“I do not think you understand your own game.”
“Even better odds for you, then,” said Truss. He worked the trachy onto his thumbnail and then flicked it up into the air. In the murky darkness, it winked like a falling star.
He caught it in his palm, closed his fingers into a fist, then slapped it on the back of his other hand. The Dogaressa smiled blithely up at him. Truss groaned.
“There,” said Mordaunt. He rolled back his shoulders and jutted his chin. “You have failed your gambit. And you have lost your touch a bit, yes. You must reacquaint yourself with the dead. You may have forgotten, but they are quite good company, once you get to know them.”
The chapel was in the very tallest tower of Castle Crudele, and the pit, as its name suggested, was in the ground. Truss steeled himselffor his journey the way he imagined a soldier girded himself for battle. In this case, his only weapon was the clothespin he used to pinch his nose shut. The erupted tumor reeked like burnt hair and rotted fruit.
Truss hooked the Exarch’s ankles with his elbows and pinned his legs on either side of his chest. Then he dragged the corpse behind him as if it were a wheelbarrow. A wheelbarrow, he thought, would have been useful. But there were so many stairs to heft it up and down. Truss merely hoped that all this jostling would not knock out any of the Exarch’s teeth. Curious, he peeled back one of the Exarch’s wormy lips and saw that there were only six teeth to be knocked out. A pitiful inheritance for the princess.
As he walked, pain wriggled like maggots through his back, and he loathed Mordaunt. They could have at least taken the body together. The Most Esteemed Surgeon would not be any the wiser. He was robed in his rage and would not make himself seen again until the day of the desecration.
The corridors of Castle Crudele were empty, and despite the light that drained in from the overhead windows, they were rather cold. There was only so much that could be done to heat such inhumane stone. A structure built upon the blood of the dead would never be hospitable to the living. A hundred years had passed, and Berengar’s cruelty still echoed in these halls like the groaning of ghosts.
Truss heard voices ahead. He stopped abruptly and let the Exarch’s ankles drop, his heels thudding to the ground like stones. At first he thought he had stumbled upon a true specter, a grim apparition, but no. These were the voices of men with pumping blood. And indeed they were lusty, incensed voices that, even disembodied, filled Truss with dread.
“I will not abide this, boy! Yes—you heard me,boy,for so you are. You may whisper into your folded hands each night,Oh, I wish my father would leave this earth,but I am not dead yet. So you are no king. You are merely an unruly son, and a father may punish his unruly sonhowever he sees fit. Your head will be too deformed to wear a crown when I am done with you.”
“You shame yourself making such toothless threats. And you shame the House of Berengar by refusing to listen to reason.”
Truss would know the prince’s voice anywhere. So fluid, so resolute, even when the words themselves were incendiary. Anyone would balk at such eloquence. Momentarily, it seemed to mollify the king himself.
But then Nicephorus rejoined with, “Ah, well, it is a pity your mother is no longer here to stand between us.”
Abruptly, there was a great scuffling, some heavy thudding—footsteps on the ground, an elbow jammed? The slightly sticky sound of flesh and fat meeting flesh and bone. It was the king who grunted—this noise, at least, could be mistaken for nothing else—and the prince who let out a huff of exertion. Leather squeaked and fabric chafed upon stone.
Truss remained still, as quiet as the bleak walls around him. If he had not known it was the royal line struggling against itself, he would have thought it no more than a tiltyard tussle. Rowdy squires blackening each other’s eyes before they could be pulled apart. There was quite a limpid slapping sound and then, from the prince, a cold and hollow laugh.
“You might have prevailed if I were still a child,” Liuprand said, “but I am a man grown.”
Nicephorus wheezed, “A man grown, indeed. Let me see the proof.”
The air hissed. There was more scuffling, what sounded like hands scrabbling among fabric. And then a tremendous, solid thud, grim and final. The king panted heavily, hatefully. Truss could hear the mucus rattling in his throat.
“Enough, Father,” said Liuprand.
“You are no son of mine,” rasped the king. His voice was so scratchy and feeble that Truss had no choice but to imagine this: Liuprand’s hand jammed against his father’s windpipe, pinning him to the wall. No mean feat. They were of a height, but the king was half as heavy asan ox. “You are your whore mother’s progeny and the seed of whatever common wretch she cuckolded me with.”
“I almost wish it were so. It disgraces me to share your blood. Now listen. Seraph has cut the rope bridge between our island and its glimmering shores. The Dogaressa is too addled with age to remember the nameDrepane.We must not let this relinquishment become known, and we must do all we can to forge stronger bonds with the noble houses. This means, yes, merging our lines, and indeed, following their customs.”
“You are as paranoid as a prophet. Always predicting doom.”
“Am I? The Master of Blood has washed his hands of us. It will not be difficult for him to encourage other houses to do the same. Wemusthave this desecration. We must let them see that we, too, will follow Berengar’s law to the letter. And we must let them see we do not cling too fiercely to the ancient mores of Seraph. That the Exarch’s bones are no more sacred to us than the bones of any other dead man.”
A pause. The king panted wetly. “What epithet are you angling for, boy?” he asked at last. “Liuprand the Prostrate?”
“It speaks to your dull nature that you think diplomacy is submission. These are the means by which any king would seek to strengthen his position. I have heard enough from you. The desecration will be performed. I will send missives soliciting leeches from each noble house. This matter is settled.”
The king garbled out a curse, but the prince’s footsteps were already brisk upon the floor, fading into the distance. Truss exhaled. His knees felt as weak as jellied broth.
He would not resent again the menial tasks of draining blood or pulling teeth. Being only a leech, he was not obliged to look skyward while the prince and the king tussled overhead like angry gods. Truss bent down, picked up the Exarch’s ankles again, and continued his slow, descending sojourn. Mordaunt had been right, he admitted to himself, somewhat sourly: He would no longer underestimate the charms of the inexorably silent dead.
Mordaunt, meanwhile, was wishing he had taken up Truss on his offer. That nine-times-out-of-ten fool had been right on this occasion: He did prefer the company of the dead.
Not that the girl was such lively company. She did not speak as he led her through the chilly corridors; she kept her gaze on the ground, only rarely daring to steal glances up at him with her strange eyes. In Seraph, such eyes would be considered portentous. Here on Drepane, Mordaunt kept his superstitions to himself. But he would be glad to deposit her back in her village and not think of her again. Horror-touched eyes, they were. Each time he was caught in their path, Mordaunt shivered.
“You will not speak of what you have seen here today, girl,” he said.
