The Fire Prince (The Cursed Kingdoms Trilogy Book 2) (7 page)

“You’ve got to see everything, night as well as day.” Bennick pulled out the knife with a single jerk. He wiped it as though wiping off blood. “All right, lad. To sleep with you. There’s more riding tomorrow.”

“Where are we going?”

“Where the road takes us.”

Bennick’s tone said it was a question he shouldn’t have asked. But Jaumé already knew part of the answer. Bennick had told him in Cornas. They were going to Ankeny. To meet a prince. The rest, Jaumé could guess. Nolt and his men weren’t running away like the farmers with their carts. They were heading north to fight.

Jaumé shivered in his blanket, in the cooling night. There was only one thing to fight and that was the curse. But how could you fight what you couldn’t see?

CHAPTER SIX

K
AREL STOOD AT
parade rest scanning Princess Brigitta’s private garden—the tall hedges, the rose bushes, the paths of crushed pink and white marble, the bower where the princess sat with her maid, Yasma.

His gaze rested on the princess for a moment. She was returning to herself slowly, returning to the person she’d been before her brief, terrible marriage to Duke Rikard.

No,
he corrected himself.
She can never fully go back to who she was
.

The weeks when she’d lived in a daze of poppy syrup, when the duke had raped her daily—those weeks could never be erased. Princess Brigitta could move forward, though, and Yasma was seeing that she did. The princess was eating properly again. She was sleeping without the aid of the poppy syrup. Her skin had regained its color, her golden hair its luster, her eyes their alertness, but beneath those things was damage, as it was with Yasma. The terror he glimpsed in the maid’s eyes when armsmen noticed her, the way she shrank into herself—Princess Brigitta shared some of those scars now.

He examined the garden again, and let his gaze return to the two girls: Yasma dark and slender, with a bondservant’s iron band pinched about her upper arm, and the princess pale and golden, a delicate crown woven into her hair.

If I could, I would free you both
.

But he wasn’t free himself. He was bound to this gold-roofed palace until the term of his service ended, the lives of his family his bond. Seventeen more years. An eternity.

He scanned the garden again, his gaze skimming over hedges and paths and the green oval of grass.

Here, three short weeks ago, Princess Brigitta had committed her act of treason, slipping Osgaard’s plans for invasion to the Lundegaardan ambassador’s wife. The risk she’d taken had been appalling, but the consequences were beyond anything he’d dared to imagine. Freedom for Lundegaard, and Duke Rikard’s fall from grace. And his death.

Karel allowed himself to savor the memory of Rikard’s death. The man’s final words echoed in his ears.
Out of my way, you whoreson islander. She’s mine
. He couldn’t remember drawing his sword, but he could remember the jolt of the blade sinking into Rikard’s neck, the smell of the man’s blood.

A sharp, exultant satisfaction filled him.
This whoreson islander killed you,
he told the dead duke.
The princess belongs to herself again, not you.

But that was untrue. Princess Brigitta belonged to her father, and he would bestow her on someone else now that she was widowed. Another man like Duke Rikard, most likely, who’d never see her for who she was. Her heart, her mind—those were what made Princess Brigitta special, not her face.

Footsteps crunched fast on the marble path. Karel swung around, gripping his sword hilt.

Prince Jaegar. The princess’s half-brother and heir to the throne, his crown bound to his head by his long, ash-blond hair.

The prince’s expression was usually cold, but today a fierce, gleeful grin lit his face. “Britta!” He strode onto the grass, half a dozen armsmen at his heels. “Father’s dead.”

For a moment everything seemed to stand still, and then sound and motion rushed back into the world. Birds sang, a rose petal drifted in the breeze, Princess Brigitta and Yasma scrambled to their feet.

“What happened?” the princess asked. Emotions crossed her face: astonishment, relief.

Yasma backed away as far as she could. She stood with her head bowed, trying to make herself invisible.

“Another of his rages. His face went purple and he dropped dead.”

“Oh,” the princess said. “How... how...” She was clearly groping for a word that wasn’t a lie. “How shocking.”

“Indeed.” Prince Jaegar’s teeth gleamed white. They looked as sharp as a wolf’s, and then Karel blinked and the illusion was gone. “I thought you should be the first to know.”

“Thank you.”

Prince Jaegar didn’t hug his half-sister, didn’t take her hands, didn’t offer any comfort. He turned on his heel, the grin still on his face. “You’ll tell the boys? I have a lot to do.”

“Of course.”

Karel watched him leave. The prince wasn’t as massive with fat as King Esger, his bulk was more muscular. Prince Jaegar controlled his appetites and his emotions in a way his father had never managed.

No, not Prince Jaegar. Heir-Ascendant Jaegar. Osgaard’s rule was passing to a new king. One crueler than Esger and far more dangerous.

“Britta?” Yasma said, once the Heir-Ascendant was out of earshot. “Are you all right?”

Princess Brigitta nodded. She looked slightly dazed. And worried.
She’s wondering how life will change for us now
.

“I’m fine,” she said, and then more briskly, “We must hurry to the nursery. I must tell my brothers!”

