The King's Hand

by Anna Thayer

  Eamon waited in the shadow of the gates – where it was at least cooler – watching as the Gauntlet worked, and listening to the perpetual sound of hooves, feet, and wheels on the cobbles. Beyond the paved part of the road, the horizon was lined with thick dust where the traffic of the leavers cast it into the air. The skill and patience with which the officers handled the exodus impressed him.

  He had not waited long when familiar faces appeared in the long line waiting permission to leave: the Grennils. They were gathered together in a cart, along with some of their belongings. Neithan entertained Damien with some story or other while they sat, and Mr Grennil sat at the head of the cart with his wife, with whom he spoke quietly.

  Eamon stepped up to one of the Gauntlet soldiers. “I will speak with that man,” he said, gesturing to Mr Grennil.

  “Of course, my lord,” the ensign replied. He went immediately over to the cart and summoned Mr Grennil down. Mr Grennil handed the reins to his wife, who looked worried until her husband gestured at the length of the line before them. He climbed down from the cart and followed the soldier back to where Eamon stood. Once there, Mr Grennil bowed.

  “Lord Goodman.”

  “I would speak to you a moment, Mr Grennil.”

  Leaving the ensign outside, Eamon led Mr Grennil into the gatehouse. It was empty, for all its keepers were too busy with the exit. It was a small, ill-lit room crammed with papers, a small table and two smaller chairs.

  Eamon closed the door and turned to Mr Grennil.

  “I won’t keep you for more than a moment,” he said. He was amazed at how any and all pretence of being a Hand dropped from him the second the door was closed and they were away from other eyes. The gatehouse’s small window was covered with a red curtain to keep out the bright sun. It cast a strange light on the sparse furnishings and ample papers.

  “I heard rumours about your new appointment,” Grennil answered. His face seemed grave as he said it. “Is it true?”

  “Yes,” Eamon sighed. “It is true.” He wasn’t surprised that news had gone about the quarter. He was gladder than ever that the Grennils were to exit the city before Arlaith took the East Quarter. He was sure that the disgruntled Hand would have found some way to strike at them for their hospitality towards him.

  Grennil watched him sincerely. “I don’t think that I would be able to bear it,” he said, “but I am sure that you will do good, even there. You will be careful?” he added. The note of concern in his voice touched Eamon.

  “As careful as I can be.”

  There was a small pause. “How may I serve you?” Grennil asked.

  “I need you to take a message to the King,” Eamon answered, leaning in closely. Grennil nodded bravely and Eamon marvelled at the man’s courage. “First, you must tell him that I am to be made Right Hand. If there is anything he would have me do beyond what my own sense will tell me, he must send word to me, just as I will send word to him of whatever I can.” Eamon did not doubt that, with the war brewing as it was, the day of battle between Hughan and the throned was near at hand. He felt it in the air, like a sound just beyond hearing.

  “Yes,” Grennil answered.

  Eamon reached into the folds of his cloak and drew out a book. He met Grennil’s gaze and spoke quietly. “There is something else you must tell him: it may be more important still.”

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Grennil looked up in alarm, but Eamon offered him a look of confidence. “Come in,” he called, setting the book discreetly down on the table behind him.

  The door opened and a shadow passed over the sunlit threshold. The familiar face of Captain Anderas appeared. “Lord Goodman?”

  “I am here, captain.”

  “Lord Goodman, I must speak with –” Anderas began, and then halted as he saw Mr Grennil. An odd look passed over his face. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, bowing. There was something stiff, almost stilted, in his tone and gesture. It worried Eamon. “I did not know that I was interrupting, my lord. I will leave.”

  “All is well, captain,” Eamon answered. “You may stay. This will not take a moment.” He gestured to Anderas to close the door. Grennil gave Eamon a confused glance.

  “Lord Goodman –”

  “Mr Grennil,” Eamon answered, “Captain Anderas is a friend.”

  Grennil breathed a sigh of relief and then held his hand out to Anderas.

