by A. C. Cobble
“What—”
“Your brothers do as I ask,” interrupted Edward. “They constantly strive to meet my expectations. Your brothers would acknowledge this man broke the law by striking a royal. While they may feel sorrow about the execution, they would do nothing about it. We are Wellesleys, a line of kings, and we have responsibility to uphold our laws.”
Oliver grunted.
“The first Wellesleys, how do you think they became kings?”
He watched the boy, just sixteen winters, staring back at him. Oliver was impulsive and quick to act, but he was also intelligent enough to understand he didn’t know the answer his father was looking for. He had enough patience to wait for it.
“Before Enhover became a nation, it was four independent provinces,” explained the king. “Had our ancestors been solely concerned with their responsibilities and following the laws, we would still only rule Southundon — Enhover wouldn’t exist. The laws apply to all, but the blood of kings balances those mandates with the weight of our desire. You remain a duke to signify your responsibility to your family and the Crown, Oliver. That you rule an empty province represents the opportunity you have. Your realm is what you will make it.”
“I don’t understand, father,” admitted the boy.
“Oliver, if you seek to change the circumstances, you will not do it by following the rules.”
Oliver began to dress.
Edward watched his son, stroking his short goatee so he could cover the curl of his lip. For years, he’d tried to understand his youngest boy. Ever since Northundon, he’d tried. Oliver had incredible potential, but he constantly teetered on the precipice of wasting it. Like Edward, he had the strength to shape and balance the world around him, and like Edward, he refused to be steered by another hand. It had been frustrating, but finally, the king knew the way. He’d found the path to fashioning his son into the man he would one day be.
Oliver had a bit of his father and his mother in him, while his older brothers leaned just toward their father. Oliver was the balance of the two. The king had finally understood. He was not meant to push Oliver one way or the other, he was meant to let the boy choose, to find his own balance.
Finally, Oliver was suited, though instead of a wig, he merely tied his hair behind his head. Edward’s smile grew. He recognized the thin leather thong the boy had used on his hair. He asked, “You will be at the Spring Ball tonight? I expect all of my children to be in attendance. It is a silly party, I know, but the peers expect to see the entire royal family there. As much as we’d rather be elsewhere, it is our responsibility as Wellesleys, our responsibility to the Crown.”
“Don’t worry, Father, I will be there,” murmured Oliver. “But first… first there is something I must attend to.”
“You’d best hurry, then,” advised the king, grinning at his son’s back as Oliver darted out of the door.
“Oliver sprang a man from the gaol this afternoon,” claimed Prince Philip.
“Yes, I heard,” replied the king. He gestured to a tray of crystal glasses filled with sparkling wine. “Have a drink.”
Below them, music and the sound of conversation bubbled up from the party. The floor of the ballroom was filled with a colorful sea of peers. All of the nobles in Southundon, along with the wealthiest merchants, a few powerful churchmen, and a selection of ministers who’d provided exceptional service throughout the year. But in the gallery above, there were only the three of them. They’d retreated there at Philip’s insistence, and Edward had allowed it, guessing what his oldest was upset about, and knowing it’d provide an opportunity.
Philip turned to Edgar Shackles, ignoring the wine glasses. “You were aware of this also?”
“I was informed once it happened,” replied the chief of staff. “The judiciary was quite upset, as you can imagine. Enraged, maybe, is a more accurate term. The prisoner was sentenced to die, but the matter is a bit complicated in that he’d earned the sentence for striking Oliver. Oliver, it seems, simply walked in and demanded the guard hand him the keys. He said he wanted to speak to the prisoner. Then, he unlocked the cell door and the man’s chains. He handed the guard the keys back and strode out of the gaol with the prisoner in tow. It caused quite a stir, and in the confusion, the man seems to have vanished from Southundon along with his young wife.”
“More of Oliver’s doing,” growled Philip. He glared at his father. “Will you speak to your son?”
