wounds, shook him awake roughly.
The young lord moaned and lolled back, his hand laid across his brow. ‘Wh . . . what happened? There was screaming . . . fighting . . . I must have fainted . . . Oh, I feel sick. I need smelling salts! Brandywine!’
‘You need to get up and help me,’ Zed said angrily. ‘My uncle . . . my uncle is dead. All our soldiers dead . . .’
Zakary staggered to his feet. ‘Oh, my heavens! Count Zygmunt! Murder! Ambush! Was it the rebels?’
He saw the owl-fletched arrow driven through the count’s chest and reeled back. His eyes flickered to Liliana who stood, silent, trembling with shock and cold. He raised one finger and pointed it at her. ‘You!’
‘No,’ she protested. ‘No, of course not.’
Merry tucked the raven feather out of sight inside his coat and said in a strange, faint voice, ‘Li . . . Laurie’s arrows were seized from him before he was dragged away. It was not Laurie who did it.’
Even as he spoke, he marvelled that he remembered not to call her Lili.
‘I killed the men who dragged him away,’ Zed said in a cold, emotionless voice. ‘Laurie did not have his bow or arrows then.’
‘Lucky for him,’ Zakary said, sounding strangely disgruntled.
‘Let us see who did this dreadful thing,’ Zed said, and bent to tear the mask off the closest attacker. He was a stranger, a rough, bearded man with a branding scar on one cheek and half an ear missing. The other attackers were as rough and disreputable-looking, their faces and bodies showing the scars of former battles. One face, however, was familiar to them all. It was Wilhelm, the soldier who had shot the albatross.
‘How very dreadful,’ Zakary said. ‘Did he have a grudge against you all?’
‘Only because of the albatross,’ Zed said blackly. ‘He was docked his pay for a week, and made to scrub the boards. Surely that is not enough to cause him to betray us so?’
‘He would’ve been flogged if it wasn’t for you!’ Priscilla cried indignantly. ‘Oh, Zed, this is all so awful! Dear Uncle Ziggy! And Annie! What does it mean?’ She began to sob.
Merry managed to sit up. Everything was hazy and mazy and wrong. ‘Look in his pockets,’ he croaked.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Zed turned towards him. Merry repeated his words. Zed rummaged through Wilhelm’s pockets and withdrew a large and heavy pouch that jingled. When Zed opened the pouch, it was filled with gold coins.
‘Someone paid him,’ Merry said. ‘But who? Who?’
This question was haunting him. He knew he could answer it if only he could think. But his head hurt and everything was dazzled, as if he looked at the world through water. He searched Liliana’s face. There was a nasty bruise on her temple.
‘Are you badly hurt?’ he asked.
‘I’d be much more badly hurt if it was not for Zed,’ she answered.
‘That’s good,’ Merry said inadequately.
‘Yes. In truth, he can fight! He must’ve slain half-a-dozen of them single-handedly.’
‘He always was a good fighter.’ Merry felt very miserable indeed. He shut his eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked anxiously. When he did not reply, she called, ‘Zed, Merry’s fainted again! We have to get him inside. Quick!’
Merry turned his face away, wishing that he was a true hero to win the heart of his true love. But that, he knew, he would never be.
CHAPTER 20
The King of Ziva
ZED SAT AND STARED AT THE PARCHMENT THAT LAY ON THE polished desk before him, its edges weighted down with an inkwell, a pumice stone, his penknife, and the heel of his left hand. He had tried several times to write and tell his parents about his uncle’s death, but each time had scraped the parchment clean and begun again.
Failure weighed on him like a suit of armour. He felt its burden in every limb and muscle. Uncle Ziggy assassinated, his sister’s maidservant murdered, so many of his men killed. Was this some kind of dark flowering of the prophecy that had haunted him since birth?
Next shall be the king-breaker, the king-maker,
though broken himself he shall be.
Zed shook his head, which felt heavy and thick, and tried to chase away the thought. It wasn’t my fault, he reminded himself. I did everything I could. How could I suspect we’d be ambushed at the very door of the king’s palace? It has nothing to do with the prophecy. My uncle was not king and I did not break him . . .
His uncle had, however, been the new crown prince. With his death, that position had been inherited, along with the County of Estelliana, by Zed himself. Was he truly now only one step away from the throne? The thought filled him with horror. Zed had no desire to
be king. He hated the pageantry and artifice of court life, hated politics, and hated the city. He would have been perfectly happy to live out the rest of his life at Estelliana Castle, looking after his people, hunting in the winter and fishing in the summer, and enjoying the occasional feast day with his friends and family.
