The Child Prince (The Artifactor) (60 page)

Bellomi sat facing the clock on the mantelpiece, just watching it tick the seconds away. In four hours, everyone would rise to face the day. In four hours, they would know whether the other kings would truly respond to their call and come to lend their might and aid. In just four short hours, his father’s plan would succeed or fail, and his life would undergo a radical change.

He felt as if he were on the eve of battle, which in a sense was true. This wouldn’t be a mighty clash of swords and shields, but instead of words and wits. He might have been able to take the waiting better if he could focus on something, but at this point, he had done everything that needed to be done. His curse was broken, his father’s curse was broken, the woman behind the curses had been caught and was even now in a glass jar in Sevana’s workroom, safely in custody. The betrothal that had hounded him most of his life was burned. He’d even heard that his ex-fiancé had eloped and was already married.

Absently, his fingers softly combed through Hana’s hair, the motion gentle enough to avoid waking her up. She’d also been too nervous to sleep, and had stayed up with him and kept him company most of the night until she’d finally worn herself out. Bellomi hadn’t protested when she curled up on the couch with him and used his lap as her pillow. He found it comforting to know that no matter what happened, Hana would be right there with him.

He looked down at her sleeping face, the firelight from the hearth flickering over her fair skin, and a gentle smile teased up the corners of his mouth. A librarian for a princess…quite a few people would likely squawk at his choice. But those same people hadn’t seen this woman’s clever mind weed through stacks of information and calmly analyze a political situation that would make the most hardened politician wince. In some ways, she understood the political hotbed of Windamere better than Bellomi himself did.

The door to the main room opened and quietly shut. Bellomi turned just enough to see who entered. “Father,” he greeted softly.

“Bellomi.” Aren walked in further, waving a hand to indicate the clock on the mantel. “Shouldn’t you both be in bed?”

“Says the man who’s awake at this ungodly hour of the morning.” Bellomi shook his head and gestured for his father to join him. “I don’t think it’s possible for either one of us to sleep tonight.”

Aren gave a grunt of sour agreement before dropping into Sevana’s favorite chair. The king had apparently made an effort to rest, at least, as he wore a warm robe and slippers. He eyed Hana’s presence as he sat, taking in the way she lay curled up on the bed, and the protective arm Bellomi had around her shoulders. “She couldn’t sleep either?”

“She’s only been still for about ten minutes,” Bellomi confirmed. “She’s nervous about something going wrong.”

“I think we all are.” Aren passed a hand over his tired eyes. “The breaking of the betrothal with Belen could have been timed better. I don’t blame you for acting when you did—it would have caused problems later on after all—but I wish you’d waited another few weeks at least. Right now I don’t know if Audenaert will come or not. He’s very influential with Vlatko, so if he doesn’t come, then it’s not one king we’ll lose, but two.”

King Dorian Audenaert had not been happy with the news that the betrothal agreement had been broken. But he’d also been semi-embarrassed when his daughter took prompt advantage of that and eloped. Bellomi wished that he’d known that his father would change plans, and that he would include the Council of Kings, otherwise he might well have just taken the betrothal agreement and burned it later. As it stood, Audenaert had been publicly slighted twice, and no king took that well.

Of course, Belen and Kindin had always had close ties to each other, since they did a great deal of trading. Bronislav Vlatko, King of Kindin, might not take his friend’s public embarrassments well either. So even though Aren had gone and talked to both kings in person (via Sevana’s clock network), they had no guarantee that the kings would actually support them on the day of the confrontation. And losing half that support would not aid their cause well and might give the Council a foothold that Aren couldn’t afford to give them.

They didn’t have an alternative plan to fall back on. The Council had done their best to rob them of all influence and power, and they’d done a fairly good job of it, leaving Aren’s back to the wall. In fact, Bellomi felt like they’d been squeezed between a wall and a spear point. Tomorrow would likely be the biggest gamble of their lives.

No wonder no one could sleep.

The ticking of the clock sounded loud in this silence. Even the crackle and snap of the fire became almost deafeningly loud. Bellomi hadn’t minded it when he sat here alone, with a sleeping woman in his lap, but for some strange reason he couldn’t sit still with his father here.

Even though they’d gone over all of this at least a dozen times, Bellomi couldn’t help but ask, “Axelrad has confirmed that the guards will cooperate?”

“Yes, that part’s fine.”

That had been one of the trickier parts of planning this, oddly enough. They could sneak the kings into the room adjoining the council room easily enough through one of the clocks, but getting the citizens onto the palace grounds without raising the alarm? That took cooperation from the whole palace guard. Axelrad had infiltrated the place quietly and orchestrated the whole thing behind scenes so that only men he trusted would be on duty that night.

“Morgan also contacted every city that we visited and spread a reminder that we needed people to show as witnesses tomorrow…well, later tonight, I should say,” Aren added as if Bellomi didn’t already know this. “We’d truly be lost without that man’s information network.”

A vast understatement, that. Sometimes Bellomi didn’t know what had helped them more, Sevana’s magical expertise, or Morgan’s business connections.

Neither one of them discussed what might happen if this plan failed. Simply fading into the woodwork and disappearing from the political scene would not be an option. The Council would be too afraid of them trying again. Bellomi and Aren both would be hounded by assassins until the day they died. They either succeeded or died trying.

“Bellomi, for what it’s worth…” Aren inclined his head toward the sleeping blonde on his son’s lap. “I approve of your choice. At first, I thought you simply besotted, but after working with that young woman I now see what you do. She’ll be a very capable queen, I think.”

Huskily, Bellomi whispered, “Thank you, Father.”

Let’s hope she gets the chance to prove herself as queen
, neither of them said aloud.

