The Poison Throne (The Moorehawke Trilogy)

  "Girly?" he slurred, and Wynter's eyes overflowed with tears when she realised that he was calling for her.

  "I'm here, Christopher," she said. "I'm all right!"

  He raised his head slightly and peered through his curtain of hair, seeing nothing. "Raz..." His head dropped forward again, and he moaned.

  "Take him," Jonathon ordered, gesturing without taking his eyes from Razi's face.

  The guards heaved Christopher upright. "You're off to the keep, my lad!" one of them sneered into his ear. Christopher's eyes rolled open, and Wynter knew that on some level he understood what that meant. The guard realised this too, and grinned in delight. He whispered savagely in his ear again. "They're going to put you in The Chair!"

  Christopher released a hoarse, terrified scream and began to thrash weakly against the big men. They laughed and started to drag him backward down the hill.

  "No!" moaned Wynter. "Razi! No!"

  But Razi was staring at his father, who was showing his teeth in a merciless, triumphant grin.

  "You will attend the banquet tonight, and every night," said Jonathon smoothly.

  Razi dropped his head.

  "You will eat at every remove."

  Razi shut his eyes.

  "You will don the purple robe of heir."

  Razi whispered, "Yes."

  Christopher's cries were fading into the distance and Wynter's sobbing was harsh in the silence. Jonathon rubbed his hands. "Good! The Hadrish will stay in the keep tonight. You stay true to your word, and he will be released unharmed tomorrow."

  "At least tell him he won't go to The Chair," Razi pleaded, raising his eyes to glare hopelessly at the King. "At least do that."

  But Jonathon just smiled, and Wynter knew he would do no such thing. He patted Razi's shoulder suddenly, with a tenderness that was obscene under the circumstances. Razi's lips trembled and his eyelids fluttered in suppressed rage.

  "You will learn, son, that friends are a luxury that no king can afford. Your only duty, your only concern must be the welfare of state. Everything, everything, comes second to that. Including yourself."

  Razi shrugged off his father's hand and turned away. Jonathon shifted his attention to Wynter, who was staring after Christopher, her hands pressed to her mouth, tears tolling down her face.

  "Protector Lady Moorehawke," he said, his voice harsh. "Get back to work, and do not interfere again." Wynter raised her eyes to him, frozen to the spot. He didn't wait for her to respond, just motioned to his guards as he turned to go. "Take his Highness Prince Razi to his chambers. He is tired and wishes to rest until dinner. He will not want to leave his rooms. Have Jusef Marcos's widow and father arrested and taken to the keep."

  And he strode off down the hill, leaving Wynter and Razi together in a ring of black-clad, stone-faced men, a body at their feet, their friend's screams still hanging in the air.

  Carpenter and King

  Lorcan must have heard Wynter crying as she raced her way down the path and up the steps, because he was already coming out of the library door when she ran into the tiled corridor. He barrelled straight out into the hall, staring around him in alarm, and came to an abrupt halt at the sight of her. Wynter flung herself into his arms, jabbering incoherently, her face a mess of tears. She was so uncharacteristically distraught, so unusually out of control that he just clutched her to him, his heart beating wildly against her ear. He dragged her into the library and kicked the door shut behind them, and, much as she tried, she couldn't stop screaming and moaning, tears and snot spreading liberally across the front of his shirt.

  She should stop now. She knew that. She kept waiting for her father to push her away, to shake her, to shout at her, get yourself together!

  But Lorcan just kept holding her against his chest, rocking her and stroking the back of her hair. He was crooning as if she were a baby. "It's all right, darling. It's all right, baby-girl. Shhhhhh..."

  Eventually, the wild storm drained out of her, and Wynter was left beached on its shore. She sagged, clutching her father's shirt in both hands. Her knees were weak, her eyes burning. There were sobs and hiccups still, but she was regaining control.

  Lorcan continued to hug her close. "There we go," he said, "That's my girl." She closed her eyes for a moment and floated on the strength and comfort that he still managed to give her, that he would always manage to give her, until the day he died.

  "Oh Dad!" she said suddenly and buried her face in his chest. She began to weep quietly, in a completely different way to only moments before. A heartbroken, hopeless way, that was all about loss.

