The Prince of Ravens Read online

  Chapter Two: Summoned

  The Prince dressed hurriedly in the best robes he owned, midnight black like all of his clothing, but with gold scrollwork on the shoulders and arms. He placed on his head the circlet that signified his position as the Prince of Ravens: a small frontless crown made of two curving, golden wings set with veins of onyx and jet. He glanced at himself quickly in a looking glass, grateful that he’d washed and shaved barely an hour earlier, and then left his rooms quickly, his heavy robes swirling about him. Outside his room, his two black-clothed Guardians who watched over him day and night fell seamlessly into step behind him, following him as silently and swiftly as shadows, despite the fact they were both over seven feet tall.

  As he moved down the hall, he passed tapestries depicting famous battles and deeds of the Empress and the Children. His body felt oddly light; maybe it was just that he finally had something to do. He had never been very good at waiting around while events unfolded without him. His hand kept reaching down to his left hip to clutch a hilt that wasn’t there. The sword he’d been given at the age of ten had rested there until the week before; it had become as much a part of him as an arm or a leg, but that connection had been brutally severed.

  Only those with names could carry weapons.

  But that would all soon be remedied. He was to receive his Inheritance. Maybe the next time he walked down this corridor it would be past a tapestry of him. The thought made him smile, but in a rueful way that lacked pleasure.

  He rounded a corner, and as he did so a young woman moved out of a room in front of him in a swirl of black hair and fine red silks. She turned and gave a small gasp of surprise when she saw him standing right in front of her. The Prince was about to brush past, but stopped when he noticed who it was.

  Leah Monsunne was the daughter of one of the Most High – the Monsunne family was on the rise in the politics of the palace, and Leah had been introduced to the Prince not a week before in the hopes that he would take a liking to her and bestow favor. The Prince, highly skeptical when Geofred had first told him this, had found himself quite embarrassingly struck dumb at their first meeting. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on, with long chestnut hair, a figure that filled out anything she wore, and a soft mouth that was quick to laugh at the dry and sarcastic humor of the Prince that so often turned others away.

  “Lady Monsunne,” the Prince said, not having to fake the sudden stirring of happiness he felt at seeing her.

  Leah clutched a hand to her chest, eyes wide as though she had seen a ghost. The Prince did his best not to look down at what that hand was clutching.

  “Are you well, lady? I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  When she didn’t respond, he repeated himself more slowly.

  “Are you well, lady?”

  He reached out a hand, concerned that she looked none too steady.

  “My Prince,” she said, dropping a hasty curtsy and lowering her eyes. As a member of the Most High, she was allowed in his presence, but not allowed to look him in the eye unless permitted. He had given her permission.

  “My Lady, why won’t you look at me?”

  His bluntness seemed to put her off even more, as if his acknowledgment of her actions made them shameful. She didn’t look up, but instead dropped into another curtsy.

  “I’m sorry, my Prince, but I am on the way to an appointment with my father. It is an emergency. May I go?”

  “Of – of course,” he responded. It wasn’t like him to stammer, and normally he would have wondered over his tripping tongue, but now he could only watch, feeling rather confused, as the young woman turned and all but ran from him.

  He knew she hadn’t been telling the truth – he didn’t need Symanta’s Snake Talisman to tell him that. A sudden foreboding took hold of him as he watched her turn a corner, still at high speed. He began to walk again, slowly at first, but then more quickly until he was nearly running, the Guardians following close behind.

  A thought occurred to him: she had been warned to stay away from him. The way she had started at his presence, the combination of fear and surprise on her face, it all said she hadn’t expected to see him. Yet, he lived here so she was bound to see him. Someone must have told her he would not be around the Fortress much longer.

  He shook his head and dispelled these thoughts; he needed to see Mother. Everything would be made clear once he could speak to Her.

  The rest of the journey to the Tower was uneventful, though quite long since his rooms were in the furthest and lowest of the Fortress’ spires. He moved as quickly as he dared through the long hallways and corridors, past the grand reception halls on the lower levels and the apartments of the Most High, taking a shortcut through the grand training rooms of the Guardians and Blade Masters with their Clockwork sparring enemies and training equipment, until finally arriving at the enormous doors that led to the Hall of a Thousand Glories where the Empress ruled upon the Diamond Throne. The doors, originally wood but gilded almost beyond recognition, were so huge that it took forty slaves, stationed there day and night, to open them. One of the Most High had once proposed that the doors remain closed except for visits of state, hearings, and proclamations so as to save on slaves. When the Empress disapproved, he had claimed it was in jest, so the Empress had a jester brought from the city to throw him from the Fortress roof. So as to save on slaves.

