Up To The Throne Read online

  On the right was the long expanse of warehouses and marketplaces, leading to the old arena where they’d had prize-fights, back in the day. To the left, the new lighthouse stood tall and clean against the sky. A huge beacon burned at the summit, throwing up a column of blood-red alchemical smoke.

  “You see that?” the boatman said, pointing. “It’s full of wheels. Big metal ones, like a clock. They make the top spin around. Some fellow from the university came up with that. Amazing what they can do these days.”

  “Isn’t it?” Giulia shielded her eyes and looked down the coast, to the old lighthouse a mile away. It had been manned by monks, decades ago; they’d been thrown out after the War of Faith. The dead lighthouse looked like a broken tusk.

  She needed something to look at: the thought of all that water under her made her nervous. Giulia had once glimpsed the sea creature known as the Old Man of the Bay, and she had no wish to see anything like it again.

  They called this part of the waterfront the Young Dock: the Old Dock was nearly a mile down the coast, where carracks and galleons from the whole peninsula came to unload. The Old Dock was for big merchants and affairs of state. The Young Dock was for smaller, and more surreptitious, business.

  “We go in here,” the boatman said.

  The boat drew close and the Young Dock spread itself out before them. Fifty yards of squalor: weathered stone and slimy posts bound together by slick oiled cord. Jetties jutted out like ladders laid on top of the water. By custom no jetty was ever repaired – instead, a new one was thrown up as its predecessor slipped into the waves, just as slender and rickety as the last.

  Well, here we are. Giulia pulled her old cloak around her and tried to look unimportant as they came in. Back in the old place.

  The stink of the dock reached Giulia’s boat: ripe not just from the sea, but from raw meat and cooked bread, dung and blood washed into the water from the quayside stalls where women gutted fish and flicked their innards straight into the bay. Her stomach churned.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Giulia said. She’d paid for speed and discretion – a lot, by her reckoning – and got both.

  The boatman smiled. “My name’s Jacobo. Tell your friends about me.”

  “I will. Just don’t tell your friends about me.”

  Jacobo laughed.

  A sailor paced alongside the boat as it drew up to the pier. The boatman tossed up a rope. “Mornin’ all!” the sailor cried, and he reached down to take Giulia’s hand and haul her out. His grip was strong, almost painful, and he grunted as he lifted her onto land.

  On the quayside every sort of industry went on, from the filthy to the devout. Giulia walked past a priest as he blessed a new boat, droplets of holy water spattering the varnished prow and the sea. Watching from the corner of her eye, perhaps with a view to business later on, a prostitute in a hitched-up dress tried to ignore a one-legged man offering her an impressive little pile of coins. Peasant women hawked sweets and cakes. A brawny fish-seller bellowed out his wares from a barrow. Supply roads ran from the Young Dock to the city centre, and dog carts rattled over the cobbles at wheel-shaking speed.

  Giulia looked up the hill, at the pale sprawl of the city. Her heart seemed to have risen in her chest, her guts to have sunk a little. She felt like an actor about to step on stage. Memories of Pagalia flickered through her mind: the drinking dens in the Four Corners, the grand houses of Corvan Rise, cutting the purses of merchants on the Black Mile.

  Giulia took a deep breath and made her way up towards the town. She was dressed like a peasant, her knives and thief’s gear hidden from view. No-one looked at her twice as she left the boat. With her head down, she could have passed for a serving-girl – albeit one with a past that had left her scarred.

  *

  Chancellor Faronetti hated the prince, but he always came quickly when summoned.

  Leonine Marenara sat up in his vast bed, propped up on a battery of pillows. He seemed to have been built to the wrong scale. Cherubs larger than he was had been painted onto the ceiling. On either side of the bed stood candelabra taller than a man, caked in tallow like rock worn smooth by running water. The double duvet was a tide breaking on the shore of the bed, rising to swallow him up.

  Even the prince’s glasses were much too large. The hinged lenses were so wide that they overlapped the sides of Leonine’s skull and nearly met over his nose.

