At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  It died as Walthere turned on them. “I had hoped for a month before such trivialities,” he spoke sourly. “This priest is restless.”

  “And it would not become you to grow unmanned by a clod such as that.” Charlotte gave Surelia’s hands a squeeze, and tried to turn from her, only to find those hands had not in turn released her. It gave her words an unnecessary sort of hesitancy that she tried to force her way around. “If he moves quick, you will move quicker.”

  “So you say,” he said flatly. Then he turned his attentions at last to Surelia. “Will you be alright, my lady?”

  She had, by then, regained some of her regal composure, but only, Charlotte suspected, by leeching it off of her. “I shall want my son brought to me. At once.”

  “I imagine he is playing with Gerold,” Charlotte said, trying to be helpful.

  Walthere frowned. “They are not with the Matair girls again, are they?”

  She wished that she could say no, but she could not see through walls, and she could thusly only guess, and the guess would not be one Walthere would want to hear. Children did not see the boundaries their parents often did, and for his imagination’s part, it did little Gerold well to have damsels for his knightly fantasies. If it kept the lot of them happy, so far as Charlotte was concerned, it made everyone’s lot better. There was no reason Walthere needed to know it, though.

  As she floundered, Walthere pushed on regardless. “I shall send for Bidderick, as I shall send for my attendants. Do you think you shall be up for a show later? I think today would be a splendid time for a certain unveiling.”

  Charlotte stirred at this. Art? She had seen no artists about the keep of late. Suspicion crooked her gaze back sharply to the Empress, but it fell quickly. Innuendo was unlikely. She doubted the woman would have caught it if Walthere had offered it.

  “An unveiling?” Surelia looked as puzzled as Charlotte felt. “How will…how would that attend your men?”

  “It does well to greet revelations with reassurances, particularly before our new emperor begins declarations. In youth rests the very best of hopes—is it not so?”

  Surelia’s eyes shuffled nervously to Charlotte and back. It rekindled suspicion’s embers. “It is so. I—I think I shall remain, however. Send Bidderick to my quarters. I shall meet them there.” As though an afterthought, she gave Charlotte’s hand another doting squeeze, and made a point of meeting her gaze plainly. “Thank you for all you have done to make us welcome, dear. You are a true treasure.”

  She might have winced. Deflection. Painfully plain deflection. This did not bode well at all.

  “Very well,” Walthere said with a flourish. “Your presence will be missed, but I understand. Rest. I shall have Karlene attend you as well. You do one another well.” As if dismissing the woman, his gaze flicked back to his daughter. “Charlotte. I shall need you to attend me today as well. Come along while I make arrangements.”

  As they passed into the hall, Dartrek and Walthere’s own shieldmen sidling into their wake, Walthere made a pointed effort not to look at her. She sensed it quickly. The Empress’s words had put her on edge, but it was the motions of Walthere’s rush that unsettled her. Men like him kept their eyes away for one of two reasons: either to make a point or to hide one. Even among family, Walthere made no habit of carelessness; jurti demanded constant observation.

  That he still spoke, and in clearer voice than he had dared with their dear guest, only reinforced her suspicions of the latter option. He did it with a smile, though, and a nod for any of the blooded folk sifting through his halls. It may have been an act, but in him, she beheld none of the viciousness the messenger had left.

  There was a certain lift to his shoulders. A quickness to the step his recovering limb should have made him check. He seemed…happy.

  “We need more time in Anscharde.” There was such a thing as too observant. It took her a moment to realize the statement was barked at her. “Don’t look so slack-jawed. Are you a peasant? Smile, girl. Smile, like I taught you.” Hesitantly, she let his words infect her lips. He wanted something—it was in the note of his demand. “Good.” It was only here, ever so briefly, that he turned his own smile to her. “Ustrit, go fetch Boyce, would you? He is just down the hall. Tell him the arrangements are in order.” He paused there, leaving room for the shieldman to veer off down a side hall before resuming their own stride. “Now listen. What happens today is part of the act. The great act. You know what I mean.”

