Free The City in the Lake by Rachel Neumeier Page B

Galef. If you find yourself my enemy, I think you will find yourself overmatched.”
    The captain had to know this was true. He bowed his head a little.
    “But it was not my hand. I did not act either against my father or against my brother. So we know where we stand.” The Bastard touched a stack of his father’s papers. “I’m glad you speak openly to me. I must hope you will bring anything you discover to me.” He allowed only the slightest bite to his tone. “If the secret is here, I will find it, and I will share it with you. Some of these drawers are locked. Do you know where the keys are?”
    “I know how to find them, my lord.”
    “Good. If you were going to steal a man from a closed and guarded room, Galef, how would you do it? Think on that, and come to me in my own rooms in three hours. Four.” He looked at the clutter in his father’s study and sighed. “Six. And find me the keys to this desk.”
    “Yes, my lord.” The captain began to withdraw. “I will send a man of mine to assist you.”
    The Bastard looked up sharply. A small movement of his hand stopped the captain. He said plainly, as they had both been speaking plainly, “To assist me? You mean you will send a spy. If I tell you I will have no man of yours at my back in this room, what will you do?”
    The guard captain answered after a moment, “What can I do, my lord, but hope that I may trust you?”
    The Bastard inclined his head. “Indeed. So we must all hope that we may trust one another. And yet someone acts against us all. You may send a man of yours to me. So long as we are clear between ourselves, Galef, I shall be satisfied.” He smiled, a smile that did not touch his eyes. “Tell your man to bring me something to eat, since I did not have breakfast.”

    It took the Bastard five days to go through all the King’s papers, including the ones locked away in his desk. Some of those were interesting. None of them shed light on the King’s disappearance, or that of the Prince.
    The mage Trevennen came at the beginning, a distinguished and assured man of fifty, and an experienced and exceedingly subtle mage. He looked carefully at the King’s rooms. “He was here, and then he was gone,” said the mage, which the Bastard already knew. “It’s hard to say how he went. Or where he might have gone. Hmmm.”
    This was not very useful. Nothing the mages had done in all this long year had been useful. The Bastard restrained himself, with difficulty, from saying so.
    The Queen, on the Bastard’s orders, kept to her rooms. She saw no one, also on his orders, except her women. He had made no effort to order the women to keep silent, knowing he might as well command the stars not to sparkle at night. There was considerable sentiment in the Palace favoring the Queen. Many in the Palace and the City agreed with Ellis that the Bastard had in some mysterious manner disposed of both his half brother and his father in order to seize power.
    If he had, it had worked. Whatever whispers ran like mice along the walls, the Bastard ruled the Palace and the City. Half the courtiers were his men . . . no one quite knew which half. The young men who had followed his brother did not meet his eyes. They said
Lord Neill
when they spoke to him and
Lord Bastard
when they spoke to one another, and they walked warily around him. The guard was his, through the guard captain. The Bastard did not touch the circlet of interlocking golden leaves worn only by the King, nor sit in his chair in the great hall. But he gathered power into his hands and held it firmly.
    But though he held power, he did not hold life. The heart of the City and of the Kingdom was still missing. That, the Bastard could not restore. He could not find whatever way had led the Prince out of the Palace and the Kingdom. He could not find the way that had opened to take away the King.
    On the sixth day, he went to see the Queen.
    “Ellis,” he said, since they were alone. Even the Queen’s