Prince of Fools - Mark Lawrence 2 стр.


I nearly made it back to my room.

Jalan Kendeth!

I stopped two steps from the balcony that led to my chambers, toe poised for the next step, boots in my hand. I said nothing. Sometimes the bishop would just bellow my name when he discovered random mischief. In fairness I was normally the root cause. This time, however, he was looking directly at me.

I see you right there, Jalan Kendeth, footsteps black with sin as you creep back to your lair. Get down here!

I turned with an apologetic grin. Churchmen like you to be sorry and often it doesnt matter what youre sorry about. In this case I was sorry for being caught.

And the best of mornings to you, Your Excellency. I put the boots behind my back and swaggered down towards him as if it had been my plan all along.

His Eminence directs me to present your brothers and yourself at the throne room by second bell. Bishop James scowled at me, cheeks grey with stubble as if he too had been turfed out of bed at an unreasonable hour, though perhaps not by Lisa DeVeers shapely foot.

Father directed that? Hed said nothing at table the previous night, and the cardinal was not one to rise before noon whatever the good book had to say about sloth. They call it a deadly sin, but in my experience lust will get you into more trouble and sloths only a sin when youre being chased.

The message came from the queen. The bishops scowl deepened. He liked to attribute all commands to Father as the churchs highest, albeit least enthusiastic, representative in Red March. Grandmother once said shed been tempted to set the cardinals hat on the nearest donkey, but Father had been closer and promised to be more easily led. Martus and Darin have already left.

I shrugged. They arrived before me too. Id yet to forgive my elder brothers that slight. I stopped, out of arms reach as the bishop loved nothing better than to slap the sin out of a wayward prince, and turned to go upstairs. Ill get dressed.

Youll go now! Its almost second bell and your preening never takes less than an hour.

As much as I would have liked to dispute the old fool, he happened to be right and I knew better than to be late for the Red Queen. I suppressed a sneer and hurried past him. I had on what Id worn for my midnight escapades and whilst it was stylish enough, the slashed velvets hadnt fared too well during my escape. Still, it would have to serve. Grandmother would rather see her spawn battle-armoured and dripping blood in any event, so a touch of mud here and there might earn me some approval.

THREE

I came late to the throne room with the second bells echoes dying before I reached the bronze doors, huge out-of-place things stolen from some still-grander palace by one of my distant and bloody-handed relatives. The guards eyed me as if I might be bird crap that had sailed uninvited through a high window to splat before them.

Prince Jalan. I rolled my hands to chivvy them along. You may have heard of me? I am invited.

Without commentary the largest of them, a giant in fire-bronze mail and crimson-plumed helm, hauled the left door wide enough to admit me. My campaign to befriend every guard in the palace had never penetrated as far as Grandmothers picked men; they thought too much of themselves for that. Also they were too well paid to be impressed by my largesse, and perhaps forewarned against me in any case.

I crept in unannounced and hurried across the echoing expanse of marble. Ive never liked the throne room. Not for the arching grandness of it, or the history set in grim-faced stone and staring at us from every wall, but because the place has no escape routes. Guards, guards, and more guards, along with the scrutiny of that awful old woman who claims to be my grandmother.

I made my way towards my nine siblings and cousins. It seemed this was to be an audience exclusively for the royal grandchildren: the nine junior princes and singular princess of Red March. By rights I should have been tenth in line to the throne after my two uncles, their sons, and my father and elder brothers, but the old witch whod kept that particular seat warm these past forty years had different ideas about succession. Cousin Serah, still a month shy of her eighteenth birthday, and containing not an ounce of whatever it is that makes a princess, was the apple of the Red Queens eye. I wont lie, Serah had more than several ounces of whatever it is that lets a woman steal the sense from a man, and accordingly I would gladly have ignored the common views on what cousins should and shouldnt get up to. Indeed Id tried to ignore them several times, but Serah had a vicious right hook and a knack for kicking the tenderest of spots that a man owns. Shed come today wearing some kind of riding suit in fawn and suede that looked better suited to the hunt than to court. But damn, she looked good.

КОНЕЦ ОЗНАКОМИТЕЛЬНОГО ОТРЫВКА

I brushed past her and elbowed my way in between my brothers near the front of the group. Im a decent-sized fellow, tall enough to give men pause, but I dont normally care to stand by Martus and Darin. They make me look small and, with nothing to set us apart, all with the same dark-gold hair and hazel eyes, I get referred to as the little one. That I dont like. On this occasion, though, I was prepared to be overlooked. It wasnt just being in the throne room that made me nervous. Nor even because of Grandmothers pointed disapproval. It was the blind-eye woman. She scares the hell out of me.

