A Crown for Cold Silver Page 15

  “Huzzah!” cried Purna. “A drink for the king!”

  It was difficult to say whether Maroto or Captain Gilleland was more dumbfounded when the rest of the haggard fops took up the cry, and as Maroto wiped sticky wine from his face he saw that everyone save for Duchess Din and Kōshaku Köz was cheering him from where they sat in the sand or stood propped up by their servants. And who knew, had Din and Köz been conscious, they might have joined in, too. Maroto grinned at Purna, then grinned even wider at Captain Gilleland.

  “Long live the king, eh, Cap’n?” he said, licking the finest sparkling brut he’d ever tasted off his lips.

  “Or not,” said Captain Gilleland, and Maroto didn’t like the man’s wink as he turned away, not one bit.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Zosia returned to pain, as she so often did these days. Not the familiar aching in her knees and joints, but a chisel in her brow, right between the eyes. As she had aged, hangovers had grown from annoyances into ordeals, but this was an entirely different sort of bullshit, one she had not experienced in many a thankful year: the comedown from a poisoning. The dim echoes of monstrous visions reverberated through her skull, but already the hallucinations or nightmares or whatever the fuck they were started fading, fading fast, and she had made no effort to hold on to them. Kicked away from them as hard as she could.

  Opening her eyes, she found herself splayed out in a tastefully appointed bedroom. Choplicker lay beside her, but the beast had the sense to stay on the floor instead of sharing the sleeping mat. Candlelight silhouetted two figures who sat on cushions by the foot of her bed, their shadows looming halfway up the painted screen behind them. Kang-ho, and a handsome older man in sumptuous Ugrakari silks, his scarlet wig pinned up in half a dozen small buns.

  “You’re the King of Hwabun?” Zosia asked, trying very hard not to notice just how awful her mouth tasted. “Jun-hwan?”

  The lord of one of the Star’s tiniest sovereign states nodded. “Mistress Clell, I am pleased to make your acquaintance, and apologize for any misunderstanding that arose this afternoon. I hope you are recovered from your fainting spell?”

  “Uh-huh.” Zosia closed her eyes, willing the pain to recede. She’d actually been able to pull that sort of thing off, once upon a time, but now the grief in her skull just laughed at her presumption. “Thanks for your concern.”

  “Now, I have other guests to attend to, and so I will speak plainly with you and expect you to do the same with me. Do we have an understanding?”

  “Absolutely,” said Zosia, sitting up in the sheets and taking a better stock of the room. None of her possessions were present, save the devil who lounged beside her. Kang-ho looked nervous, as well he might—the cheek of the man, selling her out to his husband.

  “We’ve already spoken very plainly, you and I, while you were under the influence of the harpy toxin. Do you remember what we spoke of?” Whatever face Zosia made must have pleased Jun-hwan, for he smiled all the wider. “Mistress Clell, I assure you that anything you divulged shall be kept strictly between us. Not even my husband was party to our discussion.”

  “No?” What in the devil’s ken was this creep playing at?

  “I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of your husband, Mistress Clell. I am sure that if anything happened to Kang-ho I would likewise seek justice, even if such a course was not strictly judicious.”

  Zosia sighed, lying back on the warm mat. So much for the element of surprise. Staring at the black-paneled ceiling, she said, “You claimed we’d speak plainly, so let’s get on with it. What happens next?”

  “That is entirely up to you,” said Jun-hwan. “Again, I am not entirely unsympathetic to your plight. In fact, I empathize with you much more than you may suspect. You see, our daughter Ji-hyeon—”

  Kang-ho interjected something fast and fresh in Immaculate but went silent at a glare from his husband. Kang-ho’s frown deepened, but he did not interrupt again as Jun-hwan went on.

  “Our daughter, Princess Ji-hyeon, has been missing for several months. We have reason to believe she was kidnapped by agents of Samoth. Given the history that you and my husband share where the Crimson Empire is concerned, it is most interesting to me that both your family and his have been so recently targeted by their interests, albeit in different fashions.”

  “Huh,” said Zosia, almost forgetting her headache for a moment there. Almost. “Kidnapped princess, eh? That’s obviously a sight worse than the murder of a few hundred peons, but I guess I can see how you’d draw a comparison. I’m flattered, really.”