  “Thrones and crowns and certain men in dark clothing. I have an idea.”

  “Very good. Boyce has things at work there. But we all have our parts to play, and eyes must always be on us, never on their own two feet. I do not tell you this enough, but I am proud of you, Charlotte. Proud of all that you are. I ask only that you know that, and you trust me, as you have always trusted me, as we go into this day.”

  She nearly missed a step. “Father?”

  Walthere kept walking. Their conversation was at an end, though only in practicality. In thought, it and all its worrying suppositions and lines of inquiry would go on and on a thousand fold through Charlotte’s mind until the first of their noble kind slithered into their graces, and she found herself turning to Dartrek for answers, only to be met with her shadow’s unwavering stare. He looked to her. He wanted to speak, but he knew as little of its course as she.

  Though the time Charlotte and her father spent in one another’s company that day was great, they never again spoke as he had begun to in the hall. It made its nature almost perverse to her. Walthere talked in whispers, but he never spoke of love. Certainly not respect. That something should so unnerve him that he might bring it to her ears and turn away again as quick—it made her wonder if death was all his ghastly Iruwen sellsword was about. Even the thought of the creature set her skin to a crawl.

  And still he hadn’t spoken of Usuri again—of the magic they had unleashed, only to cork again as soon as its usefulness waned. For hours, she questioned how to put that girl’s condition to him, but he busied her time with too many other things.

  As he read and wrote and dressed, he had her scurrying to her mother with the Empress’s request, then to Sara to fetch her for their coming strides, and dictating for him after that. Sara tried hard to coax them to conversation—bless her—with talk of Gerold and Lothen, for she doted on the little ones, and of the messenger, for she craved knowledge of Anscharde, but while Walthere bandied with her, Charlotte’s responses were muted. She was distracted, and she knew her friend saw it, and she smiled in thanks to her, but it was what it was.

  They sat in the same room, her father and she, but they could not have been further apart.

  By early evening, they had their assembly prepared. Torches flickered through the castle to make a maze of glittering lights, and a small feast had been laid out in the great hall. Walthere and Sara and she all descended to that room together, proclaimed by the Empress’s own herald. After Walthere addressed their guests, and bid them welcome, he took them all for a walk.

  Most men were simple enough. A good life to them was a peaceful life—a place to raise food and family, a good lord that did not skim so much extra every month, and one that likewise kept a force of arm to see the first secured. So long as these few matters were provided, such people could suffer any number of other indignities with eyes to task alone. They were sheep.

  Nobility, Charlotte had found, came with haughtier senses of the self, but the majority were still sheep to be led. Take a stick firm in hand and swat them down the paths one wished, filling their heads with promises of green pastures at the other end, and most would follow. Walthere knew the worth of his sheep. He took them well in hand and he used her to go among them and hear their concerns and to lead them willingly down his trail.

  In truth, few liked Charlotte. All whispers traveled to their victim eventually, and she had heard them all. They thought her a whore or a fool or at the least a precocious child, and for that, it was good to have Sa
ra afoot. People felt at greater ease, spoke more freely, when it was not just Charlotte lurking in their ranks, and Sara struck to the core of most people. The woman had one of those easy demeanors that could disarm all but the cleverest of men, and make friends of many more, and when she took Charlotte’s side, it gave another message. This was her father’s court, and she hated it, but they would have to accept her.

  For a time, they walked the predictable courses of speech. Nobles were by nature curious sorts, and gatherings such as this were excused to gossip as much as any. Most had already heard of the messenger’s arrival at their gates, and more than a few had already inferred his meaning. They asked after it in a way that made them seem as though casually stumbling into it, and beyond him, the Empress, the princess, and the little prince. They hungered, and Walthere baited them, ready as she was—with an answer to all their questions.

  If only she might have said the same for her own.

  “It was only a matter of time. We knew he would send for her eventually. If he has half a brain in his head, he knows he cannot ignore her.”

  “And the Empress? Where is she now?”

