The Last Quarrel (The Complete Edition) (41 page)

“I have not seen her before – who are you with?” Aidan demanded.

The Count of Londegal stood hastily and then wobbled, having to grab the edge of the table to keep from falling. “She is with me, your majesty,” he said.

“Bring her here,” Aidan ordered.

The young woman, unsteady after all the wine she had drunk, was escorted to the head of the table.

“Very nice, Arlen,” the King complimented the Count. “Good to see you still have an excellent eye.”

The girl giggled and Fallon wondered where she had been found, and whether her parents knew where she was that night and how she was dressed. She was young enough to be the Count’s daughter.

“First time meeting the King, eh? You know what that means!” Aidan said, which provoked a round of knowing cheers from the nobles.

Fallon suspected whatever it meant was not good.

Next moment the King’s hands shot out and pulled the dress straps off the girl’s shoulders, yanking it down to her waist.

She cried out in shock and tried to cover herself up. “Arlen!” she appealed desperately.

The Count stepped in swiftly and Fallon relaxed a little. “You do not defy your King!” the noble screamed at her. He slapped her across the face, sending her reeling back onto the table, then grabbed her hands and hauled her across the table so that she was face down, her nose almost in the remains of one of the Kottermani desserts.

Instantly the nobles began to cheer and thump on the table as the King hauled up his tunic, dragged down his trews and began to rape the screaming, crying girl.

Fallon started forwards, unable to stand to watch this and heedless of the consequences, only for Cavan to intercept him.

“This will happen with or without you. But intervene and you will be killed. What good will you do then? Think of your families!” he hissed.

Fallon stopped in his tracks, helpless with anger.

“Return to your place now!” Cavan ordered.

Seething, Fallon stepped back, his actions ignored by almost all in the room, although he glanced to his right and received a mocking look from Kelty that made him clench his teeth and fists in fury.

“Aroaril above, how can anyone stand this?” Gallagher asked thickly, his voice almost breaking.

Fallon looked down the table to where the nobles and many of the mistresses were cheering and thumping the table in time with the King’s thrusts, drowning out the girl’s cries.

“Don’t move. We can do nothing,” he said, the words threatening to choke him.

He looked away, clenching his fists so tightly his nails dug into his palms. He had seen many crimes over the years but few like this and never in the same night, nor any at all committed by the people who were supposed to lead the country and set the example.

A renewed burst of cheering told him it was over; the sobbing girl was let go and dragged back to her seat by the Count, the man who had held her down for the King, while Aidan collapsed back into his seat and bellowed for more wine.

Fallon was glaring hatred at the back of the King’s head but caught sight of Cavan, who had turned around. He locked eyes with Cavan and saw the frustration and misery on the Prince’s face.

“What a way to finish our revels! That was one of our best yet!” Aidan called out, making the nobles surge to their feet – those who could stand, anyway – and cheer him yet again.

Fallon felt like he needed to wash away the filth of this evening. The sooner Cavan became King, the better, he decided.

“There’s a few bastards in here I’d like to introduce to my hammer,” Brendan whispered beside him.

“All of them,” Fallon said. “They all deserve it.”

Leaving the banquet hall was also done in strict order, but reversed. The King left first, being helped along by a pair of Kelty’s guards, then Cavan was free to go. Fallon took the lead, hoping one or more of the nobles would be foolish enough to accost the Prince, giving him the freedom to knock him out of the way. But the fools had other things on their minds, groping the women, with a couple of them not even waiting to return to the privacy of their rooms to begin actually humping the shrieking girls. Fallon wanted to take his shillelagh and drive them out, both out of the banquet hall and out of Gaelland. Had his own Duke of Lunster participated in these revels? Had Baltimore’s taxes been used to keep a string of mistresses in jewels and rare silks?

“Is it always like that?” he asked Cavan when they had reached the quiet of the corridors approaching the Prince’s wing of the castle.

“That was a bad one. But there have been worse,” Cavan admitted. “Ones where servants or even one of the mistresses was killed. Of course everyone is forbidden to speak of it on pain of death.”

