‘Well now,’ she laughed. ‘Aren’t you the handsome rogue?’
A blush of pink bloomed across the silver of Reichis’s coat. Nearby, a pair of Gitabrian merchant lords, looking especially splendid in their jaunty purple hats, went to the trouble of whispering loudly in the Jan’Tep tongue of my people to ensure their insult wouldn’t be lost on me. ‘Did you see the animal that just slunk into the royal palace?’ the first asked. ‘The filthy creature’s coat is probably full of fleas.’
The other chuckled merrily. ‘Indeed … Perhaps he should borrow the squirrel cat’s instead!’
Almost a year I’d lived in this palace, and I swear every single person to walk these halls thinks they’re the first to come up with that joke. There are variations, of course. ‘What a beastly stench … And the squirrel cat doesn’t smell much better!’ was a popular one. Sometimes it was my accent that amused them: ‘What is that awful mewling the beast makes? Why, I do believe Her Majesty’s tutor of cards has learned a new word!’
My personal favourites were the heated debates over whether it was Reichis or myself who’d mated with the most barnyard animals. Reichis didn’t mind the stares and sneers though, mostly because I was generally the butt of the jokes, but also because the insults helped him identify the targets for his next heist.
‘Yep,’ he grunted, scampering down my shoulder before landing on the marble floor. ‘Gonna get me that purple hat.’
‘You’re a squirrel cat,’ I reminded him. ‘What could you possibly want with a hat?’
He glanced up to give me a snarl. ‘You sayin’ I wouldn’t look good in a hat?’ Without waiting for a reply he grumbled off to perform his latest feat of feline larceny. ‘You know who looks dumb in a hat? You look dumb in a hat. Gonna poop in your hat, that’s what I’m gonna do. Not that you’ll notice.’
Torian smiled as she watched him go. She’s got a soft spot for the squirrel cat, possibly due to a natural affinity for animals whose preferred means of resolving conflict involves maximum bloodshed.
She tugged my arm and resumed our march down the great hall. A hard right turn brought us to a set of stairs that led to the lower levels beneath the palace, where they kept the kitchens and storerooms.
And the dungeon, of course.
‘The queen’s going to hear about this,’ I informed her as we descended.
‘The queen loves me,’ Torian countered.
That, regrettably, was true. Queen Ginevra had a thing for tough, determined young women, and they didn’t come any tougher or more determined than Torian Libri. Except maybe the queen herself, of course.
We arrived at a row of six cells reserved for those prisoners the crown preferred to keep close by. Each cell was unusually well appointed, with red-and-gold velvet curtains behind the bars to provide warmth and a measure of privacy. A small reading desk and a sturdy chair were bolted beneath a plaque written in archaic Daroman for which I hadn’t yet found the translation, but was fairly sure read, ‘Yeah, you’re screwed.’
The cot in the corner was narrow, but not uncomfortable. You got a decent night’s sleep in these cells, as I’d discovered from spending rather more time in them than was customary for one of Her Majesty’s royal tutors.
‘The queen loves me too,’ I reminded Torian.
This is usually the part where she unlocks the door and shoves me into one of the cells. Instead she turned on me, the sharp glare in her eyes catching the lantern light. ‘Too bad you don’t seem to feel the same about her, spellslinger.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Torian began circling me in the narrow passage, halting periodically to poke me with a sharp fingernail. ‘It occurs to me that if you genuinely cared about Her Majesty, you’d stop pissing off her marshals service, who are, in case you’ve forgotten, responsible for her security. That’s the first rule.’
Poke.
Don’t take the bait, I reminded myself. Just let her push you around a little and soon you’ll be enjoying a nice, comfortable cell for the night.
‘The second rule is that you stick to your own job, which best as I can determine is to play cards with Her Majesty. Tell her jokes. Make her laugh. Occasionally strut around the palace with your tousled hair and pretty face, spouting Argosi frontier wisdom about “The Way of Water” so the warmongering nobles of this gods-forsaken empire get just nervous enough to focus their murderous impulses on you instead of the queen.’
She took a quick breath before asking, ‘Well, card player? You got anything to say for yourself?’
‘You think I have a pretty face?’
Poke.
‘I could ignore the rest of it, for her sake. But the third rule, spellslinger? That’s the one neither I nor the people I work for can forgive.’
She tried to poke me again but my patience was wearing thin and this time I batted her hand out of the way. ‘If you’re planning on locking me up for the night, do it, but don’t keep—’
‘The third rule,’ she went on, barrelling over me, ‘is that should you ever stumble upon gossip that a Jan’Tep bounty mage has entered my territory, you always – always – come to me with the information first so that I can do my job.’ She spun around now, addressing an audience that wasn’t there. ‘But what does the spellslinging Argosi card sharp do instead? He sneaks out of the palace to square off against a lord magus – a lord magus – all by his lonesome. Doesn’t even bring along the damned squirrel cat, who, frankly, is starting to look like the brains of the operation.’
‘You seem to have forgotten one thing, lieutenant.’
She turned back to me, instantly snaring me with that indigo gaze. One corner of her mouth rose, just a fraction, offering the hint of a smile. When she spoke, the words came out in a soft exhalation of breath as though she were reading aloud from a book of love poems. ‘I forgot that you outsmarted the mage, didn’t I?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, though at that precise moment I couldn’t quite remember what I was agreeing to.
Strange as it sounds, I was fairly sure that Her Majesty Queen Ginevra the First of Darome had assigned Torian Libri to be my liaison to the marshals service – or ‘babysitter’ as Torian put it – out of some perverse desire to see us matched. We were both young, both unattached. Torian had an endless horde of suitors begging for her attention. I had … Well, I guess we didn’t have all that much in common after all. Regardless, the queen seemed determined to pair us up.
And she wonders why so many of her subjects keep trying to assassinate her.
Torian tapped a finger against my chest. By sheer chance it snuck through a tear in my shirt. I felt the tingle of her skin against mine. ‘Fooled him with one of those ingenious ploys of yours?’ she asked, letting her fingertip linger there.
‘It was kind of ingenious, now that you mention it. See, I hired an actor to—’
‘I.’ Poke. ‘Don’t.’ Poke. ‘Care.’ Poke.
‘Ow! That last one broke the skin!’
She held up her finger, showing me the single drop of blood clinging to the nail. ‘Poor baby. Tell me something, card player. What happens to my queen on the day you run out of tricks?’