Jurand winced as he rubbed at the dent in his jacket. “Is there anything you do badly?”
“Lose.” She gave her sweetest smile. “I swear I’m the worst loser in the world.”
When Savine walked into the gilded immensity of the Lord and Lady Regents’ great chamber, Zuri was sitting in a pool of lamplight, working at the book.
“How was the swordplay, Your Highness?” she asked, setting down her pencil.
“You don’t need to Highness me, Zuri, not when there’s no one else here.”
Zuri arched one black brow. “My chicken, then? My pigeon? My dove?”
“How about Savine.”
“Then how was the swordplay, Savine?”
She rubbed at the sore patch the long steel’s grip had left down the side of her little finger. “I am rather rusty but will soon polish up. And I think I was able to tickle young Lord Jurand where he is most ticklish.”
“I never doubted it.” She caught Savine’s eye, that brow creeping higher. “It only remains to be seen whether he can tickle your husband half so deftly.”
“Zuri, you’re a devil.”
“I daresay my scripture teacher would be deeply disappointed in me.”
“You sound rather pleased at the prospect.”
“I believe I am. How were the designs?”
Savine crossed tiles already scored with scratches from Leo’s mechanical foot and tossed the sheaf of plans on a side table under the ever-disapproving painted eye of Lord Marshal Kroy. “There were some awful ones. We could have a triangular Lords’ Round, apparently. Or one that looks like a wedding cake.” She slipped the box from her sleeve and took a little pinch of pearl dust. Just to keep things afloat. “But there were some good ideas.” She stifled a sneeze. “And they’re already clearing the site. Within ten years the Union will have a new heart, bigger and better than ever.”
“Progress, then.” Zuri permitted herself a little smile. “Whoever would have thought the Union would have a big heart.”
“How are the children?” asked Savine, stepping towards the tall door to the nursery, decorated with the sun of the Union in gold leaf.
“They are well, but…” Zuri put a gentle hand on Savine’s arm. “You should know they have a visitor.” And she eased the door open.
Savine’s mother stood beside the cots, rocking her tiny namesake with practised carelessness, pulling faces while the baby gurgled happily.
“Savine!” she said, prancing over. “It’s so good to see you!” Quite as if they were an ordinary mother and daughter and it had been an ordinary few days since they last spoke, rather than six terrifying months in which Savine had nearly died, given birth, nearly died again, then taken control of a nation.
She leaned forwards to kiss Savine’s cheek and gave her a noseful of that familiar, heady mix of perfume and alcohol. The smell of her childhood. The smell of being cared for, in an offhand, slightly lazy way. Savine felt herself caught on uncertain ground between fury at being abandoned and sappy relief that her mother was alive and had danced into her life again.
“You look… well,” she managed to say. Sickening banality, considering. But her mother did look very well. As if she had been on a well-earned holiday these past few months, somewhere sunny, while Adua shivered through the bitterest winter on record, in more ways than one.
“All the better for seeing these little darlings of yours. By the Fates, Leo’s a fine-looking man, but these children are positively beautiful.” She leaned over Harod’s cot, the monstrous diamond on her wedding band flashing as she waggled a finger at its occupant, speaking in a baby-voice Savine found intensely enraging. “Aren’t you, you little beauties, so very beautiful.”
“Mother?”
“Yes?”
“Are you really going fuss over my children… as if nothing has happened?”
“Honestly, I was rather hoping to.”
Savine kept her voice under control with some difficulty. “For six months, while the world was burning down around us, I’ve had no idea where you were. Not a letter. Not a word. Not a whisper.”
“I know, I know.” She seemed, almost, a little impatient. “And I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t sound it.”
“But you can understand we had to keep our heads down. Savine, please, I’m not the enemy—”
“What are you, exactly?”
She sank into a chair with a rustling of expensive skirts, sitting Harod on her knee so she could look deep into his eyes. “I still feel very much like the same sarcastic drunk I was at seventeen. But now I’m a grandmother, apparently. And to a king, would you believe?”
