Chapter Seventy-Six: Cleverer Animal

The house was dimly lit by candles at intervals, and the masked faces glittered like ghosts. The interior, though barely glimpsed, was no more grand than the building’s façade, scantly furnished, and smelled very old. It was as if Mylo’s guests were the decorative jewels whose expense he wished to display.

Osmund took careful steps through this wolf’s den. In the dark—their faces obscured, their doublets and trousers giving off a velvet sheen—he knew these people. Not by name or face, but it was their etiquette he recognized, their bodies straight-backed and coy. This was the world of money, drained as it was of any neighborly feeling. A woman drifted past beneath a lupine mask, her eyes roving his cloaked form. Under that scrutiny, he was meat.

Rylan took him aside, and Osmund struggled to recompose himself. He could not afford to go drifting about, a gaping fish waiting for a hook. “You’re on your own here,” Rylan told him solemnly. “I can’t protect you.”

Osmund nodded, though the words inspired a fresh bout of nerves. “Right. I understand. Your first loyalty is to your sister, of course. I wouldn’t want you to do anything to put yourself at risk.” He took a steadying breath. “Thank you for bringing me here. It’s help enough.”

Rylan tilted his head, and Osmund followed the direction of his gaze to the table and glass decanters of wine set out on top of it. “The men want their drinks,” Rylan said. “Serve them. Somewhere, you’ll find Pravin.”

It was almost too good a setup. He thought he might have to slip the poison into Pravin’s cup discreetly—but he might be able to simply hand it to him. “What about you? Where will you be?”

Rylan’s eyes darted to the side beneath the mask. “I’ve got a job,” was his enigmatic answer.

Osmund forced another nod. It was for the best, after all, that they stayed out of each other’s way tonight. “Good luck, then,” he said.

“Halwyn,” said the other before he could slip away, and Osmund paused, somehow surprised by the use of the fake name. “Don’t get caught.”

Fine advice. Osmund tried to smile, half-obscured though it was by the guise of the phoenix. They split up into the crowd.

After the fall of the Crown, the nobility of Valcrest holed themselves within their ancestral keeps, tolerated by the usurper queen in return for the tribute from their lands and an iron grip over the peasantry who tilled them—but these polished men were not nobles. Merchant lords like little kings whispered close things to each other, showing off their primped and proud ladies with one arm while gesturing to their loyal clerks and minions with the other. Osmund fell back on his manners as he offered them refreshment, and bowed his head when self-styled lordlings from all corners of the kingdom complimented him on his “nearly noble” accent.

This was caution, or so he thought, but he could not seem to become invisible as he’d once seen the royal servants do. Regardless of how reserved or polite his manner, the guests treated him as part of the entertainment. Wearing the phoenix’s face apparently improved his countenance; women boldly called him handsome. One even pinched his rump as he went by, giggling girlishly to her friends like she’d filched an extra tart. And he did not get the worst of it. He witnessed a serving girl being pulled down into a man’s lap, with an invitation to feel his…rapier.

Osmund walked and weaved and turned, all the while feeling the basilisk poison sitting heavily in his breast pocket. If the glass were to crack and seep through his clothes to the skin, would it kill him as surely as the man who drank it? The pocket seemed to burn with the very thought.

Again and again, he served them their wine. On every excursion from the table he ventured further through this shifting labyrinth of human beings. In his hunt for Pravin, neither did he spy Rylan—or Mylo—anywhere.

His doubts began to whisper. A sign from the heavens—this is a mistake. Even if Emre and Sakina had lost him outside, Osmund knew the house. If Pravin returned here, they could attempt the thing then. He had nearly convinced himself to abandon the effort when the voice carried through the crowd to his honed ears:

 “…And we will cast off at last the yoke of these brutes who rule by blood. I daresay the future of the Isles and the Empire both will be very different to our eyes.”

The speaker and his fellows sat around a long table, amply lit in this deliberate dark. The warm glow furnished their bare faces with the importance given subjects of royal portraiture. Five or six strangers sat in a circle.

And at its head, Lord Pravin.

The sinister figure of Osmund’s recurring nightmares—responsible in part for the death of his father, and for the untimely end of at least one royal look-alike—had little changed. He was the same physically unimpressive little man, with thinning red hair, a wispy mustache, and round glasses that rested halfway down his nose. And yet he had those sharp, exacting eyes which any moment would look up and know him, flensing the truth of him from beneath cloak and mask both, and it would not even matter that Osmund was stronger, younger, and infinitely higher-born.

“And how might we handle these spoiled sons, my lord?” asked a second man. He was well-coiffed, with a prominent chin and manicured brows, and spoke out of a smiling mouth with a noticeable Chantelais accent.

“A sportsman must know how to handle any beast, of of course.” Pravin’s hands moved with the little efforts of their card game. “For example, you kill the lurking nightingale, knowing the song it sings isn’t so harmless. You taunt and bait the eagle, and raid the nest when it’s far afield. A sparrow, the twittering thing, you keep until it ceases to amuse you.”

The Chantelais smiled sedately. “And where is your future king in that? The sparrow?”

“To dispense partly with the metaphor,” said Lord Pravin coyly, “one day my daughter may complain of too many sons. And then, our false falcon, the Prince Osmund, will take a fall off of one of his beloved horses.”

Osmund’s breath stilled, and his heart thrummed with terror. But not a single eye so much as glanced in his direction. False falcon. The Prince Osmund that Pravin referred to was not himself, he realized, but someone else entirely. An impostor. A different bird trapped in his cage. Focus.

Moving with a swiftness and surety he did not recognize, Osmund poured the wine. One hand ducked beneath his cloak, and within its cover he unstoppered the little vial, tipping a single drop into the silver cup.

