by Mike Shel
Periods of relative lucidity—the brilliance of the Queen Geneviva of old—were interspersed with further episodes of instability. She began favoring one noble family over another, redirecting resources about the empire in ways that weakened the ingenious system she had established upon her ascension. It was a return to the days of petty aristocratic infighting, with clans competing against one another for advancement rather than working cooperatively for the good of the kingdom. During her coherent interludes the queen might rescind a foolish edict, but she would blame her councilors for the annulled act, oblivious to her own culpability.
Many attempts were made by faithful councilors and members of the royal family to end the madness. Some begged Her Majesty to recognize the inadvisability of some bizarre, counterproductive order or another. Their reward for such pleading was execution, imprisonment, exile to the Aethaali Chain, or commitment to the asylum isle of St. Kenther.
At long last, seditious plots were hatched. But every attempt against the queen was foiled: freak accidents, uncanny coincidences, strange supernatural events saw such plots fail spectacularly. It was soon apparent to all that not only was their monarch’s mental stability in rapid decline, she was also under the protection of forces with which mortals could not contend.
The last serious attempt at revolt took place half a century ago. The Sons and Daughters of Hell, a clandestine organization of Hanifaxan patriots within the army and minor aristocracy of the eastern empire, managed to surround the royal palace, trapping the queen and her loyal guard within. They gave Her Majesty twenty-four hours to abdicate. But the following morning, the insurgent ringleaders were dead, each having choked to death on a plum stone in the night.
All praise be to the Great God Timilis.
Queen Geneviva took her place on the throne, half a hundred subjects kneeling before her. Auric risked a glimpse of his monarch, saw her feral red eyes darting about the assembled petitioners, fiddling with a green-and-ivory fan like a nervous schoolgirl. She called out to the elderly man with the griffin-topped cane, waving the fan at him with quick, impatient flourishes. “We are seated, Kedrech. Inform the people gathered in the grand hall that they may now stand before their queen.” Kedrech gave a stiff nod and banged his cane on the marble floor. Auric rose to his feet with the others, costumes rustling.
Kedrech, marveled Auric silently, recognizing the nominal heir to the throne, the queen’s great, great grandson, acting here as a common servant. Gods be good, how the man has aged!
“Call the first on your list, grandson,” said the queen. Her voice was that of a young, vivacious woman, the contrast with her deteriorating countenance perverse.
The old man held a monocle up to one of his squinting eyes and consulted a long vellum scroll. “The court calls Viscount Mathas Benhowe of Hulwick,” he announced, voice hoarse.
A man dressed in clothes that would have been appropriate for a costume gala, but somehow fell short of the pretentiousness on display, approached with head held high. His face was serious, lines drawn downward at the corners of his mouth, eyebrows severe and angled like two arrows aimed at the bridge of a long nose. His hair was thinning, gray, pulled back with a black-and-red ribbon—the colors of the Duchy of Bannerbraeke. His bow was as stern as his countenance, a sudden angular dip, the silver-ringed fingers on his right hand nearly scraping the floor.
“Viscount Benhowe,” said the queen, drawing out his name as though it was somehow disagreeable to her. “Have you been before us on any other occasion?”
“I have not, Your Highness,” he said in the curt and precise voice of an aristocrat used to giving commands far more often than receiving them. “I come now to speak with you on behalf of my liege lord, Duke Rallard of Bannerbraeke. Rebels have taken control of the city of—”
“Viscount,” interrupted the queen, her tone icy, “you were not asked the purpose of your visit to our court. When we decide to ask, we will ask. This is when you will answer. You are not in attendance at some dusty alderman’s assembly, with straw strewn on a dirt floor. There is a single authority in this hall, and it is not you!”
Auric’s pulse quickened. He watched the encounter with horrified fascination. A morbid question danced in his mind: did the man realize his life was on the line? Benhowe froze, brow furrowing, lips pinched. He seemed confused, uncertain how he had gone so wrong so quickly. The queen’s sharp words hung in the air, poised like lethal blades. At last, the viscount exhibited wisdom and fell to the floor, prostrate.
