by Stephen Hunt
‘Even the stealers don’t want your soul polluting hell, Nix.’
‘They’ll take yours, though, Father. I’ll make sure of that.’
‘Sergeant Nix returned alive from the expedition. He was the regiment’s only survivor, bringing me the secret of your true name,’ said the king. ‘Jake Silver. A murderous killer on both sides of the ocean.’
‘I should apologize, Father,’ said Tom Purdell, stepping forward. ‘For flying false colours in Northhaven. But unlike you, I’m a loyal servant of the state.’
‘Shut your face, boy,’ said Jacob. ‘When I come for you, I’m not even going to waste a bullet on you. I’ll snap your treacherous neck.’
‘I do hope not,’ said the king. ‘Captain Purdell’s proved terribly helpful to me. Did you think it was my foolish nephew who ordered the police to hold your party as council witnesses? It was I who had you taken into custody, after the good captain advised me you’d be visiting the Winteringham in search of your boy’s errant lover.’
‘It’s a pity my hired swords failed to take Lady Cassandra in the forest, Father Carnehan,’ said Tom Purdell. ‘It would make your interrogation go a lot easier for you. Still, one girl in a rickety wagon riding north with a gask and a Rodalian flier. How far can they get?’
Jacob cursed himself. The night ambush of the coach and the attack on the passengers, Tom Purdell’s execution only just averted by Jacob. All staged solely to make him trust the king’s duplicitous agent. The bandits slain by Jacob that night probably hadn’t even known that the courier they had captured was one of them. All a ruse calculated to earn Jacob’s trust. And he had fallen for it. ‘They’ll get further than you, boy. I’ll see you meet a turncoat’s end.’
‘Empty threats are all you have left,’ King Marcus sighed. ‘Your brute savagery pitted against my intellect – hardly any contest at all. I planned everything, you dolt. After Nix returned alive bearing news of your survival, I dispatched Leyla Holten to worm her way into the House of Landor and be my eyes in the north. I arranged to have her stepdaughter dragged to the capital, knowing the boy would follow her and that you’d follow him. I calculated that your notorious past would cast doubt on the pretender’s claim to the throne. Now the traitors in the assembly are retreating north while I rule absolutely through a reformed parliament led by my prefects, unencumbered by the opposition’s liberal bleating. Vandia’s embassy informs me that an imperial armada will be arriving shortly to punish the escaped slaves for their revolt, and my precious nephew has kindly gathered every rebellious opponent to my rule in the north, ready to receive the empire’s retribution. Not to mention being a handy target for the people’s hatred once they learn how my brother arranged the slave raids. I could have destroyed Owen’s rebels here, but why waste the army’s bullets when the Vandians need to taste a little Weyland blood? The imperium will do my killing for me. All of this, all to my plan.’
‘To hell with your schemes. Reformed parliament?’ snarled Jacob. ‘One man, one vote … and you’re that one man?’
‘I am the monarch and I shall rule in a royal style. I really should thank you for your invaluable assistance, Father. You’ve proved yourself almost as useful to my cause as the captain here. All the southern factories and mills packed with indentured labour, their votes passed to their masters to exercise. Block voting is so much easier to coordinate for the greater good. A man always rules alone, you must remember that from leading armies across the ocean?’
‘I only remember the blood. You’ve nothing but lies to offer, usurper.’
‘You are wrong about that, too, Father. You see, I am here with a generous proposal for you. Owen’s rebels won’t last long against the army and the skyguard; but I cannot risk the rebels scattering into the wilds to fight a protracted guerrilla war. This rebellion would be ended decisively with a brute of your ilk as my general. Quicksilver, the Hammer of the Burn. The greatest mercenary commander of the war-with-no-end. Every battle you fought you won, no matter the odds. And when your noble patrons grew jealous of your success and turned on you, you destroyed them too. Yes, I know all about your history, Jake Silver.’
‘I haven’t been that man for decades.’
‘You might have fled your responsibilities and buried your soul under a false name, but I think you’re still that creature,’ said the king. ‘Serve in my guard. Replace Major Alock whose corpse you so carelessly misplaced on your journey to Vandia. All you have to do to secure your position is tell me where in Rodal the emperor’s grandchild is being held. Help me retake her unharmed. In return, I will permit you and your family to prosper. I shall have to let the Vandians burn Northhaven to ashes in punishment for the slave revolt, but if there is anyone in the region you are particularly fond of, I can have them spirited away before the slaughter begins.’
