Fool's Errand Read online

  ALSO BY MAUREEN FERGUS

  The Gypsy King

  (Book 1, The Gypsy King Trilogy)

  Ortega

  Recipe for Disaster

  Exploits of a Reluctant (But Extremely Goodlooking) Hero

  The Day My Mom Came to Kindergarten

  MAUREEN FERGUS

  For Hannah, because your support for my writing

  has always meant the world to me,

  and because no matter how much more brilliant,

  beautiful and accomplished you become,

  you will always be my little peanut.

  ONE

  D ROPPING TO ONE KNEE, the pockmarked servant looked up at Persephone with a reverence bordering on awe and said, “I know nothing about what the Seer may have said about any Gypsy King, Your Highness. I know only that you are the lost royal twin and rightful heir to the Erok throne.”

  THUD, THUD, THUD …

  Persephone could hear the Regent’s soldiers slamming something ponderous against the barred door of the palace chamber in which she and Azriel had cornered this servant who spoke of dead queens and burning baby flesh. She could see that the heavy bar was about to splinter, and she understood that when it did, the door would give way and the soldiers would fall upon them, cutting and slashing.

  She knew there was no escape.

  Yet as she stared into the face of the woman who knelt at her feet, Persephone felt as removed from the moment as if she were a silvery spectre hovering high above the fire-lit chamber, gazing down upon a world that could no longer touch her.

  THUD, THUD, THUD …

  Indeed, if she’d not seen the proof with her own two eyes, she’d never have believed the tale told by this servant who, seventeen years past, had helped the desperate, dying queen mark her newborns as twins. The queen’s purpose had been to ensure that if the tiny, squalling infant princess condemned to death in secret by the Regent Mordecai somehow survived and returned to claim her inheritance, she’d have proof of who she really was.

  Me! thought Persephone with a sudden jolt. Me—an emptier of chamber pots, a slave most recently purchased for one small bag of coins and a pretty piece of stolen jewellery—I was the infant princess condemned to death!

  As if in a dream, she ran her fingertips along the whiplash scar that criss-crossed the outside of her forearm—the scar that so perfectly matched the one that young King Finnius had borne upon his arm for as long as anyone could remember. Mere moments earlier, when she’d interrupted their waltz to beg for the lives of the handsome chicken thief and the Gypsy orphan they’d risked everything to rescue, everyone in the Grand Hall had seen their matching scars—the king, the nobles in attendance at his birthday feast, the servants who catered to them, the musicians who played for them and, of course, the Regent, who now sought to break down the door and see Persephone’s heart cut out so that his long-ago treachery might yet go unproven—and unpunished.

  Of course, he might also want my heart cut out because I toyed with him, inflamed his lust and generally played him for a great fool, she acknowledged with the barest of shrugs.

  THUD, THUD, THUD …

  The sudden feel of warm fingers cupping her elbow yanked Persephone back to reality with an abruptness that made her gasp like a drowning woman coming back to life.

  Azriel.

  Persephone turned toward the one-time chicken thief. As ever, the sight of his long, lean body and broad, wellmuscled shoulders caused her pulse to quicken, but her gaze did not linger here. Instead, it flew upward—past the determined set of his jaw, past his wide, sensuous lips, past the fading scar upon his chiselled cheekbone, which she, herself, had given him—all the way up to the twin oceans of his very blue eyes.

  THUD, THUD, THUD …

  As her eyes met his, however, Persephone felt the ground shift beneath her. Since that first night she’d confronted him in the owner’s barn, she’d seen many things blaze from his eyes—hunger, heat, hurt, humour, hardness—but she’d never seen them look like this. No longer twin oceans but instead, pieces of mid-winter river ice: impassive, unyielding and cold enough to make her shiver. And though she thought she could see shadows moving far below the surface, she could not make out what they were.

  Persephone’s heart went into freefall. It was she who’d let Azriel believe that he was the Gypsy King come to unite the five tribes of Glyndoria and set things to right for all people—she who’d let him believe it when she should have been speaking words of reason to him.

