Blood of Ambrose Page 23

  Merlin was a little dismayed. He was prepared to concede—to himself, if never to Morlock—that his son was the superior maker. But in the use of power, in cunning and trickery, Merlin was unprepared to acknowledge his son as master, or even a serious rival.

  “Ambrosia's influence, possibly,” the wizard reflected. “She was always cleverer than he. And he was only finding an opportunity for running away. If his cleverness serves his cowardice, it's no danger to me or my plans. Still…it's a bad sign. I'll have to do something about Morlock.”

  Merlin abstractedly wandered back to the blanket and, warming his feet in Morlock's abandoned cloak, he speculated on ways he might destroy him.

  *"Choke whatever it will be until it becomes what it was before.” Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.254.

  he castle was not the same without Morlock, or so it seemed to Lathmar. It reminded him of how the castle had felt whenever his parents left—colder, somehow, and not nearly as safe. Nor could he dismiss this feeling as a childish fantasy: the last time his parents had left the castle they had come back in coffins, drowned in a shipwreck on the Inner Sea (so Urdhven claimed).

  If the others felt the same they didn't show it. Ambrosia went ahead with her plans to retake the City Gate. This succeeded with such remarkable ease that Ambrosia speculated the Protector's Men had orders to retreat if attacked—or that they were simply afraid to stand against the royal forces, backed by Ambrosian magic. Either way it was a good sign, she said, and Wyrth and Kedlidor agreed.

  The sortie into the city also had been a great success. The detachment of Protector's Men outside the City Gate had been driven halfway to the Great Market. The royal troops, led by Ambrosia in person, had taken advantage of some especially enthusiastic retreating by the Protector's Men to sneak back to the City Gate unobserved by their enemies.

  “They've lost, and they know it,” said Ambrosia in the next Regency Council. “It's only a matter of time, now.”

  “If that's true,” Wyrth replied, “why not press for total victory? Why negotiate?”

  “I'm tempted,” Ambrosia admitted. “But time is a problem. We have to look past Urdhven to the other regional commanders. If we take too long to dispose of him, they may try to swing things their own way—perhaps carve off their regions as independent kingdoms, perhaps make a straight grab at Ontil for imperial power. If we can make Urdhven knuckle under, the regional commanders will probably follow. If not, the sooner we get at them the better. What's wrong with your face?”

  The remark was addressed to her sovereign, Lathmar VII, who was staring at her with wide eyes.

  “Nothing,” he managed to say, without stammering.

  Her expression softened. “You're thinking of your parents. I'm still not convinced that Urdhven murdered them, but I can sympathize with you to some extent.”

  “'To some extent,' madam?” asked Wyrth, his voice unusually harsh.

  “I don't know if you ever met my father, Wyrth, but I would have paid someone to murder him. I begged Morlock to do it, once, but he wouldn't—”

  “Madam.”

  “I'm sorry to shock you, Wyrth. I assure you Morlock would hear nothing of the idea. Of course, at the time he didn't know Merlin very well. In any case, Lathmar, we'll work the treaty this way: no amnesty will cover the murder of the late Emperor and his consort. So if, in due time, we find proof that Urdhven killed them, we can still charge him with treason and execute him.”

  “If he can be executed,” Lathmar said, thinking of the night they took Ambrose.

  “He can be. What's alive can be killed. In fact, if I understand what you and Morlock told me about Urdhven's condition, he is vulnerable in a rather obvious way. He may even be aware of this, since he has rather fastidiously avoided appearing before Ambrose since that fateful night. So there it is: I promise you that your parents' bodies will not be swept under the rug by any treaty. Does that satisfy you?”

  “Thank you, yes,” Lathmar answered politely. But the truth is that he hadn't been thinking about his parents at all. He had been thinking that his family was somewhat larger than he had realized.

  It came about like this. He had been walking the night before past the ministerial apartments, wondering if he should knock on Wyrth's door and wishing there were some point in knocking on Morlock's. But then it seemed to him that he heard someone moving about in Morlock's apartments. He had stopped at the door and, hesitantly, rapped on it.