“So it is not even whispered about?”

“A few know,’ Cavan admitted. “The heads of the Guilds and a handful of others. But the servants know that Regan has a network of informants in the city and anyone who talks will find not just themselves but their families killed. It is a simple, ruthless way to keep these events private.”

“Did the Duke of Lunster join those bastards in their revels?”

“Not for several summers. And not since he married Dina. He was not the worst but he took part.”

Fallon shook his head in disgust. “Why? Why do they act like that?”

Cavan sighed. “Because they can,” he said simply. “There is nobody to stop them.”

Fallon brooded on that as they walked on. “Why was Swane not there? It strikes me as something he would have enjoyed.”

Cavan sighed. “That was one of reasons I became suspicious of him. He used to love those banquets and everything that went on. When he stopped, I began to worry what else he had found.”

“Really?” Fallon asked. “So he used to act like your father?”

“I will talk no more about that,” Cavan interrupted.

Fallon shrugged. He was interested, however. Cavan was throwing out several hints about Swane and King Aidan, and what he had seen. “I have to ask you, highness: why didn’t you have one or more of those women hanging off you? Alone of those nobles you are unmarried, and you are also half the age of those randy old goats and stand to be ten times as powerful. I would have thought the boys and I would have had to keep a crowd of them away from you.”

Cavan shook his head. “Those are not the women I want. And any that I brought there would be raped by my father. It’s customary, but he would take especial pleasure in doing it to a woman of my choosing.”

“Truly?” Fallon blurted.

Cavan sighed. “There are things I could tell you about my father and brother that would turn your hair white.”

Fallon was tempted to push but the haunted expression on Cavan’s face made him think it was better to wait and let the Prince reveal it in his own time.

“So what was Swane up to tonight?” he asked.

“Who knows? Some foulness, no doubt, knowing that the rest of the castle will be in a drunken stupor.”

Fallon led the way up to the door to the Prince’s rooms. “I might go looking for it tonight,” he said, rapping on the door.

“Why?” Cavan asked.

Fallon waited as a small hatch in the door slid back to reveal Devlin’s eyes.

“It’s us,” he said unnecessarily.

Devlin drew back the bolts. “What happened?” he asked. “Have fun?”

“If you call watching servants being beaten and women raped fun,” Gallagher said in a strangled voice.

“We need a joke to lift us. Come on, Dev, help us out,” Fallon said.

But Devlin shook his head. “All the laughter left me when I lost Riona and the boys,” he said.

Fallon sighed at that and let Cavan step through first. “Well, I don’t think I can sleep after seeing that,” he said, following. “Those same nobles would happily watch an ordinary man hanged for less than their crimes tonight.”

“Do you still think there is one law in this country? The nobles do what they want and laugh at the rest of you,” Cavan said angrily.

Fallon thumped the wall with the side of his fist. “I never thought it would be like this. I mean, I knew the nobles were a breed apart. But to see them act like that and have the King lead them – it took all my control not to get out my shillelagh and start breaking heads in there.”

“It makes me sick to my stomach,” Cavan said coldly. “Will you join me in a drink?”

He poured the four of them a glass of wine each and they sat down around a new table, the old one where Swane’s servants had been tied and died having been taken away. They sat silently for a long moment, just holding their goblets of wine.

“Aroaril, can you give us some hope, your highness? Please tell us that is the first thing you will stop when you become King,” Gallagher said hoarsely.

Cavan snorted. “There are so many things I have to change when I become King. But I can promise you that there will never be another night like that if I am on the throne.”

“Are you already thinking of that?” Brendan asked.

Cavan took a slow sip of his wine. “I think of little else. It is all I can cling to, to keep myself from madness when I am forced to be the face of my father, smile and wave and cover up what lurks behind every door in this castle.”

“How do you mean?” Fallon placed his goblet back on the table, the wine untouched.

