Fluffy Story
This story, that I named ‘Fluffy Story’ at some point, is one of my earliest. I wrote the original version when I was in my early teens. Originally in German. Over the decades I occasionally returned to it, rewrote it a few times, now in English. Sadly, I never finished it.
Francis took a deep sigh, straightened his back and fixed a smile on his face as he climbed the last few steps to the dais.
Of all the things that his position as prince consort had to do, he liked standing in for the Queen the least.
Ahead, the herald called out: 'His grace, Prince Francis', only a moment before Francis stepped out on the open platform.
The lords and ladies of the realm, who had arrived before him as was customary, now rose to their feet obediently. Their bows, however, were mostly sketchy as Francis noted. The cheering from the common people spread in thick crowds to either side of the dais was less than enthusiastic - predictably. They just did not like him. Or they were disappointed that his wife was not coming. Neither explanation did anything to improve Francis’s mood.
Francis waved at the crowd, smiled and nodded at the noblemen and women and sat down on the Queen’s chair, allowing the nobles to sit as well. - Never let the nobles stand longer than necessary, his father had been fond of saying, it will not endear you to them.
If anybody had had any doubts yet, with Francis’s choice of seat they knew that the Queen would not be attending the Spring Race this year.
Surely, Francis thought this was not unexpected, but a low discontent mumble rose from the crowd and a number of the assembled aristocrats frowned darkly.
Francis forced himself to continue smiling, even when the Queen's Seneschal sat down on the lower but still throne like chair next to Francis.
Francis pulled his cloak around him, shivering in the stiff breeze from the sea. He took care not to look at Murato Vezzoni. Instead, Francis stared ahead, over the racecourse to where the Castle rose above the bare field where the race was held.
Somewhere in the great fortress, probably in her lavish private quarters, the Queen, his wife, was attending to urgent matters of the realm - or so she had said. For all he knew, she might be chatting with her courtiers, lounging on her great bed, eating grapes, while a musician played quietly in a corner of the room and a blazing fire kept the chill from the ocean winds at bay. She may even consider taking a nap more important than to watch some illiterate peasants and the odd offspring of the aristocracy race their horses on this dusty piece of land. She might just consider this event too boring to attend, even if it was this great tradition Francis had been told it was. So, instead of wasting her own precious time, she had sent her husband.
Sometimes Francis could not help but think that this was the main purpose of her marrying him, to have somebody to stand in for her at all the events and functions she thought were not interesting or important enough for her to attend herself.
That, and the alliance with his father, of course.
It was all he had been doing since he came here almost six months ago: keeping the Queen’s chair warm at countless ceremonies and festivities, sitting there like a complete pillock, a mere proxy showing the Queen had not forgotten about this solstice celebration or that annual assembly of some guild.
And as far as he could see this would be all he would ever do as the Queen’s consort. When he had first come to this place, she had told him that he had to first learn Sican before he could support her actively in the government of the Islands, but by now he doubted it would ever happen. For one, nobody seemed inclined to teach him this obscure language. Then, more importantly, nobody actually spoke the bloody language. Not at court at least. Nor the people he ever came in contact with.
The peasants were speaking it, but when would he ever talk to a peasant?
A shuffling noise from Vezzoni brought Francis back to the present. He quickly wiped the frown he had allowed to build from his face and focused on what was happening in front of him.
From the right the contestants were riding along the flat field, parading their horses.
Francis decided not to attempt a smile, since it would probably turn into a strange grimace, but he looked at all the riders and inclined his head, as they rode past, right hand on their chest and bowing slightly.
They were a ragged looking lot. Most of them barefoot and wearing only a knee-length sleeveless tunic. They must be freezing in the breeze. Even the few contestants of noble parentage were only distinguishable because their tunics were neither faded or patched and looked a little warmer than those of the less affluent riders. One participant of the race Francis recognised: Koykos, the third son of Rashon, the Lord of - that northern peninsula with the unpronounceable name. A year older than Francis, Koykos suffered from an infuriatingly impertinent character.