  The door was opened by a fair-haired woman whose face he didn't know, but who was nonetheless somehow familiar.

  “Good evening, Your Majesty,” she said politely. “I'm sorry, but Morlock hasn't yet returned.”

  “Good evening to you, ma'am,” Lathmar said. “May I ask…?” But as he met her fearless blue eyes, he could think of not one question to ask her.

  “Won't you come in?” the strange woman offered, and stood aside.

  Lathmar entered without hesitation. Then, as she closed the door behind him, he wondered if he should have hesitated. No one knew where he was, and he knew nothing about this woman—including how she had gotten into Morlock's rooms, which were secured by a lock designed by Morlock himself.

  But as she turned to face him, something struck him about the way she was standing…something about her shoulders.…

  “Your pardon, ma'am,” he said, “but are we somehow related?”

  “Very astute, Lathmar,” she said approvingly. “I am by way of being your great-great-great-and-so-on-great aunt. My name is Spes.”

  “Spes. Hm.”

  “If you'd rather, you can call me Hope—that's what Spes means, in my mother's language.”

  “Hope. Yes, I think I will, if it's all the same to you, ma'am. What was your mother's language, if I may ask, madam?”

  “Latin—she was a lady of Britain, Nimue Viviana.”

  Lathmar nodded slowly. “Oh? I, uh, I was not, uh, aware that Morlock and Ambrosia had a, a—”

  “'Sister,' is the technical term in genealogy, I believe,” said Hope, with something like the authentic Ambrosian asperity. Then she softened it with a smile. “No, they wouldn't have told you, I expect. Both of them think that I'm long dead, and I decided it was best to let them think so. You should feel free to talk about me to Morlock, but I don't think you should mention me to Ambrosia.”

  “No?”

  “No. She's very jealous, you know, and she never cared for me at all.”

  “Ah. So you live here in hiding?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, when we were in the secret passages, you were there too?”

  “Yes, but not in the way you mean, Lathmar. I know that the passages grew very tiresome for you, and the time you were in them seemed very long indeed. But my prison is even older than they are—older than Ambrose.”

  “I don't understand. How did you come here, if you didn't use one of the passages?”

  “I didn't come here. Ambrosia did. She often does. When Morlock is here, she talks with him; when he's not, she takes comfort from being among his things, such as they are.”

  A sudden dreadful thought occurred to Lathmar, and he looked intently in Hope's face. She laughed in his.

  “You're thinking,” she said, “is this Ambrosia gone mad—or possessed by some spirit, perhaps of a long-dead sister?”

  It had been exactly what he had thought. But he could see that her face, though like Ambrosia's, was not the same. Among other things, her eyes were blue rather than gray, and she had almost no wrinkles. She was shorter and stockier than Ambrosia, and seemed a much younger woman physically. But there was a quiet wisdom in her eyes.

  “Are you a ghost?” he asked her frankly.

  “No,” she said as frankly.

  “But you said that Ambrosia thought you dead, and you said that you came here with her—”

  “I didn't actually, but that is true, in a way.”

  “How can that be?”

  “Ambrosia and I live in the same body,” Hope said matter-of-f
actly. “She came here to seek comfort and fell asleep in Morlock's chair over yonder. I felt the need to walk around a bit and speak in my own voice.”

  Lathmar drew back, appalled.

  “You should be honored, Your Majesty,” Hope said wryly. “You're the first person I've spoken with in nearly four hundred years. Your ancestor Uthar the Great hadn't been born then.”

  “I'm not—That is—I was just thinking how strange my family is.”

  “Everybody thinks that. But it's true you have more cause than most.”

  “Can you see and hear when…when—”

  “When I am submerged? I didn't used to. But Ambrosia isn't as strong as she was, and often I can see and hear the outer world when she is conscious. That's how I knew you. And I can walk through her memories, sometimes. When none of this is possible I think and wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “For Ambrosia to grow still older, I'm afraid. When she grows somewhat weaker, we will have to change places, and she will be largely quiescent while I am the active twin.”

