The Wheel of Osheim

SEVEN

In Marsail Lisa and I spent two days and a night recuperating incognito. We took two rooms-at her insistence-at a fine inn on the Prada Royal that runs below the various palaces of the old Marsail kings. I spent more of Omar’s gold to get us both decently attired, a fine jacket for me with just enough brocade to hint at military connections without being vulgar, trews in a neutral grey, long black boots polished to a shine sufficient to see one’s face staring back out of them. Lisa abandoned the soiled dress and selected some modest travelling clothes that would neither shame her nor draw too much attention.

A trip to the bathhouse, the barber, a fine meal at one of the better harbourside restaurants and we both started to feel a little more human. The conversation between us still ran in uneven and awkward bursts, skirting around talk of her marriage whilst still covering, again and again, her various worries about Barras and any trouble he might encounter on his search for her. Even so, I saw flashes of the old Lisa, drawing a few smiles and blushes as I talked about old times, carefully avoiding mention of her dead brother and father.

In the end Lisa’s terror of yet another boat trip, even by river, saw us making the trip to Vermillion by express carriage, rattling along the various roads that track the Seleen’s path east toward the capital. We passed several days side-by-side, opposite an old priest, and a dark-haired merchant from some distant Araby port. By night we jolted sleepily against each other as the carriage carried on, changing horses at various staging posts along the way. I was pleased to find that, asleep with her head against my shoulder, Lisa smelled as good as I remembered. Almost good enough to erase the memory of how badly she had reeked when staggering off the Santa Maria at Marsail. It occurred to me during one of those long nights as Lisa’s head slipped from my shoulder to my lap, that although all three DeVeer sisters had married in indecent haste after my supposed death, Micha to my brother Darin, Sharal to the murderous Count Isen, and Lisa to my faithless friend Barras Jon-who I would never have let down-that it was really only Lisa I mourned the loss of.

All would be well. Home. Peace. Safety. The key would be secure in the palace. The Dead King might pose a threat to small bands of travellers in the depths of the desert or the wildness of the mountains, but he could hardly march an army through Red March and lay siege to the Red Queen’s capital. And as for stealthier attempts-the Silent Sister’s magics would surely not permit necromancy to function within the halls where she and her siblings dwelt.

Mile after mile vanished beneath our wheels and as my grandmother’s lands rolled past, hypnotizing in their green and patterned familiarity, thoughts rolled through my head. The things I’d seen, people, conversations, all spooling out across the smoothness of my mind. Occasionally I would raise the shade screen and stick my head out through the window to enjoy the breeze. Only then did I feel any hint of worry. The road stretching out ahead, the parallel hedgerows to either side arrowing into the distance, growing closer, closer, never meeting, lost in the future. Only when looking ahead like that did my fears give chase, skittering along behind the carriage. Maeres Allus waited for me, there, in the midst of my city.

I had confided my problem to Jorg Ancrath that drunken night on a Hamadan rooftop. He’d given me some advice, that thorn-scarred killer, and there, in the hot darkness of the desert, it had seemed sound, a solution. Was he not, after all, the King of Renar? But then again he was just a boy . . . Also, whatever he’d said to me had been washed away by a river of whisky and all I could remember of it was the look in his eyes as he told me, and the completeness with which I had believed him to be right.

The carriage rocked and jolted, miles ran beneath our wheels and home grew ever closer. We overtook three long columns of soldiers marching toward the capital. Several times the road grew so crowded we had to edge along past idle baggage-trains, arguing teamsters, soldiers shouting commands down the line. And somehow amid all that rattle and clatter, the heat, the noise, the anticipation . . . I fell asleep.

I dreamed of Cutter John, grown vast and satanic, as if the reality weren’t bad enough. I saw him reaching for me with his remaining arm, pale and hung about with the grisly trophies of his trade, lips he’d taken for Maeres Allus and worn as bracelets. I tried to run but found myself bound to the table once again, back in Allus’s poppy halls. Those great white fingers quested for me, growing closer . . . closer . . . me screaming all the while, and as I screamed the walls and floor fell away, turning to dust on a dry wind, revealing a dead-lit sky, the colour of misery. Cutter’s hand shrank back, and in that moment, knowing myself once more in Hell, I actually shouted for him to grab me and lift me back, not caring what fate awaited me-for the best definition of Hell is perhaps that there is nowhere, no place, no time to which you would not run in order to escape it.

“Something’s wrong.”

