Sageous stayed. His eyes kept returning to the shattered ruin of the tree. You'd have thought he'd lost his lover.

"Pagan, see to the Queen," Father said. "She may need calming."

A dismissal, plain and simple, but Sageous was too distracted to see it. He looked up from the glittering remains of the trunk I'd toppled. "Sire, I . . ."

You what, heathen? You want something? It's not your place to want.

"I . . ." This was new to Sageous, I could see that: he was used to control. "You should not be left unattended, Sire. The b-"

The boy? Say it man, spit it out.

"It may not be safe."

Wrong thing to say. I guessed the heathen had relied on his magics too long. If he'd truly learned my father's mind, he'd know better than to suggest he needed protection from me.

"Out."

Whatever else I might think of my dear father I always did admire his way with words.

The look Sageous gave me held more than hate. Where Katherine channelled a pure emotion the tattooed magician offered bewildering complexity. Oh, there was hate there, sure enough, but admiration too, respect maybe, and other flavours, all mixed in those mild brown eyes.

"Sire." He bowed and started toward the doors.

We watched him in silence, watched him pace across the sparkling carpet of debris, spotted here with a discarded fan, there with a powdered wig. The doors closed behind him with a dull clang of bronze on bronze. A scar on the wall behind the throne caught my attention. I threw a hammer once, hard, and missed my target. It hit there. It seemed to be a day for old scars, old feelings.

"I want Gelleth," Father said.

I had to admire his ability to wrong-foot me. I stood there armed with accusations, burdened with all my yesterdays, and he'd turned away from me, to the future.

"Gelleth hinges on the Castle Red," I said. It was a test. That was just how we spoke. Every conversation a game of poker, every line a bet or a raise, a bluff or a call.

"Party tricks are well and good. You killed the Teuton. I didn't think you had it in you. You scandalized my court-well, we both know what they are, and what they're worth. But can you do it when it counts? Can you give me Gelleth?"

I met his stare. I didn't inherit his blue eyes, I followed Mother in that department. There was a whole winter in those eyes of his, and nothing else. Even in Sageous's placid gaze I could dig deeper and find a subtext, but Father's eyes held nothing but a cold season. I think that was where the fear lay, in the lack of curiosity. I've seen malice many a time and hate in all its colours. I've seen the gleam in the torturer's eyes, the sick-light, but even there was the comfort of interest, the slightest touch of salvation in shared humanity. He might have the hot irons, but at least he was curious, at least he cared how much it hurt.

"I can give you Gelleth," I said.

Could I? Probably not. Of all Ancrath's neighbours, Gelleth stood una.s.sailable above the rest. The Lord of Gelleth probably had better claim to the Empire Throne than Father did. In the Hundred, Merl Gellethar had few equals.

I found my hand on the hilt of my dagger. I itched to draw the tempered steel, to lay it across his neck, to scream at him, to bring some heat into those cold eyes. You traded my mother's death away, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Your own son's blood. Sweet William dead and barely cold, and you traded them away. A pax for the rights to river trade.

"I'll need an army," I said. "Castle Red won't fall easy."

"You will have the Forest Watch." Father spread his hands over the throne's armrests and leaned back, watching.

"Two hundred men?" I felt my fingers tighten on the pommel of my knife. Two hundred men against the Castle Red. Ten thousand might not be enough.

"I'll take my brothers too," I said. I watched his eyes. No flicker in the winter, no start at "brother." The weakness in me wanted to speak of Will. "You'll have Gelleth. I will give you the Castle Red. I'll give you the head of the Lord Gellethar. Then you'll give the heathen to me."

And you'll call me "son."

22.

So we sat, Makin and I, at a table in The Falling Angel tavern with a jug of ale between us, and the song of a cracked-voice bard struggling to be heard against the din. Around us the brothers mixed with the lowest of the Low Town, gaming, whoring, and gorging. Rike sat close at hand, his face buried in a roast chicken. He appeared to be attempting to inhale it.

"Have you even seen the Castle Red, Jorg?" Makin asked.

"No."

Makin looked at his ale. He hadn't touched it. For a few moments we listened to the sound of Rike crunching chicken bones.

"Have you?" I asked.

