The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)

“Stop this foolery! Get down from there, sir! And face me like a man! Face me as you should have had the decency to do when you first received my challenge!” The man on the big horse had my attention now, his face red with fury around a neat grey moustache and the narrow slit of his mouth.

“His hands are bound, Count Isen!” Bonarti, leaning around me.

“Prisoner!” the Slav brother closest to me declared.

“Nonsense!” Count Isen—the real article this time—was having none of it. “Enough of this farce. Cut him loose and get him down. I’ve no time for such foolishness. A day wasted on the road when I could have been doing something useful . . .”

Bonarti took his knife, a small bejewelled thing, and cut my wrists free.

“Prisoner!” the Slav repeated but with no small amount of the traffic having stopped to watch the entertainment the brothers would be fools to try anything.

I brought my hands forward, rubbing both wrists and making a close study of my mutilated finger. It proved less injured than I’d imagined, with only the nail ripped away and the exposed flesh crusted over with black scabs. Part of me was pleased the damage wasn’t irreversible, the other part horrified that so much pain had come from so small an injury. Even with the Count of Isen ready to slice me into quivering chunks I managed a shiver at the thought of what Cutter John could achieve given his leisure with a man.

“Get down, sir! I mean to have my satisfaction without delay!” And Count Isen swung himself from the saddle of his vast horse, to vanish entirely behind it. He emerged from its shadow, hands on hips, glaring up at me. He was as small a man as I’d seen in my months on the road, with the exception of Dr. Taproot’s dwarf, dressed in the finest possible travel attire and trailing a sword at his hip that might have scraped the floor even if it hung from my own.

I reached up to my mask and tugged at it, pointing at Bonarti then at the back of my head.

“Yes, I bought Bonarti as your second. Mine’s Stevanas over there.” Isen waved a hand at a solid warrior glowering toward me from his horse. Sir Kritchen here will adjudicate to ensure fair play. Now get down, sir, or so help me I’ll have you dragged from the saddle.”

I met Isen’s stare for the first time. Beneath neatly barbered hair and well-manicured eyebrows the eyes of a maniac stared up at me. A small maniac, granted, but somehow scary as all hell even so. I got off Nor’s back sharp enough, tugging at the mask and discovering the heavy lock at the rear. Dismounting wasn’t an act of bravery. The thing about horses is that they’re great for running away once you’re actually running away, but they lack a touch of initial acceleration so if you’re right next to a threat and looking to escape, you may well find you’re better off on foot. By the time Nor got up to speed and broke clear of my various captors, enemies, and would-be murderers, a least one of them would likely have stuck a sword through some part of me that I’d rather keep. Instead I tugged meaningfully at the straps and pointed at my mouth.

“Enough of this mummery! Defend yourself!” Count Isen drew his over-long sword and pointed it my way.

I held out my empty hands. “I haven’t even got a sword you tiny madman!” is what I tried to say, though it emerged as a long string of “ung” sounds.

“Sir Kritchen.” Isen kept those little black beads of insanity fixed on my face. “Give the prince his sword. I see the fellow behind him has two blades.”

And while I made further protests Sir Kritchen, a tall elderly fellow I remembered from somewhere, dismounted to retrieve my sword from one of the Slav brothers. With the gathered crowd growing by the minute the man had little option but to hand it over. He didn’t look happy. Probably wondering if his homeland was far away enough to avoid Maeres’s wrath if they didn’t get me back to him in Vermillion as charged.

Sir Kritchen, immaculate despite his long and dusty ride from the city, wrapped my right hand about the sword’s hilt. The last time I’d swung the weapon in earnest had been at the Aral Pass. The notches told a story that I’d largely forgotten and wasn’t keen to relive. Somehow terror had pushed me into a berserker frenzy that day. Even if I could repeat the feat here on the Appan roadside it would do me little good. Battle madness doesn’t make you the better swordsman, it just stops you caring whether the man you’re facing is the better swordsman.

I stared stupidly at my blade a moment, dazzled by the sunlight flashing from it. Dehydration and hunger had left me slow-minded, not quite connecting with the events unfolding around me.