I look up and see that Snorri has stopped ahead of me and is eyeing the ridges about us. “Everything’s wrong. We’re in Hell!” Words won’t shape it but even if all you’re doing is walking down a dusty gully following the flow of souls, Hell is worse than everything you’ve known. You hurt, enough to make you weep, you thirst, you ache with hunger, misery weighs on you as if it were chains about your neck, and just standing there feels like watching everything you’ve ever loved die wretchedly before you.

“There!” He points toward a jagged collection of rocks on the ridge to our left.

“Rocks?” I don’t see anything else.

“Something.” Snorri frowns. “Something fast.”

We walk on, bone tired. Here and there the earth is torn and fissured. Long tongues of flame lick out, flickering skyward, and the air is foul with sulphur, stinging my eyes and lungs. The gully broadens into a dusty valley, studded with boulders. The wind has carved them into alien shapes, many disturbingly like faces. I start to hear whispers, indistinct at first, becoming clearer as I strain to make sense of the words.

“ Cheat, liar, coward, adulterer, blasphemer, thief, cheat, liar, coward, adulterer-”

“Are you hearing this, Snorri?”

He stops and lets me catch up. “Yes.” He glances around, still spooked. “Voices. They keep calling me a killer. Over and over.”

“That’s it?”

“. . . blasphemer, thief, cheat, liar, coward, adulterer . . .”

“You’re not getting ‘cheat’ or ‘thief’?”

Snorri frowns down at me. “Just ‘killer’.”

I cup a hand to my ear. “Ah, yes, it’s clearer now. I’m getting ‘killer’ too.”

“. . . coward, adulterer, blasphemer . . .”

“Blasphemer? Me? Me?” I spin around glaring at the rocky faces pointing my way. Every boulder for fifty yards seems to sport a grotesque set of features that wouldn’t look out of place on the statues that decorate my great uncle’s tower.

“Anger: you have committed the sin of anger . . .” from a score of mouths.

“I’m not fucking angry!” I shout back, not sure why I’m answering but swept up by the tide of accusation.

“Lust: you have committed the sin of lust . . .”

“Well . . . technically . . .”

“Jal?” Snorri’s hand settles on my shoulder.

“Greed: You have committed the sin of greed . . .”

“Oh come on! Everyone’s done greed! I mean, show me a man-”

“Jal!” Snorri shakes me, spinning me to face him.

“Yes. What?” I blink up at him.

“Lust: You have committed the-”

“All right! All right!” I holler over the voices. “I lusted. More than once. I’ll put my hand up to all seven, just shut up.”

“Jal!” A slap and my attention is firmly back on the Northman. “These aren’t things the gods care about. This is your creed. This is the nonsense churchmen rail against.”

He has a point. “So what?”

“The deadlands are shaped by expectation, but there are two of us and our faiths don’t agree.” He lets go of me. “We were in Hel’s domain, where she rules over all that is dead. But-”

“But?”

“Now I think we’ve strayed into your Hell.”

“Oh God.”

“. . . thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain . . .” Bishop James’s voice, though my father’s second had never sounded quite so much like he wanted to peel my face off.

The underworld that Snorri’s twin-aspected goddess, Hel, rules over is a pretty horrendous place, but I have the feeling that my Hell of fire and brimstone, replete with sinners and with devils to roast them, might outdo it for nastiness.

“Let’s get back.” I turn around and start to retread our path. “How did we even end up here? You’re the believer.”

“ . . . unbeliever, unbeliever, burn the unbeliever-”

“I mean you’re the one with the strongest faith.”

“. . . faithless, faithless, harrow the faithless-”

“Not that my faith isn’t really strong too, praise Jesus!” I cross myself, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and not that half-hearted wave of the hand that Father does but the deliberate and precise action that Bishop James employs.

“It might not be you, Jal.” Snorri’s hand on my shoulder again, arresting my motion. I glance back and he nods ahead.

Something flits across the gap between two of the larger boulders scattered across the valley floor. I catch only the edge of a glimpse- something thin and pale-something bad.

“This is our enemy’s Hell. He’s brought it with him on the hunt.” Snorri has his axe in his hands now.

“But, nobody knows we’re here . . .” I put my hand to the key, lying beneath my jerkin, just above my heart. Suddenly it feels heavy. Heavy and colder than ice. “The Dead King?”

“It might be.” Snorri rolls his shoulders, blue eyes almost black in the deadlight and fixed upon the rock the creature has vanished behind. “If he’s somehow been alerted to our presence he could just want revenge for us keeping the key from him.”

