Tomorrow's Kingdom Page 3

  Rachel—who did not really like the sound of any of that—nevertheless tried to appear unconcerned as she said, “So, how are we going to get out of the city if the soldiers are going to be looking for us, Zdeno? Between my resemblance to the queen and your birthmark, we’ll be easy to spot.” Pausing to give the large, wine-coloured birthmark on his face a kiss to reassure him that she didn’t find it ugly, only noticeable, she added, “Swathing our heads in leper bandages won’t work because you can be sure that the New Men will be on the lookout for anyone who seems to be hiding his face—or hers.”

  “Oh! Well, uh, the Council will have to lay the king to rest, and they’ll have to do it soon,” offered Zdeno, who was still blushing furiously from Rachel’s kiss. “People will throng to Parthania for the funeral procession, and when the streets are so crowded that Mordecai’s soldiers will find it impossible to properly look for anyone, we’ll slip through the city gates unnoticed.”

  “And then?” said Rachel hopefully.

  “And then we’ll make for my tribe’s hidden camp,” said Azriel. “Cairn, Tiny and Fayla are as brave and clever as they come—together with them, we’ll come up with a plan to find and rescue Persephone and the child.”

  Rachel smiled weakly, wondering if she was the only one who’d noticed that after fleeing Parthania, the next step in their plan was to “come up with a plan.”

  Before she could begin to worry in earnest about this, however, Azriel seized her by the arms so suddenly that she let out a startled squeak and Zdeno nearly attacked him.

  “Do you know what I just realized, Rachel?” exclaimed Azriel. “Persephone may not have told me about the child, but after escaping Mordecai, she did not run as she could have done—as she once would have done. She was coming back to me!”

  “Yes,” said Rachel, smiling in spite of the discomfort of his fingers digging into her flesh.

  “She loves me,” declared Azriel, sounding triumphant and defiant. “And I’m going to save her—her and the baby.”

  Though Rachel really did not see how he was going to be able to do so, the fearful orphan girl who’d ever longed to do something important with her life—even at the cost of it—barely hesitated.

  “I know you will, Azriel,” she said fervently as she reached up to peel his fingers off her arms. “I know you will.”

  SIX

  “CAREFUL, FOOL!” snarled Mordecai as one of the many servants assigned to cart his belongings down to the palace courtyard stumbled beneath the weight of a particularly heavy crate. “That crate contains a set of priceless crystal goblets that I mean to give to my royal bride when I am reunited with her five days hence. Do you want to see them shattered to bits before my journey is even begun? Are you trying to ruin my wedding?”

  “No, Your Grace, of course not!” spluttered the brawny red-headed wretch, his green eyes wide with horror. “I wish you a most joyous wedding and … and a long and happy union with Queen Persephone!”

  Mordecai—who despised servants that failed to act like pieces of furniture to be used, smashed or replaced as he saw fit, and who especially despised servants that dared to flaunt their strong bodies and straight limbs in front of him—stared at this particular servant with eyes that glittered so malevolently that a sheen of sweat appeared upon the young man’s broad, freckled forehead. Mordecai could smell the stench of his fear from across the room.

  “See that the crate is safely stowed in one of the wagons,” Mordecai said softly, his gnarled hands clenching into fists. “Pretend that your life depends upon those goblets arriving at their destination intact.”

  The terrified young man leapt to obey so quickly that he bashed the crate into the doorframe twice before finally managing to make his escape.

  Mordecai chuckled at the knowledge that, in truth, the crate contained nothing but rocks and would be painstakingly loaded onto the back of a wagon that would follow an empty carriage going nowhere at all. Then he shuffled into his bedchamber and eased his aching body down onto a cushioned chair by an open trunk full of women’s undergarments. As he did so, he marvelled yet again at how dramatically the world had changed since that terrible moment three days past when he’d entered the king’s bedchamber to discover the royal fool dead and Finn’s rightful heir, the new queen, gone. How providential that one of the New Men in the palace courtyard had recognized the queen in spite of her grubby clothes! How fortunate that he’d had the wits to quietly follow her through the watchtower passageway and out into the streets instead of trying to abduct her in plain view of the palace! How remarkable that the queen had proceeded down to the common harbour—and right past the waiting ship—of her own accord! Though her despicable Gypsy husband had somehow escaped capture that day, all in all, things had worked out better than Mordecai could have hoped.

