by Sonia Lyris
But now, fed and wined, it was evident even these last holdouts of the Cohort realized how things had changed. No one at this table would benefit from bad will with the princess consort. They needed Innel.
Of course, he needed them, too.
It was time to rewrite history.
“We are all brothers and sisters here,” he said, hands wide, smiling at them, putting as much joviality and warmth into his expression as he could stomach. He let his gaze come to rest on Mulack, arguably the most dangerous of the lot, and gave him the warmest smile of all, to which Mulack snorted in amusement.
With a nod of appreciation to Dil, Innel took a swig from the delicate bottle he’d been handed, not bothering with a cup. A deep, smokey concoction met his tongue and fairly danced down his throat. It was superb, and no doubt older than he was. Indeed, he would bet that every sip cost more than his boots.
He took another.
“You have the princess now,” Dil said, stating the obvious, with what appeared to be a genuine smile. Dil was good with the charm. Almost as good as Pohut had been.
“To your pending marriage,” Tok said, raising his tumbler to Innel.
Everyone did likewise, Taba making a thoughtful sound as she reached behind to the side table and selected another bottle, filling the cups of those who held theirs to her, putting some splashes in the rest, making the math more difficult. Not an accident.
“And how did he manage that?” Mulack asked no one in particular. “We all had the same damned anknapa. Why isn’t Cern in my bed?”
“Because you’re clumsy,” Taba said, who no doubt had first-hand knowledge. The Cohort had done a lot of practicing.
“There was some actual study involved,” Tok added. “Not something you really cared for, as I recall, Mulack.”
“I studied plenty!” he said, sputtering drunkenly. “The anknapa, she had a—” He made a flopping gesture with one hand that caused everyone to laugh.
Study Cern, Innel thought, but didn’t say.
“A toast,” said Tok, motioning to Innel. “To the hero of Arteni. To whom we owe the very bread in our mouths.”
“Huzzah!” said Taba. They all drank.
“I hear the king was pleased with your efforts in Arteni, Innel,” said Tok.
Innel gave an affirming nod, despite that there had been no discussion with the king about the campaign at all. Which, he supposed, could well be taken as royal approval. The wedding was going ahead, and that was all the approval he really needed.
“To our beloved princess,” said Tok, raising his glass.
Soon to be queen, Innel thought. But no one would say that. Not quite yet. It was too close to questioning the king’s will.
“To the heir!” said Sutarnan with enough enthusiasm that he sloshed red wine across the table. A trick to help empty his glass? A distraction? An honest, drunken slip?
Did any of them make honest slips any more?
“Oh, we’re not out of drink now, are we?” asked Mulack with a pout as he looked deep into his empty clear goblet.
“No, no,” said Tok helpfully, pouring a liberal amount of ale into Mulack’s goblet.
Glass number five. Ale, not wine.
“To our brother, Innel,” said Taba, raising her glass to Innel with a sideways look at Mulack. “May he continue to bring honor to our beloved empire.”
“And may the stench of his astonishingly good fortune permeate all our lives in like fashion,” said Sutarnan with uncommon passion.
Innel remembered something Pohut used to say: Poverty and power both require arrogance. Moving between them, though, often requires the appearance of humility. He gave Sutarnan what he hoped was a modest smile.
“Good fortune!” cried Mulack with a large grin, the gesture overly wide, glass raised so quickly there was ale dribbling over his fingers. “To the heir’s new and virile stud-to-be. May he succeed where all others have failed.”
It was close enough to what should never be said aloud, about the king’s lack of heirs, that the laughter at the table died suddenly.
For some reason everyone looked at Innel.
“Do explain your meaning, Mulack,” Innel said pleasantly.
“Why—marrying the princess, of course.” He gestured around the table with his wet hand still clutched around his goblet. “A feat at which every one of us has marvelously failed.” As if he were a lamp suddenly snuffed out, Mulack’s drunken expression and smile vanished. “Where you, Innel, have succeeded so splendidly.”
Looking over the rim of his goblet at Innel, Mulack emptied his glass.
The wedding, initially postponed because of Innel’s campaign, was postponed again. First a tenday. Then two.
There was always a good reason, and of course it was always the king’s decision.
Innel was sorely tempted to push, to point out that he’d done everything the king had commanded. Had butchered Arteni townspeople to prove his loyalty to the crown, to demonstrate his leadership ability.
Had gotten Cern to say yes.
He already knew what his brother would say; he had said it often: Don’t push until you must. Then go in with all you have.
It was not time to push, so he must be patient. He had Cern’s good will in his pocket now, and prudence dictated holding steady, seeming to be confident in the outcome. He put his focus on keeping both Cern and the king happy, as he gathered what support he could.
An odd position, this one in which he found himself: as long as he was on track to marry Cern, and she on track to become queen, his influence grew, but his coin did not.
With one notable, recent exception. “Make your hire,” Tok had told him softly. “I have funds in hand.” Meaning the mage.
