At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  “Do you weary, princess?” she teased.

  Sara’s face knitted into a perfect frown. “I am now equipped with the knowledge of five more children than I began, and a sound idea of who here flatters, who here desires, and whose lecherous eyes or mind do not quite match their tongues. I can also tell you that you and I are the best attired, and that not one of these fears my pretty skirts half so much as they do your father.”

  “Is that proper?”

  “It is perfectly proper, and good.” She gave Charlotte’s skin a pinch, and her grin widened when she did not so much as flinch. “And best used in conjunction with pretty skirt, that if the one does not cow, the other might awe.”

  Perhaps it had been her eldest brother—dear, deceased Joseph—that had taught Sara her initial lessons on fear. Mayhap she had simply watched and learned the walk from the capital’s own streets. Sara’s intelligence could not be denied, however. If only she had ever found a husband to match her wits, we might well be hailing an empress now. It was a pleasurable thought to dwell on.

  Armed men stalked the periphery of the group’s destination. Most bore the badge of Usteroy, but one or two kept royal colors. Men and women fanned out between them, but all continued to follow Walthere’s lead down the carpet.

  True to the garden’s name, sculptures of marble and granite towered over their guests in intricate arrays. Not to honor the dead or mark some living man’s glory, but for art in and of itself. At the end of this expansive courtyard, a saint looked down on them through stained color, the red and yellow glass making a prism of the room’s dim trails.

  Beneath the saint there stood another that caught Charlotte’s eye. Draped in canvas, a broad portrait was supported on easels, a squirrely waif of a man just beside, his long and perfumed hair giving Charlotte pause—a reminder of another artist from younger days. She chewed her lip and turned aside, turning the swell of her attentions on the others’ reactions. She assumed her father had called them together to discuss the coming strife. Not art.

  From the pleasant, if uncertain faces, most his nobles had believed the same.

  Walthere rose up before his crowd and gestured like a Ravonnen maestro readying himself for the chords. Her father loved a good show. “My lords, my friends, in these dark times, it is the duty of men to preserve some piece of the light. Put aside your grim visions a moment. I called you here tonight to share a piece of beauty.” Turning to the artist, Walthere snapped his fingers. “Adamu, if you’d be so good.”

  The artist snapped forward with a few bobs of his womanish head, two previously unseen boys stepping from behind the portrait to assist. Between them, they grappled the ropes and edges of the canvas, and pulled it down into a heap.

  Charlotte’s own gasp was lost in a chorus of them. Before their eyes, the Emperor rose anew, the oil still slick upon his eyes, so wild and proud as they turned upon their end. The man was astride his rearing, snowy mare, sword craned high above his head, captured in the moment before the circling ghouls brought his body to its end. Smoke coiled about the scene. Horses circled him. Bodies lay beneath his feet. Sunlight struck him, and he was more. Hands reached for him, as steel, as God. In more ways than one, Charlotte felt as though they all stepped over his grave. She could feel Sara bristle beside her, though her face gave nothing away.

  Playing on his nobles’ captive attention, Walthere’s own voice took on a delicate edge. “I call it simply, ‘The Battle of Leitzen.’ I made its commission with the Empress’s blessing, and I intend to dedicate it to her in feast for our late emperor’s honor, two octaves hence. It is my intent to make it a day of festivity for all manner of folk in Usteroy, unless, of course…”

  No one took the bait—a fact Charlotte was immeasurably thankful for. Heads bobbed and the women fawned accordingly, praising the man in silence for his virtues, even if not all held her father’s goodwill toward the peasants in such high regard. It was all part of the game. Bodies were bodies, after all, and word would quickly spread of their generosity. Nobles would admire his dedication to a man. The littlefolk would admire its application to all.

  The benefits of a generous Farren, they would say.

  “I will spare no expense in the festivities, and I would put calls to all your brothers and sisters abroad, to welcome them for this day. It is, after all, more than the mere sum of a man’s life, but the extension of his legacy.”

