"Under the circ.u.mstances, we can forgo the pomp," said Justus. "The princess has already consented . . ."

"Again," muttered the king.

The queen fired him a scolding look, and there was some quick laughter from the court.

"Apropos," Entipy spoke up, and she stepped down from the raised platform upon which the thrones rested. She crossed to me and took my hand. It was everything I could do not to pull it away. "Apropos, it's all right. Really. The ceremony, the trappings . . . they mean nothing to me anyway. Only you mean anything."

"And besides," the queen said, "what need have we to invite n.o.bles and such from other lands? They likewise mean nothing. The people that matter to us," and she took in the entirety of the court with a sweeping gesture, "are all right here. We are, in a way, all family."

Oh my G.o.ds . . .

"So, good sir knight," and Justus clapped his hands together briskly, like a great showman about to proceed with a circus, "the archdeacon is in the next room. I can bring him out and the ceremony can proceed, so that you and the princess can be lawfully husband and-"

"I can't." The words fell out of my mouth and splattered to the floor like eggs gone bad. And it was true. I couldn't. My mind was awhirl, my thoughts conflicted. I had spent my life acting in my best interests, and for the first time, I had no idea what those were. My trusty inner voice was shouting, Shut up! Marry her! So what if she's your sister? She could be your mother for all you should care! Deal with it and wed the b.i.t.c.h! Shut up! Marry her! So what if she's your sister? She could be your mother for all you should care! Deal with it and wed the b.i.t.c.h! My lips tightened. I said nothing further. My lips tightened. I said nothing further.

There was a deathly silence for a long moment.

"Apropos," Justus said evenly, "it is said that knights do not know the meaning of the word 'can't' . . ."

"Except when it comes to beggars," Odclay piped up. "They utter their beggars' cant. Also, I hear beggars can't be-"

"Not now," the king said sharply, and I had never heard that tone of voice from him. He had risen from the throne. "Apropos . . . I owe you a great deal . . . but you owe me, as well. Another king would have gutted you for your actions. I am choosing to rise above it. I do not suggest you drag us down, or it will go badly for you."

"I . . . have no doubt," I managed to squeak out. I was looking up at the phoenix tapestry, restored to its normal place. In my imagination, the image of the rider-Tacit, of course-was tossing a rude gesture to me.

Entipy was looking at me with wide, hurt eyes. "Apropos . . . ?" she was saying.

I looked into those eyes, and it was like seeing my soul mirrored back at me. This was no cousin, no distant relation. I became more and more convinced with each pa.s.sing instant. My voice barely above a whisper, I said again, "I . . . I can't . . ."

"How. Dare. You." Never before, and very likely never since, had the king engaged in such a public display of fury. He was rooted to the spot, perhaps concerned that, if he approached me, he'd kill me with his bare hands. What a favor he would have been doing me. "How dare you treat the princess this way. Treat us this way."

Entipy was backing away from me, shaking her head in denial, still unable to believe that I was refusing her. The king took a step down from the throne, still not getting near me, still trembling with barely suppressed fury. "I raised you up! I trusted you! What is the problem here, 'good sir knight'? Mayhap you think that my daughter is not good enough for you, you peasant b.a.s.t.a.r.d? Not as good as the . . . the wh.o.r.es and what-have-you that you've consorted with before coming here?"

The single most stupid thing I could possibly have done at that moment was to lose my temper. Naturally that's what I started to do. "At least they were honest wh.o.r.es," I shot back.

The court gasped in unison as if it possessed one throat. The king, royally, purpled. "And to think . . . to think that the queen pled with me on your behalf! To think that my daughter trusted you! To think that we invited you to join us, to be one of us! We should have known! Known that someone whose roots are from so low in our society could not possibly share that to which we aspire! The n.o.bility of spirit, the purity of soul! Here we thought that you would be able to join us in sharing our scrupulous sense of morality, and here you could not pollute it with the daughter of my loins! As if she was not good enough for you-!"

