by Peter David
I would go to King Runcible to seek justice, to avenge my mother’s death …
… and, truth be told, to kill time, because I had nothing better to do.
As for Astel, wherever she was, I hoped that she would have a long and lingering death, and that said death would involve multiple open sores and scabs, preferably in the vicinity of her private regions.
It was not a gentle notion, but it brought me some small measure of comfort.
Chapter 8
The long journey to Runcible’s palace went without incident. That was certainly a refreshing change of pace.
I couldn’t help but notice the change in the realm of Isteria as I drew closer to the king’s palace. The quality of homes and places of business enjoyed a definite upswing. I was not simply approaching the power of Isteria, I was also approaching the center of money. If one is looking for the true places of puissance, one need look no further than to see where wealth is concentrated. I suppose that is the fundamental difference between places where the rich dwell and places where the poor dwell. The wealthy are grouped together because it gives them a warm feeling to look upon others of their own kind. The poor are lumped together because they have no choice.
I drew within sight of the castle, and truly it was a most impressive affair … at least, from what little I could see of it. There was no moat around it, as I had heard some other such structures had. Instead there was a high and extremely sturdy-looking wall that ringed its perimeter, and I could see—if I looked very carefully—bowmen casually strolling along the upper recesses. For guardsmen they seemed rather relaxed. I could only assume that if danger presented itself they would be a bit more on their guard. As for the castle proper, I could see very little except for hints of the tops of towers, with flags bearing the Isterian crest fluttering in the vagrant breeze. It was a lovely day, for what that was worth, the blue sky bereft of clouds.
At what I perceived to be the main gate, there were a goodly number of people hanging about. There were also several rather self-important-looking guards who were not letting them through. I strode up to them with as much swagger as I could muster considering I had a limp and said, “I wish to see the king in the Hall of Justice.”
The guard looked me up and down. He did not seem impressed. “You’ll have to wait.”
“Until when?”
“Until the day that he sees commoners in the Hall of Justice. That would be noon tomorrow. And he only sees ten people on judgment days, so you’ll have to wait your turn and hope you get in.” He indicated the others who were milling about. “Why don’t you go stand with the others … presuming with that crippled leg, you can make it that far.” Then he chortled at his impressive lack of wit.
At first I was going to raise my voice in protest, but then I realized that there was no point. This was simply a brainless guard, following orders, given a smidgen of power and savoring it like a fine wine. He wasn’t worth my time, and it would only amuse him, even empower him, to see me objecting to cruel or callous treatment. Without a word I turned and walked over to the others who were waiting. I hoped they wouldn’t notice that my belly was already growling. The only food I’d had to eat was some provisions that I had managed to swipe from Stroker’s before setting out. Two skins full of water, some assorted table scraps. I’d rationed them carefully, but they were starting to run low, and my stomach was definitely drawing that to my attention. Furthermore, because of my exhaustion, my lame leg was sorely tired from the long walk it had taken me to get there, and it felt as if I were dragging along a slab of iron rather than something approximating a human limb. I endeavored to conceal it as best I could, but the limp was still even more pronounced than it usually was. I heard the snickering of the guards and did my best to ignore it.
The others glanced at me briefly before returning to either talking among themselves in low voices or, more prevalently, simply standing in silence. Every so often some new noble or important person would ride up to the gates, and they were naturally ushered in immediately. Rank had its privileges, although I had to admit that a few of our number truly did smell rather rank. As for our group, I did a quick head count and found that there were approximately twenty people ahead of me. This did not bode well. Perhaps some of them were together, and the number of cases the king had to face was fewer than it appeared, but I still didn’t like the look of it. If I didn’t get in this go-around, I might have to wait around until the following week. By then my supplies would have long run out, and I frankly wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to go about replenishing my stock. Certainly I’d learned sufficient woodcraft during my time with Tacit that I could take to a forest and hunt game, but I wasn’t overwhelmed with the notion. More likely I’d probably just resort to stealing money or food from others. That, of course, carried its own risks. I wasn’t seeing a large number of choices being presented to me, though.
As the sun drifted lazily toward the horizon, dark clouds began to roll in. More foul weather was clearly on its way. I couldn’t quite understand it. Isteria had a rainy season, but this wasn’t it. Generally, around this time of year, the weather in Isteria was quite mild, bordering on warm. In recent weeks the weather had been unseasonably foul. It bothered me, and it also bothered me that it bothered me.
Before long the skies opened up. This time, however, there was no thunder. Instead cold rain, quickly transforming itself into frozen rain, began to fall.
There were loud profanities from the others in the group, whose number had swelled to about thirty. Several of them had brought lean-tos or other means of convenient shelter. As for the guards at the wall, they had small guard booths into which they could step, keeping them safe from inclement weather.
I had nothing. I simply leaned on my staff and endured it. I wasn’t about to go running around, trying to find someplace where I could hide from the frozen rain.
From their shelters, I could see the guards pointing and snickering at me. Let them. As if I cared what they had to say.