It was not my fault, he thought again and wrote, the quill held awkwardly in his large hand, I did my best to save him, Mama. There were too many. I could not fight them all off.
He shuddered, and ink splattered from his quill. Zed had never killed anyone before. He hoped he would never need to again. The ambush haunted him night and day, coming back to him in sudden, vivid, blood-soaked shards of memory that kicked his heart into a gallop and cramped his lungs so that he could hardly gasp a breath.
Three days had passed since the death of his uncle and, as starkin custom prescribed, Zed had sat vigil all that time in the crypt, staring at his uncle laid out on his bier, wrapped in a shroud cloth, and surrounded by twelve tall white candles. Behind him, the professional wailers had sobbed and beat their breasts and wept, for a small bag of copper coins. For a single coin, the sin-eater had eaten a crust of bread taken from the dead man’s breast, drunk a cup of apple-ale passed to him across the dead man’s body, and then shuffled back to his hole in the wall outside, leaving Zed alone with the wailers. It had been the longest and most awful three days of Zed’s life.
His uncle had been cremated the previous evening, at sunset, with the sound of the death-bells ringing out over the city. His ashes were now in a red lacquer jar on the mantelpiece, ready for Zed to take home, and preparations were being made for the memorial feast, while Zed struggled to write and tell his mother that her brother was dead.
At last the letter was done, though rather splattered with ink blots. Zed rolled it and sealed it shut with a blob of sealing wax into which he pressed his uncle’s signet ring. His ring now. The ring of the Count of Estelliana. He said his new title to himself again, silently, in his mind, trying to get used to the idea.
There was a discreet knock on the door, and then Merry opened it and looked into Zed’s chamber. ‘It’s time,’ he said.
For once, Merry was looking clean and neat, his black hair tied back, his boots polished to a shine. He wore the blue and silver livery of the Estelliana family, a scarlet sash crossing his chest and tied at his waist, and as always carried his lute in its leather bag. The bruise at his hairline was the only sign of his recent injuries.
Zed hesitated, glancing at himself in the mirror. He had taken especial care with his own toilet. He was wearing the red velvet coat, reluctantly, but had baulked at pairing it with a red translucent shirt, red brocade waistcoat and puffy silk breeches as Zakary had decreed. Instead he wore his best black velvet breeches, and he had removed the indigo feather from his hat and replaced it with a red cockade.
He took a deep breath and went out to the corridor, where his attendants and guards waited. Like Merry, Liliana was dressed in her squire’s clothing, her bow over her shoulder, the quiver of arrows at the small of her back. Aubin the Fair was also dressed in livery, his sword prominently displayed at his side. Behind him stood a line of starkin soldiers, with hard faces, short-cropped hair and clean-shaven jaws. They were Zed’s new bodyguard, appointed by the king, and apparently under his orders, since they ignored all Zed’s suggestions to give him a little space. They had stood outside the door to the crypt for three days, searching anyone who brought him food, and they had rather embarrassingly escorted him to and from the garderobe, all without the slightest twitch of expression. Zed hated them, and wondered with a sense of rising panic how he was ever going to be free to search for the three remaining feathers with a phalanx of soldiers clanking after him every step of the way.
Zed nodded to them, then let the young pageboy lead him down the corridors. The fact that the pageboy was dressed entirely in scarlet unnerved him, and he nervously tucked the lace cuffs of his crisp white shirt out of sight beneath the red velvet.
‘Never mind,’ Merry murmured, ‘you can always say you had no idea about court fashion, being just a country bumpkin. Let your jaw hang slack and look a bit stupid . . . yes, just like that. That’s perfect.’
Zed flashed him a look, half-irritated, half-amused, and muttered back, ‘It’s lucky for you you’ve got a war wound, else I’d be teaching you some respect, squirt.’
Merry grinned at him, but did not flash back with a witty answer. He was looking pale, with the dark smudges under his eyes deeper than ever, and Zed wondered if he was finding it hard to sleep with the pain of his wounds.
‘You didn’t need to come,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I’ve got attendants enough. You should have stayed in bed and rested.’
‘And miss seeing the king? Not a chance,’ Merry whispered back.
Like Zed, the king and the rest of the royal family had been in seclusion for the past three days, mourning Count Zygmunt’s death. Now that the vigil was over, there was to be a great feast to commemorate the dead and to welcome the new heir, as was the usual custom. What was not usual was to have two royal deaths so close together. Zed realised that there would be a great deal of speculation and gossip about him, and he dreaded the meeting ahead.