The queen let him lie there in the utterly silent throne room for a full minute before speaking. “Perhaps it would be best if you continued your audience with us on your belly,” she began, directing her speech to the empty air where the viscount had been standing rather than casting her eyes down at the groveling man. “We believe it better represents the difference in our stations. Is this agreeable to you, Viscount Benhowe?”
The prone aristocrat mumbled something.
“Viscount, the marble muffles your words. Turn your head to the side so that we may understand you, you absurd little man.”
“As Your Majesty commands,” he said, face flushed crimson, humiliation and fear emanating from him like fumes.
“You spoke a few moments before about a rebellion of some sort, Viscount?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” This was followed by a pregnant pause. Auric assumed the man was uncertain if he had leave to say anything more.
“The rebellion, Viscount? Please speak.”
“Your Majesty, a number of your subjects in the city of Seathrift—commoners—stormed the keep of their rightful ruler, Viscount Torvale. They hung the viscount from a tree in the courtyard of his castle and declared Seathrift an independent republic, in the fashion of the neighboring Duchy of the Karnes.”
“And why is the duke not here himself to inform me of this insurrection?”
“Duke Rallard would be here himself to ask your leave to discipline the insurgents, Your Majesty. However, he is directing the siege on the town personally.”
“And why, pray tell, did he send you?”
“I was asked to come in his stead as the deceased Viscount of Seathrift was my cousin.”
“Would you consider the duke’s choice of advocates at this queen’s court wise, sir?”
The prostrate man did not respond. No response was necessary.
“Rise,” said the queen after another pause. The viscount picked himself up from the marble parquet, but kept his eyes averted and his arms open in supplication.
“Do you know, sir,” said the queen with serpent-like focus on the man, “from time to time it is necessary for me to have the truth of a subject’s failings written on their flesh.”
The way she drew out the final word with a strange, torpid elation conjured an image in Auric’s mind of the queen dining on tattooed human meat. The viscount tried to stand still, projecting humble repentance.
Her red eyes regarded the man. “Alas, in this moment I can think of no proper epithet for your blushing cheek. Come here, poor man. Kiss your queen.” She extended a decrepit hand, thin skin hanging from the bones of her arm like cobwebs. Benhowe slowly mounted the steps to the throne, dropped to one knee, and hesitated. It was almost undetectable, and many might have missed the flash of revulsion on the man’s face, as though repelled by a hateful odor. But he held the skeletal fingers of his monarch and his lips pressed against the emerald ring on her forefinger, careful not to touch flesh. He stepped back, stumbled and caught himself, and stood before the throne with his eyes focused intently on his own shoes.
Auric wondered whether the queen had detected the viscount’s abhorrence as he had. All good gods, spare this luckless man, he thought.
He didn’t need to wait long for the denouement.
“Mr. Benhowe, this is my judgment,” she said at last, her lilting words seeming to discharge some of the tension f
rom the room. “My scribes will draft two letters. One for the rebels of Seathrift, the other for the citizens of Hulwick. The first will inform our newly minted republicans that if they pledge fealty to their queen and the Duke of the Karnes, they may join the other city republics in that corner of our realm. The second letter will inform my subjects who have to date been in your charge that they are no longer to pay you or your descendants homage. Rather, I will raise someone else to the post.”
The man’s jaw dropped, but he was too shocked to plead for his title, or any other thing. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
“We are not finished,” the queen said, but now her tone was again icy, and dread returned to the chamber. “You, Benhowe, will deliver both messages to their recipients by your own hands. The first letter you will deliver with your left hand, the other with your right. Do you understand?”
“I believe I do, Your Majesty. The letter for Seathrift with my…my left hand, the letter for Hulwick…with my right. W-which would you have me deliver first?”
