A single ship among them had docked, flying a triptych flag—Mountain Lion, Bear, Shark. But the body of the ship was pure Pyrenee. His mother, awaiting entree from Ardenia. The gangplank was lowered, guards with their eyes on the ribbon of road that ran down from the Itspi.
She’d likely sent her demands already, hoping to win this war on intimidation alone, accept a quick surrender, and move on.
Taillefer drew in as deep a breath as his damaged lung would allow.
It would not be that easy.
“Up there with you.” It could’ve been a question, but the captain was bleeding from too many places to add the extra uptick in his voice.
“Yes, yes, up there,” Taillefer answered, dismissively. To his mother. Yes.
The pair picked their way down the swinging switchbacks to the harbor, the horse moving fast despite the long ride through the night from the Torrent to the eastern edge of Ardenia. Taillefer hung on to the reins as Nikola listed with each turn, the captain’s massive body barely anchored in the stirrups.
“You’re almost to your queen. Straighten up, man. I will not be delivered by a captain who is looking less than professional.”
He jabbed the captain in the side and Nikola’s chin shot up, his back wrenching from a concave slump to a rigid shoulders-back arc of pain. The soldier grunted.
“There. Was that so hard? Easier to make your announcements without your voice projecting at our ankles.”
The soldiers atop the gangplank tensed at the advance of a rider. Expecting Ardenia, of course, but then, upon closer inspection, receiving the shock of familiar faces aboard a pilfered pony, black in color rather than the typical Pyrenee white. When escaping a massive battle, one must take the horse one can get.
“Captain Nikola?” one asked, squinting and leaning forward, the dawn light winking off the gold pieces on his aubergine uniform. Of course Taillefer’s mother would only trust Pyrenee men in these early hours. “Is that you?”
“Aye.” Taillefer jabbed him in the side again, and the captain straightened further, planned words on his lips. “Queen Inés ordered me to deliver Taillefer, disowned prince of the Kingdom of Pyrenee, to her, and I have done so. I must have an audience with her at once. Permission to board?”
“Yes, Captain,” the men answered, making way.
The horse was nudged up the gangplank. The captain and his captive dismounted in a tangle together, Taillefer’s arms wrapped about Nikola’s torso, in a way that meant they moved as one, their weight oddly distributed in a shuffle and slide across the deck planks, toward the queen’s quarters.
“Shall I fetch Medikua Aritza?” one of the soldiers asked the captain, concerned.
“Can she embalm a body? That is the real question,” Taillefer answered, though the inquiry was not meant for him. He accentuated itwith a shuddered cough, splattering the shiny deck with spots of his royal blood. The soldier took a full step back in mild horror—clearly this one had yet to see a battlefield. “Leave us be. The medikua will have much to do in time.”
The soldiers gave them a wide berth after that, wrenching open the doors to the royal quarters. “My queen, Captain Nikola has arrived with the former prince.”
From within, his mother’s voice, laced with delight: “Oh, you’re kidding!? What a surprise!”
Nikola and Taillefer entered as one, the prince hooked under the soldier’s arms, grasping tightly to his body. The queen stood from where she’d been alone at a desk, discarding the parchments she’d been shuffling, and bustled over to shut the double doors herself. “Leave us, boys; we have much to talk about! Knock only if word arrives from the Itspi.” She smiled back at the pair, her glacier-blue eyes cold with light. “Though this should not take long.”
The doors clicked and Inés arced around the captain and his captive, who had not moved far from the threshold. “Captain, I will admit I thought you’d been unsuccessful. I’d resigned myself to it, and yet here you are, with my treasonous traitor of a son in your grasp. Obviously, having the princess, too, would have been preferable given the lever we’re trying to pull, but when one expects nothing she cannot be disappointed with something.” She set her eyes upon Taillefer. “And this one is certainly something.”
“Hello, Mother. I’ve missed your backhanded compliments.”
A smile flickered across her face. “I am glad you have, Taillefer, but I was engaged in conversation with Nikola.”
“I know.” With that answer, Taillefer straightened, all his weight on his own—and in moving his hand from where it had been hooked around Nikola’s torso, twisted and removed a dagger from where it had been lodged in the soldier’s liver for hours on end.
No longer held upright and lifeblood gushing from the punctured organ, the captain lurched and staggered. In one terrific sway, he crumpled to a heap. The candles stationed around the room sputtered and nearly extinguished at the gust of air generated by the falling body.
Taillefer tested the point of the blood-soaked blade on his finger, his eyes never leaving his mother. “It is truly a marvel of precision inweaponry that he did not bleed out hours ago. This blade was the perfect blockage.”
The prince reached behind him, barring the doors with the pull of the crossbar lock.
The queen began to back away, toward her desk. She likely had a weapon in there—perhaps a letter opener or possibly an actual dagger—but Taillefer had eyes only for the chemical warfare lined up in neat rows of vials in open-top wooden crates behind her.
“If you’ve come here to kill me, it won’t work. One scream, and a hundred men will rush those doors. They’ll come down the flue if they have to. They will come and you’ll be dead.”
“What does it matter if I’ve already succeeded in killing you?”
