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

Ten miles before the frontier between Red March and Florence the Appan Way joins the Roma Road and becomes subsumed by the larger route, our traffic lost in the to and fro of that great artery of Empire. For all of us heading south an air of anticipation grew. After Vyene, and Vermillion of course, there is no greater city than Roma in any fragment of the Broken Empire, and the taste of Roma lay thick in the air. The sight of papal messengers reminded us all how close the pope lay now. Scarcely an hour would pass without one of the pope’s riders clattering by, flamboyant in their purple silks atop lean stallions, glossy black and bred for endurance. Monks traipsed the road in columns of ten or thirty, chanting prayers or calling the plainsong up and down their length, and priests of every shade and flavour beat their paths north and south. I recalled that my own father must have passed this way with his retinue scarcely a week earlier. I guessed the old man must be in Roma by now, presented before her holiness and perhaps having it explained to him what a cardinal should be and by just how wide a margin he had missed the mark.

My banking papers and obvious breeding got me through the border checkpoint, a pleasant enough inn with an attached barracks full of ornately armoured and overheated Florentine soldiers. The country on the other side of the frontier proved as dry and as hot as the southern stretches of Red March had. Where streams ran they grew olive groves, tobacco, chillies and oranges. Where there were no streams they farmed rocks, with the occasional goat watching on.

Sleepy whitewashed villages observed the Roma Road from the slopes of the arid foothills. In time the villages became towns and the foothills reached up toward mountains. The Roma Road, forced at last from its stubborn addiction to straightness, began to wind and turn, bending its will to that of the surrounding terrain. The air grew a touch fresher and the peaks’ shadows filled the valleys, making each evening a blessed relief from the heat of the plains.

Umbertide revealed itself as the road wound down from a high pass into the broad and fertile valley of Umberto. The city, viewed from an elevation, lay white and splendid, surrounded by orderly farming districts and outlying villas of enviable size. The impression of wealth and peace only grew as the remaining distance shrank.

My papers won me swift passage through the city gates and soon I was trailing one of the urchins who wait by the entrance of every city, touting to lead you to the best example of whatever it is you’re seeking, be it a bed for sleeping, a bed for fornication, or a hostelry to wash the road dust from your throat. The trick is to remind them that if it doesn’t look like the best then they’ll get your boot up their arse rather than a copper in hand.

I took a room at the boarding house the boy led me to and stabled Nor across the road. After cleaning myself up with a washbowl and rag I took my meal in the communal hall and waited out the noonday heat listening to the local chatter. The travellers in Mistress Joelli’s house of good repute came from every corner of the empire and held little in common save for their business in Umbertide. There didn’t seem to be a man among them who wasn’t in search of a loan or finance for some or other venture. And they all carried the scent of money about them.

That afternoon found me in the cool marble vault of the reception hall at House Gold. Visitors paced, their footsteps echoing, clerks passed through, bound on definite courses, and receptionists scribbled behind marble counters, raising their heads only when some new arrival presented themself.

“Prince Jalan Kendeth to see Davario Romano Evenaline.” I waved the papers at the small and pinch-faced man behind the counter, affecting that strain of boredom that my brother Darin uses so well on officials.

“Take a seat, please.” The man nodded to a bank of chairs against the far wall and scribbled something in his ledger.

I held my ground, though tempted to lean over the counter and slam the fellow’s head into it.

A long moment passed and the man looked up again, mildly surprised to see me still there.

“Yes?”

“Prince Jalan Kendeth to see Davario Romano Evenaline,” I repeated.

“Take a seat please, your highness.”

It looked to be the best I’d get out of him without the application of a hammer and so I stalked off to view the street from one of the tall windows. Halfway across the foyer I spotted a familiar face and veered away. Some faces are hard to forget—this face, tattooed as thickly as any clerk’s ledger with heathen script, was impossible to forget. I’d seen it last in Ancrath, in a peculiarly lucid dream, urging me to have Snorri killed. I found myself facing a row of chairs along the wall beside the counter and took a place beside a dark fellow in light robes. I kept my head down, hoping Sageous hadn’t seen me, my eyes on his feet as he continued across the marble floor. I didn’t draw another breath before the dream-witch exited into the street.