NINETEEN
UNWELCOME NEWS
“Sire?”
Cavor turned from the window and frowned at the Master of Ceremonies. His face was drawn and pale, and when he moved to his chair he slightly favoured his left leg. “What is it?”
“Sire, you have a visitor.”
“Well? Do I have to grow old waiting for you to tell me who it is?”
The Master of Ceremonies fidgeted nervously. The king’s mood had been bleak these past days, and he spent most of his time inside his private apartments, admitting no-one but his wife and Oberon Fisk, his soon-to-be-replaced personal physician. He had specifically asked that he not be disturbed with visitors, but the man waiting outside had been so insistent.
“Well?” Cavor all but shouted as he lowered himself into his chair.
“The overseer from the Veins, sire,” the Master of Ceremonies hastily said. “Fennon Furst.”
Cavor stilled, his eyes boring into his Master of Ceremonies. Then he nodded abruptly. “Show him in.”
The Master of Ceremonies almost stumbled in
his haste to exit the chamber.
Fennon Furst entered the king’s chamber as smoothly and as silently as the first hint of water through a fissured rock-face. His hands were folded tightly before him, his head lowered and his eyes averted. Five paces into the chamber he fell to one knee and bowed his head in deep obeisance. “Sire, I greet you well.”
Cavor regarded the man with barely concealed distaste. Furst had never been one of his favourites—thus his transfer to the Veins—but the man looked more dishevelled than Cavor could remember. Even from this distance Cavor could smell the rank odour of sour wine.
And there was something about Furst. Something nasty. Something dark. But that was a memory that Cavor, like the man he’d replaced, had buried as deeply as possible.
For years Cavor had refused to remember exactly why it was that he’d assigned Furst to the Veins in the first instance; why it was he’d asked Furst to keep watch there.
He shifted irritably, wishing he could find one chair in this damned palace that would prove comfortable. “Yes, Fennon Furst? What has caused you to rush to Ruen in such a state?”
“Sire,” Furst wrung his hands and risked a look up. “Sire, I have ill news to report. A prisoner has escaped.” He paused for effect, his eyes lit with a cold dark light. “Lot No. 859.”
Even in these apartments with the king as his only witness, Furst was loathe to speak the man’s name aloud.
Cavor stared incredulously at the man. “A prisoner has escaped? And you’ve ridden all the way to Ruen to inform me?” He took a deep breath of anger, the veins in his neck thickening and twisting. “If you can no longer handle your position, Furst, I can have you easily replaced. Now, get out of my sight!”
“Sire,” Furst’s voice cracked in nervousness. Surely Cavor remembered? “Lot No. 859…you had him personally incarcerated. It was your first act as heir…sire.”
“I have heard enough, Furst! Get out of my—”
“Sire,” Furst cried desperately. “Surely you remember who Lot No. 859 is?”
Cavor exploded from his chair in fury, and strode across the chamber to a now shaking Furst. All traces of his limp were gone. He seized the man’s red hair in his hand and forced his head back. “I have imprisoned so many cursed souls in the Veins that I find it impossible to keep an inventory in my head!” he seethed.
“Sire—”
“But if we have a Lot No. 859 suddenly vacant, then I can now think of the perfect name to fill it!”
“Maximilian!” Furst all but screamed in utter terror. “Maximilian Persimius has escaped!”
Cavor reacted as though he had been stabbed. He stumbled back several paces, his face grey, his eyes wide and shocked. “Maximilian?” he whispered.
“’Twas not my fault, sire,” Furst grovelled, his face now flat against the cool marble floor. “Some guard, perhaps, derelict in his duty, failed. Not my fault…”
“Maximilian has escaped?” Cavor whispered again, not hearing a word that Furst said.
Furst peered from under his arms. Cavor had retreated to the window, but was still staring at Furst in disbelief. “We’ve searched everywhere, sire, but we cannot find him.” He remembered what Joseph Baxtor had said. “Perhaps he fell down a disused shaft and even now his body rots in cold black water.” He grinned, raising himself to his knees again. “Now, that would be a relief, would it not, sire?”