  He’d told her that he loved her and needed her; she’d lied to him and run out on him.

  Now she had taken from him not just a great destiny but also a past and a brother.

  “Azriel—”

  THUD, THUD …

  CRACK.

  The barred door across the room flew open so suddenly that the soldier who’d been holding the front of the makeshift battering ram stumbled and fell. As the battering ram—a twelve-foot log that had been destined for one of the massive fireplaces in the Great Hall—crashed down, a second soldier stormed into the room.

  At the sight of his raised sword, the pockmarked servant—who’d thusfar seemed frozen with terror—screamed shrilly and tried to scramble away from him. He responded by viciously kicking her onto her back and pressing his dirty black boot down upon her heaving chest that he might more easily run his sword through her guts.

  Without thinking, Persephone plunged her hand into the torn pocket of her dishevelled gown. Snatching from the scabbard at her thigh the blade she’d managed to hold onto after her recent near-ravishment, she hurled it across the room. As ever, her aim was true, and the dagger was buried to the hilt in the soldier’s throat before he knew what was happening. For an instant he just stood there, eyes bulging. Then his sword slipped from his grasp, and he staggered backward three steps. Gurgling and clawing at his throat, from which the blood had begun to stream, he slowly collapsed to the ground.

  Even as he did so, two more soldiers ran into the room. The first ran straight at Persephone with his sword extended. Azriel launched himself at the man without fear or hesitation, driving his fist into the soldier’s temple with such speed and force that the man was lifted clear off his feet. As his limp body hit the ground, Azriel lunged for his sword, but the second soldier—whose nose Azriel had broken just moments earlier in the Great Hall—was upon him before he could reach it. Grabbing the back of Azriel’s shirt collar, he pressed the point of his scalping knife under Azriel’s chin, yanked him around and forced him to his knees. By the time he’d done so, the young soldier who’d tripped when the door had first flown open had managed to stagger to his feet and catch Persephone by the hair. She struggled valiantly, but having no weapons left but her teeth, nails, words and ability to punch, squirm and kick, she was soon knocked to her belly.

  For an instant, no one moved, and the only sounds to be heard were the hiss and crackle of the dying fire, the panting gasps of the soldiers and Persephone’s fierce grunts of resistance.

  Then—and only then—did the Regent Mordecai lurch into the room.

  From her place on the floor, Persephone was treated to a most unwanted glimpse of the pale, crooked legs that were otherwise concealed by his long, fur-trimmed robe of velvet. Grimacing, she craned her neck that she might instead look up into the shockingly handsome face of the monster who’d ordered her death all those years ago and who was about to do so again.

  His head bobbing slightly—as though the delicate stalk of his neck was too frail to hold it high and steady—the Regent returned her stare with eyes so dark and fathomless that they were like pits into which one might fall without end.

  Lurching a little farther into the room, he stumbled and nearly tripped over the legs of the soldier who’d since ce
ased to gurgle. Forced to jerk his twisted body upright to avoid falling, the Regent was unable to bite back a cry of pain.

  “Useless imbecile!” he snarled, glaring down at the body as though it had purposely put itself in his way.

  “Lady Bothwell murdered him,” reported the smashnosed soldier, digging his scalping knife a little deeper into the flesh beneath Azriel’s chin.

  Mordecai’s eyes slid from Persephone’s thickly lashed violet eyes to the amethyst necklace that dangled above her bosom, then down the length of her pinned body to where her long legs lay sprawled wide beneath her bunched skirts.

  “That faithless whore is no lady,” said Mordecai, his wasted chest heaving. “She is a meddling complication who does not deserve a quick death but shall yet receive one.”

  At these words, Persephone began to struggle with renewed vigour. Mordecai ignored her in favour of addressing himself to Azriel, at whom he was now staring with undisguised loathing.

  “Attempt to play the hero and I will order these men to tear the clothes from her back and use her with such violence and at such length that death—when it eventually comes—will seem a most welcome escape. Am I clear?”