Edward lowered his wine glass and smirked. “I believe Oliver knows what I would have to say on the matter, and I’m afraid he shows little concern for my authority. It goes back to his mother, I believe. He loved her deeply, and is much like her. He blames me for her death, you know?”
“What?” exclaimed Philip. “She was in Northundon when the Coldlands raiders struck. Terribly unfortunate timing, but nothing more. There was nothing you could do, nothing any of us could do!”
“He doesn’t blame me for the raiders,” explained Edward. “He blames me that she was there at all. Because of that, I do not think I can provide the steady guidance the boy needs.”
Philip frowned at him. “What do you propose then, father?”
“I suspect that soon Oliver will be off again on another of his jaunts around Enhover, or perhaps to the United Territories again, though I hope not Finavia just yet. I’ve assigned him a number of tutors and some guardians who will lurk in the shadows unseen. He’ll be as safe on his adventures as I can make him, but just as I think he will venture out, I also believe he will return in due time. When he does, I’d like him to stay in Westundon with you, Philip.”
“With me?” wondered the older brother.
“Oliver and I are much alike,” said Edward. “Too alike, really. Like me, I imagine he will continue to be a free spirit and carve his own path. It could be a good thing for a man in his circumstances, but I’m loathe to let him continue that path alone. He needs guidance from his family. A steady hand to keep his keel even. You’ll be that hand.”
“Father, with Westundon, the trade arrangements we’re still negotiating with the United Territories, I don’t have the—”
“Our responsibility is to our family and to the Crown,” chastised Edward. “Oliver is your family, and in time, the Crown will have use of him.”
“Use of him?” grumbled Philip. “He passed his sixteenth winter — he’s a man now, but one who spends more time in the ale houses than the palace. I don’t know what use that is to the Crown. Father, I trust you, but I do not see what you see.”
“Of course you do not,” murmured Edward. “You know of prophecy?”
Philip snorted. “I know what the Church tells of it, which is that it’s false. Certainly, over the centuries, a few have turned out accurate by blind chance. I do not believe betting on chance is any way to rule our nation.”
Edward nodded, tugging at his goatee. “Gambling on chance, something Oliver would do, don’t you think? Placing a bet, letting the dice roll?”
“I wouldn’t know,” stated Philip, crossing his arms over his chest.
“No, you wouldn’t,” agreed the king. “You will do as I say, though, won’t you? I’ve always been able to count on you, Franklin, and John to follow my instructions.”
Philip drew himself up. “You can count on us, Father.”
“Good, then,” said Edward. “When he returns, I will send Oliver to you. Watch over him, advise him, but give him the space to follow his instincts.”
Philip gaped at him.
“When I see a map,” said the king, “I see Enhover marked boldly. Our cities are labeled in proud script, our rivers and mountains are drawn with precision and care. Outside of that, though, when I look at what we know of the rest of the world, it is not the same, is it?”
Frowning, Philip shook his head. “Of course it is not. Our cartographers know Enhover, Father. This nation is theirs, and they map it with care.”
“Someday, I think, Oliver will know the world,” said the king. “It w
ill be his, and he will map it with care.”
“Father!” exclaimed Philip.
“Do not misunderstand,” continued Edward, holding up his hand. “He will not take your place on the throne. When my time is done, you shall rule as king, as is your right.”
Mollified, Philip settled down. “What is it you mean, then, Father? I do not understand.”
“You will rule as king because it is your right,” said Edward. “When you look at a map and you see Enhover, that will be yours. Whatever Oliver accomplishes, it will not be because he followed the lines on the map, it will be because he drew his own.”
Herbert Shackles cleared his throat.
The king and the prince turned to him, eyebrows raised at the interruption.
