The gashes crossed his throat, chest, and thighs. Blood pooled like spilled paint beside him. His eyes bugged when Othmordian knelt and took his pulse.
"Why?" the dying man rasped. "Everything I gave… Why wasn’t it enough?"
The stateroom was furnished with fountains, mahogany chairs, rosewood tables, and gold-gilt pillars. On the walls, murals depicted scenery from each of the provinces of the Kingdom of Cammar. Each mural was tied off by a fat, velvet ribbon. Othmordian heard the sound of a boot scuffing the marble floor. There was someone else in the room, behind a jade-tiled fountain. Othmordian surged forward, his blood-wet blade still in his hand, and a young man deflected the attack with a kora, a hook-tipped sword. They circled, neither speaking, and steel clanged against steel. The young man fought like an animal, feral with rage, while Othmodian’s style was precise and deadly. But just as he would have stepped in for the killing blow, a woman entered the room behind them.
She cried out, "Don’t kill my son, Othy!"
The young man cut the velvet tie across a mural and leapt into the painting.
#
The day after his brother’s funeral, Othmordian could no longer put it off; he called an assembly to meet and name his new court. He took refuge in the formality of the occasion. In silence he let his brother’s servitors swath him in belled garments of black and gold, in the tall heavy hat and the elaborate shoes, three pairs, one inside another, until his feet felt like clods of lead. They wrapped his injured hand in bands of silk. They anointed him in oils and lay a mint leaf on his tongue, while a tiny silver bell was rung four times four. With a swan’s feather, they brushed white powder onto his brows and goatee, and they blackened the creases around his eyes with kohl, to make him look older and wiser than his three decades.
Othmordian hoped the illusion would help, but he doubted it. He had always been cleverer than Arnthom, but not more popular, and though people professed to love wisdom in a king, in truth they preferred charisma to intelligence.
Their preferences did not matter now. Arnthom was dead, and Othmordian must serve as regent until Arnthom’s twenty year old son, Drajorian, reached his quarter century, when the fools assumed Othmordian would step down and glorious Drajorian, even more beloved than his father, would ascend the throne of Cammar.
Musicians plucked at nine-stringed instruments and moaned on three-throated flutes when Othmordian entered the Great Hall for the ceremony. In such ceremonies, one had to walk in just such a way: one foot dragging to meet the other, pauseing, the next foot extending slowly, setting down, pauseing, slow, slow, back ramrod straight, so carefully that not a bell on one’s robe jingled. Othmordian made it to his place beside the empty throne of his dead brother without embarrassing himself too much.
The Four Officiants came forward to drone their hymns and chants. All went well until the Chant of Challenge, when the Officiants were required to ask of the Assembly whether anyone objected to the investiture of Othmordian as regent for his nephew.
The Officiants paused significantly in their chant, allowing ample time for all eyes in the room to turn to Prince Drajorian. Othmordian stiffened at their insolence, their unspoken accusation. He took care not to allow his frown to disturb his face.
The heir, Prince Drajorian, wore a veil under his tall moon-shaped hat, a veil to hide his face from hostile glamourers who might try to draw his portrait and thus capture his soul. The veiled prince stood ramrod straight and did not make any attempt to speak. Arnthom’s closest allies, observing the heir’s significant silence, guarded their own with sour frowns. Othmordian relaxed a fraction.
His relief was short-lived.
A woman stepped forward. In ringing tones, she announced, "I challenge."
You would, thought Othmordian.
Boldly, Lyadra met Othmodian’s eyes. He nodded his head just a fraction, in wry acknowledgment. Princess Lyadra was Drajorian’s betrothed. Once she had been Othmodian’s betrothed.
"Princess Lyadra, your challenge is noted," the Four Officiants intoned. "In three days you shall present your case that the pretender is unfit or renounce your claim. Are there any others who would challenge?"
A susurration of unease rippled through the assembled notables.
Cowards, Othmordian cursed them in silent scorn. There is not one of you here who does not suspect that I murdered my brother. Is only Lyadra brave enough to step forward to accuse me of what you all believe?
After a thick, ugly, guilty silence, a second woman, twice the age of twenty-six year old Princess Lyadra rose.
"I challenge," she said.