  Walthere turned then, inexplicably, to her. His smile broadened unnaturally, and his white teeth shone as he stepped toward her. There was, in that moment, the little voice in her head that cried: run, run. But ladies did not run. She stood her ground and returned his smile with the grace and kind required. All eyes turned to them both, as he took her hand in his, patting it affectionately.

  “We all know the importance of legacy. It is what remains when the man has faded. For some, it is an idea. For others, a place. For most, it is as simple as a child. Family. So it is for me, and so it is I hope to share my family’s bliss with you all.

  “I intend this day to formally announce as well the bond of union between my dearest daughter and our youngest lord, the little Lothen, who our gracious empress has agreed to us.”

  Dimly, Charlotte was aware of the crowd’s reactions. For a moment she felt forced beyond her own body—a disembodied thought, or a notion of a thought, peering down at some other girl’s fate from the rafters. Everyone else was smiles and awe—and none of them faked.

  At some point, Sara drew close—almost imperceptibly close—and her hand shifted from her hand to her back, as though guiding her. Is she as shocked as the rest? Charlotte was not certain when the normally glass-like woman had grown unreadable.

  Walthere Cullick had always had a thing of surprises, and this was the surprise to top them all. With a showman’s flare, he offered her forward, and she blundered her way, absent thought, through a most regal curtsy, to the praise of all.

  There has to be something. Something. But her mind was blank. There was nothing to use. Nothing to break the hold of this rude awakening.

  She heard the words, but she was helpless to process them. The word “union” kept ringing through her head, like a pauper’s tune. No small part of her wanted to turn on the man at her arm and tear into him with word and nail. Yet the same part knew the glory held within those words. With such a thing, she would be one of the most powerful women in the land—never mind the questions of how the count could have secured such a thing.

  Only hours before, that same woman had turned round and round about the reality that she would never likely marry. All knew of her deflowering, her supposed rape at the bumpkin lordling’s hands. Men passed her by, for all the beauty that had not changed in her. Women turned up their noses at her, for all the grace she had not lost. And in truth, she had come to terms with it. For all her father’s rage, she had an inch of herself in that freedom.

  Now, she would be a woman wed to a boy, scarcely free of wet nurse. She would know marriage, without ever knowing marriage for years to come. A tool. She remained a tool. She turned on the smile, and it sank deep into her gut, to ill stirrings. It was a play, and Lothen too would be an unwitting part.

  If ever there were a woman to know her feeling, it was Sara, but Sara took her hands in hers, plucking her from her father, and instead of salvation, kissed them and squealed with wetness in her eyes, exclaiming her joy for all to see. This would mean so much. A sister, the woman said. A sister.

  Charlotte’s head spun. What she wouldn’t have done for a moment’s breath. She leaned heavily on her father’s arm for support, even as the other women started forward to congratulate her. Nervously, her eyes found the portrait, and they all fell away.

  Choice, the eyes of a dead man whispered, is but an illusion.

  * *

  In Leopold’s eyes, the purpose of a council was to advise, never to instruct. Emperors, like gods, were supposed to be above the beck and call of such base men.

  Then again, even gods were
only words without swords to back them up—and Mauritz Durvalle had all the swords. It might have been less unsettling if uncle and nephew had felt any bonds of kinship to one another. Few enough men in this decrepit empire even knew who Leopold was.

  They were as two foreigners set upon the same squalid vessel. It was a reality that came with no small distaste. When they looked at one another, they saw nothing but the sum of a people and a life lost to the other, and no shared strand of hair or shapely jaw could change that fact. At least Mauritz was Orthodox. Leopold clung anxiously to the hope that would be enough.

  “What is this? And where is the rest of the council?”

  They stepped together into the council’s chambers—Leopold and his wife, Ersili. It was her voice that led them, almost before they were even through the doors. The summons had been from the council, but only Mauritz awaited them and it was his soldiers at the door.