~ ~ ~

The Council’s meeting would start at 9 o’clock that evening, so the timing of fetching the kings became a somewhat delicate thing. Too soon, and the people inside the palace would notice and cause no end of trouble. Too late, and they wouldn’t be able to hear the full meeting. Late in the afternoon, Aren gave both Artifactors the signal to go, and they both entered clocks heading in opposite directions.

Sarsen had been dispatched for the Belen King. Aren and Bellomi both, dressed in their finest, nervously hovered near the clocks, holding their breath in anticipation. Ten minutes slowly ticked by, seemingly stretching out for an eternity, before the clock face moved outward and the Belen King stepped through.

Bellomi let out a breath he hadn’t known he held and gave the man a bow. “Your Majesty. We are honored you could come.”

Audenaert gave a deep inclination of the head to the prince, expression slightly stiff, and then turned to Aren with an outstretched hand. “Dragonmanovich.”

Aren reached out and clasped the other man’s forearm in a warrior’s clasp. “Audenaert. Good of you to come.”

“I’ve spoken with my daughter,” he said without preamble. “And she said your boy did her a favor, getting rid of the agreement. Said she never cared for him, nor he for her. So I won’t hold this against you. You’re good neighbors, and good rulers, when you’re not cursed.” His eyes crinkled up in a sarcastic smile. “Better than your Council, yes? So you have my support.”

Aren relaxed into a heartfelt smile and clasped the man briefly on the shoulder. “Good to hear. Thank you. In a few moments, we’ll step through a different clock that will take us through to Lockbright.”

“Yes, about these clocks….”

Bellomi signaled his father over Audenaert’s shoulder that he’d be back in a moment before stepping out of the room. Since they hadn’t really known how the Belen king would take the matter, they’d judged it safer to introduce Hana later, if at all. But it seemed safe enough to do so. He went down to the second research room, gave a quick knock on the door, and stuck his head inside.

“Audenaert’s here, and with no hard feelings.”

Hana paced back and forth in front of the table, but at his entrance, she stopped in mid-stride and looked up. “He is? Sweet mercy, that’s a relief.”

He lost track of what she said for a moment, visually distracted by her appearance. Hana was always beautiful, no matter what she wore or if she had ink splotches on her cheeks, so he’d more or less ignored what she wore on a daily basis. But today proved the exception. He’d helped her choose that formal deep blue velvet gown, but on her, it proved even more stunning than he’d envisioned. With her hair properly done up in a loose bun, simple silver earrings on, and a soft touch of makeup, she looked…regal. As if she had suddenly morphed into a princess overnight.

“Bellomi?” she asked, waving a hand in front of his eyes.

“Uh? Oh. Sorry.” He caught the waving hand and put a kiss on the palm. “Your beauty distracted me for a moment.”

“You sweet flatterer,” she retorted with a strained smile. “I’m just trying not to embarrass you. And I still don’t see why you need to introduce me to everyone
now
.”

“It’ll make it easier for everyone to accept you later,” he promised her. “You’re Windamere’s future queen, and if it’s obvious that you are one of the people that helped put us back on the throne, no one will think it odd that I chose you.”

“Right.” She gave him a nervous smile. Hana had, after many late night discussions, finally accepted that when he asked her to be his wife, he
meant
it. But she still had moments like this, where she just couldn’t quite grasp that this new world would be her reality the rest of her days.

He put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her close for a moment, silently reassuring her. “You’ll be fine. Just treat them as you do my father, and they’ll be delighted to stay around you.”

“So
you
say.” With a deep breath, she took a step back and lifted her chin in a determined manner. “Alright, Prince Bellomi Dragonmanovich, let’s go. We have a country to win back.”

Sevana and Sarsen divided up the kings evenly, with her fetching the Kindin and Haixi kings. She went to Haixi first, and Mateus Navarro came easily, almost eagerly as he experienced firsthand the marvels of clock travel. Sevana brought him through without saying more than a hello, and deposited him into Aren’s waiting hands.

If only the Kindin King could be as easily dealt with.

He stood just in front of the clock, waiting with less than stellar patience for her arrival, both feet spread shoulder width apart as if he were in a parade stance. He reminded her, strangely, of a bear just awoken from a long winter’s sleep: irritable and grumpy.

For once, she tried not to poke and rile things up, as Aren and Bellomi absolutely needed him to come. So she pasted on a business smile and offered a quick bow. “Your Majesty, if you would simply follow me, we can step directly into Windamere.”

The Kindin king looked at the clock with plain misgiving. “Thees portal does not seet vell vith me. Your king explained that you only uze during emergencies, yes? But having such eazy access to my castle…thees, I do not like.”

Only used during emergencies? What a whopper of a lie. Sevana used them at her convenience and didn’t think twice about stepping through someone’s office or home to get to her destination. But if Aren had used this excuse to smooth ruffled feathers, she wouldn’t rock the boat. With a short bow, she waved him through.

Grimacing, he took a breath and stepped through, still muttering under his breath.

They only paused in the clock room long enough for her to turn off the clock that connected with the Kindin castle and then for her to show him to the right clock that led directly into Lockbright Palace. For this event, she had moved one of her grandfather clocks directly into the adjoining room, to avoid having to trip over nightly prowlers and raise an alarm. When they stepped through, she found that they were, in fact, the last to arrive. Sarsen had brought through the Sa Kaon king while she fetched Vlatko.

She stepped aside as the king entered the room, panning with her eyes to see where they stood. Sarsen had already spelled the wall to be clear, which looked odd as he’d also stuck two tuning forks into the wall so they could also hear, which made the forks appear to be floating mid-air. But the room on the other side of the invisible wall still only had half the council, and those men were wandering about and speaking to each other, so nothing had started yet. On this side of the wall, the kings were doing something very similar. Aren greeted Vlatko as he came in, clasping forearms with the man.