Galliardo thought back, back to the tail end of a summer that now seemed years ago. He remembered clinking a last glass of wine with Richard Hawkwood in the portside tavern by his offices which had seen so many partings, the backs of so many men who went into tall ships and sailed towards the horizon, never to return. Where was Richard Hawkwood now, and his ships, his companies? Rotting in the deep perhaps, or wrecked on some cragged rock out in the unmapped ocean. One thing Galliardo knew: Hawkwood had been meaning to sail west—not to the Brenn Isles or the Hebrionese, but west as far as his ships would take him, farther perhaps than anyone had ever sailed before. What had become of him? Had he found at last the limits of the turning world and set his foot on some untrodden strand? Galliardo would probably never know, and so he deemed it safe to tell the admiral what he knew of the Hawkwood expedition despite the fact that Richard had enjoined him to secrecy. Richard was probably dead, and beyond the consequence of anything Galliardo might do. The Hawkwood line had ended: his wife, Estrella, had died in the howling inferno that had been Abrusio scant weeks ago.
“West, you say?” Rovero rumbled thoughtfully when Galliardo had told him.
“Yes, excellency. It’s my belief they were trying to discover the legendary Western Continent.”
“That’s a fable, surely.”
“I think Hawkwood had some document or chart which suggested differently. In any case, he has been gone for months with no word sent back. I do not think he survived.”
“I see.” Rovero seemed strangely troubled.
“Is there anything else, excellency?” Galliardo asked timidly.
The admiral stared at him. “No. Thank you, Ponero. You may go.”
Galliardo rose and bowed. As he left the room and negotiated his way through the dark maze that was the interior of Admiral’s Tower, sharply lit memories came to his mind, pictures from what seemed another age. A hot, vibrant Abrusio with a thousand ships at her wharves and the men of a hundred different countries mixed in her streets. The Gabrian Osprey and the Grace of God sailing out of the bay on the ebb tide, proud ships plunging into the unknown.
As he came out into the cold grey day of the winter city, Galliardo whispered a swift prayer to Ran the God of Storms, the old deity many seamen sought to placate when they were a thousand miles from land or priest or hope of harbour. He prayed briefly for the souls of Richard Hawkwood and his crews, surely gone to their long wave-tossed rest at last.
SEVEN YEAR OF THE SAINT 552
D IM though the winter afternoon was, it was darker yet in the King’s chambers. It seemed to Isolla that lately she had been living her life by candlelight and firelight. She sat by Abeleyn’s bedside reading aloud from an old historical commentary on the naval history of Hebrion, glancing every so often at the King’s inert form in the great postered bed. In the first days she had been here she had constantly been prepared for some sudden show of life, some twitch or opening of an eyelid, but Abeleyn lay as still as a graven statue, if a statue could occasionally break into loud, stertorous breathing.
She stroked his hand as she read, the book propped on her knees. It was dry stuff, but it gave her a reason to be here, and Golophin believed that Abeleyn might yet be recalled to himself by the sound of a voice, a touch, some external stimulus which none of them had yet discovered.
It never for an instant occurred to her to wonder what she was doing here, by the bedside—or perhaps the deathbed—of a man she scarcely knew, sitting reading aloud to a man beyond hearing, in a country that was not her own, in a city half ruined by fire and the sword. Her sense of duty was too deeply ingrained for that. And there was an innate stubbornness too which her maid Brienne could have vouched for. A willingness to see something through to the end, once it was undertaken. She had never run away from anything in her life, had braved the snide asides of the Astaran court ladies for so long that it slipped like water from the feathers of a duck. She knew her brother the King loved her, also. That was one of the unshakable pillars of her life.
And he wanted her here with this man, or what was left of him. Isolla could no more have shirked this task than she could have grown wings and flown back to Astarac. Life was not to be enjoyed, it was a thing to work at, to be carved and polished and sanded down until at its end some form of beauty and symmetry might be left behind for others to see. Happiness was rarely a factor to be considered in that process, not when one was born to royalty.
The door opened softly behind her. One of the palace servants, an old man who was one of the few entrusted with the reality of the King’s condition. He stood unsure and silent behind her, coughed quietly.
“What is it, Bion?” She knew all their names.
“My lady, the King has a . . . a visitor, who insists on being admitted. A noblewoman.”
“No visitors,” Isolla said.
“Lady, she says that my lord Golophin expressly gave her permission to see the King.”