  “I have no interest in pitting my grief against yours, madam, I simply point out the facts.”

  “And the fact is, we don’t actually know it was Imperial agents who took her,” said Kang-ho, fidgeting. “For all we know—”

  “For all we know it was simply one of my dear husband’s dear friends seeking to turn a dear profit from a ransom,” said Jun-hwan. “The last time one of his war buddies came to call we wound up losing our daughter Ji-hyeon, so you can understand my interest in you when I was informed that yet another unexpected guest claimed to be an old acquaintance of Kang-ho.”

  “How’s this, now?” said Zosia, eyeing Kang-ho just as hard as his husband was. “Who?”

  “He introduced himself to us as Brother Mikal,” said Jun-hwan. “Supposedly a missionary of the Burnished Chain, and for reasons quite beyond my understanding my husband insisted we take him on as a tutor for the girls. As I have entrusted their education to Kang-ho, I thought no more of the matter until it was too late. That my helpmeet failed to mention he knew this Brother Mikal from his time as one of the Five Villains, albeit by another name, was a most disappointing revelation.”

  “Hoartrap?” said Zosia, raising her eyes at Kang-ho. “You let him around your children?”

  “No, Fennec,” said Kang-ho quickly, his husband watching this exchange with obvious interest. “True devils and false gods know I would never let a sorcerer set foot on this isle, let alone in my home!”

  “Fennec?” It hurt to smile but there was no helping it. “You installed Fennec in your house? That’s even worse than Hoartrap! I hope you people don’t put a high value on the virtue of your princesses.”

  “That is not our primary concern here,” said Jun-hwan, looking none too happy with his husband. “But I have since learned all there is to hear of this rogue’s character, and I can assure you I am unimpressed with my husband’s judgment on the matter.”

  “I doubt you’ve heard all there is to know about him,” Zosia said helpfully as Kang-ho squirmed. “Did you tell him about the time he seduced that Usban abbotess with the—”

  “He blackmailed me into giving him the job,” said Kang-ho. “Swore he just needed a place to lay low for a year or two until some storm he’d conjured blew over. I turned him down initially, but then it got ugly. I relented when he gave me his word that he would play the part of Spirit Guard and nothing more, and we used to be able to put stock in one another’s oaths, didn’t we? Besides, he left me no choice in the end—I couldn’t afford to send him away.”

  “That is a matter of some conjecture,” said Jun-hwan sharply. “What is not is that he disappeared a short time ago, along with Ji-hyeon and one of her other guardians.”

  “Who’s the other missing guard?” asked Zosia.

  “Choi,” said Jun-hwan, “my daughter’s Martial Guard. She had been with our house for many years before this Brother Mikal came along. Which would imply a longstanding conspiracy to abduct my daughter, or else Choi’s body has yet to wash ashore. For her sake I hope it is the latter.”

  “So when I rolled up you assumed I was in cahoots? Maybe delivering a ransom letter?” The man didn’t give his husband’s friends much credit if he thought they’d send a collaborator to negotiate instead of brokering the terms from a safe distance. “It’s bad for business to keep a family waiting this long without sending something—you sure she hasn’t kidnapped herself? Pri
ncesses do that, I hear.”

  “There was a witness,” said Kang-ho, though his husband was again watching him with unmistakable skepticism. “Her Virtue Guard, Keun-ju, saw Fennec and Choi carrying her off, and when he tried to stop them they threw him into the cove. He nearly drowned.”

  “Good thing he didn’t, or you’d have nobody to tell you what happened,” said Zosia.

  “I expect he will give you the full account on your voyage,” said Jun-hwan, standing. Peering down his nose at Zosia, he cut an imposing figure. “I want you to find my daughter, Mistress Clell, and bring her home. Then I will give you what assistance I may in your quest to bring justice against Samoth.”

  “A princess for an army?” Zosia’s headache throbbed, spoiling any emotion this proposal might stir in her. All she wanted was to bury her face in a cool pillow for the next day or three. “And how do you know I’m not really in on it with Fennec, that this isn’t how we’re leveraging a martial ransom out of you? Maybe we’ve got her squirreled away in some Linkensterne stinghouse, and I’ll be back in a week with the princess to get my payoff?”

