Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

‘Walk with me.’ I set a hand to his shoulder and steered him toward the Battle Gate. It’s good to steer a man in the direction they intended to go. It blurs the line between what he wants and what you want.

Norras raised both hands and balled them into fists as if to instruct the heathen. He closed the distance between them, swift on his feet, jerking his head in sharp stutters designed to fool the eye and tempt an ill-advised swing. He looked rather like a chicken to me, bobbing his head like that, fists at his face, elbows out like little wings. A big muscular hen.

‘Maeres, my friend, you can’t be serious?’ Ootana was a specialist with countless knife-bouts notched onto his belt. He’d sliced open half a dozen good knifemen this year already. ‘At least let my fighter train with the hook-knife for a few weeks! He’s from the ice. If it’s not an axe they don’t understand it.’ I tried for humour but Ootana already waited behind the gate, a loose-limbed devil from the farthest shores of Afrique.

‘Fight.’ Maeres raised his hand. ‘But—’ Snorri hadn’t even been given his weapon. It was murder, pure and simple.

A public lesson to put a prince firmly...

unreadable glance my way, then looked down to inspect the hook-knife driven through his hand, hilt hard against his palm. The sacrifice he’d made to keep the blade from his throat.

Snorri’s booming laugh silenced them. ‘Call that a bear?’ He lowered his arms and thumped his chest. ‘I am of the Undoreth, The Children of the Hammer. The blood of Odin runs in our veins. Storm-born we!’ He pointed up at Maeres with his transfixed hand, dripping crimson, knowing his tormentor. ‘I am Snorri, Son of the Axe. I have fought trolls! You have a bigger bear. I saw it back in the cells. Send that one.’ ‘Bigger bear!’ Roust Greyjar shouted out behind me, and his fool brother took up the chant. ‘Bigger bear!’ Within moments they were all baying it and the old slaughterhouse pulsed with the demand.

make the bear rear, returning the challenge with a snarl that nearly unloosed my waters even behind the safety of the rail.

straightened Snorri straightened too, leaping upwards with their combined thrust and reaching high with his knife-hand. He drove the blade into the wooden skirts of the rail some twenty feet above the floor of the pit. He pulled, reached, swung, and in a broken second he was amongst us. Snorri ver Snagason surged through the highborn crowd, trampling full-grown men underfoot. Somewhere in those first few steps he found a new knife. He left a trail of flattened and bleeding citizens, using his blade only three times when members of the Terrif pit team made more earnest efforts to stop him. Those he left gutted, one with

his head nearly taken off. He was out into the street before half the crowd even knew what had happened.

Opera! There’s nothing like it. Except wild boars rutting.

I have quick feet but it’s probably my total disregard for other people’s safety that allowed me to open a considerable lead so swiftly.

Today, like everything else since I got up, they seemed to be against me and stood firmly closed. I shook them hard.

And then I saw her. A tattered figure in the alley, bent over some burden. A bucket? For one ridiculous moment I thought it was another of those little boys lugging water for the tank. A pale hand lifted a brush, moonlight glimmered on what

There had been nothing human in that stare. Outside the blind-eye woman painted her fatal runes, and

Some kind of webbing stretched across my face. Because right now I needed a big spider on my head? Once more the gods of fate were crapping on me from a height.

When it comes to wriggling out of things I’m pretty good, but my current situation offered little purchase.

Now, nature may have gifted me a pretty decent physique but I do try to avoid any strenuous activity, at least whilst clothed, and I’ll lay no claims to any great strength. Raw terror does, however,

have a startling effect on me and I’ve been known to toss extraordinarily heavy items aside if they stood between me and a swift escape.

I gained my feet to the sound of awful screaming. The old hall rang to notes that had never before issued from any mouth within it down the long years of its history. I ran then, feet sliding and skittering beneath me – and out of the brilliance of that alleyway something gave chase. A bright and jagged line zigzagged along my trail as if the broken pattern sought to reclaim me, to catch me and light me up so that I too might share the fate I’d fought so

hard to escape. You would think it best to save your breath for running, but I often find screaming helps.

I started to pass the markets and cargo bays behind the great warehouses that fronted the river docks. Even at this hour men moved back and forth, hauling crates from mule-drawn trolleys, loading wagons, labouring by the mean light of lanterns to push the stuff of commerce through Vermillion’s narrow veins.

‘Yeah, that’s not going to happen.’

‘I’m Prince Jalan! Don’t you recognize me?’ ‘Like I know what the princes look like. I don’t even know the princes’ names! Far as I’m concerned you’re some toff who got juiced up and went swimming in a sewer.

‘Ah, Maeres! I was hoping to see you. Had a little something to hand over toward our arrangement.’ I never called it my debt. Our arrangement sounded better. A little more as if it was both our problems, not just mine.

