Leda

Chapter Sixteen: Desperate Times

There had been a place of intense darkness, like a crypt or a tomb. And before that, a rain swept street and an old man lying, bleeding, his life threading away between the cracks in the cobbles, washed into the gutter.

Meracad whispered a name: "Marc!" There was no reply. "Marc!"

Perhaps it had been a nightmare ˗ she willed it to be so. Marc, that grand old tease ˗ never serious but always wise, never without a kind word or thought for his friends. Marc couldn't possibly be dead. Could he?

She blinked open her eyes and an impossible light penetrated her skull. With a groan, Meracad rolled over on to her side, burying her face beneath an arm. Something told her that waking would be a very bad idea. That so many strange, terrible events had now been strewn across her path that she would never find her way home again. The duel, Hal's harsh words, that slap and then Magda...running out into the street ˗ blood, rain, stone. It was all too real to have been a dream ˗ she could still taste wine on her breath, the tattered, soaked ruins of her court dress still clung to her limbs.

Now that she was fully conscious, the dull throbbing in her head rippled down through her entire body, passed along nerves and cold, aching muscles, worming its way behind her eyes and to the very roots of her teeth. A violent jolt sent her rolling over hard, wooden boards. Then came the rumble and crunch of cartwheels, a man cursing a horse onwards and the light patter of rain on a tarpaulin above her head.

Shaking off the urge to call out, Meracad forced herself upright. She was in what appeared to be an old supply cart. Immediately, she realised that she was not alone. Opposite her, someone unflexed long, slim limbs, yawned with extravagance and turned back the hood of a travelling cloak to reveal a tangled mess of sandy hair and pale blue eyes ringed with shadow.

Gradually, the previous night acquired a fateful logic.

"Murderer," she said at last.

Her fellow traveller frowned and chewed on his nails. At last, he shrugged and spread his hands wide as if apologising for a mere breach of etiquette. "Desperate times."

"Desperate times are created by men such as you, Prince Josen. And your brother."

"Please!" He raised a hand. "Do not compare me to my brother. We aren't alike, and never have been. He sacrifices life for the sake of his own fame. I do so only for the greater good."

"The greater good?" She curled her lips in contempt. "The greater good is men like Marc Remigius. A single grey hair on Marc's old head had more honour in it than you'll know in your entire lifetime!"

"How dare you?" Josen's lazy blue eyes clouded with anger.

"I'll say what I please to a murderer."

"A prince."

"I've yet to see anything remotely regal about you or Castor. How could you? He was a good friend, an old friend. A man who deserved to die in the comfort of his home surrounded by those he loved ˗ not stabbed to death, his blood lost to the gutter."

Josen sighed and feigned disinterest, resting his head against the side of the cart.

"Why?" She crawled her way across the floor until she was level with him and peered into his face. "Why did you do it?"

For a brief moment, the veneer cracked ˗ she saw it. He looked away, set his jaw, bit his lip. But when he looked back, the mask had returned.

"Because he was in my way."

"In the way?"

"Yes, the old fool. Look, I would have let him go, but...he was so desperate to get to you first. To tell you..."