He nodded slowly and leaned back in his chair, eyes on the lanterns above the street-door. "When I was a squire to Sir Reilly, we took a message to the Lord Gellethar. We stayed a week in the guest halls at the Castle Red before Merl Gellethar deigned to see us. His throne-room puts your father's to shame."

Brother Burlow staggered by, belly escaping over his st.u.r.dy belt, a haunch of meat in one hand and two flagons in the other, foaming over his knuckles.

"What about the castle?" I could care less about a p.i.s.sing contest over throne-rooms.

Makin toyed with his ale, but didn't drink. "It's suicide, Jorg."

"That bad?"

"Worse," he said.

A painted wh.o.r.e, hennaed hair and red-mouthed, backed into Makin's lap. "Where's your smile, my handsome?" She had good t.i.ts, full and high, pushed into an inviting sandwich in a bodice of lace and whalebone. "I'm sure I could find it." Her hands vanished into the froth of her skirts where they bunched around Makin's waist. "Sally will make it all good. My handsome knight doesn't need no boys to keep him warm." She flicked a jealous glance my way.

Makin pitched her to the floor.

"It's built into a mountain. What shows above the rock are walls so high it hurts your neck to look up at the battlements." Makin reached for his ale and fastened both hands around the flagon.

"Ow!" The wh.o.r.e picked herself up from the wet boards and wiped her hands on her dress. "You didn't have to do that now!"

Makin didn't spare her a glance. He turned his dark eyes on me. "The doors are iron, thick as a sword is long. And what's above the ground isn't but a tenth part of it. There's provisions in those deep vaults to last years."

Sally proved to be a true professional. She transferred her attentions to me, so smooth you'd think I'd been the object of her affection all along. "And who might you be, now?" She came in close, running her fingers into my hair. "You're too pretty for that grumpy sell-sword," she said. "You're old enough to learn how it works with girls, and Sally will show you."

She had her mouth close to my ear now, sending tickles down my neck. I could smell her cheap lemon-gra.s.s scent, cutting through the ale stink, and the dream-weed on her breath.

"How many men would it take? To bring the place down around Lord Gellethar's ears?" I asked.

Makin's eyes returned to the lanterns and his knuckles went white around his flagon. Somewhere behind us Rike gave a roar, quickly followed by the splintering sound of a body meeting a table at high speed.

"If you had ten thousand men," Makin said, raising his voice above the crashing sounds. "Ten thousand men, well supplied, and with siege machines, lots of siege engines, then you might have him in a year. That's if you could keep his allies off your back. With three thousand you might starve him out eventually."

I caught hold of Sally's hand as it slipped across my belly to the buckle of my belt. I twisted her wrist a little, and she came front and centre, sharpish, with a high-pitched gasp. She had green eyes, like Katherine's but more narrow and not so clear. Under the paint she had fewer years on me than I first thought, she might be twenty, certainly no more.

"And what if I found us a way in? What then, Brother Makin? How many men to take the Castle Red if I opened us a door?" I spoke to Sally's face, inches before mine.

"The garrison stands at nine hundred. Veterans mostly. He sends his fresh meat to the borders and takes it back when it's been seasoned." I heard Makin's chair sc.r.a.pe back. "Which son of a wh.o.r.e threw that?" he yelled.

I kept the wh.o.r.e's wrist turned. I took her throat in my other hand and drew her closer. "Tonight we'll call you Katherine, and you can show me how it works with girls."

Some of the dream-haze left her eyes, replaced by fear. That was all right with me. I had two hundred men and no secret door into the Castle Red. It seemed only right that somebody should be worried.

23.

My book shifted again. I say "my" book, but in truth it was stolen, filched from Father's library on the way out of the Tall Castle. The book lurched at me, threatening to snap shut on my nose.

"Lie still, d.a.m.n you," I said.

"Mmmgfll." Sally gave a sleepy murmur and nestled her face in the pillow.

I settled the book back between her b.u.t.tocks and nudged her legs slightly further apart with my elbows. Over the top of the page I could see the faint-k.n.o.bbed ridge of Sally's spine tracing its path across her smooth back to be lost in the red curls around her neck. I wasn't convinced that the text before me was more interesting than what lay beneath it.