“They used to give me a speech, written by Regan and approved by my father, then send me out to speak to nobles, Guilds, merchants and ordinary people. I was delivering a message on behalf of the Crown. I was the handsome face trying to disguise the ugly words my father wanted spoken. If I tried to change the message then I would be punished. The only way I could keep myself from screaming out the truth was to imagine what I would say, were I King.”

“And what would you say?” Fallon asked.

“That the Guilds are too powerful, the nobles too greedy and the people sick of suffering. This should be a peaceful and rich country where you can raise your children without fear. Instead the few live off the hard work of the many. I would change all of that.”

“The nobles and Guilds will fight you all the way.”

Cavan shrugged. “They will not realize until it is too late. I have avoided my brother’s excesses, yes, but no one in Berry really knows what sort of man I am. They think me weak.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘I have been weak. But when my father is gone, and my brother, I will start by slowly reducing the taxes and bribes they must pay. They will relax, thinking to continue bleeding the peasants and simply keep the difference, and then, after a couple of years, I will start to break the Guilds with the help of the nobles, who have long hated those who have gold but no title, while reducing the nobles with the help of the Guilds, who despise the nobility. I shall turn them on each other. The people will rise as the nobles and Guilds fall, and then we shall have a chance to make a better Gaelland.”

Fallon took a sip of his wine, rolling it around his mouth as he rolled that thought around his mind. They both tasted good.

“And petitioners?” Gallagher asked.

“Will be judged on the rule of law. I have a mind to appoint King’s Judges in every town, where they can hear such cases and declare real justice, without gold changing hands and slipping into the purses of the nobles.”

Fallon smiled. “I would dearly love to see that country,” he said softly.

“If I have my way, you shall,” Cavan promised, then drained his wine, toying with the goblet rather than placing it back on the table. “I shall need men at my back, trusted men who can protect me. For once they finally catch on, the Guilds and nobles will begin to scream and they will do everything they can to protect their filthy way of life.”

“You shall have us standing there, highness,” Fallon said immediately, followed a heartbeat later by Gallagher and Brendan. His spirits rose swiftly from the depths of despair at what he had seen in the banquet room to something close to elation. The thought of changing this country, of making it something special, fired his blood and he could see the new kingdom in his mind’s eye, standing at King Cavan’s shoulder as they cleaned out the corruption and filth festering in Gaelland.

“After what we have gone through, and what we will go through to get our families back, there’s little that holds fear for us now,” Fallon said.

“You may not want more fighting after you get your families back,” Cavan said.

“If we get our families back,” Brendan said softly, looking into his wine cup.

“We will get them back,” Fallon said fiercely.

“They seem a long way away tonight,” Brendan said.

“Then let’s change that. We will start by looking for the hidden door Swane’s man used after meeting with the Kottermanis.”

Cavan nodded. “Go then. But don’t come back dead. I need you all – your country needs you all.”

“Dark clothes and knives. We will take both Rosaleen and Padraig and leave in a quarter-turn of the hourglass,” Fallon ordered.

“He went in there and then we lost him,” Gallagher whispered, his mouth close to Fallon’s ear.

Fallon waved the others onwards and led the way in a rush to the door in the kitchen garden. The castle seemed deserted, only a few bored guards on the walls and gates – and they were looking out, rather than inside. There were no lights showing at windows but they could hear snatches of music, strange and wild, nothing like the tunes they all knew and loved, seemingly drifting out of the bones of the castle.

The creak of the door as it opened set Fallon’s teeth on edge and he waved the others in. Most moved swiftly, although Padraig was hardly light on his feet. The old wizard kept up well, though, and his usefulness was instantly apparent when the door closed behind them, plunging them into total darkness. A few mutters from Padraig and a small flame danced at the head of Fallon’s shillelagh, not burning the wood and yet giving them enough light to see by.

“Everyone silent: spread out and listen for the music, see if it is louder from any part of the wall,” Fallon hissed.

So they eased along the wall, listening hard. Now and again they got a waft of the music, a faint echo, tantalizingly clear and yet not enough to say where a door might be.