Prince Thief

CHAPTER ONE

As meetings to decide the fate of a city went, this one was looking a lot like the prelude to a riot.

Of the gathered audience, only a few were paying attention to the stage where I’d somehow found myself; the rest were turned to bawl at a neighbour, or to spew invectives at the rows behind them. Half a dozen self-contained arguments had broken out along the length and breadth of the room, any of which might explode into violence at the slightest provocation.

Then again, perhaps it was all that could be expected of a seating plan that placed bankers besides extortionists, veteran warriors between crime bosses and cloth magnates.

“Settle down!” bellowed Alvantes from the front of the stage. He was gripping the lectern with the whitened knuckles of his one hand, while trying to keep the stump of his recently injured other arm from view.

I doubted it was improving Alvantes’s mood that the only venue he’d been able to find for this meeting was the hall Castilio Mounteban had so recently used for the same purpose: Mounteban, the self-same scheming crook that Alvantes had fought to roust from power hardly a day before; the man who had somehow united the disparate factions before us, had then held them together with little more than threats and promises; Mounteban who, in short, was a hundred times better at this sort of thing than Alvantes himself.

“We have to at least discuss the possibility of surrender,” Alvantes cried — obviously not feeling his audience’s mood was quite volatile enough already. “We know the King is on his way. We know he intends to end the Castoval’s independence, and by force if necessary. If we fight and lose, we’ll be crushed. If we negotiate, we might still avoid the worst reprisals.”

He hadn’t finished the sentence before a dozen of those listening were on their feet, howling over each other to see who could make himself heard first.

“Avoid reprisals? Perhaps for yourself, Guard-Captain.” From his thick accent, not to mention his knotted hair and fur-trimmed cloak, it was easy to recognise the speaker as a survivor of the warlord Moaradrid’s recent invasion; one of those who’d chosen to back Mounteban rather than attempt the trek back to his distant northern home. He had a point, too. Given that Mounteban had plotted against the King and that Moaradrid’s crimes included the murder of his son, Prince Panchetto, it was hard to imagine his highness looking favourably on either allegiance.

If he thought Alvantes would be spared, though, the northerner’s grasp on recent events was shaky at best. Given that the King had already tried to execute him once, given that he’d had his father murdered in the street for aiding our escape from the royal dungeons, it was a safe bet that Alvantes’s name placed highly on our lunatic monarch’s “to kill slowly” list.

In the meantime, the racket was only getting louder. From beside Alvantes, Marina Estrada cried out, “Please, this isn’t helping anyone.”

Estrada might have been running a town until recently, not to mention orchestrating the resistance effort against Moaradrid and helping Alvantes to liberate this very city — but just now, she might as well have been trying to put out a forest fire with a thimbleful of water.

Her words were swept away like spilled milk in a rainstorm, and even the fierce northerner’s bark was already being drowned out. “You think you got problems?” roared a huge man with scar-latticed skin and a scruff of shorn hair. “If the King don’t do for us, the Boar’ll have our necks on the block before the day’s done.”

If his appearance hadn’t already given it away, the use of that particular nickname for Alvantes would have identified the man. He belonged to one of the criminal fraternities that had given Mounteban his initial leverage in the city; if I remember rightly, he went by the name of Holes Morales, in honour of all those he’d left in shallow graves outside the walls of Altapasaeda. And once again, his logic was sound: half of those here would have faced imprisonment at the very least under the old order.

A variety of similarly rough-looking characters were bickering to make similar observations, but the voice that actually made it to the surface was of an altogether different tenor. It was a squeal more than a shout, yet its note of sheer desperation was enough to cut through the uproar. “Guard-Captain Alvantes, what about those of us innocent of any wrongdoing? Will the King care that we were tricked and cajoled into treachery?”

I recognised Lord Eldunzi, eldest scion of the house Eldunzi. Given how quick he’d been to turn his coat, I felt he had a cheek. Perhaps some of the families had gone along with Mounteban against their will, but I suspected that, for most, the chance to trade profitable subservience for unrestrained wealth had been too good to miss.

