Tomorrow's Kingdom

by Maureen Fergus

  “You are very naughty to show the poor prince consort such disrespect,” chided Persephone as she led Fleet back to where Azriel stood scowling and huffing.

  “You know, it might help if you didn’t sound quite so loving when you were chastising him,” he complained, looking so handsome in his suit of armour that it was endearing beyond measure to hear him sound like an outraged boy.

  As Persephone stood marvelling at how very, very much she loved Azriel, the baby suddenly kicked harder than he’d ever done before—so hard that Persephone staggered and clutched at her belly.

  “What is it?” asked Azriel, his blue eyes flashing with alarm as he hastily reached out to steady her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing is wrong,” said Persephone breathlessly as she forced herself to stand up straight and tall. “Your son is just a strong baby.”

  Careless of the throngs that were watching, Azriel reverently laid his hands upon her belly, leaned his forehead against hers and murmured, “If the Fates are willing, someday my son will be a strong king.”

  “Yes,” whispered Persephone, stamping down a sudden flutter of panic at the thought of all that could go wrong between this day and that. “If the Fates are willing.”

  Without further delay, Azriel lifted Persephone into the saddle, swung up onto his own horse and held his raised hand out toward her. After she’d lightly taken it, she turned and nodded at the six uniformed buglers who were standing nearby. As one, they lifted their horns to their lips and sounded the call to move out.

  From the streets beyond the palace wall there erupted a mighty cheer.

  Everyone in Parthania that day agreed that the cavalcade was the most magnificent the realm had ever seen. In front of Persephone and Azriel rode the standard bearer; directly behind them rode the mounted members of the royal guard. Behind the guard were two curtained litters—one occupied by Miter and the bag of loot he’d managed to collect during his stay in the imperial palace, the other intended for Persephone when she grew weary of the saddle. Behind the two litters was Lord Atticus, Cairn and Rachel—she without Zdeno, he having been sent on a mission of great import six days earlier. Lord Bartok, his fellow lords and his foot soldiers came after these three, then Robert and his bandits, Barka and his Khan warriors, and Fayla and the archers she’d spent the past weeks training. Behind all these were supply wagons beyond counting and several of the many battalions of lowborn men who’d answered Persephone’s call to arms, the rest being camped outside the city walls along with Lord Bartok’s cavalry.

  The mood in the city streets was an odd mixture of tense and celebratory. Most able-bodied men were in the procession, but the women, the young, the old and the infirm were many, and they lined the streets cheering wildly and calling blessings upon the queen and her army. Persephone sat high in the saddle, smiling and waving to show her confidence and courage to those who cheered her and—more importantly—to those who might very well have to do battle for her in the days and weeks to come.

  At length, Persephone found herself riding through the great gates and beyond the safety of the impenetrable city walls. As she did so, she smiled at Azriel to show him that she was not afraid to walk the path that lay before her. He smiled back to show her that he’d never thought she was.

  Some time later—after the last of the soldiers had marched out of the city, the gates had been shut to protect those left behind, and Fleet had paused to denude a rather scraggly looking sugarberry bush—Persephone turned around in her saddle. Looking beyond the vast sea of armed men, she gazed at the towering walls that had never failed to awe her.

  And she wondered what price might have to be paid to lay eyes upon them again someday—and who among them might have to pay it.

  FIFTY-TWO

  THE ROYAL ARMY had marched halfway to the bridge that Mordecai had named as the meeting place when Zdeno caught up with them.

  By the time he’d finished making his report, Persephone was white-faced with anger.

  “I … I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” faltered Zdeno, dropping his gaze to the dirt floor of the candle-lit tent. “I know how you were hoping I would discover that he’d lied about everything.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for, Zdeno,” assured Persephone before abruptly slapping the table and snapping, “But for gods’ sakes, of all the bedfellows this war might have saddled me with, why did it have to be him?”