The frozen rain came down harder and harder. I felt my hair stiffening, icicles forming on my eyebrows. I didn’t move. I remained utterly stoic, as if I was challenging the gods to throw their worst at me. As for the others in our waiting group, the weight of the collecting ice soon became so overwhelming that the lean-tos collapsed. There were moans of frustration, more cursing, as the crowd shook their fists at the sky and howled over their bad luck. As for me, I said nothing. What was the point? Since the loss of my mother, my virginity, and my life’s savings, all in rapid succession, I felt emotionally numb. I had run the gamut and was simply exhausted from it. I couldn’t even muster enough emotion to get upset over slowly becoming coated with ice.
The icy rain showed no sign of letting up and one by one the crowd began to scatter. Whatever issues they felt they wanted to take up with the king, apparently they decided that it could wait for a time when the weather was going to be more cooperative. Although the first few departed with reluctance, within minutes the rest of them were in full flight. Soon I was the only one remaining.
For the first time in a while, I moved. My clothes felt stiff and partly frozen to me. I made my way to the closest point to the gate, where the ones who had previously been first in line had been standing. Then I planted my staff resolutely and took up my vigil once more.
The guards had stopped laughing by that point. They simply watched me, as if I was some sort of oddity. Later that night, with the rain still coming down, there was a changing of the guards. The newcomers looked at me with open curiosity as the others whispered in their ears, pointing at me. There was no laughing, no snickering.
My tattered cloak, the only protection I had against the weather, hung heavily around my neck. It was frozen solid. There were icicles decorating my lips, and I sucked on them, appreciative of the moisture and glad that it meant I didn’t have to dip into my water skins for a bit longer. Sometime around midnight, I think it was, I fell asleep. Yes, I slept standing up, leani
ng on my staff for support. At one point I partially woke up and was convinced that I was dead, for I couldn’t open my eyes. It took me a few long moments to realize that they had frozen shut. I also became aware, however, that the rain had stopped. It was quiet as the grave. I forced my eyes open, and could hear the ice cracking as I did so. I maintained my posture, continued to stand there as immobile as a statue. It was still dark, but I sensed that the sun would be rising soon.
And rise it did. It was nice to know there were a few things one could count on. The chill that had brought the frozen rain the night before was now gone, replaced by a glowing warmth. The ice was melting off me, collecting in puddles at my feet. I gave it no more heed than I had given it when it was forming upon me in the first place. I just stood and endured.
As the sun climbed higher on what promised to be a glorious day, my wet clothes slowly dried on me. But I began to feel a chill to my bone. The extremes of cold and hot were wearing on me, and it was becoming that much more of an effort to cling to the staff and not tumble over. I was stubborn, though. There was another changing of the guards, and the ones who had been on post when I first arrived returned. They made no pretense at that point of doing anything other than just staring at me, and then they looked at each other and shook their heads.
Slowly people started approaching the gate. I recognized many of them from the night before. They were the ones who had fled when the weather became too much for them. It was approaching noon, and one of them … a burly individual … strode up to me and jerked a thumb behind himself. “Back of the line, cripple,” he said.
It was everything I could do to repress my shivering. I was loath to let him think somehow that I was trembling out of fear. If I had in fact been feeling anything other than exhaustion, I would indeed have been afraid. More than likely, I would immediately have acquiesced to his demand. He was a head taller than I was, and infinitely better rested.
At that moment, however, I was too exhausted to give a damn about anyone or anything. Furthermore I was concerned that if I tried to walk, I might fall. That’s how tired I was. “You left,” I said. They were the first words I’d spoken in nearly twenty hours. My lips were cracked and a bit blistered, and what I’d said came out as something of a croak. “You left,” I said again. “I stayed. I’m front of the line now.”
“The hell you are,” said the burly individual. “Move, cripple. Now.” And he grabbed me by the arm.
There is no sound in the world quite like the sound of a sword being drawn from a scabbard, particularly when it’s a big sword. It was that very distinct noise that froze everybody in their place, as a guard—the one who had spoken tauntingly to me the day before—pulled his weapon and held it in a casual fashion. He appeared physically capable of separating one’s head from one’s shoulders with minimal effort, and from an emotional point of view would do so with impunity.
“Let him go,” the guard said evenly.
“But … but he—”
“He,” the guard continued, in a voice surprisingly soft for one of his size, “is now the front of the line. Remove your hand from his shoulder, or I will remove your arm from your shoulder.” He was tapping the flat of his blade gently into his palm. He looked like someone who hadn’t used his blade in a while, and was eager for an excuse.
Just like that, the restraining hand was gone from my arm, and the rest of the crowd took up its position—in most desultory fashion—behind me. I wasn’t quite sure how to react to what the guard had just done, and I looked at him with clear confusion on my face. He simply tapped his blade to his forehead in a sort of salute to me, and then sheathed it and went back to his station.
I didn’t know what to make of it. As far as I was concerned, I had displayed the questionable attribute of not knowing when to come in out of the rain. And because of this, the guard was suddenly treating me as if I was worthy of respect. Only in this world of topsy-turvy attitudes could outright stupidity, such as I had displayed, be something that got me high marks. I had an amused glimmering of a notion at that point: If I ever turned out to be a complete and utter fool, I could wind up running the whole kingdom. It was something to consider.