  “It is a distinct pleasure, captain, to see you again.”

  Anderas looked surprised as he clasped Grennil’s hand and looked across at Eamon. Though his look was tempestuous he said nothing.

  “Are you well, captain?” Eamon asked. Fear crept into his breast.

  “Yes,” Anderas replied. His tone was icier than Eamon had ever heard it, but the captain said not a word more.

  He cannot stay here, Eben’s son. See his face? He can still betray you. Send him away – now.

  Eamon closed his eyes for a moment, then looked back to Grennil and picked up the book again.

  “I need you to take this,” he said quietly. At his gesture, Grennil took the book into his hands. He looked curiously at it for a moment, then back at Eamon.

  “The Edelred Cycle?”

  “I have marked a page in it,” Eamon replied, gesturing to where he had folded down a corner of the parchment. “This message is more important than the first. Unless your own life is in peril, you must not entrust it to anyone else.”

  Grennil nodded, and Eamon spoke again. “The King needs to know that Mathaiah Grahaven is dead,” he said quietly. A look of realization passed across Anderas’s face, followed by an odd scowl, but Eamon ignored it. He would answer Anderas, but he could not now. “Before his death, he was being tortured by the Hands and forced to read something called the Nightholt. The throned has this book, though how much or how little was transcribed using Mathaiah is something that I do not know. I know little else about it, but I fear that this book grants some power to the throned, and that it poses some great peril to the King. The passage that I have marked should be shown to the bookkeepers,” he said quietly. “It speaks of a ‘dark tome’, and I believe the verse indicates something about the nature of the Nightholt and its relationship to the throned, but I do not understand it. The King and the bookkeepers will.” At least, he hoped they would.

  Grennil looked down at the book and nodded. “Very well, Lord Goodman,” he said. As he answered he tucked the book deep into his jerkin. “I will deliver your message.”

  “Thank you,” Eamon replied, reaching across and taking Grennil’s hand warmly. “Take care of yourself; good care.”

  “And you,” Grennil replied.

  Grennil left. At Eamon’s request, he was escorted back to his cart by the same ensign who had brought him. The door swung shut behind them, and Eamon was alone with Anderas. His heart beat with fear: the captain’s face was stony and unreadable.

  “You wanted to speak to me?” he said quietly. As he met Anderas’s gaze a horrified, and almost disgusted, look grew clear on the man’s face.

  “He’s a wayfarer, too?” the captain asked. There was a tone of betrayal to his voice.

  Eamon frowned. “Yes,” he answered. Anderas stared at him.

  “How many others with exit papers are like him?”

  “A number of them,” Eamon replied truthfully.

  “What about Cara? Is she a wayfarer, too?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Anderas,” Eamon said quietly, “what troubles you?”

  “What troubles me?” Anderas’s voice was bitter, and he laughed. “What troubles me? I believed that you did good in this quarter for the sake of this quarter. I even had this lofty picture in my head of you doing good in this quarter for the city. Now I see that you care nothing for either!”

  “What?”

  “You heard what I said,” Anderas told him. “You care for nothing except the snakes that will raze this place to the ground when they come!”

  “Do you truly believe that of me?” Eamon asked
. A frantic look passed through Anderas’s eyes, but the captain did not answer him. He stepped forward. “If all my care was for the wayfarers, Anderas, why would I bother seeking justice for all, and homes for the homeless? Why would I hoarde grain beneath the college?”

  “To house and feed them, when they come.”

  “No,” Eamon replied quietly. “It is to feed the people of this city when the siege comes. I love this city, Anderas.”

  “And you betray it even now!” Anderas growled. “You will betray it when you open its gates to him. He will not, nor cannot, love it.”

  “Anderas,” Eamon said, “who has told you all these things?”

  “Told me?” Anderas laughed bitterly. “Now I see what you think of me,” he snapped. “You think me incapable of my own thought!”

  “I think you far too capable of your own thought,” Eamon countered, “which is how I know that these words are not yours.”

