Fool's Errand (27 page)

Wishing there was something she could do to ease his pain and disappointment but knowing there was not, Persephone took a great gulp of air and called, “What. what is the bad news, Rachel?”

As if in response, a big, hairy head abruptly appeared in the crack next to Rachel's.

“The bad news,” faltered Rachel, “is that it seems that the Khan do not care for trespassers.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

M
ORDECAI HAD BEEN BUSY
.

So busy, in fact, that he'd not met with the king for several days. Well, why would he have? The king was a royal nobody whose opinions mattered not at all, and Mordecai saw no need—and indeed, had no time in his hectic schedule—to coddle the fool by pretending otherwise.

As he lurched toward the king's chambers now, Mordecai reflected upon all that he'd accomplished in just a few short days. The most satisfying bit of business by far, of course, had been overseeing the routing of the Parthanian slums. Though it had not gone as smoothly as he'd have liked—the slums' lowborn inhabitants not having been entirely soothed by the sight of their smiling, waving ninny of a king—the wretches had paid dearly for the trouble they'd caused. The only thing left to do now was to haul away what little remained of the charred hovels and those who'd burned to death inside them, and to scrub clean the many paving stones that had been stained with the blood of those who'd resisted their destinies.

With a smile that made a passing pageboy shrink back in terror, Mordecai moved on to consider the other items he'd crossed off his “to do” list. In addition to having conducted another Council meeting, he'd ignored two summonses sent by the king and issued a precautionary arrest warrant for the father of the girl he'd auditioned and then banished. He'd also suffered through several wardrobe fittings and visited the cow in the dungeon twice—once to chat of inconsequential things, and once to fling a cup of beef broth at her to ensure that she smelled especially appetizing to the legions of glitteryeyed vermin that ever lurked just beyond the torchlight. Best of all, he'd managed to hammer out the details concerning the betrothal ceremony that would soon take place between the king and Lord Bartok's daughter. Admittedly, Mordecai was not best pleased by the outcome of these particular discussions. He'd wanted to make the ceremony a private affair—just two witnesses who could later be disposed of in the event that it someday became necessary for him to claim that the ceremony had never taken place at all. Whether Lord Bartok had understood and feared this very possibility, or whether he'd simply wanted to rub his fellow noblemen's noses in his own family's tremendous good fortune, he'd absolutely insisted that the betrothal ceremony be treated as a grand affair of state. Mordecai had trembled with outrage that the high-and-mighty silver-haired bastard had thought that he could insist upon
anything
, but in the end he'd gritted his teeth and acquiesced with a show of good grace. The unfortunate truth was that until the Council named him heir, Mordecai needed Lord Bartok.

Fortunately, there was a pleasanter truth: that in due course, Lord Bartok's insolence would be paid back a hundredfold. Nay, a
thousandfold
…

“Open the door,” muttered Mordecai now, as he approached the New Men standing guard outside the king's inner chamber.

Rather than leaping to obey as quickly as possible, the soldier to whom he'd given the order cast an uncertain glance toward his fellow soldier and stammered, “Uh, well, the thing is, Your Grace—”

The imbecile's next words were choked off by one scathing look from Mordecai, and with the fumbling clumsiness of a walking dead man (which, indeed, was what he now was), the soldier hastened to open the door.

Mordecai slouched across the threshold of the king's inner chamber and then stopped abruptly. He'd thought to find the windows shuttered tight and the room smelling of sickness and despair; he'd hoped to find the pale, coughing king propped up in bed, wrapped in blankets by the fire or huddled in a corner somewhere.

Instead, every shutter in the chamber was thrown wide. Specks of dust danced in the thick wedges of warm yellow sunlight that streamed through the open windows; the air was perfumed with the scent of the honeysuckles, lilacs and lilies that grew in the royal garden below.

As for the king, he was, indeed, sitting by the fire, and he was, indeed, pale and coughing. However, he was not wrapped in blankets. On the contrary, he was fully dressed in a splendid doublet of forest-green velvet with puffed sleeves slashed to show off a cloth-of-silver undershirt that matched perfectly the silver buckles on his polished black shoes. And far from huddling, he was sitting comfortably—not in his own high-backed chair, but in the chair upon which his nursemaid used to plant her once-fat arse. Most galling of all,
the fool was holding half a dozen playing cards in his hand!

Mordecai jammed his gnarled hands upon his hips. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded irritably.

At these words, there came a tiny shriek and a little head piled high with flaxen curls peeped out from behind the king's high-backed chair.

Mordecai was so shocked that he dropped his hands from his skinny hips and staggered backward. “Lady Aurelia!” he blurted.

“Good day, Your Grace!” she chirped as she started to her feet.

“Sit, Lady Aurelia, sit,” bade the king, nonchalantly waving her back into her seat. Coughing into his sleeve, he said, “As you can see from the way my lord Regent greets me, we do not stand upon ceremony within my inner chamber. Isn't that right, Your Grace?”

Mordecai nodded wordlessly, but his mind was whirling. What in the name of the gods was Bartok's daughter doing
here?

As if in response to this unspoken question, King Finnius coughed again and said, “After our last discussion in which we agreed that Lady Aurelia and I ought to wed for the sake of the realm, I decided to send for her, that we might get to know one another a little better.”

