The Poison Throne

  Then Razi turned his attention to her. They hadn’t much time, but he allowed himself one small moment of emotion, nothing more than a softening of his eyes, a sorrowful drawing together of his brow. Then she saw him swallow hard and blink, his expression hardening. “Lorcan…” he mouthed and flicked his eyes towards the royal room. The door stood open and unguarded. Wynter glanced at it and back at Razi, but his eyes were down again, and the King was staring at her. She turned smoothly and wandered away through the crowd, taking a circuitous route to the royal rooms.

  Lorcan was alone. He must have taken advantage of the shifting crowds at the end of the meal and used the chaos to slip away. Wynter found him, wedged into a corner out of sight, his back to the wall, slumped and hidden like an animal at bay. He lifted his eyes to her as she came into his field of vision and grimaced ruefully. He was desperately heaving for breath, his hand to his chest.

  “Darling,” he rasped, “I’m… in trouble.”

  She didn’t exclaim or create any kind of fuss. She just went to him, put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him up until he was standing to his full height against the wall. “Can you make it to our rooms?” she asked, looking up into his sweating face.

  “Lord Razi…?”

  “Christopher is looking after Razi.”

  Even through his distress, Lorcan managed to raise a doubtful eyebrow at the idea. Wynter put her hand on his breast and felt his heart racing and skipping beneath the fabric of his longcoat. “Dad,” she said, “Razi trusts him. And I trust Razi to know what’s best. Now please, Dad, please let’s get back to our rooms.”

  The music from the banquet hall had gained momentum, a reel now, spinning its way into a country jig. The dancers would be twirling about like tops. The heat would be unbearable, the tension deafening. Lorcan laid his arm across her shoulder and her knees buckled for a moment. Together they slipped out into the cool gloom of the back corridor and began slowly to make their way down the hall. The noise of the dance grew dim behind them.

  “Darling… d-darling…” Lorcan suddenly squeezed her shoulder and bent at the waist. “I need to stop. Just for a moment.”

  Wynter pushed him back into an open doorway and propped him against a wall. They were in the antechamber of a small room, their only source of light the dim torchlight of the corridor outside.

  “Are you all right, Dad?” His eyes were glittering in the gloom, his breath a laboured wheeze. He laid his head back against the wall and patted her arm, nodding.

  All right then, just a moment to catch his breath and then they’d move on. She glanced around her warily. God, how vulnerable they were. She could still hear, faintly, the music of the dance; they’d hardly made any progress at all.

  That’s when the shouting started. Wynter turned her head to listen, and Lorcan grew tense and wary as the music stopped. The shouting was followed by screaming, like a brawl in a pot-house. There was the noise of footsteps running. And then, that most chilling of sounds, the “Gathering of The Guard” being played on the royal trumpets – the alarm that signalled an attack on the life of the King!

  Assassin

  Wynter and her father stood frozen in the dark as quiet footsteps sped up the corridor towards them. A young man raced past the door, just a blur of coat and pumping arms and legs, and then he was gone. Wynter started immediately for the hall, her intention to call for the guards, but she drew back as yet more footsteps approached.

  Christopher Garron shot past, his long hair flying out behind him. He was there, then gone in an instant. Wynter leapt forward and out the door, not quite sure she’d actually seen him.

  The fleeing man was almost at the end of the hall by the time Wynter skidded into the corridor. She saw him glance desperately over his shoulder, saw his panicked expression as Christopher gained on him. Saw Christopher take a sudden leaping bound into the air and kick his two feet forward to hit the man square between his shoulder blades, bringing the two of them down in a tangled, sliding heap.

  Someone else ran past her, brushing her shoulder, but Wynter barely registered them as she took in the cold-blooded fury that was Christopher Garron.

  He had got his feet under him even as he was sliding and, before the young man had registered the fact that they’d hit the floor, Christopher was on top of him.