  The king was dead. Mordecai was in possession of the queen. And if she’d spoken the truth—and the dewy sprig in the locket that dangled against his sunken chest suggested that she had—the queen knew the location of the healing pool.

  The game was almost over, and Mordecai had won.

  Wishing he could see the expression on the face of that high-and-mighty bastard Lord Bartok when he realized that he’d lost because he’d been outsmarted, Mordecai reached into the trunk and pulled out a pair of ivory-coloured silk underpants trimmed with lace. As he rubbed them against his cheek, he idly wondered how Queen Persephone was being treated. He hoped she was being treated well, as befitted her station as uncrowned monarch of the realm and mother of his future half-royal sons. He also hoped she was being treated wretchedly, as befitted her base character and as payback for having played him for a fool on more than one occasion.

  The knowledge that she was a royal personage and a lying whore made Mordecai want to groan aloud. He resisted the urge to indulge in fantasies of their impending reunion, however, for he had much to do. He needed to see to the final details of that afternoon’s royal funeral and to ensure that all was in readiness for the secret journey that he would be making. He needed to finish sifting through the pilfered belongings of the queen’s dead mother to find those bits of fragrant silk he most longed to see hugging his bride-to-be’s ripe young curves on their wedding night. He needed to meet with Murdock to ensure that he understood what was expected of him while he presided over the court in the days to come and also to whet his appetite for the vast and bloody assignment that would follow.

  And Mordecai needed—nay, he wanted—to visit the one he’d neglected of late. The one with whom he could chat so companionably, the one he could trust with his secrets as he could trust no other.

  There was much he was looking forward to telling her.

  SEVEN

  “SO YOU’RE CERTAIN THAT you’re not with child?” Lord Bartok asked his only daughter.

  Little Lady Aurelia shifted uncomfortably, the voluminous skirts of her shimmering black mourning gown whispering as she did so.

  “Yes, Father,” she replied in a voice that bore no resemblance to the chirping one she normally spoke with. “My courses came yesterday as … as I knew they would.”

  “As you knew they would,” echoed Lord Bartok coolly.

  Aurelia swallowed hard. “Yes, Father,” she murmured, casting a darting glance at her bleary-eyed brother, Atticus. He was slouched in a cushioned armchair beside her father at the far end of the table.

  She, herself, was standing.

  “I told you before, Father,” she continued haltingly. “The king was unable to … that is to say, he never managed to … I was never properly bedded.”

  Lord Bartok’s lips thinned. “You are the most useless thing,” he said in conversational tones. “I arranged everything. Everything. I approached the king. I orchestrated your secret marriage to him. I outsmarted the upstart cripple. All you had to do was to lie on your back and get him to climb on top of you, and you couldn’t even manage that.”

  Aurelia flushed at the baldness of his words. “I tried, Father. I swear I did!”
she protested, clutching at the flounces of her skirts with her bony little hands. “I kissed him ever so passionately—I … I promised things that would have made a whore blush. But the king was ill and tired all the time! And though he was ever courteous to me, he never ever seemed desirous of me. Indeed, I would not be surprised if he was a man who did not feel desire for women at all!”

  “He was hot enough for Lady Bothwell,” reminded Atticus, “until he discovered that the bitch was his own sister, that is. Perhaps you should have behaved more like a bitch, Aurelia—or more like a sister.”

  He followed up this clever bit of advice by ogling Aurelia’s small bosom while running his pink tongue along his fleshy lips. He then laughed shrilly and poured himself another goblet of wine.

  Lord Bartok eyed his son askance, wondering for the thousandth time how it was that he’d been cursed with an heir who was such a wastrel. Then, shifting his pale-blue eyes to his daughter once more, he asked, “Are any of your servants aware that you’ve begun your monthly bleeding?”

