by Sonia Lyris
Then go in with all you have.
At times it was difficult to believe Cern had been training to be queen her entire life. As Innel sat at the table of ministers, she was silent, tense, barely answering.
It was almost as if she expected her father to show up at any moment and tell her it had all been a mistake, or a poor joke. He supposed she, too, would need some time to absorb what had happened to her.
But if she appeared weak, then so did Innel.
When in the meeting, her answers proved truly inadequate, a few questioning looks came Innel’s way. He returned them ambiguously. He would contact the ministers later, make sure they knew this was temporary.
Much later, when he was alone with Cern, she said, “It’s too much, Innel. No one could keep track of all this.”
“That’s why you have ministers and advisers, Your Grace.”
And me. Which he did not say. She had spent a lifetime being told what to think. He had distinguished himself, in part, by refraining from being one of the many who did so.
She wouldn’t admit it, but he could see it in her body, and hear it in her tone, that she was scared.
“One step at a time,” he told her, gently. “That’s how we got here. That’s how we will go forward.”
“They expect me to be Nials,” she said bitterly.
That was true. Many were looking at her for signs of her famous great-grandmother. Another thing he couldn’t say to her.
“You will make your own mark. Together we will show them who you are.” He put as much warmth and conviction into his voice as he dared, knowing she was used to being told all manner of flattering lies.
At this she laughed a little, but there was no pleasure in it. “Whatever that is,” she whispered.
He looked into her dark green eyes. She turned away and went to the chest where she kept her rods and hooks, flats, and now the set of bells that Innel had given her as a wedding present. Eyeing the ceiling from which descended a small chain, she began to put rods between the links, starting another of her in-air creations.
Best to go now and let her comfort herself with this thing she did. But he could not bring himself to let the barely mouthed words go by without comment. Not after all he had done to get them to this moment.
“The queen, Cern,” he said softly. “You are the queen.”
Almost imperceptibly, she shrugged.
“That was fast work,” Innel said of his reflection in the mirror while Srel adjusted the buttons and collars, cuffs and seams of the red and black uniform. Especially remarkable given that it had come from both Houses Murice and Sartor, working together, in under a tenday.
Innel found his eyes locked on the reflection, especially the gold trim of neckline and arms that marked him as the queen’s high command. He touched it wonderingly. “Did you give them my measurements?”
“No, ser,” answered Srel.
Well, so, even more impressive: the two Houses had gone to some lengths to tailor a new uniform for Innel. They wanted him pleased and well aware of their support.
And he was. “What do you think?” he asked Nalas.
Nalas gave an approving nod. “You look very much the part, ser.”
“The part?” He frowned at his second.
“I only meant, Lord Commander, that—”
Innel waved the explanation away. “Yes, yes. What do they say about me today, Srel?”
“That you are young and inexperienced. That you should give the position to someone else.”
Innel snorted. “My age and credentials would never matter. It’s my bloodline they object to. Would they rather keep Lason?”
“Some would,” he said.
Innel suppressed annoyance at this undecorated answer. That Srel didn’t dissemble, his loyalty manifesting in such directness, was one of the reasons Innel kept him close.
Nalas he kept close for his cleverness and speed, though his tongue did sometimes stumble. At least he knew when to keep his mouth shut. Mostly.
Lason had still not shown any indication of being aware that he had been replaced. What, Innel wondered, would the old king have done now, had Lason not been his brother?
There was no question in his mind, and Innel had seen it countless times. Restarn would say a few words, and Lason would vanish. Lason’s wife and children would hastily relocate, far from the capital city. Lason would not return. If anyone went looking for him, they would not return either.
A lifetime of watching Restarn’s ways had long ago resolved him to do things differently when Cern took the throne.
Nalas handed him his sword belt and sword. It was the first time in his life he’d carried a weapon openly in the palace, let alone a sword. To do otherwise was an implicit questioning of the king’s power in his own house, an insult and offense. But now Cern was queen and Innel was Lord Commander. He buckled the weapon on.
They stepped outside his small office, where a tencount of Innel’s new guard waited. Nalas and Srel had selected the set of them together. Innel was pleased with the men and women who looked back at him now.
Who looked back at him. Under Lason, direct eye contact was discouraged.
“Look at me,” he had told them when he first met with them. “If you’re going to protect me, you must know what I look like, where I am, and what I’m doing. Yes?”
Nods all around. A few grins.
Now he made a gesture, telling them to stay where they were, and only took Srel and Nalas with him.
“Is Lason still in my offices?” he asked as he walked.
“Yes, ser,” Srel answered.
“Are you certain you don’t want a few more than only the two of us, ser?” Nalas asked.
To go with force was to expect to need it. Something his brother used to say.
“I’m certain.”
When Innel rounded the corner, Lason’s guards, two on each side of the Lord Commander’s office doors, shrank a little, looking away. That Innel had only Srel and Nalas with him made this even more remarkable. Innel would later have Srel and Nalas determine whether this cringing was driven by fear or prudence, to see if these four would keep their posts after today.