Othmordian raised an eyebrow in surprise. His elder sister Forthia had been the one person he had not expected to accuse him. On the other hand, she and Arnthom had been closer in age and in sentiment than he had been with either of them.
"Princess Forthia, your challenge is noted," the Four Officiants sang. "In three days you shall present your case that the pretender is unfit or renounce your claim. Are there any others who would challenge?"
Othmordian felt his stomach clench. If a third challenged, and if all three refused to renounce their challenge in three days, he must face an actual trial for treason.
And naturally there was a third. Another woman—Drajorian’s mother and Arnthom’s widow, the Queen Mother Tulthana.
"I challenge," she said. Her white cape still smelled of funeral incense from her night spent in the company of her husband’s corpse.
Three challengers. Schemes for dealing with Lyadra and Forthia already snaked through his mind. As for Tulthana—well, he would deal with her when the time came.
#
Othmordian received Princess Lyadra in rich mahogany carved rooms lit with jasmine candles. Exquisite paintings in gilt frames vied for space on the walls. There were no portraits of men. Painting a living man would imprison his soul and was forbidden. Painting an imagined person was even more dangerous. Most of the paintings were of beautiful naked slave girls whose souls had been owned by past kings, or still lifes of food. Servants took a dozen still lifes from the walls and set them on the table, a painted feast of sausages, breads, cheeses and fruit. They tied ribbons around each painting, placed scissors next to the porcelain plates, then bowed and left.
Othmordian had chosen his wardrobe with care, a cape-coat of black and gold velvet over a buttercream silk blouse, similar to, but not quite as ornate as what he had worn before the Assembly. He’d washed his goatee and eyebrows of the white powder, so his hair was its natural ebony again. He smiled to himself when he saw that Lyadra wore a cream dress-coat and cloth-of-gold trousers, almost elaborate enough to be bridal. There was no doubt the warm whites and golds set her auburn hair and peaches-in-milk skin to advantage, but the presumption of her palette amused him. This woman had broken her betrothal to a poor artist in favor of his younger, but royally destined, nephew. She had not changed.
"Be seated, ‘niece,’" Othmordian said mockingly.
"I will stand."
He shrugged. "I will sit."
From the canvases on the table, he chose a still life of a peach, plum and pomegranate. The scribbler, Habtheine, dead some centuries now, had been renowned for the rich pigments he had used to paint his plums and pomegranates, the translucent glazes he used to make his peaches glow. Othmordian cut the ribbons tied round the painting. The fruit tumbled onto his plate, round, juicy, solid. He sank his teeth into a peach. Sweet, sticky juice gushed in his mouth and dribbled from his lower lip.
"You dress like a prince now, but you still have the manners of a scribbler," Lyadra said with great distain.
"Ah, is that why you chose to forsake me in favor of my nephew, a boy six years your junior?" asked Othmordian. He dabbed his chin with a napkin. "His manners. I am sure that was especially evident when he was ten years old, which, as I recall, is when you made your decision."
Lyadra stared hard at him. "I always knew you were crass and unsocial, Othmordian. I never knew you were capable of murder."
"Why, I have no idea what you are talking about, Lyadra."
Lyadra smiled at him. "After a thought, I do feel a bit peckish. I think I shall accept your invitation to eat." She seated herself at the table and cut the ribbon on the painting of a glass of crushed lemon ice. She spooned a few bites onto her plate, which, however, she made no attempt to consume. "Beautiful food, by the way. Did you paint it yourself?"
"No, no. I’m afraid I haven’t the talent to make my glamours real enough for a satisfying feast."
"That’s odd," she said, "For I heard that in the years you lived at the glamourers’ school, you developed quite a knack for magic. Perhaps even enough talent to draw a brink."
Othmordian smiled grimly. "Lyadra, do you even understand what a brink is?"
"Like a glamour, but it does not die at the twixting that divides day from night. Nothing can kill it. A monster painted and brought to life with blood from a human sacrifice. Such as the monster that killed your brother, Arnthom."
Othmordian took another bite of his peach. "This fruit feels solid, even tastes real. But when sunset falls, it will be as if I had never eaten it, for only the most skilled glamourers can paint the very essence of an object into their paintings. They must capture its very soul. If it is that difficult to paint the soul of a peach, imagine then how difficult it is to paint an imagined man with enough soul that he can escape the canvas and cross the twixting to breach the brink of our world. It’s not enough to mix the paint with the blood of a human sacrifice. One must also have a master’s skill." He finished eating and spit out the pit. "I assure you, I do not have that talent."
