The Prince of Lies (Night's Masque, #3)(135)

Ignoring his wife’s protests he raced through the castle grounds, pushing past startled guardsmen. At last he found himself in the outer ward, at the foot of the stairs up to the old royal apartments in St Thomas’s Tower.

“Hold! Who goes there?” a guard shouted down at him.

“Sir Maliverny Catlyn. Please, let me through. The Queen is in danger.”

“And why should I believe you?” The guard advanced down the stair, pointing his partizan at Mal. “I heard you were a traitor.”

Mal raised his hands as if surrendering. The guard relaxed, and Mal leapt up the next three steps and seized the partisan by its decorative side-blades. Twisting out of the way he hauled on the weapon, sending its bearer tumbling down the stairs to land in a heap on the cobbles below.

“Sorry,” he muttered, bounding up the rest of the stairs and pulling open the door.

The dining parlour was just as he remembered it, though it lay empty at this time of night. He ran over to the door in the corner and tried the latch. Locked, dammit! On the other hand, anything in there would take a while to get out. He went through into the other half of the main apartments, to the bedchamber where he and Coby had spent the night all those years ago.

“Ladies?”

One of the bed’s occupants sat up and screamed, waking her companions. Mal belatedly remembered he was soaked in blood from the waist down.

“Please, ladies, I’m not here to harm you, I swear. My name is Sir Maliverny Catlyn; my wife served the Queen–”

“We know who you are, sirrah,” one of them said, gathering a robe around her shoulders. “A traitor and a renegade.”

“Please, whatever you think of me, rouse the Queen mother and get yourselves out of here this instant. You are all in great danger.”

“What kind of–”

Her answer was a loud thud from the room behind Mal.

“Go!” he said, taking the nearest woman’s arm and pushing her towards the door. “Get out through the Wakefield Tower and flee this place entirely if you can.”

The women scattered, and Mal stalked back into the dining chamber, ready to face whatever came through the tower door.





CHAPTER XXXVII



Coby stood at the top of the steps, wondering how she was to get all these people out of the Tower. Fortunately the problem was solved for her by the arrival of a squad of militiamen. Coby pulled Kit back into the shadow of the great doors. The last thing she wanted was to be herded out of the castle with the rest of the courtiers.

“Come on, let’s go and check on our prisoner,” she said. “We don’t want some well-meaning warder letting him loose, not after all the trouble we’ve been to.”

She was half out of breath by the time they reached the little tower room, and half-expected Jathekkil to have vanished into thin air. But there he was, tied to the bedpost with the dark metal of a spirit-guard glinting dully at his throat.

“Come back to finish me off, have you?” he rasped.

“I could never kill a child,” Coby replied softly. She looked from one boy to the other. “But I suppose neither of you are children, are you?”

The usurper’s eyes widened in fear.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re quite safe with us.”

She went over to the door and unlocked it. After a moment’s consideration she slipped the heavy iron key into her pocket and returned to the bed, where she tore a strip from one of the sheets and gagged the young king and bound his ankles before untying him from the bedpost. He bucked in her arms as she scooped him up and threw him on the bed.

“One boy sounds much like another,” she said. “And my son looks a good deal like you. Everyone comments on it. If the yeomen warders come, I’m sure we can persuade them nothing is amiss.”

She closed the bed-curtains and opened a large cupboard. As she suspected, it was full of fine clothing, made for a boy of eight or nine years.

“Kit, why don’t you change out of those dirty things into something a bit nicer?”



As Mal watched, the door to Olivia’s chamber melted like wax into a tarry puddle on the floor. A young man of eighteen or so stood on the other side, tall and thin with skin pale as a shoot forced in darkness. Another of Shawe’s young sorcerers, no doubt. He seemed to look straight through Mal as if he wasn’t there. Beyond him, Mal could see someone lying on the floor, an arm clad in green silk flung wide, graceful hand limp as a flower. Olivia.

Mal drew his sword, and the youth finally appeared to notice him.

“Don’t like this, do you?” Mal said, pointing the steel blade towards him.

The youth raised his hands, and a chair thudded into the back of Mal’s knees. Mal stumbled and dropped the sword, and the youth pounced, turning into a great cat in mid-air. Mal rolled and retrieved his weapon. Sweet Christ! He had expected an attack on his mind, not his body. Still, if that’s what they wanted, he was more than happy to oblige.

He scrambled to his feet, sweeping the blade in an ever-changing series of arcs that wove a shield of steel between them. Let the creature get its magic through that! But he could not keep it up forever, and the sorcerer seemed to guess as much. He changed back into a human youth and withdrew, arms crossed, waiting. His enemy was no fencer, however; moments later he gave himself away by glancing over Mal’s shoulder. Mal edged round to see another boy, slightly younger, framed in the doorway. How many of them were there? Two dozen at least, or so Kiiren had said. He needed reinforcements.