"This is Not a Love Song"

Four hundred and seven jewelled bottles of the finest brandy, and that casket thing we took from the iron-clad submersible. Not bad for two fatalities and shredded mainsail. As an additional bonus, the casket seems to have killed off all our rats. I wonder what Fiona will make of it.

Temperate Shadow had given way to winter in Amber. Cold, with clouds threatening snow. Well, I didn't intend to stay long. Typically, I almost ran down Brion as we entered the harbour. He declined my offer of a lift, preferring to swim back to shore. Upon gaining our mooring, I headed up to the Castle, noting on the way a prominent graffito which had not been present when I left. "The killer of princesses must die", it read. Immediately I thought of Caine. Nodding approvingly, I continued on.

The next novelty I encountered was the news - from the King himself - that ambassadors from Chaos were due to arrive in Amber soon, to negotiate an end to the war that had been dragging on since the Battle of the Abyss. Apparently, they had demanded hostages in return, and his Majesty had obligingly sent them Caine and Corwin. I left, cursing, the laughter of Eblis ringing in my ears. I couldn't do a thing - not without endangering Corwin.

I went to see Mariella, being not quite up to haggling with her mother. She had just finished a Trump of Malek. I waited as she tried it out, producing from its lines and shading the subject himself, accompanied by Brion. Brion was much exercised by the graffiti I had noticed earlier, and others like it, declaring them to be a treasonous attack upon Random. Ah. The "princess" in question would have been Morganthe, Martin's mother. Brion had persuaded Llewella to make enquiries in Rebma, to see if any of Morganthe's relatives might be trying to start a somewhat belated vendetta. The scope of the campaign of defamation seemed to extend to an epidemic of fly-posters, and the cultivation of rumours that Random was about to conclude a less than honourable peace with Chaos. This seemed a little desperate, given that Chaos's is the immeasurably weaker position, but apparently these tales were actually gaining some credence amongst the populace. Living at the Centre of the Universe is apparently no defence against stupidity. Usually I have to rely on my relatives to remind me of this maxim, but the occasional demonstration of the generality of the truth does no harm.

Well, no harm as of yet.

Random was already informed of these incidents, and had observed to Malek that the intent might be to disrupt the negotiations with Chaos, either for its own sake, or as an indirect attempt to get at Corwin or Caine. I seem to recall that the others avoided looking at me when Malek related this, but it might just have been my imagination. But the timing was indeed suspicious, suggesting a deeper and more complex motive than simple revenge for the self-slain Morganthe.

A message from the officious Gird arrived, grumbling about Random's plans for the forthcoming negotiations. Him and Vialle alone with the Chaos delegation? Malek stormed off to protest, missing by only a couple of minutes the general summons to an audience with the King at four o'clock. The rest of us, now including Gird, sat down to lunch. We diverted ourselves by getting the teetotal Gird drunk, and listening to her whinge about Random. It never ceases to amuse me just how unlike her father she is - even Brion is recognisably his offspring, but Gird seems to have turned out more like a child of Benedict, I suppose. Maybe with a dash of Julian to negate any sense of humour, and a sprinkling of Flora for that uncontrollable urge to organise people. And then a little more Julian to counteract Flora's sociability. And it's not as if Gird consciously tries to be as unlike Random as possible. It just seems to have happened naturally. Maybe she was adopted.

Our unkind sport was taking us perilously close to the hour set for our audience with the King, so I took pity on her, and had a servant fetch a bucket of water, which I administered externally. Gird, enraged and sober, is an awe-inspiring sight. Gird, enraged and drunk, is merely comical. She was at least physically dried out when we turned up to see Random slightly later, but was still inebriated enough to spend most of the audience mouthing off about Chaosites, in counterpoint to the conversation in general.

The news was that the Chaos emissaries would consist of Princess Dara and a couple of other members of the Royal House of Chaos, plus their bodyguards. And Random had agreed that Flora and Fiona, rather than Vialle, should attend him during the talks. Fiona at least drives a hard bargain, as I know from experience. Meanwhile, Benedict was making the predictable military arrangements in case negotiations broke down, presumably on the assumption that sooner or later Flora would start criticising the Chaosites' dress sense. I contributed the suggestion of using Dara's Trump to distract her if anything went wrong. Malek's idea was to hold a victory parade, although in fairness this was suggested as a measure of reassuring the populace prior to the negotiations rather than as a cunning ploy to distract the backstabbing minions of Chaos that Gird was still wittering on about in the corner.

Which brought us to the main reason Random wanted to see us. He wanted us to look into the poster campaign, and to do something about it before it could do anything to disrupt the talks. We left to formulate plans - my first thought was to send my crew to ask around the dock and slum areas. I arranged with Brion for a few of them to be publicly arrested and then sent out as agent provocateurs. As it was, we spent most of the night doing much the same ourselves. Duplication of effort. Anything to put off another headache-inducing divvying up with Fiona.