There may have been more ill timed moments for me to completely lose control of my sense of discretion, but in retrospect, none come to mind. "Scrupulous sense of morality!" I bellowed, appalled. "What a joke!"

"Joke? Joke?! You take advantage of my daughter, and you call it a joke?" You take advantage of my daughter, and you call it a joke?"

Never had I been less concerned about my long-term health than in that confrontation with the king. Because finally, finally I was going to say that which had been on my mind all that time. Even if he cut me down right there-which he probably would-he would at least hear the truth of it. He would hear about the foundation of sand upon which he had constructed this glorious little fantasy realm which existed-not around him, but instead only within his head. Lowborn b.a.s.t.a.r.d I might be, but I would take being a lowborn realist over being royalty trapped in self-delusion any day of the week. And I knew right where I was going to start in the deconstruction of this false world of chivalry and morality. First it would be with his delusion that his queen had been faithful, his daughter his own . . . and then I would move on to the circ.u.mstances of my own creation. At last, at last, I finally understood my true reason for existence. It was for nothing else other than to bring this world of lies and deceit crashing down. "Aye, joke, say I," I snapped at him. "And that's the biggest joke of all! Your daughter, you say? Your Your daughter of daughter of your your loins? And your wife, her mother? Why, I'll have you know that your queen-" loins? And your wife, her mother? Why, I'll have you know that your queen-"

And I stopped.

Because I saw Queen Bea's face go ashen.

She knew what I was about to say. She knew that, somehow, I knew. There was panic in that face, like a trapped animal. And maybe it was a case where she had utilized all of her ability to be deceitful on the sheer act of keeping it secret. That, once it was yanked out into the open, she would not be able to resolutely deny it to her husband's face.

All of that, though, was secondary, to the fact that her panicked gaze had reflexively shifted. With her secret about to be revealed, she had not looked at her husband, nor at me, nor her daughter.

Which, of course, made sense. In an instant like that, with your duplicity about to be revealed, you would not look to those from whom you kept the secret.

Instead, you would look to him with whom you shared it.

Without even turning my head, I saw where her gaze went. Saw where it went . . . and saw it returned, from a face as momentarily frightened and desperate as her own. A face that looked like an odd a.s.sortment of different parts slapped together. A face topped off by a jaunty fool's cap.

Well . . . of course. I mean, of course. I, who had been a joke for the entirety of my life . . . naturally, I would have a b.o.o.by for a sire. Any final doubts that Entipy and I shared the same father were washed away in that instant, because of course, of course . . . of course . . . it was too perfect. It was too cosmically apt, the answer to my long-standing question right in front of me, irrefutable and poetically just: Who else could possibly produce such a fool as I but a royal fool? it was too perfect. It was too cosmically apt, the answer to my long-standing question right in front of me, irrefutable and poetically just: Who else could possibly produce such a fool as I but a royal fool?

Queen Bea, and her clandestine lover, Odclay the jester, father of the princess, and of the princess's former intended, looked at each other in the way that only petrified deceivers can when their deceit is about to be made public.

And I knew at that instant that I was right. That she wouldn't be able to deny it. That I'd caught her too flatfooted . . . her and Odclay. If I kept the momentum going, they'd be sufficiently disconcerted so that the web of lies would come unwoven, the wall of silence and secrecy would crack.

It was right there, all of it, within my reach. With just a few words, I could bring an entire kingdom crashing down. With just a few words, I could avenge myself on my father. With just a few words, I could destroy the hypocrisy rife within the system that Runcible had created. All I had to do . . .

. . . all I had to do . . .

. . . was wreck the life of Queen Beatrice. A pathetic, frightened creature who, aside from her indiscretion, had done nothing. Nothing except be the only person in the castle who had treated me with compa.s.sion. Who had nursed me back to health, who had intervened on my behalf with the king. Even her "forcing" me to go on the mission to retrieve her daughter had been motivated by concern for her daughter and a sense that I was the right person for the job, that Entipy and I would share a bond. She couldn't possibly have known.

