by M. A. Ray
Of course, it took forever: the questioning, and the acclamations, and the accusations, and the don’t-leave-town-until-we-say—which Vandis had already promised for one thing, and now had to promise for another. All his plans to leave for Windish as soon as Reed gave him a clean-enough bill of health blew away on the stiff breeze at the crater top. He’d been forcing himself through paperwork the last few days with the hope of tossing it all aside to see Kessa and Dingus again. The Aurelians had a lot to answer for. He could deal with the repeated attempts on his own life—but this, no, this was it—the straw that broke the donkey’s back—not that he wasn’t still angry about the slaughter—but—
Vandis clenched his fists, loosing a howl of frustration. All the Watchmen and assorted bystanders, plus Pearl and Adeon, craned their necks to look at him. He dragged in a breath and, unable to keep the bite out of his tone, said, “If you gentlemen don’t mind, I’m fucking late for an audience with His Majesty. If there’s anything more, you know where to find me—but I’ve told you everything, so here’s a bit of friendly advice: don’t come up with any more bullshit.”
He wheeled and stalked off in the direction of the palace. Only a moment passed before Adeon and Pearl ran up on either side of him.
“Diplomatic, Vandis,” Adeon said.
“You were great,” Pearl said. “How’d you do the lightning bolt?”
“If you have to ask me questions, ask me questions I can answer,” Vandis snapped. “And not when I’m two hours fucking late to stand before the—the King.”
“Well, excuse the hell out of me. It’s not my fault you’re late! If you’d just stayed with us like you were supposed—”
“Oh, sure!” Vandis rounded on her, throwing his arms wide. “Next time I’ll just stand still and get trampled! And as a matter of fact—”
“Vandis,” Adeon bit off.
“What?”
“Believe me, we all understand you have had quite enough, and are fully in sympathy with you, but shouting will get you nowhere… particularly with His Majesty. Am I mistaken?”
Vandis had nothing for that but a venomous glower.
“I think you understand that the best tool in this instance, the most efficient tactic, is cooperation.” Adeon came closer and dared to put an arm around Vandis’s shoulders. “The readier you are to cooperate with the authorities, the more you’ll grease the wheels… and that means you’ll be with your children in no time at all, friend.”
“I don’t want to be here,” Vandis muttered.
Adeon steered him off the main road to New Town market and onto a side street dotted with expansive houses, decorative pines, and thick juniper hedges. Pearl followed at the other side. “You could not have made that more abundantly clear if you’d blazoned it on your breastplate,” Adeon said, tapping on the piece. “No amount of sighing out the windows is going to help you, or us. We need the divine spark of two-fisted diplomacy here. You’ve got to pull this out, Vandis. We need you.”
“Right,” he said, knowing it was true and wishing it weren’t. He broke into a heavy trot that made his back twinge, heading for the palace, a massive complex at the heart of New Town. It was all white-and-silver granite, and as they approached, its high polish glistened and sparkled in the afternoon sun. The Cathedral of the Winds looked downright sensible by comparison. The four liveried guards at the wrought-iron gate let him and the other two Knights pass without challenge, but not without staring. Vandis clanked through the grounds at a dead run, not even pausing to sneer at the wild opulence of the public gardens. He thought his sabatons cracked a cobble or two on one of the twisting, manicured paths.
He clattered up the steps to the main portal, and the guards waved him right through, but in the great, round atrium, at the inlaid doors to the throne room, he met crossed spears.
“The throne room is closed for the day,” said a third guard, rising from a desk set next to the doors. He eyed Vandis with faint disdain, as well he might, given the impeccable state of his own green-and-gold livery. Vandis recognized his artfully-tousled brown curls and young face: Maynard Hyde, current Earl of Shreve, perpetual shithead, and grandnephew to Vandis’s own secretary.
“I’m on the list,” Vandis gasped.
“His Majesty is receiving no more seekers of audience this afternoon.”
“I’m on the list! Look at the list!”
“Sir Vandis, I am well aware that you were, as you say, ‘on the list.’ However, your audience was scheduled at one o’ the clock this afternoon, and it is now half past three. His Majesty is a working King. You cannot expect to claim His Majesty’s ear if you cannot be punctual.”