Francis gritted his teeth and nodded at Koykos. Stupid, little runts, the lot of them.
The horses looked hardly any better than the riders. However, unlike the humans on their backs, they had been dressed for the occasion. Their hides gleamed, their hooves were oiled to a shine. Most had coloured ribbons tied into their manes and tails. To Francis they still looked strange. The Island horses were smaller and finer boned than their continental counterparts, and, as he recalled as he watched them walk by, all unshod.
He would never get used to all this strangeness, Francis thought grimly, a spasm of homesickness shooting through him.
Vezzoni turned and looked at Francis, who only then realised he had sighed. The homesickness was instantly replaced by a stab of fear. Vezzoni’s face may remain blank, but the warning was there, nevertheless.
Francis swallowed and suppressed the urge to duck under the Seneschal’s gaze. He really had to pull himself together and concentrate on the race. No sighing or frowning any more.
Vezzoni would report all of Francis’s trespasses to the Queen and she did not tolerate misbehaviour from her husband.
Francis forced himself to observe the next contestant more closely, a skinny girl whose brown, straggly hair was almost the same colour as that of her horse. The girl’s hair could have done with its share of the brushing that had been given to the mane of the horse, shining in the sunlight and festooned with green ribbons.
Despite his efforts Francis could not stop himself from remembering the shock he felt when the day after he had returned from the inauguration of the mayor of Rhontath the Queen had slapped his face. Twice.
Francis shuddered, hoping that Vezzoni would ascribe it to the chilly air. He stared at the next rider, a boy who must be hardly more than ten years on a dappled horse.
He had yawned during the inauguration. The Queen had accused him after hitting him. Not once, but twice and that would not do. Of course, Francis knew she had the right to hit him. He still felt hurt and horrified, even if he knew that whoever he told about it would merely shrug. Perhaps it was the fact that she had not seemed to be angry when she slapped him that he found so unnerving.
His shock and humiliation had been intensified by the fact that she had hit him virtually in public. Vezzoni had been there, Kaza and Loyaka, two of the Queen’s ladies, and a servant had lurked somewhere waiting for orders. No doubt the entire Castle had known about it within the hour.
The next contestant was a tall, emaciated looking girl in a tattered tunic on a black horse. Apart from the bright red ribbons something glittered in its mane and tale, as if pieces of glass or jewels were braided into the horse’s hair and in the single braid of its rider.
What caught Francis’s attention was not the fact that the girl - he guessed she was about fourteen or fifteen, a year or so older than himself - looked pale and sickly, but the intensity with which she stared at him. He could not read her expression, a moment he thought she might be in pain, then that she was afraid or desperate, or perhaps she was angry. While she did place her right hand on her chest, too, she did not bow at him.
Francis found himself staring back, wondering who she was.
“Impertinent bitch,” Vezzoni muttered.
Francis turned to the Seneschal, surprised by this outburst. “Who is she?” Francis asked.
Vezzoni shrugged. Perhaps he did not know, perhaps he could not be asked to tell Francis.
Francis looked back at the girl, who was now trotting after the others towards the left side of the field where the starting point of the race was. He felt a strange tug of sympathy towards the girl, who he imagined wanted to be here as little as he did.
There were two more contestants, a woman of almost twenty, who must be the oldest of the riders and a boy who must be some noble offspring, judging from the brocaded tunic he wore.
“Oula,” a servant appearing at Francis’s elbow offered, holding a steaming cup up to him.
Francis accepted it gratefully, though not without wishing vainly he would finally be able to persuade the staff to make some tea for him. At least every now and then.
The riders had assembled at the starting line to the far-left end of the field. From his position on the days, he could only see that there were twenty-five. He knew there were twenty-five, there were always twenty-five riders in the Spring Race and the competition to get a place in it was hard.
The Spring Race, he had been told innumerable times, was the most important horse race of the year on the Islands. It was an ages old tradition. Some even said it dated back to the time when there were twenty-five independent principalities on the Islands.
