Chapter Six

Arthur

This time I had a different plan as I scaled the side of the tower, with Bates and Kerys waiting below. Instead of going on to the window of Balduin's former apartment, I stopped two floors lower. There was no guarantee that the room beyond was empty, but it was a better bet than the ones above.

The window opened easily, further reinforcing my theory, and the shutter too opened without a fuss. Still, I had my knife in my hand when I entered the room, and I made a quick sweep of the place to ensure I was alone. For a moment I froze as I heard the march of feet, and watched shadows pass along the line of torchlight visible at the bottom of the door. So, guards still patrolled this place; that was to be expected, and I could assume they were paying particular attention to the upstairs apartment, perhaps there were even some stationed permanently on the door.

I tossed down a line to my comrades and soon I was joined by Kerys and Bates.

"I'm sick o' climbin' ropes," muttered Bates. "I'm gettin' blisters."

"How do you feel about climbing chimneys?" I asked.

"Aye. Now you're talkin'."

There was no fire in the grate and I watched with fascination as Bates ducked under the mantel with a practiced ease, raised his hands above him and hauled his slender body into the chimney. Kerys and I watched until his feet disappeared.

"Would you do that?" I asked.

"Nope." The girl shook her head. "I've hidden in boxes and barrels and spent the night in someone's suitcase, but that is where I draw the line."

It should go without saying that every room in a tower can't have its own chimney, but every room in a place like Heir's Tower, certainly needs its own fire, or the heir might get cold. So, all the fireplaces connected to a single master flue that ran through the tower to the chimney on the roof. If you were prepared to crawl through the narrow, sooty tunnels then you could get anywhere in the building.

It was an ideal way to get into the apartments above but had two problems. Firstly; the fire would likely be lit up there. Secondly; Bates was not the strongest of fighters.

"Time?" asked Kerys.

"Should be any moment now."

Through the window, we heard the clanging of the castle bell as it tolled midnight.

Seconds later the cries rang out. Good old Gerda.

I looked to the door and couldn't keep myself from smiling as the sounds of running feet went past, a troop of guards leaving the tower to defend their king.

"Think that's all of them?" asked Kerys.

I shook my head. "I imagine they'll have left a couple on the door."

Kerys grinned as she drew a knife as long as her forearm. "Good."

"Let's go."

Moving stealthily, for we couldn't be sure how many guards were left in the tower, we stole along the corridor and up the stairs. So many times, I'd walked this route as Nicolo's squire on official business, but now I had a quite different purpose.

Reaching the top of the stairs, I peered out along the corridor leading to Balduin's old room, lined with tapestries and soft rugs. As I'd expected, there were two guards on the door, heavily armed and with an advantage of seeing anyone coming up from the stairs. If we rushed them, Kerys and I would each have a crossbow bolt sticking out of an eye socket before we got halfway.

I eased the overeager Kerys back a few steps. Our moment would come.

Turns out, we didn't have to wait long.

"Get in here!"

The call came from within the room and the guards hastily unlocked the room and entered.

"Found this bastard coming down the chimney. Do we make him talk or leave him to the professionals?"

Kerys and I were running along the corridor on the instant, the thick rug masking our footsteps nicely.

It was physically impossible for anyone, not even a skilled assassin, to get the jump on someone while emerging from a fireplace. It's an awkward enterprise. And when the fire is lit, it becomes considerably more so. Bates had never had any chance of getting the drop on the inhabitant of the room, but it was a great way of getting the guards off the door and their backs turned to Kerys and I as we entered.

"What the…?"

The guards were on the ground before the man who held Bates had a chance to finish his sentence. He was an ugly customer, with dark, sunken eyes and an expression that curled into a natural leer. This was the man who'd been the child's jailer since Balduin moved out, or so I imagined. He looked like someone who could take care of himself, but the shock of our entry had caught him unawares and had given Bates a chance to break free. The jailer lunged forward but met Kerys's fist coming the other way. I'd trained with Kerys and knew that even when she was holding back, it was like being kicked in the face by a Shetland pony.

"Keep an eye on him," I instructed, striding for the wall behind which, I knew, was the secret room.

"What are we going to do with him?" asked Kerys, her knife pointed at the man, who was now seated on the floor with a dazed expression.

"That depends," I answered. "Bates, watch the corridor."

Twisting the candle sconce on the wall made the secret door slide back and I was met by the fetid smell I remembered from my last visit. Inside, the little room was as I remembered and the little boy still sat, cowering in his cage.

"Don't be frightened, we're here to help."

He had little reaction to my words. It was hard to tell if he didn't speak the same language or if hope was so dead in him that he couldn't allow himself to believe he might ever leave his cage.

