At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  “You Idasians. Always say—boy, he has man’s blood at fifteenth year. You thought it manhood when you taste your first…peach. Is not age does it. Is not making love does it. This is your problem. Still think like boy. Think: why she hates me? Why she does this? Not: what have I done to her? What can I do for her? Did you mean hurt? No. But you did.”

  Rurik sat, stunned to silence. Calm disintegrated into ashes. He tasted many things—anger, sadness, shame. His fist clenched and unclenched at the thought. How had he not seen it before? Before, he had worried only that she thought he had drugged her. That he had raped her. Intentionally. Not that intention mattered in such a thing. In her eyes, he feared a mirror. One that would cast him for a monster.

  It was there, still, but now it spider-webbed into so many other fears he never would have thought to consider. He felt vacant, and dizzy, and he wanted desperately to be anywhere but there. Yet he sat riveted, unable to speak and unable to flee.

  Outside, one of the Gorjes was laughing. He heard it, but only just. Essa, he thought, how will you ever forgive me? It was not just the action. It was the willful selfishness of fear. No wonder she would not look him in the eye. He had not once gone to her, taken her hand in his, and asked, free of any conditions, why she cried when she thought no one was looking.

  Perhaps now the time was far too late. Better than most, he understood that one most terrible lesson of youth: the heart may want, but it will gladly move to find it. Only fools could name themselves solitary.

  Beyond family—both blooded and adopted—Essa had spent the long days since in the company of but one man. It drew his eyes down to the muck just to think it, but he had to know. Yet to tell himself to leave well enough alone if truth it was proved much the harder.

  “Is she with him?”

  There was a slight pause before the Kuric’s answer came. “What matters?”

  “You—you know why it matters to me. She’s always on my mind. Every day. And when I see her with him…I wasn’t half so scared when they were pulling knives on me, Alviss.”

  “All boys feel such. You don’t want to hear. Fine. But fact is this: her life is hers. Let her make choice. That choice is not yours.” He started to interject, but Alviss held up one massive hand to stay him. “Are you sure this is love? Not lust?”

  “Alviss! I of all people should know the difference.”

  “You of…” The giant shuddered once, then barked out a single laugh as dry and biting as an arctic wind. “Boy, you are. These things—they jumble. We see what we want seen, all too true, when someone else has them. Calm. Treat her as you always have. She will come around.” Alviss stared over Rurik’s head, watching their shapes move in the distance. Rurik longed so badly to turn and to look as well, but he could not help feeling this was a test. He fidgeted. “Or she won’t,” the Kuric said at last.

  “I can’t accept that, Alviss.”

  “Then more the fool, you.” The Kuric’s gaze leveled back on him, heavy as a weighted pike. “Choice, as I say, not yours to make.”

  The sky outside was grey and white above them, and it rumbled with the chill. Heavy eyes watched him as only a father could. Pescha, he thought—he was no better than Essa’s father. For once, he could honestly read Alviss’s face. The Kuric pitied him.

  Rurik waited until light was but a thousand tiny fires burning against an oil-slicked canvas. Men walked the periphery of the camp, but they did not see him, nor care to see him. He wandered far as he might dare from the town walls and boisterous politick, into the mud and muck he and his friends had once shared. Then he sat in the cool night, clutching to an old gift coin as he prayed his fears away.

  Where only one would hear. Where only one would weep.

  Chapter 4

  “The delay is regrettable, Your Highness, but what is a year? With the coffers drained as they are, it is the only course I can see for us.”

  Leopold rimmed the cup with the tip of his finger, trying to reproduce the sound. The wine had been drained away. They were still waiting for the boy to return with more. It was a travesty of a thing. In Ravonno, no one would have thought to let the cups run dry. All his years there had laid this lesson plain: priests, like princes, were all but insufferable sober.

  “My lord?”