As he opened the door to the offices, none of them moved to intercept him. Once inside, Nalas and Srel left beyond, he shut the door and dropped the bolt behind him.
Maps covered the walls, hung between a scattering of swords, spears, and slings.
The gray-haired Lason looked up from his desk, his face twisting in fury. Under his hands was an old map Innel recognized. Pre-expansion. Lason was reliving an old victory.
“These are my offices,” Innel said, cutting off whatever the man might have been about to say. “It’s well past time for you to leave.”
Lason slammed the flat of his hand hard on the desk. “You are nowhere near ready to take over this office. You haven’t any idea what it means. You are nothing like qualified.”
“The queen disagrees.”
Lason drew himself upright. “She’s barely twenty-five. A child. When the king returns—”
“There was a coronation. Did no one tell you?”
A look of loathing. “The king will recover.”
Innel plucked a dagger from the wall, hefted it to see how it balanced, waiting for Lason to object, which he did not. He put it down, walked the periphery of the room. “How old were you when you took this office?”
“Times were different then. She needs my expertise, now more than ever. No one trusts you, Innel.”
Innel closed fast on Lason, stopping short of arm’s reach. The other man took a startled step backward. “Lason,” he said. “Your command is over. Step aside. Grow old in glory.”
“I’m not done.”
Innel glanced at the map on the desk. The northern expansion, some decades back. The one Innel’s father had given his life for.
“You most certainly are done. I’ll give you until this afternoon’s fifth bell to leave my offices.”
“The queen wi
ll see reason. I’ll go to her.”
“Don’t challenge me. If you do, it will be the last time.”
“It’s all been so easy for you, hasn’t it? Your rise to power. Just one long streak of good luck.”
Innel was startled at these words. That anyone could see him as fortunate, in any way, as though he had somehow stumbled his way to where he now stood, was beyond his comprehension.
Lason snorted. “And all because your father managed to get himself killed in battle in some clever way that the king noticed. I assure you that being killed is not at all difficult, boy, and it doesn’t matter how clever you are about it, because you’re dead. Your father was clumsy.”
Innel fought a craving to slam the man to the ground. He was simply not sure, once he started such a thing, that he’d be able to stop.
Bad for appearances, Innel beating the old king’s brother. The queen’s uncle. It would look as if Cern had married and promoted a man with an unstable temper, and that would do them no good.
But it was tempting. Agonizingly so. He struggled to keep his hands at his side.
“You mutt,” Lason spat. “You’ll ruin Arunkel, piss on this glorious empire, shit all over everything we’ve built.”
One of the advantages of Restarn’s ways, Innel realized, was that this confrontation would never have taken place.
Innel walked to the door, unbolted it. “The fifth bell,” he repeated.
“I trained you, Innel. I know what you know. I’ve seen your mistakes, and I know every one of them. It’s disgusting, what you did. We lost one of our best when you slaughtered your brother. Pohut had good sense, and patience. But you—”
Innel shut the door behind him and wondered if Restarn’s methods might not have something to recommend them after all.
“What else?” Innel asked, keeping his voice low, despite that the two of them were alone in this small cellar room, vegetables and bags stacked high on shelves.
Innel had made sure Rutif was part of the team that delivered fruits and vegetables to the palace. The man had one leg shorter than the other and always stood lopsided, now splaying a hand to lean against the wall as he spoke.
A dockworker from childhood, until a crushing accident had taken most of his foot and ruined his knee, Rutif had a knack for getting people talking, and remembering what they had said, so Innel paid him to sit in the taverns and drink, which the man liked very much.
“Ser. Well—” Rutif drawled, rubbing his head in thought. “They liked the coronation parades. Especially the part with the sweet bread thrown from the carriages, the ones with the royal sigil baked in? They liked that very much.” He grinned, a gap-tooth smile.
That had been Innel’s idea, which the seneschal had not much cared for, muttering about propriety and expense.
“Tell them it was the queen’s idea. What else?”
“Yes, ser Commander. Let me think. Complaints from some of the captains.” Rutif scratched the back of his head, examined his fingers as if to see if anything had come off under his nails. “Since His Grace the old king’s been so sick, they haven’t been getting their full take. Don’t like it so much. Whining a lot.”
Full take? Innel needed to have a conversation with the Minister of Accounts. And a look at the ledgers. Perhaps the ledgers first. “Names?”
“Ahead of you there, Lord Commander,” Rutif said, handing Innel a folded piece of paper that was stained with what Innel hoped was only food.
“What else?” he asked.
“People saying how things are going to be better under the new queen. They say she looks like the Grandmother.”
She didn’t, not a bit, and anyone with a whole nals could see that, but it was a good rumor anyway. “I like that one; keep it going. Meet again next week. Now, you can get back to—” He waved at the stacks of vegetables.
“Oh, and there’s a young sergeant, got her drunk the other night, on about you and your brother. Something about a hard ride south a couple of years ago.”
At this, Innel froze. “Who?”
