“Aye, Your Highness, it is becoming tiresome,” he said.
“Let’s talk about something else. I’ve been meaning to ask you: I heard a rumor that Verdsmitt’s Players are coming to the palace. True?”
Teran nodded, his grin widening. “Yes, Your Highness. I meant to inform you after your swim. I knew you’d be pleased. They’re scheduled to perform in the Great Hall the day after tomorrow.”
“It’s been… what, three years?”
“Yes, Your Highness. A long time, for Verdsmitt. He used to premiere a new play every year, but he seems to have struggled with this one.”
“What’s it called?”
“ The Hidden Kingdom.”
“Historical?”
“No one seems to know,” Teran said. “It’s a mystery to everyone. .. well, except the actors, I presume.”
“Intriguing,” Karl said. Over the centuries, Court entertainment had solidified like kitchen grease left outside the Barrier in midwinter. The same songs, the same plays, the same stories, sung, acted, or read in the same way as ten years ago, and fifty, and a hundred. All had become part of Tradition, and though it was only Tradition, and not Law, in some ways it held more force than mere Law could ever muster. Within the greenhouse-like climate of the Court, the potential loss of face from flouting Tradition was far more feared than a mere fine or flogging. Nothing has changed around here for decades, Karl thought… but then the memory of the attack that morning struck him like a blow. Until now.
He shoved the thought away and took another sip of asproga. “I can’t wait to see it, Teran.” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, savoring the warm glow of the liqueur in his belly.
“That makes two of us, Your Highness,” Teran said.
Lord Falk descended a long flight of stairs into the basement of the Palace’s east wing, halting at an iron- bound door. Frost had painted it in glittering white, the sure telltale of powerful magic at work. Falk pulled his black gloves from his belt, put them on, then placed both hands flat on the door. Closing his eyes, he reached out with his mind for the energy all around him, and the magic welling up from the lode deep beneath the Palace. He twisted his mind into the necessary shape, and willed the door to open. Even through his gloves he felt a sudden bitter chill, then the door swung wide, fog briefly enveloping him as the warmer air of the dungeon contacted its frosted exterior.
Two Royal guards awaited him, swords drawn, their blades frosted like the door had been. “Password,” growled the one on the right.
“Periwinkle,” Falk said gravely.
“Hyacinth,” the one on the left proclaimed, and sheathed his sword, a small flurry of ice crystals sprinkling the flat square tiles of the floor. “Welcome, Lord Falk.”
“Timos, Anders.” Falk gave them both a smile, then shook his head. “I think I’ll tell Brich to stay away from flowers next password cycle. I feel silly every time I come down here.”
The guards laughed and stepped aside. Falk smiled at them, but the smile vanished the moment he passed them. As much as possible, he preferred to be liked by those he commanded, both to cement their loyalty and to ensure they carried out their duties as efficiently as possible. In truth, he had insisted on the silly signs and countersigns, just to give him something to joke with them about. Brich, his secretary, had agreed with an amused smile of his own. After twenty-five years in Falk’s service, he knew how the Minister of Public Safety’s mind worked.
He was also one of the few who knew what it worked toward.
Falk’s offices in the basement of the Palace were actually in the topmost of the dungeon’s three levels. Here, high, thin, horizontal windows located just above ground level still let in a modicum of natural light. A dozen relatively comfortable cells on this level were reserved for Mageborn who had fallen under suspicion of somethingor-other but had to be well treated while those suspicions were investigated. All those cells were currently empty.
Not so the ones in the levels below, where no light penetrated, and less hope. As Falk walked to his office he reviewed his mental list of those held there. There were a couple of Commoners down there with links to the Common Cause; they’d be worth another round of questions. But he could think of no one likely to shed any light on the question of who had mounted the attack on the Prince.
Falk’s dungeon was not primarily a place to incarcerate wrongdoers-far larger and more secure prisons on the outskirts of New Cabora and Berriton served that function, with separate facilities for Mageborn and Commoners. Rather, it was a place for gathering information.
Few people knew exactly how he gathered information, though, because no one who descended into those lower levels emerged with the ability to talk about it. Many never emerged at all, and those who did had had their memories carefully removed.
Falk considered that a merciful act.
Brich was hard at work in the outer office, seated at an enormous oak desk beneath a towering painting of an uncharacteristically regal King Kravon. Artistic license, Falk thought, as he usually did when he glanced at it.
Brich’s fingers flew across the keyboard of one of the mechanical text-stampers recently invented by some clever Commoner and now being mass-produced in a smokebelching factory up in New Cabora’s northeast sector, where a lot of manufacturing enterprises had begun to cluster. The constant clacking that had replaced the much more soothing sound of a pen nib scratching across paper annoyed Falk whenever he was in the outer office, but at least it didn’t penetrate his inner sanctum, and he had to admit that Brich’s reports had gotten much easier to read since the machine was installed.
More and more such clever contraptions were emerging from the Commons, attempts by the Commoners to circumvent their lack of magic through mechanical artifice. Falk considered them harmless curiosities, for the most part, though he kept a close eye on anything that could be developed into a weapon, and had already confiscated an ingenious device for spraying liquid fire. The inventor had claimed, during questioning, it was only an “agricultural aid” for burning brush out of farmers’ fields.
He didn’t much like the idea of that ending up in the hands of the radical, secret half of the Common Cause. Not that it would matter much in a very short time, if all went according to plan, but precisely because things were approaching a critical juncture, he really didn’t want any more disruption. The radical faction of the Common Cause wanted to overthrow the King, the Council, and the rest of the Twelve, and while Falk garnered a modicum of private amusement from the fact that was also what he intended to achieve, it wouldn’t stop him from ruthlessly exterminating those traitorous Commoners.. .
… if he could ever find out who they were. So far, they had maintained a remarkable and frustrating anonymity. He knew that they called their leader “the Patron,” but he had utterly failed to identify him or her, or any of his/her lieutenants.
It annoyed him, and puzzled him, since when questioned by his most skilled interrogators, very few people would fail to tell all they knew, sooner or later.
Well, no doubt that simply meant that he had not yet brought in the right people to question. He needed to dig deeper, and with a sharper shovel. And now, of course-he allowed himself a small, tight smile-the attempt to assassinate the Prince had given him the perfect opportunity to do so.
If it actually pointed him to the person behind the assassination attempt, that would be pure gravy. He didn’t think it would, because of the Unbound symbol. It was stretching the limits of coincidence to think that the assassin would have worn that particular symbol purely by chance. It had been intended to taunt him. Someone knows, he thought. And they’re working against me.
Still, being a man who lived by the motto “never let a crisis go to waste,” Falk stopped by Brich’s desk. “Brich,” he said.
The secretary stopped text-stamping and blinked up at him with watery blue eyes. Brich had looked eighty years old for the last twenty years; Falk had no idea how old he really was. He pushed one of the few strands of gray hair that still spanned his brown-spotted scalp back from his forehead. “Yes, my lord?”
“Prepare orders for all of our operatives in the Commons. They are to arrest for questioning anyone they know or suspect has ties to the Common Cause.”
Brich raised an eyebrow so high it almost disappeared behind the hair he had just pushed back. “There are many who profess sympathy with the Cause,” he said. “That number of arrests will cause an uproar