Vandis’s nostrils flared. He closed his eyes, bending all his will toward keeping his mouth shut. A muscle ticked in his cheek.
“Lord Hyde, please,” Adeon said. “Is there no way? An attempt on his life kept Sir Vandis from His Majesty’s presence, the details of which attack you may learn from the City Watch.”
“Be that as it may—”
“Look at my face.” Vandis jabbed a finger at his mouth and nose. The Watchmen had given him a cloth to wipe with, but he’d bled more since, and a drop or two hung from his chin. “Look at me! I was nearly killed on my way here. Now you go, and you check with Watch if you have to, and then you come back and let me through those doors—or your Uncle Jimmy’s going to hear about it.”
Hyde blanched. “You wouldn’t.”
Vandis raised both eyebrows.
“Have a seat, Sir Vandis. I’ll do my best.” He disappeared through a side door.
Adeon unhooked the remnants of cape from Vandis’s cuirass before they sat along the wall of the entryway, on an uncomfortable mahogany bench carved to look like a crowned dragon in flight: the crest of the royal family and of Dreamport itself. Vandis could only just prop his toes on the floor. There was a definite dragon motif in the decorating, from the fountain in the center of the atrium featuring a spouting dragon and naked maiden done up in pale green marble, to the desks and furniture carved into serpentine shapes, right down to the green carpet runner with its border of miniature golden dragons. Even the columns that supported the soaring height of the white marble ceiling were sculpted dragons, and the massive wooden doors next to young Hyde’s desk were inlaid with dragon cutouts.
So many dragons. You’d think they had something to prove.
She snickered at the back of his mind, and stroked the base of his skull with the tiniest whisper of the ecstasy She had wrapped him in earlier, enough to relax his sore neck and shoulders, no more. You left your helm.
So I did. He’d hated it, but it’d cost the Knights to replace it. He scowled heavily and took out his handkerchief to wipe the blood off his aching face. Voices filtered through the throne room doors, unintelligible beneath strains of pipe and dulcimer. Vandis leaned his shoulders against the back of the bench, but sat up on the edge again when a carved claw poked his head. Tired to the core and old in his bones, he felt; stretched to the snapping point. He could think of at least six different things he should be doing by now, but instead, here he sat, with Adeon and Pearl silently flanking.
Lord Hyde hurried back much sooner than he’d expected, and far more respectfully. “Sir Vandis, I regret any inconvenience your assassins and myself have caused you. Of course, His Majesty will see you now.”
“Thank you,” Vandis said, and the three Knights followed Hyde up to the doors. When the young lord opened one of them, music and laughter trilled out, along with the scent of food. Vandis’s stomach growled, but he gave Lord Hyde a curt nod and strode past. On either side of the throne room, from the vaulted ceiling, the banners of every lord and noble house of the realm hung to ten feet above the granite floor, dozens of them, in dozens of colors. Through the throng of richly-dressed courtiers, he caught glimpses of the five hearths on each side, each fitted with a spit that sported a suckling pig, and every so often one of the fires would sizzle with the dripping grease, loudly enough to be heard over th
e talk and music. Pork smell made his mouth water even while he sneered inside at the flagrant excess of the King’s court.
The carpet runner up the aisle blazed green with gold thread woven in a smoke-swirl pattern, and led to the throne, which held the slight burden of Calphen IV. The King was old, even older than Marcus was, and unlike Marcus, frail in the flesh. He wore a long, white beard, and the fur-trimmed, gem-encrusted robes of state swallowed his thinning form; in turn the white granite throne of the realm swallowed the entire figure, so the effect in Vandis’s mind was of a little fish eaten by a bigger fish and the biggest fish eating both.
He strode up the aisle, trailing his guards, and bent a knee before the throne. In the mirror gloss of the white granite, he saw himself bow, beaten-in face, ruined clothes, and Adeon and Pearl behind him. No doubt the designers had exactly that in mind, but he hated to see it. Bad enough he should have to do it. “Your Majesty,” he said.