And Entipy. G.o.ds, the knowledge of what had happened . . . of who and what she was and wasn't . . . of what her mother was and wasn't . . . it would drive her mad. Truly mad. She had been a handful the entire time, there was no denying that. But she did not deserve to see her entire world crack apart around her. Did not deserve to be sent spiraling down into the pit of disgrace. My turning away from her and the future she had built around us was bad enough, but to see her own place in that denied, to suffer the scornful looks and contempt hurled upon all those pathetic creatures who had the heartless label slapped on them-"b.a.s.t.a.r.d"-how could I? How-?

Do it. Do it. This is what you've been waiting for. The king is a cuckold, the queen is faithless, the daughter is a loon, and your father is the only jest in the kingdom bigger than you. If you're not going to take advantage of marrying her, then at least have your revenge. Do what must be done . . . .

The king's voice was icier than the Frozen North. "My queen . . . is what," he said. It was not remotely a query. It was a prompting for the words that would, unbeknownst to the king, mean d.a.m.nation for all.

"-your queen . . . and your daughter . . . and you . . . deserve someone more worthy than a peasant b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I said quietly. "There is nothing more to say than that, Your Highness. And if that will not suffice . . . then throw me in the dungeon now and be done with it."

Chapter 31.

As dungeons went, it wasn't that bad. There were hardly any rats, the straw was changed daily, and the king-in a burst of generosity-hadn't manacled me to the wall.

I sat there, staring into darkness. The one thing I wasn't wondering was why the king hadn't simply executed me on the spot. The only thing I could think of was that the G.o.ds were not through tormenting me yet.

I knew I would never forget the astonishment that played over Bea's face, or the choked sob of betrayal and hurt that came from the throat of the princess. Nor, try as I might, the grinning triumph in the face of Mace Morningstar as the guards hauled me past him and away to the dungeons to await . . .

. . . what?

I didn't know. And at that point, I didn't care. For someone who had spent the entirety of his life caring first and foremost about himself, it was an odd sensation to have stopped giving it any priority at all.

My guess at that point was that the king was just going to leave me in there to rot. He could have me executed, of course. The volunteers would likely be lining up. But the king was less a believer in martyrdom and more a believer in mercy whenever possible, and in the grand demented scheme of things, he'd probably think that letting me live out the rest of my life in this hole was merciful.

I stared into the darkness and tried to figure out how I could have, should have, handled that final moment in a different manner. But try as I might, I simply could not see myself stripping away the queen's secret. Perhaps I saw in her, in some measure, some of the same traits that my mother had possessed. A fundamentally good woman who, owing to circ.u.mstances, wound up doing some fundamentally bad things. That was not, however, enough to make them fundamentally bad people who deserved the misfortunes that befell them. That was a far more accurate description of me, when you get down to it.

And that was, ultimately, what it boiled down to. I deserved this. I'd had a good run . . . made some good enemies . . . held triumph in my hand for a brief time . . . and now it was done. I was done. Over. All, all over.

I heard a turning of a key in the lock and looked up. For a moment I thought of trying to attack whoever was entering, but then reasoned that I might as well stay put. I had no idea, after all, what the odds would be like outside. There could be twenty men waiting for me in the hallway, and the person entering was the one who was going to give me food. If I jumped him, and then ran straight into the waiting arms of the guards, all I would have accomplished would have been to anger the person on whom I was depending for sustenance. What would be the point of that?

So I sat there and waited.

Of the four people I most did not want to see at that moment, naturally it was the one I didn't want to see most of all. That was probably because he was the one I'd been thinking about for the longest time.

Odclay stood a couple of steps away from me, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness. There was none of the fool about him. "I wouldn't suggest you try to get away; there's guards at either end of the corridor." The door swung shut behind him.