  "Oh, baby-girl," he said gently, frightened now. "Come on, darling. Tell me what's wrong? Tell me what happened?"

  And she did. As she spoke, Lorcan drew away from her slightly, holding both her hands in his, looking down at her with growing despair. When she got to the part about Jonathon arresting Christopher and forcing Razi to don the purple, Lorcan released a little moan of grief and shook his head. Turning away, he shuffled over to the wall where he had been working. He leant against the defaced picture panel, his head down, his forehead pressed to the wood. Then he sank slowly to the floor and lay down, his head back, his right arm over his eyes.

  "Dad?" she whispered, her own grief forgotten.

  She slid to the floor and scooted over to sit beside him, taking his hand in hers.

  "Dad. Please don't leave me."

  A tear slid slowly from the corner of Lorcan's eye and he hitched a little breath. "I'll do my best, baby-girl." And he squeezed her hand before going very still for a long time.

  Wynter sat for about two-eighths of a quarter, twenty or thirty minutes, holding his hand and listening to his breathing. This had happened several times since Lorcan's illness began, where he had just sunk to the ground and faded into sleep, usually after a long period of intense concentration, or late nights working, or stress. It was very different from those other gasping, sweating attacks, which were so full of struggle and desperation. Wynter was never sure which of these two she hated more.

  He had been so very strained these past few days, after such a long period of hard travel, and the last two attacks had been so bad, and so close together...

  She wished that Razi were here, with his knowledge and his calm authority. Even Christopher, padding about in the background with his quiet competence, setting things straight, being supportive. Thinking of the two men only made her worry how they might be now, especially poor Christopher. She had seen a head injury like Christopher's before, when a groom was thrown against a fence at Jonathon's tilt-yard. The poor man had been plagued by fits for the rest of his days. The thought of Christopher, that graceful, self-assured tomcat, in the grip of one of those foaming attacks was appalling, and Wynter pressed it down with all her might.

  After a while, she heard the tramping of a large body of guards coming up the granite steps and advancing along the tiled corridor, but she didn't move. Even when the sounds stopped right outside the library door, she remained seated. She didn't intend disturbing Lorcan for anyone.

  The door opened a little and Jonathon slipped inside, leaving his guards in the hall. He shut the door quietly behind him and came to a stop at the sight of Lorcan lying on the floor, his daughter hunched and scowling beside him.

  "Is this how the Moorehawkes fulfil their duty to me?" he asked, but his voice was soft. "By sleeping?"

  "Your Majesty has but to glance around this room to see how hard my father has toiled in your name." Jonathon's eyes slid a little to the right, but he did not really look around him. Instead, he stepped closer and peered down at her father with what Wynter was amazed to see was tenderness. Infinitely more tenderness than he had shown his own son less than an hour previously. She stifled her surprise and took advantage of the King's momentary openness while she had the chance.

  "The Protector Lord is ill, your Majesty. I beg you please, allow my Lord Razi to attend him?"

  Jonathon's eyes flickered and he spoke dismissi
vely as he moved to get a better view of his old friend's half-obscured face. "He is your Royal Highness, the Prince Razi, Protector Lady Moorehawke. Do not misspeak again. And he is not a doctor; he is the heir apparent to the throne. The palace already has a doctor."

  "Razi says he is a quacksalver!" Wynter exclaimed, her temper rising. The King levelled an opaque look at her and she swallowed her insubordination like bile. "Please, your Majesty," she said, courtly and low. "Will you not allow his Highness to attend the Protector Lord? Or if not his Highness, can you not find the good doctor St James, who was here before?"

  "St James is dead, child. He died bringing Razi to the Moroccos. I will get Doctor Mercury to..."

  "What are you doing, Jonathon?"

  Lorcan's dry whisper shocked them both.

  Wynter leant over her father. "Dad?"

  Lorcan squeezed her hand, took his arm from his face and let it fall across his chest. He turned his eyes to Jonathon. He looked exhausted, and he barely moved his lips when he asked again, "What are you doing?"