  A veteran of many wars, Mauritz’s bearing cast him larger than he truly was, even as time had weathered him into an edged old man. He was the soldier brother, the second son of the last generation of Durvalles, and it carried in him still, despite the slight hunch to his back. Nearly eight feet tall in his prime, time had battered the scarred warrior of his height and of his fine red hair, but the eyes still held the fire that the rest of his seventy-five-year-old body did not. The blade still at his side—even in this hallowed hall—certainly helped foster the image.

  A crooked smile broke the general into a bow. “Unnecessary,” he countered, without missing a beat. “As I might have imagined, well—” His tongue fumbled around the landscape of his lips, grasping for the right insult. “His Highness’s lady should be.”

  Fury pinched Ersili’s lips. “Empress would be the term, lordship.”

  “Politics is a messy business, mum. A man’s business. In the future, do remember that in the north, my lady, jurti demands we use the terms our blood has earned.”

  Only Leopold’s hand on hers restrained the outburst lurking just beneath the surface. It was a pity, really. In truth the pair of them held more in common than either might have realized. Not birth, certainly, but fire—Oh, the fire.

  Whereas Mauritz had his embers tempered in the fires of war, Ersili had hers stoked on the streets of Ravonno. A fact, he knew all too well, which would forever haunt her bearing.

  Nails clenched against Leopold’s hand, and he flinched. He tried to assert himself to hide it, but as his uncle rose, he knew he fooled no one. The man made a sweeping gesture, indicating the table and their readied seats. Say what he might, Mauritz had expected the two of them together.

  Perhaps because it was always so. All men had their secrets, but for Leopold, Ersili was not one of them. In Ravonno, his enemies in the Prelatory had whispered against her as a witch, but he ignored them. He was not the only prelate to take a woman. If priests could, there was no reason he shouldn’t, after all.

  Of course, that did leave the thorny business of their marriage up for debate. She claimed the title, and he more than happily gave it to her.

  But they had never been married. Not by paper and not by the Church. It meant little to him. It could mean the world to the people. It could mean death for the nobility.

  As he slid into his chair, Leopold tried to turn his sternest glare upon his uncle. “Where she goes, I go. Remember that.”

  Mauritz’s head cocked to one side. “I believe you mean that the other way around, highness.” He remained standing—a fact that Ersili, if not Leopold, noted, and matched. Leopold’s eyes drifted between them and, cursing, immediately regretted his decision.

  “Majesty,” he advised, trying to keep the distaste from his voice.

  “Not yet, highness. But if we play our cards correct, I should say so, yes.”

  “Enough of the small talk,” Ersili interjected. To the point, as ever. “You summoned us, Mauritz. We would know the why of it.”

  They had clashed all month long. People had thought Ersili a bauble, a cute amusement to be dismissed while they gnawed on Leopold’s bones. Instead, she had been the one to gnaw. Feelers had been cast into Anscharde’s various districts nearly from the day of their arrival, and Ersili had grown emboldened by the work Leopold so willingly offered her, but it was only after the electors’ confirmation that she had deemed it time enough to teach the court its place.

  In private talks with Portir, she had put the fat man in his place before rounding on the Emperor’s treasury. Together with a hastily assembled entourage of local aristocrats and commoners alike, she had hunted for strands of corruption about the capital and seen both noblemen and soldiers alike jailed for it. Portir had demurely—if grudgingly—accepted the state of things. Mauritz, however, had argued against her before the council. Without his brother’s support.

  Ersili had shone when she spoke of such things, for she loved to outfox those who thought themselves superior. She had been doing it her whole life. Yet Leopold had his doubts. Perhaps she had moved too quickly.

  Mauritz’s hand drifted to a bottle of wine at his side. He plucked it as one might pluck the points of a feather, pouring himself a glass before passing it on. He took a sip and positioned himself like the eagle he was, perched against one of the broad-backed chairs of the councilmen.

  Not for the first time, Leopold wondered if it wouldn’t be best to have the man killed.

  He might have, but for the fact that the general knew all his assassins. A nest of vipers, our family.

  “It is with regret that I must inform you of Lord Portir’s humble resignation of the council.”

