The Madness of Kings Read online

  “Look,” he said, “I know Porra sounded upset and I’m sure that triggered all sorts of things in you, but our lives? I really don’t think it will come to that.”

  “What do you think they do with outsiders who commit regicide? That may be as calm as she’s going to get.”

  “Fine, but it won’t be up to her, will it? Who is Kenson’s successor?”

  “Tannik. And he’s a reasonable man. But you’re not grasping this. Without evidence to contradict what she’s accused us of, we need more than just a cooler head on the throne.”

  “Right. Well, I’ve never been in the library where Kenson was killed, and you have an explanation for being there. A DNA sweep should clear me completely. Your problem may be a little more nuanced, but I can vouch for you. Let’s just wait for this to cool down. And drink, while we’re waiting.”

  “There won’t be a DNA scan, or a fingerprint scan. There are no cameras in the hall to verify that we weren’t in the library. And to get us out of immediate capture, we just proved capable of exiting a room via means other than the main door with the murder weapon in tow. We need either to come up with a more plausible suspect or we need to find a way out of this castle. I appreciate that you’re used to seventy-fourth century technology, but around here we’re still in the fortieth century.”

  He downed the brandy in the rocks glass and refilled it.

  “Oh that’s good,” he said.

  “By the gods, Damid…”

  “I know. I understand. I’m sorry, I’m having trouble taking this too seriously. With the swords and the horses, it all feels a little make-believe around here. But I think I’ll be okay. I’m not a citizen of the nine kingdoms, and there are rules about this sort of thing. The treaty agreement between the Middle Kingdoms and Inimata for a matter like this is complicated, but not so complicated that imprisoning me wouldn’t create an international incident. In the past, crimes committed here have been resolved by exiling the accused.”

  “For killing a king?”

  “No, but let me think…In 6382 I think it was, a Ghon-Dikan named Bok was accused of assaulting an Endocine prince. Not murder; the prince survived. Bok was exiled and no citizen of Ghon-Dik was allowed in any of the nine kingdoms for a thousand years, but that was the worst of it. Cutting off Inimata like that would be an economic nightmare for the Middle Kingdoms, and that’s the only precedent I can think of. Do you really think Lord Aginot had something to do with this?”

  “I only know that it’s a place to start. Do you mean to stay here and drink until they find you? Because I can’t force you to come with me, but I can promise it won’t go well for you regardless of your citizenship.”

  “Fergo’s room adjoined mine,” he said. “If we get there, I can retrieve my things…”

  “Does this change the calculation for you?”

  “It does, actually. All right, I’ll go with you.”

  “Good,” she said. “Now tell me where those rooms are.”

  “I already told you I couldn’t begin to guess how to find my way back, even if I used one of the regular hallways out there. Getting to it through the walls is even less likely.”

  “How about which part of the castle?”

  “Sorry, I’ve no idea. Does this place come with a map?”

  “No,” she said. “…Not a literal map.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She made me a promise, she thought.

  “It means we’re going to have to ask for help from the person who knows this castle better than anyone living. Provided she’s still living. Hang on.”

  Battine put her ear up against the door of the servants’ entrance. Hearing nothing, she opened it and looked both ways. The person with the torch was coming back down, from the left side; the light was getting brighter.

  “All right, be quiet,” she said, closing the door again.

  She could hear the gentle shuffle of footsteps along the uneven stone floor on the other side. When it sounded like they were right in front of the door, she yanked it open, reached through, and pulled the owner of the torch into the study.

  A chambermaid landed unkindly onto the floor, her torch skittering across the stone. It came to rest on an area rug. Damid snatched it up before the rug caught fire.

  Battine had her sword out before the girl could speak.

  “What’s your name?” Batt asked.

  “What?” the girl gasped.

  “Your name.”

  “Tima,” she said. Then she got a look at who was asking. “Tima, milady.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “You’re…the Alconnot.”

  “I am. Do you know Matron Limasse?”

  The girl looked confused.

  “Herma Limasse,” Battine repeated, “do you know this name?”

  “I do, yes.”

  “She is still with the castle?”

  “Yes,” Tima said.

  “Excellent.”

  Battine held out a hand to help the girl to her feet.

  “What have you heard?” Damid asked. “About us?”

  Tima was startled to discover a second person in the room, preoccupied as she was by the one holding the sword.

  “Nothing, sir,” she said.

  “Come, you can tell us,” Battine said. “We won’t hurt you.”

  This was a lot less reassuring than it could have been, given all Tima had already been through.

  “They been looking for you both,” she said. “Nobody’s said so to me but I heard enough. For the king’s blood on your hands.”

  “We didn’t do it,” Damid said.

  “Yes sir.”

  “We really didn’t,” Battine said.

  “Yes milady.”

  “But that’s not why you’re here. I need you to take us to see Matron Limasse. Can you do that?”

  “I…I wouldn’t know…”

  “Through the passageways, Tima. We need a guide.”

  “She’d be in the laundry, most like.”

  “Then that’s where you’ll bring us.”

