There weren’t any.
Orso issued a heavy sigh. Sighing was one of his few remaining hobbies and, with all the recent practice, he flattered himself to think he had become quite accomplished. He wasn’t in his mother’s league, of course, but perhaps one day, if he really stuck at it. If he was given the time. But that was the question. How much time was he likely to get?
Leo dan Brock had stuck his son on the throne. Orso’s half-nephew, in fact, by his reading of the tortuous royal family tree. King Harod the Second, not even one year old, which, in practice, left the nation in the hands of his parents. It trampled over all the Union’s laws of succession, of course. But laws did not appear at all the rigid pillars they once had. If the Great Change had proved anything, it was that—with enough force, with enough fear—one could bend them into whatever knots one pleased.
Brock had the men and the weapons. He had anyone loyal to Orso locked up along with him. He had the lords firmly on his side, and had no doubt gathered a pliant rump of Representatives around them. Anyone likely to oppose him was weeded out as a traitor, the rest falling over themselves to disinherit Orso and bow down before their new infant king, son of a bastard or no.
Orso served up another sigh. In truth, he could hardly blame them. He was the son of a bastard himself, after all. And people were desperate, exhausted, sick of chaos, sick of fear. He would have happily voted for anything that brought the Great Change to an end himself. It was just a shame for him that this ending almost certainly meant his death.
Leo dan Brock had stuck his son on the throne and that, quite obviously, left nowhere for Orso to sit. The Breakers and Burners had reckoned one king too many, but even he had to admit that two was. As long as he was alive he would be a guilty secret. Not to mention an open enticement to rebellion. He came weighed down with compromises, enmities, disappointments. Baby Harod carried no baggage. He was all rosy cheeks, fresh starts and limitless potential.
Orso shuffled a couple of dead flies across his windowsill with the side of his hand. It would be done discreetly, he imagined. A midnight garotte? A quiet three-man knifing? Poison, perhaps, in his water? When Brock had tightened his grip sufficiently. When he had done the deals, arranged the bribes, won over everyone he could and silenced the rest, and brought some semblance of longed-for peace back to Adua. With Savine to help him it would not take long. No one drove a harder bargain than she, after all.
He heard bolts rattle and turned to face the opening door with as much dignity as he could muster.
And there she was, in the doorway.
She had given up on wigs. Her dark hair was clipped short, the way it had been at the trial, showing the scar on her forehead, the fading marks of her fight with Judge. It made her look both oddly vulnerable and oddly powerful at once. White was her colour now, but today’s dress was a very different affair from the one she had worn at her trial, pearls and silver thread glittering as she moved with even more than her usual poise.
She looked like a queen. As much as Orso’s mother ever had.
It took him a moment to find his voice. “I am… almost as honoured as I am surprised.” He brushed those dead flies onto the floor. “If I had known the Lady Regent was visiting I would have dusted. I fumble for the proper term of address…”
“Your Highness,” she said, simply.
“Most becoming. I’m not sure how one refers to a deposed king. Am I deposed? Or retired? Or simply… unmentionable?”
“They have been discussing that question. In the Hall of Mirrors.”
“I suppose the Lords’ Round is a little burned to the ground. But where are my manners?” He pulled out the one chair, rubbed the flaking seat with his cuff. “Might I enquire as to the purpose of your visit? A last word, perhaps, with the condemned?”
“That…” She held his eye. “And to let you go.”
It took a moment for Orso to work that one through. “That and to…
what now?”
“We haven’t much time. My husband means to have you killed.”
“The surprise is not so much that he might… as that you might not.”
“You came to help me in Valbeck, when I scarcely deserved it. Then you had mercy on me after Stoffenbeck, when I definitely did not. Then, to rub it in, you saved my life on the Tower of Chains. Without you, I would be dead three times over.”
Orso waved it away. “I rather wish I had hanged your husband now, but in your case, I have no regrets. I would have felt awful about killing a lover or a sister, so killing both at once would have been impossible to live with.”
