Now that we had a good idea what time we were in, thanks to the Ba-Hali, we knew where we were headed. The capital of the early Empire was Singhal, and according to the way markers we had passed on the road, we were only a day’s travel away from the outskirts. Officially, Edouard was posing as a Cortes cousin from (as not yet conquered) Quinze. It was a clever enough story and would explain away any questions about his accent. He was coming to learn statecraft from his uncle the King as he was soon to become the head of his family and leader of a legion of troops. His father felt he was not yet ready to take the reins and needed some hands-on experience. It just so happened that the King was in the midst of a campaign against a small tribe. It was just the sort of thing to sharpen the boy’s mind while minimizing risk. It was only the Ba-Hali after all. Didn’t even fight with weapons, was the rumor.
I prepared myself for my new reality, spending less time chatting with Edouard about books and Quinze, and making sure to call him “My Prince.”
“You know, you don’t have to do that,” he said. “Not until we’re there. Playing our parts.”
“Practice, my Prince. I have a feeling your ancient ancestor’s court does not take kindly to servants who get too familiar.”
“You have a point.”
“Thank you, my Prince.”
We spent our time quizzing on aspects of Everard’s reign. I found Edouard had been exaggerating when he described his laziness with his tutors. He was sharp when he wanted to be, able to name the important members of Everard’s court and their functions and petty rivalries without too much difficulty. We went over the particulars of court scandals and intrigues of the time period, but I was quick to caution him.
“Remember to let them lead the conversation.”
“Until we know exactly what year it is. I can’t know about a scandal that hasn’t happened yet.”
“Or you could hasten the coming of the scandal by the insinuation that you know their intent.”
“Right,” he said. “I think generally playing dumb on tricky topics will suit me well. I am supposed to be untested and untrusted by my father.”
If the cover story hit too close to home for Edouard’s comfort, he did not show it.
“But remember the ultimate goal of convincing the King to change his policy. You can’t very well appear stupid to him and change his mind on his most pressing matter of state.”
Edouard sighed and pushed his hair back from his eyes. We would be at the outskirts of Singhal by nightfall and the stress was beginning to show. He pulled the leather cord around his neck out of his cloak and held the three signets in his fist, squeezing. As he let go, they clinked against each other as they rode on his sternum. I believed the comfort of an escape hatch back to his own time gave him courage. After what he had told me, I wondered if what awaited him in our own time was any better. I was too young to have seen any royal intrigue turn violent, but Febril often spoke of the execution of the Prince when he was a boy.
Jahvid was the third son, the useless Prince. Edouard’s father was firstborn, followed only by Cortland. Five years later, Jahvid was born.
“Always a trouble maker,” Febril told me. “Problem was, he grew up and failed to see any difference between squabbling over a wooden horse as babes and making designs on the crown. Saw it all of a piece. He wanted something that his brother had, and he aimed to take it.”
When it was clear that Edouard’s grandfather was ailing, Jahvid became obsessed with the idea that his brothers would disown and disinherit him once their father passed. As all liars, he assumed everyone else was lying as well. He did not trust his brothers, could not trust them. The only solution was to be in charge, to insulate himself from their intent to send him to a remote estate.
“Never was such intent,” Febril went on, pointing with his finger. “All in his head. Went about it in a damn fool way too. Hiring a common citizen off the street to do his dirty work. Couldn’t be bothered to do it himself.”
Of course, the would-be assassin got cold feet, admitted to everything, and was banished from the Empire for it. It was Cortland who had discovered the plot, having noticed the same commoner hanging about the garden gate for three days in a row. It was not uncommon for citizens to come and look at the royal gardens through the bars, but the shifty man caught the Prince’s attention.
“Spilled his guts to Cortland from the start. Word was the Prince barely got his questions out before the man unburdened himself. I understand that,” Febril said, taking a sip of his ale. “Thing like that’s a terrible weight on your conscience. Cortland was his escape hatch. His opportunity to get right and he took it.”
Javhid was hung in the public square of Quinze while his brothers looked on stony-faced. the King wept for his son, tears rolling down his cheeks. All saw him wince as the trap door slammed open and Jahvid’s neck snapped. He hung in place for three days as a warning to all. No one is above the law of the Empire, not even a Prince. The King drew breath only four more days, living long enough to see his son cut down from the gallows and his bloated body wrapped in cloth, but no more. Such began the reign of King Edouard Cortes I.