Francis took a sip of the hot, bitter-sweat oula. He could not care less about the Race. All he wanted was to have the thing finally over and done with so he could go back inside and get warm.
The Castle looked very inviting sitting on its rocky prominence over the sea. Which just showed how much he hated being here. He did not like the Castle. It was a huge, hostile looking edifice built, as he had been told, centuries ago in less civilized times, at a time when the Islands were torn apart by wars.
Whether that was before or after the time of the alleged twenty-five principalities, Francis did not know.
Inside its forbidding walls, the Castle had been rebuilt repeatedly over the centuries. Francis had been surprised at the luxuriousness of its appointments when he first entered it.
And now, while he was sitting here in the cold wind, his wife was enjoying the luxuries of her principal residence. If Vezzoni were not sitting right next to him, Francis would have thought there was a more than even chance that the Queen was in bed with her Seneschal.
He was certain that the Queen was sleeping with Vezzoni, even though nobody had even hinted at such a thing. And he himself, Francis thought angrily, had of course been too scared to ask.
He turned to look at Vezzoni and found the Seneschal staring back at him with a strangely amused look on his face.
“What?” Francis asked and cursed himself at once.
Vezzoni grinned at him. “Are you going to start the Race or shall I?”
Beyond Vezzoni’s smirking face, Francis saw the assembled nobility look at him expectantly. The crowds were staring at him, too.
No doubt blushing furiously, Francis wanted to burst out that nobody had told him he was supposed to start the gods damned Race, but trying to defend himself would only make him look more foolish than he did anyway. He could imagine the Queen’s reaction only too well: ‘You could have asked.’
He forced himself to smile at Vezzoni and ask, “what do I do?”
“Just raise your hand,” Vezzoni replied, “the sergeants of the Race will signal the riders.”
Francis nodded and looked at the twenty-five riders lined up and waiting for his signal. He took a deep breath, waiting a moment longer and raised his hand high in the air.
Apparently, something about the way he raised his hand was wrong. Francis could hear a soft snigger from Vezzoni, and a few of the nobles looked at each other as if they had just seen something funny or embarrassing.
Francis clenched his jaws, telling himself that whatever he had done wrong was not his fault. How could he know if nobody told him what to do?
At least, Francis thought, the sergeants of the Race had understood his signal. He could faintly hear several barked orders, and in a burst of dust the race began.
A thunderous cheer rose from the crowds and, to Francis surprise, the nobility on the dais were cheering too. Some looked slightly uncomfortable about it, but most were yelling happily like the peasants below. In the front row, further to his left, Francis saw the Lord of the Northern Peninsula standing and holding both his fists in the air. Of course, his son was in the Race.
At first, the horses did not seem to be not very fast, but as they came close, Francis realised that they only looked slow from the angle at which they approached.
Then, the first horse galloped past, the dappled one with the little boy on its back, who looked hardly in control of his steed.
Dust whirled up by the thundering hooves was blown against their faces by the stiff wind. Horses and riders whirled past and before Francis had thought it possible the first had reached the end of the track where a broad beam, almost as high as the horses’ noses ran across it.
He knew that to complete the Race, the beam had to be taken, then the horses had to make a turn around a tall post with bright strips of ribbon fluttering in the wind, jump the beam again and head back towards the starting point of the race.
There were the first casualties at the beam. Francis did not see clearly what happened, but one rider slipped off his horse, landing heavily on the hard ground. One of the horses must have hit the beam. A thud loud enough to be heard above the ongoing cheering was followed by a shrill neigh. Francis saw hooves in the air as the horse seemed to cartwheel across the barrier, crashing on its back on the other side.
Another rider barely managed to avoid the flying hooves, and one had to pull his horse up in front of the beam to avoid jumping onto the injured animal.
The first riders, the little boy on the dappled horse, and a black horse, possibly the one of the grim-faced girl, where the first to jump the beam a second time, galloping back across the dry track.