“Selfish decisions, then.”
“Ask any of my enemies. I’m the most selfish man in the Circle of the World.”
“I suppose we can do good things for bad reasons.”
“Or bad things for good ones,” he answered.
“Or bad things for good ones.” She stepped out of the way of the door and someone slipped around the frame. A ragged man with bright eyes and a moustache.
“Tunny?” breathed Orso. He was followed by a girl in a soldier’s cap, a big man at her back, sliding heavy swords into his belt. “Hildi? Gorst, by the Fates!” Orso used to be thoroughly dismayed at the sight of his father’s bodyguard. Now he seized his hand and pumped it like an old friend’s, much missed.
Vick dan Teufel peered in from the corridor outside, her nose more bent than it used to be and a few multicoloured bruises still lingering around her eyes. “You have to go,” she said. “Now.”
“A daring escape?” Orso raised his hands at the barren cell and let them fall. “I am packed.”
“There’s a way ready through the sewers.” Teufel tossed a ring of keys to Tunny and he plucked them rattling out of the air. “But the city’s crawling with the Lord Regent’s men. Won’t be easy getting out.”
“I wish I had more to offer you than my thanks,” said Orso.
“You can thank me by not getting caught.”
He held Vick’s eye for a moment. “Who would have thought a professional turncoat would prove to be one of the last loyal people in the Union?”
Teufel winced. “Maybe we could keep that particular defect in my character between ourselves.”
“Your secret is safe.” Orso faced Savine, in the doorway. “I hardly know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything. Ask any of my creditors. I pay my debts.”
He wanted to take her in his arms. Fates help him, he wanted to kiss her, and not stop there. He knew she was his sister. Half-sister, anyway. He had never doubted it was true. But it did not feel true. He was as much in love with her as he had ever been. More, if anything.
But love is not always a solution. In this case, it was very much a problem.
“Goodbye,” he said. What else was there to say?
It was Jurand who appeared in the doorway first, staring into the cell with its bed, chair, table and instantly obvious lack of an imprisoned king.
He gave Savine a pained look. “What did you do?”
“What did you do, Your Highness,” corrected Savine, slipping the little box from her sleeve and taking a pinch of pearl dust up each nostril, feeling that invigorating burn, then that reassuring numbness spreading through her face to the back of her throat.
One generally heard Leo coming before one saw him. The click of his cane, the scrape of his metal foot, the slight squeak of the mechanism at the ankle. He really needed to get Curnsbick to apply a little oil. Jurand faded back to make room, started speaking softly to one of the other Anglanders.
“You let him go.” Leo stared into the cell in disbelief. “You let him go?”
“He let us go.” Savine calmly smoothed the front of her dress. “He let you go.”
“He let you go!” snarled Leo as he took one lurching step towards her. “He left me to rot with half my limbs in a stinking wagon!” He had lifted his cane as if he might strike her with the handle. She resisted the urge to flinch, instead turned her cheek towards h
im as if inviting him to do it. The way he used to do to her. It felt like a long time ago.
“He’ll be a thorn in our side for ever!” Leo got a grip, lowering his stick. “Where is he?”
“Judge couldn’t get a thing out of me,” said Savine. “Do you really think you will?”
“Don’t be so bloody dramatic! You’re my wife. You’re the mother of my children. Of the real king, in fact! We’re on the same side.”
“Really? I’m not so sure!”
She had raised her fist to shake it in his face and Leo noticed the rolled-up paper she was gripping. “What’s this?”
“Nothing.”
“Show me,” he said, tossing his cane aside and making a clumsy grab for it.
She hid it behind her back. “No.”
“Give it to me, damn it!” He caught her under the arm, making her gasp. He might only have one hand, but its grip was as strong as ever. She tried to twist free, dragging him off balance. He only stayed standing by clinging on to her, his dead weight almost pulling her over. He growled with effort as he took another lurching step, iron ankle squeaking, pressing her against the wall, elbow of his useless arm jabbing into her corset as he made another grab at her hand.