  “No, Father,” said Aurelia with an eagerness that suggested she was relieved to have gotten something right. “I kept knowledge of it from them, just as you instructed.”

  “Good,” said Lord Bartok.

  “Shall I continue to pretend to be with child, then?” asked Aurelia, still brimming with eagerness. “Shall I begin padding my bodice and skirts—when the time comes, do you mean to find an infant I can claim to have birthed?”

  Wordlessly, Lord Bartok shook his head. Then he turned to his son and said, “Atticus, you will see Aurelia serviced.”

  Atticus choked on his mouthful of wine. “Serviced?” he gasped as he clumsily wiped wine from his chin with his pudgy white fingers.

  “If we can get her with child in the next few weeks, we’ll be able to pass the infant off as the dead king’s child,” explained Lord Bartok. “With luck it will be born early and a boy.”

  Atticus looked at his sister as though seeing her for the first time. “And you would have me service her?” he asked in a wondering voice as his watery eyes drifted from her shocked face to her childlike body.

  Lord Bartok cocked his head to one side and stroked his trim, silvery beard as he considered the possibility. At length he shook his head and said, “No. I would have you arrange to have her serviced by a trusted servant who resembles the dead king as much as possible.”

  “Even trusted servants talk,” said Atticus, whose eyes yet lingered upon his sister’s body.

  “Dead servants don’t talk, trusted or no,” said Lord Bartok. “As soon as Aurelia’s monthly time has passed, you will see that the chosen servant lies with her as often as he can manage for three weeks, and thereafter you will see that he lies with the dirt and the worms.”

  “But—”

  “That is my decision, Atticus.”

  Scowling, the drunken young lord snatched up the wine jug and splashed some into his goblet. “Very well,” he muttered. “I will arrange matters as you’ve instructed, Father, but if we are found out—”

  “If we are found out, I will be branded a traitor and a whore!” burst Aurelia, who could hold her tongue no longer.

  “And if we are not found out, I will be the grandfather of and Lord Regent to the next king of Glyndoria,” said Lord Bartok with quiet satisfaction. “I deem that reward well worth the risk.”

  “But what of the cost?” said Aurelia, her small hands clenched into even smaller fists.

  “The cost?” frowned Lord Bartok, not understanding.

  “The cost to me!” she cried. “Father, please—my skin crawls at the thought of some lowborn lackey’s dirty, work-worn hands upon me. I could not bear to have one peel off his disgusting rags and crawl into my bed. I swear to you, I could not!”

  “You can and will do your duty to me and this family by lying with whomever you are ordered to lie with,” said Lord Bartok, who was not the least moved by the impassioned pleas of his girl child. “If you cannot bear to have the man crawl into your bed, crawl into his. But see it done, for you are no use to me if you do not.”

  Lady Aurelia blanched at this. “That … that is not true, Father,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “I could yet be of use to you. I am young, comely and well dowered—you could yet make another marriage for me—”

  Lord Bartok shook his head. “You are used goods, and unless we can get you with child immediately, there will be rumours of barrenness. Besides, in the whole of the realm there is no noble family as great as ours. Unless we are marrying royalty, we are marrying beneath ourselves.”

  “Then … I’m never to marry again—ever?”

  “Bear a son who can be called king and you shall have whatever your heart desires.”

  At these words, Lord Bartok’s daughter went very still.

  “Whatever my heart desires?” she asked, touching her index finger to her still-trembling lip.

  Lord Bartok nodded and watched his daughter’s face as she considered all the many, many things that her little heart desired.

  “Would you give me a king’s ransom in jewels, a new gown for every day of the year and an estate of my very own?” she asked tentatively.

  “Yes,” replied her father without hesitation.

  Aurelia made no sound, but her lip stopped trembling and her bright eyes got brighter. Hands fluttering as though unable to decide what to reach for next, she said, “Would you see banished, beaten or imprisoned all those who displease me? Would you find an excuse to execute the innocent, if I so desired it?”

  “Yes,” replied Lord Bartok.

