“Why do you paint your face and wear a silly hood?”
“Because I am Death’s Jester, child.”
“No, you are Girton.”
“I am Death’s Jester and Girton,” I said, taking down the hood.
Anareth screwed up her nose in confusion and I watched her gather up all the importance that a seven-year-old daughter of the king possessed.
“I think you are greedy. You should be either Girton or Death’s Jester. What if other people run out of people to be?”
“Well …”
“You should think on it, Girton Death’s Jester, before I have to make a royal command.”
With that she turned on her heel and stomped away, her blonde hair swinging like a pendulum while I tried not to laugh. Anareth was Rufra’s second child, named for his wife who had died soon after giving birth to her. She was a golden child, sweet-natured and clever, and her father doted on her—as all did in his court. Not only because she was clever and funny, but because we saw her mother in the girl, and her mother was missed by all.
We had camped in a clearing by a pool, and as I turned to follow her I caught sight of the reflection of the man I had become in the water. Not much to look at, not really. Short for a man of the Tired Lands as they fed me badly in the slave pens when I was a child. My body leaned subtly to the right, caused by years of favouring my club foot, which still pained me. I was not well-built either, like the Riders and the soldiers whom I was constantly among. Though this was not to say I was not strong but my strength was the acrobat’s strength, thin and wiry. “You are built for speed, like a lady’s racing dog.” That is how Aydor described me. I did not like dogs, but Aydor often forgot that.
Of course, I could not let anyone see my body, no matter how finely muscled it may be. The scars of the Landsman’s Leash covered it and it marked me for what I was, magic user; pariah. Even to show it among friends would see me taken to the Landsmen and bled into the ground. The Tired Lands had little pity for sorcerers and I had hoped, once, that my friend Rufra, on becoming king, may soften toward magic. But his hatred was as strong as any other’s, and so my secret remained just that, secret, and another stone went into the barrier that had gradually grown between us.
The reflection of my clothes, Death’s Jester’s black motley, created a hole in the water before me. I raised an arm, seeing the white material beneath the black, meant to give the illusion of bone. The bell on my hood rang gently as I pushed it back. My hair, long, brown and worn in a plait that reached to my waist, looked like a serpent moving lazily across my chest. A skull stared out of the water and back at me, bone-white face, black around the orbit of my eyes, around the jaw, under my cheekbones and over my neck and ears. I was more familiar with this face than I was my own, I only ever glimpsed that in the mornings in poor-quality mirrors and bad light while I put on the mask of Death’s Jester.
Voniss, Rufra’s new wife, said that everything about me—despite my shortness, which she loved to point out—spoke of confidence. That was why I was trusted and liked by Rufra’s soldiers, despite my strangeness and that they called me the King’s Cripple behind my back. Such words stung still, though I knew they were meant with a degree of affection. I could not see the confidence she spoke of in the figure in the water. I only saw the reflection of my master, Merela Karn, the greatest assassin I had ever known. I would only ever be her apprentice, never her replacement or equal. But I had found a place in life, and though it may not be what I had expected, or wanted, it was home and I was comfortable—or as comfortable as I was ever likely to be.
A scream filled the wooded clearing and I turned, hand going to the blade at my hip and immediately I felt foolish. The scream was only Anareth being taunted by her brother. He had taken her doll and was dancing it about just out of her reach. Doyl, the nurseman, stood by, wanting to help the little girl but wary of crossing the heir to Maniyadoc and I could not blame him, sometimes I thought Dark Ungar was in the boy.
“Vinwulf!” I shouted. “You are fifteen and should be above teasing children.” He stared at me, full of adolescent rebellion, then dropped the doll and walked away.
Vinwulf was Rufra’s son, named for the memory of the man who had raised, and in the end given his life for, the king. Sadly, there was nothing of Nywulf—a man I had respected if not loved—in the boy, no matter how much Rufra may have hoped the name may have brought some of the old man’s qualities with it.
Rufra and Areth’s first child had died young, victim to assassins, and when Vinwulf came along he had been coddled and spoilt in a way I had never agreed with. Though King Rufra was a good man, a great man in many ways, he remained blind to the faults of his children and would hear no criticism of them, no matter how much he was meant to trust who it came from.
Rufra and I had argued over today; where we were, what we travelled to do. The high kingship had become vacant after the forgetting plague had ravished the land and destroyed the family of High King Darsese. Rufra travelled to the capital of the Tired Lands to make his bid for the high kingship and bring his new ways to everyone. Maniyadoc was the largest province of the Tired Lands, but was not even a fifth of the area the high king ruled over—though I struggled to understand why Rufra could not be happy with what he had. The capital, Ceadoc, was a dangerous place for an adult, never mind a child, but he would not leave his children behind.