  “As I said, we spoke, you and I, when you were swimming with the harpies, and at those depths few can tell a convincing truth, let alone a convincing lie,” said Jun-hwan. He nodded at Choplicker. “And if I had any doubts, your companion disavowed me of them. You always keep your word, apparently.”

  “That a fact?” Zosia tried to shrug off the ice water that ran down her back. The Immaculate were eerily comfortable with spirits, weirdborn, and all other sorts of horrors, but it was common knowledge that only practitioners of the black arts could truly speak with devils. Drugging and interrogating Zosia against her will was one thing, getting chummy with her fiend was quite another. “Choplicker put in a good word for me, did he?”

  “Choplicker?” Jun-hwan looked aghast. “You should treat such a being with more reverence, Mistress Clell.”

  “Yeah, I bet he said as much,” said Zosia, limply kicking the sheets in Choplicker’s direction. “Fucker still knew better than to get on the bed with me, though, didn’t he?”

  Choplicker growled low in his throat, which finally inspired Zosia to sit up straight, but only so she could swat him on the nose. That was exactly what she needed, the old monster putting on airs just because some kooky Immaculate communed with his evil ass. Jun-hwan hissed through his teeth but did not comment on Zosia’s treatment of her devil, and Choplicker whined reproachfully at her. She raised her palm but didn’t pop him again. Staying upright took all the energy she had.

  Jun-hwan reached down and petted Choplicker, his eyes on Zosia’s. “It is said that in the Black Lands, the Great Dark King craved light for his subjects and so sent two fire dogs through the Gate of the Sunken Kingdom, into our world. One tried to bring back the sun, and the other, the moon. Yet the sun burned the first dog’s tongue, and so she dropped it, and the moon froze the second dog’s teeth, and so he dropped it. Yet knowing the Great Dark King’s disposition toward failure, the two fire dogs try over and over to carry off our celestial lights, and they will continue to do so as long as the sun and the moon rise over the Star.”

  “Eclipses, right?” Zosia remembered the song Kang-ho had sung her nearly three decades previous, when they had taken advantage of the distracting religious hysteria the event brought on in Yennek to sneak in and rob Castle Illicitus blind. “You saying what, he’s a moon-eating fire dog? If you saw the hassle his own hindparts give him when he’s munching down back there you wouldn’t give him so much credit!”

  “I do not suggest the old myths be taken literally, but I do know they come from an age when mortals were not so alone upon the Star as we fancy ourselves now. All cultures have legends of black dogs, and while these songs are different, the universal truth is that such beings are due deference,” said Jun-hwan, offering the beast another respectful nod.

  “Mister, you need to lay off your fish oil,” said Zosia, though the man’s legend dredged up all kinds of weird memories of her harpy dream, memories that sank back down in oily blackness before she could focus on them: enormous, squirming monsters that were but fleas upon greater nightmares still, leviathans churning in the lightless center of all things…

  “Anyway,” said Kang-ho, “our honored guest was just leaving, weren’t you?”

  “Keun-ju will travel with you,” said Jun-hwan, and when his husband gave him a wicked glare, the king shrugged. “He has been desperate to go after Ji-hyeon ever since the abduction, and what use have we for a third Virtue Guard when we have but two children left?”

  “Zosia doesn’t need one of our servants spying on her!”

  “Mistress Clell,” corrected Jun-hwan. “Though it is also true that Keun-ju can act as an interpreter for her, should the need arise, and confirm any and all reports sent to us.”

  “I’ve already got a translator,” said Zosia. “The soldier brat, Bang, she can come with me. I don’t need nor want anyone else tagging along.”

  “Keun-ju goes with you,” said Jun-hwan. “If you also require the services of Lieutenant Bang Lin, I am happy to write to her commander at Linkensterne and explain my need to furlough her for a personal matter. Kang-ho, I trust you can see to sending a decommission fee to the mainland headquarters?”