He would have Srel send word to a down-city broker he knew, rather than go through Bolah. Best not to always use the same path to a destination.
No, on second thought, he would tell Bolah as well and see which pathway succeeded first.
Best to have them search outside the city. Any mage in Yarpin was likely already aligned with the old king. Innel needed someone new, someone who did not already know the Anandynars.
Then, one evening, alone with Srel, frustrated, he asked, “Is this damned thing going to happen or not?”
Outside, swirls of snow flew sideways past the window. In the gardens below, a dusting of white collected.
Srel followed his look, then poured hot spiced wine from a flagon with one hand while he dribbled cream from a small cylinder with the other.
“Coin has been committed to the feast, and a fair bit of it. That would seem a strong indicator of yes.”
“Then why is the king still delaying?”
“Oh, that. Well, ser . . .” A small smile.
“He has mixed feelings?”
“Very much so, I think.”
“The mutts,” Innel said, using the title no one would now dare speak.
Srel made a sound indicating disagreement. “I think he likes being king, ser.”
After all the times Restarn had pushed Cern to choose a mate and promised her the throne if she did, a wed Cern was one less excuse. He wanted his daughter to continue his bloodline, but was loath to give up the crown.
There was, Innel suspected, another reason. He thought Cern weak.
It was no secret he had long hoped Cern would blossom into a replica of the Grandmother Queen Nials esse Arunkel, a powerful ruler who kept the empire strong and expanding.
Innel had watched the king as he scrutinized his dogs in the fighting pits to determine which would be given the chance to sire the next bitch’s litter. Innel had seen the intensity of his attention. Restarn cared about one thing: winning. As long as you managed that, some rules could be bent along the way.
Suddenly Innel understood that bringing back his brother’s body had not made the king doubt Innel at all, but rather the opposite; it was what had convinced him that Innel was a suitable mate for Cern. The king thought he had sacrificed his brother to win her.
At this thought Innel felt sickened, closely followed by the fear that if he looked deep into himself, he would find it was true.
He pushed it all away. It didn’t matter; it was the past. There was one direction open to him now, one path, and he’d staked everything he had on it. Unlike the rest of the Cohort with their Houses and wealth, he had no second-best option.
“After that, the Lesser Houses will enter here and here, march around the columns here, stand staggered thus and so behind the Great Houses.” The king’s seneschal looked up sourly from his diagrams at Innel as if doubting he understood.
One wedding date had replaced another so many times that Innel had stopped paying them much attention, so he was more than a little surprised to be standing in the seneschal’s office surrounded by a handful of assistants, the wedding still scheduled for the morning after next.
Might it actually happen?
Most of those who directly served the king, like the seneschal, had offices lining the side of the palace that looked over the walls of the palace grounds onto Execution Square. Innel was looking out just such a window, wondering when they were going to take down the two ice-covered torsos hanging on the square’s display wall.
“And so the Great Houses are in front, represented by a count of—Innel, what is the count from each of the Houses?”
“Twenty-five per House,” he answered, without looking away from the frozen bodies. “The Lessers each have ten.” It was like being drilled, back in Cohort days; a part of his mind was always ready with a correct answer, trained by pain and hunger to never be without.
“Everything must be done exactly as specified. Any mistake will reflect poorly on the king.”
How many times had he heard that admonition?
“Yes,” he said.
“You must nod your head exactly the same amount for each gift from each of the Greater Houses. And likewise, but in lesser measure, for each of the Lesser Houses. Did you practice with a mirror?”
In his peripheral vision, Innel could see the gaunt man look at Srel for an answer.
“Yes,” Innel replied, trying not to sound as irritated as he felt.
“Now we will review the vows—”
“I know them.”
“We will go over them again. There must be no deviation. Not a word. You see where this mark is between the words? That means you inhale at that time. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Innel wondered if the Grandmother Queen had been as creative in her executions as was her grandson. He should ask his Cohort brother Putar, who had made a particularly detailed study of those histories.
“Srel, be sure he has them memorized.” A rustling sound told him that the seneschal had handed Srel yet another set of papers. “Now—the roster of attendees.”
A paper was being held up in front of Innel’s face, blocking his view.
“I know them,” Innel said.
“Be sure you do, ser. This list is as if chiseled in stone, and yet it may change at the last minute. So memorize also this secondary roster”—another piece of paper with hundreds of names on it—“of those who have requested to attend should something happen to those who have been directly invited.”
That would make for some very interesting social events the next two evenings. Innel could imagine fights breaking out among Houses at taverns and pre-wedding celebrations, reflecting quiet arrangements made in the shadows about who should infuriate whom and how much, and what they would get in return for such efforts. The Houses could be impressively cooperative when they wanted something badly enough.
Innel had been granted only two invitations, one each for his mother and sister. He would have been insulted if there had been anyone else to invite, not already on the list. There wasn’t.
His mother had been profoundly relieved when he handed her the threefold envelope, expression as near pleasure as he had seen. For a moment it almost seemed she would look at him.