  It was his silence that most disconcerted her, that and the absolute precision with which he landed each blow. He hit the young man straight between the eyes with his first punch, knocking his head back into the floor, disabling him with that blow alone. But he didn’t stop there. Christopher cocked his arm back, way back, and that was what Wynter would recall later: that pose and then the contact. Each separate punch divided into the moment when Christopher’s arm was pulled back, his fist ready and then the instant when the punch landed on the young man’s face. Blood sprayed out from the fellow’s lips, his nose, his eye. Just blood, Christopher’s fist and more blood. And Christopher completely silent, his face composed to hatred. His intention to beat every inch of life from this person who lay under him, limp and immobile since strike one, perhaps already dead.

  The person who had rushed past her slid to a halt beside Christopher, and Wynter realised with a shock that it was Razi. She let out a little cry as she noticed his right sleeve, black and glistening with fresh blood, his hand red with it. As he fell to his knees beside the pumping fury of his friend, Razi’s blood spattered onto the flagstones. One-armed, he grabbed Christopher around the chest and heaved backwards, pulling him off the target of his wrath.

  “Enough! Enough! Christopher!” Razi shouted. “We need him alive! We need him alive, Chris! Stop!” He heaved back so violently that the two of them tumbled over, Christopher still as silent as the grave.

  Then there were guards in the hall, pulling Razi and Christopher to their feet and snatching the beaten man up from the flags and snapping shackles on him. Razi growled at them and rebuffed their attempts to separate himself and Christopher, who stood looking at him with a dazed kind of confusion. And then, oh God! Christopher launched himself at the guards.

  Screaming in Hadrish, his face contorted in red anger, he leapt into the air and loafed one of them right between his eyes, felling him like a pole-axed bull. “Where were you?” he screamed. “Where were you, you poxy whoreson cur!” And then, even as the first guard was hitting the floor, Christopher spun on his heel and with another brittle scream of rage, brought his knee slamming up into the groin of the big fellow next to him.

  More guards closed in with a roar and Razi swept his arm up, yelling at them, “LEAVE! Leave, goddamn you all! Take your trash and leave!” And, amazingly, they did. Christopher and Wynter and Razi were left standing in the hall, panting and looking around them wonderingly, as if it had all been an illusion.

  “Razi,” said Wynter, reaching for her friend’s arm, “you’re bleeding.”

  But Razi wasn’t listening. He was looking at Christopher, who was, in turn, gazing at the bright splashes and curlicues of blood that decorated the floor where he had beaten the young man.

  “Christopher,” Razi gently put his hand on the smaller man’s shoulder.

  Christopher turned to him immediately. He looked at Razi’s arm, hanging limp by his side now, blood still dripping from his cuff. He scanned Razi’s chest, his other arm. Finally he looked up into his friend’s face, blinked, and took a deep breath as if surfacing from cold water.

  “I’m all right, Christopher,” said Razi, very softly.

  “I saw you go down. That whoreson threw his knife… I saw you hit the floor. Good Frith, Razi! The spray of blood!”

  Razi showed all his teeth in a wide grin. “You imagined that, friend. There was no spray of blood.”

  Christopher reached up suddenly and grabbed Razi by the back of the neck. He pulled the taller man’s head down until Razi’s forehead rested on his shoulder, then he wrapped his arm around Razi’s back in a brief, fierce hug.

  “Don’t do that again, you fool
.” He banged Razi twice on the back. Wynter suspected it was intended as a gentle pat but fear and the aftershock of violence made into a solid thump. And then the two men parted.

  “You’ll need stitches,” Wynter said. Razi nodded. Wynter put her arm around his waist and he leaned into her for a moment. “Let’s get you and my father back to our rooms, Razi.”

  But there were more guards now, advancing down the corridor, and with them the King, his face a black mixture of anger and concern. Razi shot his two friends a look and began backing away from them, moving to intercept the King before he got a chance to sink his teeth into the ones who had refused to eat at his feast.

