Chapter 204: The Remnants of My Beautiful City of Dawn Song
I did see. And I didn't like what I saw.
Because what I saw was that my beautiful City of Dawn Song, with its broad, tree-lined avenues and lush gardens with ornamental lakes and carp, had been obliterated. The original, square layout was barely detectible beneath the jumble of two-story buildings that teetered over a warren of crooked alleys. There wasn't a tree to be seen, and the only bodies of water in sight were pools of scum that had collected in the potholes.
What happened? I cried.
"You," answered Floridiana. Now that Dusty had been forced by the press of carts and bodies to slow to the occasional step, she wasn't retching every other minute.
You cannot possibly blame me for other people's architectural choices.
Up ahead, a burly woman threw open second-story shutters and tossed out a pot of – ew ew ew! I barely got my head over the edge of the wagon seat in time. The sight of the contents of my stomach next to a still-steaming pile of goat leavings made me heave harder.
Why? Why why why? People didn't do that before! What happened?
Dusty maneuvered around a pool of stinking yellow liquid – the contents of the pot that the woman had just emptied onto the street. He arched his tail high to make sure none of the hairs trailed into it. With each clip-clop, my stomach lurched.
"I've never seen the City of Dawn Song as it was," Den said, shrinking into his Caltrop Pond size so he could tuck up on the wagon seat next to us. "But I hear it that nightsoil collectors used to come around every day?" He raised an eye knob at me.
I could only shrug. My chamber pot had been spelled to smell like a garden of roses, and the contents had vanished without my needing to think about them. In retrospect, a maid or maids had probably emptied it regularly. I didn't think the mages had figured out a spell for nightsoil removal, although even if they were actively researching it, no one would have mentioned it in my presence. Even mages had some instinct for self-preservation.
Marcius, good old Master Logistics, would have known. For the very first time in my existence, I wished he were here to drone at me while my mind blocked out his voice in self-defense. Vivisecting an empire I knew how to do. Reconstructing one and running it – effectively, not into an early grave – I had no idea how to do.
Well, no need to get ahead of myself. First I had to put the boy-prince on the throne, which required learning about the court and its intrigues. This will be fun! I exhorted myself. You love courts and their intrigues! This is your world!
Except it was hard to enjoy myself when there was so much at stake.
"Copper for your thoughts." Den's voice interrupted my self-pity.
I shook myself both mentally and physically, from the tip of my nose to the point of my tail. Just wondering how old the king or queen is and who might support or oppose Eldon.
"Boot gave me everything the cat spies had on the royal family," Floridiana said, which was news to me.
To you?
"No need to sound like that. She gave it to the person most likely to sit down and read it all."
Fair enough. Well?
"King Philip is forty-six years old. Queen Rosalinda, the mother of Crown Prince Eldon, died in childbirth last winter. The baby was stillborn. The king has not yet remarried, although he certainly will. The crown prince is his one surviving heir at the moment."
That's convenient. So there were no siblings to muddy the succession. Yet. Who are Eldon's aunts, uncles, and cousins?
The question wasn't which of them we needed to keep an eye on. The answer was all of them, because even the staunchest ally might get ideas. As Floridiana listed Eldon's kin, ranked by which ones the cat spies believed most ambitious, I considered how to eliminate their threat.
It would be simplest if they all died, leaving Eldon the only claimant to the throne. If they all died, say, from the Black Death. The cat spies hadn't spread flea remedies into East Serica, because the other kingdom wasn't their problem. (Of course, fleas didn't respect political borders, but Lodia and the others would deal with it when they brought the Temple eastward.)
So...what if the Black Death were to come to Norcap? What if it were to ravage the royal family? I wouldn't even have to cause it, only keep quiet about the lavender and rosemary. It would be so easy. I imagined the palace, devoid of life. The king, his siblings, their offspring, everyone save Eldon lying dead in their beds.
The human servants, lying dead in their beds. The spirit servants, fleeing this morgue while scratching flea bites.
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The rest of the city, decimated by disease. This busy street gone still and empty except for rotting corpses. Who would lie among them? The human peddler hawking his steamed buns? The human woman picking her way across the cobblestones with a shopping basket over one arm? The human ragamuffin children, so dirty I couldn't determine their genders, weaving through the crowd and picking pockets as they went?
I couldn't do it. I couldn't let it happen. Not when I knew how to stop it.
So much for easy solutions. I heaved a long sigh, eliciting a frown from Floridiana.
There are so many of them, I explained, thinking of the city and all its inhabitants.
"You were the one who asked," she snapped. "I'm not the one who controls royal family size."
No, unfortunately, that would be me.
Whatever. Let's go meet the future Emperor.
The once-future and still-future emperor was having a good day. From a crack in the wall around the palace, I watched him stomp about on his short, stubby toddler legs, picking up leaves and throwing them into flowerbeds. Crown Prince Eldon, future Son of Heaven – and gardener-in-training?
He'd get along with Aurelia. Of course, he'd always gotten along with Aurelia.
A stout human woman followed him around the garden, soothing his boo-boos when he inevitably tripped and fell. Further back hovered a pair of human guards.