  Leopold stared just as dryly over the rim of the cup, at the red-faced figure of Lord Hinslen. The blowhard was one of the court’s many relics. Brother to one of Idasia’s quaint “palatines” and the voice to matters foreign—or as close as one might come—for the breadth of an empire, Hinslen was a man done grievous wrong by time. Whereas age bloated some men, it had withered the one-time soldier to a husk. Though he sat still with a soldier’s repose, his black beard was shot with streaks of grey, and the palest of cataracts hazed his intemperate gaze.

  Yet time had done little to temper the man’s propensity for speech. This latest bundle was but the tail-end of his hour-long play for domination of the small chamber. A chamber that was, despite the sun pouring in from outside and the hot air blowing from within, unseemly chill. This was the Lord’s Council. Leopold could hardly see why they needed him to suffer through it.

  “And when we do have the coin? How long?” For all his minimal effort, Leopold could not keep the boredom from seeping in.

  Straightening his crooked jaw, the old man croaked, “Two octaves, perhaps. Three if the rains come early. The spring showers can be a touch…unpredictable.”

  “My father is dead,” Leopold sighed, “and the succession clear. None dispute it. We have the crown. We have the capital. We have the bishops. At a word, even the Patriarch will come with his blessing. Why must I wait? You would not ask such things of Joseph.”

  No one had given voice to the question of why the foreign minister was assuming the voice for local affairs. Leopold presumed it was by virtue of his age. Exasperated, his gaze flicked to the empty chair beside him where, he was told, had once sat their venerable chancellor. He, it would seem, had passed as suddenly as that guiding fatherly hand, left to drown under the same unsavory circumstances as had claimed too many of his own family.

  If there was one thing Leopold had learned from Ravonno it was this: every man was friend only so long as it suited their interests. He could look out on these men now and see the regard they paid to this dead one, but he doubted any of them truly called him friend. More like than not, at least one of them had been involved in his “accident.” Or so his wife kept reminding him.

  At last, another voice arose, and this being the stuffed crowing of the Empire’s actual treasurer, Portir. “Consider the country from whence you came, Leopold. Ours is not so different in its courses. Yet until you have the blessing of the electors, you can be nothing more than prince. Royalty may be birthed, but a ruler—a ruler is raised…”

  Portir, called “the Devout” brother Durvalle among the southern halls to taunt Leopold, was his uncle. A bulbous, nervous sort with a tiring propensity for soft-spoken lecture, he was one of the few pieces of family whom had taken the time for contact in Leopold’s long years abroad, though sometimes Leopold wished he hadn’t. Of the gathered men, he was probably one of the most powerful now, in the wake of everything. He was certainly the richest.

  It was he that had sent the letter for Leopold’s return, and it was he that greeted their carriage on that fateful morn, the palace guardsmen arrayed about him like a personal army. Their meaning had not been lost. After, Ersili had taken Leopold by the shoulder and whispered in his ear: “You watch that one. He knows what it is to be regent and he should come to slaver for more, should words not ease. Should chancellor not sate.”

  It did tend to put the man in a new light.

  “Spare me the tired epithets. I know the demagoguery of ritual. Just tell me—can these men take the crown from me?”

  The room shifted uneasily around the question. Already he could see the weasel thoughts scrambling through their heads. Not one of them wished to confront the truth. Save his uncle Mauritz
.

  “They can. It does not mean they will. But it’s more than that. Coffers or no—Hinslen, you neglect a fact. We need a replacement for the Veldharts, or there will never be a vote.”

  The general, with his long white hair and beard, stood beside his brother Portir, opposite Leopold. His hand was on his wider brother’s shoulder, as though to steady him. It was like watching a wolf guide an antelope.

  “What about Lord Ittenbeck?” Hinslen countered, turning it toward the group. “He is more than loyal—to the true family, mind you—and he is—”

  “A pig, a philanderer, and far too severe. Even his fellow lords divine the need to wash after an hour with him.” Lord Turgitz, the youngest man of the council, interrupted.

  Under scrutiny, Leopold supposed this was one man he could come to like. A duke’s son, he nevertheless kept his opinions to the considerate silence not of the witless inheritor, but the discerning merchant. Though short, he had a voice like liquid iron, and the courtesy—unlike too many Idasians—to bathe on a regular basis. A pity he was nothing more than their Minister of Ships.