The last hours were strange in their mundanity. We began to pass travelers on the road. A lone man with a donkey loaded with bags, uncovered wagons filled with hay, and soldiers on foot, in formation. We stepped off the road for them as they went by, their clanking armor as familiar in our own time as in this one.
“I thought it would feel different,” I said, admitting out loud what I’d been feeling as we approached the old capital.
“I did too. I expected to notice something different, some indication that they knew they were at the start, the beginning of something. But it’s not their past,” he said. “It’s their present.”
“Edouard,” I said.
There was no one around. We stopped in the road and I put my right hand on his shoulder.
“You can do this.”
He placed his hand on my shoulder and we stood like brothers. He did not speak, but nodded, his face full of resolve. We pulled apart and I dropped back three steps behind him as we approached the city gates. A valet should not walk in stride with his master. The city was lit up as we approached. The sun was in its final stages of setting, the last light of day still lingering while the torch lighters did their work. I had never been to Singhal in our own time, so I had no basis for comparison, but it was an imposing city, exactly the sort of city a ruler like Everard would be drawn to. It was set into a hill, with the gate being the lowest point of the city. Built into the crown of the hill was the King's palace, looking down on the city below. The streets were laddered up the hill towards the palace in parallel. I could not imagine the chaos of bringing a carriage down from the top down through the zig zagging streets. Smells of roasting meat and baking bread wafted to us as we drew near. My stomach rumbled as two soldiers came to meet Edouard from the guardhouse.
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“Hail,” he called. It amazed me how he could turn on his aristocratic voice at will. In a single syllable he could make clear that he was above these men but inclined to be fair.
“Well met, what is your business in Singhal?”
With a flourish, Edouard pulled his letter of introduction from his cloak. I watched their faces as they read the missive and saw their posture change. They stood up straight. One cleared his throat.
“Of course, of course, please this way.”
Our separation happened in the guardhouse. One led Edouard to a waiting carriage to take him into the halls of royalty. After he was gone, an old man appeared at my side. He was unshaven and stooped at the waist, but his smile was kind.
“I’m to show you to the big house,” he said. “‘Fraid we’ll have to walk it.”
“After you,” I said. “I’ve all the time in the world.”
My guide was called Horace and in spite of his age and stoop was talkative and sprightly. After inquiring if this was my first time in the capital city and learning that it was, he waved his arms at buildings as we passed, telling of when that inn had better ownership or how that stall had the freshest bread. I thought of Febril and smiled. My legs burned as we climbed ever higher towards the palace, but Horace never flagged, but waved me on when I fell behind. By the time we reached the palace’s gates I was drenched with sweat and out of breath. I thanked my guide and complimented him on his skill traversing the city’s streets.
“It’s nothing. I make that journey a dozen times a day. It’s the messenger’s way.”
It was hard for me to reconcile the image in my mind of a young messenger boy swooping through the streets of Quinze with this stooped old man. We shook hands and he went on his way back to the guardhouse as I was turned over to a serving girl called Molly to take me to my quarters.
As a valet, I would have better quarters than most servants, Molly informed me in a clipped speech that told me what she felt about that. My room was adjoining the suite in which Edouard would be staying so that I could be at his beck and call should he need me. The young serving girl’s eyes roamed up and down me once as she left me at the door and her appraisal did not seem to be a winning one.
“You can eat your meals in the kitchen. Do you need me to show you where it is?” “I’ll manage,” I said, putting on my most winning smile.
It was not returned. She turned on her heel and left me to peruse my new living space. It was better furnished than my garret, with a large chest filled with linens and blankets, a feather mattress, and several imposing portraits on the stone walls. A fireplace lay directly across from the foot of the bed. It was cold but cord was neatly stacked on the bricks. My window was stained glass and did not open. It provided a view of an alarming drop and the sea. I imagined my view was a result of Edouard’s status. Servant’s rooms likely looked out over the city if they had a window at all. Molly’s attitude towards valets began to feel justified.
