Retribution (Drakenfeld 2) (22 page)

‘She doesn’t show much fear,’ I replied.

‘You get to see the queen. I get to see my
mother
,’ Nambu replied. ‘She also comes down here when she’s taking lovers.’

Looking at Leana I raised an eyebrow.

Leana smirked. ‘You wanted safety? You have found a love nest. A shame you never have anyone to romance.’

‘That may well be,’ I replied, ‘but it’s an improvement nonetheless. I imagine, decades ago, this would have been some sort of storage facility.’

‘Or a dungeon,’ Leana muttered.

‘Indeed.’

Nambu was standing with her shoulders slumped and a resigned look about her. She did not seem petulant – as the offspring of royals could so often be. She appeared to accept whatever direction she was steered in, and it occurred to me that a royal life may not be entirely blessed – though it was a thousandfold improvement on the existence of most young people. ‘How many people know about this place?’

‘No one,’ Nambu said, ‘other than her two secretaries and me. Maybe one or two close soldiers, if she can trust them. Her lovers are blindfolded on their way down here. Probably after they’ve arrived, too.’

‘You take exception to your mother’s . . .’ I searched for the word, keeping in mind how young she was, ‘entertainments?’

‘Entertainments,’ Nambu grunted, stifling a laugh. She looked across to Leana. ‘Astran’s mercy – did he grow up in a monastery?’

Leana addressed Nambu. ‘You know, I think we will get along very well.’

‘Well isn’t that nice,’ I said. ‘I’m glad ridiculing me might provide a common interest for you both.’

‘Relax, officer,’ Nambu said, reclining on her side on the couch, and staring into the empty fire. ‘Anyway, to answer your
delicate
question, I don’t really care what she does with her lovers.’

‘Well, she must care for you,’ I continued, moving around the other side of the couch to see her face, ‘in order to want you protected so badly.’

‘Hmm . . . She’s concerned that someone is going to take the throne. And I’m just something else for her to be worried about.’

I wondered if Nambu might open up on an issue that had niggled with me since I’d arrived. ‘Do politicians thirst for greater glory?’

‘They probably do, what few of them there are.’

‘There are not many here?’ I asked.

Nambu went on to reveal what I had suspected all along: that the political structure of the nation was anything but democratic. A handful of senators – mainly those with connections to the Sorghatan family – convened every new moon to discuss the affairs of the state. Mostly this conclave was made up of ranks of senators who were leading figures in rival clans – the Rukrid, Yesui, Tahtar and Jagats – and her mother had merely given them ceremonial roles to appease the embittered families. There was always the promise that one day they would receive more power, but it never came. Over the years the clans had become even more frustrated. Now and then these senators might put an issue or piece of policy forward to the queen, but she was someone who did things her own way and often ignored their requests. Those who sought any real power quickly disappeared.

It would explain why I had seen so few politicians around the city. Yet it was important to bear in mind that Nambu was possibly jaded, happy to exaggerate her mother’s weaknesses to paint her in a bad light.

It was getting late in the evening and we decided to head to our respective chambers. Leana and I would share the larger room, allowing Nambu her own private quarters.

‘Just so you know,’ Leana said, ‘at sunrise, we will be practising with the sword.’

Nambu peered from behind her half-closed door and replied, ‘Sure. If you know when the sun has actually risen.’ And she closed the door behind her.

Leana shrugged, turning to me. ‘The girl has a point. I will light one of these candles on the side and estimate how long has passed. It can also provide enough brightness for us to light the cressets in the morning. You will start to miss windows soon enough, Lucan.’

Without the sounds of the city to disturb me, I suspected I would sleep well. There would be no carts grinding through the narrow streets. There would be no priests calling out through the night. There would be no fights breaking out. It would be blissful.

I had taken the bed and Leana, as ever, had wanted to sleep on the floor. We would probably repeat this arrangement wherever we were travelling, no matter how much I argued otherwise. Not that I ever argued too strongly.

‘You have taken a bit of a shine to the young princess,’ I suggested, lying there in the dull light of the candle. ‘Forgive me for saying, but it doesn’t seem like something you’d normally be happy to do, yet you seemed keen to look after her.’

Leana was silent in thought for a while, something which felt all the more profound down there, away from the hubbub of daily life.

‘I do not mind so much,’ Leana whispered in reply. ‘Because I remember what it is like to be a young girl who is out of her depth.’

‘You do?’ I sat up in bed.

Leana looked uneasy, and then she said something surprising. ‘I was not always a warrior.’

‘How do you mean?’

Again, a lingering silence as Leana searched her mind for an answer. She was rarely in a rush to speak, but I could tell this was taking a lot of willpower. ‘I was once in a much higher station than I have previously let on.’

‘Go on . . .’

‘Before the wars, this is. Before all the killings had begun.’ She sighed. ‘Spirits save me, when I was a girl I was in a position in society much like Nambu’s. In fact, we are very similar. We
were
very similar, I mean to say.’

Leana had never even hinted at this before. I had always assumed she was trained to be a warrior – and remained of the warrior class in her own culture – because that’s what I had inferred from her few statements on that period of her life.

‘Are you telling me that you’re Atrewen royalty?’

‘Not the most senior royalty, no. But of . . .
significantly
noble birth, it is safe to say. I suppose at one point towards the end, as my people were killed one by one, I became senior royalty, but that does not seem appropriate to consider. That time has long since passed. The spirits wish for me to walk other roads, and I have taken them. I am not unhappy with their wishes.’

