Kingshold

by D P Woolliscroft

  Those few words hit Hoskin like a punch in the gut. Recognition. But what about the books and the hills? said the part of him that wanted to get away.

  And the other Hoskin laughed.

  “Thank you, Lord Bollingsmead. I’ll give it some thought this evening… Now, I have taken enough of your time; enjoy your celebrations.”

  Hoskin turned and walked away, his face a picture of shock only noticed by a few onlookers.

  Hoskin sat in a comfortable armchair in his quarters, dressed in a cotton nightgown, with a book in his lap. He considered his accommodation. More significant than most, but more modest than he could have justified. These rooms had become his own and felt like home. Would he miss them if he went back to the house of his childhood? Could he even remember what his rooms looked like there? Since the death of his mother and father, he’d now have the master chambers, which he’d rarely been allowed to enter.

  These thoughts had intruded on him as he worked his way through the book the wizard had given him: Bethel the Red. The queen used to frighten children if they wouldn’t go to sleep. The stories of her inquisitorial squads pulling families apart, chopping blocks working day and night, were known by all. But this account was slightly different, or at least provided context.

  He never knew the extent to which Pyrfew had infiltrated Kingshold with agents, apparently high-born and commoner, rich and poor, many of the cells not knowing about the others. It was tinder packed under the very foundations of Kingshold that would have been ready to be lit at a moment’s notice. Given the past few weeks’ experience, Bethel’s actions began to make some sense to Hoskin.

  A knock at the door interrupted his reading once more.

  “Yes? Who is it?”

  “It’s Percival, my lord. May I come in?”

  “Of course.”

  The door opened, and the familiar face of his assistant peeked around the door.

  “My lord, I have Lady Grey here to see you.” And without waiting, he opened the door wide to let in the woman, her features hidden under a hooded black coat. Once inside, she pulled down the hood to reveal her handsome face, and Percival closed the door behind her. Percival remained outside.

  “What an unexpected pleasure, my lady,” said Hoskin by way of greeting. “It’s not often I’m visited in my nightgown by a beautiful woman.” He chuckled at his attempt at flattery.

  “I know,” she replied flatly. “I know all about you, Lord Hoskin. How are you? You looked quite ill after talking with Lord Bollingsmead earlier.”

  “Yes, it did take me a little by surprise. Probably just the shock on top of the tiredness from the past few weeks. I was rather looking forward to retiring, you know. But if my country needs me, then I guess I’ll have to put it on hold.”

  “I was afraid you might say that.”

  “Pardon?” Hoskin paused. His visitor’s previous words only just sinking in as being a little peculiar. This whole meeting suddenly seemed quite out of the ordinary. “What did you mean about knowing all about me?”

  “Sit on the bed,” commanded Lady Grey, ignoring his questioning.

  “You can’t come in here and order me around, my lady!”

  “Sit. On. The. Bed.” As she spoke the words, a force compelled him to stand, walk over and perch on the edge of the bed. He tried to fight it, but his legs wouldn’t obey him. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, Hoskin. I truly am. You may not realize it, but you’ve been most helpful.”

  “Percival! Come quick!” he called.

  The door opened slightly, and Percival’s head appeared around the door once more.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you, my lord,” said his trusted assistant. He slipped into the room, closing the door behind him. “But it was a pleasure working with you these years.”

  Lady Grey and Percival advanced on Hoskin, now unable to move any of his limbs, his jaw clenched shut by an invisible force against his desire to scream for help. Lady Grey pushed him gently back onto the bed, and Percival picked up his feet from the floor, so he lay comfortably. Lady Grey pulled a small vial from a pocket of her coat and held it up for him to see.

  “This poison is quite painless,” she explained. “I believe it’s the type of thing young lovers drink when they’re kept apart. Gentle sleep, and then your heart will stop. I don’t think it will come as a great surprise to anyone that you’d take your own life in such a romantic fashion.”