  “Get Lorcan to your rooms, little sis,” Razi whispered before limping away. “I’ll see you when I can.” And then he was gone, the guards, the councilmen and his father closing around him like a shroud and whisking him off up the corridor.

  Lorcan was sitting in a chair in a dark corner of the anteroom when they went to fetch him. Wynter could see the knuckles on his hands gleaming white in the reflected light. She thought, with a flash of pride, he’s arranged himself to look stronger, in case they discovered him.

  He’d done a good job. Sitting straight, with his hands clutching the arms of his chair, his long red hair fell loose around his shoulders and his green eyes blazed from the gloom. He looked like a tiger in its lair or a dragon smouldering in its cave. Unassailable. Wynter came in with one hand up. Keeping her voice low, she used the affectionate tone that they reserved for when they were alone.

  “It’s all right, Dad. Christopher took the assailant down. The guards have dragged him to the keep.”

  “Alive?” Lorcan’s voice was a hoarse gravel in the base of his throat. Wynter knelt by his chair and laid her hand on his, startled by how cold his flesh was.

  “Alive,” answered Christopher from the shadows. Lorcan’s eyes leapt to him and Wynter felt the big man’s body jerk in shock.

  “Was it the King or the boy he was after?” Lorcan directed this question to Wynter, and she smiled knowingly at him. It would take much more than Razi’s faith in Christopher to get Lorcan to trust a Hadrish stranger! She looked back at the young man hovering behind them and transferred the question to him with a raised eyebrow.

  “He was aiming for Razi,” Christopher replied. “He threw a knife across the room, nearly took Razi’s arm off.”

  Now that the fight was over, Wynter could hear the aftershock trembling through Christopher’s voice. In the gloom, she could just make out that he was cradling his mangled hands to his chest as though they hurt. Small wonder they hurt, she thought, you beat that man to a pulp.

  “Christopher,” she asked, “will you help me get my father to our room?”

  Lorcan growled, but he was no fool either. He allowed the young man to come forward and, between the two of them, Wynter and Christopher got Lorcan back to his suite.

  They helped him to his bedroom door, fully intending to put him to bed, but he shrugged free of them at the threshold and staggered inside, shutting the door behind him.

  “Can I do anything more for you? Get water? Some food, maybe? Call a guard for your door?” Christopher asked, with one foot already out the door, his concern for Razi willing him away. Wynter shook her head, wanting him to go and protect her friend, wishing she could accompany him, but knowing she couldn’t.

  “Listen to me,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. He went to draw away. “Listen!” He stilled, impatience humming off him like the resonance of a bell. “Do not sneak about. The lords will kill you if you’re caught. And, Christopher, they want to kill you. You are Razi’s ally, you don’t fit in, you’re… you’re a danger. If you go sneaking about on your own they’ll murder you under the pretence of thinking you an assassin, and that will be the end of you. Stay public, go about in the light… be blatant, Christopher. Do you understand?”

  He maintained that hooded gaze for a moment, and then he said, “Will they let me see him?”

  She shrugged. “You might as well try; it all depends on how strong Razi feels. If he’s able to hold his ground against them, then yes, I think even the King would allow you in, if Razi demanded it. But be loud, Christopher, be obvious, make sure he knows you’re there.”

  He nodded, turned to go, and Wynter caught his arm once more.

  “Christopher.”

  He paused, patient now, waiting for more instructions.

  “Thank you,” she said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

  She felt the muscles in his forearm jump and then he was gone, padding away from her with no noise at all.

  He returned at the flux of the shadows, midnight by the northern clock. Wynter had been sitting in a chair by the window for hours, the scent from the orange garden balmy on her face, cool in her shift and her mother’s dressing-robe. Her father had fallen into a sleep so sound that she’d been frightened by it. She checked on him regularly, laying her hand on his chest as he slept, feeling the rise and fall of each laboured breath, feeling the unnatural rhythm of his heart.