“About that . . .”

The creature steals any further conversation, emerging from the shadows at the rock’s base and starting to run toward us with appalling speed. It drives forward on bone-thin legs, the power of each thrust veering it to one side, only to be corrected by the next so that it threads an erratic path through the boulder-field, weaving around them and leaving the stone faces screaming their horror in its wake. The thing puts me in mind of the white threads you’ll see in the muscle of a man laid open by a sword blow. Nerves, one of my tutors called them, pointing to the nightmarish drawings in some ancient tome on anatomy. It looks like a nerve: white, thin, long, dividing into limbs which in turn divide into three root-like fingers, its head an eyeless wedge, sharp enough to bury itself in a man.

“Lichkin.” Snorri names the beast and takes three paces toward it, timing his swing. He roars as the head of his axe tears through the air, muscles bunching as they drive it forward. The lichkin blurs beneath the blow, surging up to catch Snorri by the neck, the other hand on his stomach, lifting him high off the ground and slamming him down with a sick-making crunch. Dust billows up around the impact and I can’t see how he landed, though with so many boulders around it’s unlikely to be well. “Shit.” At last I remember to draw my sword. It sings out of the scabbard, the deadlight burning along the runes that mark its length. My hand is shaking.

Snorri’s axe rises, unsteady amid the billowing dust, and the lichkin snatches it, continuing the motion to bring it round and down in a circle that buries the blade roughly where I expect Snorri’s head to be. The impact is dull and final. I can just make out the axe handle, pointing up unsupported as the lichkin abandons it and stalks toward me, the dust still rising smokelike about it. Terror comes off the thing like heat off a fire.

“Oh crap.” I thrust my off hand down the neck of my jerkin and bring out Loki’s key. “Look, you can have it, just let me-”

The lichkin charges and it’s so fast I think I must have been frozen in place. One moment it’s there at the edge of the dust cloud and the next it has one hand wrapped around my throat and the other around the wrist of my sword arm. The thing’s touch is foul beyond imagining. Its white flesh joins mine, seeming to merge. It feels as if innumerable roots are sinking into me, burrowing between veins, each afire with an acidic agony that leaves no space even for screaming.

I’m held, useless and immobile while that white wedge of a face inspects me and all I can do is beg to die, unable to get the words past a jaw locked so tight that I expect my teeth to break in the next moment, to just shatter all in one go.

The lichkin’s head tilts down toward Loki’s key, held between us, pointing forward, my arm rigid and paralysed.

I glimpse some large and smoking object, past the lichkin’s head, rushing toward us. At the last moment I see it’s Snorri, dust rising from him with each pounding step. He’s empty-handed, as if he thinks to tear the creature apart by main force. The lichkin turns, faster than thought, and catches him by the shoulders. Despite its thinness the lichkin is rooted to the ground and absorbs all the momentum of the Viking’s charge, needing just a single sharp step backward.

I stand, still frozen in the moment. Edris Dean’s sword has fallen from the hand the lichkin released but not yet hit the ground. My eyes follow its progress and see that in stepping back the lichkin has driven itself against the black shaft of Loki’s key, the head of which has pushed an inch into the white flesh.

All I can do is turn it.

And as the key turns the blackness of it invades the lichkin’s alabaster, darting along its length in ebony threads, each in turn forking and branching, staining, corrupting. Gravity reaches for me and I’m falling, pulling the key clear, but even as I hit the ground and the dust rises all around, I see the lichkin start to come undone, as if it were a thousand strands, a thousand thin white tubes, now grey and putrefying, each peeling apart from the next, the whole thing opening, spreading, falling.

“Vermillion!” A banging on the carriage roof, the rough voice of whatever lout currently had the reins. I sat up with a jerk, soaked in sweat.

“Oh thank Christ!” Shudders ran through me. I looked at my wrist, expecting to see the scald mark of the lichkin’s hand still there. Lisa gave a sleepy murmur, face hidden by her hair, head in my lap. The old priest, Father Agor, narrowed pale eyes at me in disapproval.

“Did he say Vermillion?” I raised the shade and peered out, squinting against the brightness. The suburbs of Vermillion bumped past. “At last!”

“We’re there?” Lisa, blinking, face creased where she lay on me, strands of hair stuck in the corner of her mouth.

“We’re here!” My grin so broad it hurt my face.

Lisa gripped my hand and smiled back, and suddenly all was right in the world. At least until I remembered Maeres Allus.

