The King's Hand

by Anna Thayer

  He watched as those invited came into the hall and took their seats. He saw the servants by the doors at the back of the hall, standing as inconspicuously as they could. As the guests stood by their chairs, their eyes turned to him, but he was not able to discern the intention behind the stares. He was a prisoner, and anything beyond the walls of his cell ceased to interest him.

  The goblets at his place were filled, the cutlery wrought in a golden sheen, and small crowns marked the stems of the goblets. Eamon took one and raised it in his hand. As he did so, every man in the room did likewise. He marvelled that his gestures should have such effect.

  “To the East Quarter,” he called, “and to his glory.”

  “His glory,” the room echoed. The hundred voices spoke and drank in unison. The guests set their glasses down and seated themselves, as the first servants stepped into action, silent and flawless. They bore the nuts to the table.

  Conversation surrounded him as the meal progressed. Some of it may have been aimed at him, as an attempt to engage him, but he was never certain. He responded to little or none of it, and ate swiftly, enjoying less than little of it. It was a business that had merely to be endured and dispensed with. He found some pleasure in the fact that the wine was white and that the soup, a deep red colour, was thick. It tasted good, though he would not have liked to admit it.

  Soon the Crown Platter, an exquisite selection of red meats, was brought out. Eamon was dimly aware of a stunned silence as it was laid before the guests. One or two of them glanced at him in horror, but he did not understand it. Perhaps they preferred their meat bloody. He did not.

  Anderas stared at him. He ignored it. Even Waite seemed a little disturbed as the plate was laid before him. In silence and with uncertainty, the men began eating.

  There was another odd silence when the cheeses were brought, though most seemed content with the major-domo’s choice of dessert – a rich pastry served with honey. Eamon found it ironic that the part of the meal he enjoyed the most was that in which he had had no part. He wondered idly whether he should have let the major-domo choose everything.

  The meal drew to its close. At Anderas’s whispered instruction, Eamon rose and went to the door for the formal leave-taking of his guests. He made himself smile and bid farewell to each of them. Anderas stood at his elbow, discreetly whispering their names to him as they approached. Eamon cared about none of them, not even those he knew.

  “Thank you, Lord Goodman,” Waite said as he took his turn. Eamon wondered why the captain looked pale.

  “Thank you, captain,” he answered. “Please give my regards to Lord Cathair,” he added, as the men representing the other Quarter Hands also approached, “and to Dehelt and Tramist. Thank you all for your company.” He was lying with every utterance, and well he knew it. Perhaps they did, too. They bowed to him and left.

  “Lieutenant Mers, East Quarter,” Anderas muttered, and Eamon looked up to the next man, one of the last in the long line of leaving guests. He was red in the face and his eyes did not seem entirely clear. He laughed. It seemed to Eamon a strange, mocking laugh.

  “A two-crown dinner,” Mers sneered, bowing ridiculously low.

  “Lieutenant.” Anderas’s voice was harsh and full of warning.

  “Very fine, Lord Goodman. You have my thanks. A two-crown dinner for a backhanded quarter.” As the lieutenant spoke he looked slyly at Anderas.

  “Hold your tongue, lieutenant.”

  Anderas’s voice was terribly loud in the emptying dining hall, causing a couple of the servants to glance at him. The outburst stirred even Eamon from his stupor. Anderas’s cheeks coloured with anger. Faced with such a look from his captain, the inebriated lieutenant grew a little pale.

  “Yes, captain. I know that you have his papers to deal –”

  “Leave,” Anderas told him. “Now.”

  The lieutenant left. Eamon watched him go before looking back at Anderas. The captain’s hands shook as he leaned forward to speak once more, his voice bearing its customary whisper.

  “Lieutenant Smith,” he said quietly. Obediently, Eamon bade the remaining men farewell.

  Anderas walked with him back to his quarters. As they crossed the main hall to the study, the captain was curiously quiet. At the door, the captain bowed and made to leave.

  “You’re forgetting your papers, captain,” Eamon told him. “Fetch them, and you may go.”