Well, that more or less covered the three factions Mounteban had persuaded to share power in Altapasaeda: a resounding “three against, nil for” vote in favour of negotiation.

Not for the first time, I regretted letting Estrada talk me into taking the stage with her. I supposed she’d meant it as acknowledgment of my recent efforts in the city’s rescue. However, given how quickly our heroic liberation of Altapasaeda had turned sour, I would far rather my part be hurriedly forgotten.

I did my best to shrink into the background as Alvantes leaned forward and raised his voice once more to drown the clamour. “All right! You don’t want to surrender. Neither do I. Yet you all agree you’re not willing to fight. Who do you expect to defend Altapasaeda if not its own people?”

“Isn’t that your job?” someone piped up from towards the back.

“With what?” Alvantes cried. “A few dozen exhausted guardsmen and amateur soldiers?”

“With what? With those bloody giants is with what!”

That comment brought a steady roar of approval. Good luck to Alvantes explaining the concept of giant pacifism to his unruly audience — for how could anyone who hadn’t witnessed it believe that the terrifying creatures we’d brought here could barely even be persuaded to defend themselves? It was only because I’d accidentally stolen a giant and even more accidentally befriended him that I’d come to understand; for Saltlick and his people, violence was something alien and utterly abhorrent.

“The giants won’t fight for us,” Alvantes said simply. A note of defeat was starting to enter his voice, and he was hardly trying to restrain it. After everything he’d been through to save this city, everything he’d sacrificed, I could see that the churlish defeatism he was up against was grating upon his good intentions. Then there was the fact that the very threat he was striving to protect his home from was the king he’d served dutifully all his life. All things considered, it wasn’t a good day to be former Guard-Captain Lunto Alvantes.

It was only about to get worse.

“What about Mounteban?” someone heckled from towards the centre — and at the mention of that name, the atmosphere in the room changed immediately, as though every light had dimmed or the temperature abruptly climbed.

There was a pause, uncomfortably long, and then another voice echoed, “Yeah! Where’s Mounteban?”

“Mounteban! Where is he?”

“We’ll talk to Mounteban!”

In a moment it had become a chorus, that one name resounding down the length and breadth of the hall.

Alvantes stood it for a full ten seconds before he broke. Then he lashed a foot into the lectern and it tore loose with a thunderous crack, to burst into pieces on the tiles below. Alvantes stood, sides heaving, eyes roving across his suddenly-silent audience — as though challenging them to acknowledge his outburst, or to so much as whisper that hated name again.

“This meeting is over,” he spat, and stormed from the stage.

Outside, the city was in chaos.

Roughly half the populace had chosen to stay at home, and were in the process of barricading those homes against any and every threat. Such was generally the case here in the wealthy South Bank, where some of the families had the sort of resources that could fend off even a royal army — for a while, at least.

The other portion of the city’s inhabitants had decided that the best place to be right now would be anywhere but Altapasaeda. These had bundled their possessions onto whatever modes of transport or beasts of burden came to hand — horses, donkeys, handcarts, their own or other people’s children — before heading swiftly for the nearest city gate.

Whichever exit they chose, they wouldn’t get far. Every gate was closed, and protected by a mixed squad of guardsmen and the irregular soldiers Estrada had brought here. Alvantes was calling it a temporary measure to keep both city and surrounding countryside from falling into further turmoil, but I couldn’t help wondering how temporary it would turn out to be. As the disastrous meeting had made abundantly clear, Altapasaeda had a short enough future ahead of it if its own populace weren’t willing to stay and defend it.

Just then, however, Alvantes seemed oblivious to anything but his own seething frustration. Where anyone got in his way he simply barged through, leaving horses whickering and men and women shouting in his wake. I followed a few paces behind, still unable to think of anywhere better I could be while the city was busy tearing itself apart, and Estrada struggled to keep pace with Alvantes.

