Free The Dark Flight Down by Marcus Sedgwick Page A

there.
    The doctors. A feckless assortment with less knowledge of medicine than Maxim, but they served their purpose. Frederick was never well. At least, in his mind there was always something wrong with him. The doctors were very useful to Maxim. He could, and did, blame them for the emperor’s poor state of health, deflecting from himself any complaints Frederick made. And if, as rarely happened, Frederick chanced to say he felt a bit better than usual one morning, Maxim would take the praise, pretending he had told the doctors to improve their efforts.
    There were the stargazers, the astrologists. Maxim had less control of this group. Not that they were any less spineless than the doctors, but they were altogether unpredictable. They wore the badges of their office—pointed caps emblazoned with stars—and carried charts and diagrams with them always. Frederick set great store by astrological computations, and never did anything if Saturn was in retrograde motion. Maxim did his best to use the information the astrologers imparted to further his own position, but they were apt to come out with the most unexpected bit of news at any time, with little or no warning, and Frederick would be sent into fits of panic. When this happened he was likely to start accusing Maxim of disloyalty, or even treason, and at the very least criticized Maxim’s lack of care for his emperor, and his emperor’s health and general well-being.
    There were alchemists, necromancers and other magical practitioners whom Frederick had seen fit to assemble around him. Many of them were entirely laughable and ineffectual, but some were devious and clever enough to give Maxim cause for concern. Frederick seemed to think the answer to his problems lay with men of this sort. He never welcomed Maxim’s suggestions that there were perhaps too many of them and that he might do better with a dozen fewer.
    Then there was the court itself, with its entourages and hangers-on, the noblemen and ladies of the court, all from rich and powerful families, dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, but not one with a direct claim to the throne. This was the group Maxim feared the most in the event of Frederick’s death. They were a conniving and greedy bunch out for nothing but their own gain. Maxim recognized these motives well, since they were his own, and to be feared in others.
    Then there were the staff, though most of them existed almost unseen.
    It was Maxim’s lot to rule this exotic collection, to see that things in the palace ran smoothly, to make sure Frederick was attended to in the smallest detail, every minute of every day.
    Now Maxim stood by Frederick’s throne as the emperor considered the application of another occultist.
    The influence of Frederick’s court was not what it had once been, but stories of its very real wealth still spread far and wide, and it was commonplace for several new applicants to arrive at the palace gates each week, all hoping to gain the special favor of the emperor and earn a fortune in the process.
    This latest candidate was a youngish man, with thin hair and roaming eyes. Maxim, however, was fretting not about him, but about the boy in the dungeon. Maxim was convinced that Boy had to know about the book. His spies had told him that it had been rediscovered, and Maxim knew that Valerian had been looking for it. If he
had
found it, then it stood to reason that his boy had to know its current whereabouts.
    Maxim now quite rightly believed the book would be the only way to find a solution to his predicament. There had to be some way out of the dilemma Frederick had placed him in, yet it managed to elude him despite his best efforts.
    The emperor wanted immortality, and
nothing
would stop his relentless search for it. Any day the neurotic, decrepit ruler might decide he’d had enough of his current right-hand man.
    As things stood, their relationship suited Maxim. He commanded respect, or at least fear, throughout the palace,