Cahlen, of course, didn’t care. He must remember to have someone dress her, in case she decided at the last minute to come anyway.
“I was in the Cohort,” he said to the seneschal. “You may have heard. I spent my life studying the damned Houses.”
The seneschal handed more papers to Srel, who exuded his usual calm. Innel again made a mental note to buy something extravagant for Srel as soon as he had the means.
“Do not swear. Not about the Houses, not about anything. Not until your wedding night, and then only if it pleases Her Grace the Princess that you do so. Do you understand me?”
Innel clamped down on the many replies that leapt to mind.
Don’t push until you must.
“Yes.”
“Now—attend to this map. It shows the locations of all the Houses in the Great Hall—”
“Because I won’t be able to tell who they are by their colors?” He could feel himself losing his patience. He looked at Srel, who was smiling faintly, as if everything were right with the world.
“Because, ser Royal Consort-to-be, I have worked very hard to achieve an equal count and arrangement among both Greater and Lesser Houses. Who stands next to whom is no accident. The ordering of the presentation of gifts was harder to arrange than the Charter Court’s opening day feast—no trivial matter that, and I have arranged three of them in my life—and you will learn the locations of the Houses so that you know what to expect and when.”
Innel clenched his teeth against what he wanted to say.
The seneschal seemed, for a moment, to be out of breath. He inhaled, then handed the last sheet to Srel with a pointed look, as if he would hold Srel personally responsible for any mistakes.
Then, to Innel: “The tailors will be in shortly to measure you.”
“Again? Do you jest?”
“Never. Innel, do attend carefully to my next words: she can divorce you far more easily than she marries you. Watch where you put your feet.”
He felt himself warm at this condescension and wondered what the man would think when Innel was made Lord Commander.
When Cern was queen there would, Innel resolved, be a new seneschal. And perhaps a new kitchen scullery boy as well.
For now, though, he would comply.
“I will step only where and when I am told to, seneschal.”
On the day of his wedding, Srel woke him at the fourth bell, in full dark, a lamp in his hand, and presented Innel with a message sealed with the king’s mark.
A shot of apprehension went through Innel. He ripped it open, his mind dancing across various possibilities, read it once, read it again, and handed it to Srel.
A strange, bitter feeling settled over him.
“Congratulations, ser Colonel.” Srel looked at him. “You are disappointed?”
The smallest possible promotion. In time to prevent his daughter marrying a captain. Barely.
Having had the lord commandership dangled in front of him made this seem a meager achievement, where it should have felt a victory. Innel wondered if that had been the king’s real intention, to keep Innel wanting more than he could have, with no plan of ever passing the throne to his daughter, or letting her make Innel lord commander.
But how long could the man keep ruling? His famous grandmother Nials esse Arunkel had stayed on the throne until she found someone she wanted to succeed her: her grandson Restarn. She had passed over her own children and their generation, dismissing them as unsuitable, then passed over Restarn’s older siblings as well. She stayed tight by her grandson’s side while he secured his throne, alive and active in palace politics until she was well over a hundred.
A long time.
And while it seemed unlikely, Restarn could still name someone other than Cern to succeed him.
Srel moved around the room with the ease of a silverfish, selecting underclothes for Innel, setting out various jewelry for the ceremony.
As he looked out the window at the late winter snow, he asked Srel: “Do you think it’s too
late for him to cancel it again?”
“Entirely too late, ser.” Srel smiled, a rare expression on the small man.
It occurred to Innel only now that his steward had been waiting for this day nearly as long as he had.
In short order Innel’s room began to fill with people. Houses Sartor and Murice had both sent so many people to dress him that they could not all reach him at once. The Houses clearly wanted to make their mark on his outfit and began sniping at each other about matters of buttons and tucks.
Finally Innel growled, “I can rip it all off and let you sew it back on.”
After that they were more polite. Another hour went by with needles and other sharp objects moving around him, making Innel even more testy. All this in order to adjust an outfit that looked much the same to him as it had an hour ago.
When at last they left he was rushed to one of the Great Hall’s antechambers to wait.
Like a working animal, he thought, not liking it much. He stepped out into the hallway and found a door that opened to the Great Hall, prying open a crack to look through. For a moment all other thought fled his mind.
In the hall stood a thousand murmuring aristos, packed tight in knots of House colors, each jacket and glove, cravat and earring bright in appropriate hues, long hair swept into elaborate towers draped with chains and sparkling gemstones. In stance and expression he could read the strains and linkages between the Houses.
In the galleries above, royals sat up front, the Lesser Houses standing behind. From the banisters draped chains of the various metals from which Arunkel derived wealth, red and black flowers woven through.
It came to him then that this whole event was going to cost the king a very great deal. It was an immensely satisfying thought.
The mutt was worth something.
Then the ceremony began. First a speech by the king about the necessary patriotism of every Arunkin, then a list of the accomplishments of the Anandynar line and a summary of the history of the empire. For a time it seemed he intended to discuss every one of the nine-hundred eighty-three years.