Goodbye, Mother.
‘Move real slow now, spellslinger,’ Cobb said.
I heard the marshals shuffling behind me, fingers on the triggers of their crossbows. They seemed neither concerned nor even aware of the cards that had floated here and that I now held in my hand. I suspected barely a second had passed for them and this whole event had taken place solely in my mind.
‘Hey,’ Reichis growled from where he was curled up on the ground. ‘Why’d you dump me down here?’
‘Sorry,’ I said to both him and the marshals, stuffing my mother’s strange herald cards into my pocket. I picked up the squirrel cat and settled him back on my shoulder. ‘Let’s get a move on. Time for Torian Libri to lock us up again.’
The marshals chuckled at that, and we all resumed our march to the palace.
‘You know where you went wrong with the lieutenant?’ Reichis asked.
‘Don’t start,’ I warned.
There are only three solutions his species have to offer regarding the resolution of conflicts between humans: kill them, rob them blind, or – and this is the one where Reichis derives the most pleasure from devising elaborate and intensely nauseating suggestions – bed them.
‘Shoulda mated with her the day you met her,’ the squirrel cat said earnestly.
‘Mating works better when the other person doesn’t despise you,’ I countered.
A couple of the marshals following behind me broke out laughing. Reichis took their mirth as encouragement – not that he needed any. ‘Nah, that Torian female desires you, see?’ He tapped a paw against his fuzzy muzzle. ‘Smelled it on her the day the queen introduced you two. I swear on all twenty-six squirrel cat gods, Kellen, the marshal’s in heat for you.’
It was, most assuredly, not true. Also, it’s highly doubtful that there are twenty-six squirrel cat gods. Times like these though? It’s best not to contradict the little monster.
‘Now, here’s what you oughta do …’ Reichis tried – and failed staggeringly – to stifle his chittering laughter. ‘First, you’re gonna take off your trousers. Females love that. Next, you turn around and wiggle your bottom at her. Then all you have to do is drop to your knees and start making this sound …’
I’m not going to describe the noise he made. Suffice it to say that it was exactly as disgusting as you might imagine. He kept making it all the way to the palace.
3
The Lieutenant
The Imperial Palace of Darome had been my home this past year, a significantly more luxurious place to lay one’s hat than the string of seedy roadside taverns, flea-infested campsites and cramped jail cells that constituted an outlaw’s customary abodes. That didn’t make it any more comfortable though.
The outlandish opulence of palaces, with their gilded halls, stunning portraits and majestic statues, make them wonderful places to visit. But unless you were born in one? Living in a palace makes you feel small. Shabby. An intruder whose presence tarnishes the otherwise pristine perfection of their surroundings.
It was enough to make a man reconsider whether he belonged there at all.
‘Now who let a lousy, no-good outlaw loose in a fine, upstanding establishment like this?’ Lieutenant Torian Libri asked.
Don’t pick a fight, I reminded myself. Let her drag you off to a cell and by morning the queen will have ordered your release. After that … I sniffed at my armpit, a very long bath is in order.
Torian was leaning nonchalantly – some might say disrespectfully – against a statue of Hephantus IV, the famously ill-tempered Daroman monarch who founded the royal marshals service more than a century ago. In life, Hephantus had broken with tradition by foregoing ostentatious royal vestments in favour of a rather plain grey leather coat better suited to concealing the knives and garrottes he relished employing on would-be assassins. To this day that same dull grey garment remains the customary uniform of nearly every marshal in Darome, save for Torian Libri, who’d dyed her own long leather coat a deep crimson.
Hides the bloodstains better, she claims.
‘Miss me, spellslinger?’ she asked with a wink.
At this point I should mention that, as merciless enforcers of the law went, Torian Libri was the most beautiful woman I’d ever met.
How beautiful?
‘So purdy …’ Reichis murmured.
The squirrel cat was perched on my shoulder, one paw resting on top of my head as he gazed wide-eyed at the lieutenant. Now, I know what you’re thinking: why would a squirrel cat – especially one who claims to find human faces so ugly that every time he tries to count their eyeballs he ends up vomiting before he gets to two – be mesmerised by this particular skinbag?
‘Purdiest eyes I ever saw,’ he chittered wistfully.
Imagine the brightest indigo you’ve ever seen – brighter than the azurite ores in the blue desert region of the Seven Sands. Deeper and richer than the waters off the coast of Gitabria that the locals call the Sapphire Sea. So captivating that more than one amateur poet among the palace courtiers had been known to rhapsodise about the ecstasy of drowning in those eyes.
Me? I generally avoid drowning.
Best as I’d been able to uncover, Torian was only a couple of years older than me. A string of successful manhunts against some of the deadliest outlaws in the Daroman empire had enabled her to rise up the ranks far faster than her fellow marshals – a fact which irritated them no end.
I’d met one of her captives once. The guy swore to me – right before he was dragged off to be hanged – that he’d witnessed Torian take down six highly trained killers all by herself, pursuing them high up into the border mountains. He figured she’d only left him alive to make sure there would be someone left to tell her story. ‘Had my crossbow aimed right at her,’ he repeated over and over. ‘But those eyes … Gods of sea and sky – one look and I just couldn’t bring myself to fire.’
There’s something particularly pathetic about a man awaiting execution bewitched by the beauty of the marshal who’s sent him to the gallows.
But when Torian Libri flashes that smile at you … When those high cheekbones rise even higher and that long black hair shimmers like onyx as it drapes down a neck so smooth you could stare at it all day long even when you weren’t contemplating how much you’d like to throttle her …?
And yeah … Those eyes.
‘Like sapphires,’ Reichis purred.
It’s worth noting that squirrel cats don’t purr.
Lieutenant Libri gave the six marshals escorting me a curt nod and they left me in her charge. No back-up, no handcuffs. That’s because Torian liked to remind me that she was faster on the draw than I was and could easily bury one of those finger-length throwing knives she favoured in my throat before my hands ever reached my powder holsters.
‘We can’t keep meeting like this, card player,’ she began, sliding her arm through mine to lead me through the grand foyer as though I were her escort to a royal ball rather than a prisoner headed for the palace dungeons. She leaned her head against my shoulder. ‘People are going to start thinking we’re sweet on each other.’
Her absurdly affectionate behaviour drew the attention of nobles and courtiers cockroaching their way around the palace in search of opportunities to advance their interests and frustrate those of their rivals. Reichis, convinced by all the stares that people were admiring him, shook himself, causing his fur to change colour from its natural brown to a rich silver accented with blue stripes almost the hue of Torian’s eyes.