  Anderas’s eyes closed a moment. He sighed. “Yes, Lord Goodman.”

  The captain followed him into the room and strode to the desk to collect the papers. As he did so, Eamon gently closed the door.

  Anderas looked up. His eyes recognized a coming storm. He paused by the desk, the papers in his hands.

  “My lord?” Anderas’s voice was tense.

  Eamon waited for him to speak further, but the captain remained silent. Eamon’s chair, the ennobling throne of his grief, called to him from behind the dimly lit table. He walked across and sat down in it, feeling its wooden arms holding his own. Anderas watched him sit.

  “For such words as he uttered,” Eamon began, “you should have rendered the lieutenant some punishment.”

  The captain’s face was still and pale. Eamon wondered that the man did not answer him, but his wondering did not last long. Soon, his eyes drifted to the window, his body assuming its accustomed rigid repose.

  There was silence.

  “I will not punish him,” Anderas said at last. His voice was strained. “If, in so doing, I act or speak out of turn, it is because the lieutenant did not do so.”

  Eamon looked up, annoyed that entry to his brooding thought had been thus disturbed. Then he understood what the captain had said.

  “What?” he snarled.

  Anderas’s jaw trembled, but there was clear thought in his blue eyes. Eamon envied it.

  “You put two ‘crown’ dishes in the dinner,” Anderas told him. His voice grew more heated as he went on, “Two crowns. Two crowns! No dinner in Dunthruik has two crowns – Dunthruik is ruled by one crown alone!”

  Eamon felt his gaze hardening and vile, acidic words bubbling up into his throat.

  “You would criticize a lord of Dunthruik over a menu?” he hissed.

  “You are no lord!” Anderas exploded at last, his voice roaring with something near rage.

  Eamon stared, stunned beyond words. “What?”

  “Are you dull or blind, that still you cannot see?” Anderas yelled. “Your eyes were good once. Now you see nothing! You are no lord, you are no Hand, barely are you a man!” Anderas leaned furiously across the table and slammed the papers down.

  “These men, this quarter, welcomed you with joy!” he cried, gesturing towards the college. “I welcomed you with joy. What a man like him could do, I thought! But you are not the man who marched to Pinewood, you are not the man who stood against the Easter cavalry, you are not the man who defied the Right Hand. You are not the man,” he added more quietly, “who saved me.”

  He fell silent for a moment as his voice caught. “This quarter waited for that man, and he never came. Now they mock you, you who sit enthroned in your dull thoughts night and day! They mock him who gives all his work to his captain, who knows not enough to say that his captain cannot sign every paper, who has not the wit to remember the names of the men who serve him, who is fickle enough to terrify a boy for lighting a fire and reckless enough to insult the Master by serving a meal with two crowns!” The captain shouted the last at the top of his lungs, his hand driven against the wood of the desk as he beat it with his palm, and then fell back.

  Eamon stared at him. The captain’s words rang dizzyingly about him. For a moment those words lodged near his heart, crying out their truth. His heart froze in fear.

  Was that what they said about him? How could he have been so blind?

  He has no right to speak to you thus, Eben’s son.

  Eamon rounded darkly on his trembling captain. “Do you not fear me, Anderas?” His voice seemed de
athly quiet, but all the force of his blockaded rage was behind it.

  “Your goodness gave me cause to fear, and to hope, once,” Anderas replied quietly. He shook. “I fear you still, but not for that.”

  “Your life will be forfeit for what you say.” The words passed Eamon’s lips, but he knew it was not really he who spoke them.

  Anderas met his gaze. “If you hear but one word, then I will pay that price.”

  Eamon stared at him. He meant to draw his blade to strike the man down, to see his blood run into the cracks in the stone floor. Anderas understood nothing.

  Eamon rose to his feet and surged around the desk. Still Anderas held his gaze, and he held it without flinching.

  The captain’s resolve shook him. At the last moment, Eamon turned and stalked to the window. He turned his back on Anderas. Surely the captain would leave. He had to leave Eamon and his baleful grief alone. It was the only way.

  Eamon. The gentle voice passed through his heart, strangely close. It took his breath.