‘This is Cutter John. I was telling him as we came in just how unfortunate it is that you’ve seen my operation here.’ ‘O-o-operation?’ I stuttered the question out. Victory could be measured now by a lack of soiling myself. Cutter John was a name everyone knew, but not many claimed to have seen him. Cutter John came into play when Maeres wanted to hurt people more creatively.

upon some poor soul, Cutter John would be the man to do the work. Some called it artistry. ‘The poppies.’ ‘I didn’t see any poppies.’ Row upon row of green things growing, here under Builder-lights. My Uncle Hertert – the heir-apparently-not, as Father liked to call him – had made countless initiatives to cut the opium supply. He’d had town-law out on boats patrolling God knows how many miles of the Seleen, convinced it came upriver from the port of Marsail. But Maeres grew his own. Right here. Under Hertert’s nose and ready to go up everyone else’s. ‘I didn’t see a thing, Maeres. I ran into a door for godsakes.

drunk.’ ‘You sobered up remarkably well.’ He lifted a golden vinaigrette to his nose, as if the stink of me offended him. Which it probably did. ‘In any event it’s a risk I can’t run, and if we have to part company we may as well make it a memorable event, no?’ He tilted his head at Cutter John.

‘But … I can pay. I’m the Red Queen’s grandson. I’m good for the debt!’ ‘One of many, Jalan. Too much of any denomination waters down the currency. I’d call “prince” an over-valued commodity in Red March these days.’

madness might be spiralling behind those dark little eyes. Too much blood in the water for the shark in him to lie quiet any longer. ‘But … what good would killing me do?’ He couldn’t ever tell anyone. My death wouldn’t serve him. ‘You died in the fire, Prince Jalan. Everyone knows that. None of my doing.

And if a hint of a rumour floated behind Vermillion’s conversations. A whisper that you might have died elsewhere, in even less pleasant circumstances, over a matter of debt … well then, what new heights might my clients reach in their efforts not to disappoint me in future?

I roared at them then, thrashing, useless in the ropes.

If one of Maeres’s men hadn’t been standing on the table legs it would have tipped forward and I’d have gone face first into the flagstones, which bad as it sounds would have been far less painful than what Cutter John had in mind for me.

I was still roaring and screaming, working my way rapidly toward sobbing and pleading, when a hot wet somet...

Although I’d stopped yelling the din was no less deafening, only now it wasn’t me screaming. I’d drowned out the crash of the door bursting open, too far gone in my terror to notice it. Only Daveet stood there now, framed in the doorway. He turned as I watched, slit from collarbone to hip, spilling coils of his guts to the floor. To the left a large figure moved at the edge of my vision. As I turned my head the action shifted behind the table, another scream and a pale arm wrapped in bra...

intestines. And in one moment there was silence. Not a sound save for men shouting far down the corridor o...

blood splattered his chest and arms, and dripped from the scarlet sword in his fist. More of the stuff ran down his face from a shallow cut on his forehead. It wouldn’t be hard to mistake him for a demon risen from hell.

He felt it too – I saw his eyes widen. The direction that had led me, the destination that had drawn me on … it was him. The same force had led Snorri here, and set him among Maeres’ men. We both recognized it now. The Norseman slowed his hand, fingers an inch or two from my neck. The skin there buzzed, almost crackling with … something. He stopped, not wanting to find out what would happen if he touched me skin to skin. The hand withdrew, returned full of knife, and before I could squeal he set to cutting my bonds. ‘You’re coming with me. We

can sort this out somewhere else.’

None of them had any weapon more offensive than a six-inch knife, carrying anything larger within the city walls just wasn’t worth the trouble from town-laws. I took the dagger and kicked Cutter John in the head a few times. It really hurt my toes, but I felt it a price worth paying.

I’ve always viewed boats as a thin plank between me and drowning.

‘In a moment a man with a crossbow will stand there and convince you that waiting was a mistake.’

Once your Red Queen changed her mind about letting me go she put her city at war with me.’

‘The Red Qu—’ I caught myself. I’d said it was the queen’s order that he be sent to the pits. He had no reason not to believe me. Remembering the anchor points of any web of lies is part of the basics when practising to deceive. Normally I’m world class at it. I blamed my failure on extenuating circumstances.

trek from hell.

Rhone, our uncouth neighbour to the north, was always a place best avoided. I’d yet to meet a Rhonish man I’d piss on if he were on fire. Renar I’d never heard of. Ancrath was a murky kingdom on the edge of a swamp and full of murderous inbreds, and Conaught lay so far away there was bound to be something wrong with it.

It was quite possibly the most painful thing I’d ever experienced, and that from someone who learned the hard way not to jump into the saddle from a bedroom window.

And just like that we were travelling companions. I’d bound myself to his quest for rescue and vengeance in some distant land. Hopefully it wouldn’t take too long. Snorri could save his family then slaughter his enemies to the last man, necromancer and corpse monster, and that would be that. I’m good at self-deception but I couldn’t manage to make the plan sound like anything other than a suicidal nightmare.

But I could only catch the odd word since drowning is a noisy business. Eventually, when I’d given up trying to save myself by swallowing all the water and had slipped below the surface for the third and final time, he snagged my waistcoat and hauled me back in with distressing ease.

Morning struck with the promise of a blazing summer’s day. More of a threat than a promise.