‘But you always made fun of my relatively privileged upbringing,’ I whispered. ‘I just assumed you didn’t like people of higher birth.’

‘You never appreciated how lucky you were,’ she replied bluntly.

‘That isn’t true, Leana.’

‘I had my privilege destroyed. Not removed, but
destroyed
. Only when these things are gone do we appreciate them.’

I let out a long breath. ‘You’re correct.’

‘What is more,’ she continued calmly, without a trace of bitterness in her voice, ‘I had to learn how to fight to get such privilege back. I had to train hard, and work hard, and commit myself to regain my dignity. Not that it mattered and not that I succeeded, but I did discover new things along the way and we must make the most of those discoveries. So yes, though Nambu has not been through any of what I have been through, I understand what it is like to be a young girl in a noble family, in a world where it is not so easy to be a woman as it is to be a man. Now, that is all I have to say on the matter. We must rest.’

I lay back down, stunned by the revelation.

The following morning – or what I assumed to be morning, judging by how much the candle had burned down – Leana’s confession still echoed in my mind. It was as if she had been living a lie to me all these years; though strictly speaking, she had not lied. She simply had not told me
all
the details. Instead, I had let my assumptions get the better of me, and allowed those errors to harden over time into a clay image of what I took to be the truth. I felt like some distant, secret admirer who, without truly knowing the subject of their desire, creates a story about them to fill the void of their longing.

I was very annoyed with myself.

Most of what I had known about her past was based on our first encounter. Understandably she had spoken little about it since then, and I had never thought it appropriate to enquire about such matters beyond what she was prepared to say. I would have liked to talk at great length and revisit her past – to understand who she really was before we met on that horrific day.

Though she was still the same Leana – someone I could depend upon with secrets about my god-cursed seizures, someone whose sarcastic ways prevented my station in life getting the better of me, and someone who had saved my life on many occasions.

I could not understand why she had not told me before. It was likely she was worried I would treat her differently. Just because she was not far from royalty did not make her any better or worse a person. It had no influence over her skills by my side, yet it had obviously shaped who she was today. There might be something else entirely behind her discretion, but it would probably take another few years until she decided to tell me.

Putting those thoughts to one side, I lit the cressets and the other candles, allowing the queen’s ‘love nest’ to be seen in all its glory.

Leana woke Nambu and the two soon began to practise sword combat. It was the first time Nambu had done anything remotely like this. At first the fragile frame of the girl didn’t seem to cope with even holding Leana’s spare blade.

‘What if I hurt someone?’ Nambu said, holding the blade with uncertainty.

‘A chance would be a fine thing,’ I remarked dryly from one of the couches. The look Nambu gave me then suggested that there was some considerable spirit within her.

Leana was an incredible warrior and a superb teacher. She had helped refine my own skills over the years. Even after we battled petty criminals in the underworld of Venyn City, she would occasionally correct my technique and give me some inappropriately timed feedback. I watched her now in the light of last night’s revelation. A royal warrior educating another royal.

Leana guided Nambu through some basic moves – how to hold the blade, footwork, posture and so on – and Nambu appeared to take to Leana’s brisk instructions with considerable promise. I cringed the first time Nambu was knocked to the floor – this was a princess in our protection, after all – but the girl simply brushed herself down and got back on her feet again.

After the lesson I located suitable attire for Nambu from the belongings that the queen had sent down for her, in the end opting for a simple brown tunic, dark-grey cloak and military-style black boots – the garb of a boy. For the first time that she could remember, Nambu wore no make-up, did not style her hair as per the fashion and wore no jewellery.

She told us it was rather liberating.

We had managed to leave the palace at a decent hour. The sun had only just risen, so we had not yet lost much in the way of time. Being encouraged by the queen to not use the royal facilities, to keep Nambu’s new situation discreet, we dined out on cheap street food.

In the shadow of a towering statue of Astran, the princess of Koton munched her way through a cheap pastry with remarkable gusto.

‘This stuff is so much better than what we get in the palace,’ she mumbled with her mouth full.

‘It’s probably not as good for your constitution,’ I replied.

‘Don’t care. Can we eat this all the time?’

The three of us walked through the prefecture towards the market. I scrutinized the signs on the stores nearby, some of which were written in Detratan, others – which I had some trouble discerning – were written in Kotonese.

‘What are you looking for?’ Nambu asked, one of many questions that was about to come my way.

‘I’d like to locate a jeweller,’ I replied.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because . . .’ I sighed. ‘You heard me discussing the murders with your mother?’

‘Of course.’

‘So you think you know all the details?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well you don’t. There’s something we didn’t tell her.’

She gave me a look of smug satisfaction. ‘So this is a secret?’

‘Not exactly. I was merely . . . managing the information.’

‘It sounds a lot like a secret to me. What is it?’

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the envelope containing the ring we’d found in the bishop’s mattress. I told her where we found it and of the similar stone in the missing amulet belonging to Grendor of the Cape. She examined it carefully before putting it back in the envelope.

‘So, in conclusion, the jewel could be important. But we don’t know what it is. And that’s why we’re here looking for a jeweller – to find out.’

‘Oh. I thought you agents and spy types got to kill people to get information.’

‘No. Well, sometimes she does,’ I nodded towards Leana, ‘but we generally try not to kill. Life is best preserved – there’s almost always a loved one who will be affected by the death, a life to be ruined. Take poor Grendor – his death has now left a wife in mourning and two small children without a father. Such an act is not to be done casually. It can echo down the years.’