  Jonathon remained silent, but Wynter was completely thrown by his reaction to Lorcan. This was a man who, only today, had backhanded his wounded son down a hill, who had tried to crack Christopher Garron's head open against a tree and who was methodically erasing his most beloved heir from history. She found herself staring at him in astonishment as he looked down on her ailing father. He was examining Lorcan with the most heartbroken tenderness and regret. And more, a kind of shuffling guilt had crept into his demeanour, as though, in the face of his friend's distress, he could no longer keep his courtly mask from slipping. Wynter had never thought of the King like that before, as having to don The Mask. But looking at him now she realised that, of course, of all people he would have most to hide.

  "Lorcan," he said, crouching down beside his friend. "Allow me to appoint another in your place. There is no need..."

  Wynter's father's voice remained a rasping whisper, but his green eyes spat fire and his hand clenched tightly on Wynter's when he said, "You think I would let anyone else do this, Jonathon? You think I could possibly stand by and allow someone else to undo my work? This work?"

  "What do you mean?" cried Wynter, dropping her father's hand. "Did you offer to do this, Dad? Are you...?"

  Lorcan smiled tiredly, but the King glared at Wynter with what looked like confusion and hurt. Wynter wanted to shout at him, who do you think you are? To look like that after all you've done?

  "What did you think, child?" Jonathon asked, "Did you think that I would make your father desecrate his own art?" Then he was suddenly angry. His face darkened and he flung an arm about in an expansive, grandiose circle. It was a movement more fitting to an auditorium than to crouching on the floor with a prostrate carpenter and his apprentice, and Wynter thought the King was like a spoiled child denying that he'd broken a vase. "Do you see Salvador Minare here?" he continued, "Burning his own manuscripts? Do you see Gunther Van Noos hurling his paintings on the fire? What kind of a man do you think I am? That you would accuse me of making an artist destroy his own work?"

  The kind of man who hurls his son downhill and tries to expose a good man's brains to the light, Wynter thought, narrowing her eyes. Her expression must have been transparent as glass because Jonathon faltered and dropped his eyes, all his anger gone.

  "You always were wicked quick to lose your temper, Jonathon Kingsson," said Lorcan, his amused hiss breaking the tension.

  The King groaned and passed his hand over his eyes. Then he amazed Wynter by dropping down into the sawdust to sit with his back to the wall by Lorcan's head. He looked down into Lorcan's face and put his hand on his old friend's chest. Lorcan glanced up at him briefly. Jonathon sighed and laid his head against the wall, looking up at the sky through the library window.

  "And you were always very quick to give your opinions, Lorcan Moorehawke. I should have shot you years ago."

  Lorcan chuckled. "There's time yet."

  They sat in silence for a moment, then Lorcan asked tiredly, "Will you kill the Hadrish?"

  Wynter's heart squeezed and her eyes widened in shock at the casual way he asked it. He could have been asking, will you attend the game? or, will you buy that horse? for all the emotion he had just put into the question.

  "I won't have to," Jonathon said tonelessly. "Razi is bright enough to get rid of him first. Besides, he's rather more useful alive... for the moment."

  "He is Razi's friend!" exclaimed Wynter, dismayed at her father's disinterest in Christopher's fate. "He's a good man! He is loyal!" She didn't add the dangerously sentimental, he makes Razi laugh! He makes Razi happy!

  The two men turned their heads to look at her, blue eyes and green eyes equally appraising of her. She felt tiny and stupid under their combined scrutiny.

  "He's too dangerous," said the King dismissively. "He's unsuitable."

  "There was a time," rasped Lorcan, "that people said the same about me."

  The King grinned. "Ah, Lorcan, you are different."

  "I know my place," Lorcan murmured, without a trace of bitterness.

  "Aye," whispered the King, patting his friend's chest. "We both know your place. Razi doesn't understand things like that yet."

  The men subsided into silence again.

  Who are these men? thought Wynter. I don't know them at all. This was not her circumspect, courtly father, and this certainly wasn't the remote and demanding King. These men, she realised with a start, truly were friends.

  "What ails you, brother?" It took Jonathon a while to ask it, and he did so reluctantly, as if by asking he might push Lorcan irretrievably over the edge of some precipice.

