Teran flinched, but stood firm. “Even so, Your Highness. And so I had to obey the orders I was given, by Lord Falk.”
In disgust, Karl spun away from him, strode to the sideboard, and poured a glass of asproga. “And what are your orders now?” he said, then downed the fiery yellow liqueur in a single gulp.
“Lord Falk requests that you await him here, Your Highness,” Teran said.
“Then perhaps you had better wait for him outside, so you can confirm you carried out your instructions,” Karl said coldly.
“Yes, Your Highness,” said Teran. He went out into the hallway, and closed the door.
Karl, upset with himself, furious at what he had just witnessed and at Teran’s part in it, stripped off his ridiculous finery, donning in its place plain black trousers and a white shirt. Barefoot, he padded to the window and gazed out over the Palace grounds. The night was moonless, but globular magelights on metal poles cast circles of cold illumination every few yards along the paths that wound through the formal gardens. Their illumination revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
He squinted. Unless…
Karl had an enchanted device known as a “magniseer” beside his window. Tagaza had provided it to him so that he could study the stars. Somehow it canceled out the faint shimmer of the Lesser Barrier, allowing him a clear view. But now he seized the chill metal tube and pointed it downward, toward the Palace grounds.
There. Near the bronze equestrian statue of Queen Castilla, down at the far end of the gardens. Karl pushed at the focus lever, and turned the knob that made it as light sensitive as possible. The action of the magic within drew energy from the air around the device, frosting the controls. Karl blew on his fingers to warm them, then took a closer look through the magniseer. Even with the adjustments, he could not make out any features of the two figures lurking in the shadow of the statue. Still, they were obviously hiding-waiting for a signal, perhaps.
A signal that Davydd had been taken prisoner? And then what?
Karl watched them for the next few minutes, but they did nothing but lurk. He straightened up to relieve his back just as he heard the door opening in the other room.
Instantly he pointed the magniseer up to the ceiling, and was at the bedroom door before Lord Falk finished closing the main door. “Lord Falk,” Prince Karl said in his haughtiest I-am-royal-and-you-are-not voice, “I demand to know what is going on!”
“Of course, Your Highness,” Lord Falk said. “That is precisely why I have come.”
“ On your orders, Teran came perilously close to dragging me to my chambers, Lord Falk. I am still Prince, am I not?”
Lord Falk spread his hands, though his face remained expressionless. Karl suspected Queen Castilla’s statue could show more emotion than Falk when he didn’t want to reveal anything. “I trust Your Highness will forgive him,” Falk said. “He was following my orders. I feared there might be some unrest following the arrest of Davydd Verdsmitt and his troupe. As it turned out, those fears were unfounded, Verdsmitt’s play having scandalized even his most ardent supporters in the Palace.”
“Are you mad, Lord Falk?” Karl said. “Davydd Verdsmitt is the leading playwright of the kingdom and much beloved by the Commons. You may have arrested him without any ‘unrest’ in the theater, but when word of this reaches the Commons-”
“Unrest among Commoners is of little concern,” Falk said. “While magic lives, the Commons pose no threat to the rule of the MageLords. And despite the fond wishes of radical Common Causers like Verdsmitt, magic is not going to fail.”
Karl’s eyes narrowed. “If you aren’t worried about the Common Cause, why have you arrested him?”
“Not because he is a threat to the Kingdom, Your Highness,” Lord Falk said. “Because he is a threat to you. It was he who ordered and organized the attack on your person.”
“ What? ”
“My source is unimpeachable,” Falk said. “Verdsmitt ordered the attack.”
“Three days before coming to the Palace to perform?” Karl did not try to keep the skepticism out of his voice.
Falk shrugged. “Hubris. He either believed we would never find out, or else he believed he is untouchable because of his fame. In either case, more fool he.”
“But why would Verdsmitt want to kill me?”
“My working assumption is, as I told you earlier, as a simple act of terror. But I’m sure his exact motivation will become clearer after a thorough interrogation. Which I had best be about. If Your Highness will excuse me…?”
Karl waved a hand. “Of course. Please keep me informed.” Falk bowed and took his leave. Teran looked in momentarily, then stepped back into the hall, closing and locking the door behind him.
Karl went back to the magniseer.
The mysterious figures still waited in the dark. But even as he watched them, they moved.
He didn’t know what he had expected them to do. Approach the Palace, perhaps, maybe attempt to free Verdsmitt, armed with enchanted weapons provided by the same renegade mage who had provided the one that had mysteriously failed to kill him. But instead they went the other way, to the shore of the lake; and then, as he watched, they got into a boat and rowed out onto the water.
Their course, he saw immediately, would take them to the wildest part of the far shore, a tangled jungle of cattails and rocks and brush that the Palace gardeners had left in its natural state.
There was nothing there. Nothing to interest Mageborn or Commoners. Unless…
How had Karl’s attacker come through the Lesser Barrier? Falk had suggested that perhaps she had been smuggled in as a Commoner worker, a servant for some MageLord. But Falk had provided no more information. That proved nothing, since Falk had little inclination to share information with Karl at the best of times. Still… what if the attacker had not been smuggled in? What if she had… somehow. .. come straight through the Barrier?
What if the mysterious renegade MageLord who had enchanted the crossbow was more powerful and connected than they had yet guessed.. . powerful enough that he could open the Barrier at will?
It wasn’t impossible. After all, the Gate, the only existing opening in the Lesser Barrier, had been crafted by a powerful ancient mage. Why couldn’t some modern mage have likewise figured out the secret?
Karl knew he should tell Teran about the two lurkers in the night, have him call out the guard. He knew what he was about to do was foolish beyond belief. But anger still burned in him at the cavalier way Falk treated and belittled him. If he could discover how the assassin had gotten inside the Barrier, it would give him an edge in his dealings with the Minister of Public Safety for years to come. And though he was not King yet, Karl already knew he needed every advantage he could get over the fractious and powerful MageLords and Mageborn that made up the government, from the Council on down to the regional governors and town mayors.
Besides Teran right outside his door, there would be other guards farther down the hallway, more guards at all the Palace entrances, guards everywhere…
… except right outside his window.
Karl had long ago discovered that it was a simple matter to climb down from his third-story window to the ground below. The cut stones that emphasized the massive solidity of the Palace also made excellent foot- and handholds. When he had been much younger, he’d frequently slipped down the side of the Palace and roamed the lakeshore and gardens in the dark, sometimes swimming in the moonlight, sometimes just lying on the grass and staring up at the stars through the shimmer of the Lesser Barrier. He’d never been caught, either, and so no one had ever thought to put a guard below his window.
The descent was easiest barefoot, and the night, as always, was warm. Karl went to his closet for a pair of boots-not the silly dress boots he’d been wearing in the theater, but his favorite pair of comfortable, ordinary boots-opened the casement, dropped the boots out the window, and then turned and lowered himself out of it as well, his toes finding the remembered cracks with ease. He descended quickly and quietly, although he had one bad moment when his right foot slipped-the cracks between the stones didn’t seem nearly as deep to him now as they had when he was ten. Still, he recovered without falling, and a few moments later stood, a little breathless, on the bedewed grass, damp and cool beneath his feet. He grabbed his boots and immediately slipped into the darkness of the line of trees that, framing the ornamental gardens, stretched down to the lakeshore.
Hidden in the shadows, he tugged on his boots while he peered across the lake. He could see nothing of the boat the two strangers had taken, out there on the dark water, but it had certainly been one they had somehow
