The Madness of Kings

by Gene Doucette

  They never found it of course, because it really didn’t exist. Porra couldn’t say for sure if Battine ever believed that, though; it was something of an obsession for her. Batt also thought there was an underground tunnel in the Great Temple, which was even more far-fetched considering it was on an island. Porra remembered them looking for one at castle Orch too, on an extended visit there.

  The dungeon was also the current location of the royal physician’s medical suite, which was how Kenson ended up down there. The suite was located just off the stone staircase behind the throne room, meaning the king’s final repose was currently directly beneath his own throne.

  He was still dressed in the clothes he’d died in. They’d begun cleaning him up around the face and the hair, both of which had been washed, but the bloodstain where the blade went in was still there. The royal garments he’d be wearing when he was officially lying in state, and later buried in, were on another table at the far end of the room. He’d have to be embalmed first; a royal embalmer (it was an actual title) was being flown in from Choruscam to perform the task. He wouldn’t be arriving before morning.

  She was alone in the room, having asked for a private audience. Dr. Opan acceded to the request with that same look of sadness and pity in his eyes that Porra had been treated to the entire day. (She was overwhelmingly sick of seeing that look, and expected to snap at someone about it before the evening was through.)

  Kenson, despite the blood, looked like he was sleeping. So much so, she ended up staring at his eyes for what had to be a while, trying to will them to snap open.

  They didn’t, and if she wasn’t careful she’d run out of time to do what she was there to do.

  Put the voicer in Kenson’s hand.

  That was what Damid Magly had said. It was stupid, and it wouldn’t change anything, but she could not get the suggestion out of her mind. It was such a persistent thought that she knew if she didn’t do it, she’d spend the rest of her widowed days wondering what would have happened.

  She pulled Kenson’s voicer out of the folds of her dress and stared at it. Like the king’s eyelids, the device failed to come to life under her insistent gaze.

  Porra’s experience with this forbidden technology was far more limited than Kenson’s was. He’d learned how to use one during his Haremisva.

  She remembered well his fascination with the various advances made in the rest of the world—the world that was doomed, according to the teachings of the kingdoms. He used to employ his voicer to stream information (she had to ask what that meant) about recent advances, and talked on more than one occasion, quite seriously, about allowing some of that technology to infect Totus. He even brought it up with the council of kings at least once. Porra was not privy to the council’s sessions, but they were conducted remotely nearly all the time, which afforded her the opportunity to eavesdrop, often when she didn’t even mean to.

  The remote meetings were conducted using permitted tech: a cathode-ray vacuum tube video screen powered by the steam engine in the back of the castle and employing an antenna array on the roof. The volume settings on the device—which was over a thousand years old—were intemperate; she could usually hear the conversations through the door.

  The other kings were less interested in vetting the use of external tech, obviously, because Kenson never did it. (He did not officially require their permission, but there was the matter of preserving the peace; nobody wanted to ignite a technology race among the nine kingdoms.)

  Porra used her voicer from time to time, but aside from figuring out how to activate the beacon on the one other such device in its vicinity, she didn’t really know how to use it.

  She knew how to get a message because Kenson messaged her periodically when they were apart, and sometimes the faster means of communication really was helpful. Totus had a pneumatic tube system for intra-castle communication, but it had fallen into disuse over the years. She wasn’t sure it even still worked. Likewise—probably—for the tubes in the other eight castles. It was not, in short, a functional way to speak effectively within the castle. Not any longer.

  And outside of the castle, the pneumatic tubes didn’t work at all.

  There had been a few occasions in which something was of sufficient import that Kenson felt the need to communicate with Porra immediately at a time when he was away from Castle Totus. Although his standard of what constituted important had slipped over the years.

  The first time he used his voicer in this manner was to warn of an impending typhoon on a day in which Porra had been about to take a ferry to the Great Temple. That was valuable and timely information. But the last time he used it to let her know he’d killed a wild boar so she could notify the kitchen. This was something that definitely could have been accomplished by sending a runner ahead of the hunting party.

  What Porra did know about her voicer was that when she held it, the glassine screen jumped to life. She also knew that when she held Kenson’s, it did not do that. She was allowed to answer when Magly sent a direct (outsiders had such odd words for these things) to Kenson’s voicer, but as soon as the conversation ended, the device shut down again.

  However improbably, the voicers appeared to know who was holding them.

  After furtively checking over her shoulder, Porra leaned onto the body and pulled the shirtsleeve—which extended past the knuckles—away and then twisted the hand around so that it could grip the voicer. His body was already stiffening from rigor; in another hour, this might have been impossible.

  It was awkward, and it felt like she was actively committing the sin of desecration, but she got it done. Then, after a long delay in which she nearly convinced herself it wasn’t going to work, the device sprang to life.

  Now what? she wondered, holding it up.