Francis suddenly realised that he had clapped one hand to his mouth and was biting on his middle finger hard enough to hurt. He quickly dropped his hand. Fortunately, everybody around him was too engrossed with the spectacle to notice his embarrassing behaviour.
The black horse gained on the dappled, overtook it and as it sped past the dais again, Francis caught a glimpse of the girl riding it, bent over its neck, her mouth open as if she were screaming.
The little boy on the dappled horse was clearly in trouble. Francis could glimpse the boy holding on to the horse’s neck and it seemed he was in danger of sliding off one side of his mount.
The field of horses stretched out now. Behind the dappled horse came two horses, neck to neck. One of them was ridden by no other than Koykos. His father, a man Francis had so far seen only behave in the most decorous way, seemed to be beside himself with excitement. He was shouting so loudly that Francis could hear him. Hear but not understand. It took Francis a moment to realise that he was shouting in Sican.
For a moment Francis was so surprised by this, a great Lord of the Islands yelling in the peasants’ tongue that he missed what was happening on the track. It was only when the Lord of the Northern Peninsula suddenly stopped his shouting, apparently in mid-word, that Francis looked back on the track.
A cloud of dust marked the place where at least one horse had fallen, Koykos’s apparently. The dappled horse, riderless now, galloped off to one side, away from the spectators.
“Ha!” Francis shouted and immediately clapped his hand across his mouth as if he could stuff the exclamation back into it. This was no way to react in the Lord’s presence, who did not know whether his son had been injured or even killed in the fall.
Fortunately, Lord Rashon seemed to be too much concerned with the events on the track to have heard Francis’s outburst.
Horses were thundering past the point of the accident. Francis could see through the dust whirling in the air, that Koykos’s horse was back on its feet. It held its head down and for some reason stayed where it was.
The cheering of the crowds grew louder still. The first horses had reached the far end of the track, where the riders wheeled them around, this time without a post to mark the turning point to head back towards the dais. The first to reach it, to ride past Francis would win the Spring Race.
The black horse with its grim looking rider was still in the front, but its lead had shrunk to almost nothing. The brown horse with its ratty-haired rider was next to the black one, only a couple of paces behind. Perhaps the brown had taken the turn more closely, perhaps it could just keep the speed longer than the black.
Then suddenly the black horse broke away to the side, losing its rhythm and the brown pulled past it. Francis could see the grim girl hitting at the ratty-haired girl, but the blow landed only on the girl’s arm and did not slow her down.
“She hit her,” Francis exclaimed.
“So she did,” Vezzoni said without the note of patronising humour in his voice that Francis had come to expect. He kept his eyes of the two riders who were almost at the finish, “but only after the other girl kicked her horse. It is allowed”
The brown horse thundered past the dais, the black just half a length behind, and Vezzoni, like everybody else who was not yet on their feet, jumped to his feet and shouted one word: “Tikan!”
Sican again, Francis thought.
He rose as well, realised he was still holding the cup of oula, and placed it on the small table beside his throne.
The crowd was still cheering, “Tikan. Tikan,” and Vezzoni grinned broadly and seemed for once in a perfectly pleasant mood.
“What does it mean?” Francis asked.
Vezzoni clapped him on the shoulder. “What do you think?” he shouted. “Spring!”
Francis thought that was an odd thing to shout at the end of a race, but then, he reminded himself, it was the Spring Race.
The ratty-haired girl was heading back towards the dais, closely followed by the black horse. Its rider looked as if she wanted to rip the other girl’s head off.
There were horses and riders along almost the entire length of the track. Apparently, the riders who had lost had simply stopped their horses where they were when the first riders had passed the finishing line. Lord Rashon running across the track towards his son.
Koykos, Francis could see now, was alive. He knelt on the ground, covered in dust - and probably blood. In one hand he held his horse’s reigns, the other was holding on to the shoulder of the little boy who was either dead or unconscious.
“What do I do now?” Francis asked Vezzoni. The winner of the Spring Race had leapt off her horse and was climbing up the dais towards him, followed closely by the grim-faced girl, and another rider, a boy with a wild stack of curly black hair on its head was steering his horse towards the dais, too. He was probably the third across the winning line.