She gave him five minutes, waiting until we were near the inner border of the South Bank district before she said, “You know they’re just afraid.”

Alvantes didn’t look back. “Of course they’re afraid. Cowards are always afraid.”

“Lunto-”

“What?” he said. “You think I’m being unfair?”

“I think there are bigger questions we have to face.”

“Because I think that what’s unfair is handing this city back to Castilio Mounteban when we’ve only just wrestled it out of his filthy grasp. What’s unfair is that he’s relaxing in comfort when he should be resting his neck on the block in Red Carnation Square. I think…” Alvantes finally caught himself, and the last of his anger came out in a sigh of bitter vexation. “I think you’re right as always, Marina… and I’m glad beyond measure that you’re here, if only to stop me doing something I might regret.”

Estrada reached to touch his arm, careful to choose the one that still had a hand attached to it. “I know how hard this is for you.”

Finally pausing to face her, Alvantes managed the weakest of smiles. “It’s hard for everyone. You must be worried about Muena Palaiya.”

“I doubt the King will stop to bother with one town,” she said. “It’s if Altapasaeda falls that they’ll have something to worry about. The best thing I can do for my people right now is to be here helping you.”

“Helping me? Only, it seems no one much cares what I think.” Much of the bitterness had returned to Alvantes’s voice. “They’d prefer to put their city in the hands of a self-serving crook.”

“Bigger questions, Lunto. They think of you as part of the old order. Then, the minute you walk through the gates, they hear the King’s marching an army on their city. They’re going to have to learn to trust you. In the meantime-”

“Yes, I know. In the meantime, they want Mounteban. Good old honest Castilio Mounteban, the people’s hero. Well if they want him so badly, maybe they deserve him.”

Alvantes set off pacing again, and this time Estrada left him to it. She had her own reasons to despise Mounteban, just as I did — in her case, an amorous attempt that had gone far too far, in mine a deranged assassin sent after my life. In fact, it was arguable that we both had more reason to hate him than Alvantes did. Yet just then I felt remarkably unfazed by the prospect of having the man I’d risked so much to depose weasel his way back into power. Perhaps it was only the shock of discovering that my best efforts to do the right thing had led to nothing except disaster, but ever since the King’s message had arrived I’d found it hard to care about much of anything.

We’d barely passed the border of the South Bank, marked by an arch of twisted iron decked and twined with flowers, before our objective presented itself. Since his defeat, Mounteban had been confined to his rooms in the Dancing Cat, the inn he’d made his base of operations. It was a luxurious establishment, perched upon the edges of the rich Upper Market District and the mansion-filled South Bank. Until Mounteban had taken it over, the Cat had catered solely to wealthy patrons resting on their way home from an exhausting day’s shopping. The question of just what Mounteban had done with its original proprietor was one of the many left to hang before the more pressing business at hand.

There were two guardsmen on the main entrance, both of whom I recognised from Alvantes’s trusted inner circle. Inside, another sat at the bottom of the stairs, on one of the few chairs still intact. Most of the remaining furniture had been smashed to smithereens in the violence that had led up to Mounteban’s capture — a fight this man had seen his share of, if the bandage around his arm was anything to judge by. Lastly, at the head of the staircase stood waiting Sub-Captain Navare, former undercover agent in the Suburbs beyond the northern wall. Seeing Alvantes starting up the stairs, he threw a smart salute.

“Has he given you any trouble?” asked Alvantes, sounding almost hopeful. He had wanted to throw Mounteban in the dankest depths of the city prison, and only Estrada’s caution had kept him from doing it.

“Quiet as a temple rat,” replied Navare. “I think he’s been asleep.”

“Or else quietly prying off those planks we nailed across his window?”

“I put a man in the yard,” replied Navare, “looking out for precisely that. Not a word from him so far.”

Alvantes didn’t quite hide his disappointment. Brushing past Navare, he made to knock at the heavy panelled door, caught himself, and slammed it open instead.