  Leopold started from the bottom of his glass. “His what?”

  “We have received no such letter.”

  Mauritz’s smile was wide enough to swallow a tiger. “Perhaps that was because he did not intend it. I imagine the decision caught him as much unawares as it did you.”

  There was a game being played here, and for as many bawdy words as he had traded with his fellow robes in Turnina—that petulant gem of the world, and of Ravonno—Leopold had little patience for such things. It was the part of politics that bored him.

  One of the parts, anyways.

  “I am afraid we do not follow. We simple Ravonnens, perhaps, were not meant for your country’s double-speak.”

  All the more reason for his wife’s ever-vigilant presence. She was the diplomatic one—and the poisonous one, if a blade crossed them.

  “Pity. You had best learn it. We do love our jests.” Mauritz raised his glass to the both of them. “In one of the world’s great and many tragedies, he has withdrawn to the Tower.”

  The Tower, as it was colloquially known, was the place naughty nobles went to die. It was a crumbling husk of a thing to the north of the palace, part of an older structure that had long since fallen into history. That the city clung to it was bad enough. That they had to make it a symbol was all the worse. It had been pointed out to Leopold on one of their many forays into the city. He had endeavored not to consider it again.

  “To the Tower? But why?”

  “I fear you never knew my brother in his prime, Your Highness.” Mauritz craned his head away as he speared an apple with his fork. “A fine mind, once. Tragically, it fails him. Age is but one of the many issues your council faces, but it is a heavy one. Besides, as your wife’s own investigations proved—” Leopold thought he caught a sneer there. “—there were too many willing to take advantage of that weakness. This was for his own good, I assure you.”

  “Does he see it that way?”

  “How very unkingly of you, sire.”

  Leopold sighed into his hand. “Why should I see it this way?”

  “Much better. And to answer your question,” Mauritz punctuated with the crunch of his teeth on the apple’s flesh, “because power-hungry men do not suit your cause unless they are your power-hungry men. Portir is not well-loved by the people, but he is by our fellows on the council, and while some of us fight wars for the glory of this nation, he has spent his ye
ars amassing coin. Far more than you or I could boast, I am afraid.”

  “Coin that, under the law, I would imagine, now falls to the crown,” Ersili concluded, catching the insinuation. There was some small awe in even her venomous tones.

  Mauritz shrugged. “If you should say so, my lady. I am but a simple soldier. I would have no knowledge of that.”

  “Well. You are to be commended for your dedication to the law—few would commend even family to it.”

  “A dedication I trust the court shall remember, in time.” Mauritz watched Ersili without mirth, but the way he nodded to her offered some hope of respect, at least. “And I hope it shall put aside our own quarrels—though they have been for the good of all, I have no doubt.”

  So it was a bargain then. Leopold might have groaned aloud. Big or small, no deed came without its strings, it seemed. Though bribery was, perhaps, a lesser sin. Especially on so grand a scale, even Assal could look aside. Yet Assal was a man. Women, he had found, did not often bind their anger up in circles and let the fates make what they would of it. They remembered, and bribery, he had likewise found, only went so far to allaying it. And only for a time, at that.

  While he cringed, Ersili had no hesitation. “And what of Portir’s grandson? I shouldn’t imagine he will be pleased at his father’s condition.”

  Grandson? As if he did not feel old enough! Leopold turned to his wife, examining her for trace of jest. She glanced back at him, her eyes softening like those of a master patting down a distraught pup. Well, the man was eight years younger than his brother, but that still gave him more than seventy years, so there was certainly time for a family. That said, Leopold would have expected such a creature loitering about the court, if he existed. More relatives. Goody.

  Warily, he looked across the table to Mauritz. Were there little generals running around as well? The thought was enough to give any reasonable man the shakes.

  “He has a grandson?” Leopold asked lightly.

  “And two daughters,” his wife answered, placating. He should have expected—she never went to any place without its notions firmly scoured. Of course, he shouldn’t have let that slip to Mauritz. “Duke Urtz, you’ll recall?”