  With the torch back in her hands, Tima led them down the passageway in the same direction they’d been heading before she came along the first time. Battine stood behind her, with Damid bringing up the rear.

  The passage was too narrow to properly wield a sword in, so Batt left her weapon in its sheath. Tima clearly didn’t understand this, walking as if she expected to be stabbed in the back at any moment.

  The path took a right turn after about fifty paces, then another stairway, a straightaway for twenty paces, and then a dead-end.

  Batt had no idea where they were.

  “What now?” she asked the maid.

  “We’re at westside domed foyer, milady,” Tima said. “The entry to the laundry’s on the other side. We have to go through the middle of the foyer to get to it.”

  “That’s problematic,” Damid said.

  “Tell me exactly where this door opens, Tima,” Battine said.

  “Beside the clock, a quarter round.”

  “The spiral stairs open on our right?”

  “You have it,” Tima said.

  “And where do we need to get to? Exactly.”

  “Left of the painting, milady.”

  “Which painting?” Batt asked.

  “Dunno. All the men in the portraits look the same.”

  “What does the title on the plate at the base of the frame say?”

  “I can’t read, mum,” Tima said. “If his name be there, I don’t know how to work it out.”

  It had been at least a decade since Battine was in the western rotunda. Assuming no changes, there were five portraits of five different Alcon kings. One might be left to presume that meant they were lesser kings given they’d been exiled to the little-used far western rotunda, except that the house’s lineage went back seven thousand years and there was only so much wall space available, even in a castle this size.

  If she remembered correctly, two of those
portraits were near enough to the stairs that they wouldn’t have a chance of reaching it without being seen by someone coming down the spiral staircase. They belonged to: Ho-Ulgur the Ungrateful, a twenty-seventh century monarch; and Ho-Jixiban the Illustrious from the nineteenth century. Batt didn’t recall what either king did to warrant the nicknames carved into their plates—Ulgur didn’t look particularly ungrateful, nor did Jixiban seem illustrious—which just drove home Tima’s point that all the kings looked more or less the same.

  “How far around will we have to travel?” Battine asked.

  “Near halfway.”

  “Forgive me for stating the obvious,” Damid said, “but do we have any choice?”

  “No, you’re right,” Batt said. She put her hand on the maid’s shoulder. “Open the door, step out and tell me how bad it is.”

  Tima put the torch into the sconce on the wall and pushed open the door. Batt winced in anticipation of bright light that wasn’t there yet. The ground floor of the rotunda had a lot of stained glass, but the suns were still rising on the eastern side of the castle; the glory of the western windows wouldn’t become apparent until the afternoon.

  The maid took two steps from the door, with Batt’s hand still on her shoulder.

  “Looks like nobody,” she muttered, without turning.

  Please be telling the truth, Batt thought. She had no plans to gut the maid for a betrayal, but their continued freedom relied on Tima believing otherwise.

  Battine stepped out behind her. There was nobody there.

  “Hurry,” Battine said.

  She pulled Damid out, shoved him ahead of her and behind the fast-walking Tima.

  The base of the spiral staircase faced the front doors of the rotunda, two big oak beasts that were too heavy for her to open as a child. Tima led them around the back of the staircase and to a door next to the portrait of Ho-Larentze the Lovely, a thirty-second century monarch with an ego problem.

  What will they call Ken? she thought, as Tima pulled open the door. Ho-Kenson the Killed?

  Tima and Damid made it through the door.

  “Wait,” someone said behind Battine.

  She turned. A guard was standing at the doors, having just entered. He was alone.

  “Hello, Nistor,” she said.

  “Princess.”

  She held her breath, waiting for him to do something: pull his sword, shout for help, something. He just stared at her, unable to commit to any action at all.

  “Go,” he said finally. “Quickly.”

  Then he turned around and walked back out the doors.

  Battine jumped through the servant’s door, closed it behind her, and then exhaled.

  “We just used up the last of our luck,” she said to Damid. “Tima, how close are we?”

  “Not far,” Tima said. “But the laundry will be full.”

  “One thing at a time.”

  The door Tima had taken them through led to a wider corridor than the ones that went through the walls, which made sense halfway through when they came across a cart meant to transport dirty things.

  Battine stopped Tima when they reached the cart, and began riffling through it.

  “There’s no clothing in here,” she said. “Where is the clothing?”

  “This is for linens,” Tima said. “Clothing’s particular to the owner; sheets, not as much.”

  “Right. Damid, jump in the cart.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Having you walk around wrapped in a sheet won’t do us any good,” Batt said. “Tima, I need your dress.”

  Tima’s understandable reluctance to disrobe was mitigated by the fact that she had on at least another two layers beneath the dress. She was equally reluctant to climb into the cart next to Damid, less because he was a man and she was in her undergarments—which, again, covered up her whole body anyway—than because he still had the short sword originally used to kill the king in his hands.

  Battine didn’t bother to change out of her riding pants and tunic; she just threw the dress over the whole thing. If anybody looked closely they’d recognize her either way, but Tima’s dress would pass a casual review, which was the best she could hope for.

