The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

The throne room proved less crowded than the chamber before it, with thirty or so of Uncle’s favourites gathered around, wine goblets in hand, servants hovering. I saw a dozen familiar but anonymous lords, Sir Grethem all in armour as if prepared for one of the tourneys that made his reputation, Lady Bellinda, stood close to the centre, the most recent and youngest of Hertet’s long string of mistresses. And beside her, perhaps Hertet’s most powerful supporter, the Duke of Grast, a burly fellow sporting a thick grey beard, a man I might have spread the odd cruel rumour about over the years after he caught me with his sister.

Hertet’s ebony chair stood on a dais and rose above him, the back spreading in a dramatic scroll, the lines of it tracked with inset rubies, returning the lantern light and turning to glowing drops of blood.

None of this splendour exerted quite such a draw on my eye as the crown upon the new king’s head. Grandmother’s imperial crown, a heavy thing of iron, honouring the bloodiest of her ancestors and the days of the Red March when we were warriors one and all. Centuries had softened the thing with a wealth of diamonds and a tracery of red-gold, but it still spoke of power won by the sword and the bow.

Hertet looked lost in the dark grip of his throne, swamped by a voluminous robe of cloth-of-gold, worked all over in elaborate whorls and spirals of the Brettan kind. I followed in Roland’s wake, noting my uncle’s unhealthy pallor as he sweated beneath the crown, more haggard than he had been at Father’s funeral that morning.

“Father!” Roland’s slight speech impediment managed to put a comic edge on most words. A kinder sire would have changed his son’s name to John when the problem with “r’s became apparent. Roland pushed past another couple of lords and raised both his hand and his voice. “Father! I’ve found Prince Jalan, come to swear to you!”

Roland stepped aside to present me, his gaze falling to my bound wrists for the first time, with some confusion, now taking in the torn and blood-spattered clothes.

“Nephew. I commend you for being the first of Reymond’s boys to bend the knee . . . but you’ve come before me in rags and ropes? Some new fashion perhaps? Heh? Heh?”

His barked laughter sparked the court-in-waiting into sycophantic echoes, tittering at the state of me. I supposed they might now just be called “the court” since the waiting appeared to be over.

Hertet raised both hands, a tolerant call for quiet. “So where are those brothers of yours? Martus should be offering his fealty. He’s head of your house now, no? Until the pope’s new cardinal evicts the lot of you at least!” More laughter at that.

“Martus holds the enemy before the palace walls at your command . . . Uncle.” I couldn’t call him king, not yet. “I last saw him about to charge a rag-a-maul. I don’t know if—”

“A what?” Hertet asked.

The Duke of Grast stepped in before I could reply, cold eyes upon me. “A rag-a-maul, majesty. The peasants’ word for the dust-devils that blow up from time to time. They hold them to be haunted.”

“Heh! Heh! That boy! I always said he’d fight wind if he hadn’t anyone else to battle! Didn’t I say that, Roland? Didn’t I?” Hertet wiped the grey straggles from his forehead as the dutiful laughter followed.

“I don’t know if Martus survived.” I raised my voice. “And Darin is dead, killed behind the city walls by dead men who over-ran the Appan Gate. The outer city is burning. We have—”

“Yes. Yes.” Hertet’s brow furrowed beneath the crown, irritation showing in his voice. “Aren’t you the marshal, Nephew? Shouldn’t you be out there putting a stop to all this? Or are you unequal to the task?” He looked nervous as much as angry, twitchy in the throne.

I sensed a weakness in him. I would never get the help needed at the gate if I let them laugh me from the court, so I attacked. “How did you get the crown, Uncle?” The sparkle of the diamonds captured my eye. “It was locked in the royal treasury.” My father had told me about the iron vault. The first Gholloth spent a small fortune to defend a large fortune. Turkmen master smiths travelled from the east to build it in situ. In time the vault might be breached—but so quickly? “The Red Queen keeps the key.”

Silence followed the scattered gasps at my temerity. Hertet reached into the golden collar of his robes and drew forth Loki’s key, making slow rotations on the end of a twisted silver chain. “It didn’t take any effort to wrest this from that ugly old man she keeps in the tower. Much safer with me, and so good at opening doors! You wouldn’t believe the secrets I’ve found or how much gold dear Mother had stashed away . . .”