“Let’s not pretend this is the first time you’ve had a future monarch in your lap.”
“Really, that would’ve been beneath you at twelve. It’s certainly beneath you now you’re the Lady Regent of the Union.”
She was right, of course, but that did not help, of course. “You can’t just… turn up, Mother.”
“Isn’t that what grandmothers do? Avoid all the work then whisk in for the glory? It’s safe, now, isn’t it?”
“Of course, but—”
“It wasn’t safe before.”
“I am aware. I was thinking very much the same thing while I sat in the midst of at least two different riots, then in prison, then in the dock.”
“Your father and I sitting there with you would only have made things worse.” Harod gave an annoyed burble, and Savine’s mother softened her
exasperated tone. “I wanted to be there, to help you through it all. When the babies were born, of course I wanted nothing more. But I knew all I could do was to put you in more danger. And I knew you’d make it through. You’ve always been such a fighter. Such a modern, can-do woman. You really are so like your father. The pair of you simply refuse to be beaten.”
“He isn’t my father,” grumbled Savine, but it sounded churlish. How the hell could she have come out of this as the unreasonable one?
“Whether you like it or not, he’s your father in every way that counts.”
“Then where was he?”
“It’s better… that he explains it himself.”
“He’s here?”
“I think he wanted me to talk to you first. Break the ice. You know how it is, Savine, married couples tend to specialise, and I’ve always done the small talk, while he was more interested in—”
“The torture?”
“I was going to say the long-term planning, but no doubt you’ll have it your way. You always have.”
Savine pronounced every word with angry precision. “Believe me when I say that I have not. Where is he?”
Her mother nodded towards an unused door. “Can I stay with them? For a while?”
Savine wanted to say no. But she had never known how to say no to her mother. And Harod was clinging to her finger so tightly, the bloody little traitor. It would only have been punishing the children, and everything was supposed to be about them, now. Having a child limits one’s choices. Two at once is an even worse constriction. Make one of them a king and you lose all say in anything.
Savine gave a hopeless shrug. “Since you’re here.”
She turned the key in the door and stepped through.
She had never found out why they called it the Sighing Room. Perhaps some royal widow had worn her life away in endless mourning there. It had three doors, one to the nursery, one to their great chamber and one out into the hallway. The walls had been scrubbed clean of the Breakers’ slogans and freshly whitewashed, but Savine had not got as far as decorating. In any reasonable house it would have been a grand salon. In the palace it was one step above a cupboard. But it had a fine, high vaulted ceiling, and a stone floor polished by the passage of centuries of servants’ feet, and a beautiful window. There was excellent light in the mornings, so Leo had requisitioned the place for Carmee Groom to paint his portrait. In the evenings, though, it was quiet, and dim, and full of shadows.
Savine’s f
ather—in every way that counted—sat in that wheeled chair Curnsbick had designed for him, knees making two knobbles in the blanket across his withered legs, frowning at the unfinished canvas. The Young Lion bursting through the city gates astride a sable charger to deliver the nation from chaos, sending as yet roughly sketched traitors routing for their cowardly lives.
Savine walked to him, skirts hissing on stone in the heavy silence. All the way her mouth was open to speak, but when she got to the chair she still had not found the words. In the end, she simply put her hand on her father’s bony shoulder, the way she might have years ago. He laid his hand on top of hers. They looked up at the half-finished painting of Leo embodying the manly virtues, his iron leg hidden by horseflesh and his ruined arm by gold braid, pointing his sword towards a better tomorrow.
“I think it will be a fine portrait,” said her father. “Somewhat overwrought and sentimental, but so is its subject. It’s also an absolute pack of lies.” He gave a sigh. “But if people wanted the truth they could look at the real world. In my experience they much prefer paintings.”
“Paintings are less likely to kill you.”
“There is that. Where is the Lord Regent himself? Delivering the nation from peril once again?”
