Lord of Slaughter by M. D. Lachlan

invisible now and cast the streets in a blue half-light. The clouds were an unnatural deep grey, almost black, so heavy they looked as if they might fall and kill him. Even in Normandy the rain clouds didn’t look like that. He shivered, and not with the cold. Was this a further magical attack? Would he be called on to explain and counter it?
    Concern for Beatrice welled up in him, swamping all other fear. Where was she? Had she been taken by the chamberlain? Or by someone else? He breathed deep to try to calm himself. It had to be the chamberlain. No normal abductor would have left a seal.
    He ran up the palace steps, under the great portico with its frieze of battles and conquest. Two guards – Greeks – barred his way.
    ‘I am the chamberlain’s man,’ he said. ‘I am to report here.’
    The guards looked him up and down.
    ‘You are a scholar, and a poor one at that.’
    ‘I am the chamberlain’s scholar.’
    ‘So where is your silk and your fine shoes? Why do you smell of the docks rather than of perfume and oil?’
    Loys stood tall.
    ‘I am the scholar Loys, appointed by the chamberlain to do his most valued work. I am to report here for my lodgings and my clothing. The work is pressing, and if you want to frustrate it that is up to you. When the chamberlain asks me why I have not done as he asks, I shall say you stood in my way and defied his will.’
    The two guards said nothing but one stepped inside. When he returned he was with a short man dressed in a yellow silk gown and a three-cornered blue hat.
    ‘This is not the poor door,’ said the man. ‘If you wish to apply for alms go to the kitchens at the rear of the palace.’
    ‘I am the chamberlain’s man,’ said Loys, ‘the scholar Loys.’
    ‘My God, are you really?’ said the man, as if he’d just been informed a toothpick he’d discarded at dinner was part of Christ’s True Cross.
    ‘Proper …’ Loys tried to find fine words, ‘proper raiment has been provided. Take me to my wife. I think she has been brought here.’
    ‘I know nothing about that.’
    ‘She should have been brought here not an hour ago.’
    ‘My shift has only just begun.’ The man examined his tablet.
    ‘You are listed here,’ he said, ‘and expected. Come in and pass quickly through the room.’
    Loys stepped inside and the world was transformed. Outside, under the bubbling clouds, the light cast the buildings in blues and greys. Here, a thousand lustrous colours shimmered under the lamplight.
    Few people had been on the streets but though this room was very large, it was crowded. It was a wonder to Loys – lit with oil lamps that gave off a soft golden light. Every surface seemed alive. The floor was a mosaic of flowers and lilies with the representation of a pond, complete with shining copper fish at its centre. The walls were lined with trees but no tree that had ever grown in a forest. They were rendered in gold and silver with berries of rubies and leaves of green glass. The branches threw a canopy over the ceiling, silver moons and twinkling stars – diamonds or glass, he couldn’t tell – peeping between them. Rich and beautiful people sat or lay on couches, and servants dressed in tunics laced with gold and emerald green served drinks and food from silver cups and plates.
    The room fell completely silent when he entered and everyone turned to look at him. Loys suddenly had a sense of himself standing in the same clothes he’d grabbed as he’d run from Normandy, save for a fourth-hand scholars’ gown, breathless in front of these people who moved like fabulous fish through the waters of a beautiful fountain.
    Another man came forward. He was short, bald and dark and wore a robe of green velvet.
    The man in the silk showed him the tablet. ‘The scholar is to go to his rooms here,’ he said, ‘as quickly as possible.’
    The dark man smiled. ‘This way, sir,’ he said.
    As he led Loys across the room the man said: ‘The Room of the Nineteen