As I set to work on the lock to his cage (child's play for a skilled lockpick), I noticed fresh bruises blossoming in shades of purple and green across his young face. Someone had hit him and based on the older bruises beneath, they'd done so regularly.

"Come here."

He seemed to weigh almost nothing as I lifted him from the cage, barely more than skin and bone. Not starved, but not fed any more than the minimum required to keep body and soul together. His legs wouldn't hold him and I carried him from that room which he hadn't left in… I dreaded to think how long.

As we entered the main room and he saw his jailer, I felt his body tighten against mine, shrinking back from the man who had clearly mistreated him. I felt the rage rise in me like liquid fire, burning through my veins.

Kerys looked up at me in question.

"In the circumstances, I think the only fair thing would be to let him go," I said, coldly. "As one would a trapped bird. Bates, open the window."

"What?" The jailer jerked up. "I ain't resisting. I ain't armed."

"And this boy was?"

Bates flung open the shutters and the window. Kerys grabbed the jailer, he struggled but Kerys was stronger than she looked and the man got a backhand across the face that sent him reeling when he tried to fight back.

"I was following orders."

"I doubt that."

"You can't do this."

"Kerys is about to demonstrate otherwise."

"I'll scream!" the man insisted, a last, desperate plea.

I nodded. "Yes. I imagine you will."

He did. All the way down.

And Heir's Tower had a nice, long drop. The noise of Gerda's diversion meant no one heard.

"Alright?"

The boy's face had remained blank as he watched, quite intently, his old torturer going to his death. Now he nodded. He understood. That was something.

"I think we shouldn't hang about," suggested Bates.

"Agreed."

The diversion was set to be a short one—I hadn't wanted to risk lives any more than was necessary. Right now, with the violet-eyed boy in my arms, it all felt necessary.

As we left through the window, I couldn't stop myself from glancing out at Prince's Tower, where Nicolo still lived. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw movement in the window.

***

His name, we discovered when the boy started talking, was Arthur.

"Seems so damned normal," commented Wylder.

"He is normal," I insisted.

"I meant his name. He comes from who knows where— someplace no one in the Gath has ever heard of—and what's his name? Arthur. I'd expect something with lots of ‘Z's and ‘Y's that none of us can pronounce."

"I guess they have normal people in other lands, as well."

But Wylder did make a reasonable point. ‘Arthur' was a pretty common name. The Gath was full of Arthurs. It made me think afresh about where our Arthur might have come from. We had all made the assumption that he came from over the hills and the great steppe, because that was where I knew Nicolo's father to have come from (according to his mother, Maria). But another thing I'd learned from Maria was that Nicolo's father's people traveled. Who was to say how far they might have come?

I was cagey at first with questioning Arthur too intently, leaving him to talk as and when he felt like it and letting him reveal his history in his own time rather than going after information. But as the days passed and the boy seemed to get stronger, showcasing that resilience that children often have, I decided to ask a few more direct questions.

"Where do you come from?"

The answer was certainly not what I'd expected.

***

The Gath changed greatly from district to district, in ways that usually told you how close their Duke was to the monarch. Needless to say, things had changed in this respect too since the change in monarch. There were Dukes who had been close to the Old Queen who now found themselves last on the list for everything, struggling for food and supplies for their districts. Then there were those who might not have enjoyed such a good relationship with Queen Nell, but were old drinking buddies of Balduin, and those districts were now benefitting (though the money poured into such districts didn't always make it down to the people). Balduin was also actively involved in getting rid of those who displeased him, putting their districts under the command of loyalists. None of it promised anything good for the people themselves.

The Rand district had been neglected under the Old Queen and that seemed unlikely to change now. The problem in Rand was not royal favor but natural resources; it produced nothing that anyone else wanted and so had no sustainable economy. Pumping money into such places can only keep them afloat until the money runs out and so monarchs find it easier to let the people fend for themselves. It was an ugly reality and had left Rand an ugly district whose Duke kept whatever money came their way for himself.

It was also where Kerys had grown up, so she led the way while Gerda and I followed.

"Stay close," suggested Kerys. "It's easy to get lost."

Because bringing a horse into Rand was like carrying a sign that said ‘Mug me then eat my steed', we traveled on foot. No one could afford a horse in Rand and we didn't want to stand out. For the same reason, we'd dressed to fit in and concealed our weapons, because armed women stood out anywhere in the Gath.

"Had you ever heard of these people?" Gerda asked Kerys.

Kerys shook her head. "I lived a bit further north. In Rand, the street where you grew up is like your identity. You don't talk to people from the next street over unless you want something, or unless you're teaming up against people from another district, then it's all Randers together." She paused. "There were rumors. But there's always rumors. You don't listen to them."