  “Retired. The petulant whelp nearly set the shakes about her. At the least, we no longer need to feign illness.”

  Walthere shook his head and grumbled aside. The train of courtiers followed in their wake, passing beneath the portraits of the dead and wise, their sabers rattling the cobbles. Half the men, Charlotte mused, should never have shared a room. Now they shared a thin hall, and their master’s chill favor all at once.

  But this was the purpose of a castle’s galleries—so as the walls were to defend, the galleries were to humble and to awe. Men gathered in their solars and their studies, but the walk showed the possibilities, mingled effortlessly with the lines of the past.

  Her great grandfather’s face on the wall, for example, was not merely a memorial to the dead—it was to remind the living that even a century past it was the wealth and prestige of House Cullick that stirred the fortunes of these lands and guided its people to their purpose. There were men that called history a poem and those that called it a song, and the bards certainly heralded it so. The simple truth? History was never simply history. If it was anything it was another collar—another means to control.

  Her father pivoted back on his crowd, halting them beneath a tapestry of the battle of Ferrise—the battle where Cullick and their Curderoy forebears both had nearly been extinguished from the face of Lecura. In this, Charlotte heard the lion roar: We will survive.

  “I would hear of the readiness of our men. If need be true, how soon could they march?”

  Ser Kobulle, a knight of the Western Reaches, was quick to answer. “Planting season slows the process, but it goes at that. And it is no small feat to gather so many under bandits’ guise.”

  “Aye. You have our blades, lord, but give us the time to see them properly sharpened.” More than a few men deferred to Lord Gardesl’s swagger. The bald, broad titan of a man was one of those rare characters whose mere bearing could earn him such. To be called a knight, and to look as though you could twist a man’s head clean off with bared hands was no small thing.

  But not all men were so moved. “It goes—they tell it true enough. But lord, not all of us have the means to support such.”

  There were a few scandalous whispers at that. It even managed to cock one of Walthere’s brows. Poor though the speaker was, it was not a “noble” thing to lay it quite so plain.

  “A balance must be struck. Too many of our men are already afield in Effise. If we do not take care with our summons…” The leather-skinned Lord Surrel’s shoulders slumped with a weight only hearts could bring. “We shall find no food to support our armies come autumn.”

  “Tut, tut,” another tongue clucked into the fray. At this one’s sound, Charlotte nearly groaned for all his pleasant air. The slender, rat-haired viscount Hamoelet had never seen war, nor likely ever would. He kept one hand on his wife’s arm—though all knew it was she that steadied him. “All men pass beneath your brother’s own eye, my lord. He will see them to their purpose, if any a man may. Perhaps…even before autumn?”

  There was a general clamoring of assent at that. Even Walthere smiled. If ever there were a man respected in Usteroy, it was his brother, Maynard. Were the bards to be believed, he spit steel and breathed fire. Pity so few would ever know the side of him that Charlotte held close to heart. The side that doted on the little children, and wandered the evening halls in worry for their blood.

  Men knew the figure. Few knew the weight of the soul behind it.

  “All save one. Messar Kamps,” her father said, turning on the shrew of a figure, “you will take a delegation to Anscharde, with gifts of horse and linen. Make sure they know the depth of my apologies for my absence at our lord’s coronation. I trust that you shall also bring word of this day’s events. They will be notable, I assure you.” With this, some of the slyness came into his voice, and the whispers rose with it, for all men knew when Walthere grew playful, there was ample reason. It puzzled Charlotte further.

  “And fair lady Argenne, I would have you write your brother. Assure him any motions at his borders are but exercise against the rising acts of banditry there. As a fact, it would do nicely to ask of him any troops he might spare for the task. Surely he, after all, is as burdened by the villains as we.”

  Both assured him it would be done. Content, the lord of the castle then motioned them forward anew. Walthere moved on, ignoring the grapevine secrets slithering through the gaggle at his back, no few in part fanned by Sara, who pressed and parried with the gossip as a grandmother at her knitting.