Isolla put away her book, intrigued but wary. Half the nobility of Hebrion had blustered or wheedled at the door at some point, eager for a look at Hebrion’s invisible monarch. Golophin had turned them away, but he was indisposed. Something had happened to his eye—he was wearing a black patch over it—and even his febrile energy seemed to be fading.
“Her name?”
“The lady Jemilla.” Bion seemed ill at ease, perturbed even. He could not meet her eyes.
“I’ll see her in the anteroom,” Isolla said briskly, unwilling to admit even to herself that she was glad of the interruption.
The lady was pale-skinned, raven dark-haired and assured: a doppelganger of half a dozen who had made Isolla’s childhood a misery. But things were different now.
The lady paused a moment as Isolla entered, black eyes watchful, gauging. Then she swept into an elegant curtsey. Isolla acknowledged this with a slight bow of her head. “Please, be seated.”
They took up positions on small, uncomfortable chairs with their robes spread out around them like the plumage of two competing birds.
“I hope I see you well, lady,” Jemilla said pleasantly.
A series of vapid exchanges essential to courtly conversation, all of which were meaningless, a convention. How had the lady Isolla found Hebrion? Cold, was it not, at this time of year, but more pleasant in the spring, surely. The summer far too hot—best to retreat to a lodge in the mountains until the turning of the leaves. And Astarac! A fine kingdom. Her brother the very model of a Ramusian monarch (his current heresy and excommunication blithely passed over). The lady Jemilla held a roll of parchment in one fine-fingered hand. It stirred Isolla’s curiosity, and pricked her into a fine-tuned wariness even as the empty talk slid from her mouth.
“So Golophin agreed that you be admitted to see the King,” Isolla said at last when the polite phrases had run their course.
“Yes, indeed. He and I are old acquaintances. The palace is like a village really. One cannot help but get to know everyone—even the King himself.”
“Oh, indeed?” Isolla’s face gave nothing away, but there was an apprehension growing in her.
“Such a man! Such a monarch! He is greatly loved, lady, as I am sure you are aware. The kingdom is riddled with worry for him. But the dearth of news as to his progress has been quite worrying.” She put out a hand as Isolla stirred. “Not that I mean any reflection on Golophin or the worthy Admiral Rovero, you understand, or General Mercado either. But the people who bled for Abeleyn have a right to know, as do the great men of the kingdom. After all, if the King’s convalescence is to be a long one, then it is only proper that some other personage of fitting rank be nominated to help steer the course of the kingdom. These . . . professionals are very well in their way, but the common folk like to see good blood at the head of the government. Do you not agree?”
There it was, the gleam of steel through the velvet. Jemilla smiled. Her teeth were small, fine, and very white. Like those of a cat, Isolla thought. Could Golophin actually have given this creature leave to see the King? No, of course not. But what was she to do, tell this lady she lied, to her face? And what was in that damned parchment?
Isolla’s face, unknown to her, grew severe, forbidding almost. It was what her brother Mark called privately her “beat to quarters expression.”
“I will not speculate on the policies of the man who is soon to be my husband, nor on those of his closest and most trusted advisors. It would not be fitting, you understand,” Isolla shot back, watching the little barb slide home. “And unfortunately, the King is very fatigued today, and unable to receive anyone. But be assured, lady, I will convey to him your best wishes and hopes for his recovery. I am sure they will hearten him mightily. And now, alas, I too am not mistress of my own time. I am afraid I must bring this delightful interview to a close.” She paused, expecting the lady Jemilla to get up, to curtsey and to leave. But Jemilla did not move.
“Forgive me,” she said, purring, “but I am afraid I must beg your indulgence for a few moments more. I have here”—the parchment at last—“a document of sorts which I have been charged to deliver to you, as the King’s betrothed. Little do I, a mere woman, understand of these things, but I believe it to be a petition signed by many of the heads of Hebrion’s noble families. May I leave it in your hands? It would be a weight off my mind. Thank you, gracious lady. And now I must bid you farewell.” A curtsey, only just as deep as custom demanded, and a swift exit, the triumph flashing in her eye.
The bitch, Isolla thought. The scheming, insolent bitch. She cracked open the seal—it was the house seal of some high born princeling or other—and scanned the long scroll which fell open in her hands.
A petition all right, and the names on it made Isolla purse her lips in a silent, unladylike whistle. The Duke of Imerdon, no less. The Lords of Feramuno, Hebrero and Sequero. Two thirds of the highest aristocrats in Hebrion must have their signatures here—if the document were genuine. She would have to check that, although did not doubt that it would be genuine. Who was this Lady Jemilla anyway? She was not married to anyone of rank, or she would have taken his name instead of parading around under her own. A husband’s name was the label of a woman’s stature in this world.
