I landed in the street, less heavily this time, free and clear, and if not smelling of roses then at least of azalea and mixed herbs. Alain would be a problem for another day. He could take his place in the queue. It was a long one and at its head stood Maeres Allus clutching a dozen promissory notes, IOUs, and intents to pay drunkenly scrawled on whores’ silken lingerie. I stood, stretched, and listened to the hound complain behind the wall. I’d need a taller wall than that to keep Maeres’s bullies at bay.

Kings Way stretched before me, strewn with shadows. On Kings Way the town houses of noble families vie with the ostentation of merchant-princes’ mansions, new money trying to gleam brighter than the old. The city of Vermillion has few streets as fine.

“Take him to the gate! He’s got the scent.” Voices back in the garden.

“Here, Pluto! Here!”

That didn’t sound good. I set off sprinting in the direction of the palace, sending rats fleeing and scattering dungmen on their rounds, the dawn chasing after me, throwing red spears at my back.

TWO

T he palace at Vermillion is a sprawling affair of walled compounds, exquisite gardens, satellite mansions for extended family, and finally the Inner Palace, the great stone confection that has for generations housed the kings of Red March. The whole thing is garnished with marble statuary teased into startlingly lifelike forms by the artistry of Milano masons, and a dedicated man could probably scrape enough gold leaf off the walls to make himself slightly richer than Croesus. My grandmother hates it with a passion. She’d be happier behind granite barricades a hundred feet thick and spiked with the heads of her enemies.

Even the most decadent of palaces can’t be entered without some protocol, though. I slipped in via the Surgeons’ Gate, flipping a silver crown to the guard.

“Got you out early again, Melchar.” I make a point of knowing the guards’ names. They still think of me as the hero of Aral Pass and it’s helpful to have the gatekeepers on side when your life dangles from as large a web of lies as mine does.

“Aye, Prince Jal. Them’s as works best works hardest, they do say.”

“So true.” I had no idea what he’d said but my fake laugh is even better than my real one, and nine-tenths of being popular is the ability to jolly the menials along. “I’d get one of those lazy bastards to take a turn.” I nodded towards the lantern glow bleeding past the crack of the guardhouse door and strolled on through the gates as Melchar drew them open.

Once inside, I made a straight line for the Roma Hall. As the queen’s third son, Father got invested in the Roma Hall, a palatial Vatican edifice constructed by the pope’s own craftsmen for Cardinal Paracheck way back whenever. Grandmother has little enough time for Jesu and his cross, though she’ll say the words at celebrations and look to mean them. She has far less time for Roma, and none at all for the pope that sits there now—the Holy Cow, she calls her.