Already doubting my part in this latest turn of events, I didn’t much feel like following after, but Estrada was close behind me, and I couldn’t think of a decent enough excuse to make my exit. I fell into step, entering the room a little cautiously, and edged into a corner so as to be well out of whatever came next.

The room was certainly luxurious, a wide and airy space with brilliantly white walls hung with tapestries and rich, patterned carpets on the floors. The furniture was all of dark wood, and more solid than that demolished by the ruckus in the taproom; the desk and broad bed might even have been sturdy enough to survive that violence.

However, I suspected the extravagance had been inherited from the inn’s true owner, for imprinted upon it were signs of an altogether more austere personality. The desk was literally buried in maps and other papers, with just enough arrangement to suggest the inklings of some order. The bed looked as if it hadn’t been made in weeks; the rugs were scuffed with countless boot prints. My sense was that Mounteban had chosen this location as a compromise, between what he was accustomed to and what he knew would be expected of a man who could run a place like Altapasaeda.

As for Mounteban himself, he certainly didn’t look like he’d been relaxing. Sat before the desk, he looked, in fact, like someone for whom sleep had become a distant memory. His eyes were shadowed, and despite his bulk and copious beard, his face looked drawn. He had flinched at Alvantes’s entrance, and now he stared up, with a bravado that didn’t quite hide the tension beneath it.

“You can relax,” scoffed Alvantes. “If you were going to be executed, I wouldn’t have bothered to come in person; I’d have sent the city’s sewer cleaners. No, it’s quite the opposite, Mounteban. We’re letting you go.”

Mounteban’s face didn’t change; neither the veneer of courage nor the strain it failed to mask. “I don’t understand.”

“What’s not to understand?” Alvantes spat. “You’ve won, damn you. Altapasaeda will get its independence, whether it wants it or not — or else be burned to the ground by its own king. And you’ve poisoned the place so thoroughly that no one will listen to anyone besides you. So get up. Get out. If you really claim any shred of good intentions then make those scum you brought together understand that this city hasn’t a chance without their help.”

“They’re asking for you, Castilio,” said Estrada. “The alliance you brought together is falling apart. They won’t listen to us. And if they don’t listen to someone, the King will simply march into Altapasaeda in a week’s time, with no one to hinder him.”

Mounteban’s only response was a stiff nod, as though he’d weighed what they’d told him and found it credible.

“No gloating?” asked Alvantes, disgust dripping from each syllable. “No grand speech? Not going to explain again how you decided to elect yourself prince of the city for its own good?”

“Do you think I want this any more than you do?” Now that he wasn’t anticipating an imminent demise, some of Mounteban’s self-possession was beginning to return. “Whether or not you believe it, I did have Altapasaeda’s best interests at heart.”

Alvantes gave him a ghastly smile. “Of course you did.”

“Still,” continued Mounteban, “I knew when I started that it might come to this.”

“You thought the King might come knocking if you absconded with his city? How astute.”

“I thought there might be some reprisal. So I planned for it… which is more, it seems, than you did, Guard-Captain.”

Alvantes lurched forward, fist clenched. “I said I’d let you talk to them, Mounteban. I didn’t say what state you’d be in when you got there.”

In a moment, Mounteban was on his feet, sending his chair clattering to the floor.

“Stop it! Both of you.” Estrada had advanced too, arms outstretched, as though she’d keep them apart by brute force if need be. “And grow up, damn it! There’s more at stake here than your petty squabbling.” She turned fiercely on Alvantes, who looked both surprised and sheepish. “Leave him alone, Lunto. This isn’t helping anything.”

If he’d realised, as I had, that Estrada was playing subtly to Mounteban’s ego, Alvantes’s wounded expression gave no sign. He stamped to the far side of the room and turned half away, as though not quite willing to admit he was interested in anything Mounteban had to say.

Estrada, meanwhile, gave Mounteban a moment to right his chair and sit back down before she said, “Understand, Castilio, that I will never forgive you for the things you’ve done… to me or to this city. But I’ll work with you now, if that’s what it takes. So if you really care about Altapasaeda, tell us your plan. There’s no time for us to play games.”

