by Anna Thayer
“I have no words, Ilenia,” he said, shaking his head. “That is marvellous. Why, the Right Hand himself would weep to hear you!”
Ilenia curtseyed.
The director called up a pair of other actors and took them through various spots on the stage, taking care to indicate where the light from the candelabra and braziers would fall. While he gestured, the singer descended the stage steps into the rows of seats. She walked a good distance into the seating area and as she came closer, Eamon could not help but smile.
Suddenly she stopped. Seeing him, she cocked her head at him.
“The master propsman has excelled himself!” she laughed; her voice was as beautiful in speaking as it was in singing. “You look just like a Hand! As good as true. Isn’t the dress tomorrow?”
“I am afraid I do not know,” Eamon answered her.
Hearing his voice, the singer peered forward at him.
“I am so sorry! I mistook you for Marcus,” she said, watching him. “Are you the new singer for the chorus of Hands?”
“I would covet the opportunity,” Eamon told her truthfully, “but alas! I am not.”
Carefully, he rose from his seat and stepped into the aisle. She gasped.
“My lord,” she said, and curtseyed deeply before him.
“Madam Ilenia,” Eamon told her, “you have done me honour beyond my dues by your song.” He reached out, took her hand, and pressed it in his own. “I thank you.”
The singer stared. “Are you Lord Goodman?” Her eyes took in his features with surprise.
“I am, madam.”
“Then the honour, my lord, is mine alone.” She smiled. “I am glad if the song spoke to you.”
Eamon felt a great laugh in his heart and beamed at her.
“Please tell Mr Shoreham that I very much look forward to the fruits of his labour,” he said. “I have already spoken to one of the servants, but perhaps you would convey to him that I would have my inaugural performance made a commoner?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you again, madam.” Eamon let go her hand and walked down the aisle to the great doors. They opened before him, flooding the room with light, revealing him to the whole stage.
Not since he had sung with Mathaiah in the Pit had he felt such joy.
That evening he asked his servants to bring him supper in his quarters; as he dined, his only company were the papers from the day’s work. Among the Hands’ reports were also papers from two of the Master’s generals: Rocell, who had charge of the knights, and Cade, who had responsibility for the thresholders – the non-Gauntlet men who would be called up from the Four Quarters to defend the city. Eamon had met neither general but suspected that would change in short order. Madam Ilenia’s song went round and round his mind as he read, rendering the task more bearable.
As a maid raised a flask of wine Eamon looked up. “Excuse me,” he said. The maid nearly dropped the flask in surprise.
“My lord?” she recovered swiftly.
“Are you able to tell me where Mr Cartwright is?”
“Iulus, my lord?”
“Yes.”
“I shall send for him.”
“That would be kind, thank you.”
The maid filled his glass, curtseyed, and left the rooms. Her feet pattered away down the servants’ stairs.
He read through another dozen pages of the reports, stopping to make notes in the margins on various things. Steps returned to the servants’ door.
“You sent for me, my lord?”
Eamon rose immediately to his feet, set his papers down on the table, and strode across to his servant.
“Mr Cartwright,” he said without preamble, “I have treated you appallingly.” The man was amazed. “I poured scorn on you and your service when I howled at you last night – I will not call it speech – and it was ill of me to do so. I scarcely think to thank you for all you do for me, I repay you with rancour and harsh words, and yet still you do as I ask.”
The servant looked overwhelmed. Eamon drew a breath and tried to speak more slowly. “This place can be no less terrifying for you than it is for me, and I have not aided you in bearing that burden.”
“Terrifying?” Cartwright asked. “My lord, the walk of a servant and of a Right Hand can hardly be compared –”
“Even if they could, it would not cede responsibility for what I have said and done,” Eamon told him, “for it is said and done. I would understand your reluctance if you would not forgive me for it.”
Cartwright held his gaze for a long moment. “Are you well, Lord Goodman?”
Eamon nodded. “I am,” he said. “When I spoke wrongly to you last night, Mr Cartwright, I was distraught by matters that were not of your doing. I had no right to offend you.”
“What matters?” Cartwright asked, then stopped. “I am sorry, my lord. I do not mean to pry.”
“You need not apologize to me,” Eamon told him. “A great many things have happened in the city since I became Right Hand,” he said at last. “People I care for have been injured and killed. I have seen work undone that I sorely laboured to achieve, and that grieves me all the more, knowing that it is the city that will suffer for that undoing.