  “You are a traitor,” Anderas retorted. Steel glinted in the captain’s hand. “And you would have me betray myself! A fine pair we would have made: a Gauntlet captain and a Right Hand, traitors to the Master both, and I the more treacherous for letting you lead me astray with your poisonous words.”

  “I have never deceived you, Anderas, nor led you where your heart had not already been prepared to go,” Eamon answered.

  “You would lay the blame of treachery against me?” Anderas cried, blade in hand. “I will not be a traitor’s pawn, to be moved and played by you!”

  Eamon reached out and touched Anderas’s shoulder. The captain could take his life at a stroke. Yet all that mattered to him was the anguish in his friend’s eyes. He knew who had placed it there, and it stirred righteous anger in his heart.

  “Anderas,” he said. The captain did not meet his gaze. Eamon pressed his shoulder firmly. “Captain, look at me.” The hand holding the blade shook. “Andreas!”

  The captain looked at him in alarm. “There’s a voice,” Anderas whispered, his own – for it was his own voice again at last – rent with fear. “There’s a voice in my head. It would have me –”

  Suddenly he cried out in terror, clutching his palm where a red light grimly flickered.

  Eamon set his hand over the captain’s so that the red light struck them both. It burned him but he did not flinch from it. He knew that it could do nothing to him, and he looked Anderas straight in the eyes.

  “Hence, voice of Edelred,” he commanded. Though his voice was quiet, it struck keenly through the air. “This man is the King’s and the King’s grace is over him. By that grace I command you: hence.”

  A blaze of blue light arched from his palm to cover the captain’s. The red fled before it and the frenzied fear in Anderas’s eyes faded, leaving his tears.

  There was a moment of silence broken only by a clatter as the blade fell to the ground. Anderas shook, and suddenly he wept.

  “Courage, Anderas.”

  The words stirred him. The captain looked at him with renewed awe.

  “Who are you?” he breathed.

  “I am First Knight to King Hughan Brenuin, rightful lord over the River Realm.”

  “First… First Knight?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that… that… voice?” he asked.

  “Is the voice of Edelred, the throned,” Eamon told him. He pressed encouragingly at Anderas’s hand. “At our swearing, we gave him authority over us. He is a coward and a liar, and will do everything he can to set you against me, the King, and yourself.”

  “You hear it often?” Anderas still shook.

  “Rather too frequently.” Eamon looked curiously at Anderas. “You don’t?”

  “I’ve never heard it before,” Anderas replied quietly. “Or at least, I don’t think I have. At first I thought it was just my own thoughts. Then I was convinced it was some Serpent sorcery.”

  “It was no sorcery of the King’s,” Eamon told him. “This voice always lies, or twists what might be true. That is how it seeks to hold you. That is how it has often held me. I suspect you hear it now because you have given your oath to the King – and now it must redouble its efforts to master you.”

  Anderas looked up in alarm. “Does he… hear what I think?” he whispered.

  Eamon shook his head. “I do not believe he can,” he said. “I would have been lost long before now if he could. But his voice still carries power. It seems to know what makes us afraid.”

  “I was afraid,” Anderas told him. “So afraid. This voice told me things, about you…”

  “It lies,” Eamon answered flatly. “You are covered by the King’s grace, and by that grace you can command it to leave you.”

  “As you did?”

  “Just as I did.”

  Anderas sighed, and was still for a long moment. “I should have come to you sooner,” he said at last. “Then perhaps I would not have behaved like such a fool.”

  “I am afraid that I was the more foolish this time,” Eamon answered. “I knew about the voice of Edelred – I have struggled with it since first I was sworn into the Gauntlet – and yet I said nothing of it to you. I am sorry that I did not. I assumed you knew.”

  “There is always more than one way to learn something,” Anderas replied. A small smile touched his face. “I have always been one for learning things the hard way.”