"It says here that there's a valley in Gelleth they call the Gorge of Leucrota," I said. "It's in the badlands down below the Castle Red."

The morning light streamed through the open window. The air had a chill to it, but a good one, like the bite on ale.

"Mmmnnn." Sally's voice came from the pillow.

I'd tired her out. You can wear even wh.o.r.es out when you're that young. The combination of a woman and time on my hands wasn't one I'd tried before. I found the mix to my liking. There's a lot to be said for not being in a queue, or not having to finish up before the flames take hold of the building. And the willingness! That was new too, albeit paid for. In the dark I could imagine it was free.

"Now if I know my ancient Greek, and I do, a leucrota is a monster that speaks with a human voice to lure its prey." I bent my neck to bite at the back of her thigh. "And in my experience, any monster that talks in a human voice, is human. Or was."

My feet hung over the end of the bed. I wiggled my toes. Sometimes that helps.

I reached for the oldest of the three books I'd stolen. A Builder text on plasteek sheets, wrinkled by some ancient fire. Scholars in the east would pay a hundred in gold for Builder texts, but I hoped for more profit than that.

I'd been taught the Builder speech by Tutor Lundist. I learned it in a month and he'd gone bragging to anyone who'd listen, until Father shut his mouth with one of those dark looks he's famed for. Old Lundist said I knew the Builder speech as well as any in the Broken Empire, but I couldn't make sense of more than half the words in the little book I'd stolen.

I could read the "Top Secret" at the head and foot of every page, but "Neurotoxicology," "Carcinogen," "Mutogen"? Maybe they were old styles of hat. To this day I don't know. The words I did recognize were interesting enough though. "Weapons," "Stockpile," "Ma.s.s Destruction." The last but one page even had a shiny map, all contours and elevations. Tutor Lundist taught me a little geography as well. Enough to match that small map to the "Views from Castle Red" painstakingly executed in the large but dull A History of Gelleth whose leather-bound spine nestled in the cleft of dear Sally's oh-so-biteable backside.

Even when I understood the Builder words, the sentences didn't make sense. "Binary weapon leakage is now endemic. The lighter than air unary compounds show little toxic effect, though rosiosis is a common topological exposure symptom."

Or, from the same page: "Mutagenic effects are common downstream of binary spills." I could stretch my Greek to guess the meaning, but it hardly seemed reasonable. Perhaps I'd stolen an old storybook?

"Jorg!" Makin hollered through the door. "The escort's here to take you to the Forest Watch."

Sally started up at that, but I pressed her down.

"Tell them to wait," I called.

The Forest Watch weren't going to be much use to me. Not unless they had ten thousand friends that wanted to come along.

"Sweet Jesu I'm sore." Sally tried to get up again. "Oh! It's morning already. Sammeth will kill me."

"I said still, d.a.m.n it." I found a coin from my purse on the table and tossed it up to her. "That for your d.a.m.n Sammeth."

She slumped back with a comfortable protest.

"Binary weapon leakage . . ." As if speaking the words would add meaning.

"You're going to the Castle Red then?" Sally said. She stifled a yawn.

I raised a hand to slap her into silence. Of course she didn't see it and A History of Gelleth blocked the best target.

"Say h.e.l.lo to all those little red people for me," she said.

Rosiosis.

I lowered my hand to her hip. "Little red people?"

"Uh huh."

I felt her wiggle under my palm. I gripped harder. "Little red people?"

"Yes." A whine of irritation tinged her voice. "Why do you think they call it the Castle Red?"

I pulled myself to a sitting position. "Makin! Get in here!" I shouted it loud enough for the whole inn to hear. He came in sharp enough, one hand on his sword. A smile found its way to his lips when he saw Sally sprawled out naked, but he kept his hand where it was.

"My prince?"

Sally really did try to get up at that. She almost made it to all fours and A History went flying.

"Prince? n.o.body said nothing about a prince! He ain't no bleedin' prince!"

I pushed her down again.

"That conversation we had yesterday, Makin," I said.

"Yes?"

"Anything you'd like to add to the description? Anything about those nine hundred veterans?" I asked.

For a moment he looked as blank as idiot Maical.