  “How fares my chancellor this morning?” Leonine asked. His voice was surprisingly loud, as if the force that supplied it had retreated deep into him, leaving his body to crumble while it lurked safe inside.

  Faronetti smiled. “Excellently, My Prince.”

  “And my city? How is Pagalia today?”

  “Very well, Prince. The people are happy, and the merchants busy. Trade is good, and crime at a low. All is well.”

  Leonine’s eyes were quick and resolute behind the lenses, with large, glistening pupils: survivors from a better time. “I’m glad to hear it. I think I shall rest for a while. Would you be so good as to fetch my book?”

  “My pleasure. I shall open it at the page.” Faronetti fetched the volume – The Contemplations of the Spirit by Pontifex Pacifer the Ninth – and set it before his master. Leonine’s left hand scrabbled across the covers like a spider tied to the deadwood of his arm, and his right held the book steady while the left found its grip. The prince smoothed the pages out and slowly lowered his eyes.

  “Ensure that nobody bothers me for an hour, Faronetti.”

  “Certainly, My Prince.”

  “And send Doctor Alcenau up this afternoon. I need him to brew something to get me moving. I must be growing accustomed to his potions: they don’t work as well as they used to.”

  “Gladly, My Prince. I’ll have him visit you after lunch.”

  “Yes… yes, that would be good.”

  “I shall depart, Prince, and leave you to your reading. Pious thoughts demand solitude.”

  “Thank you,” Leonine said. “Oh, and Chancellor?”

  “Yes, My Prince?”

  “Do remember to send my best wishes to Lady Tabitha.”

  Faronetti paused, surprised. He was due to meet a representative of Tabitha’s about her monopoly on Rhenish wine. He’d expected Leonine to have forgotten that. “Of course, My Prince.”

  Faronetti backed out of the room, closing the doors behind him. He nodded to the two guards and paced away, turning over the news in his mind. So Doctor Alcenau’s potions were losing their effect, eh? It would not be long before Leonine could not walk at all, either with or without magical help. Soon he would be nothing but a head and an arm, both of them weak and dithering. And when he was that feeble, what could be easier than to press a pillow over the old fool’s face?

  But he would have to be careful. Once the throne was empty, Tabitha Corvani and Publius Severra would come running like mastiffs on a scent. All the more reason to set them on each other first.

  *

  Two soldiers of the city guard stood at the top of the quay. They were tough fighters squeezed into striped uniforms that would have looked garish on a troubadour. One drew up his lip in a wolfish snarl as Giulia approached, while his older colleague gave her a winning smile, revealing a set of teeth that seemed to have been knocked out of his mouth and replaced in the dark. She lowered her head and kept on.

  “Halt there!” a voice called. Giulia stopped.

  A slender, ferret-faced man in a dark coat watched her from behind the two guards. He was a lictor, one of the chancellor’s personal policemen. She’d heard about them back in Astrago: when Leonine had fallen ill, Faronetti had generously used his own bodyguards to bolster the Watch.

  The lictor tilted his head like a bird, squinting as he studied her. To judge from his expression, he could have been examining the sole of his boot.

  “Move on.”

  She dipped her head to him and each of the two guards in turn, and hurried past.

  Giulia slipped into an alleyway and stopp
ed to work out where she was. This road, she recalled, was the Street of Poltius, named after some Quaestan senator or other who had died a thousand years ago.

  Little had changed in the city, from the looks of it: the skyline was still dominated by the Palazzo and the towers that nestled around its base as if for warmth. To her right the two white spires of the Cathedral of the Sundered Waves loomed over the city like the peaks of an elaborate, decrepit cake.

  She turned towards the spires. There was much to do, but first of all she needed to speak to the saints, to get their blessing for her revenge.

  The wide streets were busy now. Under dozens of awnings, craftsmen set out the proof of their skill. Flanked by striped poles, a barber stood proud in a red apron. Next door, a money-lender and his guards shooed away a group of small boys, probably spotters for a robber gang. A fletcher laboured beneath a huge metal bolt designed for a siege ballista, the tip gilded to draw attention to his trade. Giulia made a mental note of the place. She did not remember it from before – but then, she had not needed crossbow bolts back then.