  “A pig with vast shores of grain. Given the harvests we’ve had the last few years—”

  “There are any number of suitable knights on the crown’s own lands,” Portir said, with all the warmth of a father trying to appease his struggling spawn, “Men Matthias drew close to him. I should think it would be a fair concession to the new bloods among the court, no?”

  “New does not always translate to better,” Hinslen interceded, with all the candor of a pricked boar. “One should not forget the old families that first set the crown here. A middle ground is well and good, but bear in mind what many of these others have to bring forward. Proven loyalty foremost among them.”

  It was only after this tired lecture that Hinslen seemed to realize the potential fault in it, and he hastily turned himself back to Leopold. “Which is not to demean your own circumstances, Your Highness. I meant only—”

  “I know what you meant.”

  In truth, he didn’t. It sufficed to cow the braggart, but the names slid over his head. The intricacies and familiarities between these men that were supposed to be his hands left him as one entombed without a light, and he could only hope they did not note it. Half of politics was bluff, but it never hurt to buoy it with actual knowledge.

  Damn Ersili for setting me here. This was her place.

  More importantly: damn that boy with the wine. Did he run all the way to the vineyard for another cup?

  Turgitz flicked his attention to Ser Ontlaus, the only one of the council—save Mauritz—still armed with a blade. In his leather cuirass and greaves, he was as much guardian to the council as member. With his thick arms contrasted by grey, drooping eyes, one had to wonder how much fire this dog still had in him, though.

  “Honorable Ontlaus, surely there’s someone close to the court you might recommend.”

  But the head of the Imperial Guard shook his head resolutely and addressed Leopold, “I am here to counsel the decisions proposed of others. I do not begin them.”

  “What about Lord Gorrowsly?” Portir slid into the conversation. “He has been—”

  “I grow weary,” Leopold cut in.

  Portir choked on his words and floundered like a dying fish. Mauritz smiled as the others fell to silence.

  “But—my lord? We have much more still to discuss. Palatines aside, there is the matter of the Chancellery.”

  Leopold, already half-way to his feet, snorted derisively. “Would you like it?”

  “Would I—” The dying fish paled like one too. Hinslen’s face registered shock, while the pair of military men gave only stony masks. Turgitz alone gave the slightest hint of a smile.

  Yes, he definitely liked that one.

  “Highness,” Hinslen sputtered. “This is most irregular. This is a matter for discussion. Debate. It is not for—”

  “I have thought long and hard,” Leopold answered seriously. Untruthfully. “There is no better man for it. But I do have one last question, sers, before I’ll hear no more of it. If you think this country can get along without an emperor for a year, pray tell who do you think shall rule in my stead? Who shall keep Assal’s peace?”

  Puffing up, Portir gaped as he answered, “With you, my lord nephew. I shall rule with you. As your father’s lord regent and—that is to say, if your most gracious words be genuine, chancellor—I shall help guide you, and the year shall be good. We shall use it to make you Idasian again, my boy. We know you are at heart, but to the people—I dare say you will seem as a foreign conqueror.”

  Hinslen nodded to that, at least, but Turgitz and Ontlaus, while paying Portir his due, seemed slightly more concerned with his brother. Mauritz smiled through it, patting his brother on the shoulder and nodding his quiet assent.

  The most dangerous men, Ersili once told him in bed, were those that gave nothing away. Naturally, she was the most dangerous of all.

  “Of course,” Mauritz said. “And my soldiers will keep the peace in the meanwhile. When the levees return from Effise, well, we should have more than enough men between you and any…” For a flicker of a second, the general’s eyes drifted to the regent. “…naysayers.”

  “We have also dispatched messengers to Effise itself,” Portir added. “We would see this monster of a blight done before you take to your office. The people—they grow weary of it.”