“Oh, that does not concern you, sir,” she answered, red eyes alight with malice. “You will be in our dungeons. Your hands will deliver the messages without you. We have axmen for the purpose.”
Benhowe, weeping an incoherent protest, was dragged without ceremony from the throne room by a trio of blindfolded guards, whose ability to perform their duties was apparently unimpaired by their sightlessness. The silence that followed the man’s ignominious removal was broken for but a second by a muffled cough. No one else dared disrupt the grave-like hush that covered the chamber like a funeral shroud.
“Let us see the full list of petitioners, grandson,” said Geneviva finally, wiping the palm of one hand with the other as though brushing off crumbs. With some reluctance, Kedrech handed her the vellum scroll, which she unwound and began scanning.
“Your Majesty,” muttered the old man, stooping to her ear. “Next among your supplicants we have agents of the Syraeic League, who require your leave to—”
“Ah!” she exclaimed, interrupting the man with a dismissive wave of her fan. “Look who’s on the list! Ilanda, darling, where are you?” Her alien eyes darted about the chamber, seeking out the countess.
“She waits in the salon with the other petitioners, Your Majesty. She is lower on the rolls today. Your councilors have taken great pains to order the supplicants so that the most urgent concerns receive your attention first.”
“Oh, no, no, no! Send her in immediately!”
Court servants scurried out to the adjacent chamber. Countess Ilanda was ushered in, accompanied by a pair of men carrying rolled maps, scrolls, and a fat codex with a weathered leather cover. She bowed gracefully before the throne, holding herself low until the queen gave her leave to rise. Geneviva unleashed a broad smile, exposing the rotting teeth that reminded Auric of crumbling gravestones in a derelict cemetery.
“Darling girl, stand up, stand up!” she tittered with glee. “How long has it been since you graced our court?”
Ilanda returned the queen’s smile, rising in a seamless motion, a striking accomplishment given her elaborate gown. The contrast between the queen and countess could not have been more pronounced.
“Nearly a year, Your Majesty. I am so pleased by this opportunity to visit you again. Alas, Beyenfort is such a long way off, is it not?”
“It is, dear,” the queen answered. “Come and kiss me, darling.”
Without hesitation, Ilanda approached the throne and kissed both decaying royal cheeks before withdrawing again to a respectful distance, her serene smile never wavering.
Auric himself suppressed a shudder. The queen’s horrific physical deterioration had to have occurred in the three years he had spent in happy ignorance in Daurhim. Yet her movements betrayed no sign of degeneration. Rather, they seemed even more youthful than he remembered from previous audiences.
The queen commented on the countess’s gown, and Ilanda spoke at length about the difficulty of finding good tailors in Beyenfort.
“But you know Harkeny, Your Majesty. If it doesn’t concern the frontier, or those terrible barbarians, or horseflesh…well, it is a lovely place, but it can be so dreary sometimes. Regardless, I insisted my husband locate a tailor or seamstress or anybody who could create something to delight Your Majesty.” She gave a girlish twirl of the voluminous skirts of her gown.
“Oh, it does, dear girl. Most delightful indeed. Tell me, speaking of horses, are you still breaking those wild beasts in that rough country you inhabit?”
“I am, Your Majesty,” she responded with demure apology, a slight curtsey executed with eyes cast down.
“A most dangerous endeavor, sweetheart,” said the queen with mock disapproval. “We would order you to refrain from such activities, but we know you would disobey. We would be most vexed if any harm befell you. You will exercise caution!” She punctuated her last four words with pedantic swings of her green-and-ivory fan, each swipe the lethal arc of a cutting blade. Auric thought of the viscount, and the axman who might be tending to him at that very moment.
This inconsequential chatter went on for a full half hour, the other courtiers present masking their impatience with varying success. At long last, after the queen drew from Ilanda a promise to stay in the capital for a fortnight and accompany her to the theater, she spoke to Kedrech, who was at risk of nodding off.
“We suppose we must speak to the others you have assembled for us, grandson. Who is next on your tedious list?”
