The Gospel According to Verdu (a Steampunk Novel) (The Brofman Series) (25 page)

“Well then, you will also recognize this for the baited hook that it is.” He unfolded a second piece of paper and handed it to Chenda. This one featured a drawing of Candice Mortimer—but the picture was unflattering in a different way than Chenda’s had been. Candice’s eyes were drawn dull and glassy, and her neck, roughly hacked off her body, was mounted on a pike. This was a picture celebrating an ugly death.

Chenda gasped in horror. “What is this?” she asked in little more than a whisper. “What has happened to Candice?”

“It’s an announcement,” Ollim said. “Your friend is to be beheaded in a few days. It’s going to be a very public event. The flyers are all over the port towns and have traveled well into the countryside.” He looked meaningfully at Chenda. “They want to show that the Pramuc is not untouchable.”

Chenda panicked. Her power writhed inside her and bits of it began to escape. The wind swirled around her and waves appeared in the calm sea around the boat, the air smashing against itself like the flailing arms of a child’s tantrum. She let her fear and anger run with her power for only a moment and then she pulled the itching, squirming forces back into herself. Her rage made the power fit poorly into its resting space between the cells of her body. It wanted out, to fly from her in wild abandon. She panted, her eyes clenched in the effort until she had herself under control.

“Pramuc . . . ,” Ollim said, shocked into belief. “You
are
the Pramuc!” He practically danced with the joy of his newfound belief, but confronted with Chenda’s expression, he stayed his enthusiasm.

“I can’t let this stand,” Chenda said. Her stomach heaved at the idea that Candice could be awaiting the ax. Chenda was suddenly disoriented. How had Candice gotten to Tugrulia? Surely Captain Endicott, finding that he was short of crew, would not take Candice—airsick and studious
Candice
, of all people—and run off searching for . . . what? Her? Fenimore? Verdu? And then it all clicked. Of course they did. Captain Endicott looked at his crew as family, and his family was falling apart. Would Rainor do any less if his family was mysteriously and unwillingly disappearing from the
Tao-Tallis
? No, he would extend every net, have every eye wide at the rail looking; every passing ship would be asked to help and spread the word. Of course the
Brofman
had taken Candice and gone to search for her and the others. But something must have gone very wrong.

She knew that only she had the power to make this right.

Rainor, who had watched the interplay of emotions roll across Chenda’s face and finally settle into a resolved smolder, pleaded. “This must be a trap—don’t walk into it.” He dropped onto his knees and begged. “She may already be dead and this paper is just circulating to tempt you. A trap. That could be so. It is not common to delay an execution, I am told, not common at all. . . .” Rainor, on the verge of tears, could do nothing but clasp his hands and cast imploring looks upward.

Chenda glanced at the man at her feet, knowing she would not heed his warning. She had a strong feeling it was both a trap and a message: no one defies the word of the emperor. Dissent is death.

She disagreed.

“Rainor, I can’t turn my back on Candice. She was the first person to see me as I really am—as a person. She is my friend, and she’s in danger. If I don’t help her, who will? She wouldn’t be in this awful mess if it weren’t for me. So if this is a trap, it better be a great one. I doubt much less could catch me.”

She turned her head toward Ollim. “We need to talk about what else you know.”

It was the bloodstain soaking through Verdu’s pants leg that brought the grand tour to a grinding halt. He had, more or less, walked though the entirety of the royal palace under his own power, and it really hurt. Over the last several days, Nameer had paraded Verdu through all manner of places in the palace: the weaving and dyeing rooms, the kitchens, the banquet halls, the women’s salon (while it was unoccupied, of course), the chambers where the emperor held court (also empty), the gallery, the armory, and so on.

Nameer spoke endlessly about the palace, the people they passed—mostly petty officials and low-ranking dignitaries—and the nature of life for an imperial prince of Verdu’s rank. Verdu listened as the councillor rambled on and on about trade with the Mae-Lyn, the logistics of the imperial guard and royal army, the intermeshing cogs of Tugrulian industry and how the fishermen depended on the kelp farmers, and the dye merchants were at the mercy of the miners, and the endless quarrels between the moss growers and the bakers. He looked, listened, and limped along.