Minutes later Lisa and I disembarked outside the courthouse on Gholloth Square and stood stiff and stretching, looking around with disbelief. Father Agor tossed a coin to a porter who received his luggage from atop the carriage and set off after the priest, a case under each arm. Our silent merchant friend departed, a boy with a mule carrying his trunk, leaving Lisa and me alone on a crowded street as the carriage rattled off to whatever stables would receive it.

On my journey south with Snorri I’d spent much of my waking day planning and anticipating my return to Vermillion. Travelling with Lisa, I had hardly spoken a word on the subject-perhaps fearing to jinx it, or unbelieving that after all I had endured our home would be waiting there to take us in once more as if nothing had changed. But here it was, busy, hot, wrapped around its own concerns and indifferent to our arrival. A large number of troops had been assembled on Adam Plaza, their supplies heaped against the side of the war academy.

“Will you take me home, Jal?” Lisa turned from the street and looked up at me.

“Best not. I’ve met your eldest brother, and he doesn’t like me.” Lord Gregori would have sliced me up himself if I hadn’t hidden behind my rank and made him goad Count Isen into doing the job for him.

“I live at the palace now, Jal.” She looked at her feet, head down.

“Oh.” I’d forgotten. She had meant the rooms in the Great Jon’s apartment in the guest wing. The ones she had shared with her husband. “I can’t. I’ve got something really important I need to do straight away.”

She looked up then, disappointed.

“Look.” I waved my hands as if there were something to look at that might actually explain it. “You don’t want me there. Not when you meet with Barras. And you’ll hardly come to grief between here and the palace gates.” She kept those big eyes on me, saying nothing.

“I would have married you, you know!” The words took me by surprise but they were out now and words can’t be unsaid. Instead they hang between you, awkward and uncomfortable.

“You’re not the marrying type, Jal.” A tilt of the head, surprise touching her face.

“I could be!” Maybe I could. “You were . . . special . . . Lisa. We had a good thing.”

She smiled, making me want her all the more. “Mine wasn’t the only balcony you climbed, Jal. Not even within my father’s grounds.” She took my hands. “Women like to have their fun too, you know. Especially women born to families like mine, who know they’re going to be married for their father’s convenience rather than by their own choice.”

“Your father would have jumped at the chance of a prince for one of his daughters!”

Lisa gave my hands a squeeze. “Our brother did jump at the chance.”

“Darin.” His name tasted sour. The elder brother. The one not to be seen staggering drunkenly from bordellos in the predawn grey, or gambling away other men’s money. The one not past his eyes in debt to underworld criminals.

Suddenly I couldn’t stand her kindness a moment longer. “Look. I’ve got this matter to attend to. It can’t wait. I really have to do this. And-” I rummaged in my jacket’s inner pocket. “I need your help.” I withdrew Loki’s key, wrapped inside a thick velvet cloth bound tight with cord. “Keep this for me. Don’t open it. For God’s sake don’t touch it. Don’t show it to anyone.” I folded her hands about the package. “If I don’t come to the palace within a day present it to the Red Queen and tell her it’s from me. Can you do that? It’s important.” She nodded and I released her hands. And somehow, although that key was by far the single most valuable thing in the kingdom of Red March, something I had fought and bled for, literally walked across Hell to keep, I felt no pang at letting Lisa DeVeer take it. Only a sense of peace.

“You’re scaring me, Jal.”

“I’ve got to go and see Maeres Allus. I owe him a lot of money.”

“Maeres Allus?” A frown.

I remembered that to most of my circle Allus was a merchant, a rich one to be sure, but nothing more, and who has time to remember the names of merchants. “A dangerous man.”

“Well . . . you should pay him.” She took my hand in both of hers. “And be careful.”

The old Lisa might have laughed and told me to tell this Maeres fellow to wait-and if he had the temerity to lay a hand upon me, to draw my sword and have at him. The new Lisa was much better acquainted with the realities of swords meeting flesh. The new Lisa wanted me to swallow my pride and pay the man. There was a Jalan once who would have advised swinging the sword too-but that Jalan was eight and he and I had been strangers for many years.

I took myself first to the Guild of Trade, a great dome that may be entered by many archways about its circumference. Beneath the dome on a wide mosaicked floor merchants of a certain degree of wealth gather to make deals and swap the gossip that oils industry’s wheels. A gallery runs around the dome, several storeys above the trade floor and from it doors lead to offices that look out over the surrounding city.