  He closed his eyes and set his head in his hands, broiling with a million thoughts and hurts. He could not hold them… but he could not let them go, or give them over to any other. He had done that once, and she…

  “Lord Goodman.” Anderas, his voice filled with immeasurable courage, stood next to him. Eamon felt a light touch on his shoulder. It was bold – too bold – but he had not the strength to throw it from him. He knew he had heard truth in Anderas’s words. It terrified him just as his wicked grief consumed him.

  Do not speak, Eben’s son! He will betray you and rend your heart – just as she did!

  “I cannot speak to you, captain.” Eamon’s voice, wrathful and afraid, spilled from the hands over his face. Terror seized him. He staggered against the window frame and dropped down to the floor. “Do you understand?” he howled. “I cannot.”

  “Then let me speak to you.” Anderas sank to one knee at Eamon’s side. The gesture tore Eamon’s heart from him in a cry of grief.

  “Do not kneel!” he cried, trying to force the captain away. “Not to me.”

  Obligingly, Anderas shifted and sat instead. He reached out and took Eamon’s shaking hand. Eamon stared at him, incredulous at his audacity.

  “You dare to take my hand?” he asked, anger seeping into his voice. Anderas flinched at the tone, but held.

  “Once, I saw one dare to offer such a comfort to a lord of Dunthruik,” he answered. “It is his example that I follow.”

  Eamon stared at Anderas. “You speak of myself and Lord Ashway.”

  Anderas nodded.

  There was a moment of silence before the captain spoke again. “Lord Goodman, there is a weight on you.” The captain’s hand quivered with fear as it held Eamon’s, but it held fast. “There has been a weight on you since first you came to this quarter. I believe that it is that weight which has taken from you everything that you are. Tell me its name.”

  Horror churned through Eamon. His monstrous emotions clamoured to remain undisturbed.

  He shut his eyes. “You cannot ask me to do that.”

  “Then let me guess at its root,” Anderas answered. “I know you, Lord Goodman, and have some sense of the depth of your heart. I witnessed that when you bore me back from Pinewood, when you put your life in the line. I am honoured by that witness – and by the fact that, when I was very small, my mother taught me to read.”

  Eamon looked up, caught out by what seemed illogical to him. But Anderas held his gaze. When he next spoke, the captain’s eyes were grave.

  “I read the reports that the palace sends,” he said quietly. “Every day, I receive a list of names – men and women who have been sent to the pyres. I know, Lord Goodman, who they sent the night that you sat here and comforted Ashway. I think you know it also.”

  Eamon’s eyes burned. His grief raced up his throat and seared his mouth; rage rattled his heart and lungs. As the captain gently pressed his hand, Eamon suddenly remembered Alessia – he saw her kneeling by him, binding the wound on his injured palm as he drew breath to speak out the whole truth of who he was…

  He will betray you, son of Eben. Just as she did.

  Eamon shuddered violently. “I cannot speak to you.”

  “No.” Anderas shook his head gently. “It is not that you cannot speak, my lord. You choose not to speak because you are afraid, and deathly angry.”

  Eamon looked at Anderas. The captain’s eyes were sincere and the grip of his hand on Eamon’s own was firm.

  “I am stricken with anger, Anderas,” Eamon told him. His heart ground with its burden as he said it. “And I am afraid that you…” He pressed his eyes shut. “That is why I cannot speak to you.”

  “My lord,” Anderas spoke quietly. “Do not be afraid. Least of all of me.”

  A sob ripped through Eamon’s throat. His hand was on the latch of the cart. The face was before him, and he was screaming at the driver and crushing his cheeks down into the terrible gore…

  His voice was overcome and broke. All the rage within him howled out of his throat in a shredding cry. All his insidious and wrathful grief tore at him, striving with tooth and claw to keep hold of its precious lair in his heart and drive him back to silence. But bitter tears were in his eyes; they rushed over his face and hands.

  “Mathaiah!” he cried. His voice brought the room – the whole world – crashing down around them, but the captain held his hand. “They took Mathaiah!”