“Of course,” Mounteban replied, all surface calm restored. “I was never the one who wanted a conflict, Marina. I’d have gladly worked with you both from the beginning.”

Alvantes gave a snort of derision, silenced abruptly when Estrada glared at him. “All right,” she said. “We’re listening.”

I could tell that was what Mounteban had been waiting to hear, for all his old arrogance had returned as he asked, “I trust you’re familiar with the name of the Bastard Prince?”

Alvantes glowered. “A northerner myth. A phantom to scare the royal court.”

“Not so,” said Mounteban. “The boy is very real.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. Thus far, I’d been deliberately keeping out of the conversation — but having only recently heard of this mysterious Bastard Prince, I realised I couldn’t keep down my curiosity. “Tell me if I’m understanding this right. King Panchessa sires a child on some northerner wench and then covers it up. That child grows up to be Moaradrid, notorious invading warlord, kidnapper of giants and all-round madman.”

Mounteban nodded, with the disinterested air of one teaching obvious lessons to a stupid child.

“But Moaradrid is dead,” I continued. And no one in their right mind would ever refer to him as a boy. Suddenly, I understood. “You’re saying Moaradrid had a son too?”

“His name is Malekrin,” Mounteban agreed. “The Bastard Prince, illegitimate son of an illegitimate son. The King’s only possible living heir.”

“But surely he hasn’t any real claim to the throne?” put in Estrada.

“For our purposes,” said Mounteban, “it hardly matters. What’s important is that the northerners believe it — and that, even after Moaradrid’s failed rebellion, they’re willing to fight over it. If you’re aware of the Prince, Marina, I’m sure you’re equally familiar with the name Kalyxis?”

Alvantes’s expression soured even further. “That witch.”

My inquisitiveness genuinely piqued now, I said, “Let’s assume that not everyone has your or Alvantes’s grasp on the politics of far-distant lands.”

“Kalyxis,” said Mounteban, “is King Panchessa’s one-time paramour, Moaradrid’s mother, Malekrin’s grandmother… and just as she did with his father, she’s been grooming the boy as a potential saviour of the far north. As obvious as it would seem that she’s motivated by spite, she has a remarkable knack for telling her people what they want to hear.”

“It sounds like you two have a lot in common,” observed Alvantes.

“Just so,” Mounteban agreed, ignoring the obvious slight. “Which is why I sent a messenger to her proposing an alliance. I haven’t received a reply, but then given the distances involved that’s hardly surprising. However, it seems to me that Kalyxis and the Prince are still our best hope. Perhaps they can be persuaded to send support, or to harry Ans Pasaeda from the north, forcing the King to cut short his visit. Perhaps just the threat of an alliance will be enough to make Panchessa think twice.”

“I appreciate that you’ve put thought into this,” said Estrada carefully, “but do you really think it could work? And even if it did, as you just said yourself, there’s no way anyone could travel so far and return in time. Altapasaeda can’t stand against the King for more than a few days.”

“A difficulty, for sure,” agreed Mounteban. “But there is a way.”

There was something in the way he emphasised those last words that made everyone, even Alvantes, suddenly more attentive. “Go on,” Estrada told him.

“A tunnel, running west from the palace, through the mountainside. It was built, or perhaps more likely discovered, by the first prince… this in the days when a Castovalian revolt seemed more than likely. At the other end are a dock and a ship. If my sources are correct, even Panchetto wasn’t so confident in his own safety as to leave the passage and vessel unmaintained. It should still be there, and seaworthy.”

“This is all nonsense!” growled Alvantes. “I’d have heard of such a thing.”

“Apparently not,” replied Mounteban. “Then again,” he added with smug good cheer, “Panchetto always did like to keep the City Guard at arm’s length.”

Alvantes was clearly ready to storm back across the room, but catching Estrada’s eye he thought better of it. “Anyway,” he said instead, “in case it’s escaped these ‘sources’ of yours, the palace is occupied. I doubt the Palace Guard would take kindly to us traipsing through. Unless, of course, you’ve somehow managed to deal with them too?”