“Overseeing the organisation of his new army.”
“Someone’s compensating for something. But I suppose a warrior must have a sword.”
“I understand they’re calling it the Regent’s Own.”
“That could apply as much to the Lady Regent as the Lord.” Savine’s father glanced up at her. “I always thought armour would suit you rather well.”
“Difficult to nurse in a breastplate. And toy soldiers were never my playthings, as a girl.”
“Neither were dolls. As I recall it was fencing, money and power from the time you could talk, which was precociously early.”
“Did it ever occur to you that those things interested me because they interested you?”
“Who cares where they came from? They’re fine interests to have.” His grin became a grimace as he clawed at one of the wheels of his chair, turning it towards her. “I have to tell you how impressed I am, Savine. You not only plotted a safe path through this madness but made yourself exceedingly popular in the process. Quite the feat, for a woman who once put so much effort into making herself unpopular.”
“I can do without your flattery,” she lied. Honestly, his approval was still a headier drug than pearl dust to her. No one knew her better than he did. No one understood her so well. Except Orso, perhaps, and he was gone.
He took her hand in both of his, frowning down at it. “You have no
idea how hard it has been, to know you were in danger. But with your marriage… and the choices you made afterwards… you put yourself beyond my reach. I hope you can understand that I was always doing my
best to help you, in my own way. Someone had to have an eye on the bigger picture. I was working with Superior Pike to bring this madness to an end.”
A cold sliver of doubt pierced the warm fuzz of their reunion and began to stab deeper. “Working with Pike? Wasn’t he behind all this?”
“No, Savine. The time has come for me… at long last… to confess.” His eyes slid up to hers, bright in their bruised sockets. There was no remorse in them. If anything, he had a kind of stubborn pride as he said the words. “I was.”
Her hand was prickling where he held it. “What do you mean?”
“When I was a young man, and widely admired—there actually was a time, if you can believe it—I always imagined the power was in the Closed Council. But from the moment I first perched my withered arse on a chair there, it was clear we were all puppets. Bayaz pulled the strings, and always had. He controlled the banks, and their roots ate into everything. A web of debts, and secrets, and favours, deeper than you can imagine. Valint and Balk.” His eyelid flickered, and he dabbed a streak of wet from his weepy eye with a knuckle. “They were like ivy choking the garden. King Jezal and I… you might not believe it, but we tried to do some good. As long as Bayaz was there… we were helpless.” He paused, shadows black in the deep lines of his frowning face. “I had to bring a Great Change.”
Savine could only stare at him, while the floor seemed to shift under her feet. Seemed to shift so savagely it was hard, almost, to keep her balance. “You… brought the Great Change?”
“I had to burn out the corruption. Rip Bayaz and his bank up by the roots! Dig it all over, so we could plant something new, something good.” He sat forward, gripping her hand tight, lips curling back from his ruined teeth. “And now we have that chance!”
“Don’t talk to me about fucking gardening!” she screamed, tearing her hand from his. “People died! Thousands of them!” She felt dizzy. She felt sick. “I nearly died, more than once!”
He gave a frustrated twitch, as if the problem was not his epic ruthlessness but her poor temper. “Progress does not come without sacrifices—you have always seen that more clearly than anyone. The Court of the People was not at all what we had in mind, but once it became clear what a disaster Risinau would be, Judge was the only option. Who could have known Judge would be even worse?”
“Anyone! Anyone who saw what she did in Valbeck! Anyone with eyes or ears in their head! The woman was fucking insane!”
“A period of insanity was necessary so that sanity could prevail,” grumbled her father, as if she was complaining about footprints on a rug. “I would have liked a more… orderly transition, but Bayaz began to show an interest in you, and I could not risk that. Honestly, Savine, a little gratitude would not kill you.”
“Gratitude?” she whispered.
“I did it all for you. So you could truly rule. All your life, we’ve been preparing you for this.”
“My mother knew what you were planning?”