  An Immaculate spat was the same as any other kind—tedious—and Zosia awkwardly got to her feet in a bid to distract herself from their exchange. As she wobbled, Choplicker rose beside her, looking up at her with his hungry black eyes. She put a hand on his furry head, but only to steady herself. Princess hunting. Ugh. Nobody said bankrolling a private war would be easy, though.

  Zosia felt marginally better that evening, but as soon as she returned to her mat she sank through it, splashing futilely in her bedding before going under. All through the night she floated higher and higher in moon-greased clouds, drifting up the haunch of a monstrosity bigger than any city, any mountain, any idea or ideal, the moon behind its many heads glowing like a silver crown… But other than the lucid dreams, it seemed a milder detox than most of her previous poisonings. It was mad to think she and Kang-ho had once smoked harpyfish oil on purpose, one wild night in Thao.

  They set out the next morning, by which time Zosia was feeling invigorated, if only to get shy of the island. His Elegance Jun-hwan stayed behind to tend to his unseen guests, but Kang-ho accompanied them to Othean, known to foreigners as Little Heaven, the capital of the Immaculate Isles. After various wheelings and dealings they were admitted into the northern harbor of the massive island. White-uniformed soldiers watched them from the moment they left their small ship until they reached the walls of the Autumn Palace, and from the ramparts more hard eyes monitored their progress as they followed a gravel road out into the dead fields that surrounded the Temple of Pentacles. It was beginning to feel like old times, drawing this kind of hostile attention from the locals just by taking in a little sightseeing.

  “We were here when the spirit attacked us,” said Keun-ju, the missing girl’s Virtue Guard. Young, veiled, and bright, the lad presumably hailed from a lower-class isle, or maybe even the mainland.

  “And here I’d always thought you Immaculate were cozy with devils,” said Zosia. “Who’d have thought one of them would try to gobble up a princess?”

  “Respecting something is not the same as assuming it is safe,” said Kang-ho. “Quite the contrary. You don’t live on the sea without learning that lesson.”

  “If a houseboy, a couple more servants, and a teenage princess put it down, it can’t have been too dread a beasty, eh?” said Bang from where she brought up the rear, Choplicker at her flank.

  Neither Keun-ju nor Kang-ho seemed willing to respond to the soldier, but Zosia smiled. “So that was the first time she snuck off, was it? To go devil-hunting near a Gate, of all places—I wonder who put that idea into her head.”

  “Keun-ju?” asked Kang-ho, and when the Virtue Guard cast his eyes into the barren field, Kang-ho puffed out his cheeks in exasperation.
“I’m hardly going to have you whipped now that she’s gone, so let’s have it—I can think of one or two other occasions on which Ji-hyeon was not where she was expected, so what of it?”

  “He was sly about it, but I always thought Brother Mikal protested Princess Ji-hyeon’s fancies a little too strongly,” Keun-ju said bitterly. “He counseled against certain actions, yes, but always in the most alluring fashion possible. That night was no exception, and he was instrumental in helping us surreptitiously depart the palace. Since we all seemed in peril, and especially considering we overcame that harvest devil together, I did not suspect him of treachery until after it was too late. Now I wonder if he used Chainite witchcraft to summon the monster himself, to draw the princess closer to his confidence.”

  “And the other one, her Martial Guard, did she ever rub you wrong?” asked Bang, expressing more of an interest in the plot than she’d previously displayed since Zosia had filled her in.

  “Choi was always beyond reproach,” Keun-ju sniffed. “Right up until she threw me in the sea when I tried to stop them from abducting my princess.”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” said Zosia. “Back it up to when you four came out here, during the festival—what went down exactly? You snuck away, ran afoul of some devil that slipped through the Gate, beat it down, and came back to the party covered in gourd guts—that’s it?”

  “The expression on Jun-hwan’s face when Ji-hyeon burst back into the ballroom, pumpkin string in her hair…” Kang-ho smiled sadly. “It was the last festival she attended. That was last autumn, and then a few months later she disappeared, just before the Winter Moon Ball. Fennec and Choi shoved the boat back to sea after they landed here under cover of dark, but it was spotted by a guard. They found tracks leading from the shore all the way up here, to the temple. Even with the help of Ji-hyeon’s betrothed we haven’t been able to unearth anything more—the trail goes cold at the Gate.”