“Ah…” mumbled Shackles. He pointed over the balustrade at the dance floor below them. In the center of it, singing a commoner’s drinking song at the top of his lungs, was Oliver. He showed little concern that his song was terribly out of tune with the waltz the orchestra played. He had Baroness Lucinda Vrey on one arm, and Countess Annabelle Swan on the other, though it was unclear which amongst the swaying trio was supporting the others. By all evidence, it looked both Oliver and the girls had become well acquainted with the king’s wine. Shackles mumbled, “I believe Duke Wellesley may be rather intoxicated, m’lord.”
“Frozen hell,” muttered the king. He turned to his oldest son. “He’s your responsibility, now. Make sure he doesn’t cause a bigger scene than he already has, and make sure those girls don’t do anything… well, assure their fathers all is well. We need Baron Vrey’s voice in the congress of lords, Philip. Go on then, do it for the Crown.”
“For the Crown,” muttered the prince, scowling at his father. He hurried toward the steps to go collect his drunken little brother.
1
Durban: A Short Story
“How much longer, you think?” muttered the factor before tilting up a brown glass jug and swigging a mouthful of the contents. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then his brow, frowning up at the blazing sun above them.
Oliver stood, stretching his back and wincing at the crack. “Two, three turns of the clock, I imagine.”
“How old are you, that your back is cracking like that?” wondered the factor. “It’s too much time spent hunched over your maps, if you ask me.”
“Good maps give us a trade advantage,” responded the young duke. “If we find a channel through these reefs that we can navigate a proper freighter through, we’ll own the trade in Durban. You and I will both be rich men.”
“You’re already are a rich man,” replied the factor glumly. “I, on the other hand, am decidedly not.”
“If you’re the one who stands to benefit, then why in the frozen hell are you the one complaining?” questioned the duke.
“I didn’t join the Company for the sterling… well, that’s not entirely true. I did join for the sterling,” grumbled Factor Giles, pushing back a mop of floppy hair, damp from the sea spray and sweat, “but it wasn’t because I wanted it settled nicely in my purse or invested in some farmland back in Enhover, it was so I could spend it on gambling, drink, and women.”
“If we find the route through this reef, you’ll have plenty to spend on women,” assured Oliver. “Besides, I didn’t ask you to come along, you volunteered.”
Giles grunted.
At the front of their small ketch, a man named Quimby called a sounding, “Three and a half fathoms, Duke Wellesley!”
“We’re getting closer,” remarked Oliver. He turned to the two sailors behind him, one adjusting the sail, the other manning their tiller. “Keep us on this line, right along that break in the surf.”
The sailors nodded, knowing they’d get their sterling from the young peer regardless of how deep a channel he managed to scout. At four times their day rate, they’d been eager to take him up on his offer to sail the ketch off the coast of Durban while he and his companions sounded the reef.
Reeling up the line and weight at the bottom of it, Quimby peered over the gunwale of their little ketch. “Blue waters, m’lord. I think we’re figuring it out.”
“You don’t have to call me that,” chided Oliver. “In fact, while we’re in Durban, I’d prefer you didn’t. It’s a rough town, Quimby, and Durban’s respect for Enhover and her might is recent. Just Oliver is fine.”
“Of course, m’lo… ah, Oliver,” murmured the writer.
A few years Oliver’s junior, the boy was still adjusting to his role within the Company. Work in the field required different behavior than Enhover’s courts. Around the director’s table in Southundon, your standing amongst the peers still counted for something. In the newly formed rough and tumble colony of Durban, it was a different matter. In Enhover’s most recent colony, a local was as likely to stick you with a filet knife as he was to bow.
A city that had clung to the northern shore of the Soundlands for a millennia, it had only recently fallen into Enhover’s grasp. Enhover, like dozens of nations before it, had marched in and claimed the sandstone pile of buildings, narrow alleys, and vibrant markets. The locals hadn’t paid the change in ownership any mind. They nodded to the new governor, paid a different man taxes when they bothered to pay them, and continued their lives as their parents had before, and generation after generation.