  “You are,” said Azriel through his teeth, as he slowly unclenched his fists.

  With a smile that showed his own perfect teeth to their best advantage, Mordecai shifted his gaze to the young soldier who was kneeling on Persephone’s back. Licking his lips, he said, “Lift her head higher that I may watch her eyes—first as the scalp is peeled from the head of this Gypsy cockroach with whom she so brazenly defiled herself, and thereafter as her life’s blood drains from the mortal wound that you shall presently inflict upon her pretty white throat.”

  The young soldier on Persephone’s back hesitated for only a moment before twining his fingers tighter in her wild, dark hair and lifting her head so high that her back was arched almost to the waist.

  Mordecai leaned his bobbing head a little farther forward. Then, without taking his eyes off Persephone’s face, he breathed, “Do the Gypsy.”

  The smash-nosed soldier holding Azriel nodded.

  “No—please! Your Grace, I’ll do anything!” begged Persephone as she twisted and squirmed with all her might.

  Mordecai sighed softly at this but did not rescind his order. The smash-nosed soldier, meanwhile, struggled to get a proper hold of Azriel’s recently shorn auburn hair. Upon finally getting the grip he sought, he growled with satisfaction and set the blade of his scalping knife at Azriel’s brow.

  With a lopsided little grin, Azriel looked over at Persephone—his last goodbye.

  Desperately—though in a voice as haughty, cold and noble as could be—Persephone cried, “As a princess of the blood, I order you to release that man at once!”

  In spite of himself, the smash-nosed soldier froze.

  “Do him!” bellowed Mordecai in a sudden rage. “Do him now, you worthless piece of—”

  His last words were lost in the strangled shriek he emitted as a strong hand yanked him backward by his dark, glossy hair—and a dripping dagger was pressed against his throat.

  “I b-believe that you forgot about me again, Your Grace,” stammered the pockmarked servant.

  “Unhand me at once, you interfering lowborn nobody!” screamed Mordecai. “Unhand me or I will see you slaughtered without mercy!”

  In response, the trembling woman adjusted her grip on the hilt of the dagger she’d pulled from the throat of the dead soldier. Fixing her colourless eyes upon the soldiers that held Persephone and Azriel, she said, “Release the princess and her lover—”

  “He’s not my lover,” squeaked Persephone.

  “Or your master is dead.”

  “Release them and you are dead!” shrieked Mordecai as he feebly struggled against the humiliatingly iron grip of the woman made strong by years of toil. “Unless … unless, of course, this woman releases me,” he added in a deliberately less deranged voice. “If she releases me, you may release them.”

  At this, the pockmarked servant cast an uncertain glance toward Persephone. “Your Highness?” she asked.

  “Do not release or kill him,” said Persephone, who knew that she, Azriel and the servant were finished the instant the Regent was dead or beyond the threat of death. To buy time to figure out what to do, she added, “I would ask the Regent some questions before deciding what to do with him.”

  At these words, Mordecai stopped struggling and looked down at her.

  “By the scar I bear upon my arm, you know me to be the elder twin of the king,” she began.

  “Yes,” replied Mordecai.

  Persephone’s heart leapt at the admission. “The night I was born, you could have murdered me in the birthing chamber and told the world I’d been born dead,” she continued. “Instead, you ordered a lackey with mismatched eyes to spirit me beyond the castle walls, there to kill me and dispose of my body. Why?”

  “It was an error,” admitted the Regent as he impatiently thrust his gnarled hands into the pockets of his robe. “The Gypsy Seer had promised old king Malthusius a son, and it never even occurred to me that she might have been telling a half-truth. It was an exceedingly foolish mistake on my part—since Gypsies are known to be liars of the highest order—but that’s as may be. The instant you slithered from between your mother’s legs, I knew I had to get rid of you. It was that or risk having the nobility challenge my right to rule the kingdom on behalf of the weakling prince born second. Believing that disposing of you in plain view of those who’d attended your birth was too dangerous, I made alternative arrangements. In hindsight, of course, I see that I ought simply to have held a pillow over your tiny face and been done with it.”