  Lathmar said nothing to this. He wasn't sure whether it was a good thing or not.

  “I suppose it's hard for you to imagine your Grandmother, as you call her, growing weak?” Hope said gently.

  “Yes,” said the King truthfully. “She's always been the strongest person I knew. Not just physically.”

  “I understand. But she's not as strong as she was. Soon, as I count time, she will not be as strong as she is. This will be a hard time for her: you will have to grow strong, Lathmar.”

  Lathmar nodded solemnly. “So that she can pass on the imperial power.”

  Hope laughed and shook her head. “Do you really know her as little as that, after having lived with her your whole life? She won't pass it on, Lathmar. You'll have to take it from her, before she grows too weak to wield it.”

  Lathmar was silent for a few moments, then said, “That will be difficult. Because I don't want it.”

  “I think you do, Lathmar.”

  “Everyone seems to think that I do, or I should. But I don't.”

  “Not everyone knows you the way I do,” Hope said. “Our situations are oddly alike. What we most want is freedom—including freedom from someone we both love, Ambrosia. In your rather peculiar situation, that requires power of imperial scope: so that no one can govern you as Ambrosia has, or harm you as the Protector has.”

  Lathmar was not convinced, but what she had said troubled him. “You've given me a lot to think about.”

  “Well, thinking and holding back your words are two things you've always been good at,” Hope observed. “You'll find them useful skills as a leader, though maybe not the most useful of all.” She sat down abruptly in the chair and put her hand to her face.

  “What's wrong?” Lathmar asked.

  “I'm getting sleepy. That means Ambrosia is waking up. Would you please get me pen and ink? And paper—paper, too, of course.”

  Lathmar rushed over to a desk and brought back writing supplies. Hope held the paper in her lap, dipped the pen in the inkwell that Lathmar held, and scrawled a few words. Her eyes fell shut for a moment, then opened abruptly. “Good-bye, Lathmar,” she said, smiling sleepily. “It's been so nice talking with you. Perhaps…again. Sometime.” Her eyes shut and she lay back in the chair. The pen fell from her fingers on the floor.

  Her body grew longer and leaner. Her hair faded to iron gray, darkened by rusty streaks of red. The features of her face became longer, sharper, thinner. Her skin was seamed with a network of fine wrinkles.

  Ambrosia opened her eyes (gray, not blue) and yawned.

  She looked around and caught the King's eye. “Lathmar! What are you doing here?”

  “I heard someone inside,” Lathmar said truthfully, “and I thought I'd see who it was.”

  “I must have been snoring. Can't remember what I came in here for.”

  Her hands moved in her lap, and the sheet Hope had written on rustled slightly. Lathmar thought Ambrosia was about to look down at it.

  “Can we poke around a bit?” Lathmar said with feigned eagerness. “I've never been in Morlock's quarters when he wasn't here.”

  “Certainly not,” snapped Ambrosia, and stood. The paper fell unregarded out of her lap. “Come along.” She went to the door.

  The King stooped and grabbed the sheet of paper. “What's that?” asked Ambrosia, as he joined her at the door.

  “A message for Morlock,” the King said. “I thought I'd give it to Wyrth to put up in the workshop.”

  “Have him put it by the choir of flames,” Ambrosia suggested as she locked the door. “He thinks more of them than he does of you or me,” she added jealously.

  Mulling all this over, the King sat through the rest of the council session without saying a word or noticing what the others said. But as they adjourned, it appeared that they had agreed to send a messenger to Urdhven to propose terms.

  “We might have you crowned by summer,” Ambrosia remarked, slapping him on the shoulder as she departed.

  Lathmar was less than thrilled. But he thought of what Hope had said, about power and freedom, and he wasn't sure. He still wasn't sure when he went to sleep that night.

  But when he awoke the next morning, just after dawn, he was sure something was wrong. His intuition was ringing like a bell. He threw on some clothes, grabbed a sword from his weapons closet, and pulled open his door.