‘I wish Mama and Papa were here,’ he said to his sister as she came slowly out of her room, one hand to her tall conical hat. ‘I really don’t like us being here with no-one but Zakary to advise us on how to get on.’
‘You know Papa is not permitted at court,’ Priscilla said. ‘And Mama would not come without him. They thought we’d be safe enough with Uncle Ziggy.’ Tears filled her eyes, and she dashed them away.
‘I’m not feeling particularly safe,’ Zed admitted. ‘I’m glad we’ve got Aubin to look after us.’
‘Me too,’ she answered in a small voice. ‘Zed, what if I should fall down the stairs? I can hardly walk in these shoes. And what if everyone laughs at me?’
‘Put a brave face on it,’ he advised her. ‘Come on, chin up.’
Raising his own chin high, and trying to remember everything Zakary had ever told him about court etiquette, Zed walked into the royal throne room with a fair appearance of composure.
A herald blew a high note on his golden horn, and then the steward announced, in a deep, melancholy voice, ‘Lord Zedrin, the Count of Estelliana, and his sister, Lady Priscilla ziv Estaria.’
With Merry and Liliana a correct five paces behind them, and his guards on either side, Zed took Priscilla’s cold and trembling hand in his, tucked it into the crook of his arm, and walked slowly and regally down the broad, sweeping stairs.
‘Try to pretend you’ve got The Zephyr Book of Etiquette balanced on your head,’ Zed murmured to his sister and she smiled wanly.
The throne room was built of glass and boasted the most astonishing views out to the blue glitter of the ocean. Tall arched windows stood open to the breeze, alternating with arched silver mirrors that reflected back the view so that it seemed as if the hall was a ship upon the ocean, surrounded by blue on all sides. Thronged upon the polished silver floor were, it seemed, a thousand people, bowing and curtseying to him, all dressed in the darkest blood-red. Like poppies blown before a howling wind, the courtiers bent almost to the floor before swaying upright again once he and Priscilla had passed.
His throat dry, his palms damp, Zed inclined his head in response, first one way and then the other, being careful not to let his back bend at all. As crown prince of Ziva, he bowed to none except the king himself.
The closer he came to the throne at the end of the hall, set on a dais under a pale blue canopy, the more shallow became the obeisance made to him, as the rank of those in the crowd grew higher.
The clothes were extraordinary, making Zed feel very much like the country bumpkin his cousin professed him to be. Towering high heels studded with rubies, billowing breeches of pleated silk, skirts so wide the wearer could not have passed through the great double doors without turning sideways, conical hats s
o tall they looked like steeples, and chiffons and muslins so sheer they left nothing to the imagination.
Next to the throne was a cushioned litter where an enormously fat woman reclined, an obese pug dog nestled beside her. Both were dressed in matching red velvet gowns, the woman wearing the largest skirt Zed had ever seen. The pug wore little red velvet slippers on his four feet, identical to his mistress. Her prominent blue eyes bulged from her round flushed face, and she wore a very tall, elaborately curled white wig below a grotesque headdress made of crimson roses the size of cabbages.
She inclined her head to him, and he bent his head in response, guessing that this was Lady Vernisha, the king’s niece, and mother of Lady Adora, the newly widowed wife of Prince Zander. He looked around for his third cousin, and saw Adora sitting on a cushioned stool at the foot of the dais. Zed had met her only once, soon after she had married Prince Zander, when the royal couple had made a year-long progression around Ziva, staying with all twelve of the counts in turn. She had been only fifteen, and a beautiful, laughing girl with fair hair to her feet and a way of poking fun at everything she saw, which had both embarrassed and charmed the nine-year-old Zed. She had kept up their friendship over the years with gifts and letters, though these had become more and more rare as the years had passed.
Her face was swathed in a crimson veil, so that it was difficult to see much of her face. All Zed could see beneath the veil was a thin white jaw, the powder so thickly laid on it was like a mask, with rouge in a red circle on her cheeks, and lips as red as an open wound. Her dress was the most lavish in the entire hall, her bodice so stiffly sewn with rubies and diamonds that Zed was sure she could not have bent to curtsey even if she had wanted to.
She inclined her head to Zed and Priscilla as they passed to kneel before the dais, but otherwise she was motionless.
Behind them, Merry and Liliana and all the soldiers prostrated themselves, their foreheads pressed so close to the floor that their breath misted its polished silver surface.