Calphen blinked owlishly and shivered, waking himself from a doze. “Sir Vandis,” he said. “Ah. Yes.” After a long pause, he continued. “Allow us to express our pleasure that you escaped, ah, relatively unharmed from the vicious attempt on your life this very noontide. Honor does not always follow from popularity, nor popularity from honor. You are the rare man who possesses both, and, ah, despite obstacles, you have still exerted yourself to come before your King. This speaks well to your valor.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. Thank you, Your Majesty,” Vandis said, bobbing his head. He waited to see if Calphen had more to say. To the right of the aisle, very close to the throne, stood the Duke of Friedhelm. Vandis couldn’t think of him as Marcus in all that velvet, samite, and ermine, but his posture was as perfect as always despite the heavy chains around his neck, and he wore an expectant, very Marcus-like expression: Go on and prove yourself. Next to him, though, the Duke of Valheim glowered down at Vandis like a thunderhead. Richard Bludgraven must, at least some of the time, look pleased, but it never seemed to happen when Vandis was around.
“You may speak, Sir Vandis,” the King said at length.
“Your Majesty, I’ve come to you today to share my concern over Dreamport’s neighbor to the south. It seems to me—”
“It seems to us that Dreamport’s markets are still flush with Muscodite products, and that Muscoda buys from Dreamport as much as she ever did, if not more. Do you wish to correct our assessment?”
“No, Your Majesty, but while that is true—”
“Quite true, Sire,” Bludgraven put in.
Calphen darted him a sour look. “Continue, Sir Vandis.”
“Your Majesty, while it is true that trade between Dreamport and Muscoda has continued without interruption, it is my belief that Muscoda can no longer be separated in more than name from the Order of Aurelius, and that the attacks on my Order are only the beginning. If I might beg Your Majesty’s indulgence, a private hearing—”
“Our indulgence,” Calphen said tiredly, “has been extended mightily far for you already today, Sir Vandis. Whatever you have to say, certainly you can have no objection to sharing the information freely.”
Vandis’s jaw hung for a moment before he shut it with a snap. “Your Majesty, I certainly don’t, but the sensitive nature of—”
“Surely you are not implying anything so vulgar as the presence of spies.”
I’m not implying a damn thing, he thought. So be it, you stupid old man. “Your Majesty, in the year since the Muscodite border was closed to the Knights, my office has received ample intelligence indicating that Muscoda intends further aggression, specifically against Lightsbridge.” The coded illuminations in the book he’d received at Moot, plus several pounds of the paper he’d shifted over the last week or two, all pointed to it, and he was ready to back up his conclusions, publicly or no. He looked at the King, waiting for some indication that he ought to continue. Vandis became aware of all the eyes swinging his way, the weight of scrutiny on his banged-up armor.
Calphen inclined his head in a slight nod, all he could manage without losing the twisting monstrosity of a crown on his head.
“I’ve received reports that Muscoda is stockpiling materiel of all kinds,” he projected, so that everyone in this ridiculous place would hear him well, “and that conscription has dramatically increased, as have the grain quotas for every acre of arable land. Your Majesty may recall that three years ago the Muscodite Crown began to require all its tribute from the Little States to be rendered in coal, and when the Little States defaulted last year—”
“Well within King Kasimir’s rights,” Calphen said firmly.
Better not touch that one. “I’ve also received reports of extensive improvements being undertaken on the infrastructure of the Little States, which are now, of course, under Muscoda’s banner. Your Majesty, I refer to the building of canals, the dredging of rivers, and repairs on the roads. I’m given to understand that there has been a substantial movement of troops toward the border with Lightsbridge, with new garrisons being established and the size of those existing increased.” He took a deep breath. “If Your Majesty wishes it, I will produce these reports for the perusal of—”
Calphen raised a shaky hand and Vandis clamped his mouth shut; he held his tongue, though the King’s silence stretched longer than afternoon shadow. The musicians seemed loud, their strains curling among the hushed nobles. Calphen gestured for one of his guards, who hurried to answer. “Send for Baron Dreyfuss and Baron Recht. Have them go to the privy chamber.” The guard rushed away at once, and Calphen returned his attention to Vandis. “Leaving aside, for the moment, the impropriety of such an issue for a public hearing,” and didn’t that make Vandis boil, “Lightsbridge has long been an ally of Dreamport. I have no reason to doubt the truth of your words. An envoy will be dispatched.”
