We turned down an alley at the back of the palace. I knew it led to the kitchens, where garbage and other refuse was removed by the wagonload daily and new supplies were delivered. There was a new iron gate here as well, guarded by two big men in uniform. There was no visible evidence of why this gate had been installed, and the soldiers themselves didn’t appear too concerned with their job. That, at least, I knew to be a trick: only the toughest guys watched the palace’s back door. You’d stand a better chance of storming the throne room itself.
Anders stopped and dismounted. One guard stepped forward, and the other discreetly put his hand on his scabbard. “State your business,” the first one said.
“King’s orders,” Anders said, and held out his right fist. He wore a signet ring, and popped it open to reveal the second insignia, the one that showed his true rank.
“Huh,” the first man said, then looked up at me. “And you, fuzzy?”
I nodded at Anders. “I’m with him.”
The man started to say something, then stopped and stared at me as if I’d grown another nose. Then he turned to Anders. “Is that-?”
“Yeah,” Anders said quickly, and snapped his ring closed. “And we don’t want to keep the king waiting.”
“No, of course not,” the guard said. He gestured to the other man, who produced a key and unlocked the gate. I dismounted and followed Anders.
The first guard preceded us through, and unlocked a nondescript wooden door set into the palace’s foundation. It looked like a servant’s entrance, and the ground outside it was stained after years of chamber pots, leftovers and worn-out linens being stacked for collection. He pushed it open, and we stepped inside.
“What about our horses?” I asked.
“They’ll be attended to, sir,” the guard said. He sounded nervous now. “Well fed, brushed down and put away dry. And, hey-sorry about that ‘fuzzy’ crack. No harm done, right?” He closed the door behind us before I could answer, and I heard the key turn the lock again.
Anders was clearly on familiar ground, because even though we were in total darkness, he began humming. I said, “What the hell was that all about?”
“They knew who I’d been sent to fetch. People still talk about you here.”
“They do,” I repeated. My stomach fell into a pit and I was suddenly queasy. “What do they say?”
A spark flared in the darkness, and then a torch burst to life. Anders held it at arm’s length while the harsh residue burned away. “They talk about that day at the lake, when you fought all those guys,” Anders said as he waited for the flame to settle. “Whenever someone’s facing odds like that, they call it ‘getting LaCrossed.’ ”
“I can think of a few better words for it.” Failure came to mind. “We’re not allowed to use the front door?”
“People watch the front. The king wants your visit to be, ah… discreet.”
We were at one end of a long passage. We walked down the tunnel to another door and Anders, still humming, tapped the stones in the wall, looking for the false one. I reached past him and pushed the correct one, which slid in to reveal a key in a small depression. The castle had dozens of these secret passages-every castle did-and it made me smile to think that I probably knew them better than Anders. After all, I’d grown up around them.
The passage beyond was lit with widely spaced torches, so that we had to pass through deep pools of darkness between them. I knew that in some of these shadows, soldiers could hide in invisible notches in the wall, a security precaution to defend against enemy infiltrators. Heavy iron gates could also drop at a moment’s notice, trapping intruders between them. Ordinarily, though, these spots would be unmanned, because Arentia had been at peace with its neighbors for over forty years, since the reign of the previous king. Now, given all the precautions outside, would these niches be occupied by soldiers ready to defend the palace from attack? I thought about reaching into one just to see, but figured that was needlessly provocative. If I got run through before I even talked to the king, I’d never find out the truth.
The tunnel dead-ended at yet another door. Anders knocked, and a slot opened. Hard eyes peered at us. Anders held up his identification ring again, and after a moment the slot closed, and the bolt inside slid back. Anders snuffed his torch in a bucket beside the door and gestured for me to precede him.
We entered a small antechamber with a desk and two chairs. When the door shut behind us, it became almost invisible in the wall’s stonework. Another much more modern door was directly opposite the one we’d just used. A soldier, a major according to his uniform, sat behind the desk and looked up at us. When he saw Anders, he jumped to his feet and saluted. The man who’d opened the door stood at stiff attention beside it.
“As you were,” Anders said calmly. “Has the king been informed that we’ve arrived?”
“Yes, sir,” the major said. “He’s expecting you in his office.”
“Very good.” The soldier who’d admitted us leaped to open the other door.
I realized I was sweating, and my hands shook as we walked down the hallway whose every brick and tapestry was familiar to me. This was the passageway to the king’s private family quarters, and you could only enter through the secure door we’d used, or the two other hidden ones known only to the family and its closest friends.
We reached the big double doors at the end of the hall. Anders knocked. The door opened partially, and a white-haired man peered out beneath thick, still-dark eyebrows.
“Brought him,” Anders said simply, and stepped aside.
The old man squinted at me. I knew him, of course-Emerson Wentrobe, advisor to the king of Arentia for the last sixty years, the one great constant in Arentian government. Some uninformed wags always insisted that Wentrobe was the apocryphal power behind the throne; the rest of us knew that, while his advice was often heeded, he never made the final decision. At least that had been the case with the previous king; I couldn’t imagine Phil being any different.
Wentrobe had only been an advisor for forty years the last time I saw him, and his hair had been stone gray, not white. But his eyes were still as sharp as ever. “Young master Edward,” he said to me.
“Not so young,” I replied, and offered my hand. “How are you, Mr. Wentrobe?”
“Not so old,” he said with a grin. His grip was still firm, although not as bonecrushing as it had seemed in my youth.
He stepped aside, and this time I gestured for Anders to precede me. But the young man shook his head. “I’m just supposed to deliver you. This is where I get off. It’s been a pleasure traveling with you, Baron LaCrosse.”
I winced a little; it was the first time anyone had ever used that title in reference to me. “Yeah, well, you can still call me Eddie. Thanks, Mike.”
SIX
Wentrobe closed the door behind us. The office was decked out with all the gilt and glitter expected of a king, but for the moment we were alone in it. I dropped my saddlebags next to the door and hung my jacket on the coat rack. I felt seriously underdressed.
“Would you like a drink?” Wentrobe asked, moving to the bar.
“Sure. Rum if you have it.”
“We do indeed.” As he poured, he glanced at me. “You appear to have grown accustomed to hard work.”
“Yeah. Who’d’ve thought, huh?” I took the drink gratefully. “So. How are… things?”
Wentrobe sipped his own drink. “What do you know?”
“What was in Phil’s note, what Anders told me, and what I picked up from gossip on the way. Phil met some mysterious beautiful woman, married her, and now everyone thinks she killed their child.”
He nodded. “That’s what everyone thinks, all right. Almost everyone.”
“Is that what happened?”
He made a grand shrug. “Their son is dead. The queen was found with the body, covered in blood that wasn’t her own, inside a locked room. Those are the only facts everyone agrees on.”
“So the queen murdered the prince.”