“Master?”
I turned. It was still strange to hear myself called master, despite that Feorwic had been with me for nearly two years now. She was small, like I had been, and of an age with Anareth. Her hair was almost pure white—though she had the rounded face and darker skin of the mountain people.
“Yes, Feorwic?”
“The Merela wants you.”
“Then I will go to her. You guard Anareth.” Feorwic nodded solemnly. “Maybe you and she could practise your skipping, eh?” She nodded again, trying to stay serious, and then ran off after her friend, shouting her name at the top of her voice while I went to find my master.
She sat under a tree, her crutches laid by her side and her legs sticking straight out. Her hair, which had once been jet-black, was now more grey than any other colour, though her dark skin did not seem to wrinkle the way skin did on most her age.
“Girton,” she said, pointing to a patch of grass by her. She knew that, even after all these years, I would not sit without her permission.
“Yes, Master?” I lowered myself to the ground, then jumped up with a yelp. A stick, with sharp thorns facing up, had been placed exactly where I sat.
“Long years in Maniyadoc have made you soft where you should be sharp.”
“Arses are meant to be soft, Master,” I said, rubbing my wounded backside. “You could have just told me.”
She shrugged.
“It is better to teach by example.” There was a twinkle of amusement in her eye as she picked up the thorny branch and tossed it away. “Ceadoc is not Maniyadoc. It will be rife with assassins, or those that call themselves such.”
“Which is why you should have stayed back at the castle, Master.” When I had been young, I had believed assassins were everywhere, though the truth had been that we were a dying breed. There was my master and I, and maybe three or four other sorrowings at most. But my fame, the assassin who became Heartblade to a king, had in turn led to a resurgence of the Open Circle and the art of the assassin. These new assassins were a cruder thing than I had been—a blunt instrument instead of a surgical knife—but, as I well knew, a warhammer kills as well as a blade.
“You should have stayed, Girton. If you had stayed Rufra would have left his children behind and you could have looked after them.” Before I could snap at her she raised a hand to still my temper. “I do not mean you are no use but as a nurseman, before you say that.”
“I was not going to say that, Master.”
I was.
“Only that the business at Ceadoc will be all politicking—bloody politicking, aye, but still nothing you wish to be involved with. Rufra is a fool to take his children there.”
“I told him that. He does not listen.”
“Neither do you.”
“He cannot be without me.”
“He has Aydor and Celot, not to mention Dinay. Sometimes protecting a king is about protecting him from himself, and those children are his weakness.”
“I am here to protect—”
“They are your weakness also.”
“I can protect them. Anareth is never out of Feorwic’s sight.”
“It is Feorwic I want to speak to you of.” Something cold settled on me.
“Feorwic is—”
“Delightful, Girton, in many ways, and has been since you found her wandering, but she will never make an assassin.”
I could feel the anger within, a dark tide as intricately tied up with the magic in my veins as the scars on my body were with my skin. I had learnt to control it, slowly and with my master’s help. Nine years ago we had finally stopped cutting the Landsman’s Leash into my flesh but the magic still fought to be free. Sometimes it was almost overwhelming.
“Her family were acrobats before they were killed, I am sure of it. She tumbles as well as I ever did, Master.” Dry words. My master nodded, staring at the floor.
“And she is filled with the same joy in life you were,” when my master looked up there was the echo of tears in her eyes. “I speak badly, Girton. I only think about you as a child and what our profession has put you through as an adult. Maybe I should not say she will never be an assassin. You care deeply for her, maybe I should ask you whether she should ever be one?”
I could not reply to that. Suddenly I was a small boy again, holding a blade for the first time, scared of the shining edge and the damage I thought it would do to me.
“Maybe you are right.”
My master put out her arm for me to help her up. When she walked half her weight was held on the crutches she tucked under her shoulders. A girl called Neliu had cut the hamstring in her right leg and, I thought then, stolen everything she was from her. But my master had never given up and, though she would never be the fighter she had been, she was still dangerous in her own way.
“When do we meet the queen, Girton?”
“She is due today.” A darkness spread across my master’s face at the thought of Rufra’s new wife.
“You would think that a man who was raised in fear of his life from Queen Adran would recognise another like her when he saw her.” She said it under her breath.
“She is from Festival. It was about alliance, not love. He is not blind to her.” I did not share my master’s opinion of Rufra’s queen, Voniss. She was ambitious, yes, but not cruel, and she delighted in her stepdaughter Anareth’s company. I could see nothing in her of Adran, the cold and cruel woman who had ruled Maniyadoc and would have burned Rufra alive for her own crimes had my master not outsmarted her. But they had known each other—and better than she would admit—well before I ever laid eyes on Adran or my master. Maybe this gave her some insight I was lacking but I found the threat hard to see, and my master’s past was not something she would ever speak of.