  She bent over the lord chancellor, smiling at him the way one would to a sick child when about to administer medicine. One hand gripped his nostrils as his mouth opened involuntarily, and she poured the sour poison down his throat. He tried not to swallow, but he was going to choke and drown if he didn’t. The liquid slipped down his gullet and, slowly, black crept in from the corners of his vision until the light of the room became pinpricks.

  And then darkness.

  Chapter 48

  One Last Night

  “Mareth, do we have to have so many guards here tonight?” called Jules from across the common room. She wasn’t happy, threading through the roomful of armored palace guards sitting around, talking, playing cards, but not consuming any beer.

  “Yes!” answered Dolph. “Tell me again, Mareth, why we’re not staying at the palace tonight?”

  Mareth leaned back on his chair, feet on his favorite table, and a grin plastered on his face that seemed like it would never come off. He took a sip of foamy beer and rocked forward. “Because I don’t start the job until tomorrow. And they might not let reprobates like you lot into the palace.” Mareth winked at Trypp.

  “Who are you calling a reprobate?” said Jules, putting down a tray of drinks and cuffing him playfully around the head. There was a scrape of chairs behind her, and three members of the guard got to their feet. “Sit down, you pillocks,” she called back at them, and they sheepishly returned to their seats.

  Jules sat at the table after passing around the drinks, and Mareth took a moment to look at the friends around him. It’s true, he might have had a few drinks so far, but it wasn’t the ale causing the giddiness. He felt a genuine warmth for his companions.

  “And I also wanted to be here one last time,” said Mareth, looking at his mug. “One more time when we could pretend we were going to try to change the world without the reality of having to do so. I have so much to thank you all for.”

  He looked at Petra to his right. They held hands under the table, and she squeezed his knuckles harder than he’d expect for someone of her size. Her blonde hair was tied in a braid that fell down the front of her dress. She looked beautiful. Jules had helped her with an outfit fitting for the palace earlier that evening, and no one had a chance to change. Her cheeks were flushed, probably from going pint to pint with him, and her eyes glistened as if she was on the verge of tears.

  “Petra, my love, you’ve been the dawn of my life. Without you, I’d still probably be sitting here this evening, but having done nothing of worth in the meantime. You believed in me when no one else did, and you were the first link in the chain that binds all of us who are around this table.”

  Petra smiled while a tear escaped her eye. She leaned over and grabbed Mareth by the collar and pulled him into a long kiss. Alana’s cough interrupted them, and Mareth turned his attention to her. He couldn’t believe she was up and about when last week she was bleeding out on the inn floor. But there she was, actually looking stronger than she had earlier today (obviously the healing power of ale) and with not even a scar to show above her gown.

  “Alana. Where to begin? Without you, I’d be six feet under. Without you, we wouldn’t have known what to do. And without you, half of this table wouldn’t have come together. Thank you so much for driving us all forward.”

  Motega, Florian, and Trypp were spread around the table. Motega and Florian had their customary smiles, and Trypp was trying hard not to enjoy himself. These three had been essential to what had been done, and they’d hitched their wagon to his solely on the basis of adventure.
He was going to need to keep them around, but maintaining their interest would be the challenge.

  “Motega, Florian, and Trypp, more people who have saved my life. I probably need to be a little more careful about that in the future. But seriously, you guys are an amazing team. I don’t know how you do what you do, but keep doing it. And do it for Edland, please.”

  “Lady Neenahwi.” Mareth looked at her sitting quietly at the opposite end of the table. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet since the announcement, lost in her own thoughts. “Thank you for joining our cause, too, and not just thinking of us as a group of beer dreamers. I hope you’ll guide us in the future.

  “My dear, lady Jules.” He looked at the landlady of his favorite inn, his former crush, and now someone he thought of as a big sister. “How on earth you let me stay around all of these years amazes me. How you’ve turned away business for the past two weeks to house us has astounded me. From now on, all visiting ambassadors will be encouraged to stay at the Royal Oak!”

