Cadavers hastened over at Pons’s command. Two guards removed the spear from the body of the prince, lifted it between them and bore it away. Dead servants brought water and soap to cleanse the blood from floor and walls. Haplo stood patiently off to one side, observing the proceedings. The chancellor, he noticed, kept avoiding looking at him. Pons fussed about the room, exclaimed loudly over bloodstains on one of the wall tapestries, made a major production of dispatching servants in search of powdered kairn grass to sprinkle on it.
“Well, I suppose that’s all that can be done.” Pons heaved a sigh. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to Her Majesty when she sees this!”
“You might suggest to her husband that there are less violent ways of killing a man,” suggested Haplo.
The chancellor gave an unaffected start, glanced about fearfully at the Patryn. “Oh, it’s you!” He sounded almost relieved. “I didn’t realize—forgive me. We have so few living prisoners. I’d quite forgotten you weren’t a cadaver. Here, I’ll take you down myself. Guards!”
Pons gestured. Two cadavers hurried to his side and all of them, chancellor and Haplo in front, guards behind, left the game room.
“You appear to be a man of action,” said the chancellor, glancing at Haplo. “You didn’t hesitate to attack that armed soldier who killed your dog. The death of the prince offended you?”
Offended? One Sartan killing another in cold blood? Amused, maybe, not offended. Haplo told himself that was how he should feel. But he looked with distaste at the blood spattered on his clothing, rubbed it off with the back of his hand.
“The prince was only doing what he thought was right. He didn’t deserve to be murdered.”
“It was not murder,” retorted Pons crisply. “Prince Edmund’s life belonged to the dynast, as do the lives of all His Majesty’s subjects. The dynast decided that the young man would prove more valuable to him dead than alive.”
“He might have allowed the young man to give his opinion on the subject,” Haplo observed dryly.
The Patryn was attempting to pay close attention to his whereabouts, but he’d become immediately lost in the maze of identical, interconnecting tunnels. He recognized they were descending only by the slope of the smooth cavern floor. Soon, the gaslights were left behind. Crude torches burned in sconces on the damp walls. Haplo could see, by the flaring light, faint traces of runes running along the walls at floor level. Ahead of him, he heard the echoing sound of footsteps, heavy and shuffling, as if bearing a burden. The prince’s body, going to its not-so-final resting place.
The chancellor was frowning. “I find it very difficult to understand you, sir. Your words come to me out of a cloud of darkness, shot with lightning. I see violence in you, violence that makes me shudder, makes my blood run cold. I see vaunting ambition, the desire for power achieved by any means. You are no stranger to death. Yet I sense that you are deeply disturbed by what was, in reality, the execution of a rebel and a traitor.”
“We don’t kill our own,” Haplo said softly.
“I beg your pardon?” Pons leaned nearer. “What was that?”
“I said, ‘We don’t kill our own,’ ” Haplo repeated shortly, succinctly. He snapped his mouth shut, troubled, angry at being troubled. And he didn’t much like the way everyone around here seemed to be able to stare into the heart and soul of everyone else.
I’m going to welcome prison, he thought. Welcome the soothing, cooling darkness, welcome the silence. He needed the darkness, needed the quiet. He needed time to reflect and think, decide on a course of action. He needed time to sort out and quash these disturbing and confusing thoughts. Which reminded him. He needed a question answered.
“What’s this I heard about a prophecy?”
“Prophecy?” Pons’s eyes slid sideways to Haplo, slid rapidly away again. “When did you hear about a prophecy?”
“Right after your guard tried to kill me.”
“Ah, but you’d only just regained consciousness. You had suffered a severe injury.”
“My hearing wasn’t injured. The duchess said something about a prophecy. I wondered what she meant.”