The way back to town was just as long as he remembered, but more overgrown and with fewer signs of cattle or travelers. Why would Arrin have let it get so wild?

  Tanag kicked the bay forward, trotting where he could, cantering when there was enough room, and walking when he had to. The moon was half-way to its zenith when he reached the outskirts.

  The streets were quiet, but there was movement inside the first inn, and people dancing at the tavern he and Arrin used to visit in deep disguise. Back then, it would never have done for the townsfolk to see their prince too much at ease, or so his father had said.

  His father—Tanag felt a frisson of pain, and the first spark of rage. The bay shifted restlessly beneath him, and Tanag wondered how long it would be before undeath took him in full. Perhaps, the evil did not come all at once, and he had to hurry if he was not to lose himself to rage. The tavern was his best chance of finding where Arrin was living now.

  Turning the horse down an alley beside his once-favorite establishment, Tanag settled it beside a side door and waited. The first man to exit, answering nature’s call would be his target. This close to midnight, he did not have long to wait. The door opened, and a mop-haired merchant came out.

  He was older than Tanag remembered, and his paunch was definitely broader, but the prince remembered the merry mischief in the man’s eyes, recalled the way he brushed the hair from his eyes when he was working a difficult bargain, and knew Herrish would sell his mother if the profit was large enough.

  Herrish, he mused. Well, I could have done worse.

  As the merchant registered the horse beside the door and turned, Tanag lunged, keeping his seat by sheer force of will, as he grabbed Herrish’s shirt front.

  “Where can I find Arrin?” he rasped, the anger again bubbling to the surface and threatening to subsume him. His question was lost in Herrish’s exclamation of fright, so Tanag repeated it.

  “Who?” Herrish whimpered, through a chatter of teeth, a dark stain spreading from his crotch and down his leg as he looked into the Tanag’s eye sockets.

  His eyes grew wide, and he opened his mouth again, although it took several attempts for him to ask it again.

  “Wh… Wh… Whom did you seek?” No fool, and with a strong instinct for survival, Herrish showed he understood the skeleton sought someone. His eyes bulged in a face drained of color, and the scent of fresh urine fouled the air, but his gaze flitted over Tanag’s face, over Tanag’s shoulder to the end of the alley as though looking for assistance. Tanag did not give him time to think of calling for help.

  “Arrin!” he demanded, and then realized there must be a hundred Arrins in a city this size. “Arrin, who once rode with Prince Tanag.”

  He clenched his fist tighter, crushing velvet and the heavy cotton beneath. He watched Herrish’s eyes return to his face, then drop to the medallion over Tanag’s borrowed chain corselet. Tanag saw recognition and realization spark on his face.

  “By the demo—”

  “Do not call upon them,” Tanag warned. “You do not know how close they travel to this plane. Now, where is Arrin?”

  “In the p…p…palace,” Herrish shuddered, and then moaned in sudden recall. “He k…k…killed your father, your mother, your—”

  “What of Maietta?” Tanag noted the sibilance in his voice, the sudden rasp.

  Herrish whimpered, tears welling in his eyes.

  “Please…” he whispered. “Do not ask me of her.”

  Tanag shook him and the words came spilling out.

  “He took her to wife.” Herrish sobbed. “Maietta and Lannara, he took them both, on the same day and in public. He… he defiled the temple and we… we did nothing to stop it. The beasts appeared from nowhere. Maietta’s guards stood no chance. Your sisters…”

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  He wept, dangling from Tanag’s grip, then raised his tear-stained face.

  “But you live,” he whispered, his tone changing from disbelief to half-throttled joy. “You live!”

  “I live on in death,” Tanag said. “I swore with my dying breath that if he harmed Maietta he would die by my hand.”

  The rage welled up within him, and he reached for the sword at his belt.

  “No, please. I…” Herrish begged, watching Tanag draw the royal blade.

  “You would sell your family for a profit,” Tanag rasped.

  Herrish, dangling from his hand, did not deny it. He bowed his head.