Huh.
Come to think of it, all the guards and servants I'd seen so far were human. That was odd, if convenient for me. I'd expected to find rat spirits patrolling the inside of the walls, but I'd only run into unawakened vermin. If I'd had one of those spears I'd hidden away in Black Sand Creek, I might have exterminated the flea-ridden pests, but alas, Black Sand Creek lay far to the east.
Well, no matter. I could always steal a spear from the palace armory. Surely they had rat-sized ones for the smaller spirit guards.
Eldon tottered up to the planter below me, reached out, and grabbed a handful of peony leaves. I winced on behalf of the plant when he ripped them off and proudly showed them to his nurse.
"Why, thank you, Your Highness!" she chirped in that high-pitched, saccharine tone people always used on babies.
Elated, the toddler babbled something I couldn't parse and turned his tender mercies to the next shrub. Oh boy, there went this year's peony-viewing party!
I checked myself once more for fleas. Floridiana had already pulled out half my fur with a fine-toothed comb and rubbed me all over with lavender and rosemary, but no harm in making sure, and a lot of potential harm in not checking. No fleas. Good.
I scampered out of the crack and into the nearest clump of ivy, making sure to pull my long tail all the way in. Then I peeked out between the glossy leaves. Neither guard had stirred, diligent watchdogs that they were. A pair of real dog spirits would have been better.
Under cover of the ivy, I ran down the wall and dashed under the peony bush that the walking defoliant was about to reach. Psst! Little prince. Eldon.
He stumped to a halt, hands outstretched.
Over here. Look down.
Bright teak-brown eyes homed in on me. The new and possibly-improved Marcius stomped a few steps closer.
Good boy. Hi. I'm – I cycled through the list of names I'd taken before settling grudgingly on the most convenient one – my name is Griselda.
"Gi-da," he agreed, more amiably than the original Marcius ever would have.
No, Griselda.
"Gi-da," he repeated, more loudly.
No, it's Gri– oh, you know what? It doesn't matter. I stood up on my hind legs, bowed, and addressed words to him that I never thought I'd mean: It is good to see you.
For a moment, even the breeze stilled and the mortal birds ceased their twitter. I thought I glimpsed a flash of recognition in Eldon's pudgy face, but of course it was only my imagination.
"Ish nice to mee' you," he said, or at least I thought that was what he said. Small children didn't have the most precise diction, did they?
"Your Highness, to whom are you speaking?" His nurse's tone had gone sharp.
The guards clanked forward – finally! – with their hands on their sword hilts.
"I's a mouse!" Eldon pronounced this as if it were the most exciting development in his life. Which it was. How often did human princes meet the person whom Fate had sent to elevate them to Son of Heaven?
"No playing with the mouse," she scolded. "What did we say about nasty mice? They might bite you."
His face screwed up and his voice lifted into a wail. "Bu' it talks!"
The effect was immediate. The nurse went white, dashed forward, and snatched him up. The guards charged past her, one of them blowing a whistle furiously. More booted feet rounded the corner.
"Spirit! Spirit alert!" shouted the guard with the whistle.
Spirit alert?
"Get him inside!" shouted another guard. Eldon and his nurse vanished behind a wall of humans in leather armor who hustled them back.
Wait! I protested, torn between fleeing the garden and chasing Eldon. I'm not here to hurt him –
A sword stabbed into the peony shrub, chopping off branches and plunging into the dirt mere inches from me. I shrieked and jumped back – nearly into a spear that sliced through the leaves. More and more steel flashed as the guards surrounded my shrub and hacked it into mincemeat.
Another voice barked, "Where's the spirit?"
"Under this plant, Sir Mage!"
Stop it! It's not what you think! I'm not an assassin –
"Stand aside," commanded the mage.
The blades withdrew, the edge of one slicing through the cape Lodia had made for me. At least it was the wool one, not the fancy embroidered silk one!
Just listen to me for a –
I heard the familiar squelch of a seal in seal paste.
"Burn!"
A twang. An arrow punched into the shredded leaves. I registered the red-stamped pouch bound to the shaft at the same instant that rat-brain sent me leaping for the ivy. An explosion hurled me into the wall. I screamed, but my feet were already clawing their way up the stones as fast as they could.
"There it is!"
"Get it!"
"Don't let it escape!"
"Burn!" shouted the mage. "Burn! Burn!"
More arrows smacked into the wall, following me up. More explosions. The wall was gone. I was blind, deaf, flying. Flying? I blinked and blinked, fighting to see.
Blue. White. More blue.
The sky! I was plummeting through the air belly up! I flailed and twisted and got myself half-turned. Splotchy beige walls rushed past me.
No, no, no! This couldn't be how I died. I was so close! I'd already found my friends, gotten to Norcap, met Eldon.
I won't die! I shouted up at Heaven. I won't die! I won't –
Squelch.
I smacked into a heap of something that gave way and cushioned me and slowed me to a stop. I lay, panting, and saw a rat-shaped patch of sky far, far above me, through a tunnel of sticky, slimy, brown –
That was when my nose kicked in.
I gaped at the walls of manure that rose around me and wailed.