Cavor sunk slowly down into his chair, and Furst took the opportunity to rise to his feet and make his way to a small fire burning in a grate. Even on the hottest day, the thick-walled palace remained cool. He turned to face his king again, his composure rapidly returning in the face of Cavor’s utter shock.
Cavor blinked, then looked at Furst. “Maximilian is still alive?” he rasped, horror underscoring his voice.
Furst sighed inwardly. “Yes, sire. If he has not died since his escape.”
“But how? How? No-one survives longer than a year or two down there. I had thought that…years ago…he would have died…surely…not even the mark could have protected against natural death…in the Veins…could it? Could it? Why didn’t you tell me Maximilian was still alive?”
“You never inquired,” Furst replied.
Cavor was silent for a long time, and Furst noted that he absently fingered his upper right arm.
Furst knew what he meant. “For seventeen years I have put Lot No. 859 in the most dangerous sections,” he said, his eyes steady on the king. “I have put him to work rock-faces that were so thin you could see the sea shadow behind them—and yet none of them cracked and ruptured until the day after I moved him somewhere else. I have chained him to gangs that were heavily infested with disease—fungus, plague, the sweating sickness, you name it, Lot No. 859 has been chained to it—but he remained disease-free. I have appointed the shortest-tempered guards to his detail, and they have beaten to death prisoners to either side of Lot No. 859, but he has remained unscarred. I have put him to work underneath hanging walls that have bulged with the weight of the earth above, and they have collapsed and buried every man but him. Somehow Lot No. 859 has lived.”
Cavor’s face was now gaunt. “The Manteceros,” he said almost to himself. “The mark has protected him.”
“You were there,” Furst grunted dismissively. “You saw the irons put to his arm. You heard him scream. You inspected the result. The mark has gone.”
Cavor was silent, but his fingers again scratched at his right arm. Furst’s eyes flickered over the king. “The mark has gone,” he repeated.
“Are you sure?”
“Once every two or three years I made sure I inspected the man, sire. A thick scar thrives where once reared the Manteceros.”
“I wonder,” Cavor whispered. What of his dreams over the past months? Coincidence?
“There is nothing to mark him or name him,” Furst replied. “If he still remembers who he is then there is absolutely nothing he can do about it. No-one would believe a madman escaped from the Veins.” Furst thought about that for a moment, then roared with laughter. “No-one!”
Cavor stared at the man, remembering why he disliked him so much. He also knew better than to believe his thin reassurances. Maximilian alive and free was nothing but disaster.
Strangely, coming to that realisation somehow bolstered Cavor’s resolve. He sat straighter in the chair, and his hand fell to the armrest. “We will recapture him,” he said, both voice and face now firm.
Furst shrugged. The problem was now the king’s. His mind turned to other matters. “Has Baxtor arrived, sire? He left some fifteen hours before I, and yet I did not pass him on the road. He must have ridden as hard as I to get here before me.”
“Hmm?” Cavor looked up, preoccupied with the problem of Maximilian. “What was that you said?”
“Joseph Baxtor,” Furst repeated patiently. “He should be here. He left the morning after he escaped.”
Cavor frowned. “But, no, Baxtor has not arrived.”
“Then where…?”
“Wait!” Cavor snapped, holding up a hand. “Let me think.”
It did not take long for the damning memories to flood back. Both Baxtors arguing persuasively to go back to the Veins just this once. Garth Baxtor asking about the way a man laid claim to the throne, and then Cavor remembered that Joseph Baxtor would have known Maximilian when he was a boy at court.
“Dear gods!” he whispered appalled. Why hadn’t he ever stopped the damned physician from going down the Veins? Because he’d thought Maximilian dead, that’s why.
He leaped out of his chair, shouting for his guards. Then he turned and seized Furst by the shoulder.
“What?” the overseer gasped.
“We’re going hunting,” Cavor said grimly, but there was a wild gleam in his eyes. “And if I have to tear the entire kingdom apart to find Maximilian, then I bloody well will!”
He reached the door and tore it open. “Guard!”