“You hand out the prizes, of course,” Vezzoni replied cheerfully.
Francis grinned at the tall Seneschal who smiled back at him. For a moment, Francis found himself liking the man and wondered why they were usually so at odds with each other.
“Prizes?” Francis looked around, but he could not see anything resembling gifts.
“They are being brought,” Vezzoni reassured him. “In the meantime, congratulate the winner and say something about a splendid race and the glory of the kingdom.”
He patted Francis on the shoulder again and stepped back to his throne, where he sat down, taking the oula Francis had left, raised it in a salute to him.
Perhaps, Francis thought, they should have a spring race every day if that meant that Vezzoni was treating him like this.
Francis stood as straight as he could and tried to look dignified. Perhaps standing in for the Queen was not what he liked to do but today may be an exception.
The three winners had lined up on the dais five steps down from his throne. The ratty-haired girl grinned so hard, she looked almost insane. The dark-haired girl, who had almost won, on the other hand, was not happy at all. She hugged herself tightly, perhaps cold in the stiff breeze that still came in from the sea. Her face was screwed up in some violent emotion, disappointment perhaps or anger. The third winner’s overwhelming emotion was astonishment. He gaped at Francis as if he could not quite believe he was there, standing in the presence of royalty.
Francis could hear some noise behind him. It must be the prizes being brought as Vezzoni had promised.
The cheering had died down considerably, but nobody seemed to be paying particular attention to what happened on the dais, not even the nobles assembled there were particularly interested. It was the race that had brought them here, not the giving away of presents.
That suited Francis just fine. The fewer people heard his impromptu speech the better.
People and horses were milling around on the track, and a grey-haired, burly man pushed himself through the thick of the crowd.
Taking a step down towards the winners. With a smile that was not forced this time, Francis started, “Congratu…” when his eyes fell on the dark-haired girl who was now looking him straight in the face, and the fury and hate with which she looked at him made him grind to a halt before he even finished the first word.
Then everything seemed to happen at once.
The girl unclasped her arms, suddenly holding a long knife in her hand. She pushed the ratty haired winner aside with one hand, while the astonished boy stepped back, missing the step, and fell down the stairs with a high-pitched scream.
Somebody yelled “Stop her!”, somebody ran up the steps behind her, his hands stretched out as if he wanted to grab her from behind.
Francis could see from the corner of his eye how Vezzoni jumped from his throne, other people on the dais were moving. The Duchess of Ylirim, resplendent and by all appearances unarmed, pulled what looked like a small sword from her back.
Even though Francis had time to notice all of this, and even though it felt as if he were standing there, rooted to the spot and staring at the girl like a rabbit in front of a snake for ever, there was no time for anybody to stop the mad attack.
The girl, knife raised in her right hand, jumped the few steps that separated them in two strides and flung himself at Francis hard enough for both of them to fall over. Francis hit his head against something hard, but all he could see, all he could comprehend, was the knife in the girl’s hand. And the fact that he was about to die.
Howling like someone possessed, the girl knelt over him, holding him down with her left hand and striking down with the knife.
Something crunched in Francis’s chest, and a flash of pain shot through him so bright it almost blinded him.
Somehow, he could still feel the jerk when the knife was diverted by something hard, almost making the girl loose her grip on it.
The pitch of her howling changed, as she tried furiously to pull the knife out again. Francis could feel his back lifting off the wooden planks as she pulled, but the knife was stuck.
Then, Vezzoni and somebody else were both there, almost colliding in their hurry. It was the man who had come running up the stairs that grabbed the mad girl round her middle and bodily lifted her up in the air. She was screaming still, her arms and legs flaying around. One of her bare feet kicked Francis painfully in the ribs.
The man who held her shouted at her and though Francis did not understand what he said, it sounded as if he tried to reason with her.
Vezzoni threw himself on the floor next to Francis, his face white as a sheet. “Thank the Gods you are still alive,” the Seneschal breathed.
