6
The prince had all the tools he would need to pull off something like this.
First of all, he’s an accomplished artificient.
And three of the glyphs on his nails are unfamiliar to me.
I’m not an expert on the glyph compendium, but I did study hundreds of glyphs when I was choosing mine.
I suspect he invented the three I couldn’t place, which means he’s not just an expert—he’s a master.
As a prince, Vawn could have amassed the forces, the allies, and the funds necessary for a dramatic political move. He had knowledge of his relatives’ schedules; he knew when they would be most vulnerable. And he placed himself outside the palace grounds on the night of the assassinations.
Maybe he even arranged for the death of his former bodyguard so a new, untried one would be present instead—someone who didn’t know him well, who wouldn’t ask questions if he behaved out of character or did anything unusual. Someone like me.
Our flight from the Lyre & Vice seemed too easy. Maybe it was. Maybe the attackers feigned the assassination attempt while under orders to let him escape.
So why is he running away with me? Why not return immediately to the palace and complete his takeover of the kingdom?
Unless he’s got a plan for that, too. If he returns too quickly and takes the crown, it might be obvious that he orchestrated everything.
That’s why no one has claimed responsibility and announced their rulership over Belavrin.
Vawn is having his soldiers maintain a holding pattern.
They’ll wait a few days, maybe even a week, during which he can produce some trumped-up allies to help him take back his family’s kingdom.
Then he’ll return as the surviving heir, defeat the “enemy,” and claim the throne.
He’s the villain.
He destroyed his entire bloodline. And I’ve been playing the fool, thinking I was protecting him. He must be laughing at me deep in that black heart of his.
Vawn taps his foot, arms crossed. “Are you going to unlock the room?”
“I am,” I say crisply. “But neither of us is touching the bed until we’ve bathed.”
“My disguise will wash off,” he reminds me, touching his filthy locks.
“You can wrap your head and face with an extra towel.” I shove the door wide, surveying a plain room with dingy plaster walls and a dusty wooden floor.
There’s a bed, barely wide enough for two.
On the washstand sits a lamp, a chipped pitcher, and a bowl scarcely large enough to dip one’s fingers.
The decorations on the wall consist of a spotted mirror and a cross-stitch of several lumpy-looking blackberries with splotchy leaves.
I lift the blanket, peeking at the sheets. “Bedding looks clean enough. No bugs that I can see.”
“Are you satisfied, then? Ready to bathe?”
I want to confront him now, but talking about sensitive things in this house, where the walls are thin, would be ill-advised. Best to wait until we get to the baths.
“You should leave your belts here,” Vawn suggests. “No use taking weapons to the bath. What is in all those compartments, anyway?”
My brain rattles off the list: nail repair kit, cotton twists for my cycle, our money, mild herbs to chew for headache pain, emergency antidote tabs in case of exposure to toxins, teeth cleansing pellets, and a tiny vial of perfume.
“None of your business. And I’ll be bringing everything with me.
You think I’m going to leave our possessions here to be stolen?
And what if we’re attacked in the bath-house? ”
“The lady said it would be empty.”
“Don’t believe everything people say.” I push past him into the hallway.
He shuts the door to our room and follows me down the back stairs, out into the yard behind the inn. I scan the grass-tufted dirt, the garden, and the sheds nearby.
A small girl in a tattered gray apron watches us curiously while tossing handfuls of feed to the chickens clucking in their pen. “Are you looking for the baths?” she asks.
“Yes, please. Which building is it?”
“Not a building.” She points to a low hill past the garden.
There’s a stone archway that seems to lead into the hill itself.
The sign at the bar did say Historic Subterranean Mineral Baths, so it makes sense that they would be underground.
My mind conjures images of steaming, blue-green pools lit by golden lamps, surrounded by smooth gray rock.
I really hope that’s what we’re getting.
“Thank you,” I tell the girl.
As we start toward the arch, she adds, “You’re lucky. There’s no ghosts today.”
The prince turns slowly on his heel. “Sorry… ghosts?”
“The baths. They’re in the old catacombs.” She shakes her apron, emptying the last bits of dried corn. “Have fun!” And she skips away.
The prince and I stare at each other.
“The historic baths… are in a tomb.” He enunciates each word with dreadful precision. “The minerals come from the dead bodies, Syth. From the bones. You want me, the prince of Belavrin, to bathe among corpses.”