‘I stashed the imperial brat up your hairy arse while you were asleep last night.’
‘And that is really your final answer? You have changed, Quicksilver. You’ve become a weak-blooded fool without the will to do what is necessary! A waste, indeed. With my acumen and a brute like you as my hammer, I could have forged a future so great our praises would still be sung at the far end of Pellas millennia from now. Oh well, I shall just have to rely on soldiers like Nix here. But, as you might recall, he is something of a blunt instrument.’
‘Give me the job of making him talk, Your Highness,’ begged Nix, hatred distorting his grotesque features. ‘Old Nix was about to warm his flesh when he escaped me last time. I was fixing to get Carnehan to tell us how he knew to set his compass for Vandia.’
‘Yes, that is still rather a puzzle.’ King Marcus placed a hand on Nix’s shoulder. ‘But he’s not for you, at least, not yet. A tortured man will invent anything to make his pain stop. Isn’t that right, Captain Purdell?’
‘Indeed so, Your Majesty,’ said the officer.
‘Before the captain infiltrated the long guilds, he served as an interrogator for me. The answers he obtained weren’t nearly as important as the fear he spread among the rebels. But it’s not fear I need now. Lady Cassandra must be returned unharmed, or the Vandian emperor will have my skull for a feasting cup. We live in a modern age and so we should rely on modern methods.’ He waved a hand at Purdell. ‘Captain, send word to the imperial surgeon. He has a new patient.’ The king returned his attention to Jacob. ‘It’s not only metals and raw materials the imperium supplies us with. Among their agents and advisers serving in the kingdom, Vandia’s embassy keeps an expert in making people talk: an imperial surgeon with techniques so advanced I can only watch in awe.’
Jacob watched the treacherous guild courier scurry away. ‘You wouldn’t recognize the truth if it spat in your eye.’
‘But I’ll know it when the Vandian brings it to me.’
Jacob shook the bars, as though fury alone could twist them out of place. ‘You had better put a bullet in my head right here. Because I’m going to come for you, Marcus. It doesn’t matter how many sell-swords like Nix you surround yourself with, how many Vandian allies you buy with our people’s blood. None of them will save you when I come for your filthy carcass. I’ll make you suffer. I swear it by the saints and my murdered wife and my last living son. Life in the Burn as the lowliest trodden-down serf soldier crawling through the mud will be a paradise you’ll beg me for before your pain’s done.’
The usurper raised his hands mockingly towards the cell. ‘Charity, charity, Father. Please. What a wasted opportunity.’ Marcus strode off, turning back just before he exited the corridor. ‘You’re standing in the way of progress, and so it’s only right that progress should take everything from you. The pretender, his rebels and his lost cause. Your son. Your home. Your last pathetic secrets, and finally your life, too. He is all yours, Sergeant Nix, just as soon as the Vandian has loosened his tongue.’
Nix leant in towards the bars and looked Jacob straight in the eyes. ‘I’ll do it the old-fashioned way, myself, for old time’s sake. Shit on progress.
It’ll be like being back in the Burn, two old comrades with a white hot fire to toast your hide on. You remember what I did to your friend Wiggins, don’t you? How loudly he screamed as I warmed his old bones.’
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ said Jacob. I haven’t forgotten a thing.
Leyla Holten found King Marcus in front of an orchard on the eastern side of the palace gardens. She stepped off a gravel pathway flanked by expensive bronze monuments to Weyland’s previous monarchs. An octahedron-shaped wooden pavilion stood between the trees and a lake with a serene view over a double-arched bridge, a gentle slope with well-tended green banks on either side, the structure built to accommodate a band to play for the pleasure of king and court. Today it featured a rather different kind of entertainment. A man was bound to a chair on the oak platform, while the king pecked at his lunch from inside the cover of a canvas pavilion, fires burning in braziers to either side of him. It was no normal seat placed on the bandstand, though. It held a condemned man, while an officer slowly tightened a silk scarf around his neck using a poorly oiled crank wheel.