  When Christopher returned, she was out of her chair and sliding the bolt open before she’d fully registered the sound of his knock. He was standing in the hall, a tray in his hand, no expression on his face. Wynter smelled toasted bread and butter, hot milk and cinnamon.

  “My Lord Razi sends you his love and a tray of supper, my Lady.” Wynter glanced past him and noted with shock that the corridor was now lined with guards, ten or twelve in all, positioned at attention from one end of the hall to the next. Dear God. There would be no privacy at all now.

  “Come in, Freeman Garron, and lay the tray over there, please.”

  She went to shut the door, but Christopher shook his head slightly and made a show of crossing to the table and laying out the supper in full view of the nearest guard. Wynter drifted over to supervise. Christopher spoke without looking at her, his voice a whisper.

  “There is a large, dark panel of wood in the far wall of the retiring room. If you turn the cherub sconce on its head, it will unlock a hidden door and Razi and I can access your room through a small corridor that leads from ours. Would this be all right?”

  She nodded. He glanced up quickly as he organised pots of honey and butter and jam. “Razi has very little time and he wants to spend it with you… but we have to undo the work that that bloody quacksalver has done on his arm. He hopes you won’t find it distressing if we do it here?”

  She glared at him impatiently and Christopher’s dimples flashed in amusement, his eyes sparkling. “Razi seems to think you a delicate wee flower. I shall detail your scorn for him.”

  Then he stepped back, bowed and left without another word. She shut the door and drew the bolt loudly, the guard across the hall staring all the while.

  She hurried across to unlock the hidden panel. Moments later there was a knock, and the panel was pushed open. Razi came through first, stooped slightly and grey, his soft white shirt hanging loose at the right arm, a heavy wool cloak over his shoulders. He pulled her to him in a tight hug and she thought, as ever, how clean he smelt, how unlike most other people he was. “Sis,” he murmured, “I’m sorry.”

  Christopher followed, a copper bowl of steaming water held out carefully ahead of him, his hands protected by thick wads of cloth. “Out of my way, out of my way! ’Tis hot!”

  Razi broke away from her and limped over to put a rush mat on the table by the supper things. Christopher laid the bowl on top of it and disappeared back down the dark passageway. Wynter leaned in at the secret door and saw him turn right a few paces up, where light spilled out in a dim rectangle from Razi’s rooms. From what she could tell in the gloom, the passage continued on past that patch of light, winding away in dark mystery behind the walls to God knows where.

  “I can’t believe the King doesn’t know about this!” she marvelled.

  “He does know,” said Razi from behind her. He had dragged the armchair closer to the table and as she turned, he sat down gingerly and b
egan to pull his uninjured arm from his shirt sleeve. “He just doesn’t think anyone else does. Aaah!”

  Wynter went to help him and together they got the shirt over his head. He was left in just his britches, the bandaging across his shoulder and chest vivid against his dark skin.

  Wynter blushed to see the curling hair on his chest and stomach, and the dark circles of his nipples. They had swum naked together all their lives, and until Razi was eleven, had often slept in the same bed – Wynter and Albi against the wall, Razi curled around them like a guard dog. But they weren’t children anymore and it felt strange suddenly to be in his presence like this. Razi seemed perfectly at ease, though, and she bit down on her embarrassment. It fled of its own accord anyway when he began to unwind the bindings, and the horrible mouth of his wound was revealed, its row of stitches like a collection of ragged insect legs poking up from the clotted gore.

  “Oh Razi,” she gasped, helping him with the last of the bandages. “Why? Why did the King do it? Could he not tell that this would happen…?”

  Razi looked at her, bitterness etched in every line of his face. “He waited, Wyn, strung me along with this damned lie about Albi being on the coast… waited until Lorcan and I were in the reception rooms, ready to step out the damned door. Then he told us what… what he wanted me to do. Poor Lorcan, his face… But what could we do? We were surrounded by guards. Half the councilmen sided with the King, the others cowed into submission. If only… God, if only we had had time to think, to prepare, but the wily bastard sprung his trap and there we were… caught.”