  This was Charlotte’s purpose, though: to watch and to listen as tittered behind a fan, and most importantly, to remember.

  Above their heads, the passing tapestry whispered: put fortune to me and you shall survive as well.

  “My lord, if I might be so bold,” Kobulle called over the clamor of booted feet, “Would we not best be served in recalling our men from the east? Many of the very best of us remain abroad…”

  A fan began to flutter at Charlotte’s side. “Oh, I do so miss my Geoffrey. He’s sent word of terrible things afoot in that bastard’s cold…” Young Lindie Ipsvend whispered far too loudly under the gust.

  Much hot air rode that gust. The trick was to find which of it had worth beyond its uttering. Yet Charlotte was shrewd.

  Geoffrey. Ser Geoffrey. Ten men-at-arms beneath him. Beholden to a sodden marsh, but fierce with a spear. He has a son…Geoffrey as well, isn’t it? The son was old enough to fight, and inherit; he could call his littlefolk to them for he was well-liked, and as much a Farren as the father. There was a nephew as well if memory served, south of their border, in Sorbia, likely as eager to inherit as Geoffrey. That, too, could be useful. If Geoffrey the Elder does not return, we will be fine for it.

  Names struck images, images reverberated into chords of possibility and present and past, and those without worth were shut out while the others tumbled on, and the connections consumed her. All this came and went as the others spoke, and she set her face to stone—the warrior’s face, her uncle called it—and let none of it show. Memory was as key to jurti as anything.

  “It is already done,” Walthere answered without breaking stride. “They will be here within the month.”

  “Far be it for me to pick, lord, but is that so wise? The people see our just war in Effise—Assal wills it—and will no doubt fall upon our men as turncoats.” Ser Hanvedt, another of the western banners, ducked his dark eyes even as he asked, in the manner of one unaccustomed to being heard.

  “And what of the Bastard?” Hamoelet interjected. “He holds not the emperor title, but I am told he has as little love for certain birds of the nest as we. Might we not have words?”

  “No,” Cullick answered firmly.

  “But it’s my understanding the soldiers there march to his call, now. That makes him…”

  Children hold mor
e commonsense than this one. If she were his wife, Charlotte surely would have dug her nails into the fool’s arm until his own blood cowed him, but neither lord nor lady Hamoelet seemed to possess any sense of the madness they offered. Oh, it was good detail, but the craft of it was all wrong. What fool—even among friends—reveals so plainly such detail? This was what jurti was made for.

  Instead, he all but wailed the presence of his own spies. Tactless.

  “I said no, Hamoelet. Leave it alone. The man is baseborn, and ill-tempered besides. He’s as like to a bull’s charge, if someone goads him, and I’ll not ruin our lots with such.”

  The Bastard, it was said, was an impressive man by all counts—physically. Unfortunately, though he once held the Emperor’s favor, he had never been a man of the court. To tell it truly, rumor held him to more than one quarrel with the nobility of the city Nirsburg, where his father long saw him housed, and all knew of his bloody duel with Baron Keffl, for insults slung upon his whore mother. What’s more, he had a penchant for plain talk and crass tongue—neither of which endeared a man to the creatures of silk.

  In all, the man lacked finesse. He lacked layers. Even his faith was so dreadfully plain, so rigid, Charlotte could not help but greet it with disdain. The man’s fervent press of the reformed word was admirable, she supposed, but his bluntness in its regard had been what finally forced him to the field in a more permanent sense. Fanatics of any breed were, after all, a terrible burden to the status quo. Especially given people’s tendency to follow them.

  Passion often overran logic, unfortunately. If only the man weren’t so intractable, he might have been a useful pawn. The early days of any faith were meant for the clever, not the angry. She sighed into her fan. Pity.

  Guards parted the heavy doors to their statue garden—a place Charlotte had almost come to fathom as religious for its silence and its grace. Sara slunk back at last, extricating herself with a giggle and a parting quip, to come to Charlotte’s side. Her hand caught Charlotte’s, and offered a smile so infectiously conspiratorial Charlotte could not help but share it.