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“Why should I care about that?”
“Because you like your bread, Balduin, that’s why,” Nicolo answered as he frowned at the prince and then faced me, handing me the sheet of paper he’d been scrawling notes on. “Charlotte, take the seating chart to Mistress Rosana.”
What I learned, that I’d previously not understood, was that although the Castle Complex in its entirety was ruled by the Old Queen, it was also broken down into a number of disparate fiefdoms—harking back to when those areas had been physically separate. And though all those fiefdoms and the dukes who ruled them were loyal to the queen, they were not loyal to each other and they squabbled continually.
I’d also learned that loyalty to the queen didn’t mean loyalty to the royal family. The Old Queen had been on the throne for as long as anyone could remember; no one knew any different, so no one wanted any different.
Balduin was another matter.
There were many who saw him as dissolute, adolescent and self-indulgent (points which were hard to argue). Those same people felt that such a king would be an affront to the monarchy. Then there were those who didn’t consider Balduin as unworthy so much as an obstacle—most notably his four older sisters, all of whom believed the throne was rightly theirs. Lastly, there were those who felt Balduin was a despot in waiting.
It was hard to see the carousing, fun-loving wastrel as a tyrannical ruler, but when people who care only for their own pleasure are given infinite power, things happen. I recalled Balduin’s reaction to the death of his bodyguard and thought about that attitude scaled up to an entire kingdom. The Old Queen might consider the nobility above the peasantry, but there was always a sense that she cared about everyone. Balduin only cared about one person; Balduin.
I got the sense that he would happily torch people’s homes if he felt a bit chilly.
To a degree, the same could be said of Nicolo. I didn’t detect the same streak of gleeful cruelty that sometimes flashed from his friend, and Nicolo didn’t share the prince’s indolence, but he was certainly out for number one.
Maybe that was mitigated by Nicolo’s childhood—how he’d been ostracized by his community then wrenched from his mother. To whom should he have loyalty if not to himself? But mitigating circumstances didn’t make him any less dangerous. In many ways, Nicolo was more dangerous than Balduin, because he was smart, he listened, and he understood. Balduin made decisions based on his immediate pleasure, without ever weighing the consequences. As far as Balduin was concerned, there were no consequences. Nicolo, on the other hand, made decisions while taking to mind consequences that could come way down the line—usually consequences others couldn’t see. When Balduin became king, who would be his chief advisor? Balduin was as unlikely to do any actual ruling as he was to attend meetings, thus it was quite obvious that Nicolo would be king in all aspects, but his name.
No wonder so many people wanted the master dead.
But killing him would not be so easy.
“Come at me,” Nicolo said, his eyes narrowed and predatory.
Sparring with Balduin kept up Nicolo’s sword skills, but the latter always held back. With me he had no such qualms.
“Don’t be afraid of hurting me,” he continued. “Give it all you’ve got.”
“And what of you hurting me?” I returned.
He further narrowed those violet eyes which, even now, seemed to glow with some preternatural sight. “If I think you’re holding back, Charlotte,thenI will hurt you.”
He threatened me with beatings most days, usually in a casual way. And, as of yet, he’d never followed through with his threats. Maybe the threats were simply in jest? You could never tell with Master Nicolo.
Our swords clashed and we met, nose to nose.
“Your father taught you well.”
“Thank you, Master.”
The more he realized how good with a sword I was, the more vigorous the sparring became and I swiftly came to enjoy it. We invariably finished, exhausted and sweating, but bright-eyed and in the wake of our spars, we chatted, the difference in our status forgotten, or so it seemed.
Seeing Nicolo like this, purely enjoying himself, he almost became a different man to The Terrible who stalked the corridors of the Great Castle.
“Where were you brought up?” he asked as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Crammer, Master.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I wanted to see the Gath.”
“What do you think now you’ve seen it?”
“It’s… quite wondrous, sir.”
He narrowed an eye at me and shook his head. “Speak the truth.”