I said nothing, did nothing. Just stared at him. Part of me wanted to launch myself at him, to knock him to the floor, to feel his throat between my hands, to feel the pulse slow and stop beneath my fingers as I choked the life out of him. I would have. I should have.

I couldn't. I just couldn't work up the interest. After all this time, after all that had happened, it seemed . . . it seemed irrelevant to me somehow.

"How did you know?" he finally asked.

I told him. Why not? What did I have to lose at that point? In as flat and steady a voice as I could, I told him everything. The circ.u.mstances of my creation, the birthmark, the reason I had come to Isteria, the involvement with Entipy, the realization . . . all of it.

He took it all in, nodding. He didn't reply immediately. Instead he wandered the cell, looking around it as if he were surveying my summer home. Seeing him walk in this way, rather than capering about, I noticed for the first time that-in addition to his other deformities-he had a limp. I never would have thought that I would consider my physical impairment as having gotten off lucky.

And yet . . . part of me wanted him to deny it. After all, if he said he wasn't there, that left possibilities open. Finally he stopped wandering and leaned against the wall. "That night," he said softly, "was the worst night of my life."

" 'That night'?" I asked, momentarily confused. But then I understood. That night. That night with my mother. That terrible, terrible night. "Oh," I said.

"Yes. Oh." There was grim amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice, and no hint of the madness whatsoever. None. My thoughts flew back to Beatrice, talking about how people hid what they were. She wasn't talking about Entipy so much as she was talking about Odclay. He continued to speak, and it almost seemed as if he wasn't just speaking to me . . . but also to the distant shade of my mother. "Because when the knights insisted on my joining in . . . why, to them, it was the biggest joke of all, you see. A jester having a woman that knights had taken. It was the crowning giggle. I kept . . ."

His voice caught. He looked as if he was ready to cry. Unsurprisingly, my heart didn't exactly go out to him. "I kept . . . kept whispering in your mother's ear, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' even as I kept a grin forced on my face, and there were peels of laughter from all around. A joke. A great joke."

"You are so full of s.h.i.t," I said coldly. "They were likely halfdrunk. They couldn't have been too difficult to fool. You could have pretended, could have mimed it, could have joked your way out of it. Instead, you took her. Took her just like the others did, to prove to a group of men who thought you incapable that you could be as brutish as any of them. And you're sitting here now, years later, telling me that you were reluctant. That you, of all of them, were the man of conscience who didn't want to have anything to do with it, so that I'll feel . . . what? Compa.s.sion? Sorry for you?" I snorted. "You claim that you were forced. G.o.ds . . . you'd paint yourself to be as big a victim as she was. Let me say something, jester, that I'm sure very few say to you: Don't make me laugh."

He looked down, but he was smiling grimly. "Believe what you will, Apropos. I can't really blame you for it."

"Oh, good. I truly lived in fear of your blame." I studied him for a moment, thinking about all that had happened, putting the final pieces together. "It's been you, all along, hasn't it."

"I've already admitted to being with your moth-"

"Not that." I waved impatiently, as if the last thing of interest to me was that which I had been dwelling on for nearly two decades. "I mean the brains behind the throne. The craft. The cunning. It hasn't been Runcible at all, has it. It's been you."

He smiled at that. "Very good. I daresay you've inherited a good deal of my wit, along with some of my more," and he glanced at my leg, "unfortunate attributes."

"Shame my mother didn't mention to me one of her 'visitors' had any physical deformities. Might have narrowed down for me who to look at as potential father material."

Odclay shrugged. "It was dark. We were cloaked. And she had stars in her eyes that night, Apropos. That much I can tell you. To her . . . we were all giants. All of us. I . . ."