“That proved… untenable,” admitted Mounteban, his brief upturn in mood evaporating. “I’d hoped that, left to their own devices, they’d eventually see sense.”

The Palace Guard were notorious in Altapasaeda for many things: their fierce loyalty to the crown, their moral flexibility in its service and their comprehensive training in its defence, especially where that defence involved the use of disproportionate violence. One of the things they’d never been known for, however, was seeing sense — and with their beloved prince dead, it was a safe assumption that they’d be less inclined than ever. Taking all that into account, it was a fair guess that Mounteban’s plan had been more along the lines of “wait them out and hope they eventually starve”. In fairness, it was probably the best anyone could have come up with.

“However,” Mounteban continued, “there’s no need to march into the palace. Because the passage has a second exit, which opens outside the city… beneath your own barracks, in fact, Alvantes. No doubt its designers anticipated a less extreme emergency where retreating to the protection of the City Guard might prove useful. Had the Prince trusted you enough to reveal the location of that second exit, our problem would be solved. Still. When it comes to entering the palace and finding the entrance, one man might conceivably succeed where a larger force would be sure to fail.”

“I’m not convinced this passage of yours even exists…” began Alvantes.

“It does,” Mounteban cut him off. “And it’s our one chance of drawing aid to Altapasaeda before the city falls. You’d never have come here if you had another.”

Estrada and Alvantes shared a long look. I assumed there was some unspoken communication passing between them, for how else were they to discuss the possibility of a truce with Mounteban, who they’d gone to such lengths to depose, when he was sitting right there? He was all swagger now, not even bothering to look at them — but I doubted even he was truly arrogant enough to assume that they’d unquestioningly put their enmity for him aside to pursue so desperate a plan.

“Altapasaeda needs help,” Estrada said finally. “And there’s nowhere in the Castoval left to offer it. Frankly, Castilio, I’d don’t trust this scheme of yours. There’s far too much that could go wrong, and no guarantees even if it doesn’t. But I don’t see any other choices, and every moment we spend seeking one brings the King closer to our gates.”

“I don’t like it,” agreed Alvantes, “but it’s all we have. So I’ll go along with it… until you give me the slightest inkling that you can’t be trusted in this, Mounteban.”

“Let’s take the threats as said and heard,” replied Mounteban, with studied dignity, “and start preparing while there’s still a chance of success. The first question is who to send into the palace.”

“I think I could arrange a suitable diversion,” conceded Alvantes.

“The walls and the courtyard will be the hardest part,” Mounteban said. “How long would this diversion last?”

“Long enough, I think.”

“So, if someone were to scale the walls… perhaps to reach a window…”

I couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t so much what they were saying, but that I could feel Estrada’s eyes on me, boring into my skull in search of the conscience she seemed convinced was in there. “All right!” I cried. “Why not spare us all a little time?”

Mounteban and Alvantes turned my way as well — and it was only seeing the surprise in their expressions that I realised how badly I’d misjudged. What I’d taken for none-too-subtle hinting in my direction had been no more than the honest back and forth of observations, it appeared.

Yet, with my mouth open and working, I found I couldn’t simply back down. “Haven’t we been here before?” I said. “Oh no, something needs breaking into! Who can we possibly ask? Who do we know who used to break into things all the time? Who will no one miss when it all goes wrong?”

“Damasco-” Estrada began.

I realised then that, though Alvantes and Mounteban might not have had any intention of involving me, Estrada truly had. It was there in the gentle cajoling with which she spoke my name. Why couldn’t the woman just leave me alone?

And even more infuriatingly, why, when I knew she was manipulating me, could I not stop myself from talking?

“Spare me,” I said. “We’ve danced this dance enough times. Sooner or later, whatever I say, you’ll talk me into it, so just this once let’s get it over with. You want me to break into the palace? Fine! I’ll do it.”