The Clerk of the Eastern Tower bent low over his charge, so that his ear was positioned little more than an inch over her moving lips. Since she had awoken the previous night, she had talked intermittently, fast and frantic one moment, pouring out information into the small tower room, and then silent, sometimes for hours at a time.
After spending most of the night, and a good deal of the morning, kneeling by her bedside, quill in hand, listening for any messages the woman might care to offer him, he was exhausted. Around noon, he decided that the woman was probably done talking for the time being, and allowed himself to close his eyes. Just for a moment. The clerk had been shocked out of his skin when she started up again, finding himself in near darkness.
He wrote in the dark, unable to take the time to find candles least he miss a single word. After a few minutes, she stopped, and sighed, lapsing back into the comatose state he had grown used to.
He let out his own sigh, and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for his heartbeat to slow. He wasn't strictly supposed to do that, but he didn't think his charge would mind sharing the mattress too much given what she'd just conveyed.
With the words now dried from her lips, the tower room should have returned to silence, and the clerk was puzzled to find that there was a strange sound in the room.
He leant down once more, placing his ear against her mouth, but whatever it was, it was not coming from her. He took him a full minute to realise it was the papers shaking in his hands. No surprises there. He didn't think there were many things in the world more disconcerting to one's nerves than sitting in the dark listening to the whispered ramblings of a sleeping oracle. He moved his free hand to hold the wrist of the other, so that it didn't shake. Except, there was still something. It sounded... breathy. Images of ghosts and demons flittered across his mind, and he chased them away with whatever rational thoughts he could come up with.
He eased himself off the bed, and looked about him. Shuffling over to his desk, he felt around until he found a candlestick, with what felt like two inches of good candle still stuck in it. Another blind search pulled up a flint. It took a few attempts to get it lit, as his hands were still shaking, but soon his desk was bathed in a smokey yellow halo.
And there he was, the source of his ghostly visitation. The master. Snoring. The clerk clearly wasn't the only one unprepared for the long vigil.
The clerk crept over. There was a line of drool running down the master's unshaven jaw. It was strange to see the man who so tormented him looking so vulnerable. That was going to make it so much easier to betray him.
Since their last meeting with the Chancellor, the master had been determined to prove his worth. He looked over every transcript as it was sent out, signed by him before being handed over to the messenger. He would love to be able to pass this news over in person. But, considering he was asleep, it seemed only right the clerk should be the one to go, alone.
As he made his way over to the door, he stuffed the papers inside of his shirt, then as a thought struck him, he paused, ducked down, and removed the chamberpot from under the bed. He nodded to himself, and chamberpot in hand, lifted the latch. The door was heavy enough to keep an invading army at bay for at least at day, and he had to ease it open to stop it from announcing his exit.
"Where are you going?" said the master.
Damn. The clerk sighed. "Just popping out for a moment."
The chair creaked as the master leaned forward. "Popping out where?"
The clerk raised his eyebrows and held out the chamberpot. "Do you really want to know?"
The master pulled a face. "No thanks."
Strictly speaking, neither of them were supposed to leave the room for any other reason than to pass on news of their charge, not even for calls of nature. But both of them decided early on in their relationship that there were some rules which just had to be broken, if they were going to work in the same room, year after year.
He sprinted down to spiral stairs, and nodded to the guards as they let him through the door at the bottom. "Evening," he said, leaving it until he got around the corner to lean against the wall and catch his breath. Two years working in a room barely big enough for the bed, desk and armchair it contained, had done nothing for his endurance.
He coughed, pulling his shirt away from his back and flapping it a bit so that the papers crumpled against his chest ruffled. That was better.
He half-walked, half-trotted across the citadel, nodding to any servants he met in the corridor, until he reached the Chancellor's rooms. As he raised his hand to knock, he began to regret volunteering himself for this task. His last encounter with the great man had been terrifying enough. The gods only knew why he wanted to repeat it. Then he remembered his good friend the master, and it all became clear. He knocked.
