His smile died. What were they doing, that’s what he’d like to know. What were they doing so secretive like? Who had the order brought to this hidey-hole?
And why hadn’t he left before now to seek help and report the intrusion?
Unconsciously, his hand crept to the small pocket in his breeches.
“My parents?” Maximilian asked after a long time.
“Your father died eighteen months after your disappearance, Maximilian,” Joseph said gently. “Your mother three weeks after him.”
Maximilian nodded and took a deep breath, bringing his emotions under tight control. It had been so long…he hadn’t truly believed they’d still be alive. “The throne,” he said suddenly as the thought occurred to him. “Who sits on the throne?”
Everyone else eyed him silently, and Maximilian narrowed his eyes at their reaction. “Who?”
“Cavor,” Vorstus replied calmly. “As abbot of the order I marked him myself, and watched through his claim.”
Maximilian was very still for a moment, then he nodded. “Of course. Cavor. He would have been closest in line.” He smiled, shocking the others. “I like Cavor. He was kind to me as a child, and I was always envious of his skill at arms and his flamboyance.” His smile turned into an easy grin. “He sometimes seemed more the prince than I.”
“No doubt he thought so, too,” Joseph muttered under his breath. Over the past few days the four had compared thoughts and suspicions as Maximilian had slept by the camp fire; all believed that Cavor’s hand was evident in Maximilian’s disappearance and incarceration in the Veins—why else appoint Fennon Furst as overseer? Why else the massive effort to recapture a single escapee?
Maximilian looked at the four of them. “What?” he asked softly but with the utmost authority. “What is it?”
Vorstus answered for the others. “Maximilian, we believe that Cavor was involved in your kidnap and incarceration.”
“No!” Maximilian shot to his feet and turned to the fire, hiding his features from them. “No! I will not believe it!”
“Maximilian,” Vorstus said firmly. “For many years the Order of Persimius mourned you dead. But then I was called to the deathbed of,” he hesitated, then decided it was no longer necessary to keep the man’s identity secret, “Baron Norinum of the estates east of Harton.”
Maximilian turned back to them, his face flat and expressionless. “I know…knew him.”
“Yes,” Vorstus continued. “Norinum asked for the abbot of the order to confess him, because the sin that weighed his soul affected us most. Maximilian, Norinum was one of those featureless, anonymous men who circled you that day so long ago.”
Maximilian’s shoulders slumped. “No!”
“He told us little,” Vorstus continued remorselessly. “But he told us enough. The man who’d hired—or blackmailed him—into helping was of noble birth. So noble that even on his deathbed Norinum feared naming him. And you know as well as I that Norinum and Cavor were ever close.”
“Cavor has been troubled by his mark for many years,” Joseph took up the thread smoothly. “Sorely troubled. As Garth and the Order of Persimius crept closer to your discovery, his mark festered anew.” He shrugged. “Perhaps coincidence, perhaps not.”
“And who else would assign Fennon Furst to the Veins, Prince?” Garth argued, leaning forward. “Why else?”
“I will not believe it,” Maximilian said stubbornly. “Cavor was my friend.”
“And will he continue to be your friend when you step into his throne room, Maximilian Persimius?” asked Ravenna quietly. “Will he welcome your return? Your claim?”
Maximilian stared at her, then turned back to the fire. “I will not believe it,” he repeated.
Silence. Then: “But you will claim,” Vorstus said, and it was not a question.
A longer silence, save for the crackle of the uncaring fire.
“Your father is dead,” Joseph said, enunciating each word carefully and clearly. “You are the rightful king of Escator.”
“Damn you!” Maximilian shouted, swinging back to face them. “You are hounds from the netherworlds to so bark at my heels! Yes! Yes, damn it! I will claim. Are you satisfied?”
“Good,” Vorstus said evenly, as if Maximilian had not just shouted into the room. “Then the order will back your claim, and those in this room will witness.”
His temper gone as suddenly as it had erupted, Maximilian sat down on his stool. A small and somewhat embarrassed smile flitted across his face. “I apologise for calling you hounds,” he said. “I owe you my life, and more.”
