Chapter Nine
The throne room betrayed a certain basic insecurity.
I stepped through the door and looked around, trying not to roll my eyes at the gilt. The chamber was lined with gold and silver leaf, irresistibly drawing one’s attention towards the throne. Swords and spears, some of them looking rusted and old, hung from the walls. A pair of maps rested on a golden table - one showing Yolanda, one showing the three surrounding kingdoms - positioned at the edge of the chamber. I glanced at them, noting the arrows leading out of Yolanda and stabbing deep into the three kingdoms. It looked as if the prince was planning a war on three fronts.
Prince Alvin lounged in the throne. He sat up as he saw me, magic crackling around him. I was unimpressed. He looked nothing like the upright and almost painfully handsome prince the statues had primed me to expect. He was short and overweight and ... I frowned at the latter. Overweight magicians were rare, almost unknown. Working magic was good exercise. And there was enough power boiling in the air to suggest the prince was a very powerful magician indeed.
Or was there? My eyes narrowed as I studied the aura. It was ... weird. I’d never felt anything quite like it. The magic reminded me of a ritual spell, with magic from a dozen magicians concentrated and woven into a single piece of spellwork, but ... it was focused on the prince. It made no sense ... or did it? The prince’s enslaved alchemist had been churning out forbidden enhancement potions, using blood and organs sourced from magicians. It wouldn’t be safe to drink more than one or two doses in a month. How many doses was he drinking?
The prince leaned forward. “Who are you?”
“Does it matter?”
I tested his wards gingerly. He had little formal education - I supposed that explained why his wards were so simplistic - but he had a hell of a lot of power. Stolen power. Lord Ashworth hadn’t been that far wrong, when he’d suspected a necromancer. It wouldn’t be long before the prince took the plunge into outright necromancy. He was already halfway there.
It was hard not to smash him flat. “Why are you doing this?”
“You’re from the council, aren’t you?” The accusation in the prince’s voice was almost comical. “They sent you here to stop me.”
“Something like that,” I said, vaguely. Lord Ashworth had known something was wrong, but he hadn’t suspected the truth. “What are you doing?”
The prince stood. His wards grew stronger. I could feel them pressing down on me. “You will not be going back to your master, little sorcerer,” he said. “I think you’re going to stay a while with me.”
“How nice,” I said, mischievously. My mind raced, slipping through his wards. He might not have personalised them, but he’d piled so many wards into his fort that hacking the spellware would take time ... time I doubted he was going to give me. I slipped a tiny hint of suggestion into my voice. “You’re building an army, aren’t you? Why?”
The prince smiled. Aristocrats loved to brag. It was how they kept score. They knew - even if they refused to admit it openly - that they didn’t have any true power. A knight on horseback could dominate the battlefield, but if he were to be surrounded by angry peasants with pitchforks he’d be brought down in short order. They wanted - needed - to put on a show. They didn’t dare risk having their subjects call their bluff. They lacked the magic to make their power stick.
“I’m going to take power,” the prince said. “First, my father. And then the surrounding kingdoms.”
I was almost disappointed. My relationship with my father had never been that close - and he’d died just after I graduated - but I’d loved him and I never doubted he’d loved me. And this prince was about to kill his own father? He’d hardly be the first prince to put a knife in his own king’s back, but ... I had to admit he’d gone further than most. He’d done a quite remarkable job of building up a secret powerbase. The super-soldiers would be more than enough to take control of the tiny kingdom. And who would dare stand in his way?
“Interesting,” I said. “I might be interested in a barony. Tell me more.”
“My father bows and scrapes to our neighbours,” the prince hissed. I had the feeling he’d wanted to rant for a long time. “He bends the knee to them all, all the time! He’s a king and I’m a prince and yet we have to kneel before them? Intolerable!”
“The three kingdoms are strong enough to take your kingdom effortlessly,” I said, mock-thoughtfully. Technically, Yolanda wasn’t even a kingdom. “Your father has no choice but to play the three monarchs off one another. How else is he going to maintain a precarious independence?”
“We are kings,” the prince insisted. “I should be married by now. Do you know why I’m unmarried? Every time my father chooses a bride, it gets vetoed by one of the monarchs!”
How lucky for your poor bride, I thought, nastily. The prince looked big enough to squash a horse, let alone a poor princess. I’m sure she’s very upset about it.
The prince kept ranting. “Father won’t stand up to them,” he said. “I’m going to do it!”
I glanced at the maps. They looked absurdly simplistic, to the point they were ignoring terrain and enemy forts and everything else that might block the army’s advance, but ... the super-soldiers might be able to swim rivers and scramble up walls and simply punch their way through everything that got in their way. If the projections were accurate, the super-soldiers would be able to run for hours and arrive at their destination in perfect fighting trim.