  With that, Leopold was finished. Hoisting himself onto his aching feet, the heir apparent graced the rising nobles with a single, curt nod and twisted away from the heart of his nation’s politics. The men bowed to him as he went, but his disgust bid no hesitation. Already it felt as though he were walking on needles, and this was only his second meeting of the council. As far as he could see, they were just a ragged troupe of gossipy old men—save Turgitz, of course—utterly incapable of certainty, and utterly disposed to dragging him from his valuable time. In all the months since his demise, one chair of their number still sat empty, since they could not even agree to appoint a new chancellor for their fragile state. That alone told volumes.

  The Lord’s Council ran most of the day-to-day operations of the Empire, and Leopold was determined to let them. How his father had ever sat among them he would never know, but they were beneath his time. As he saw it, no emperor should have to be second-guessed and bogged down with the menial.

  If she would have it, he would appoint his wife to the council in his stead. How they would love that, he mused. It was a pleasant thought. A woman had never served there and his wife was more than capable of putting the men in line. Backward slugs like these could certainly use the injection of new blood.

  The more he thought about it, in fact, the more convinced he was of its merits. Ersili thrived on these sorts of things, anyway.

  When he emerged from the council chamber, Bertold was waiting for him like his own personal shadow. He stood at the threshold, beside the men of the palace guard, at once enigmatic and malevolent in the smooth silver sheen of his mask. Strands of brown poked out from the deep lip of his cowl as the sunlight through the windows flashed deep lines across his red and brown robes. Only his bare hands hinted at one of the true curiosities of the man—like the lightest of chocolates, the result of a mixed heritage of Zuti and Marindi.

  “My own dog,” Leopold mused aloud.

  Bertold said nothing in reply. He bowed his head to the heir apparent and followed obediently in his wake. Leopold had no other guards—at least that he could see. He had little doubt one court hound or another stalked their wake, and it was only right. Men sought to keep tabs on him. To stalk his movements and to know—for better or worse—what manner of being stepped so surely between their foreign halls. And he was more than man.

  In the Vorges, it was said a man once asked his lord, “In all the land, might there be such a king that only heaven could divine his ways?” At the time, there had been no answer. Kings, be they fair or foul, ruled of might or fear or birth. Assal had
little to do with it.

  Yet divinity was the only way Leopold could describe the whirl of months behind him. His beloved Ersili had whispered to him as such from the moment the letter came of Joseph’s end. She had mounted him in the sanctity of their chambers, wrapped in his own hallowed robes, whispering Grace into his ear as she took him inside her. The God’s own, she had cried.

  Strictly speaking, there had been some perks to being a prelate of the Church—perks those lower in the pecking order were not nearly so free to endulge.

  “Tell me, Bertold, what is my wife about today?”

  The masked man shrugged, turned away. Leopold could imagine him scowling down one of the corridors, peering out their pursuers. “She went to town. I am told a hedge witch caught her eye.”

  He could hear the derision in the man’s voice, and it made him smile. “Is that right?”

  “I am told she is returned.”

  In some ways, he collected his oddities. Ersili and her children might have been scoffed by another man. They had been, in fact, by many men. The willful youngest daughter of a Ravonnen nobleman, she had been married young to one too old, and though he had gotten her with two children, it did not take him long to die. Leopold had given him his rites. But from the moment he first spoke with Ersili, he had forsaken his own.

  He was hardly the first priest to say the same, and though it provided a great many avenues for the other prelates to strike at him, he warded them, as any content man may. They were as two parts of a whole, their minds carved from the same bedrock, though hers he dared say was all the sharper.

  Sucking a little at his gut, the would-be emperor pressed at the doors to his personal chambers, intending to show the woman his appreciation. Instead, he and Bertold were met with smoke, spice, and smiles.

  The massive room had been converted, from the profligate manner of kings, to the sleek substance of eastern mystery. All the windows had been drawn and covered, such that the only light came from the torches and chandelier that blazed about the room’s central table. The fires cast long shadows over the receded furniture, leaving a sense of emptiness to the room that seemed utterly unnatural. At the heart of it all sat his wife, clothed in damask and divinity, her white smile beckoning. The only piece of this entire palace with any meaning to him.