“Hush!” I drag him farther from the inn, toward the archway in the hill. “Maybe it’s only a few skeletons, tucked away neatly in the walls. Let’s at least go and see, shall we?”
“I don’t like ghosts, Syth.”
“I don’t know of anyone who actually likes ghosts.”
“Necromancers. Fortune tellers. Mediums. They like ghosts. They like them too much.”
“Stop being such a delicate flower.” I step behind him and place a hand between his broad shoulders, propelling him toward the bath-house entrance—or rather the bath tomb entrance.
He complains the whole way. Maybe he’s scared because he had his whole family assassinated and he’s afraid their ghosts will come to taunt and condemn him. Whatever the reason, it’s all I can do to get him through the arch and down the clammy stone steps.
Daylight filters weakly into the subterranean passage.
We open the door and enter a small room beyond it, which contains a cabinet full of musty-smelling towels, a bottle of soft homemade soap, and a tray holding a cluster of partly melted pillar candles.
Wax has pooled and hardened on the tray, around the candles, cementing them together in an amorphous clump.
“Lighter.” I hold out my hand to Vawn.
He slaps the silver lighter into my palm. “You should say, ‘Please, Your Highness, would you lend me your lighter?’”
“Aren’t we past that now?” I flick the lighter and hold its flame to each candle wick in turn.
“Once you get me to safety, I expect you to resume using all appropriate honorifics,” he says.
I snap the lighter shut and hand it back to him. “But that would be ‘Your Majesty’ instead of ‘Your Highness,’ wouldn’t it? The King is dead. Long live the King.” I throw him a cutting look as I pick up the tray of candles. “Bring the towels and the soap.”
“You delight in ordering me around like a servant,” he mumbles. “And now I must bathe in a haunted tomb, after everything I’ve endured…”
I turn sharply, holding the streaming flames of the candles between us.
“And what exactly have you endured? I’ve been wondering if this crisis was really such a surprise to you.
Maybe you orchestrated the coup to secure your place on the throne.
You had access to wealth and allies. You know everyone’s schedules.
You could have been laying plans for years. ”
He stares at me as if I’ve grown three heads. “You believe I’m absolutely heartless? You doubt that my grief is real?”
When I don’t answer, his jaw tightens briefly before he continues. “I see. Setting aside the question of my emotional state, do you really think I have the mental capacity to design and execute a scheme like that?”
I tilt my head, reconsidering my theory. “I suppose not. Unless you play the fuckboy fool to conceal your vast strategic intelligence…” but I start laughing before I even finish the sentence, and he joins in with a bitter chuckle at his own expense.
Once I’ve started laughing, I can’t stop. I can barely hold onto the candles, and the bursts of breath from my mouth make the flames gutter. It’s more hysteria than humor, and I feel tears gathering at the corners of my eyes.
“By the fates… I heard that come out of my mouth,” I gasp through the laughter, “and it sounded so ridiculous… I’m sorry I accused you of such devious brilliance. I’m exhausted. That’s my only excuse.”
“No harm done.” But his lips barely move, and his eyes flicker with dark heat.
In the brief span of hours that I’ve known him, I’ve seen him peeved and petty, coquettish and playful, charming and derisive, but I’ve never witnessed his genuine anger. The dead silence of it scares me.
We follow the tunnel to a cave with a ceiling so oppressively low that Vawn has to bend just to enter it.
A tiny mountain hot spring bubbles from a crack in the stone, feeding a pool barely large enough for three people.
The water looks deep enough to stand upright, but I can’t tell if the objects at the bottom are white stones or something worse.
Along the far wall of the cave are more than a dozen misshapen holes in the rock, like a terrible honeycomb with openings large enough for human faces to pop out.
Each hole is pitch dark, a black void. There’s a narrow passage at the end of the room that seems to continue on into the bowels of the earth, or into the rest of the catacombs.
I have never seen a place less conducive to bathing.
Instinctively I turn to the prince, for commiseration or comfort, I guess, since he’s the only living thing here. His face is streaked with dirt, his eyes rimmed with smudged black kohl, and his full mouth compressed into a grim line. He looks rather like a nightmare himself.
“Shall I bathe first, or would you like to?” I venture. “I could test the water. Make sure it’s safe. I am your bodyguard, after all.”
“By all means.” His words are a cold hiss in the gloom of the cave. “I’ll turn my back.”