A
T MIDNIGHT,
K
AREL
went off duty, leaving the princess’s safety in her second armsman’s care. The palace was more alive than it usually was at this hour. Courtiers bustled and bondservants scurried. There was a frisson of nervous energy in the marble corridors. He tasted it on his tongue, slightly metallic, as if the air itself knew that the world was dangerously different.

Karel joined the line of men queuing for food in the armsmen’s mess hall.

He went over the afternoon as he waited. The cool late-autumn sunshine, the roses losing their petals, Prince Jaegar grinning. And then the nursery, smelling of cinnamon and hot milk, and the young princes bewildered by their half-sister’s news.

Four-year-old Lukas had been inclined to tears. Not grief, but fear, if Karel read him aright. “You won’t leave us?” he’d asked Princess Brigitta, almost frantically. “Promise?”

The boys were orphans now, and it wasn’t just mother and father they lacked, but Prince Harkeld too. Small wonder Lukas was terrified of losing his half-sister.

“I promise,” the princess had said, hugging him.

It had been a rash promise to make. Princess Brigitta was a pawn, with no more control over her future than Yasma had. And from the expression on her face, she had known it.

Karel reached the front of the line. A bondservant piled mashed turnips on a plate, and thick blood sausages bursting from their skins. The man was from the Esfaban Islands, his hair as black as Karel’s, his skin as brown. There was a fresh bruise on his face, fresh welts on his arms; he’d taken a beating today. Their eyes met for a moment. Karel gave the man a brief nod, acknowledging the servitude he endured. If not for his own parents’ bondservice, he’d be wearing an iron armband, not the golden breastplate of an armsman.

He took his plate and a tankard of ale to a table, picking one where men who guarded the king’s audience chamber sat. If there were rumors about King Esger’s death, he wanted to hear them.

More men arrived; the seats filled up. Karel cut his food slowly, chewed slowly, listening to the conversations around him.

“Shrieking one minute, then keeled over the next.”

“His face was right awful to see.”

“...dark purple. Like one of them plums.”

“You reckon it was natural?” someone asked in a whisper.

Karel didn’t raise his eyes from his plate.

“I dunno,” someone else answered. “But did you see Jaegar’s face when it happened? He just about pissed himself, he was so happy.”

“Pissed himself? He looked like he was having the best rut of his life. I’ll wager he was coming in his underbreeches.”

An armsman gave a snort of laughter, choked on his food, and began to cough.

“Bet he’s found himself a bondservant to tup tonight,” someone said.

“More’n one, I’ll wager,” another armsman said. “He’ll be rutting all night.”

“Island girls,” someone said slyly, to Karel’s right. “He likes how they squeal.”

That comment was aimed at him. Karel ignored it, chewing stolidly, his eyes on his plate.

“So do I,” the man opposite him said. “I had a good one last night. Looked like this whoreson right here. His sister, I reckon.”

Karel raised his eyes and gazed at the man, unresponsive, as if he hadn’t understood the words. The armsman was baiting him, seeing if he’d rise.
You think I’d risk my family’s freedom for one such as you?

The armsman snorted in disgust. “Little better than an animal, you are. Nothing up here.” He tapped his forehead.

Karel marked the man’s face in his memory and looked back down at his plate, cut another piece of blood sausage.
I’ll have you on the training ground
. During wrestling, he decided as he chewed. An accidental knee in the groin. The man wouldn’t be able to rape bondservants for a week. Forever, if he kneed him hard enough.

And then he regretfully laid the fantasy aside. His position was too precarious, his family’s freedom too precious. He dared not step outside the rules. He’d trounce the armsman, but there’d be no knee to the groin. It would be a clean win. Nothing anyone could cavil at.

“He’d’ve done it, if he could,” someone said around a mouthful of food. “But I don’t see how.”

“Don’t you?” The voice was low. “Don’t you remember his visitor last week?”

Karel glanced to his left. The speakers were some of Jaegar’s personal armsmen.

“Which visitor? He had several.”

Karel looked back at his plate, listening intently.

“The peg leg.”

“Him?” someone said scornfully. “What’s he to do with anything?”

“Jaegar was real careful we couldn’t hear anything, wasn’t he?”

“So?”

“So what did they do?” the armsman said, his voice growing exasperated.

“I dunno. Talked.”

“You’re as thick as that idiot islander,” the armsman said. “He gave Jaegar something in a flask and was paid for it. Don’t you remember?”

“So?”

“I reckon peg leg’s a Fithian poison master.”

“What?” someone said loudly. “A Fith—”

“Keep your voice down,” the armsman hissed.

Karel concentrated on keeping his expression bored, trying to look like a cow chewing its cud.
Listening? Me?

“No way he was Fithian,” someone disagreed, his voice prudently low. “Only got one leg.”

“And even if he was, you need to keep your mouth shut. Jaegar’ll have your head on a stake for a rumor like that. With your tongue cut out.”

Karel silently agreed. He finished his meal while the mess hall emptied around him. Jaegar’s armsmen departed, some to sleep, others to find bondservants to rut.

Karel sipped his ale, turning the conversation over in his head. A Fithian poison master with a peg leg? It sounded ludicrously far-fetched.

But from what he knew of Jaegar, he could believe the man had poisoned his father.
That
wasn’t far-fetched at all. Three of Esger’s four wives had been murdered. Why not Esger himself?