“It was her idea in the first place. One of her best.”
Savine did not often find herself at a loss for words. She slowly stepped back, pointing at her father with a trembling hand. “Because… I was King Jezal’s bastard. You knew all along… if Orso could be removed, I could be put in his place!”
“Your parentage was not a choice we made.”
“Only something you turned to your advantage!”
“To everyone’s advantage!” he barked, wheeling himself towards her. “Put aside your pique, Savine, this was war. In war one must make use of every weapon. Restraint is folly. Worse. Restraint is cowardice. You can give us a better Union. A better world! The horrors of the Great Change have left people pliable. Desperate for strong leadership. You are loved as much as I was hated, and the banks are torn up by the roots. We will finally have a free hand!”
“We?” she whispered.
“Your son will be king, but he will need your guidance.” He gripped her arm, and there was strength in those thin fingers. A grasping strength. “And you will need mine.”
Savine stared at him, cold all over. “You freed us from Bayaz…”
“Yes!”
“So you could become Bayaz.”
He narrowed his eyes. “That is unfair.”
“You’re right.” She twisted her arm free, taking another step back. “He only destroyed half the Agriont for his own ambitions. You destroyed half the Union!”
“You were willing to destroy a sizeable chunk of it for the sake of your ambitions, as I recall. You and your husband’s revolt against the crown nearly ruined everything.”
She gave a disbelieving gasp. “Was my mistake that I spoiled your efforts to burn down the world? Or that I didn’t burn down enough of it?”
“Both,” he said.
“I should have denounced you, in the Court of the People,” whispered Savine. “I should have denounced you to hell.”
“You should have. It might have improved your situation and could not possibly have done me any harm. That is the kind of sentimental mistake I can help you avoid in future. You have a struggle ahead of you, Savine.” He gave the painting
a significant glance. “Your husband may prove more difficult to control than anyone imagined. We cripples have a habit of surprising people. And freeing Orso was a blunder you may well regret. Then there are the nobles, and the commoners, and the Styrians, and the Imperials, and the Gurkish will not stay down for ever…” Enemies stretching off ahead of her, enough to fill a lifetime. “The time will come, sooner than you think, when you will need my support.”
She would have loved to tell him to fuck himself. At that moment, she would have loved to punch him out of his chair. But although her eyes were narrowed, and her fist clenched to do it, she did not indulge herself. Savine had taken many roles over the momentous past year or two, or had them forced upon her. A helpless fugitive, a desperate killer, a disappointed lover, a wife and a partner, a rebel and a traitor, a forger of alliances, a mother to twins, a benefactor to orphans, the wretched accused, the terrified convicted, the Darling of the Slums and the Mother of the Nation. A journey of giddy rises, horrifying falls and wild reverses that could leave no one the same. But, above all, Savine had always been a woman of business. And a woman of business cannot afford to be a slave to her passions. She has to be realistic, and plan for the long term. She must take the world as it is and look for the best deal.
She raised her chin, looking at her father down her nose. “Then I suppose we should talk prices.”
He showed those empty gums of his as he smiled. “That’s my—”
There was a crash. Outside, in the gardens. Savine’s father frowned towards the window. An angry cry, cut off in another crash, even louder, as if something heavy had fallen from a height.
“What was that?” For some reason, Savine felt the need to whisper.
Her father held up a hand, eyes still narrowed at the window. “Stay calm.”
“Calm? What have you done?”
“Freed us from Bayaz.” His eyes flickered sideways towards a muffled yell. “But the First of the Magi was never going to simply let us steal the Union from under his nose.”
Savine heard shouting in the corridor, then a long, thin scream. She took an unsteady step away. She had been on a battlefield and knew what genuine agony sounded like. It ended in a sickening metallic crash, and another, closer, then a crunching thud so near and so hard that Savine felt the floor vibrate. The painting rattled on its stand. Dust filtered gently down from the vaults above.
The Wisdom of Crowds Page 58