Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

Bensimon’s eyebrows rose into his hairline of thick gray curls. “Prince Conor,” he corrected. “Tonight, a delegation from Sarthe will be visiting Marivent. As you may or may not know, there has been unrest between our kingdoms for quite some time.”

Sarthe and Castellane were neighbors and quarreled often over taxes, goods, and access to the Gold Roads. Most of the sailors at the docks referred to Sarthians as “those bastards on the border.”

Kel supposed that was what unrest meant.

“As always, the King—ever with the best interests of the citizens of Castellane at heart—is seeking peace with our neighbors. Among the political, ah, treasures of our city is our Crown Prince Conor. It is always possible that, at some point in the future, the King may wish to form an alliance between his son and one of the royal family of Sarthe. For that reason, it is important that, even at his young age, Prince Conor attend tonight’s banquet. Unfortunately, he is indisposed.” He looked closely at Kel. “Are you following me?”

“The Prince is sick, so he can’t go to a party,” said Kel. “But what’s that got to do with me?”

“The Prince cannot be seen to be absent from tonight’s affair. Therefore, you will take his place.”

The room seemed to turn upside down. “I’ll do what?”

“You will take his place. He isn’t expected to speak much. You are about his height, his age, his coloring—his mother the Queen is Marakandi, as you no doubt know. We will clean you up, dress you as a prince should be dressed. You will sit quietly through dinner. You will not speak or draw attention to yourself. You may eat as much as you like as long as you do not make yourself sick.” Bensimon crossed his arms over his chest. “At the end of the night, if you have performed satisfactorily, you will be given a purse of gold crowns to take back to the Sisters of Aigon. If not, you will earn nothing but a scolding. Do you understand the arrangement?”

Kel understood arrangements. He understood being given a coin or two to run a message for the Sisters, or the prize of an apple or candy for picking up a package from a tallship and delivering it to a merchant’s house. But the concept of a gold crown, much less a purse of them, was beyond comprehension.

“People will know what Con—Prince Conor—looks like,” said Kel. “They won’t be fooled.”

Bensimon slipped something out of his pocket. It was a hammered-silver oblong on a chain, not dissimilar to the one the adviser wore around his own neck. Etched into it and picked out by the flame of the firelight was a delicate pattern of numbers and letters. This was Ashkari magic. Only the Ashkar knew how to manipulate and combine letters and numbers in ways that wrung enchantment from their design; only the Ashkar, in fact, could perform any sort of magic at all. It had been that way since the Sundering.

With little ceremony, Bensimon dropped the chain over Kel’s head, letting the tablet slip below the collar of his ragged tunic.

“Will this make me look like the Prince?” asked Kel, trying to peer down his own shirt.

“Not quite. What it will do is make those who look at you, and already see a boy who resembles our Crown Prince in complexion and size, more inclined to regard you as Prince Conor. To hear his voice when you speak. Your eyes are wrong,” he added, half to himself, “but it does not matter; people see what they expect to see, and they will expect to see the Prince. It will not physically change your features, you understand? It will simply change the vision of those who look at you. No one who really knows who you are will be fooled, but all others will.”

In a way, Kel did understand. There were tales of the way magic had once been before the Sundering, when a spell could blow a mountain apart or transform a man into a dragon. Magic now—Ashkari magic, talismans and charms and poultices, for sale in Fleshmarket Square—was a shadow of a shadow of what had once been. It could incline and convince and direct, but it could not change the substance of things.

“I would suggest,” said Bensimon, “that, at this juncture, you speak.”

Kel tugged awkwardly at the chain around his neck. “I don’t want to do it,” he said. “But I ain’t got no choice, have I?”

Bensimon smiled thinly. “You do not. And don’t say ain’t. It makes you sound like a mudrat from the Warren docks.”

“I am a mudrat from the Warren docks,” Kel pointed out.

“Not tonight,” said Bensimon.


Kel was brought to the tepidarium: a massive chamber with two stone-bound pools sunk into the middle of a marble floor. A rose window looked out over the nighttime glow of Castellane. Kel tried to keep his eyes on the horizon as he was poked, prodded, and scrubbed with vicious thoroughness. The water ran dark brown into the drain.

Kel thought about whether he trusted this Bensimon and decided he did not. Bensimon said the Prince was sick—indisposed—but Jolivet had come to the Orfelinat a month ago. He couldn’t have known then that the Crown Prince would take ill tonight and need a standin.

Nor did the idea that he’d be sent home at the end of the night with a bag of gold make much sense. There was a well-known tale in the Maze about the Ragpicker King, the most famous criminal in Castellane. It was said that he’d once invited three rival criminals to his mansion and fed them a splendid dinner, offering them a partnership in his illegal empire. But none of them had been able to agree on anything, and at the end of the night the Ragpicker King had regretfully poisoned his guests, on the grounds that now they knew too much about his business. (He paid for glorious funerals for all three, however.)

Kel could not help but feel that he had already been told a great deal that he ought not to know, and was about to learn more of the same. He tried to think of what he would do were he playing a part in a game with Cas, but could imagine no better strategy than keeping his head down.

After the bath, he was dusted, perfumed, shod, and dressed in a steel-blue satin tailcoat with silver links at the cuffs and collar. He was given velvet trousers as soft as mouse’s fur. His hair was trimmed and his eyelashes curled.

When he finally went to look at himself in the mirror that covered the whole west wall, he thought, with a sinking feeling, that if he ever stepped out in the streets of the Maze looking like this, he’d be beaten six ways by the Crawlers and run up the flagpole outside the Tully.

“Cease shuffling your feet,” said Bensimon, who had spent the past hour watching the goings-on from a shadowed corner of the room, like a hawk planning its descent onto a family of rabbits. “Come here.”

Kel approached the adviser as the rest of the Palace servants melted away like mist. In a moment, he was alone in the room with Bensimon, who grabbed him under the chin, tilted his head up, and surveyed him unceremoniously. “Tell me again what you’re doing tonight.”

“Being C—Prince Conor. Sitting at the banquet table. Not saying much.”

Apparently satisfied, Bensimon let Kel go. “The King and Queen know who you really are, of course; don’t worry about them. They are well used to playing parts.”