  “The Fates and their tricks,” muttered Azriel in a tone that suggested he didn’t think much of the Fates or their tricks.

  Looking over at him, Persephone said, “Is this as bad as I think it is, Azriel?”

  “Worse,” he replied.

  Persephone nodded—calmly, for Zdeno’s sake. “And is it too late to turn the tables?” she asked.

  Azriel considered her question for a long moment. “We are four days away from the parlay,” he finally replied. “Much can change in four days.”

  And much can stay the same, thought Persephone. But all she said was, “Do what you can.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  LESS THAN AN HOUR before the parlay that would herald the dawn of a new age for the kingdom, a page darted into Lord Bartok’s sumptuous tent and cried, “My lord, Her Majesty, the queen, requests your presence!”

  “Tell Her Majesty that I shall attend upon her the very instant I have finished shaving,” said Lord Bartok without looking at the boy.

  The page nodded and bolted out of the camp tent. After he’d gone, Lord Bartok continued carefully scraping his cheek with the straight razor. He resumed pondering if it was truly worth waiting to disinherit Atticus until he had a new son in the cradle. Unbelievably, during the march north, instead of making an effort to behave in a manner more suited to his great station as he’d been told he must if he wished to preserve his inheritance, Atticus had done the exact opposite. He’d picked fights and complained incessantly; he’d guzzled wine and openly caroused with camp followers who didn’t look fit to clean out his chamber pot, much less warm his bed.

  It is just as well that he’s been avoiding me like the Great Sickness, thought Lord Bartok grimly as he set down his razor, wiped his face with a cloth and ran a comb through his hair. Otherwise, I might very well have ordered him sent to keep company with the stable boy—and the dirt and the worms.

  His ablutions complete, Lord Bartok stood, lifted his cape off the camp bed, shook it out and tied it on. Lastly, he felt for the ivory king in the pocket of the padded blue doublet he wore beneath his gleaming silver chest armour. Reassured that it was yet there, he smiled and stepped out of his tent.

  It would not be long now.

  They’d made camp the previous evening after marching hard for more than a week. Within an hour of setting up camp, a message had been sent to Mordecai letting him know that the queen and her army were a short distance from the named bridge and suggesting that as a show of good faith, they should both attend the meeting accompanied by only a handful of armed retainers. At dawn this morning, Mordecai had replied suggesting midday today as the time of the meeting and agreeing to her suggestion. Given that the secret plan called for the armies to meet—that hers might be sandwiched and destroyed—Lord Bartok had been somewhat dismayed by this turn of events. However, he’d understood that for Mordecai to have done other than to agree to the queen’s suggestion would have been to raise her suspicions to the point that she mightn’t have met with him at all. No matter—the cripple’s canny general would find a way to bring the armies together. By sunset tonight—tomorrow at the very latest—the unfit queen and her Gypsy husband would be dead, her followers would be dead or captured, and he, Lord Bartok, would be king of Glyndoria—the man that a thousand years of history would remember as the one who’d elevated the great Bartok Dynasty from noble to royal.

  Wishing his own cold father were alive that he might see how far these achievements surpassed his own, Lord Bartok deftly stepped over one of the puddles of filth that had already begun to accumulate around the camp.
Striding the last few paces toward the royal tent, he gestured to the guards to stand down, pushed aside the flap and stepped inside.

  The first thing Lord Bartok noticed after his eyes adjusted to the dimness was that Atticus was standing beside the pregnant queen.

  The second thing he noticed was that half a dozen battle-axe-wielding savages—including the very big one that old King Balthazar had once called friend—had silently moved to encircle him the instant he’d set foot inside the tent.

  Sensing danger the likes of which he’d never known, Lord Bartok nevertheless affected not to notice Atticus or the savages. Instead, he graciously bowed to the queen. “You requested my presence, Your Majesty?” he said, pleased to hear that he sounded as cool as ever in spite of his uncomfortably galloping heart.