Even considering the furnishings, I preferred my garret room. Without access to the outside world, I felt hemmed in. As my Prince was likely to be busy being feted for some time yet, I resolved to find the kitchen. I wandered the stone corridors, committing all I could to memory. I had the advantage of my long years in the library, while not a palace, was an enormous old building with unpredictable architecture requiring memorization to navigate well. Whenever I came across another person, I stood up straight and nodded with confidence. I’ve found it’s best not to appear to be lost. I found the kitchen within a half hour, grabbed a roll for the road and continued my wanderings about the palace. It could not but be an asset to Edouard for me to be familiar with the palace’s layout. It was much easier for me to walk the corridors unnoticed than it would be for a personage like him.
Just as I had this thought of my own relative safety, I turned a corner and collided with a man in armor. I might as well have collided with the brick exterior of Febril’s stall. I picked myself up off the floor, dusting off my half eaten roll on my cloak and looked full in the face of my partner in collision. He was a head or more taller than me and wearing a full set of armor save a helmet. A cloak was pinned on his left shoulder by a gold pin. A broadsword hung at his waist. His skin was pale and his hair a dirty blond color, tied back in a fighter’s knot. His eyes were a blue so light they were almost the milky white of the blind. But this man was not blind.
“I beg your par–”
His hands were quick and the roll was out of my own and into his before I could blink. He turned it over in his gloved hand and squeezed it into a tiny ball of dough.
“Still warm, thief.”
I kept my voice calm.
“I am not a thief. I am a valet of a visiting royal cousin. I was instructed to find the kitchen at my leisure, as I have done.”
“Interesting,” he said, not unclenching his fist around my roll. “Did you need to do such a thorough inspection of the palace corridors after finding the kitchen? You weren’t looking for something else to steal, perhaps something more valuable than bread?”
So he had been watching me.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve kept an eye on you. As a King's guard I’ve found that rather than throwing you and your ilk out on the street immediately, it’s often helpful to see if you have grander ambitions.”
“I assure you, this is a misunderstanding. I am a–”
“A valet to a visiting royal cousin, yes. What is his name?”
“His name is E–”
I hesitated. I was in shock at my own stupidity. Our stupidity. Of all the things we discussed, we never discussed whether or not he was to be called Edouard or if the letter of introduction gave him a different name. My hesitation was a pronouncement of guilt to my King's guard.
“Word of advice, Rodanian. Come up with your story ahead of time. Save’s you use of your limbs in the long run.”
The threat was not lost on me as he pulled me along by the throat of my cloak, unheeding of my scrambling to keep up with his stride. I’d be damned if I was going to be dragged through the palace like a corpse. The way he pronounced rodanian gave me a pretty clear idea of the situation I was in. All the other people I had seen in my wanderings had disappeared. We passed no one as he dragged me along, no faces I could implore to find my master and bring him at once. The dark staircases were in my mind. I had read of what went on in the early Empire’s dungeons. I could already feel the chill damp, the clamping of irons, and winced at the promised breaking of limbs. It was sheer luck that saved me.
Just as we passed a set of grand doors, they opened and Edouard strolled out arm in arm with a man that could only be King Everard Cortes.
“Origio?” Edouard said. “Uncle, is it customary to drag visitor’s valets like stubborn cattle?”
“This is your man?” the King asked. “What is the meaning of this, Carbo?”
the King had a thin, reedy voice at odds with his muscular build and trimmed but imposing black beard.
“I caught him skulking around and stealing food.”
“Familiarizing myself with my surroundings,” I said, out of breath.
“A wise decision in a strange new place,” the King said. “You’ve chosen your man well, nephew.”
“Thank you, sire.”
Edouard and I were yet to make eye contact and the King's man, Carbo, had not yet let go of my cloak.
“Carbo, if you will.”
the King laid a paternal hand on Edouard’s shoulder and bid him a good evening as he had to be getting on to bed and advised him to do the same.
“Big day, tomorrow after all.”
Edouard smiled as the King's military gait carried him down the corridor. He turned to Carbo.
“I can rest easy tonight knowing the King has such dedicated guardsmen to keep me safe. I thank you.”
He took me by the arm and we began to walk away from a motionless Carbo. He called out to Edouard.
“A Rodanian will never serve you well in the end, my lord.”