I borrowed money on the trade floor first. I borrowed against my family name, leaving Edris Dean’s sword as additional security-whatever evils tainted it nobody could deny the quality of the steel, ancient stuff melted down from Builder ruins: no smith today has the skill to match its strength. Whether word of my incarceration for debt in Umbertide had reached Vermillion yet I didn’t enquire, but it seemed unlikely given that I walked out of the Guild with fifty pieces of crown gold.

With those monies and the remains of Omar’s Liban bars I purchased clothing of sufficient quality to match my station, along with a blood-gold chain, a ruby ring, and a diamond ear stud. The garments had to be tailored to my build rapidly, adjusted from the dimensions of their intended recipients, but I paid handsomely enough and forgave any failings in the cut.

To borrow a lot of money you have to look the part. A king in rags will win no credit no matter what collateral he may own.

Penniless again, I climbed the stair to the gallery where Vermillion’s richest moneylenders plied their trade. Maeres Allus would never be permitted an office in this circle, though he had the coin to sit among such men. Old money ruled here, merchant dynasties of good repute and long ties to the crown. I chose to approach Silas Marn, a merchant prince that Great-uncle Garyus had given good opinion of over the years.

The men at the door carried my petition inside and Silas had the manners not to keep me waiting. He saw me in person in his interview chamber, a vaulted room, marble-clad, with the busts of various long-dead Marns watching us from alcoves.

The old man, so ancient as to be practically creaking, rose from his chair as I entered, burdened by his velvet robes. I motioned for him to sit and he gave up on the effort before managing to fully straighten himself.

“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.” I took the seat he gestured to and we sat opposite each other across a span of gleaming mahogany.

“I would hardly turn away a prince of the realm, Prince Jalan.” Silas Marn regarded me from murky brown eyes almost lost in the many folds of his face, his skin leathery and stained with age. I gave him a broad smile and he returned a more cautious one. Large ears and beak-like nose dominated his small head, though those seem to be the fate of any man who lives too long. “How may I help you?”

I pushed the relevant documentation across the desk. The crumpled parchment looked in no better state than old Silas, as stained and creased, the writing barely legible, the wax seal cracked.

“It looks like it’s been through hell.” Silas made no move to pick it up. “What is it?”

“Deeds to thirteen twenty-fourth shares in the Crptipa salt-mine.”

“I am aware of your . . . misfortunes in Umbertide, Prince Jalan. There have been charges laid against you of a very serious nature. A murderer of children would find it easier to get credit than a bankrupt charged with multiple counts of fraud. I am sure that these charges hold no substance, of course, but the mere fact of them is a terrible impediment to-”

“I’m not seeking credit. I wish to sell. The Crptipa mine holds vast reserves of salt immediately adjacent to some of the largest markets and ports in the Broken Empire. It has the infrastructure in place to ramp up production now that the departure of Kelem has opened for exploitation areas that have for centuries been off-limits. Production from the mine could undercut the imported supply while still generating considerable profit on each ton. As a debtor I’m at liberty to conduct business in order to generate funds to cover my obligations.”

Silas laid a withered hand across the deed of sale. “I see that your great-uncle’s blood is not wholly absent from your veins, Prince Jalan.”

I felt a pang of guilt then. “Is he all right? I mean . . . three ships . . .”

Those old eyes narrowed in disapproval, dry lips a thin line. The merchant watched me for a moment then relaxed into the smallest smile. “It would take more than three ships to put much of a hole in your uncle’s concerns. Even so-and with the greatest of respect-it was not well done to lose them.”

“How much will you give me?” I tapped the table.

“Direct.” Silas’s smile broadened. “Perhaps you think a man of my years doesn’t have time to beat around the bush?”

“Make me an offer. The place is worth a hundred thousand.”

“I am aware of its value. The mines have been the subject of considerable speculation. The legalities of your claim however would take some considerable clearing up though and run the attendant risk that Umbertide’s duke might rule your assets forfeit given your unlicensed departure. I will give you ten thousand. Consider it a favour to your family.”

“Give me five thousand, but allow me to buy it back for ten thousand within the month.”

The old man tilted his head, as if listening to the advice of some invisible counsellor. “Agreed.”

“And I need to walk away with the gold within the hour.”

That raised his white eyebrows some considerable distance. “Can a man even carry five thousand in gold?”

“I’ve done it before. Your arms ache the next day.”