  “Anderas, for men like you and me, men who gave their first allegiance to the throned and took his mark, being a King’s man is difficult,” Eamon told him. “It is made more difficult still when you serve in Dunthruik under the throned, and as difficult again when you hold positions where your authority can be worked for the King.” He paused. “You will hear this voice often,” he added, “and you must stand firm against it. I will not always be here with you, and it is when I am not there that it will strike hardest.”

  “I understand,” Anderas said. He looked up. “And I will stand.”

  “You were right about one thing, though,” Eamon told him.

  “Really?” Anderas smiled.

  “We would make a veritable sight if they found us out – the trusted captain and Lord of the East Quarter. Such good men… so foully led astray by the Serpent.”

  “They’d have more than a pyre for us set out if they found out,” Anderas said, and laughed.

  “Being tortured, breached, and more than lightly toasted doesn’t worry you?” Eamon asked, surprised.

  “Not if they toast using a very fine vintage.”

  Eamon stared at him incredulously. “I cannot believe you just said that.”

  “Must be the company I keep.” Anderas grinned, then looked more serious. “You know, this city is full of good men.”

  “Yes,” Eamon agreed, “it is.”

  “Being a good man in times like these helps, but it is not enough,” Anderas replied. “I think that is what I finally understood when you told me who you are. It is not that you are good, rather that you are a King’s man, which truly makes you what you are.”

  “We are both King’s men,” Eamon told him, pressing his hand with a smile.

  “Yes,” Anderas laughed. “We are.”

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  After the East Quarter had been emptied of many of its ordinary citizens, the new Gauntlet officers and ensigns arrived. Eamon stood in the Ashen to watch them as they marched past, wondering how many of them had ever been to the city and how many of them would lose their lives in its defence.

  He never saw Ladomer leave the Handquarters. His friend’s words ran over and over in Eamon’s mind that night as he tried to sleep. When he was not thinking about that he wondered about the Grennils, and whether his scant message would reach Hughan in time. And when he finally slept, his mind was burdened with images of the book he had torn from the tomb in Ellenswell and the memory of surrendering it into Ashway’s hands. He woke from his dreams, alone and afraid, with only the dying fire in the grate and the starlight beyond his window to comfort him.

  His last days as Lord of the
East Quarter passed in a blur of paperwork and distant congratulations. Other than occasional meetings with Anderas, he felt very much alone. The silence of his halls haunted him and he hated it as much as he acknowledged its importance. He wondered whether it was not a taste of the solitude that he would reap when he became Right Hand.

  You will not be alone, Eben’s son, the voice of Edelred told him. I will be there with you.

  It terrified him.

  During Eamon’s penultimate day in the East Quarter, he spent much of the evening with Anderas. The captain was a strong-willed man, resolute in his new allegiance, more determined than Eamon in his early days.

  “It will be harder, Lord Goodman, when you are gone,” he said.

  “You will not just have the voice to contend with then,” Eamon answered, “but Arlaith, too. You will need to keep all your wits about you.”

  “You would have me be as cunning as the Serpent?” Anderas laughed.

  “And as innocent as a dove.”

  “And while I contend with the voice and with Lord Arlaith, you shall have the voice and the throned himself,” Anderas replied. “I’m not sure which of us I envy the more.”

  “Neither am I,” Eamon laughed.

  Eamon walked solemnly across the Ashen to the Handquarters. The silence struck him from every side, blanketing itself around him and smothering him. He hated it.

  As he reached the top of the stairs that led to his own rooms he heard the shuffle of feet, and whisper of voices within. The door to his chamber was slightly ajar. He recognized them at once: Cara and Callum, going about their duties.

  As he set his foot onto the last step, his foot landed heavily enough to echo down the hall, but it did not help. With a deep sigh he walked to his door and pushed it open. Callum finished setting a small fire as Cara folded down the top sheet of the bed, her face all grace and concentration.

  “If I were Lord Arlaith,” Eamon announced, “you would now find yourselves at the receiving end of my deep displeasure.”

  The siblings froze and looked up at him. Their faces grew pale.

  “Lord Goodman,” Cara began, curtseying, “I am sorry, nobody –”