  “They took you with him,” Anderas whispered. “My lord, do not carry this alone! You need not speak its whole. Let me bear it with you.”

  Eamon lowered his sobbing face into his hands. Long was the time that he wept, deep the angry and harrowing grief he had to spend; but Anderas sat beside him until long after his weeping ceased.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Dawn crept into the chamber. As the light reached across the walls it touched the pennants in the painting, illuminating the King’s star.

  He breathed deeply. It was quiet. For a moment he waited for the darkness of thought, the horror of disaffection. But they did not come. His breathing eased, his heart lightened, and as the first quivers of tentative birdsong sounded, Eamon opened his eyes and smiled with gentle delight.

  The deep hopelessness was gone. It had been taken when his eyes had unburdened all their tears and his heart its grief. It was true that he was still in Dunthruik – and that brought terrors of its own – but the image of Mathaiah’s cruelly defiled face no longer held such terrible power over him.

  Slowly he arched his back; he still sat against the window’s embrasure. It was uncomfortable, but as he looked to his left he saw the whole garden laid before him, green and dappled gold in the rising sun. It stole his breath.

  At last he stirred his limbs. His black cloak was wrapped around him and it fell in long folds, almost tripping him as he sought his feet.

  Anderas was there. The captain lay on the ground, asleep, one arm gathered under his head to cushion it against the cold floor. Eamon looked at him in awe. The captain had put his life before the fury of a Hand, and then sat watch through a vigil of tears until the dawn. He had freed Eamon from the grip of his crippling grief.

  Looking up, he saw the star on the wall, and he thought of Hughan. Mathaiah had died in the King’s service. Eamon realized that, were he to lose his own life, he would not want to die for less.

  Peace settled on him in the silence. He watched the painted star-banner on the study wall. Like that banner, he had to go through the city before Hughan.

  He drew another deep breath. How could he go before Hughan when he wore black? How could he be a Quarter Hand and serve the King – and live?

  It seemed an impossible task. It was true that he was a lord of Dunthruik, but in the grip of his horror he had allowed himself to be seen in weakness and woe. Who could follow the commands of such a Hand as he had been? He had sown seeds of bitterness – in his house, his college and, no doubt, his quarter – in his angry despair. It was bitterne
ss and hurt that he had to undo before he could begin to serve the King.

  You must start with your house, First Knight.

  The gentle voice and the name by which it called him touched him with forgotten clarity. It was a name that, unlike the colours of Dunthruik, he could not wear clearly. Though he might bear sorrow and anger still, he would not allow those things to hold sway over him.

  It was time to be Hughan’s First Knight.

  Stepping carefully past the sleeping captain, Eamon rose and left the study.

  The corridors were palely dashed with light from the tall windows and tinged with green from the new-budded leaves. Eamon passed swiftly through the shadows, his footsteps echoing in the passageway. He saw no one, but, as he walked, he heard soft feet fleeing before him. The servants must have been up for an hour or more already and none dared meet him. How could a servant serve without knowing his master? What kind of service was it, rendered in fear of distant footsteps?

  He turned towards the servants’ quarters and to the kitchens which lay buried in one wing of the building. The smell of cooking emanated from it. As Eamon approached he felt almost as though he smelled fresh bread for the first time; there was no sensation like it in the world.

  He heard the master cook singing softly to himself, his deep voice drifting in the morning air, mixing with the birdsong. Eamon paused in the corridor to listen to it. The cook was singing an old River ballad. Eamon recognized the words, and remembered how his mother’s sweet, clear voice lifted up in the same song while she laid him in his bed to sleep.

  “The green blade rises, the sparrow sings,

  My heart rejoices with the spring.”

  Quietly he stepped down into the kitchen, trying to mask the sound of his feet. He measured his success by the fact that the singing continued undisturbed.

  Many of the Handquarters’ servants were there, either eating meagre morsels or preparing to turn their hands to further work. The kitchen was filled with tables and cupboards stacked high with cooking instruments. At the end of the room was a large door that opened out into the garden. The door was open, the morning air and birdsong mingling with the smell of the baking bread and the harmony of the cook’s voice.