"I don’t pretend to know about scribblings and glamours," Lyadra said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "But I know that King Arnthom was murdered. And I know that you’ve done something to Prince Drajorian. That veiled boy who walks around the palace like one of your soulless fruits—he is not human."
"You’re right," said Othmordian.
Her jaw dropped, then her eyes narrowed.
"Your darling betrothed is actually a glamour," he said, "kept under careful control, redrawn each dawn and dusk, when the illusion fades to dust."
"I will bring this news to the Assembly…" Lyadra stood up.
"Will you?" Othmordian asked mildly.
Lyadra sat down again, horror on her pretty face. "Will you kill me and replace me with a glamour too, Othy?"
"Now I’m ‘Othy’ again," he noted. "You haven’t called me that since you were sixteen."
"I never thought you capable of this," she said.
"No, if you had thought that I had a chance at the throne, you would not have cast me off in favor of my nephew."
"Is that why you murdered Drajorian?" she asked coolly. "To take revenge on me?"
How typical that she assumed everything revolved around her.
"Drajorian is not dead."
"Not…? Then where is he?"
Othmordian smiled. "Agree to renounce your challenge against me…"
…And maybe I’ll tell you, was the unspoken implication, which, carefully, Othmordian did not actually promise aloud.
Lyadra stared at him wide-eyed for a moment. Then, as wax melted off a mold, her crafted veneer of affronted innocence melted away. The woman beneath the mask was harder, crueler. She burst into tinkling laughter. "Oh, Othy, Othy, Othy! Who knew you had it in you?"
Very deliberately, she picked up the plum from his plate and bit into it. She let the juice drip down her lower lip, and licked it off in a sensuous motion. "I’ll go you one better. I will agree to marry you."
"Lyadra, I’m shocked."
"No. You are not. You knew that if you showed me the true extent of your power, I would flock to your side. Well. You were right. I presume that if the real Drajorian is not dead yet, he is your prisoner, and it is only a matter of time until you send him the way of his father."
"Would that bother you if it were true?"
"Not at all. But I want proof that he is your prisoner, that he did not escape you. Prove it to me by showing him to me—in chains. Then I will believe in your power and agree to be your queen." She grinned and leaned forward. "Oh, let me be the one to stick the dagger to the belly of the little brat."
Othmordian laughed. "In time, perhaps, Lyadra. But first you must prove yourself to me."
"I’ll renounce my challenge." She shrugged.
"That’s not enough."
"What else could you want?"
"Let me paint you."
She stood up, eyes flashing. "As if I were a slave girl? Are you mad?"
"I don’t trust you. If I marry you, I must know I control you. You won’t be humiliated. I’ll keep the painting secret."
For a moment, he wondered if he had pushed too far, too fast. Her breath came rapidly and he watched, transfixed, how the translucent cream gauze of her blouse shimmered over her cleavage as her breasts rose and fell. How badly did she want to be queen?
"I will let you paint me," she said at last. "But there are two other challengers, Othmordian. And many, many others who suspect you. Your brother’s death was messy. Even with no investigation by a master glamourer, everyone could tell he had been murdered by a brink. Very careless."
"Dear Lyadra, let me worry about that. Why don’t you worry about the things you do best—your wardrobe on the day of your wedding—the day of my coronation."
"I want jewels," she said. "Silks and brocades. And a veyance pulled by the swiftest dogs. Every luxury must adorn my new station. If I’m going to sell my soul to you, I hope you do not think it will be cheap."
"You shall have all that you ask. Just be here at midnight to sit for your portrait."
She swept out of the room without answering. Although it was too soon for the glamour on the food to have worn off, his stomach clenched, as if empty. The table was full of food that would only leave him hungry. He tried to remember when he had last had a real meal, and realized it was before his brother had died.
#
"I never liked that girl," Forthia said, stepping from the panel in the wall where she had been concealed. Her plum dress-coat was almost black. The tight leather pants she wore instead of the looser style more commonly favored by ladies made her look like a soldier. She had a kukri hooked on her belt.