‘You remember Captain Purdell, my dear?’ said the king, indicating the officer gradually twisting the crank.
Leyla nodded. ‘Of course. I have the captain to thank for bringing me your instructions to return to Arcadia.’
‘Yes, the good captain has proved himself highly useful. This entertainment is partly to reward him for his labours. He is like one of my hunting hounds. He needs a little blood every now and then to keep him prepared for the actual hunt.’
‘I can’t see any blood yet,’ noted Leyla, stepping close to the warmth of the brazier.
‘Wait until the end,’ said the king. ‘You will not be disappointed. Unlike your king, who is. It would have been far better if you had returned bearing the Vandian emperor’s missing granddaughter.’
Leyla felt a bristle of indignation but did not rise to it. This had always been the king’s way. To undermine her achievements and confidence. He did it with all of his subordinates. Marcus clearly felt it was the way to get the most out of people – like squeezing a fruit for the last few drops of juice.
‘I brought you the people who took the brat hostage,’ said Leyla. She nodded towards the prisoner moaning in the garrotte chair as the silk tightened around his neck. ‘I’m sure they can be induced to cooperate.’
‘Oh, our friend here hasn’t come to lunch to be tickled into providing us with information,’ said King Marcus. ‘This is Harland Stanbury, retired colonel of the royal guard.’
‘I thought you needed every officer with experience to crush the rebellion?’ said Leyla, curiously. ‘God knows, there are enough factory owners and aristocrats joining your army who are hard pressed to distinguish a rifle from a riding whip.’
‘I need officers I can rely on,’ said Marcus. ‘Loyalty above all else. Not a quality I can accuse Colonel Stanbury here of. He’s been on the run for quite a while, until he was found by a recruiting party. And Stanbury knows he disappointed me. Betrayed me, if I am to be brutally honest. He was one of the royal guardsmen who set the charges that brought the avalanche down on my brother and his family. For which I made him a colonel and gave him a very generous settlement. But it transpired that the colonel’s workmanship was rather shoddy. He only did half the job he had been paid for.’
‘I couldn’t do it,’ croaked the prisoner, shaking his chair. ‘When I found them alive in the snow. For the love of the saints, they were only children.’
‘So instead you handed the three princes to the skels to sell as slaves,’ said Marcus, ‘which was as good as a death sentence. You didn’t want their blood on your hands. If there’re two things I cannot abide in a man, it is squeamishness and hypocrisy. One sin by itself I can stand, but both? Too much.’
‘Two of the princes died,’ begged the prisoner, ‘only Prince Owen who survived. And I did for your brother and the old queen.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ said Marcus. ‘Centuries ago, the crime for treason was to be hung, drawn and quartered. Severed heads were spiked on the bridge for courtiers to see as they arrived at the palace. Seeing as only one out of my three nephews is still alive, I’ll spare you the drawn and quartered portion of your punishment.’
‘I didn’t know he’d come back alive,’ pleaded Stanbury, his voice cracking. Or was that his throat? ‘How could I have known?’
King Marcus waved wearily at Thomas Purdell who began turning the crank again. ‘Yes, yes, imagine my surprise, also.’
The guardsman’s desperate pleas became a strangled gargling, his frantic words punctuated by a choked hacking. King Marcus offered up a woven basket filled with warm chicken legs towards Leyla. She demurred. ‘We might not have the snow they do up north, but it’s still a little cold to eat outside.’
‘Have you never seen a man garrotted?’ said the king. ‘They splutter and spit blood everywhere. The dining room has some very expensive carpets and we’d never get the blood stains out.’
‘It’s not as if you would have to clean it yourself, my darling,’ said Leyla.
‘I would still have to walk on it.’
Leyla shrugged. She had forgotten how fastidious the king could be. When she had been kept as a mistress in apartments not far from the palace, Marcus had always insisted she dispose of any dresses she had worn during their love-making, going out quickly to purchase new ones – in case a worn dress became contaminated with the vapours and pollution of the capital’s mills in-between their trysts. She hadn’t minded spending the king’s vast fortune, of course, even though indulging his hypochondria quickly grew tedious. Benner Landor might be a common-born bore, but at least he tolerated a little rural dirt on a girl.