  “Shut up.” And she cuffed him around the head again. “That’s not why I did this, and you know it. No one cares about personal gain—”

  “Well, we were expecting protection from prosecution out of this deal,” said Trypp with a straight face.

  Everyone looked at him and, after a moment, laughed.

  “No, I mean it,” he insisted.

  Mareth turned to Folstencroft. “Where is Lady Grey tonight? I wish she were here. Without her support, both financially and in lending us credibility, we’d have been laughed out of all meetings. Besides the ones that were brokered by Petra anyway.”

  The secretary sat upright, drinking water from a clay cup. Apparently, not everyone was going to let their hair down tonight. “I’m afraid she had an appointment, and then wanted to get an early night, my lord.”

  “I’ve told you. You don’t need to call me ‘my lord’ when we’re all together. Well, we all appreciate you, too, Folstencroft. You stepped in and organized when Alana was laid low. And I’m looking forward to hearing about your system for paying back all of the voters. Zzzz.” And Mareth pretended to fall asleep. Everyone laughed again except Folstencroft. Florian whacked him on the arm.

  “That’s funny, man! Laugh! You won’t break anything.”

  The secretary cracked the barest of smiles.

  “We all here are a chain,” continued Mareth. “We have links with each other now, some of them go back years, others weeks. But they’re forged from steel, not from tin. “

  His friends nodded, and they looked at each other in silent reflection. Motega broke the quiet. “So how are you feeling, Mareth?”

  “Oh, I’m shit scared. Don’t any of you think you’re running off. You’re chained to me now.”

  “We’re all with you, Mareth,” said Neenahwi. “But as my father would say, don’t fuck it up!”

  “I think it’s already fucked up. Isn’t that why we did this? I hope it can’t get any worse,” he replied. His hands rested against the worn oak tabletop, and he again considered his friends gathered around it. “Jules, I love this table. Can I take it with me?”

  Epilogue

  Jyuth rolled back and forth with the gait of his horse as it walked with little guidance from its rider over hills of what would be a verdant green in the daytime, but were now a dull grey in the moonless night. Kingshold was visible behind him in the far distance, nestled between Mount Tiston and Deepwater Bay. If he’d looked back, he would have seen it twinkling in the dark, lights in the city that would continue through the night as people celebrated the solstice and the new lord protector. He didn’t look back, though. Jyuth examined a book he held, able to see it even without a source of light. He held the book close, then at arm’s length, and then turned it sideways. The cover, embossed with gold letters, read Sexomnicon.

  “This is very interesting, Horse,” he said, for that is what Jyuth had called all of his horses for more than eight hundred years, having run out of names of a more personal nature. “Who knew you could do that? Maybe this retirement is going to be more interesting than I feared.”

  Horse didn’t reply. But Jyuth didn’t expect it to. Horse rolled on, following a simple trail that continued in a southwesterly direction from the capital city. Horse paid little attention to the three metal discs, constructs of Garlick the smith, as big as wagon wheels that trailed along just behind it, hovering in the air. On all three discs rested wooden chests, bound with iron, almost as long as the diameter of each circle. On one of the floating platforms, accompanying a big chest, was a smaller duplicate, an eighth of the size of the larger container. Horse thought those chests looked heavy. He was glad he hadn’t been required to pull them himself like a cart horse.

  Pop.

  A small pink demon, fluorescent in the dark, appeared on Jyuth’s shoulder. It peered down at the book being inspected by the old man and gave what could only be described as a dirty little chuckle.

  “Heh, heh, heh,” said the pyxie, nudging Jyuth’s head with his elbow.

  “Yes, very,” said the wizard, turning his head. “Did you take the gold back to the people as I asked?”

  The demon nodded.

  “Good. I have no interest in an angry gaggle of dwarves on my trail. Or for those district supervisors to all be strung up come the morning.” Jyuth stroked the pyxie under the chin, which it stretched forward like a cat. “The others, though, they won’t miss it. Well, not too much.”