Othmordian tried to not show that his older sister had taken him by surprise. He had not meant for her to overhear his sordid conversation with Lyadra. Also, it was nearly sunset. He did not have time for a long argument. Still, he had best not try to put this off.
"Forthia," he greeted her. "Did you spy on Arnthom as well?"
"You are not Arnthom," she said. "And to answer your question, yes, I often listened in on his privy councils from that behind that panel, at his invitation."
"I don’t recall inviting you."
"Perhaps you recall my challenging you," she said and pinned him with a look that made him feel eight years old again. "And after what I just heard…" She shook her head.
Othmordian sighed. He shoved himself back from the table. Glamoured food spoiled so quickly. The overripe scents only nauseated him now. He stood up and shrugged out of his black velvet cape-coat, then loosened the elaborate ruffles of the blouse at his neck.
"You had your reasons to doubt me before you overheard my sparring with Lyadra, else you would not have challenged in the first place. Well, pour out your accusations, then."
"It is a story of a moody child," said Forthia. "A stray child, his mother called him before she died, last born, when she thought her time for bearing past. Born the same year Arnthom married Tulthana, and during all the years they tried and failed to conceive a babe of their own, Arnthom would pat this stray on the head and promise him a throne. It was a blow to him when a real heir was born. Suddenly he went from heir apparent to being packed off to a lonely school on a distant moor."
"It was a relief to me, not a burden, to be spared the throne, Forthia," Othmordian said. "And as for the school, that was my request as well. I wanted to study magic. And I first went when I was thirteen, three years after Drajorian’s birth."
"Yes," Forthia said, "I know. After you tried to kill him."
Othmordian frowned.
"No one told me," she said. "I have my ways of knowing."
"So I have discovered," he said dryly.
"If you were willing to kill your nephew when he was but a toddler, how much more so now that he the only remaining threat to your power?"
"And you think I killed our brother too?" Othmordian asked. His hand itched, and he toyed with the edges of the bandages, trying to scratch without removing them.
"There is more," she said.
"Say it then."
"No one allowed the glamourers to perform an investigation of our brother’s death. Nonetheless, I secretly asked the Head Glamourer of Mangcansten Lodge to report his findings to me. He confirmed that Arnthom was killed by a brink. He also told me about your time as a student at his school, before you were expelled. And why you were expelled."
Vivid memories flashed across Othmodian’s mind: the drunken smell of paint thinner, the sound of scribs on linen parchment, the giggles in the dark after the proctors extinguished the candles in the boys’ dorm. Most wonderful of all, had been the early mist-filled mornings walking out alone on the moor, with only a sketchpad and a pack of wild dogs for company.
"He told me," continued Forthia, "That you were a mediocre artist, not a true glamour caster, except in one area. You could draw dogs like no one else, all kinds of dogs. He said that you even inquired into a forbidden area, how to make a certain kind of brink called a Smoke Hound. The Smoke Hound must be drawn with a burning coal. When it is brought to life, the hound moves with a hide of flame and smoke. The artist, however, is left with a burnt hand."
Forthia held out her palms. "Put your right hand in mine, Othmordian."
He did so. His right hand was swathed in bandages.
Tears pricked her eyes. "Oh, Othy." She released his hand. She drew a deep breath and looked him in the eye. "Have you anything to say to me?"
"Just this," Othmordian said. He caressed Forthia’s cheek with his good left hand.
He glanced out the window, at the purpling western sky. He must soon attend to other matters. Time, time, he was running out of time. Fifteen minutes to sunset…five years to Drajorian’s majority. He would not allow even Forthia to stop him.
"The Head of Mangcansten," she said in a low voice, "has promised me the support of his entire Glamourers’ Lodge if I oppose you. As you know, all the notables who subscribe to Mangcansten will follow suit. You cannot hope to rule Cammar under such circumstances."
"Indeed, Forthia. But I have already communicated with the Head Glamourer of Langmar Lodge. They took me in after Mangcansten expelled me, and I have been their grateful supporter ever since. And vice versa. Langmar will uphold my claim to the throne, even if I am formally charged with treason by the Four Officiants of our late brother." He smiled without pleasure. "As you know, all the notables who subscribe to Langmar will follow suit."
The blood drained from her face.
"You are threatening civil war."