  As the Prince approached the doors, a full fist of Guardians, ten in all, came forward, dressed in blinding white uniforms and full plate armor, great helms tucked under their arms.

  “My Prince,” said the captain, carefully looking just below the Prince’s eyes. He was not of the Most High, nor even of the High, but was simply a Guardian and as such existed outside the social order. He would never meet the eyes of one of the Children.

  “Open the doors – my Mother has Summoned me.”

  “Yes, my Prince,” the captain responded, “she left this for you and commanded you read it before entering.”

  He held up a steel plate, engraved with gold scrollwork, which held a roll of parchment that the Prince quickly took. The message was only a single sentence, and a brief one at that:

  Await My Presence in the antechamber.

  There was no signature, but the message was his Mother’s. No one else would have dreamed of commanding one of the Children.

  “Very well,” he said, placing the scroll back on the plate. He turned to the left, where a single well-polished mahogany door was set in the stone wall. His two trailing Guardians, their black armor making them look like shadowy wrights next to the blinding white of the Empress’s personal guard, took up positions to either side of the door as he twisted the crystal knob and entered.

  The room was dark, lit with only a pair of oil lamps in wall sconces. They were situated on either side of a long table that ran down the center of the room flanked by a number of intricately carved high-backed wooden chairs. There was no one else in the room, and after the door closed behind him, there was nothing but a heavy silence that covered him like a thick blanket. There should have been someone there - a clockwork servant perhaps, one of Geofred’s many inventions, if not a human one to offer him refreshments while he waited. A simple oversight, no doubt, but one that would not go unpunished if his Mother found out.

  The Prince walked slowly down the side of the table, tracing a gloved finger along the polished wood. He felt oddly calm. But then again, the worst part of anything, he’d always found, was the waiting beforehand. Now that events were in motion –

  The door at the far end of the anteroom crashed open. Shocked, the Prince’s hand fell once more to his hip, reaching for his missing sword. But the hand fell away and the Prince’s breathing came easier as he saw that it was only a number of servants, carrying what looked to be a tablecloth. No doubt the fools were simply late - he had left his quarters rather abruptly – he must have beaten the notice of his arrival.

  “Where were you?” he asked imperiously,
his voice coming out much more harshly than he’d intended. Silence followed his question, and just that quickly he knew something was wrong. One did not ignore the questions of the Children. The servants, human ones the Raven Talisman told him, approached, and as they did the Prince saw that they didn’t move with the subdued quality with which all servants were bred. Their movements were too sharp, too quick – and they were coming right toward him.

  “You will stop where you are!” he commanded. They didn’t listen, but broke into a run down the sides of the table. Surprise set the Prince’s nerves on fire and choked him as the men unsheathed long daggers from underneath their dark gray servant’s garb.

  Automatically, the Prince fell into a defensive stance as the first man came for him, his training taking control of his body. He stepped quickly inside the man’s reach, grabbed his wrists, and broke them with two sharp blows. The dagger fell from the man’s grip and into the Prince’s hand; he spun it around and stabbed the man in the chest, careful to avoid the heart, seeking only to leave the man incapacitated. The servant let out a hiss of surprise and pain and fell back into the man behind him. Two other men rounded the table on the Prince’s right, blades flashing in the light. With two quick motions, the Prince disarmed them, and with a third hamstrung them with a sweeping motion of the dagger.

  As he spun to face a fourth man, the Prince felt a prick on his neck and a sudden numbing sensation descended along his arm, and then up across his shoulders. He looked up and saw one of the servants on the far side of the table with a daptsing, a dart gun that was used exclusively in the lands to the south.

  Rebels? In the Fortress? the Prince thought with incredulity as the toxin flowed into his brain and shut down all further thought. Darkness swirled in on him, and the last image he had was of the inside of a sack, sewed to look like a tablecloth.