In appropriate guise, Malek, Brion and I entertained ourselves by starting fights and being thrown out of seedy pubs in the hope that the malcontents behind the anti-Random crusade would make themselves known to us. The main upshot of this was that we spent a lot of time trying not to dodge blows, and trudging about in the snow. This is why I prefer to winter in Kashfa. In the end we simply went looking for new posters and followed the bill-stickers' footprints, which proved to be much more effective. We came to an inn where the clientele were singing a modified and wholly treasonous version of "The Ballad of the Water Crossers". It was an improvement on Corwin's sentimental dirge, but still pretty dire. I waited around the back to catch any suspicious departures, while the other two went inside.

I found out later that Gird had been pursuing a similar strategy, albeit in less covert form. According to Black Tom, who caught one of her performances, her preferred tactic was to remonstrate with anyone she caught. Although it has to be said that her attempts at the moral improvement of the lower orders were just as successful as our own tactics. In the inn, Brion posed as a patron while Malek buffed up his Black Prince image. I missed most of it, including Brion's allowing himself to be picked up in the subsequent arrests so that he could play at being a stool-pigeon. I was busy following a couple of shady characters who had sneaked out the back.

There are times when subtlety is essential. There are also times when I'm too cold and tired to bother. When my quarry ended up in a house, I kicked the door in and grabbed the one who tried to flee upstairs. The other got away. Maybe I'm too used to boarding actions where one's opponents have nowhere to go but over the side. It might have been more profitable to follow the escapee. As it was, my prisoner claimed to be a perfectly innocent drug smuggler just going about his business. I extracted the names of the local crime bosses from him, and spent the next couple of hours paying social calls. They were all "not at home". I left a few messages, suggesting a beneficial import/export arrangement in return for information regarding the campaign against Random, and then when I got tired of being fobbed off by surly minions, decided to break into the last mobster's dwelling just to see if he really was out. He was. I'd had enough exercise, I was cold, and I was tired, so I went back to the Alphonzo. Black Tom and the others were still out carousing. I Trumped Brion. He was in a cell in the Castle, trying to gain his fellow inmates' confidence. I left him to it.

Before we could try and pick up the trail again, we were summoned to attend the arrival of the Chaos Embassy. Seven of them in total - Dara, her cousin Despil, their assistant Lindisty, and four demonic guards. They didn't look especially imposing, but they didn't look particularly defeated, either. True, Dara was wearing a somewhat corroded set of copper armour, although the verdigris might have been intended to be decorative. They seemed civil enough when we were introduced, although Malek got some hard looks. Well, they don't call him "The Scourge of the Black Zone" for nothing. Well actually, I don't think they call him "The Scourge of the Black Zone" at all, but it's something like that. I never really followed the war all that much. I just sank their ships until there weren't any left, and then went raiding elsewhere. Maybe if there's peace, I can start raiding them again. Cheering thought. I felt a little better about the previous night's fruitlessness.

Anyway, at Lord Despil's urging, the negotiations began right away. Almost. We entered the conference chamber to discover that someone had splattered "The killer of princesses must die" in three-foot high red letters across one wall. Legibly, but with an artful messiness. The talks were hastily relocated, along with the small army of spies that Gird had arranged. Random, Fiona and Flora were secluded with the Chaosites, while the rest of us went back to the vandalised conference room. The servants had little helpful to tell us - the room was sealed the previous night. No-one saw anything. Interestingly enough, even the watchers at the spyholes were flummoxed - the lettering had just simply appeared, they said, just as the negotiating teams entered.

The letters were just what they appeared to be. Blood. And not painted or smeared. Projected, perhaps, as of a piece, which supported the testimony of Gird's troop of surreptitious stenographers. There was also a noticeable aura of power in the vicinity - not Trump, not Magick. And not Pattern, either. Hmmm ... Dara or Despil might have had a sufficiently good view into the room to have projected the lettering just as the door was opened, but I'm sure I would have sensed something. And even if I hadn't, Fiona would have. No, it seemed more likely that whatever the source, the sanguinary display had been set up earlier, to be triggered by the arrival of the negotiators. Not the Chaosites then. Someone in league with them perhaps, but I was still inclined to suspect it was a purely internal Family matter. The most harebrained plots usually are.

Curiosity led me to bring the Pattern to mind, and trace my fingers over the lettering. The power emanations faded and the blood dried and powdered instantly. A minor power, then, possibly of the same degree of magnitude as Magick. If it really had been the Pattern's Chaotic opposite, I'd have expected a reaction of rather greater vigour. I collected a sample, and persuaded Mariella to Trump me to a magickal Shadow where I could conduct a scrying ritual. I used the usual technique, a simple bowl of water, scattering the powdered blood across its surface, watching it ripple and ...

... A dark place. Buildings, fish. Rebma. A much younger Random. A woman with him, looking happy. Then Random and Vialle together, and a sense of deep and abiding hatred. Focusing on Vialle's face. An expression of hatred. Insane hatred ...

No Martin. But the woman could only have been Morganthe. The roots of the problem lay in Rebma. The Queen's connection to all this worried me, though. It worried me even more when I Trumped back to Amber and learned from Gird that Vialle had been the last person to check the conference room the previous night - alone. Which Vialle herself denied. Some background checking in Rebma seemed in order, so Mariella and Brion accompanied me to see Llewella, while Gird and Malek lurked outside the new conference room in the hope that an argument over the seating arrangements might give them an excuse to start the war all over again.