  “Since you later disposed of all who’d attended her birth, anyway,” said Azriel coldly.

  “Not all,” corrected the Regent with a sinister sideways glance at the pockmarked servant who still held him fast. “Only all who mattered.”

  “Including my mother,” said Persephone.

  “Oh, I had no hand in her death,” demurred the Regent. “The queen died of childbed fever. So in truth, Princess, it was you who killed your mother—you and your brother, the king.”

  As he spoke these last words, Mordecai yanked his hand from his pocket and drove it back toward the belly of the pockmarked servant. Azriel bellowed a warning, but Persephone didn’t even have time to do that—she saw a brief flash of steel and then heard the surprised grunt of the servant as the Regent’s hidden blade was buried to the hilt. With a grunt of his own, the Regent awkwardly twisted from the woman’s failing grasp on his beautiful hair. Turning, he stabbed her again and again, punctuating each knife thrust with a jubilant cry,

  “FOOL! IMBECILE! TO THINK—THAT YOU—COULD BEST—THE MIGHTY—REGENT—MORDECAI!”

  It went on and on and on. When he finally finished punishing the lifeless body at his feet, straightened up and turned around once more, the Regent was beaming—and splattered with gore. “That useless, lowborn nobody thought she could best me,” he panted. “But she could not! And neither can you, Princess!”

  “I don’t care about besting you!” burst Persephone, who was shaking with horror. “I don’t care about being a princess or about anything that goes along with it. I only want my companions and me to be allowed to live!”

  “Your companions?” snorted Mordecai, his happy countenance vanishing at once. “Do you perchance mean this smug cockroach and the Gypsy brat you stole from my dungeon? Are these the companions of which you speak, Princess?”

  “Yes,” gulped Persephone, relieved that he did not appear to know about the girl who was currently hiding in the stables—or about the dog, horse and hawk who’d followed her so well and so far.

  With a snarl, the Regent gestured for the young soldier to haul Persephone to her feet. Plucking the dagger from the cooling hand of the murdered servant, Mordecai thrust it so close to Persephone’s face that she could smell the tang of fresh blood. “If you’d kept this blade to
protect yourself instead of using it to save the life of the drab that now lies dead before you, you might yet have had a fighting chance,” he hissed. “But you did not, and so you and your so-called companions are doomed. Which is as it should be, Princess, for though I tried valiantly to make you see that servants are replaced as easily as smashed dinner plates, you are as stubborn as your peasant-hearted brother when it comes to understanding that there are those who matter and those who merely take up space. And that is why I know I will be doing the kingdom of Glyndoria a glorious service by sending you both onward into the afterlife.”

  “Wait—what do you mean ‘both’?” gasped Persephone. “Do you mean that you intend to kill King Finnius as well?”

  “Of course,” said Mordecai silkily. “How else can I become king except by disposing of the one whose backside currently warms the throne?”

  “But … but it would be a wasted effort!” she cried. “The Erok nobility would never accept you as king!”

  Mordecai smiled gloatingly. “You are wrong, Princess, for Lord Bartok has promised that once I announce his daughter’s betrothal to the king, he will force the king’s Council to name me heir apparent and to accept me as such. Thereafter, if the king should die—and I assure you that he will die, most agonizingly—I shall ascend to the throne.”

  Knowing from experience that those in positions of power rarely responded well to being spat upon, Persephone bit her lip to keep from doing so as she frantically searched her mind for some way to save the king—and the kingdom—even if she could not save herself and her companions. Before she could come up with any clever ideas, however, Azriel made the situation a thousand times worse by loudly declaring, “Even if all that you say is true, Your Grace, you still can’t be king. You’re a cripple!”

  TWO

  AT AZRIEL’S WORDS, Persephone felt the blood drain from her face. There were easy ways to die and hard ways to die, and mocking the Regent for his terrible deformities must certainly guarantee the very hardest death of all.