And so it was that an hour later I left, carrying a small but extremely heavy coffer clutched to my chest. It took half a dozen senior underlings scuttling about beneath the dome of the Guild of Trade, calling in favours left and right, but Silas assembled the necessary coinage, and I handed over my controlling interest in the Broken Empire’s richest salt-mine.

I walked through main streets, wishing I’d taken Silas up on his offer of a porter, whilst at the same time still agreeing with my own argument that nobody should miss the opportunity to carry that much gold. My passage drew a few looks, but nobody would be foolish enough to think I would carry such riches unguarded, and even knowing it few would be foolish enough to try to rob me in the broad thoroughfares at the heart of the city. In any event my new outfit came with a small knife in an inner pocket just above the wrist, ready for quick release to stab any thieving hands.

By the time I reached the great slaughterhouse a third of a mile from the Guild of Trade headquarters my arms felt twice their usual length and made of jelly. I stared up at the impressive edifice. It seemed a lifetime since I had last been inside. Just over a year by calendar reckoning. Two thousand miles and more, by foot. Once a slaughterhouse for cattle, beef for the royal tables, and now a place where men carved man-flesh, the Blood Holes were one of Maeres Allus’s more popular haunts.

The bruisers on the door let me in without question. Rich men came every day to watch poor men die and bet on the outcome. The elder Terrif brother, Deckmon, he recognized me sure enough, looking up from his cash table. He put a finger to the skin beneath his left eye and pulled it down, letting me know my entrance had been marked.

The usual crowd circulated around the four big pits, the numbers men at the margins with the odds chalked above their stalls. I took a moment to breathe it in, the colour, the noise, the aristocrats dogged by their toadies, a loose halo of hangers on, and moving here and there, wine-men, poppy-men, ladies of negotiable affection.

The stink of blood ran through it all, an undercurrent. I’d not noticed it in those years I spent here, betting on carnage. The smell brought back memories, not of the Blood Holes but of the Aral Pass and the Black Fort. For a moment I felt the icy waters of the Slidr enfold me and the red berserker heat rise to meet it.

I crossed over to Long Will, a trainer and talent scout, a thin strip of a man, crowned by a grey shock of hair. “Maeres here?”

Long Will jerked his head toward Ochre. Of the four big pits it lay farthest from the main doors. I eased my way through the crowd, sweating, and not just from the strain of carrying my treasure. The thought of Maeres Allus put a chill in me, making my legs feel as weak as my trembling arms-though an unexpected anger came with that fear, a rising heat that had been there beneath the terror, keeping me company all the long and rattling ride up from Marsail.

A pretty girl trailed her fingers through my hair, an oily wine-man thrust a pewter goblet at me. I glanced pointedly at the coffer occupying both my hands.

“Prince Jalan?” Someone recognizing me, unsure.

“Is that Jalan?” A fat baron from the south. “Damned if it is.”

Underlings parted before me as I approached the tight knot of colour at the edge of Ochre. More than a year. Thousands of miles. Icy wastes to baking desert. I walked through Hell . . . and here I was again, back where it started. Fourteen months and they hardly knew me, here in the place where I’d spent so much time, and money, and other men’s blood.

A murmur grew about me now: even if the crowd weren’t sure of my name they recognized a man walking with intent toward the heart of things. The last few layers peeled back, men I knew by sight and name, Maeres’s associates, merchants in his pockets, minor lords courting loans or being courted for this or that advantage. The business of business while twenty feet below, two men fought, each doing his level best to beat the other to death with his fists.

Two narrow-faced Slovs stepped aside, and there, revealed between them, stood Maeres Allus, small, olive-skinned, his tunic unostentatious- to look at him you wouldn’t think he owned the place and much more besides. He registered neither surprise nor interest at my appearance.

“Prince Jalan, you’ve been away too long.” A roar of triumph rose from the pit behind him, but nobody seemed interested any more. I imagined the victorious brawler looking up, expecting cheering faces, and seeing nothing but the wooden guardrail and the back of the occasional head.

Jorg Ancrath, that prodigy about whom so many prophecies seemed to circulate, that vicious and vic-torious youth on whom my grandmother’s plans appeared to pivot, the young king who lit a Builders’ Sun in Gelleth and another on the doorstep of Hamada . . . he had given me his advice on dealing with Maeres Allus. He had spoken his words in the hot and drunken darkness of a Hamadan night, and now, with Allus before me at long last, those forgotten words started to bubble from the black depths of my memory. “I’ve come to settle our business, Maeres. Perhaps we could go somewhere private.” I gestured with my eyes to the curtained alcoves where all manner of Blood Holes negotiations were conducted, from the carnal to the commercial, not that the former wasn’t the latter.