"Rumors about…?" I pressed.

"Outsiders. Not just outside the street or outside Rand but from outside the Gath. No one believes the rumors." She paused again. "These people must have done something to fit in. Outsiders aren't welcomed into Rand."

"Getting that impression," nodded Gerda, staring daggers back at anyone who dared to stare at her.

"For outsiders to make a life here…" Kerys threw up her hands. "They must have done something in order to fit in, in order to be accepted."

It was a grim walk, or so I found it. Because I was still a relatively recent arrival in Woodfall Gath, there were large areas of it about which I knew nothing. The places I'd visited were those to which I'd gone with Nicolo on some official business or other.

No one came to Rand on business, it was ignored by the more monied districts and by the court itself, in the vague hope that it might do the decent thing and vanish. Seeing such poverty was a new experience for me. It wasn't like what I'd seen out in Simnel; they'd been poor but self-sufficient—a poverty that could be alleviated by work. That option barely existed in Rand. The only way up was out, and however bad things were a strange sense of loyalty kept people here. You were a Rander till you died.

In such an insular society, it did make you wonder how any outsider could fit in, let alone ones who were so very obviously outsiders.

"This is it," nodded Kerys. "Mathis Street."

It had a look which I'd found characterized Rand; dilapidated pride. There was obviously no money here and the houses were held together with string and prayer, but it was all spotless. People took pride in the little they had. Any child who dropped litter would get a thick ear and a sore backside for their disrespect.

"Hi." Kerys stopped someone. "We're looking for the Regulus family."

The man pulled a pretty convincing expression of ignorance. "Never heard of them. Sound foreign. An' everyone knows everyone ‘round here so I reckon you're in the wrong place."

"I don't think so," replied Kerys.

The man looked her up and down. "Methuen?"

"What if I am?" Kerys stood up sharply as it seemed her street name might be dragged into disrepute.

"Nothing, nothing," the man said casually. "I just thought you had that look about you."

"What look?"

"Giving yourself airs."

"I'll punch you so hard your heirs will feel it!" Kerys snapped back.

"Kerys…" I began.

"And you're not from around here at all," the man sniffed.

"What about me?" It wasn't that Gerda was a particularly large woman, but she carried an air of being far bigger than she was. There was something threatening about Gerda.

The man backed down a little.

"If you don't know Regulus's family," I tried to keep things calm, "then that's fine. We'll look somewhere else. But if, after we've gone, you should happen to remember them, could you please tell them we have news about Arthur. Thanks for your time."

I turned to go, beckoning Kerys and Gerda with me, Kerys still muttering something about ‘ airs' and ‘ people from Mathis '.

"Wait!" We hadn't reached the end of the street when the call came. I turned back and found the man walking after us. I expected some further double-talk ‘ Not that I'm admitting to knowing anyone called Regulus or Arthur etc, etc ', but instead he just said, "Is he alive?"

I nodded. "He's alive and as well as can be expected given what he's been through."

A range of thoughts passed visibly across the man's face as he decided what best to do next.

"I can take you to his people."

"We would appreciate that."

At the end of the street the simple layout of houses changed, as if the architect had had a sudden change of heart, and the road twisted off into a knotted cul-de-sac, neatly hidden from the outside world. Our guide nodded at people as we passed down a narrow alley between two such houses and into what would have been a dead space between them had someone not decided to build a makeshift dwelling here too, squashed in amongst the other houses, bordered by their walls on all sides.

The man knocked in what sounded like a code, and the door was opened by a woman. She had violet eyes.

***

"Arthur…" The older man at the head of the table, who our guide had addressed as Regulus, breathed out.

"We'd long since given him up for dead with the rest of his kin."

"Arthur's family are dead?" I felt a stab of sorrow to my heart. Poor Arthur; what a life to have led.

"Before he was taken," Regulus nodded. "Castle bastards."

"Were his family your family?" I asked.

"No," Regulus shook his head. "Or at least, not close. There were three families from across the hills who wound up here. I suppose we're all Randers and Mathis now as much as Fenians. Arthur was born here and I've two grandchildren who were."

"Fenians?"

"That's our land," Regulus nodded. "Time was when there were close ties between us and your people. But that was before Woodfall Gath. Or, at least, before it became the monster it is now. Trade became harder and so we was first cut-off, and then forgotten. Even I'm not old enough to recall the last time Fenland did business with the Gath."

"What sort of trade?" asked Gerda.

Regulus shrugged. "This and that. Dyed textiles—our people have a skill in that department. But what they most wanted from us was the healing."