  As she walked, she picked out the shops that might be useful: a smithy, for fresh knives and repairs; a hire shop for clothes and jewellery; an alchemist whose potions could hide scars and heal wounds.

  The road opened into the cathedral grounds. The cathedral was made of marble the colour of bone, and looked like a vast piece of carved, grimy ivory. Pilgrims and peddlers loitered under the carved façade of the nave doors, chatting and buying food from the vendors who circled them. They did not notice her slipping past.

  A ghastly-looking man was being lifted up the steps on a stretcher by his friends. His head was like a skull wrapped in paper. At the top step, an old woman had succumbed to her condition and was wheezing and coughing up a little blood, while a young priest gave her a tentative pat on the back. There were few beggars here as yet; the tower clock said that it was seven-thirty, and the giving of alms was at nine.

  Four huge statues leaned out of the façade: Saint Bonifacio, in life a miner; Saint Allamar the fisherman; Saint Cordelia, burned as a devil three hundred years ago in the war against the living dead; and the archangel Alexis, his wings open to cover the skies. Giulia ducked her head as she passed under them, as if hoping to sneak into the cathedral without being recognised. There was only one saint she wanted: Senobina, patron of thieves.

  Inside, it was dark and vast and cool. Rows of huge, sad-eyed statues ran down the sides of the nave. A pastor stood at the altar fifty yards away, chanting as he swung a censer the size of a man’s head. The smell of incense, rich and cloying, was subtle by the door, but next to the altar it would be almost unbearable. If the spirits of the saints were to be with the host at Vespers, it would be a miracle if they didn’t choke on the fumes.

  Giulia put the thought away, vaguely ashamed. The cathedral intimidated her: she could never quite believe that she was entirely welcome in a place like this.

  It was not that she did not believe in God. He was real enough, as was Alexis his prophet and most of the saints. But the Lord seemed easily swayed by power and coin. God, she felt, was Heaven’s version of the Prince: if a pauper wanted help, they were better off talking to his footsoldiers.

  Saint Senobina stood behind a column near the Chapel of Contemplation. She was depicted as she had been when she rescued three missionaries from the Quaestors: her head shaven so she could pass for a messenger, cloak wrapped around her body, her hand holding the hooked knife she had used to cut the missionaries’ bonds. Her neck was an open wound, representing the way she had died: her throat slit by the authorities.

  Unusually for a saint, Senobina’s bald head was tilted downwards so as to look at her visitors. There was an odd, quirky smile on her lips. Giulia smiled back. She had always imagined that Senobina thought much as she did, being a thief by trade, and was amused by the blind piety that surrounded her. Giulia dipped her head to the statue, fished a few coins from her belt and placed them in a small tin dish between Senobina’s booted feet. Several other coins had already been left there, probably by other criminals. There was a tradition amongst Pagalian thieves that offerings to Senobina had to have been stolen first.

  Giulia put her hand on the saint’s cool boot.

  Blessed Senobina, watch over me.

  It occurred to her that it had been nearly six years since she had been at this church, asking for the same things, standing in exactly the same place just before she had fled the city.

  Blessed Senobina, watch over me. Keep me safe and unseen. Give Publius Severra to me, so I can be revenged on him for what he did to me.

  Giulia looked up, feeling eyes on her. A few mendicants prayed in the pews. One was clutching a little portrait of a woman and rocking in his seat, swallowed up by grief.

  All I want is a chance. I’ve trained for this for so long, you know that. You know what it’s like. Nobody up there’s going to help me except for you. I just need a little luck, and then I’ll pay you back. Like a loan. Let me get the bastard.

  She looked up, then down again, remembering.

  And I pray for Grodrin who gave me shelter, even though he is a pagan, and for the soul of Nicolo One-hand, who first showed me your shrine, that he might go quickly to paradise. Hide me and guide my hand. Amen.