“Forgiven,” Joseph smiled, and Garth grinned good-naturedly to take the sting out of his words.
“You’ve done nothing but shout at me ever since I found you.”
Maximilian’s embarrassment deepened. “Then my father would chide me for my ill manners, my friends, for no king can afford to shout at those who so demonstrably prove their loyalty and friendship.”
He glanced at Ravenna, and she inclined her head gravely. “You have never shouted at me, Maximilian Persimius.”
“Nor would I ever want to, Ravenna,” he replied, equally as gravely, then he looked back at Vorstus.
“But how can I claim, Abbot Vorstus, when,” he waggled the ringless fingers of his right hand at the monk, “the ring of my father and of his forefathers has been lost? They tore it from my hand that day, and tossed it aside. You know, as do I, that my claim will crumble into uselessness without it.”
Disturbed, for he had never thought to question the ring’s absence, Vorstus opened his mouth to say something, but the words never came, for a terrible thundering at the door shattered the peace of the room.
“Open this door, fugitives! Now!”
Each one of them leaped to their feet. Garth grabbed Ravenna and hauled her to the back of the room, protecting her with his body. Joseph and Vorstus took an uncertain step forward, then an even more uncertain step back, as if partaking in a half-remembered dance. Maximilian’s hand slid to his hip as if he expected to find a sword there, then he looked at his hand in amazement at its long memory.
“Open, now!” and a great crack splintered down the centre of the door. Whoever was out there had a weapon and was prepared to use it.
“I hear only one voice,” Vorstus whispered urgently. “And we are five. Surely—”
The door cracked wide open and a tall, broad-shouldered man stepped into the room, an axe swinging at the end of one well-muscled arm. He wore the rough clothes of an outdoors man, but his eyes were bright with keen intelligence clouded now by grave suspicion—and although he was grey-whiskered with old age he moved with the grace of a champion swordsman.
For several heartbeats everyone stared, then Vorstus took a hesitant step forwards. “Woodsman? I…we must apologise for disturbing the peace of your forest. But as a member of the Order of Persimius I have every right to be here, and—”
The woodsman did not let him finish; he had not taken his eyes from Maximilian. “I have no quarrel with you, monk, ’tis your friends here who have mistaken their way, methinks.” He narrowed his eyes even further. “And I can’t help wondering if one of them is the reason King Cavor has laid martial law so tight across northern Escator even cats are questioned for walking the streets at night.”
“I am the reason Cavor seeks,” Maximilian said, and Joseph could hear the almost concealed hurt in his voice. “I escaped from the Veins some days ago.”
“A prisoner,” the woodsman spat, and hefted the axe in his hands. “Wretch! I…by the gods! What is that on your arm?”
In the act of raising his axe to strike Maximilian down, the woodsman’s arm trembled and his hand slipped on the haft of the axe, the weapon sliding from his clasp and clattering to the floor. Joseph hesitated, then bent down and picked up the axe, placing it safely out of the woodsman’s reach.
Maximilian’s eyes did not waver from the shocked stare of the woodsman. “It is the Manteceros, friend.”
“But you died!” the man whispered. “You were taken by a bear!”
“What?” Vorstus ejected.
“Peace, Vorstus,” Maximilian said calmly, holding out a cautionary hand to the monk. “Let us hear what our friend has to say.”
“Two years after your disappearance,” the woodsman said, stumbling over the “your”, “I found what remained of your bones in a bear’s den not far from here.”
“And why did you think it was me?” Maximilian asked, although his heart grieved for the anonymous youth sacrificed for the sake of an evil pretence.
“Because of this, my Prince,” the woodsman said, calmer now, and he slipped to his knees before the prince. “Because of this.”
In his hand he held the Persimius ring.
TWENTY TWO
THE CLAIM
They shared a meal, then talked some more, then Maximilian laid himself down to sleep, for he would have a long night ahead of him.
“Has Cavor sent troops into the forest, Alaine?” Vorstus asked the woodsman.