What would people have thought, if they could have seen their new Lord and Lady Regent, the pilots of the nation, staggering about a prison cell, wrestling over a scrap of paper?
She felt a powerful urge to kick his iron leg away, bring him down, pin his good arm and start punching. But that would have solved nothing. She let him twist the document from her fist and leave her standing, flushed and breathing hard. She let him think he had won. That was what he wanted, after all. More than ever.
He pulled the paper open, eyes flickering over the writing. “What the hell’s this?”
“A letter of charter,” said Jurand, plucking it from his fingers and handing him his cane, every bit the faithful valet. The two of them were always together these days. Hard to believe that Savine had needed to beg Leo to bring him back. “The Duke Rogont. A Styrian vessel.”
“You’d hand him to the Styrians?” Leo looked at her in shocked disappointment. “You’d make a weapon of him, for our enemies to use against us?”
Savine drew herself up again. “I am starting to think your enemies and mine are not at all the same.”
“We’ll discuss this later,” snapped Leo, turning his back on her. “Get men to the docks!” And he limped out, tap, scrape, squeak.
Jurand gave Savine that pained look again. “What have you done, Your Highness?” And he followed Leo.
“That’s it!” Glaward reined his horse in hard and swung from the saddle with an ease that made Leo deeply jealous. “The Duke Rogont!”
It was an ugly tub, low in the water, a few scraps of gilt still clinging to the unlikely bosom of its figurehead but her face reduced to a pitted mass by years of sea wind. She was about to get underway, men crawling in the rigging, a shabby-looking sailor dragging at the knots of a mooring line.
“This ship is forbidden to leave the harbour!” roared Leo, gritting his teeth as he slithered from his saddle.
The sailor squeaked out a lot of scared-sounding Styrian as Glaward wrestled him down onto his face. More well-armed Anglanders were clattering up, dismounting, pulling out weapons.
Leo limped down the long wharf, iron foot clonking on the boards, waving them past with his cane, Jurand loading his flatbow as he followed. “Get on board! Find Orso! Bring him to me!”
They clattered towards the Duke Rogont’s gangplank, half-hidden among a mass of boxes and barrels. The leading man looked sideways, took a whooping breath, then flew from the wharf and tumbled flailing into the sea. Leo winced as he skittered to an ungainly halt.
Someone had burst from among the crates and rammed the man with his shoulder. Now he turned towards Leo, blocking the narrow jetty with his body. A very big body, with a noticeable lack of neck.
Bremer dan Gorst.
The king’s bodyguard pulled a final buckle tight on his unmarked breastplate and stood, swords at his sides, a bright buckler on his left arm. “I am afraid I cannot allow it,” he said in that ridiculous squeak.
Leo’s men crowded forward. At least a dozen of them, but there was no way around. Just that narrow path of crooked wood, and the sea on either side. Was there anyone in the Circle of the World you’d want to face less on a wharf than Bremer dan Gorst?
“What do we do?” muttered Glaward, licking his lips.
Leo gave a frustrated growl. “I’ve nothing but respect for you as a swordsman! But we’re boarding that ship. In the name of King Harod, step aside!”
He’d never seen Gorst smile before. He’d seemed a man incapable of expressions. But he smiled now as he raised his steels, metal flashing in the sun. Like a man who feels a wonderful relief. “In the name of King Orso,” he piped, his boots grinding into the weathered wood as he lowered himself into a ready crouch, “no.”
“So be it,” snarled Leo. “Kill—”
Gorst moved before he even said the him. One Anglander toppled into the sea with his brains flying from his neatly split skull. Another sank to his knees, dropping his sword, trying to hold his guts in as Gorst ripped the short steel back out of his stomach. The man began to scream. Desperate, whooping screams.
“Damn it,” muttered Leo.