  Giulia made the Sign of the Sword across her chest. She stepped back and raised her head, half expecting someone to be standing nearby, judging her.

  People milled around at the back of the huge hall, quiet as the motes of dust that drifted from the roof. Giulia walked down the length of the nave, past other supplicants and their problems. A couple of people looked at the scars on her face, but no-one paid her much attention. Perhaps her prayer to go unseen was already being answered.

  3

  Faronetti stood in the Palazzo’s library. It was a large, oval chamber, the walls lined with shelves. They stretched to the ceiling, twelve feet up, and broke only to allow for windows and a fireplace. Each book was worth more than a farm labourer could earn in a year.

  A painting hung over the fireplace, depicting a maiden drowned in a pool. Beneath it, looking much like the girl in the picture, sat Princess Leonora.

  Her hair was loose and messy, and the sunlight glimmered between the strands like straw about to catch alight. Faronetti coughed, and she glanced up.

  Leonora rose from her seat and pushed her hair out of her face. She was tallish and very slim, and her white skin and large, dark-rimmed eyes gave her an undernourished look. Her features were attractive but quite sharp, with the pointed nose and long slender hands of the Marenara family. She was twenty-two and liked gentle things – reading, animals, and a dull, sweetly pious sort of religion that Faronetti found nauseating.

  “Good morning, Chancellor Faronetti. How is Father?”

  “He’s well enough, but resting now. I told him I’d leave him undisturbed.”

  “I’ll do the same then.”

  A moment’s silence passed. Faronetti thought, My God, I’m looking at my future wife. And that’s if everything goes well.

  Once Leonine died, Leonora would be in line to inherit the throne. It was his plan to get her out of the way as soon as possible, either by marrying her or forcing her into a convent. Although he disliked Leonora, on balance it would be wiser to marry her. A wedding would be a good opportunity to throw some money at the common folk and get them on his side from the start of his reign. He had never been a man of the people, and a few feast days would do wonders for his reputation. The plebs were dangerous enemies, but easy enough to bribe.

  “What’re you reading?” he asked.

  “Keystones of Alchemy, by Lord Portharion.”

  Faronetti stepped over and looked over her shoulder. From the looks of the circular symbol in the centre of the page and the characters alongside it, the picture was a magic-wheel, a key from which other spells could be drawn.

  “What is that?” he asked, a little worried. Leonora had a keen interest in magic.

&n
bsp; “A way of changing a colour to its opposite. It’s used for alchemical dyes.” Her eyes moved down to the book again. “A messenger called, one of your lictors. He said something about the guild of clockworkers. I told him to wait in the Porcelain Hall.”

  “Thank you. It’s a minor matter. Taxes, import duties. I’ll leave you to your studies.”

  “As you wish, Chancellor.” Leonora sat down again and lowered her head to her work. Her hair dropped in front of her face, a curtain to shut him out.

  My God, he thought as he strode down the corridor, what fun our married life will be.

  The Porcelain Hall was sky blue, long and airy, and was used to display ornamental plates on shelves around the walls. The floor was polished wood, and creaked.

  The lictor stood in the centre of the room, his black coat stark against the pastel walls. He was a youngish, weak-looking man whose receding chin was partially hidden by a goatee beard. He bowed as his employer approached. “Sir.”

  “Ah, Cantano. You’ve got a message for me, I’m told.”

  “Yes my lord. The message is this: the grandmaster of the guild of clockworkers is dead. His servants found him in the alley behind his home last night, stabbed in the back.”

  “Dead, eh?” Faronetti turned to admire a Nappanese serving dish to hide his surprise. “Do they know who did it?”

  “The Watch have no idea, sir. Someone had searched him, and there was no money on the body. My source tells me that the Watch see it as a plain street robbery.”

  “Where did you hear all this?”

  “From a whore kept by one of the high guildsmen. She passed the information on to us.”

  “I see. The Clockworkers belong to Publius Severra, am I right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Cantano said. “Not just protection, either. He’s their formal patron. He’ll be furious.”