  "My heart is failing me," Lorcan answered simply.

  Jonathon closed his fingers slowly on her father's chest, gathering a bunch of Lorcan's shirt in his loose fist. "I will get Razi to attend you," he said quietly.

  Oh, thank you! Thank you! thought Wynter, tears springing to her eyes.

  Lorcan didn't move, but Wynter saw his eyes gleaming under the shadow of his arm. He blinked a few times in the silence, and then he rasped, "You know I love that boy." Jonathon tilted his head and tightened his jaw as if to say, Don't! Please! But Lorcan went on. "He was always a most excellent child, and now a great man. But he is no king, Jonathon. You haven't bred him for it. He is, and always will be, a doctor."

  Jonathon growled but Lorcan continued, his tone grating, "For Godssake, man," he said, "it's what you've wanted for him since the day he was born, it's what he's trained for since he was eight years old. He has a God-given talent for it. He is a blessing to the world, Jonathon. What are you doing, that you would destroy him like this?"

  Jonathon was quiet for a long time, and Wynter held her breath, trying to remain invisible.

  "They will never accept him, Jon." Lorcan covered the King's hand with his. "It doesn't matter what you do. Despite all his worth, despite all his talents, regardless of all the magnificent things Razi brings to this world, the people will only ever see him as your brown bastard." Jonathon winced at that, and Wynter recoiled at her father's unflinching bluntness. "And they will kill him, Jonathon. They will kill him rather than let him take the throne." Lorcan let his hand drop back to the floor. "You know that." That last was a whisper so soft as to be a sigh.

  Jonathon breathed in deeply. Cleared his throat. "I have no choice," he said. "He's all I have left." His jaw muscles tightened and he turned his head to look down at his friend as though preparing for an argument. Lorcan didn't respond.

  "Dad?" Wynter whispered.

  "Lorcan!" Jonathon gripped the front of his friend's shirt and shook hard.

  Lorcan gasped, startled and took his arm down from his eyes, staring blearily, "What?"

  Jonathon and Wynter both released terrified, relieved laughs.

  Lorcan frowned up at them, confused. He sighed and closed his eyes. "I can't do any more today, Jon."

  "It must be done," Jonathon said, his voice hard. "If you cannot finish in time, t
hen I must retain some help. I can't afford to wait. A team of woodworkers could get this whole room done in a few days. I'm delaying just to please you, Moorehawke! It's ridiculous!"

  Wynter's hands knotted, but her father just nodded. "I know. I know. Just give me today. That's all I need."

  Jonathon seemed to collect himself at that. He looked away, and said quietly. "I will get my men to carry you to your chambers."

  Lorcan's eyes flew open. "No you will not," he snarled. "I will not be paraded through the corridors like some fool in a tumbrel." He reached his hand up to Wynter and attempted to rise.

  Jonathon rolled his eyes to heaven and pressed his hand down on her father's chest, pinning him to the ground. "Oh, stay easy, you bloody fool." He got to his feet and went to the door.

  The King murmured to his men for a moment, and Wynter steeled herself for the awful moment when they would come in and force her father to submit to this humiliation. Then Jonathon shut the door and stood listening to the corridor, his hand up to silence them.

  What was going on? Lorcan tilted his head at Wynter, and she shoved her shoulder under his and pushed. He got his legs under him, and between the two of them they got him halfway to his feet before Jonathon turned and saw them. He released a pretty spectacular oath and crossed quickly to catch Lorcan under his other arm and lift him the rest of the way.

  At a knock on the door Jonathon pulled Lorcan's arm over his shoulder and wrapped his own arm around his friend's back. He glanced down at Wynter and nodded at her.

  "Now," said the King, "my men have cleared the hall outside, and they'll clear each corridor as we go along, all the way from here to your rooms. No one will see you. Does that suit you, you stubborn rock-head? Or are you too bloody good to have the King help you walk?"

  "Shut. Up," hissed Lorcan and leant forward to get the three of them going. Wynter and the King jerked into motion and, between them, they made it through the empty corridors with no one to witness his Majesty the King acting as a crutch to a lowly carpenter.

  Leverage