Any fact left unsaid by Nameer was helpfully filled in by Bateem, who often tagged along on the walks on the off chance that his sycophantic skills might be required. Verdu thought him rather a mother hen at times, offering to fetch flavored waters and teas as they walked along, and occasionally praising His Highness’s fine progress and rapidly improving health and stamina. It annoyed Verdu minimally, as he liked Bateem’s information. In fact, he was tempted by what he saw and heard. Like a buyer examining a run-down house, he recognized the flaws, but he had also seen past them to the underpinnings, which in this case had such potential. Perhaps he looked at Tugrulia in the same way that Bateem and Nameer looked at him: great fixer-upper opportunity, minimal cost.

From time to time he felt cold eyes on him, watching from shadowy corners or through one of the hundreds of arrangements of tropical plants growing in enormous pots littering the palace. Nameer must have felt them, too, as each time the watchful feeling came to Verdu, the other man suddenly remembered a great wonder on the other side of the palace that the prince just had to see immediately. After one such episode, Verdu grabbed Nameer by the sleeve and spun him around.

“What’s going on, Nameer? Who is it we’re running from?” he demanded.

Nameer glanced around the sandy-colored game room, checking for any prying eyes that might have been lingering behind any of the multitude of stuffed giant lizards and small long-toothed wildcats. “There are a number of eyes watching you, some of them with more lethal intent than others,” he said. Nameer refused to say more.

Verdu had not come to trust in Nameer during those days walking the palace, but he did realize that Nameer was a person who would not be wheedled or swayed. If he declared he would say no more, then the man’s lips were fully sealed. An admirable quality, Verdu thought.

Verdu’s will, however, was equally stubborn. Once tempted with the apple of changing Tugrulia from the royal throne, Verdu devoted himself with holy fervor to achieving that aim. The brace on his leg, effective as it was at keeping him standing and walking, was biting into his skin. It pinched everywhere, but it was the worst at the top of his thigh just below his hip, and on the inside of his knee. At the end of each day, as Nameer briefed him on the expectations of the next, he would listen as he leaned against the footboard of his bed. He had vowed to show no weakness, and it was all Verdu could bear not to collapse before the councillor left the room. On several nights, he had needed to rip strips of his bedsheets to tie around his leg to stanch the bleeding.

Finally, during one of the walks, the wadding he’d stuffed between his wounds and the brace was no longer enough to hold back the blood, and a streak of darkening crimson wicked through the folds of fabric around the brace.

Bateem—normally a model of composure and efficiency—lost his dignity at the sight of the blood. He gasped, fluttering his hands, and said, “Sir! Oh, sir! His Highness has been wounded!”

Nameer, hip deep in a lecture about Tugrulia’s woven carpet markets, refocused his attention on the physical person of his charge. Verdu had to hand it to Nameer: the man was no fool. In one glance, he assessed the situation and made a quick double hiss through his clenched teeth. Servants appeared from several places both nearby and out of sight. A flick of Nameer’s fingers had a pair of them ducking under each of Verdu’s arms and dragging the man back through the palace to his overly pink room, where they gently deposited him on the bed.

Verdu sank back on the mattress and tried his best to ignore his agony. Nameer, leaning over Verdu’s leg, started to remove the brace.

“Leave it,” Verdu said. “I can manage.” He tried to sit up and loosen the straps, but Nameer pushed his hands away while continuing to work the buckles. He had lost his patience with his wayward prince.

“When were you going to mention that this thing was cutting your leg off?” Nameer demanded. He set the brace aside and peeled the bloody fabric of Verdu’s pants away from his skin. Tucking his fingers into the small holes worn into the fabric by the ill-fitting straps, he tore open the pants from mid-shin to hip.

Through gritted teeth, Nameer said,“Oh, this is worse than I thought!” He turned to Bateem, who was waiting breathlessly by the door, and sent him to fetch some bandages and the royal tinkerer.

Once the clerk was gone, Nameer addressed Verdu. “Do you have no sense of what we are doing here? Are you completely mad? Your leg looks like an execution! You could have contracted an infection that would have killed you! You can’t push yourself so hard. Why didn’t you speak up?”

Verdu, silently staring at the wall throughout Nameer’s tirade, asked, “Why do you care?”