Maeres’s dark eyes rested on the coffer in my arms. “I think perhaps too much of our business has taken place behind closed doors, Prince Jalan. Let us settle our accounts here.”

“Maeres, it’s hardly suitable-”

“Here.” A command. He meant to humble me before witnesses.

“I really don’t-”

“Here!” Barked this time. I don’t recall Maeres Allus ever raising his voice before that. He glanced over his shoulder down into the pit. “A poor fight. Put the bear in.”

If there were any people in the Blood Holes so taken with their own affairs that they weren’t already staring in my direction then the mention of the bear soon changed that. A ripple ran through the crowds and as one they began to flow toward Ochre, drawn by the fighter’s shouts for mercy and by the prospect of seeing him get none.

Maeres didn’t turn to watch the spectacle, keeping his eyes on me instead. We stood there like that with the throng around us baying for blood, their voices competing first with the man’s screaming and then with the grisly noise of the bear rending its meal.

“You had business to conduct, Prince Jalan?” Maeres cocked his head, inviting my reply. Two of his enforcers stood at my shoulders now, hard men who had survived the pits to climb to their current positions.

“I’ve come to settle my debts, Maeres. I borrowed in good faith and gave my word to repay in full. My father is the Red Queen’s son and I don’t give my promise lightly.” I layered on the bravado. If I were going to spend thousands in gold I should at least enjoy the moment. “Remind me how much is due.”

Maeres put out his hand and a hulking fellow in black placed a slate into his palm. I knew the man for Maeres’s bookkeeper though with those big sausage fingers of his he looked better suited to wrestling trolls than pushing numbers around. “The debt stands at three thousand and eleven in crown gold.” A sharp intake of breath ran through the onlookers, perhaps even the building itself sucked in its walls at such a figure. Many there would have difficulty imagining so large a sum, and none of the gentry were so rich that the loss of three thousand wouldn’t hurt them.

Three thousand exceeded what I’d borrowed from Maeres by some considerable margin. Even with months of interest. I suspected I was being charged for the services of the men he sent after me, Alber Marks, Cutter John, and the Slov brothers who were tasked with returning me to the city for a secret and gruesome death. With a grunt of effort I supported the coffer with one aching arm and flipped open the lid with the other. “If you could have your man count out the required amount.” I stepped forward so that the coffer almost reached Maeres, level with his head, the coins’ glow lighting his face.

It took a while but each scoop of the bookkeeper’s shovel-like hands lightened my load. He weighed the coins in his scales, calling the tallies aloud then spilling the gleaming heap into a leather sack. He quickly sent for two more, realizing that the one he had would prove too small to receive my payment.

“One thousand.”

While the bookkeeper scooped and weighed, weighed and scooped, Maeres kept his gaze on me, eyes dark and unreadable. The madness I’d seen in them that day in his poppy halls lay hidden now.

“The repayment of a loan is always welcome-but tell me, what prompted this change of heart, from a man so keen to borrow to a man so keen to pay?”

“Two thousand.” The bookkeeper tied off a second sack.

I stared back. Was Maeres inviting me to advertise his methods? Daring me? This killer with his vile tastes, murdering within the walls of Vermillion, dining so close to the palace that the shadows of its towers might brush against his mansion, richer than many a lord, making his own laws and dishing out his own justice. “I met a king and sought his advice.”

“And he advised you to pay me?”

I thought of my meeting with Jorg Ancrath. When I had spoken of my problem he grew quiet at first, then serious as if not a drop had passed his lips all night. “He said to give you what you want.” I set the coffer down between us and rubbed my arms.

“A wise king indeed.”

“Three thousand.” The bookkeeper tied off the last sack, then bent over the coffer once more and started to count out the last eleven coins.

“You seem a changed man, Prince Jalan. I do hope your travels in the remnants of our once great empire haven’t soured you?”

“Six . . . seven . . . eight.” The bookkeeper placed the coins into a pocket of his leather apron.

“I’ve been through Hell, Maeres.”

“The roads can be dangerous.” He nodded. “Still, I’m sure we’ll see the old prince return, such a happy young man, so sure of his opinion, so ready to spend.”

“Nine . . . ten . . .”