"Bugger," he said, realising he was still holding the chamber pot. He looked around, and seeing a side topped by a vase of roses. He picked up the vase, put down the chamberpot, and replaced the vase inside the pot.
Then he pulled the papers from his shirt and smoothed down his hair.
No one answered the door. He tried again, louder this time. Perhaps the Chancellor wasn't in.
That led to the rather alarming question of where the Chancellor might be if he wasn't in his rooms. He looked up and down the corridor, thinking that was probably the best place to start. And then he tried the rest of the wing.
The only person he found was a rather cross looking chambermaid.
"Umm?" he said as he passed her in the corridor. He wasn't much good at talking to women. The only woman he spent much time with didn't seem to even acknowledge his presence. He was just an ear to talk to. Perhaps not even that.
"What is it?" said the chambermaid, sweeping a lock of sweaty hair away from her forehead.
"Oh, err..."
She rolled her eyes. "Spit it out! I've got another twenty rooms to do before I get my dinner. Unless you want to help me turn down a bunch of beds that aren't even going to get slept in tonight, and tend fires for rooms that aren't being used, I suggest you get a hurry on."
"Right. Sorry. I was looking for the Lord Chancellor."
"Council Chamber. Anything else?"
"No?"
She narrowed her eyes. "Are you sure about that?"
"Yes?"
She shook her head and strode off, muttering under her breath. "Why thank you, Blue. So kind of you to take time out of your busy day to help me with my silly questions."
The clerk blushed and opened his mouth to apologise, but only a strangled squawk made it out of his lips. The maid stopped, and turned, but the clerk wasn't hanging around. He spun around and pelted in the other direction.
That was a first. He'd always found the maids to be highly respectful, stepping aside and lowering their eyes as he passed by. That one seemed to be of an entirely different breed. And much to his confusion, he was quite sure that he didn't like it. He considered going after her, to apologise, he told himself, but the papers in his hand gave him an excuse to let the moment go, and he was grateful for that.
The clerk had never been to the Council Chamber, and wasn't entirely sure where it was, but after traipsing up and down more than enough staircases, he was finally pointed in the right direction by a bored looking footman.
There was a guard outside the door, who made no move to bar the clerk's way as he approached. Nor did he take any notice of the clerk's attempts to tidy himself up after his exertions. So, with only a faint amount of embarrassment, the clerk fanned himself with his hand, and waited to be admitted.
Except he wasn't.
"Err," said the clerk, eyeing up the guard. "Do I just... knock, then?"
There was a strained pause, and then the guard lifted his arm to the side, and with a gloved fist, knocked twice on the door.
"Thanks," said the clerk, but the guard was clearly done with him, and went back to staring at the wall.
A deep voice filtered through the door. "Come."
"Oh, should I just.." said the clerk, pointing at the door. "Right, umm... I'll just go in then, shall I? Yes. Fine."
Even from his position in the Eastern Tower, he'd known that the council hadn't sat since the assassination of the king, so he knew that he should not to expect a room filled with the great and the good of Serradorian aristocracy, but he hadn't thought he'd end up in what appeared to be a club meeting for masters.
For a brief second he wondered whether his tower colleague had managed to play a monstrous prank on him, but he very much doubted that even his master would presume to attempt to involve the Chancellor in his plots.
The clerk pushed through the mass of red robes until he found the Lord Chancellor, sitting in their midst, nodding as a white-beard clerk talked him through a ledger.
The other clerk returned his nod (a professional courtesy in a career that offered very little in the way of that sort of thing) before whispering something in the Chancellor's ear. The clerk tried to swallow the lump lodged in his throat as the great man looked up and beckoned him over.
"You have news from the Eastern Tower?" he said.
"Err," said the clerk, shocked that the Chancellor remembered who he was. Of course he did, he chastised himself. He doubted the man ever forgot a thing. "Yes."
"She said something else?"
"Yes."