  Jyuth stopped stroking the little pink creature. It looked a bit mad that it had been distracted like a pet.

  “Where is our share?” it said with a deep voice unsuited to its small frame.

  “The chest there. As agreed.” Jyuth pointed to the small chest on the third flying disc.

  “Good.”

  “Before you go, Basharaat, a question. Was everything counted fairly?”

  “Ah, I see,” said Basharaat, “you wish to believe everything happened fairly. Make you feel good.”

  “Actually, I want to know. I find belief to be quite useless in most situations.”

  “Know? I don’t know. But belief helps in the dark night when thinking about it. I think it was done fairly. Now, accurately, I don’t know.” The little creature smiled. “Not all of my people can understand the common tongue too well. But they do their best.”

  Jyuth chuckled. “I guess it turned out alright anyway. Thank you, Basharaat.”

  The demon grabbed the wizard’s bearded cheek and planted a kiss. Then the pyxie, and the small chest, disappeared in a puff of smoke.

  Horse plodded down the dune to a sheltered cove, pinned between rocky outcroppings. At least one of those stone abutments continued far out under the sea by the signs of the shipwreck clinging to the rocks, left there as a warning to other sailors to be careful of what was happening under the surface. Something Jyuth had always found to be sound advice in all walks of life.

  The sun was just beginning to rise, but it was still early in the morning, even though the days would shorten now. Flotsam and jetsam littered the beach on the right side, at least what had been left behind by the wreck pickers, predominantly that too big (in the case of the rusty anchor) or not worth it (wooden shards, empty, broken crates, and barrels). But Jyuth expected, given time, what was left would even be put to good use, if he knew his countrymen well enough. To the left of the beach was why he was here. A small catboat, beached and secured to a metal ring set into a massive boulder of granite.

  Jyuth carried his bags from Horse and put them into the boat. The chests floated over and rested on the ground nearby. He needed to launch the vessel before he loaded the heavy cargo if he wanted to get it off the beach. He braced his legs in the sand and leaned over to push the vessel into the gentle waves of the bay when something caught his attention rising from the surface.

  From the sea, dripping in water, walked a figure, female from the waist down, judging by its nakedness, but with the broad chest, long-taloned arms, and the head of a black panthe
r. Eight feet of soggy cat, and it didn’t look happy as it waded through the shallow water to the shore, flinging away pieces of weed attached to its fur. Jyuth stood and walked across the sand to meet the creature, apparently unnoticed.

  “Ahem.” Jyuth coughed politely to get its attention.

  The feline face turned, eyes narrowing as it now regarded its surroundings. “What do you want, old man?” it growled. Sniff, sniff, sniff. “Wait. You smell of her!”

  Jyuth sighed. “I feared as much. Where are you heading?”

  “That way.” The creature pointed the way Jyuth had just come, and where Horse was already picking its way home. “How far is she?”

  “Oh, she’s much too close. And she needs a rest. I did promise I would stop being involved, and that probably includes letting her clean up her own messes.” Jyuth seemed to be talking to himself more than the demon, considering his options.

  “What are you wittering about, old man? So far, I’ve let you live, but maybe you should be breakfast. I’ve run far.”

  “Yes, that will work,” said Jyuth, coming to some internal agreement. “She does need a rest after all.”

  The wizard pulled a thread from his robe and began to wrap it around his index finger. Behind the beast, which walked toward what it thought was a helpless old man, the iron chain attached to the washed-up anchor rose out of the sea. Each link, as big as a man’s hand, showed signs of rust, but it still held together, and it lashed forward like a whip, wrapping around and around the panther beast. Jyuth picked the wrapped thread off his finger, rolled it up, and flicked it forward. Like a puppet controlled by the wizard’s thread, the anchor lifted into the air, flying back in an arc before launching itself forward into the sky. The chain dragged along behind with the captured demon, a screaming tail to the metal comet. The iron-bound package sailed across the bay until it disappeared into the sea with a splash.