  Aside from the base functionality menu at the bottom, there were three boxes on the screen. Hers only came with two. The ones she was familiar with were: Messagebox, and Stream.

  Utilizing Messagebox meant accessing either ‘live’ textual communications or regular messages. The former was for messages with immediate back-and-forth, meaning both parties were holding their voicers and sending text back and forth in something like a dialogue. The latter was for precomposed messages, sent forward with no expectation of an active recipient. Those were the kind Kenson usually sent her, as she couldn’t be expected to have her voicer in her hand and active at any given time.

  Choosing Stream meant immediately drowning oneself (she thought of it this way because it was called a stream, after all) in the doomed world of the outsiders: Live videocasts of garishly dressed people talking outrageously while doing outrageous things. She had no taste for it and generally found Kenson’s interest off-putting, if not downright alarming. Were he not the king, he’d have been banished for his proclivities, at minimum. That he was the king meant he could grant himself dispensation, but that didn’t really make it okay; not in her eyes.

  The third box was titled Imagebox. She didn’t have anything like that on her voicer.

  On at least one occasion she caught Kenson viewing still images of women without blouses, and worried that the contents of Imagebox would be more of the same, so she elected to ignore it and opened up Messagebox instead.

  The first thing to greet her was a sub-box called DM.

  Damid Magly, she thought. She selected it.

  The very last message in what appeared to be an extensive conversation came up first:

  I understand. I’m not comfortable sharing this across the Stream. I’ll transfer it directly when you arrive.

  Looking forward to it!

  It was from Kenson.

  The message prior to it was longer, and it was indeed from Damid Magly:

  Your concern might be warranted. I don’t know what kind of tech is in play; interception of the proof is a real risk. It would still get through, but your role in its transmission could be exposed.

  If you’re this worried we can skip the air gap and bridge t
he voicers. I’m going to be there either way. But on receipt I’m just going to push it to my main box.

  Porra lingered on the word “proof”.

  “Proof of what?” she asked her husband. He didn’t respond.

  Whatever it was, it lived in Kenson’s voicer. The rest of Magly’s message appeared to concern exactly that: shifting information from one voicer to another.

  It was then that she remembered Kenson telling her about the portraiture function of voicers.

  This proof they spoke of might live in the Imagebox.

  She was about to go there next, but she’d taken too long. The voicer’s internal clock determined that it was no longer needed, and turned itself off. She reopened it by putting it back in Kenson’s hand again.

  I’m going to need more time with this, she thought. Not just to look at the contents of the Imagebox, but to read through what was in the Messagebox as well. Assuming Magly—with Battine’s help—killed Kenson, the reason for it might live in those places. And if they didn’t do it…well, what was in there might explain why someone else wanted the king dead: “interception of the proof” implied as much. But she wasn’t going to get the necessary time to work any of this out if the voicer kept shutting down. She’d either have to figure out how to stop that from happening or take Kenson’s hand with her.

  Someone would probably notice it missing.

  But she had a voicer too. She didn’t know how to “bridge the air gap,” but Magly’s part of the conversation clearly indicated that the information could be sent via other means.

  She clicked into the Imagebox. The first thing to come up was the last image Kenson captured. It was of a room holding a wall-sized metallic panel with liquid behind glass, Porra foregrounded by a table with some glass vials and a control console.

  She didn’t recognize the room, couldn’t even speculate on where he might have been standing when capturing the image. All she knew was that it wasn’t in Castle Totus.

  She resisted the urge to continue looking at the images. Opan would be returning soon; she needed to figure out how to convey the Imagebox to her own voicer first.

  The menu had a transmit option. When she selected it, she found a submenu asking what she wanted to transmit. All was one of the choices, so she picked that. It brought up possible destinations, but only two: D. Magly, and Porra.

  She chose herself. It responded by notifying her that the transmission was underway, and would take roughly two hours.

  Then she went to the Messagebox to see about transferring over all of that as well.

  Chapter Twelve

  They couldn’t find a safe path to the roof.

  There were five ways to get there: either via one of the stairwells at the four turret corners of the castle or by way of a fifth stairwell that led up from the king’s private quarters along the side of the Finger that rose from the center of the roof.

  The corner turrets defined the “old” part of Castle Totus, i.e., the original portion that predated the east and west wings. They existed to provide the castle interior’s defenders with roof access for archers (needless to say they hadn’t been used in this way for a very long time) and notably, they were no longer at the corners, strictly speaking. The expansions that resulted in the eastern and western wings made sure of that.

  Had the designers of the wings deigned to consider additional roof access necessary, Batt, Damid and Orean might have other options. But they didn’t, either because the wings were added in a time of peace or because the existing turrets were deemed sufficient. Or, archery in warfare had been de-emphasized or something.