"Would you care to tell me what?"
The clerk nodded frantically. "Yes, yes. Of course. Here," he said, holding out the crumpled paper.
The Chancellor stared at it. "Why don't you just tell me yourself," he said. The clerk looked down. The papers were stained by his sweating palms, making the already twisted handwriting completely illegible.
"Of course, my Lord Chancellor. I apologise. It's just that... well, the Princess is here. In the city."
He stood back, waiting for the Chancellor's reaction.
"I know," said the Chancellor, looking back at the ledger.
"You know?"
"Yes, I was just making arrangements for her arrival."
"Oh," said the clerk, deflated.
"I have eyes across this land. Each of them important in their own way. I value your service," said the Chancellor.
That surprised the clerk. "Thank you," he said, unsure what else to say. The most powerful man in the country knew who he was, and just told him his contribution was of value. He was going to get out of the Eastern Tower. Who knows, perhaps the Chancellor would take him on as part of his personal entourage.
"You are dismissed."
Perhaps not.
"Right," he said. He opened his mouth again, but the bearded clerk shook his head. "Right," he said again, bowing low and stepping back.
There was a rumbling sound from outside.
"Is that her?" someone asked.
The Chancellor's head rose from the ledger just long enough to say: "Someone check, please."
The Clerk raised his hand. "I'll do it," and legged it to the windows before anyone could tell him otherwise.
He got there just in time to see a carriage coming through the gates. It was black, with a crest painted on the door.
"It's the princess' carriage," shouted one of the masters, who was gawping over the clerk's shoulder.
"Excellent," said the Chancellor. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he said rising from the table. "I'm sure you can imagine that my duties must now take me elsewhere."
"No," said the clerk, his forehead creasing. "That's wrong." But his words were lost in the shuffle of masters. He looked down at the papers in his hand, trying to make sense of the smeared ink. "That's not right," he said again, louder this time.
The Chancellor was on his way out.
The clerk pushed through the crowd, jabbing masters out of his way with his elbow. A few of them yelped, others tutted, but most got the idea and moved out of the way with only a mild level of buffeting.
But there was so many of them. The Chancellor would be half way downstairs by the time he got out of that room. "Lord Chancellor," he shouted. "Please!"
The head, bald and capped, and standing high above anyone else in the room, stopped. And turned.
The clerk gave a few more jabs and managed to stumble into the clearing that surrounded the Chancellor.
"My Lord Chancellor," he said.
"Yes?"
"It's not right. That carriage. It's not right."
"How so."
"She's not arriving in a carriage. The lady of the Eastern Tower was quite clear on that."
The Chancellor stared at him for a moment, standing as still as if he had been carved from wood, then he blinked. "Come," he said, turning and striding out into the corridor, without looking back.
After a moment's hesitation, the clerk's legs decided that it was probably a good idea to follow. As he rushed after the Chancellor, the clerk remembered the last time he'd tried to keep up with the man. He wasn't so sure he wanted to be in the Chancellor's entourage anymore. Going back to the Clerk's Room was looking more and more appealing.
Thankfully, the only stairs they encountered were of the down variety, and soon they burst out into the night air, and right into a path of a running guard.
"Lord Chancellor," said the guard. "I..." he looked behind him. "I was just about to report... How did you know?"
The Chancellor ignored him, striding past, out into the courtyard and towards the carriage. The clerk smiled weakly at the guard. "He's always like that," he said, shrugging.
"It's empty," said the Chancellor, as he puffed up to his side.
"What?" said the clerk. "I mean, I didn't quite catch that, Lord Chancellor."
The Chancellor flung open the door. "It is empty," he repeated.
The clerk stuck his head inside and looked around. It was a finely equipped vehicle. Fine grain leather seats. Mahogany panelled on the doors, with silk curtains fixed to the windows. Brass lamps fixed on either side, and a soft woollen blanket left in a pile on the floor.
The Chancellor was right. It was utterly devoid of princesses.