"No, big sister. You are threatening civil war. I am merely pointing out how closely matched the sides will be if you carry through your threat. It will divide the kingdom in half, Lodge against Lodge, noble against noble, sister against brother. Is that what you want?"
She did not answer, but for the first time, she looked her age, a decade and a half his senior. He knew that she would renounce her challenge on the third day for fear of destroying the whole of Cammar. Her shoulders slumped and she left bent over like an old woman.
#
As soon as Forthia had departed, Othmordian hurried from his chamber to the Northeastern Tower. A spiral staircase led him to the uppermost chamber, the Queen’s secret atelier. She had once been a student at Langmar Lodge as he had, except that her skill, unlike his, would have been prodigious enough to make her a master glamourer, had she not been chosen as the wife of a king.
Queen Tulthana already sat at her easel, the veiled prince at her side, standing. A paint-splattered artist’s apron covered her crimson dress-cape. She was close to fifty, yet remained a handsome woman. Now, however, she looked exhausted. Since her husband’s gruesome death, her face had been etched with deep lines of pain and worry. She looked up as Othmordian entered the atelier.
"I feared you would not come," she said, "That you would seek to punish me for challenging you."
He did not answer at once. Instead he strolled to the far wall, which was covered with a large tapestry, embroidered with pomegranates, cypress trees and curling vines. He fingered a tasseled tie, but did not open the curtain.
"Why did you challenge me? I thought we had an agreement." He glanced at the veiled young man, the false Drajorian. "I wonder if you have decided to renege on our bargain."
"No, Othy." A pleading note entered her voice. "You hold the life of my son in your hands. After Lyadra and Forthia challenged you, I felt it would look strange if I did not as well. I also hoped to forestall any other challengers. If I took the position of third challenger, and then backed down, no trial could proceed."
"Ah."
"It would be Drajorian’s death otherwise. I know that truth too well."
"I wondered if you had decided to try again."
"Never," she whispered.
"You should never have tried it in the first place." He stroked the bandages on his hand. It itched, but he couldn’t scratch it. "It would have saved us all a lot of trouble if I had had killed Drajorian when he was three."
"Please, Othy. Don’t kill him."
"I only spared his life to please you, but you have to do your part, Tulthy," he said. "People are beginning to suspect I have the real Drajorian locked up in a dungeon. You have to give the new glamour a mouth."
"That would make it too easy to turn the glamour into a brink," she said. "If someone discovered what it was, and sacrificed a life to make it a monster…."
"Don’t you trust me, Tulthy?"
He had to look away from the bleakness in her face. The tower had two large windows, one facing dawnward, one facing duskward. The eastern window was already showing stars, the western window glowed with dying ruby light. "It’s time."
"Take off your veil," Tulthana instructed the silent young man.
The young man lifted the dark gauze. Where his face should have been was only a formless, parchment blankness. A moment later, the last sliver of sun dropped below the horizon. The blank faced man dissolved, leaving only a crumbled blank sheet of canvas paper and a ribbon where he had stood.
Othmordian let out a shuddering sigh. "Give the new one a face."
She nodded. She sketched a face onto her drawing, unclipped the parchment, and rolled it up in carefully knotted ribbons. She set it down on the floor. An instant later, a young man, veiled, twin in limb and stance to the one who had dissolved with sunset, stood there, silent and indifferent.
"Go to your bedroom, Drajorian," Tulthana instructed him. "Arise before dawn and come back here."
"Yes, mother," the glamour said in a hollow voice. Othmordian wondered how long that would fool anyone.
At dawn, this construct would dissolve, just as the other had. In the meantime, if anyone, servant or noble, checked in on "Prince Drajorian," he would appear to be right where he should be. No mystery unexplained. A lie covered by another lie.
The doppelganger drifted obediently from the room.
Othmordian tightened his jaw. He remembered watching Tulthy in the days shortly after Drajorian’s unexpected birth had been announced. He remembered the pang he’d felt watching her cuddle the new baby, an empty feeling, like the hunger one felt after too much glamoured food. After his own mother had died, Tulthana had mothered him, and he had loved her so much that at night he used to lie awake, imagining how it would feel if she were killed too, just to brace himself against the pain. So he would be able to survive it.
He unsheathed the kukri he wore at his waist. He advanced toward Tulthana.
"And now, Tulthy," he said, "Now for the blood to bring the brink to life."