I first saw her when they brought me before the throne on my fifth birthday, my name day, flanked by Martus and Darin in their church finest, Father in his cardinals hat, sober despite the sun having passed its zenith, my mother in silks and pearls, a clutch of churchmen and court ladies forming the periphery. The Red Queen sat forwards in her great chair booming out something about her grandfathers grandfather, Jalan, the Fist of the Emperor, but it passed me by-Id seen her. An ancient woman, so old it turned my stomach to look at her. She crouched in the shadow of the throne, hunched up so shed be hidden away if you looked from the other side. She had a face like paper that had been soaked then left to dry, her lips a greyish line, cheekbones sharp. Clad in rags and tatters, she had no place in that throne room, at odds with the finery, the fire-bronzed guards and the glittering retinue come to see my name set in place upon me. There was no motion in the crone; she could almost have been a trick of the light, a discarded cloak, an illusion of lines and shade.

. . Jalan? The Red Queen stopped her litany with a question.

I had answered with silence, tearing my gaze from the creature at her side.

Well? Grandmother narrowed her regard to a sharp point that held me.

Still I had nothing. Martus had elbowed me hard enough to make my ribs creak. It hadnt helped. I wanted to look back at the old woman. Was she still there? Had she moved the moment my eyes left her? I imagined how shed move. Quick like a spider. My stomach made a tight knot of itself.

Do you accept the charge I have laid upon you, child? Grandmother asked, attempting kindness.

My glance flickered back to the hag. Still there, exactly the same, her face half-turned from me, fixed on Grandmother. I hadnt noticed her eye at first, but now it drew me. One of the cats at the Hall had an eye like that. Milky. Pearly almost. Blind, my nurse called it. But to me it seemed to see more than the other eye.

Whats wrong with the boy? Is he simple? Grandmothers displeasure had rippled through the court, silencing their murmurs.

I couldnt look away. I stood there sweating. Barely able to keep from wetting myself. Too scared to speak, too scared even to lie. Too scared to do anything but sweat and keep my eyes on that old woman.

When she moved, I nearly screamed and ran. Instead just a squeak escaped me. Don-dont you see her?

She stole into motion. So slow at first you had to measure her against the background to be sure it wasnt imagination. Then speeding up, smooth and sure. She turned that awful face towards me, one eye dark, the other milk and pearl. It had felt hot, suddenly, as if all the great hearths had roared into life with one scorching voice, sparked into fury on a fine summers day, the flames leaping from iron grates as if they wanted nothing more than to be amongst us.

She was tall. I saw that now, hunched but tall. And thin, like a bone.

Dont you see her? My words rising to a shriek, I pointed and she stepped towards me, a white hand reaching.

Who? Darin beside me, nine years under his belt and too old for such foolishness.

I had no voice to answer him. The blind-eye woman had laid her hand of paper and bones over mine. She smiled at me, an ugly twisting of her face, like worms writhing over each other. She smiled, and I fell.

I fell into a hot, blind place. They tell me I had a fit, convulsions. A lepsy, the chirurgeon said to Father the next day, a chronic condition, but Ive never had it again, not in nearly twenty years. All I know is that I fell, and I dont think Ive stopped falling since.

Grandmother had lost patience and set my name upon me as I jerked and twitched on the floor. Bring him back when his voice breaks, she said.

And that was it for eight years. I came back to the throne room aged thirteen, to be presented to Grandmother before the Saturnalia feast in the hard winter of 89. On that occasion, and all others since, Ive followed everyone elses example and pretended not to see the blind-eye woman. Perhaps they really dont see her, because Martus and Darin are too dumb to act and poor liars at that, and yet their eyes never so much as flicker when they look her way. Maybe Im the only one to see her when she taps her fingers on the Red Queens shoulder. Its hard not to look when you know you shouldnt. Like a womans cleavage, breasts squeezed together and lifted for inspection, and yet a prince is supposed not to notice, not to drop his gaze. I try harder with the blind-eye woman and for the most part I manage it-though Grandmothers given me an odd look from time to time.

In any event, on this particular morning, sweating in the clothes I wore the night before and with half the DeVeers garden to decorate them, I didnt mind in the least being wedged between my hulking brothers and being the little one, easy to overlook. Frankly, the attention of either the Red Queen or her silent sister were things I could do without.

We stood for another ten minutes, unspeaking in the main, some princes yawning, others shifting weight from one foot to the other or casting sour glances my way. I do try to keep my misadventures from polluting the calm waters of the palace. Its ill advised to shit where you eat, and besides, its hard to hide behind ones rank when the offended party is also a prince. Even so, over the course of the years, Id given my cousins few reasons to love me.

Назад Дальше