  The staircase from the king’s quarters was also added later, after airship travel became commonplace. The Finger, which was purely an architectural oddity—an echo of the Fingers of the Great Temple—did a passable job as an airship dock in an emergency, provided one also used a rope ladder. The idea was for the king’s stairwell to serve as an escape route in the event the castle was overtaken. Battine was pretty sure it had never been used that way.

  Despite that, they were currently heading to the roof because Damid Magly insisted quite stridently that his old friend Ken kept an airship up there.

  They weren’t getting to the roof through the royal chambers, so they concentrated on reaching the nearest stairwell to their location, which was on the southeastern corner of the main building, right at the point where the eastern wing branched out. But they could only get to within about ten rooms. Then they were stuck.

  “How easy would it be to scale the side of the castle?” Magly asked, after their second hour stuck in the room. They were in one of the last Alcon staterooms, intended for one of Battine’s Alcon cousins when they visited. It looked no different from the one she’d been put up in, so she didn’t know what the big deal was when it came to staying there.

  Maybe the food’s better on this side, she thought.

  “Not impossible,” Batt said. “But some rope would be nice.”

  “I can get you rope,” Orean said. “If you’re serious.” She was parked at the door. They’d reached the room by way of the servant passages, but weren’t going to get any further by that means. The one they’d taken connected only with the room next to it and the hallway. Now she was watching and listening for a chance to sprint the thirty maders to the door that led to the stairs. Given they’d been waiting since before the suns went down, a gap didn’t seem likely to present itself soon.

  “Are we serious?” Battine asked Magly, about scaling the outer wall.

  “Ask me again in an hour,” he said.

  They were in a room that had already been searched. They knew this because the three of them had been just outside of the room as it was being searched. (It was also proving helpful that the palace guard—needing to cover a lot of ground—had gotten in the habit of putting check-marks in chalk on the doors to the rooms they’d already searched.) Given the size of the castle, it would be a long time before anyone came back around to their room again.

  That didn’t mean the hallway was clear, though. They were right in the middle of Battine’s extended family, all of whom had been released from their temporary arrest sometime before sundown in order to prepare for Tannik’s coronation. Their comings-and-goings were constant.

  Still, it was only about thirty maders. Clearing a distance that small shouldn’t have been a problem given how freely they’d walked up and down the castle halls for most of the day. Except…they’d since been recognized. This came shortly after their escape from Fergo’s quarters when, about halfway to the turret stairs, someone behind them was heard to shout, “There they are!”

  Battine had turned around long enough to spot the fat guard Orean previously convinced to let them pass. Thankfully, he wasn’t gifted with great speed personally. And collectively, the palace guard were not capable of running terribly fast anyway thanks to their armor, so none of his compatriots were in a position to chase them down.

  They’d managed to run ahead and around a corner, taking refuge in a servant passage until the guards passed, which got them out of the immediate problem. However, it was clear that pretending to be staff wasn’t going to work any longer.

  “Tell me about this airship,” Battine asked Magly. He was standing at the window and either working out the physics of climbing the face of the castle or watching the arrangements being undertaken below as they converted the Feast of Nita layout to a coronation ceremony and possibly a funeral.

  This was not how she pictured Kenson’s funeral. She had pictured it—she’d been possessed of a somewhat maudlin imagination as a child—but she was expecting a grand ceremony many years in the future after he passed of natural causes as an old man. Also, she was expecting to be in attendance.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  “Is it invisible? Because I don’t know how much you know of the technology, but the inflatable has to be quite large to get anything with weight off the ground.”

  “The balloon i
s smaller on the personal ones.”

  “I have a personal one,” she said. “It’s not that small. Damid, if there’s an airship up there, I’d have seen it from the road on my way to the castle.”

  “You’re saying you would have known to look?”

  “I’m saying I’d have noticed, because it would be impossible not to.”

  He just smiled that annoying smile of his. “It’s there,” he said, “I promise.”

  She found the smile annoying because it surfaced whenever he was discussing some special knowledge that came with being an outsider. It said, I have forbidden information, and also, You kingdom folk are so naïve.

  Condescending is what it was.

  “I’m wagering my life on that promise,” she said.

  “Mine’s at risk too,” he said. “As you’ve pointed out already.”

  “That was just to get you moving. But you were right: You’re a walking international incident. Me they can execute before Ken’s even cold.”

  “I could suffer an ‘accident’,” he said. “Or succumb to a sudden, previously undiagnosed medical condition. Or they could insist I did leave, and produce five locals who would swear under oath that they escorted me to the border personally. States have plenty of ways to make people they don’t like disappear.”

  “Fair point,” Battine said.

  “I ‘spect they’ll just hang me,” Orean said from the door.

  “No,” Battine said. “No, it won’t come to that.”

  “Princess, my life’s been one tight knot from ending since we left the laundry. The matron’s too. Tima’ll be fine; she’s too dim to waste a rope on. It’s okay, we both knew the stakes. Don’t let it rattle you.”