“Yes,” Francis managed to say.
He was still alive, he realised. He was not even unconscious or in too much pain. Which, he thought, was the strangest thing, since there was a knife sticking out of his chest just under his collar bone to the left side of his sternum. He could see its blade and hilt. There were jewels embedded in the it, which struck Francis as decidedly odd.
Somebody barked an order and the screaming stopped.
Francis looked past the knife in his chest and saw the duchess of Ylirim holding the point of the short sword she had produced from under her embroidered cloak against the girl’s throat.
“Don’t move,” Vezzoni said.
For a moment Francis thought the Seneschal meant the girl, but then Francis realised that Vezzoni was talking to him.
Vezzoni’s hand was pressing something against Francis’s chest, but he still could feel blood pooling on his skin. But surely, he thought, if the wound was deadly, there would be more blood - and more pain.
But there was pain now, a sharp stinging sensation and a dull throbbing in his chest.
“I want to see,” Francis demanded trying to ignore the pain.
The girl stood limp still held by the burly man who had pulled her off Francis. The man, Francis realised who had tried to reach the dais just before the girl had attacked.
Then the girl did the strangest thing: she suddenly burst into tears.
Before Francis had time to comprehend this sudden change of mood from howling madness to heart-wrenching misery, the man holding the girl, turned her around in his arms and embraced her, holding the weeping girl to his chest and patting her on the back.
The other nobles and the Captain of the Guards had by now formed a circle around them, Francis and Vezzoni, the sobbing girl, the burly man and the Duchess as its twin centres.
The man said something in Sican to the Duchess, who lowered her sword immediately. Understanding and compassion dawned on her face. The Duchess placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder and whispered something in her ear.
In fact, every man and woman around them seemed to understand what was going on. Even the ratty-haired winner of the race, standing somewhat awkward between the nobles, seemed to know. They all stared at the sobbing girl with compassion, some looked as if they were awed.
The only person who looked as dumbfounded as Francis felt, he noticed, as he struggled in vain to sit up, was Vezzoni.
The Duchess said something in Sican to the assembled noblemen and women, and a hurried conversation erupted, as if they were trying to come to a decision quickly.
Why was everybody talking this strange language of a sudden? Francis had heard none of the nobles speak anything but French so far, now they were all talking Sican.
“What the hell is going on?” Vezzoni demanded to know.
He did not know Sican, Francis realised, not more than a few words.
The throbbing pain in his chest increased steadily, and there was now blood running down his side.
Perhaps he was imagining it, but for a moment Vezzoni looked almost scared when the assembled nobility turned to him.
“She is my niece,” the burly man stated while still holding the sobbing would be assassin as if it explained everything.
It did explain everything to Vezzoni at least. He jumped to his feet, furious all of a sudden.
“Take her to the Queen!” he yelled at the Captain of the Guards who had joined in the rapid conversation in Sican. “Bind her and take her to the Queen.”
“I’ll take her,” the man, the mad girl’s uncle, said.
“You will do no such thing,” Vezzoni roared. “You will be lucky if the Queen does not clap you in irons.”
Francis tried to push himself up to see what happened, but the pain shooting through him was enough that he almost passed out.
“What…?” was all he managed to say, feeling lightheaded all of a sudden.
Nobody pays any attention to me, he thought, as usual. He was probably going to lie here and slowly bleed to death.
The people around him moved, he could hear their boots clunking, coats rustling, but they seemed to be far away. He put his hand on his chest, feeling the sharp metal of the knife sticking out of his chest, the warm, sticky blood.
It’s not too bad, he thought, staring at his hand, red and glistening with his own blood. I’m not dead.
Then he must have passed out.

Francis came round when a flash red hot pain stabbed through his chest, making him scream out.
The Queen’s personal physician, Taranzo, was leaning over him, both hands clasped around the knife that was still sticking in Francis’s chest. Somebody had removed his cloak and shirt while he was unconscious. Behind Taranzo Francis could see the white-washed walls of the royal hall of the Castle. Sartene was standing half-way across the hall from where he was propped up in a chair. She was looking at him for a moment, then she returned her attention to the girl, who stood in front of her, between two of the Queen’s personal guard.