‘I have done everything you asked of me,’ said Leyla. ‘Married that old fool up in Hawkland Park. Kept my eyes and ears open. Used Nocks as your dagger in the north; sifted the returned slaves’ dull stories of misery in Vandia for useful intelligence; helped your agents search for Lady Cassandra and goaded Jacob Carnehan and his son into coming down to Arcadia. When will it be my turn, Marcus? My time to be with you again?’
‘You’ve done very well out of your intriguing for me, Lady Landor,’ said the king, ‘and you may yet do even better.’
‘I have kept my side of the arrangement,’ said Leyla. ‘If I had wanted to be a mere lady, I could have married any number of titled suitors in the south.’
‘You have done what was needed, that I agree. And I still have need for your artifice,’ said King Marcus. ‘More people for you to coax into doing their duty. Benner Landor and his daughter have a further part to play in my plans.’
Leyla bent down to stroke the king’s hair. ‘And do you have a part to play in mine?’
‘This war will change everything,’ said Marcus. ‘The powers I will claim to win it will allow me to do whatever I need to, to give us the nation we truly deserve. Nobody will dare to speak against the new order. I will only have to speak for it to be considered law.’
‘You will make me your wife, as you promised,’ wheedled Leyla.
‘Of course I will,’ said Marcus. ‘Although you should expect a little company. The Vandian way seems to have much to recommend it. Every one of our children will rule as grandly as kings and queens in our land. And when our acres are all taken, we shall turn our attentions to our neighbours in the league and add their strength to our own.’
Leyla’s gaze frosted. She didn’t tolerate competition. Her rivals had suffered a rather statistically-unlikely series of fatal accidents.
Marcus laughed as he saw the look in her eyes. ‘I’m told that in Vandia, the role of mistress-keeper of the imperial harem is one of the most powerful positions in the imperium. All those well-born ladies grovelling and bribing and ingratiating their way into the keeper’s good graces, so that they may give birth to heirs with imperial titles. Can you think of anyone suitable for such a high station in Weyland?’
Now, that is honey for the toast. Leyla Holte
n immediately saw the possibilities; particularly the humiliation of every noble-blooded, wealthy heiress in the capital and court who had snubbed her as another common mare in the king’s stable of mistresses. Given the king’s appetite for variety, it was guaranteed that theirs could never be an exclusive relationship. Better that she gain immense power through directing his lusts, rather than be run ragged trying to stop his ardour lighting on someone who could entirely displace her. Landing the king was one piece of work, keeping him interested was entirely another. With such a position, she could keep herself in favour indefinitely. She would be safe from poverty for as long as she lived. Perhaps the mores of distant Vandia were superior, after all? ‘Of course, my love, I already have a husband, with a child for him on the way,’ said Leyla.
‘War is a wicked business,’ Marcus smiled. ‘It claims many husbands, especially when the husband in question has been commissioned as an officer by royal warrant. And as for your little bastard, after the rebellion is crushed, there’ll be a harvest of youthful missing soldiery left as worm-food under the battlefield’s churn; with legions of northern widows only too glad to take on a bawling little responsibility to help them forget their pain. It would hardly be the first whelp you’ve farmed away, would it?’
Leyla rubbed her swollen body, as if just the act could wipe away her painful weight. The saints knew, she would just be pleased to get rid of it from her and onto a wet-nurse. Slowing her down, making her stay in the vicinity of comfortable plumbing. And how could she wheedle men to do her bidding when she resembled a whale dragging her belly down the street? No, the end of this particular ‘favour’ for the king couldn’t come too soon.
‘But,’ added Marcus, ‘a ruler’s favour is not lightly given, it must be indulged …’
Leyla smiled, her happiness not conjured for artifice’s sake this time. So, the king’s lust for her even stretched into her present condition. Reassuring. Well, Marcus was a connoisseur of novelty, and this wasn’t something readily available in any bawdy house. Courtesans in her unhappy condition were usually tossed out on their ear. Luckily, she knew exactly how to please the king. Leyla bent down, hitched up her skirt and offered herself to Marcus, watching the prisoner’s dreary death throes in front of her with as much detachment as if a cow was being milked in a field. Life and death. Two sides of the same coin. The trick was in making sure the coin toss always landed in your favour.