  “It is true. I would do anything for a profit,” he said, his voice soft, but then he added in a harder tone, “but there is no profit to be had. Not anymore. High King”—and his voice made the title a curse—“Arrin takes all there is to be had. No one can make a profit while he rules, so, if there is a profit to be had, it will only be found in his death. Can you do that?”

  “I am sworn to it,” Tanag replied.

  “But can you deliver?”

  “I am cursed to live until Maietta is avenged.” Tanag let go of Herrish, turning the horse away before the merchant hit the cobbles. “Tell no one I am here.”

  Herrish’s next words halted him, before he could ride away.

  “He has taken the west wing.”

  The west wing, Tanag thought, not the king’s quarters, but those which used to be mine.

  Suddenly, he was glad he hadn’t found a lover.

  “He has taken everything that was yours,” Herrish said, and Tanag was very glad there had been no woman in his life—it meant one less casualty for Arrin’s jealousy. But when—

  “Devas is going to miss his horse.” Herrish interrupted his chain of thought.

  “Devas is dead,” Tanag said, and nudged the horse into a walk.

  “His brother will want revenge.”

  “I did not kill him.” Tanag did not bother to hear what Herrish would say next, but rode back along the alley. He knew where the palace was, knew other entrances to the front gate, tried to recall if there was one he had not shared with Arrin.

  It came to him that he had never shared the secret ways behind his sisters’ chambers, but he wondered what Arrin had gleaned from Maietta since. Herrish’s waist-line had not grown so thick in the passage of one or two years, and nor had the merchant’s bitterness. Tanag measured the two in his head, and decided Herrish found profit enough under Arrin’s rule, but not a lot, and that the waistline was something earned from middle age, too much inactivity, and an overindulgence of time spent at the tavern.

  How long have I been away?

  He rode, careful to stay away from the main thoroughfares and patrol routes, a skill he and Arrin had shared. He rode until he reached a small iron gate in the palace wall. It was so overgrown that he almost missed it.

  “Thank you,” he said, rubbing the bay’s nose with careful fingers. “I will see to it from here.”

  The horse made no sound, but nudged him gently in the chest and meandered away. Tanag checked the gate, surprised to find it locked, and the lock rusted closed with age.

  Age, or magic? Tanag wondered, and glanced up. Arrin probably knew about the gate, even though they’d only used it once.

  The wall was too high to climb, would have been difficult for a man with flesh-and-blood fingers to wedge between the stones, impossible for a skeleton having trouble with its boots. He glanced across at the buildings on the other side of the street.

  There was a point where the street narrowed. When he was living, the jump had been difficult, but Tanag figured he had nothing to lose by attempting it, now. Perhaps not having a body would work to his advantage.

  He was almost right. If he’d had a body, he would have fallen to the cobbles below. As it was, he ended up hanging on by his fingers and willing his body to cooperate as he tried to swing his legs onto the wall top, while unhooking his forearm from a jagged spike of stone.

  It took longer than he liked, but he succeeded in scrambling to the top of the wall and then over and into the garden beyond. To his relief, the short-cut grass and neatly pruned bushes remained silent. This had been his sisters’ favorite place to relax.

  Tanag glanced over at a low, stone bench set by a fish pond and remembered how Maietta, Chelea and Suzette used to sit and giggle over their sewing or sketch books. It brought sadness and Tanag was glad he no longer had the wherewithal to cry. Pushing the feeling aside, he felt the ever-burning rage slowly heat. If he did not find Arrin soon, he would grow mindless with his need for vengeance, and the honor of his oath would be lost within his growing rage.

  Glancing up at the palace, Tanag noted the dim light glowing through windows. It didn’t mean anyone was awake, just that the night lamps were lit. Something still lived in the palace—even if was only the guards. Tanag didn’t have the same hope for Maietta.

  Moving as quietly as he could, Tanag walked into the shadowed portico. His first task was to find the succubus. As far as Tanag knew, succubi did not need much sleep and Arrin should have long exhausted his ability to play. If Lannara was true to form, she would be found in the place that represented her power base best—the throne room?

  Tanag stalked down the portico, wincing at the sound of his joints clicking as they moved, and wondering if a trip to the kitchens might not be in order. He decided against it.