I heard a bell chiming the noon hour from somewhere behind the walls, and the guards stood back as the great doors opened of their own accord. Another guard was now standing just within, but unlike the others his tunic was deep purple. I guessed from that, along with the self-important way that he was carrying himself, that he was from the king’s personal guard.
The guard at the door whispered something to him, and the purple guard’s gaze flickered in my direction for a moment. Obviously I was the topic of discussion, but both of them were trying to be subtle about it. They weren’t terribly successful.
The purple guard then paced out the people waiting on line, selecting the first ten who had issues and disputes they wished to bring before the king. As I had suspected, it wasn’t a one-for-one. Some had come in couples, and one was a group of three. All in all there were about eighteen of us, but there were still a number of frustrated individuals who had to turn and walk away. I couldn’t help but notice that the burly fellow who had tried to send me to the back of the line had fallen just below the cutoff … all thanks to me. He growled in my general direction. I ignored him. It was easy.
The inner city, the city within the walls, was also called Isteria, the same as the kingdom. We entered through the gate and I could immediately see the palace much more clearly. There was a main street that cut through the center of Isteria, which lay within the walls. There were shopkeepers, vendors. Two blacksmiths, and three weapons makers. Four pubs, which frankly astounded me. What could people possibly need more than one pub for?
I also noticed something else. There was no poverty in Isteria. No hint of want, no sign of crime prompted by desperation to put food on the table or bread into one’s stomach. No matter where one wandered in the rest of the outer realm, want and need were represented in some way, shape, or form. Beggars here and there, or stores that were shuttered for lack of business. A former pickpocket, wandering about forlornly because two fingers of his right hand had been chopped off in punishment. And of course, there were always the smells. The aroma of a charnel house wafting from one direction, perhaps. Or the odor of excrement, sometimes human, sometimes animal. One always had to watch where one walked. And mud. Mud everywhere, particularly after some nasty weather such as we’d been having lately.
But in the capital of Isteria, there was none such. It seemed pure and perfect. The main street was layered with a sort of hardened clay, smoothed off for easy transport. There was no crap anywhere about, and not a whiff of any offal odors. All the people seemed happy and healthy and just pleased to be alive. It was as if I were looking upon a world that never existed, and yet here it was all laid out for me.
Some of it could be ascribed to money, of course. Isteria City had the highest concentration of wealthy individuals, from the king and queen on down. It was likely that even the guard who was escorting us, as far down as he was in the grand scheme of things, probably earned as much in a year as the average citizen of Isteria proper earned in five or ten years. I had mixed feelings about it, which I found disconcerting, because usually I had such a steady and endless wellspring of cynicism that my feelings—except for flashes of genuine affection for my late-if-benighted mother—were uniformly consistent. On the one hand, I looked with contempt upon a capital city that so poorly reflected the land that it ostensibly represented. On the other hand, I was envious and wondered what it would be like to be a part of it.
The palace only seemed to get larger as we drew closer, spires reaching so high from this angle that they seemed to be scratching the sky. Flags fluttered in the breeze. I felt my legs start to buckle, and the guard noticed and steadied me. “Quite a few people get weak-kneed from being impressed,” he told me in a low voice. The sentiment was much appreciated, although in my case I was simply hungry and exhausted.
&nb
sp; Without preamble, we were escorted directly into the palace itself. I was immediately struck by how cool the air was. Perhaps the reason it was so striking was because it caused me to shiver even more. I didn’t like the feel of the raspiness building in my lungs. More than anything, I would have simply liked to lie down on a bench for an hour or so. Obviously, however, that was not an option.
“In here,” said the guard, and we were ushered into a room that was fairly stark. A table had been set up at one end with small refreshments. I was the first one at the table, gobbling down whatever I could, even shoving aside an old woman to get at a small morsel of food which others would have considered an appetizer, but for me was an entire meal. I gorged myself on what amounted, comparatively, to little more than table scraps.
Unfortunately, because I gulped whatever I could down, my stomach was caught off guard. I felt it starting to heave, but with sheer force of will I kept everything down. I engaged myself by looking more closely at the others in the room with me. I was struck by the variety of expressions they bore. Some seemed hopeful, as if this was the culmination of a lifelong dream. Others appeared apprehensive, fearful of what they would experience. Still others appeared resigned, as if they were convinced that this entire endeavor was simply a waste of time. I wondered where my own expression fit into the array.
The door opened and this time another purple-clad guard was there. He pointed at me. “You. Come.”
I did as instructed, limping after him as best I could while trying to keep my shoulders squared and what I laughingly referred to as my dignity intact.
I was struck once more by the coolness of the castle. Cold air kept things preserved. That made sense, of course. It was entirely to the advantage of the nobility to preserve the status quo, to keep things entirely as they were. After all, since they were at the top of the heap, what advantage was there to risk knocking out any of the supports?