  The queen said nothing only nodded at Atticus.

  Soft hands clenched into fists, Atticus stalked toward Lord Bartok, weaving slightly as he did so. “So, you thought to disinherit and disown me, did you, Father?” he sneered, his breath heavy with wine fumes. “Well, you’ll never get the chance, because I told them everything! How you sent me after Mordecai so that you could kidnap and ravish the queen yourself … how you ordered your own daughter to lie with a commoner in the hope of begetting a child you could pass off as the dead king’s … how you had the stable boy murdered … how Aurelia’s false pregnancy was your idea … how you sold her to the cripple to seal the deal that would see the queen’s army sandwiched between two enemies.” He laughed shrilly. “As I said— everything!”

  Lord Bartok was too skilled a courtier to let his exploding panic show. Thinking fast, he gave his stilllaughing son a look that suggested that he couldn’t decide whether to pity or be angry at him (when in truth he wanted to kill him). Then he turned toward the queen and murmured, “I knew the drink would addle his wits someday, Your Majesty, but I never imagined that he would dream up—”

  “I do not think it is a dream at all, my lord,” said the queen flatly. “My men reported that the body of the stable boy was found exactly where Lord Atticus had said it would be.”

  Desperate to gain control of the situation, Lord Bartok bowed his head and said, “It … it grieves me beyond words to know that you thought for an instant that—”

  “And where is your daughter?” interrupted the queen.

  “At my estate north of Wickendale, where you gave me leave to take her,” said Lord Bartok quickly.

  “No, she is not,” said the lowborn Councillor with the hideous birthmark on his face. Sounding almost apologetic, he said, “I made thorough search of your estate, my lord, and spoke with many of your servants. She is not there and has not been seen for some weeks.”

  The last of the colour drained from Lord Bartok’s noble face. “W-well … then … she must have r-run away,” he said, appalled to hear that he was stammering and stuttering like some godforsaken dungeon rat. Resisting the urge to wipe the beading sweat from his brow, he babbled, “Aurelia has ever been a most wilful child. I can assure Your Majesty that—”

  “Lord Bartok, for your most heinous crimes, I hereby strip you of all titles, lands and wealth and order you imprisoned to await further justice,” announced the queen. “You will henceforth be known as Ned Bartok—”

  “But … but my name is Edward!” he blurted in horror and anguish.

  “Ned Bartok,” she repeated in a hard voice. “And you shall doff your cap and bend the knee to your betters— starting with the gentlemen who will be escorting you out of my tent.”

  Lord Bartok heard the words the queen spoke but could not bring himself to believe them until he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder forcing him downward.

  As Ned Bartok, the former greatest of the great lords of Glyndoria was driven to his knees before the tribal savages who were now his declared betters, he had a sudden nightmare vision of his descendants scratching out a living in the dirt.

  And when he realized that the vision was no nightmare but that it was real and that a thousand years of history would remember him as the man who’d made it so, Ned Bartok fell face first to the ground so heavily that the ivory king in his doublet pocket snapped clean in half.

  And the last thing he heard before he lost consciousness altogether was a voice saying, “The hour of the parlay fast approaches, Your Majesty. It is time to go.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  “IT IS TIME TO GO, Your Grace.”

  At the sound of Murdock’s voice at the entrance of his tent, Mordecai jerked his head around. “She has arrived?” he asked.

  “Not according to the report given by the scout most recently returned from his post overlooking the bridge,” said Murdock. “But it is nearing midday, and I would prefer us to arrive at the meeting place first that we might gain advantage by having our men in position when the queen arrives. That way, if she has decided to break faith and bring her entire army instead of just—”

  “She will not break faith, Murdock,” interrupted Mordecai, turning back to the looking glass into which he’d been staring when his general had arrived. “She is too soft-hearted to risk unnecessary bloodshed—even if the blood that would be shed is worthless. She and the cockroach will suspect trickery, of course, but thanks to the added strength they believe Lord Bartok’s knights have brought to their fighting force, they will be confident of being able to defeat me should it come to that.”