Hauling right back, Sartene slapped the girl in the face hard enough that she would have fallen over if she had not been held up by the guards.
Somebody was holding Francis’s shoulders, pressing them against the hard back of the chair.
“Hold him,” Taranzo said. “You,” he snapped over his shoulder to somebody Francis could not see, “put your hands on his chest here, and hold fast.”
There was a loud smack as the Queen hit the girl again.
Obviously, Francis found himself reflecting, he had been mistaken when he had thought his wife had slapped him hard. Compared to the violence she displayed now, she had been very restrained then.
Izena, one of the hall servants stepped around the chair and placed her hands on Francis’s chest, directly next to the knife. One hand on his ribs, the other on his sternum. She looked pale and frightened, avoiding his eyes.
But Francis was trying to see what was going on behind Izena anyway.
The girl threw her head back, to get her hair that had almost completely escaped its braid out of her face. The expression on her face was one of defiance and hatred.
Pulling her lips back she spat something in Sican at Sartene, only to be slapped again. “Speak French, like every civilized person,” the Queen ordered.
“Hold him,” Taranzo repeated.
“You killed my family,” the girl said, her voice shaking with suppressed rage, “you murderous, vile bitch.”
Francis saw the Queen’s face contort in fury as she punched the girl in the stomach, then Taranzo pulled on the knife, and all Francis was aware of was the searing pain in his chest and his own screams rasping in his throat, drowning out every other sound.
“It’s stuck good,” the man behind Francis said, when the pain had receded somewhat and he was able to hear again.
At the other side of the hall, the Queen was yelling at the girl - in Sican. Perhaps of all the weird things that had happened today, Francis thought, that must be the weirdest.
“Perhaps if we trade places?” the man behind the chair suggested.
Taranzo looked dubious for a moment, then he nodded. He let go of the knife and stepped back to allow the man to take his place.
It was, to Francis surprise, Lord Gepetto of the Northern Peninsula.
He smiled at Francis and bent close over the knife. Francis had never seen him close up, or paid any particular attention to the Lord, he had always been just one of the innumerable nobles who came and went at court.
As Gepetto bent over him, Francis could see his skin, tanned deeply from the sun, his black beard cut short and his hair braided back, but not, Francis realised, in the continental fashion, but in a more elaborate style.
“How is your son?” Francis asked.
Gepetto looked up briefly, as if he was surprised in turn, then he returned his attention to the knife. “Fine,” he answered. “A few cuts and bruises, a couple of cracked ribs. Nothing that won’t heal in time.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Francis stated, realising to his own surprise that he meant it. “And the boy?”
“Not as lucky,” Gepetto said, his left hand closing around the knife’s hilt. “Broken arm and a nasty kick to the stomach. They don’t know whether he’s bleeding internally.”
He gave the knife an experimental plug, sending a stab of pain through Francis that made him scream again.
“You, my boy,” Gepetto declared, “are not lucky, you are blessed by the gods.” He looked up to where Taranzi must be standing behind Francis’s chair. “The boy needs some poppy.”
“But,” Taranzi protested, only to be cut off by Gepetto. “The boy is not going to bleed to death, but we have to take the knife out and that is going to hurt like buggery. - Sorry,” he added to Francis as if he thought him unused to swearing. Somehow, Francis thought, he did not mind Lord Gepetto calling him a boy, though he did really hate it when other people did.
“What are you doing?” Sartene asked sharply. She had abandoned the girl for the moment and stood behind Lord Gepetto.
Francis looked to where the girl was standing, blood trickling out of her nose and down her chin. She tried hard to keep her face hard and defiant, but Francis could see she was on the verge of losing the struggle. There were tears in her eyes. The way she was standing indicated that she was in considerable pain.
“I am giving your physician a hand,” Gepetto replied calmly.