And what did this petition request? That the King reveal himself to his anxious subjects and prove that he was the ruler of Hebrion, not the triumvirate of Golophin, Mercado and Rovero. Or, if he were too ill to do so, that a suitable nobleman, one whose bloodline was closest to the King, be named regent of Hebrion until such time as the King himself was capable of ruling again. Second, that access to the King’s person be granted for the signatories, his noble cousins, whose concern for him was overwhelming. Third, that the aforementioned triumvirate of Golophin, Rovero and Mercado be broken up, these gentlemen to resume their proper duties and station and allow the kingdom to be ruled by whomsoever the Council of Nobles decreed regent. And, by the way, the Council of Nobles—an institution that Isolla, for all her reading on Hebrian history, had never heard of—would be convening in two sennights in the city of Abrusio to debate these matters, and to call on the King to marry his betrothed Astaran princess and give the kingdom the joyous spectacle of a Royal wedding, and perhaps, within due time, an heir.
There it was, the gauntlet tossed down before her. Marry him or go home. Produce him, upright and breathing, or let the nobles squabble over his successor. It was what it amounted to, for all the flowery language. Isolla wondered how deeply Jemilla was buried in this thing. She was more than a mere errand-runner, that was plain.
“Bion!” Her voice snapped like a whip.
“My lady?”
“Ask the mage Golophin if he will receive me at once. Tell him it is a matter of the direst urgency. And be quick about it.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Hebrion had just gone through one war, now it was to suffer another; but this one would be played out in the corridors of the palace itself. Strangely enough, Isolla was almost looking forward to the prospect.
I T depressed Corfe to see Torunn again in the numbing drizzle of the new year, the smoke of the refugee camps hanging about it like a shroud and the land for miles around churned into a quagmire by the displaced thousands of Aekir. They were still squatting in the hide tents provided by the Torunnan authorities, and seemed no nearer than before to dispersing and rebuilding their lives.
“Our glorious capital,” Andruw murmured, his usual good cheer dampened by the sight, and by the swift miles they had put behind them in the last week. They had killed twenty-three horses in the retracing of their steps north, and even the tribesmen of the command were sullen and stupid with exhaustion. They had had enough, for the present. Corfe knew he could push them no further. Perhaps that depressed him too. He was as tired as any of them, but still all he could think of was getting out of here, up to the battlefields of the north. Nothing else held any attraction for him.
This, he thought, is what my life has become. There is nothing else.
The long column of filthy, yawning cavalry and silent mules wound down from the higher land overlooking the capital and came to a halt outside the city walls amid the tented streets of the shanty town. The folk of Aekir stared at the hollow-eyed barbarians on the tall warhorses as if they were creatures from another world. Corfe stared back at them, the white lightning-fury searing up in him at the sight of the muddy children, their ragged parents. These had once been the proud citizens of the greatest city in the world. Now they were beggars, and the Torunnan government seemed content to let them stay that way. He felt like dragging King Lofantyr out here and grinding his face into the liquid filth of the open sewers. When the warmer weather came, disease would sweep through these camps like wildfire.
He turned to Andruw and Marsch. “This is no damned good. Get the men bedded down beyond the camps, away from this.”
“We’ve no bedding, no food—not even for the horses,” Andruw reminded him. As if he needed reminding.
“I’m aware of that, Haptman. I’m going into the city to see what can be done. In the meantime, you have your orders.” He paused, and then added reluctantly. “You might want to slaughter a couple of the pack mules. The men need meat in their bellies.”
“God’s blood, Corfe!” Andruw protested quietly.
“I know. But we can’t expect too much. Best to prepare for the worst. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He turned his horse away, unable to meet Andruw’s eyes. He felt as though the anger in him could set the world alight and take grim satisfaction in its burning, but it left him feeling empty and cold. His men depended on him. If needs be he would lick the King’s boots to see them provided for.
The sentries at the main gate forgot to salute, so outlandish did he appear in his crimson Merduk armour. He turned over the options in his mind and finally pointed his horse’s nose towards the courtyards and towers of the Royal palace. His patron would, perhaps, be able to do something for him. He had passed the first test she had set him, at any rate.
“C OLONEL Corfe Cear-Inaf,” the chamberlain announced, a little wide-eyed.
The Queen Dowager turned from the window. Her hands fluttered up over her face and hair. “Show him in, Chares.”