“Your Majesty, I’m afraid that won’t be enough,” Vandis said. A collective inhalation seemed to suck the air from the chamber, clear to the ceiling. He knew Calphen had expected him to say a polite “Thank you, Your Majesty,” and leave, and he knew he’d stepped far out of line, but he couldn’t stop now. For Your Knights, my Lady, he thought, and said, “A stronger sort of action may be required.”
“You are counseling us to make unprovoked war on another sovereign power… or do we mishear you, Sir Vandis?”
Words spilled out of his mouth, hot, fast. “Your Majesty, war would be far from unprovoked. Muscoda won’t stop with the Little States, nor will she swallow Lightsbridge and consider it enough. The Muscodite Crown, the Order of Aurelius, has its eye on all Rothganar. Bringing the Knights to heel is—“
“Sir Vandis,” said the King, resting an elbow on either arm of the throne and leaning forward, as if into him, “we seem to recall several occasions on which you have praised us for refusing to officially endorse any Church. Are you telling us, now, that we must reconsider, and attack Muscoda on your behalf?”
“No, Your Majesty, of course not, but permit me to remind you that many of the Knights and Squires martyred last summer were citizens of Dreamport.” Vandis worked desperately against his legs, which wanted him to spring up, and gnashed his teeth against the urge to shout.
“The reminder is permitted, but unnecessary. The Crown of Muscoda has made restitution for those citizens.”
I didn’t know that! How did I not know that? Well, he hadn’t been up here, had he? He gazed at Calphen, dismayed and desperate. “Your Majesty, the Crown of Muscoda has targeted my Order, an Order formed and chartered in Dreamport, whose history in the realm extends as far back as your royal line. What would you have me do?”
“Sir Vandis, this strikes us as a dispute among the clergy, and Dreamport is a secular realm. We suggest you come to grips with the problem amongst yourselves. Was that not the very reason for the constitution of the Conclave of Pontiffs?”
Old King Useless! Vandis thought savagely. You senile old goat! “Yes, Your Majesty, but in this case, I believe it’s gone a bit beyond—”
“Dismissed, Sir Va
ndis.”
Somehow, he managed not to snarl. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said, and kept his lips closed as he and his guards backed out of the throne room. Once the inlaid portal closed in his face, he whipped around and stalked past Pearl and Adeon, through the atrium and the gardens and the gate, his hand white-knuckled around the Staff of Office. Pins and needles shot, still, from fingertips to shoulder.
Neither of the other two spoke a single word to him, all the way back to HQ. He wished they’d try to say something, anything at all. He’d feel guilty afterward, but right now, all he wanted was a target.
Culture Shock
Windish
Before they’d gotten the Ishlings, things had been a little boring, but now Kessa had more than enough to keep her busy. Dingus had seemed surprised that it turned out to be easier to sew new clothes for the kids than to mend the ones they had, but she’d known the instant he brought them back into camp that he hadn’t thought for a heartbeat about what his little project was going to involve. First there’d been the delousing, which they’d done two days in a row, and then there was keeping them all busy, and of course, the clothes and the food.
Good thing she’d always liked sewing. They were doing it the easy way: two tunic shapes stitched together to make a tunic, but Kessa sort of felt the Ishlings deserved more. She could do a little fancy work, nothing too special, but she knew how to embroider a couple different kinds of flowers and a few patterns. Who would’ve guessed being a laundry maid would help her be a better Squire? Not Kessa, but last night by the fire, while Dingus told fairy tales, she’d decided to put a little daisy border on the bottom of Zeeta’s new green tunic, and it went down like a storm. Zeeta had hugged her and kissed her and said, “You is very much amazing, oh Kessa, thank you, thank you, you is a wonderful sewing person! This is the most pretty dress I ever is have!”
It wasn’t the best daisy border Kessa had ever done, but she’d felt like it was the best anyone had ever done, just from Zeeta, and then Dingus gave her this look, with shiny eyes and a great big smile, and—and here she was stitching a geometric pattern around the cuffs of Voo’s sleeves. She wished she had some nice floss in different colors, but when she quadrupled it up the plain thread stood out enough against the green cloth that it looked pretty good.