“Your Majesty, the Syraeic League—” The queen held up her fan just as Ilanda started a discreet withdrawal.
“We are sorry, darling, was there something else you wished to speak with us about?”
“It is nothing, Your Highness. It can wait. So many others require your attention.”
“Nonsense! What is it, dear? Out with it!”
“Well, Your Majesty,” Ilanda said, motioning the two men who accompanied her forward, one of whom unfurled a map of the Duchy of Harkeny and its northern frontier. “My husband asks that I bring intelligence to your attention regarding the nomads who endlessly prowl the hills north of the Selvey River. It seems the Cherusa and Ghenna tribes have settled their mutual bloodletting for the time being and threaten to spill over into your furthest satrapy.” The countess motioned to areas on the map with her fan that Auric could not himself see. “They make frequent feints at our line of river forts along the border, testing our resolve and harrying our troops. Something big is afoot. We lose a few horsemen in every skirmish, they lose ten or more times that number, but their supply of screamers is apparently endless. We must replace the cavalry lost in these fights with fresh levies. We could also use the assistance of the neighboring Duke of Marburand.”
“Has Harkeny not petitioned for the duke’s assistance directly, dear?”
“Duke Orin has, Your Majesty. Unfortunately, Duke Willem has not seen fit to answer those requests. I am certain he must have legitimate reasons for withholding such urgent aid from us, but I’m afraid I can’t fathom what they are.” She fluttered her fan, a look of innocence on her lovely face.
“By Marcator’s thunder!” shouted the queen, causing several petitioners to jump. “Duke Willem will answer the call! We can’t have those filthy barbarians parading their shaggy mounts up and down the entire eastern wing of our empire! Kedrech!”
The crown prince sprang to attention.
“See to it a sternly-worded message is dispatched to Duke Willem within the hour. Use our sorcerers for the purpose to track down his whereabouts and deliver the message immediately.”
“Your Majesty, the cost of tracing the duke’s whereabouts and transmitting such a message with sorcery is quite high,” he pleaded, his eyes sallow and tired.
“We don’t care how many emeralds and rubies those tattooed mystics must crush to make it happen. Ilanda says our northern frontier is at risk! Exp
lain to the good duke that he must offer up whatever aid he has at hand, especially that pretty house cavalry he likes to parade about. And add the cost of tracking him down and sending the message to his expenses. We will hear of it if he does not comply swiftly!”
Kedrech nodded and spoke quietly to a court official summoned to his side, who then left the chamber, ostensibly to carry out the order.
“Will that be sufficient for your purposes, darling?” hummed the queen, turning back to the countess with her blackened smile.
“Most certainly, Your Majesty,” she said with a charming bow. “Of course, a royal bonus for volunteers accepting appointment to the legions would also have a salutary effect. My man here has the figures drawn up.” The countess reached for a scroll from the man with the leather book and held it out like a bouquet of flowers.
“Of course, sweetheart, it shall be done,” said the queen. “Kedrech, take the papers from Ilanda and see that our ministers address its particulars today, as written.”
Kedrech stepped forward and took the scroll from her with stoic acceptance.
“You have my gratitude,” the countess trilled, “as well as that of my husband, and of his liege lord, Duke Orin. Harkeny thanks you. And I so look forward to a visit to the theater with you.”
“Of course, my darling girl,” said the queen, flashing her sepulchral smile. “Next, Kedrech?”
When Auric’s name was called, he was caught flat-footed, watching Ilanda Padivale resume her place amongst the supplicants standing before the throne. He stepped forward with less grace than he had hoped for and made his obeisance to the queen, eyes averted.
“Sir Auric,” said the queen in a distant tone. “We do not believe you have been in our presence for some time. Has the League been hiding you away?”
“No, Your Majesty,” he replied, eyes still fixed on the exquisite marble floor. Gods guide my tongue. “I have been away in the country, retired from the League these past three years or so.”