  This time, Aurelia could not contain a burble of amazed laughter. Looking as though she finally understood the power she held in her tiny hands—and the full extent of what she stood to gain by cooperating—she cocked her head to one side, bent at the waist like a bird about to pluck a juicy worm from the earth and said, “Would you make me your heir over Atticus?”

  Her brother gave a cry of outrage. “Don’t be absurd!” he spluttered. “You are the younger and nothing but a girl, besides! Father would never—”

  “Yes,” said Lord Bartok, his eyes never leaving his daughter’s face.

  Aurelia shrieked loudly before quickly clapping her hands over her mouth. Almost immediately, she snatched her hands away so that she could stick her tongue out at her blustering, red-faced brother. Fairly hopping with excitement, she turned toward her father and said, “If you will give me all these things and also promise that I’ll not have to truly mother the half-lowborn bastard I bear, I will do my duty to you and this family. So long as Atticus sees the base creature bathed and scented before delivering him to my bed, I will endure what I must to get myself with child as soon as may be.”

  “Excellent,” murmured Lord Bartok. “You are a good girl, Aurelia.”

  Flushing with pleasure, Lady Aurelia dipped him a curtsey and chirped, “Thank you, Father.”

  After favouring his daughter with a wintery smile, Lord Bartok dismissed her that she might finish readying herself for her dead husband’s funeral.

  As soon as she’d flitted from the room, Atticus sprang to his feet, pounded his soft fist upon the table and bellowed, “Father, this is an outrage! You cannot possibly mean to make Aurelia your heir—”

  “Of course I don’t mean to make Aurelia my heir,” interrupted Lord Bartok calmly. “Don’t you be absurd, Atticus. We needed your sister’s cooperation, and now we have it. When are you going to learn the way of things? Sit down and stop behaving like a commoner.”

  Atticus didn’t seem to know whether to look relieved, nonplussed or insulted. “But … but what will happen when Aurelia discovers that you have lied to her?” he asked as he plopped back down into his seat.

  “Nothing will happen,” said Lord Bartok, taking a small sip from the finely wrought silver goblet before him. “As Aurelia, herself, pointed out, if the court were to learn of her actions, she would be branded a traitor and a whore. And with the servant who studded her de
ad, there would be no one’s word but hers that you or I had any part of the scheme.”

  “She will not be best pleased,” said Atticus doubtfully.

  “She will keep her displeasure to herself or be ruined,” said Lord Bartok with an elegant wave of his hand. “I am not worried about what problems your sister may cause. It is the new queen who worries me.”

  “Let me get my hands on her, and she’ll never worry you again, Father,” growled Atticus, fingering the dent in his skull that had been inflicted by the queen’s brokendown horse on the night her true identity was revealed. “I owe the bitch a debt that I mean to repay in full—and then some.”

  “Stop being melodramatic,” said Lord Bartok. “How in the world would our cause be furthered by your murdering the dead king’s named heir?”

  “It would pave the path to the throne for Aurelia’s bastard child,” said Atticus, stifling a hiccup.

  Lord Bartok pursed his lips ever so slightly. “That is true—if Aurelia can get herself with child, if she can carry it to term and if she can deliver it alive,” he said. “What if she cannot?”

  “Well … well …,” began Atticus. When he could think of nothing further to say, he shrugged and reached for the wine jug, presumably in the hope that another drink would help him come up with a suitable response.

  Lord Bartok deftly moved the jug beyond his son’s reach. “If Aurelia fails in her task—an outcome I rather expect, frankly, since she hardly has the look of a female built for breeding—there will be no one of the Bartok bloodline who could challenge the queen’s right to succession.”

  “Give me an army, and I could challenge it,” boasted Atticus.

  Wordlessly, Lord Bartok reached out and slapped his son hard across the side of his dented head. “Don’t be an imbecile,” he said, ignoring Atticus’s high-pitched yelps of protest and pain. “This family does not commit treason openly, and when we finally sit upon the throne of Glyndoria, I will not suffer whispers that we stole it. Besides, the cripple might have something to say about you trying to fight your way to the throne, and I do not have an army to rival the size of his.”