Then he saw how I was looking at him, and looked down. "In any event . . . yes, you're correct. As a jester, I've always been appreciative of the ultimate joke. None of them know, none of them realize . . . Runcible has no knack for strategy at all. He's neither wise nor clever . . . well, no more so than the average man. But it takes more than an average man to become king. It's always been me, guiding him in private, telling him what to do. He likes the limelight; I like to run things, try and make the world a better place."

"You've certainly made a mess of it so far," I said bluntly.

"We all do the best we can, in our own way. As you yourself have just done."

"I don't give two d.a.m.ns about the world," I said flatly. "I care about myself, and that's all."

"So you say," and he eyed me skeptically. "Yet you could have said what you knew, or guessed. But you were willing to sacrifice yourself on others' behalf. That's heroic, Apropos. A father could not be more proud of his son."

And that was all I could take. He was crouching near me when he said it, and that was his mistake. I lunged toward him, swinging as hard as I could. My fist caught him square in the face and I heard the satisfying crunch of a very familiar impact. He lay back on the ground, stunned.

"Enjoy your broken nose," I said tightly. "G.o.ds know I've had mine shattered enough times."

I leaned toward him and he put up his hands reflexively to try and ward me off. I think he thought I was going to hit him again. Once upon a time, I would have. Once upon a time, I would have set upon him and strangled him with my bare hands. But now . . .

. . . now I was just tired.

Instead I satisfied myself with looking at the blood gushing from his nose. Copious flow. Good. Nice to know I still had a good punch. Then I leaned back and just stared at him.

"And that's it?" asked Odclay after a while.

"You want more? I can accommodate you . . ."

"No, that's . . . quite all right. Still . . . it's interesting."

The longer he stayed, the more tired I was getting of him. "In what way?" I asked, despite my better judgment.

"Your world has widened, Apropos. I don't think you yet realize how much. Only a few years ago, if you'd known who I was, you'd likely have kept hitting me until I stopped moving, forever. Because vengeance against me was so much a part of your existence."

"Don't flatter yourself," I said.

He ignored me and went on, "But now you're part of a much greater, much grander scheme of things. Compared to that, I've shrunken to insignificance."

Slowly I shook my head. "You," I said slowly, "are a coward who raped my mother and hides his intelligence behind fool's motley. Take my word for it, Odclay: You were always insignificant."

He seemed prepared to argue the point, but instead shook his head. Then he rose and went to a far corner of the cell. I watched him with little interest . . . until I saw him push against one particular brick. Suddenly a small section of the wall slid aside. It was not much; just enough for us to slide through, one at a time, on our bellies. I gaped at it as Odclay turned back to me and gestured for me to enter. "After you," he said.

"You first," I replied cautiously.

He shrugged, apparently uncaring, and crawled in ahead of me. I waited for a moment, glanced around nervously, and then followed him in.

The pa.s.sageway remained narrow for a time, but in short order it widened out and I was able to stand. Odclay was already standing, and he was holding a torch in order to illuminate the area. He angled it down and I looked where he was pointing. My eyes widened. My staff was there, as were a few of my things . . . including the belt that held the jewels, gold, and other riches I'd garnered from Astel. He must not have looked within the pouches.

"Take them," he said tersely. "Let's go."

"Go . . . ?"

"Hurry up. It wasn't easy greasing the palms of the guards to 'forget' that I came in to see you. I think it wiser not to press our luck by acting as if we have all the time in the world."

Deciding that it would be best to save all questions, I picked up my staff and few belongings, and headed down the corridor. The jester remained close behind me, not saying anything. Indeed, what was there to say?

The flickering torchlight seemed to indicate that the path ahead was ending. Nothing but a large wall greeted us. However, Odclay pushed against another section and this one, too, swung open. I stepped out into the night air, breathing in deeply. It was a warm night and there was no rain, which was certainly a pleasant change of pace.

"I am sorry your mother was killed," he said softly. "You . . . seemed rather focused on the scars Meander carried upon him. Do you think that was her mark upon him? That he did it?"