Llewella had been following up Brion's original request, and as far as she could tell Morganthe's family were clean. We questioned her about Martin. An outsider even in Rebma, it seemed. He rarely came back. The big revelation was that Vialle had been the person who brought him up after his mother's death. She had originally been Morganthe's lady in waiting. This was looking rather worse than a phantasmal scowl in a bowl of water. Llewella agreed to show us Morganthe's old chambers. En route, I Trumped Gird, instructing her to "guard the Queen". Apparently, she sent Malek instead. Maybe he was limbering up to break down the doors of the conference room or something. Or maybe she wanted him out of the way so that she could do the same thing.

Morganthe's old chambers were in exactly the same position in Moire's palace as Deirdre's rooms in Castle Amber. I wasn't sure I liked this. The idea of a personal connection wasn't exactly appealing. Hadn't Mother spent nearly four years in exile in Rebma, during Eric's reign? Granted, Morganthe was dead by then, and Martin out in Shadow, but she must have got to know Vialle quite well. At least Rebma, unlike Amber, is environmentally controlled ...

The rooms were full of sculptures - Vialle's by the look of things - including one of Random, broken and then mended. Except according to Llewella, they were Morganthe's. She didn't even know that Vialle sculpted. Certainly she had never done so while she lived in Rebma. We checked a few of the assorted busts and statuettes. Sure enough, each one was signed with a tiny, delicate "M". An impossible and horribly believable suspicion forming in my mind, I questioned Llewella about Morganthe's death. After giving birth to Martin she had taken poison. She had left a note blaming Random. Vialle had found her, and had been bed-ridden with grief for several days afterwards. And no, Llewella told me when I asked, there was no tradition of shapeshifting in Rebma. That left how it was done a mystery, but for a brief period, I didn't doubt that it had been done.

If you like your revenge not so much cold as deep frozen, how better to avenge yourself on the man who slighted you by faking your own suicide, leaving your lady-in-waiting's corpse instead of your own, taking her identity, arranging your marriage to your former lover, and unleashing a slow, cumulative nemesis when he can least afford it?

Well, there are probably numerous better ways, but we're talking about someone who pays people to sing Corwin's songs. A twisted mind.

No-one ever saw the mysterious "M"'s face. Why did we automatically assume it was a man? I still thought on the balance of probabilities that it was Martin, but the presiding figure now seemed to be … Morganthe? Vialle? I felt vaguely nauseous. Breathing water didn't help - after all, I've spent my life trying to avoid it.

Brion remained in Rebma to search Martin's old quarters, while Mariella and I Trumped back to Amber. Malek didn't appreciate being disturbed from his vigil, which was probably just as well, since that vigil was by the Queen's side, and I had no wish to confront her just yet. We went through to Gird instead. She had questioned more closely the servants who had seen Vialle in the conference chamber, and had discovered that she had demonstrated not only an unusual degree of visual acuity for a blind person, but had also seemed a little too interested in the wall were the blood-spattered message had later appeared. I told Gird my theory. She didn't seem wildly enthused by it, but then I wasn't either. I just thought it was probably true. And nothing we knew so far seemed to contradict it.

On a hunch, I went to see Mother's rooms. A lot like Morganthe's. The same layout. The same aura of a shrine to the dead, carefully preserved the way they had left it. There was nothing unusual, nothing out of place. I left as soon as I could. I hated the place. Martin's occasional rooms in the Castle I checked as well. Again, nothing. They were basically guest quarters, impersonal and barely used.

Brion had returned when I rejoined the others. Martin's room in Rebma had turned up nothing either. He also had a theory of his own, which for sheer bleakness managed to outdo even mine. Vialle had killed Morganthe because she wanted Random for herself, he suggested, although this left somewhat mysterious the reason why she should organise a campaign against him now that she actually had him. His alternative was that Martin wanted Vialle for himself, and hated Random all the more so because of this. This had a little more bearing on the matter at hand, although I still preferred my faked suicide hypothesis, which at least tallied with my scrying with the blood.

We relieved Malek from his guard duty so that we could bring him up to date, while Gird talked to Vialle. What transpired suggested a more plausible, and marginally less distasteful, explanation for current events. Vialle seemed surprised to learn how alike her sculptures were to Morganthe's. She had only started after arriving in Amber, and sometimes felt as if some other hand were guiding her own as she sculpted. She maintained that she was in bed, asleep with Random, when she had been seen in the conference room, but once Gird started snooping around the Royal Quarters, Vialle's footprints - recent footprints - turned up in a secret passage. Vialle had no memory of ever using the passageway, and certainly not recently.

So we had another theory. Possession from beyond the grave. Which at least meant that Vialle was still Vialle, even if we now had to work out a way of undoing the dead Morganthe's hold over her. And we still had to establish a connection with the posters, the graffiti, the songs and the rumours. Checking Vialle's notepads was all we had to do to confirm the latter - indents of orders to send large sums of cash to an obscure address in the more disreputable quarter of the city. We left Malek to look after the Queen again, while the rest of us did what we should have done first thing that morning.

We Trumped Martin.