“There are other women in Festival, Girton, they could have sealed an alliance. Now Voniss is bearing his child her grip on Rufra will be stronger than ever.” She lifted a crutch and let herself fall toward me, catching her weight at the last minute and throwing herself forward in the lurching walk she used when she wanted to move quickly. Sometimes she used one crutch, sometimes two, and I had never worked out why. It seemed to change with her mood. “And the danger to Vinwulf and Anareth may not just be from the outside, Girton.”
“Age is making you paranoid, Master.” Did she look disappointed in me? Maybe. “Voniss would never harm Rufra’s children. She is ambitious, not stupid.” In truth I liked Voniss, she was no Areth but she was sharp-witted and—though I do not think she loved him—she was loyal to Festival and so to Rufra.
“There’ll be plenty at Ceadoc ready to harm Rufra’s
children. Maybe Voniss would not move directly, but she would not stand in front of an arrow for them either.”
“I would hope not, Master, or I would be out of a job.” The crutch flashed out and hit me in the shin. “Ow.”
“Flippancy is not attractive, boy.” She gave me a grin. “We should find Rufra, I am sure he will find something to darken your mood.” But I did not have to meet the king for that, just thinking of him was enough.
The years had changed Rufra. There were still flashes of the boy I had known, and none could argue that the changes he had wrought in Maniyadoc had not been for the best, but it had been hard on him. The wounds he had taken to his side at the second battle of Goldenson Copse had never truly healed, and though we were of a similar age, both having seen over thirty-five yearsbirth storms, he looked far older. He had grown into a serious, worried man. If my master could not understand his attraction to Voniss I could, she was a brightness and, together with the jester Gusteffa, was one of the few things that still amused him.
Note that I am no longer among them.
I found him seated beneath an apple tree, leaning to one side to ease the pain in his side. He was big in a way he had never been before. Not that I would ever have described him as lithe, but he had been strong and fit as a youth, now time and pain had taken their toll. The more he hurt the less he exercised, often choosing a royal cart over his mount. It showed, he had thickened around the waist and grown a beard to hide his jowls. I had never thought of him as vain, but he was touchy about his looks, had been known to send Riders away to the furthest reaches of his kingdom if they mentioned his size.
More and more often when we spoke he ended up sending me away too, as if I were nothing but a servant.
“Death’s Jester,” he said.
“My king.” I bowed low, touching the floor with one hand, and Gusteffa cackled as she chewed on an apple with her one remaining tooth. I don’t know when I had stopped using his name. It was one of those changes that had happened slowly and subtly—this move from friendship to something other.
“Aydor comes from Festival with my wife. I would like you to ride to meet them.”
“But my place is here, by your side, guarding you and your family.”
“Voniss is family too, lest you forget. And I have plenty of guards.”
“But none are—”
“They are all perfectly capable, Jester.”
“They are not—”
“Didn’t you tell me the true assassins are almost gone?” I bit on the inside of my mouth. It annoyed me that he was so careless about what I was, and he knew it.
“Almost gone is not completely gone.”
“And as king I choose to risk sending you away to keep my wife and unborn child safe.” He let out a sigh, bowed his head and the hard figure before me wavered. “Please, Girton, we head to Ceadoc where I will vie for the crown of the high king. Voniss rides with Aydor and a phalanx of my best Riders, but I don’t doubt it has crossed the mind of someone that to take her hostage may give them some advantage. I trust them to be safe with you like I trust no one else.”
And in a moment my denials, readied and loaded like crossbow quarrels, died on my lips. I saw the boy within, the worried, desperate boy who had been through so much, and I saw the man who had watched his land prosper while it seemed a curse had fallen upon him. I nodded.
“Of course, Rufra. I will go to them.”
“Good,” he said. A smile brushed his lips. “You will meet them near the castle of Dannic ap Survin.”
“Is that wise? He does not support your bid for the crown and has no great love for you.”
“No,” said Rufra. He did not look at me. Instead he stared at Gusteffa as she rolled her apple core along her arms, over her shoulders and down into her other hand and then back again, her movements hypnotic, the smile painted on her face a rictus. “His son would support me though. And he is of an age to vote.”
I waited for something more. Some actual confirmation of what he meant by that, but it did not come. Would not. He was King Rufra, the Tired Lands’ most honourable king, the one whom they called “the Just.” Such a man would never order an assassination.
But he could always benefit from one.