That meant brisk trade with the caravans coming from some unknown civilization to the south, a bit less brisk activity with the Darklands, the hermit neighbor to the east, and the occasional bit of piracy.
And that piracy was why Duke Oliver Wellesley, Factor Ethan Giles, and Writer… Oliver frowned. What was Quimby’s first name? His family had some amount of land back in Enhover, if Oliver recalled correctly. They’d been named peers, though of a minor sort that didn’t rank a place in the council of lords and rarely set foot in any of the Wellesley’s palaces, but it was some recognition. Enough that he should probably find out what the boy’s given name was.
Dropping the line and letting it slide through his fingers, feeling the knots that were tied in it, Quimby called again, “Four and a half fathoms, m’lord!”
Smiling, Oliver nodded his head, ignoring the boy’s insistence on using the title. “I think we’ve found it, then.”
They spent the next two hours tacking back and forth in the surf, twelve leagues east of Durban’s harbor and the squat, shimmering dolomite walls that guarded it. Behind those walls, the city was a sprawling complex of short sandstone buildings, fused together, built on, then rebuilt when they collapsed. It happened over and over through the years, and now, it was difficult to tell where one structure started, and another stopped. Those walls had stood for centuries, and for just as long, pirates had slipped in and out of Duban’s harbor laden with the bounty of the sea. How they managed to do it, when commercial shipping was confined to one narrow channel, no one from Enhover had quite figured out, yet.
Now, Oliver had an idea. Set away from the harbor, they’d found a channel wide enough to sail a freighter class vessel. It wouldn’t be easy, and it’d take a captain as bold as they were skilled, but Oliver thought it was possible.
The problem was getting that information to the right Company officials.
Durban was thick with spies, and he had no doubt Company House was crawling with them. There’d be little they were more interested in than updates to the nautical charts, and little they’d be more protective of than a shipping channel wide enough for the Company to come through in their massive freighters.
The Company’s freighters sprouted more cannon than the walls of Durban itself, which kept the pirates well clear of the riches inside of them. The ketches and shore-huggers that darted between the freighters and the scattering of villages the clung to the coast, though, were easy pickings.
The pirates would kill to protect their secret knowledge, and not even the title of duke would protect him if they truly set their minds to stopping him.
Oliver turned to the two sailors, a salt spray
-speckled parchment in front of him, a quill in his hand. “How’d you fare?”
“Could be worse,” one of them drawled, leaning over a square hole in the deck and pointing down. “Bream, shad, and more sardines than I care to think about. Those things upset my stomach.”
“Could be the drink that does that,” mentioned the other sailor.
The first frowned at him. “Those little fish are oily, mate. They’re not good for you, no matter what the locals claim.”
“Oily?” asked Oliver. “Fetch me a handful.”
Muttering to himself, the first sailor laid down on the deck of the ship and reached in the hold, scooping up a pile of the finger-length fish.
Arranging them on the deck, Oliver drew his belt knife and sliced one in two, lengthwise. Then he stepped on another, cut one in half widthwise, and tossed the rest over the side of the ketch. “Oily enough. If anyone back in the port asks what we’ve been up to, we’re harvesting sardines, trying to assess their commercial value as a source of fish oil.”
“Fish oil?” questioned the sailor. “The last thing the Company’d want to import to Enhover is fish oil. Up in Harwick they’ve got more whales than they can haul in, and on the west coast the cod run—”
“You think anyone in Durban knows that?” questioned Factor Giles. “As far as they know, that could be a legitimate commercial product. And if they know enough to see it isn’t, well, then we’ve got a foolish young lordling here that doesn’t know any better.”
Oliver snorted. “Thanks.”
Giles winked at him.
“Sail us back to Durban. We’ll unload the sardines to the Company warehouses and I’ll visit Company House and review our available nautical charts of the coastline,” instructed Oliver. Peering at the sailors, he instructed, “You understand how important it is to stick to our story, to keep this information between our group, right?”