“How bad is it?” the Queen asked.
Francis felt hurt. And foolish because he felt hurt by her neglect. She would rather beat that mad girl up than see how he was.
“The knife hit his left collar bone, your grace,” Taranzo replied. “Probably broke it. That saved the Prince’s life, no doubt. It passed through his chest without damaging any vital organs, which, if I may say so, is a small miracle. The tip seems to have embedded itself in the shoulder blade.”
“You have to take the knife out,” Sartene stated.
“Yes,” Taranzo agreed with a hint of impatience in his voice.
“Do what you must.” Turning on her heal, she returned to the girl, who with a visible effort stood up straighter as the Queen approached.
“Drink this,” Lord Gepetto said, holding a cup of wine to Francis’s lips.
“I want to know what is happening,” Francis complained.
“So do I, but this is more important. Drink.” Gepetto tilted the cup, and wine mixed with something that tasted quite strange poured into Francis’s mouth.
He swallowed hard, obediently drinking the entire cup. It would take a while for the poppy to take effect. In the meantime, he wanted to find out what all this meant.
A commotion drew his attention towards the right end of the hall, where the doors to the entrance hall were.
“I am her guardian, be damned,” a familiar voice explained, “and I will not be denied.”
“Lord Istvar.” The Queen sounded surprised. “I did not know you were here.”
The man marching across the hall, was the same burly, grey-haired man who had held the girl in his arms as if to comfort her.
“I tried to stop him,” Vezzoni explained as he hurried after Istvar, but Sartene silenced him with a wave of her hand.
“You are her guardian?” Sartene asked incredulously.
“She is my niece, Royaz,” Lord Istvar declared.
“Your…,” Sartene started and stopped, as she, too, seemed to be hit by some revelation. “Your niece, your grace?” When she turned back to the girl, there was a new expression of disgust on her face. “I should have known.”
Francis looked up at Lord Gepetto who was also watching what happened in front of them. He did know, too. Even the hall servant, Izena seemed to comprehend.
She turned to Lord Gepetto and asked in a barely audible whisper, “is she…?”
He nodded before she could complete the question. “Yes.” His voice sounded tight, as if he were choking on some very strong emotion.
Would somebody please explain to me what is going on? Francis thought desperately, but there was something forbidding in the look that Gepetto gave him.
The Queen looked at Istvar and back at his niece. “So, it was me you really wanted to kill?”
“Yes,” the girl spat. “And one day I will kill you.”
Sartene snorted, as if that was hardly a threat at all. She turned back to Lord Istvar. “She’s been living with you all those years?”
“Yes, your grace,” Istvar answered.
Lord Gepetto furrowed his brows, fixing his eyes on the knife.
“Why now?” the Queen asked. “Why come here now?”
Francis felt a heaviness creeping into his limbs, a fuzziness spreading in his mind. Not now, he wanted to yell. Now when they were finally started to talk about the meaning of this.
“It seems somebody told her,” Istvar replied.
“Told her what?” Francis asked, his voice slurred.
“Hold him,” Lord Gepetto said, and put both his hands on the knife’s hilt.
Hands grabbed Francis’s shoulders, pressed against his chest. He did not want to pass out again, he wanted to know why the girl had attacked him, why there was a knife sticking out of his chest, but everything became blurry and distant.
“Now,” somebody said, and an explosion of pain shot through Francis’s body. He screamed and screamed as if he wanted to expel his soul out of his body. He screamed until there was no air in his body left.
But he did not pass out.
Nor did he really comprehend what was going on around him. Vague shapes were passing across his vision, somebody patted his shoulder, turned him over and back. A face loomed before him, saying something significant that he did not understand, and a hard object was pressed in his hand. He held on to that, clutching at the hard cold thing as if it were his only link to reality. For a while he had the impression he was floating, walls moved past him. Then he landed in a bed, his bed. Somebody tucked him in, gave him more of that nasty stuff to drink and said, quite clearly, “Sleep.”
He slept, but he also dreamed.

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