  Wyrth was standing in the hallway, a troubled smile half-hidden in his beard. “Say, maybe there is something to that Sight business. Do you know what's up?”

  “Just that something's wrong.”

  “There seem to be Protector's Men loose in the castle. I saw them in a courtyard—have no idea how they entered. But we have to get you to a safe place.”

  “Let's find Ambrosia.”

  “First things first. We'll get you safe—”

  “Wyrth, Ambrosia's safety is first. Without her, we don't have a chance and you know it.”

  Wyrth twisted a knot in his beard. “I never did understand this politics stuff,” he admitted.

  “Besides: ‘blood has no price.’”

  “She'd deny that,” Wyrth said, grinning now. “But then, we're us, not her. Let's go.”

  They were lucky with their first try: Ambrosia had just risen, and was ringing repeatedly for a hallway servant who didn't appear. When Wyrth and Lathmar explained what was happening, she turned to the dwarf and hissed, “And you brought him through open corridors.”

  “Royal orders, Lady Ambrosia,” said Wyrth, with a straight face.

  “You sop, he doesn't have any authority to give orders. I'm the regent.”

  “Ah, well, madam, I'm afraid I never understood the technicalities of your laws very well. The salient issue, though, seems to be—”

  “Yes, yes—what do we do now? First we put the King in the hidden passages. Then you and I, Wyrth, will nose about and see what has happened to the royal soldiery. There's something funny about this.”

  “Where's the nearest entrance to the passages?”

  “Not near here. The bolt-holes are for royal persons, not ministers.” She thought for a moment. “Come,” she said at last.

  They ran like thieves through the empty corridors until they reached the corridor above the audience hall. “There's one in here,” Ambrosia muttered, and opened a chamber door.

  She froze.

  “That's right, Lady Ambrosia—come in,” said Steng's voice.

  Surprisingly, she did, drawing the King with her. Wyrth followed.

  There was a company of Protector's Men in the room. Four of them were holding a man against the far wall of the room, while Steng held a knife to his throat.

  “Come in, come in,” cried Steng genially. “I suppose you were wondering where your brother had gotten to. Well, here he is!” And he took the knife and slashed Morlock's face.

  orlock's jaws clenched, but as far as the King could see, he hardly reacted otherwise. Steng flourished
the bloodstained knife (blood spattered his ropy pale fingers also) and then put the edge against Morlock's throat.

  “You see, Lady Ambrosia, you must make a choice,” the detestable poisoner was saying. “You must choose between your distant descendant, whose presence lends a fictive legitimacy to your rebellion, or your brother, whose skills are necessary if that rebellion is to succeed. The shadow or the substance, Lady.”

  Ambrosia laughed. “Steng, you must think me as much a fool as yourself.”

  “Exactly as much, my lady—that is: none at all.”

  If your offer was a real offer, you would be giving up what you consider substance (in the overrated talents of my brother) for what you call shadow—the fiction of legal status.”

  “Why not?” Steng's wide rubbery lips bent in a grin. “Why not? Your brother is no use to us. He will never serve our purposes. The real substance, the military power of the empire, is ours already, and I frankly concede that we consider Morlock as nothing against it. All that we lack is some shadow of legitimacy. It is a trivial thing, but if we can buy it with the nothing of your brother's life, why should we not?”

  “The event will answer you,” Ambrosia said, with real grimness. “You were, I repeat, a fool to enter here, Steng. When you, and that traitor who employs you—”

  “The Royal Protector, madam.”

  “Regicide and attempted regicide are treason for every subject. This detail is no doubt inessential to a poisoner's education, but I assure you it is so; I wrote it into the code myself, about the same time as Ambrose's first foundations were being laid. When that traitor and coward whose spittle you lick (yes, I do refer to the Lord Protector) held this castle with all his military power, I managed to take it from him. You won't escape it if you harm my brother.”

  Steng's smile became one-sided and derisive. “Yet I do expect to escape, no matter what I have to do here. By the same route I entered.”

  That sank in, the King could tell as he shifted his gaze to his Grandmother.