Nameer turned and slumped onto the bed beside Verdu. He clasped his hands in his lap and started talking, seemingly to the empty floor in front of him. “I can’t imagine you have guessed how it was that I got assigned to be your advocate. Have you wondered?

“I’ve been guiding you around, trying to educate you about the palace, about the keys to Tugrulian life as they stand now. You know so much of the rest of the world, but I was hoping you would see the webs and strings that bind the empire, so you can understand it and see it. You have a very singular way to fit into it. Your life can be useful. Perhaps I’ve gone around this explanation the long way. . . .

“At first I resented being saddled with you. I tried to discredit you, but your story checks out. The only hitch was that, according to palace records, your mother provided a tiny corpse at your birth –– your twin.”

Verdu whispered, “That explains a lot.” He could think of nothing else to say, so Nameer continued.

In truth,
you
were meant to take me down a peg. I have risen farther than I should have. Society can’t allow a second son of a merchant to become councillor to the emperor. I have no wife, let alone a wife worth enough to enhance my value. The money I have from my family is modest. I have brains, but that counts for little now. I worked harder than anyone to gain the ear of the emperor, not an easy task for one with little money and no connections. I even did a few things I’m not proud of, but achieve I did. I clawed my way to the circle of councillors and I aimed to stay there.”

Nameer’s tone turned from steely to contemplative, as if he was sharing a deep secret. “I once had a little sister. She was a delightful child, so beautiful, demure, and humble. She married, and after a few childless years, she was beaten to death by her husband for not bearing him a son. He shamed her and the rest of her family by saying she was having an affair with the gardener. None of his other wives ever had children, as if that mattered. Nevertheless, her failure, as far as society is concerned, also reflects poorly on my house. On me. I cannot say so, but I know my sweet sister did not deserve that.”

Nameer sighed. “So, for so many reasons, the inner circle of councillors proved that they were superior to me and assigned me the task of defending you. I am meant to lose. It is meant to disgrace me; any show I make to do my duty, and truly be your advocate, will make me look a fool as well as disloyal, and I will be pushed further out. The emperor used to listen to my counsel, but now, viewed as I am to be on
your
side, and not
his
, —whether I wanted to be or not—I will never regain the position I worked, bled, and sacrificed for. Never. The taint of you and your writings, your Pramuc, this rebellion—it’s a stain that I will never be able to wash from my skin. . . .” His tone was not angry or bitter, but rather the voice of a man who was simply reading a map and seeing what lay before him.

Verdu reached his hand up as if to lay it on Nameer’s shoulder in sympathy, but at the last moment he rested it once again on his own chest. “I am sorry. You seem a decent sort.”

Nameer chuckled. “For a right bastard, I am a decent sort. But I dare not deny an opportunity when the One True God hands it to me.”

“There are many gods who make up—,” Verdu started, but Nameer cut him off.

“Give it a rest, holy man.” Irritation returned to Nameer’s voice. “You miss my meaning. If you are finished, so am I. And, willing or not, my nets are hung from your trap. We go down together, or we can rise together instead.”

“You want to save me just so you can save your own skin? How reassuring.”

“I can see how you might view it that way, and at the outset, perhaps it was so, but then temptations were dangled before me by that slippery holy man, Pranav Erato. Whispering words of a different way. He tells me that you are not one to take this responsibility without commitment. Wouldn’t it be so much better, he said, if reason ruled the law? The man has a way of getting under your skin. . . .

“I got to thinking—maybe you might call it scheming—and I could see a glimmer in you of something that could serve us all. The rebels sing of the Pramuc, how she will be the one to bring peace and prosperity to the land, and how it will live again. But you, oh, you have the chance to do so much more. She may have the hearts of the people, but you could rule in law. That could be so much more real, so much more . . . immediate.

“Our first hurdle is keeping you alive, and in the laws of the emperor, I feel I can. If we prevail there, the claims of the religious leadership are all undone. But once you are free to walk away, I need you to stay. I need you to survive to take the crown and mantle of the empire. I’m willing to kill to get you a front-row seat, but you must become the man I need, the man we all need to build a better empire. Do you understand? Can you tell me if I have put my hopes into the right man, or am I bound to live in the land that I now see as naked of virtue?”