“His Majesty has been teaching me how to play cards!” trilled the lady in question as she playfully fanned her face with the cards she had clutched in her bony little hand.

“Has he,” said Mordecai faintly.

“Yes, though he's
so
much cleverer than I am that I'm afraid he's won every single hand!” twittered Lady Aurelia, gazing at the king with such admiration that even though Mordecai knew it was the false coin of a grasping courtier, he felt a sharp stab of envy.

“Well,” he said brusquely, “I've come here to share with His Majesty the details of your upcoming betrothal ceremony. It will take place—”

“Here at the palace in three days' time,” said the king absently as he nudged three white beans into the centre of the small mahogany table before him. “Yes, I know. Lady Aurelia has told me everything.”

“My father has promised that the feast that follows the ceremony shall be the most spectacular the realm has ever seen,” she breathed, her bright eyes glittering.

“And he promised
me
that our wedding feast shall make the betrothal feast look like a lowborn corn roast,” added the king.

At these words, Mordecai felt the blood drain from his face. “What … what do you mean ‘he promised you'?” he spluttered. “Lord Bartok has been
here
? To see you?”

Seized by a sudden coughing fit, the king could only nod in reply. When the fit was over, he shakily wiped the blood from his pale lips and drained the wine goblet that was sitting next to his pile of white beans. The instant he set the goblet back down, a servant stepped forward to refill it.

“Thank you, Meeka,” gasped the king with a wan smile.

Under other circumstances, Mordecai would have been much affronted that the slattern who'd replaced the cow had failed to offer
him
wine. However, at present he was too affronted by the fact that the king had
dared
to meet with Lord Bartok in secret to be affronted by anything else.

He needed to speak privately with the king at once to find out just how much damage had been done by this secret meeting—and just how brutal a punishment would have to be meted out to ensure that another one never took place.

“Your Majesty,” said Mordecai, his voice strained with the effort of trying not to snarl, “though I do not like to intrude, I'm afraid there is business we need to attend to.”

“What business?” asked the king.

“Business of the realm,” replied Mordecai, with a pointed look at Bartok's spawn.

The king smiled across the pile of beans at his birdlike soon-to-be betrothed. “Whatever you have to say to me you can say in front of Lady Aurelia,” he said.

“I think not, Your Majesty,” said Mordecai, through his teeth.

“But Lady Aurelia will be my wife, Your Grace,” frowned the king.

“
But she is not your wife yet!
”

“A formality,” said the king mildly, after a moment of awkward silence. Then, laying his cards face down on the table, he smiled at Lady Aurelia again and said, “Still, if my lord Regent wishes to speak with me alone, I suppose I ought to accommodate him. After all he has done for me and my realm these many years, I would say it is the least I can do for him, wouldn't you, Lady Aurelia?”

“Oh, yes, Your Majesty!” she cried.

Mordecai nodded as graciously as he could given that he was a heartbeat away from gouging out both their eyes—and that he knew Lady Aurelia would have agreed just as enthusiastically if the king had suggested beheading him on the spot.

“Very well,” said the king amiably, rising to his feet. “Then I bid you good day, Lady Aurelia.”

“And a good day to you, Your Majesty,” she trilled, hopping to her feet and dipping him a curtsey. “I shall look forward to our next meeting.”

“As shall I,” he said with an elegant bow.

The instant Lady Aurelia was gone the king dropped back down onto the nursemaid's chair. Clearly, he'd been working hard at looking effortlessly comfortable.

Though the knowledge pleased Mordecai, he did not smile.

“Is something the matter, Your Grace?” asked the king, slumping forward with his elbows on his knees.

“Yes, something is the
matter!
” snarled Mordecai, sweeping the white beans off the mahogany table with the back of his hand. “What do you mean meeting with that little shrew behind my back? Not to mention meeting with her conniving father?”

The king appeared genuinely shocked. “But. but I thought you'd approve!” he stammered.

“You thought I'd approve?” barked Mordecai with a startling burst of high-pitched laughter. “You thought I'd
approve?
”

“Yes!” exclaimed the king, gesturing with his hands. “
Yes!
You spend your days running the kingdom; I have nothing to do but think! And the more I thought about our last conversation, the more I came to see how strange it would seem if I, a king come of age, did not show an interest in the matter of my own marriage. And I began to worry that if I did not make
some
effort to better acquaint myself with my betrothed-to-be and her family that people might start to think that I did not truly support the marriage—or worse, that I was being coerced into it! And I realized that if they started to think
that
, they'd soon wonder what else I was being coerced into. And. and after your recent heartless treatment of the city's lowborn inhabitants and after the terrible injury you inflicted upon poor Moira, I feared what you'd do if such rumours were to interfere with your plans!”

Lips curled in disdain at the blubbering blue blood before him, Mordecai sneered, “I am
touched
that you care so deeply for my plans.”

“I care nothing for your plans,” coughed the king. “I care only for the fates of those I would see kept safe from harm.”

“If you care so deeply,” said Mordecai with a chilling smile, “you really ought to have consulted with me before meeting with Bartok and his spawn.”