  The cart was somewhat heavy now. The wheels were self-evidently not intended to support the weight of two people, so they groaned and squeaked. But it moved.

  “How much farther?” she asked Tima. The maid’s head was at the same end as Battine’s hands, so they could talk to one another.

  “Not much.”

  They hit a downhill slope. It wasn’t steep enough to take the cart out of her hands—a good thing—and it made pushing easier. At the end of it was a set of double doors. Battine took a deep breath, and pushed the cart through them.

  Battine had never been in the laundry before. She felt as if she knew all about it, though, because she was an inquisitive child. The same curiosity that led her to discovering the servants’ passageways also led to questions like, what happens to our dirty things?

  The place was much larger than she expected. At the back of the room, at basically the rear-most point of the western side of the castle, was a huge furnace beneath an iron tank. This produced hot water to wash the clothes, and also powered a steam engine that ran the tumble-dry machines.

  The middle of the room was taken up by vats with soap. There were about fifteen people—male, female, and other—stirring the vats with long wooden sticks.

  “Where am I going, Tima?” Batt asked.

  “Hard to say, milady. She walks around mostly.”

  “Never mind, I see her.”

  Herma Limasse was a big, round woman. When Batt was a child, she thought her the biggest and roundest woman she’d ever expect to meet. (She had since met plenty of larger and rounder people, but as a child, being raised by a group of people who effectively all had one of the same five body types, the range of comparison was limited.) The years had taken away some of the matron’s strength—she walked with a cane now—and put a hook in her back. And, intentional or not, she’d lost a lot of weight. But the confidence with which she carried herself was still there.

  Matron Limasse had always been the last word in all matters regarding the female staff of the castle. Her word was unimpeachable, and she was probably the only commoner in Totus who could get away with lecturing the royalty.

  She also knew every inch of the castle as if it was tattooed on her arm.

  Battine steered the cart across the room as quickly as she could without drawing attention. She needn’t have worried; none of the people stirring the vats were interested in another chambermaid walking past with another load of laundry.

  She made it as far as ten paces before Herma Limasse noticed her.

  “No, no, no, not here, what’s the matter with you?” the old woman barked. “Dropoff is near the door. Just leave it there, pull another cart up and be gone with you.”

  “Sorry, mum,” Battine said.

  “What’re ya new?”

  Limasse looked at her face for the first time then…and froze where she was standing.

  “Do you know me?” Battine asked, hoping against hope that nobody near them was listening. The rumble of the furnace and the tumble-dryers on constant churn hopefully aided her in that regard.

  Matron Limasse nodded silently.

  “’We have to stick together, you and I’, Battine said. “You told me that once. Is it still true?”

  The old woman looked like someone whose life was passing before her. Maybe it was.

  “Aye,” she said, shaking her head loose from a reverie. “Follow me. Leave the cart.”

  “I can’t. The cart, I mean.”

  “Then push it all the way for your health.”

  Limasse led her to a storage room on one side of the giant boiler. The cart barely fit through the doorway.

  “What, you got your horse hidden in there?” the matron asked.

  “Worse,” Battine said. “Damid, come on out.”

  Magly sat
up. So did Tima.

  “Oh! A pair of horses,” Limasse said. “Tima, what are you doing in your knickers?”

  “Beg pardon, mum,” Tima muttered

  “Sorry, here,” Battine said, taking off the dress. “I needed a way to get in.”

  “So you did,” Limasse said. “And this is the fellow they’re looking for when not looking for you, I take it.”

  “Professor Damid Magly,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Save it, boy. We never met. Let’s not pretend elsewise.”

  “Understood. But I actually do need someone’s hand or I’m never getting out of this cart.”

  Batt helped Tima out first, and then Damid.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Batt muttered to the maid as she handed back her dress.

  “Tell me, princess,” Limasse said, “what are you doing in my laundry? Other than endangering the entire staff?”

  “Matron, you know I didn’t do what they want me for. You know.”

  “Oh sure, I know. What’s that get you? Think anyone listens to old Herma? Whole laundry’s full’a folk who don’t listen to me. I’m not going looking for more of that in the gods-damned throne room.”

  “I know,” Batt said.

  “I’m saying, if I’m your first character witness, princess, you’re in a real tangle.”

  A laugh escaped Damid. He was evidently finding the admittedly colorful Herma Limasse entertaining.

  “I need your help to find someone,” Battine said. “Do you know what room Lord Aginot is in?”

  “I know where he bedded down last night,” she said. “Where he is now is between him and the Five.”

  “Close enough.”

  “Foreign dignitaries stay in the east corridor these days. Little Ferg got two rooms just off the main.”

  Battine performed a couple of mental calculations. “What floor?” she asked.

  “Second. Close to the throne and all.”

  There was a second-level entrance to the throne room near the hallway in question. It led to a balcony and two sets of stairs. But what was more interesting was that the library was on the way to the throne room on that floor.

  Herma pointed to Damid. “Dunno why you have to move Haven and the Depths to ask me when your tumble here has a room there hisself.”