“I hope so too-but for now the prince you see before you will have to serve.” I remembered how it felt to be tied to his table-the look on his face as he turned me over to Cutter John-how I’d shouted and begged. Snorri had mistaken that for bravery.

“Eleven.” The bookkeeper straightened up, seeming reluctant to leave the coffer with gold still obscuring the bottom. “The debt is covered.”

“Well and good.” Maeres’s smile told me he knew that despite the chains of debt being cast off he owned me now, more truly than he ever had before. A chill ran through me, the cold challenge of the Slidr, and the red heat that had seen me across the sharpest river in Hell now rose to burn away that chill. I remembered all the boy-king’s words.

“Jorg Ancrath told me, ‘Give him what he wants.’” I stepped forward, bending to recover my coffer.

“One more thing, Prince Jalan.” Maeres’s voice, arresting me as I bent before him. A cold hand closed around my heart and I knew there was only Jorg’s path open to me.

“He said you would say that.” I remembered all of it. I remembered the darkness, the heat, Jorg Ancrath’s prediction: “When you’ve given, he will ask for more. Just one more thing, he’ll say.” And I remembered the look in the boy-king’s eyes.

“He said, give him what he wants.” I straightened, quick and smooth, without touching the box. “Then take what you want.” A flick of my wrist brushed the back of my hand across Maeres’s neck. The small triangular knife, once concealed in my sleeve, and now with its blade jutting between my fingers, slit his throat. I hardly felt it.

I caught him around the back of the head and held him close, spraying crimson and trying to speak. I had it done before any of his men even knew what had happened.

“I am the Red Queen’s grandson.” I roared the words out into the silence. “Maeres Allus is dead. His life was mine to take. There’s nothing left to protect here.” Hot blood soaked my chest while I clasped Allus against me, lifting my chin as one of his arms reached up weakly, scrabbling at my face. “I don’t care how his assets are divided, but lift a hand against me and by God you will lose it.”

The crowd had drawn back from us, aghast, as if the violence they looked down upon each day twenty foot below the level of their shoes was something different, a pretence perhaps, but a man in a well-tailored tunic bleeding among them was all too real and made them blanch and cringe.

Allus’s guards had stepped away too. Their charge was dead, his heart would realize it in short order. They had nothing to gain by coming against me now. It had ended for them the moment I slit their boss’s throat.

I pushed Allus away from me. He staggered back, pulsing crimson from his neck wound, fetching up against the wooden barricade. I followed and shoved him, two hands rammed hard into his chest. He went heels over head, plummeting backward across the barrier. I peered after him. “Is the bear big enough for you?” Shouted at a volume that would reach the whole crowd, though Maeres himself was beyond hearing.

I spun around and picked up my coffer. I could see some of Allus’s flunkies slipping away through various exits. The bookkeeper was clutching a wound in his side and the three sacks had vanished. Scuffles had broken out further back in the crowd. Half a dozen of the Terrif brothers’ guards were closing in on me.

“He’s dead!” I roared it at them. “I’m a fucking prince of the realm. Are you going to touch me?” I stalked past the first of them, paying him no heed. “Thought not!” I walked on, letting the onlookers part before me.

Just before the entrance I turned back. Several bloody fights were in progress and the richer elements had already started to flee the scene.

I used my royal shout to be heard. “My grandmother’s troops will be burning the poppies by nightfall. Death warrants will be issued for Allus’s captains. I expect to see Alber Marks’s head on a spike by morning, Cutter John’s too, and there will be leniency for any man who helped put them there.”

I turned and left, exiting the main doors, with some of the lords who had wondered about my identity now sprinting ahead into the street, many others crowding behind me. I heard the mutter then, for the first time. “Red Prince.” And looking down at myself as I stepped into the light of day I saw that few parts of me weren’t crimson with Maeres Allus’s lifeblood.

I walked twenty paces and leaned against one of the great buttresses that support the slaughterhouse walls, forehead to the stonework, cool in the shade. I saw my knife cut Allus’s throat, again and again. On the third time I vomited until I was empty. At last I walked away, weak and shaking, wiping my mouth.

“Give him what he wants,” Jorg had said. “Then take what you want. Nobody is more vulnerable than in their moment of victory, and you know that whatever you do this man will never let you go while he lives.”

I walked away, coffer heavy in my arms, still a coward. Neither the old Jalan, nor the one who left Vermillion a year ago. Perhaps a little of each-still a coward, but when you’ve looked at your old life with eyes that have seen Hell you discover a new perspective and realize that you can only be pushed so far.