Gorst was already back in his fighting crouch, eyes shifting calmly between the Anglanders.
One jumped forward, swinging, but Gorst slipped aside and let his sword thud into the wharf. Something gleamed on the back of the man’s dark uniform for an instant. The point of Gorst’s long steel as it ran him through. A moment later he folded up, keeled forwards like a tent that’s suddenly had its guy-ropes cut. Gorst sprang at another Anglander with blinding speed. The man managed to parry the short steel but an instant later the long chopped into his neck, beneath the rim of his helmet, and sent him crashing into a pile of boxes, head flopping.
Glaward swallowed. “Bloody hell.”
“Ready your bows!” Leo snarled over his shoulder. “If you see an opening, shoot. You with the spears!” he shouted down the wharf. “Put him in the sea or in the ground!”
Two spearmen rushed forwards, points levelled. Gorst caught one on his buckler and it scraped past. He smashed the face of the man who held it with the pommel of his short steel and knocked him wailing into the water. He growled as the other spear grated against his breastplate, opening a cut up the side of his head, but his heavy long steel was already swinging in a great overhead arc that caught the spearman in the shoulder and split him open down to the chest with a meaty thud.
Blood sprayed over Gorst, speckled his face, flooded across the wharf. Men stepped back in shock, opening a path. Flatbows clicked and rattled. One man cried out as he was nailed in the back by a stray bolt. Another sank into Gorst’s meaty shoulder. A third bounced from his breastplate. A fourth caught him in the right arm, dangling from his sleeve. He whipped out of the way, behind some crates, as a fifth buried itself in the wood.
The man who’d been carved almost in half flopped down, legs still kicking weakly at the timbers.
“You’re shot, Gorst!” yelled Leo. “You can’t stop all of us! And the damn boat’s not leaving anyway. Give up now!”
“Tell your mother…” came that high warble. “That I always held her…
in high esteem.”
Leo ground his teeth. “As if she’d care a shit. Load your bows. You lot, get down there and finish him!”
No one seemed very keen. The wharf looked like a busy day at the slaughterhouse. They edged forwards through the mess of blood and broken bodies.
“Help me,” the one with a handful of his own guts was whimpering. “Help me.”
“Throw down your arms!” shouted one of the Anglanders.
It seemed Gorst preferred to go down fighting.
He burst from behind the crates in spite of the bolts stuck in him. He slashed one man’s throat with his sh
ort steel in a spray of blood, left his long steel rammed through another’s chest, kicked a third tumbling into the water, shouldered a fourth out of his way and, with a high bellow, came pounding down the wharf, head lowered, arms pumping, short steel held overhand like a dagger.
“By the dead,” muttered Leo, dropping his cane and fumbling for his sword.
Planks rattled under Gorst’s boots. A flatbow bolt pinged off his breastplate. Another sank into the same shoulder he was already stuck in. He barely noticed, coming on faster and faster, twisted face speckled red, eyes fixed on Leo under his furiously wrinkled brows, short steel going up high.
Leo took one lurching step back, raising his sword, no idea how he’d have met that charge even with all his limbs.
Next to his ear, Jurand’s flatbow made a sharp whipping sound.
The bolt punched into Gorst’s face, under one eye.
His head snapped up. He lost all momentum.
He took one more wobbly step forward, but with no venom. His eyes had gone soft, slightly crossed.
Another flatbow bolt nailed him through the thigh. As his foot came down, the knee buckled and he toppled sideways, crashed drunkenly into a barrel and came to rest with his bolt-stuck right arm over it, one leg out in front, the other bent underneath him, his bloody short steel wedged harmlessly between two boards of the wharf beside his limp left hand.
Leo let out a long breath and slowly lowered his sword. “Get aboard,” he grunted at Glaward. “Find Orso.”
There was a red stain across Gorst’s eye above the flatbow bolt. But the other one rolled up towards Leo. It seemed, somehow, he still had that smile.
The Wisdom of Crowds Page 51