Not a moment too soon. He was noticed at last. “I’ll have some, boy,” said Pravin absently. A gloved hand waved in his direction.

The steps between were as infinite as the sea. But somehow, Osmund approached, and extended the cup. Somehow, Pravin did not even turn his head to glance at him when he accepted the offering. The thing was done.

The only disaster was this: when the cup passed out of his hands to Pravin’s, Osmund felt a tickling in his nostrils, beneath where the phoenix’s face shielded his own.

Basilisk venom was vanishingly rare, so few knew how to recognize it. It was a subtle scent, not sweet or acrid, like the famous (and possibly fictionalized) poisons that slipped their way into unsuspecting mouths in his romance novels. But Osmund knew it, for he realized now he had smelled it once before.

And so surely would the man who had put it in a cask of wine and given it to Osmund to present to his father!

Time itself seemed to stop as Pravin weighed the cup in his fingers, swaying it this way and that. Almost nonchalantly, he swept a ringed hand over the top, the inset stone glowing blue. No poison. At least none the enchantment could detect. Drink, Osmund willed, his guts clenching horribly. Drink, and don’t inhale!

“Oh, our good necromancer is here,” said Pravin cheerfully, putting down his wine. “Let’s have our dancer for the night.”

A fresh jolt of fear drew Osmund’s attention upwards, as if he expected to find the usurper queen herself standing there in their midst. But this necromancer was a portly and balding fellow, wheezing as he took to an elevated spot in the middle of the room. Behind him he dragged a heavy sack which rattled against the wood floor and bulged with unusual contours. His props, perhaps? He didn’t look much like a dancer, but as if in on a great joke, the guests all began hooting. Someone played a flute. And he overturned the sack.

If words fell short in describing the exultant joy of the festival outside, then they were useless at giving shape to the horror in front of Osmund’s very eyes. Even his most feverish, guilt-ridden nightmares had not done their diligence in preparing him.

Out of the bag came a human skeleton. Bare, bleached bones, which could belong to any man or woman of a certain height. But not the clothes. The skeleton was attired like a king. The last time Osmund had seen that tunic, cloak, and crown, they had been clinging to his father’s dead flesh. Now they draped the bones loosely like an oversized shawl.

At the necromancer’s bidding, the royal skeleton stood and bowed to its audience. In so doing, the crown tumbled from its head to clatter loudly on the floor, and the abomination jumped back, hand raising to jaw in a caricature of startled surprise. Uproarious laughter filled the hall.

The doublet’s front still bore a dark wine stain.

This is a dream, I am dreaming. The words were not so much an effort to convince himself as an incantation whose clear, predictable syllables he grasped at. This is a dream, I am dreaming. Dream, dream, dreaming.

“May I get some too, m’sieur?”

It took Osmund a moment to realize the second man, the Chantelais, had addressed him. He met that inquisitive look and found it as penetrating as a stab. Beside him, Lord Pravin levered the wine cup half to his lips, then pulled it back and gave it a dubious look. Osmund’s hands quivered. He fumbled the tray. The full decanter of wine tumbled to the floor, but not without splashing a tiny blood-red mark onto Pravin’s immaculate yellow doublet.

The ghoul kept dancing. But the world stopped.

“Well, you inept bufffoon? Do you have a plan to repay me for what you’ve done?” said Pravin, businesslike, finally noticing him. His tone reflected nothing more complex than consternation. Could it be the mask and costume and change of hair color were enough? Were his blue eyes not screaming his guilt loud enough for the dead to hear?

Osmund opened his mouth to speak, but no words would come. If his eyes did not give him away as the very prince Pravin was hunting for, his voice would. If he spoke a word, all would be known.

As he would realize later, in that moment he could have lowered his register. He could have put on a coarser accent. He could have pretended to be unhearing or simple or even to not speak Tolmish. But these were tricks of a cleverer animal than the one Osmund had become. Legs he remembered, and how to use them. Flee, screamed the part of him that was pheasant and buck both.

Thus Osmund turned and he ran, shoving aside men and women in their finery as he bolted single-mindedly for the front door through which he’d come. “Catch that man!” he heard Pravin call. “Don’t let him leave!”

Hands started to reach, grasping. A few managed to snag an elbow or a piece of his cloak, but being fearful and not knowing his offense, they did not hold fast enough to keep him. Osmund found a series of doors and emerged not into the open air, but somewhere cold and dark. The world spun, and he fell ungracefully.

Pain, again and again, sharp, then a cold thud. He was on the dirty floor. Behind him, stairs. A basement?

He absorbed the shock of the fall in agonized silence, waiting for his inevitable capture. An incredible moment came and went. Then another. No one opened the door to pursue him. Could it be they’d all thought he’d fled outside?

He forced himself to trembling feet, seeming to have escaped this unglamorous tumble without any broken bones or a snapped neck—a stunning show of mercy from the heavens. With one arm, he leaned on a barrel to wait until the spinning canter of the world stopped. The lid was partially open.

Inside, a glint of gold. His eyes bugged.

Theckerils. With one hand, he reached inside and swept them aside. Beneath, more! An entire barrel full of them! Could all of these barrels be…?! Osmund’s breath halted. Even if they were counterfeits, each and every one, the amount of gold in evidence was staggering.

He didn’t notice the footsteps until strong arms seized him from behind and held him steady.

“And here you are again,” said Mylo almost piteously, taking a seat on the barrel in front of him as Osmund struggled against the mysterious assailant behind. “Listening in on my guests’ private conversations, then running off once you’ve gotten an earful? You think I wasn’t waiting to notice ’til you finally manhandled the books in my study? You’re a sorry excuse for a spy. How much else have you heard, birdie?”