“Last name on the list, ser.”
Innel stepped to the edge of the large sunken tub where Cern bathed in steaming water. The royal bath was now Cern’s, and the old king was bathed in his own rooms with a basin.
And yet here Innel was, almost as often as before. One of the ways in which she was very like her father. Which he would not say.
A slave boy knelt at the side of the tub, beginning to work a scented paste into Cern’s hair. When it was wet, Innel could see the hint of mahogany that was characteristic of the Anandynars. Like embers, he thought.
“Good afternoon, Your Majesty.”
Her mouth twitched at this coming from him, as though she could not quite decide how she felt about it. But Innel knew that his respect soothed her, and soothed she was more reasonable.
She stared out the window at the Houses and city spread below.
“Lason and I have spoken,” he said after a moment. “It wasn’t a friendly talk. He is refusing to leave my offices.”
“Ah. That explains why he demanded to speak to me today.”
“And?”
“I am busy.”
Innel made a thoughtful sound, not sure if this was loyalty on her part, or avoidance. “Perhaps you should talk to him, my lady. You might persuade him that it is in his best interest to cooperate.”
Her shoulders twitched in a shrug that sent ripples across the tub. The blond slave lathering her arm paused, sponge in hand. “You take care of it, Innel.”
There was a fine line between her letting him make decisions, and appearing not to rule at all.
“I can hardly send him to survey the roads in the outer provinces, as your father would have done at this obstinacy, much as I might like to. He’s your uncle.”
Her mouth turned downward. “I will talk to him.”
Innel rubbed his chin, fingers still surprised at the naked skin there. Cern didn’t like beards, so now everyone shaved. Those who did not were watched closely, in the Yarpin style, by the many who did.
“I’ve been talking to some of the captains about the rails to the north,” he said. It had been a challenge to find any who would confide in him about what was going on out there.
The slave poured water slowly and carefully over Cern’s head. Innel could see the effort involved as the slave boy poured with great attention to avoid her eyes. It must have been especially challenging when she nodded, as she did now.
“Good,” she said, distracted.
“There’s widespread corruption. Transporting goods via rail, to and from the mining villages. Without House sanction or royal accommodation.”
A second slave was tilting a bowl into the bathwater of dried flowers and scented herbs. Cern raised two fingers, and the slave froze in mid-tilt. Two more leaves escaped, fluttering down to the water.
“I suppose this has been going on for a while?”
That there were black-market arrangements up and down the Great Road and throughout the city, they both knew. How many, and how far it went, how much it was costing the crown, they had not. To grab hold of it, they would have to unravel the tangled knots that made up Restarn’s web of unwritten arrangements.
“Yes. It will take a while to sort out.” Some knots were better sliced across, but Cern’s rule was yet too young to take such abrupt action.
“I have sufficient things to take my attention,” she said. “Kelerre wants us to pay for repairs to their port, did you know that?”
“I had heard something about it, yes.”
In truth, he had been up late the night before, studying years’ worth of correspondence and trade agreements between the crown and the nominally Perripin city of Kelerre.
“The ministers demand I approve everything. Perripin trade agreements, currency exchange contracts, shipping schedules . . .” She trailed off, raising and lowering a foot, making small waves against the side of the tub. “Surely you can take care of this.”
“Yes, of course, my lady.”
The slave rinsed Cern’s hair, and the other dried her head. It seemed a good time to leave, now that they had reached an accord of sorts. Perhaps the other subject could wait. He could do what he needed to do without telling her at all, but if it came to light and she did not know—
“However,” he said, sitting by the edge of the tub, “to find the corruption and fix it, I must hire someone with . . . exceptionally good vision.”
She knocked the boy’s hands away from her head. “Out. All of you.” Slaves, servants, guards—all but Innel left the room at a near run. She gave him a look. “You can’t mean what I think you mean.”
“I do.”
“We do not do this.”
Innel knew how far from the truth this was, and again wondered how she could know so little about how her father conducted business.
“That is not quite the case,” he said mildly. “What we face is beyond simple graft and chit-bribes. Our soldiers are soliciting coin from towns to ignore taxation and Charter violations. The crown is losing revenue. And reputation.”
“So root out the corrupt ones and send them to Execution Square.” She waved a hand. “You are now in charge of executions. Make it right, Innel.”
“Cern, we need—”
“The laws exist for good reason.”
He motioned to the wide expanse of window. “Do you really think House Glass made this? You promoted me to Lord Commander because you trust me to do the necessary work. This is necessary.”
“You’ve seen the Shentarat plains, Innel. A wasteland. Nothing lives there now. Magic did that.”
“A mage did that. Magic does not act by itself.”
“They bring death.”
“The same can be said of our army.”
“They are like raccoons. Once they learn you will feed them, you can’t get rid of them.”
She had no idea how hard they truly were to come by, nor did he plan to tell her. “They sell their services like any merchant. Even mages need to eat.”
“They bring ill-fortune. Stone that rots, babies born dead, the melting plague.”