  Murdock hesitated for just a moment. Then, with a fleeting glance at Lady Aurelia’s inert form beneath the covers of the camp bed, he bowed his head and departed the tent.

  Mordecai smiled broadly at his beautiful reflection. He knew why Murdock had hesitated. It was because when Mordecai had ordered a message sent to the queen informing her that he would honour her request that they come to the meeting with only a few armed retainers, Murdock had assumed he was lying and that Mordecai yet intended to arrive with the entire New Man army at his back. Indeed, his repulsive henchman had been quite pleased by the turn of events, since it would allow them to eliminate the queen and her party first before marching onward to assist Lord Bartok in slaughtering the nowleaderless royal army.

  But Mordecai had not been lying. Though he could obviously see the merit of Murdock’s strategy, he’d not been able to resist the urge to play with the queen one last time. To make a great show of hemming and hawing and pretending that he was considering whatever she was offering; to watch her pretty face fall when she realized that they could not come to terms. To see her brimming with determination as she rode away to prepare for the battle she believed she could not lose.

  To hear her whole world come crashing down around her ears when she realized that Lord Bartok was a traitor and that every last hope she had for the future was as doomed as her pathetic army of nobodies.

  Yes, the woman who’d played Mordecai for a fool so many times before was about to get played herself.

  It took less than an hour for Mordecai, Murdock and their party of soldiers to ride to the meeting place. By the time they arrived, the day that had dawned so bright and clear had clouded over, and a chill wind had kicked up. Digging his spurs into the flanks of the wretched horse that had so jarred him during the ride, Mordecai galloped to the top of a small rise that he might look down on the meeting spot. As he did so, he could not help noting that Murdock had chosen the place well. The wooden bridge that spanned the river was easily defendable from both sides, and the river, though quite shallow, was broad enough to give both parties a sense of security. That being said, the slightly elevated bank on his side of the river would allow them the advantage of looking down on the queen, and the mostly open field on the queen’s side of the river would prevent her from making a stealth approach.

  Mordecai did not bother praising his general for a job well done. Instead, he drove his beast down to the water’s edge and sat staring across the river with an expression that evidently did not encourage any in his party to approach him because none did until a quarter of an hour past midday when Murdock finally drew h
is horse alongside and murmured, “I fear the queen is not coming, Your Grace.”

  “Your fears are misplaced,” snapped Mordecai, who’d begun to fear the same thing.

  Even as he spoke the words, however, he spied movement in the copse of trees beyond the field on the far side of the river. The next instant, mounted archers began bursting into the clearing at a full gallop. Upon emerging from the trees, the first turned sharply right, the second left, the third right and so on until they were lined up facing the river, the exact same distance between each horse except for the two in the very middle. For several seconds no one moved and Mordecai could hear nothing but the rising wind whistling through the trees. Then a fierce female voice called out a command. As one, each archer drew an arrow from his quiver, notched it into the bow, drew back and aimed it skyward in Mordecai’s direction.

  As the archers froze once more, two beautiful caparisoned horses emerged from the wider space between the two middle horses.

  That’s when Mordecai saw her.

  His breath caught at the sight of her riding toward him looking like something out of a fairy tale in her simple silver crown and suit of armour—her glossy dark hair bouncing gently with each step the horse took, a look of unmistakable determination on that face that had haunted his dreams since that first night he’d discovered her standing ankle-deep in alley muck all those months ago.

  For a fleeting moment, Mordecai wondered if he loved her.

  Then she reined up at the water’s edge, and he noticed the gross swell of her pregnant belly and the broad shoulders of the cockroach who’d planted the seed. And Mordecai’s insides turned to ice, and all he wondered was why he hadn’t allowed his soldier to run a sword through her belly back in the alley when he’d had the chance.