“Every day there is news of some new malaise, of dead ensigns and lieutenants, of blood spilled needlessly, of people starving and going to the pyres. The Master looks to me to show his glory and the city looks to me to make it new.” He trailed off, his voice catching.
Cartwright watched him with wide eyes. Eamon matched his gaze. “There are wounds I bear, Mr Cartwright, that go deeper than these, but I cannot burden you with them.” He breathed deeply and his heart, tempered by the song that he had heard that day, began speaking words he had not thought he could say.
“Lady Alessia was dear to me,” he whispered, “the dearest thing I had. Doubtless she did what she had to do, but she hurt me – more deeply than almost any other hurt I have borne. It is that hurt which spoke through me last night,” he said. “I should not have permitted it to strike at you also. Your mistress was a noble lady,” he managed, “and unswerving in her service to the Master.”
“Yes, my lord.” Cartwright watched him with suspicion.
“Mr Cartwright,” Eamon began again, “from the very first I have mistreated you, for I commanded what I should have humbly asked.” He met the servant’s curious gaze. “I will not keep you here against your will. If you would leave my service, I freely give you leave to go. I will give you any aid or assistance that you require, be it horse or purse or lodgings. I presumed to set you in my house; that was wrong of me.”
Iulus Cartwright was stunned. “You would let me go?”
“On me the city rests,” Eamon answered. “How may I see to it when I cannot judge rightly in my own house? I have done you wrong. For you, for me, and for my house, I would amend it.”
Cartwright was silent for a long time. Eamon feared that he would choose to go. What comfort would there then be for him? Yet, what comfort would the man be, if his staying were enforced?
“You bear all these things?” Cartwright asked. “All these woes and griefs?”
“Perhaps I make them sound more weighty than they are; that, or I bear them badly.”
“Forgive me, my lord,” Iulus managed. “I was not clear. I mean to say, you bear all this – all of this – and yet, you howl at a single servant?”
“To do so at even a single servant is to do so at one too many.”
Cartwright shook his head in amazement. “You are not who people say you are, Lord Goodman.”
Eamon looked at him in surprise, though he knew not why it should surprise him that the servants in the palace, or the men and women in the city, spoke of him. “Who do they say I am?”
“They call you the sword-ceder and pine-feller; head-winner and grain-hoarder; house-builder and plain-rider; glorious favourite of the Master, and base-born son of a vagabond house.”
Eamon laughed. “I would not answer to any
of those names – though perhaps to some of the deeds.”
Iulus looked down at his hands, which he joined together nervously.
“Mr Cartwright,” Eamon said quietly. “Who do you say I am?”
Iulus was silent for a moment, then drew breath. “I believe, my lord,” he mused, “that in all the names they give you, and all the stories they tell of you, the men and women of this city, as they hear and speak of you, forget. They forget that, when all those names have fallen from their lips and all is said and done, you are simply a man.”
Eamon smiled. “In fairness, I think that I forget it, too.”
“But,” Iulus added, looking up, “you are a good man.”
“Thank you.”
There was a long silence. Eamon forced himself to wait through it, to stand with patience, and determined to keep his word whatever choice the man made.
At last, Iulus looked up. “You mean what you say? I may go if I wish it?”
With difficulty, Eamon nodded.
Cartwright looked about the quarters then rubbed awkwardly at his arm. Then he crossed to the table where Eamon’s unfinished meal lay.
“I am sorry; with all our talk your supper is growing cold, my lord. Would you take some fruit?”
“Mr Cartwright, I should like nothing better.”
“I will arrange it, my lord.” So saying, the servant left the room.
Feeling light of heart Eamon sat. The fruit brought before him never tasted better.
CHAPTER VI
Two days passed, during which time Eamon saw the repair of the quay completed and the fortifications at the south wall brought to their conclusion. Reports spoke eloquently on the matter of the new grain edict. Much of the East’s grain store had been put into circulation, but the whole had not been exhausted. Eamon was relieved by this, and his hope and heart were strengthened. Even so, the Master’s smile and touch unnerved him, perhaps never more so than when he thanked him for the grain edict. He wondered whether the command had been given less for the city of Dunthruik and more for the fraught sensibilities of the Right Hand. In either case, it was an indulgence and Edelred’s indulgences were fickle and perilous.
The whole city was in a preparative mood, and the streets teemed with Gauntlet. Eamon received word from Shoreham at the Crown, saying that they would be delighted to hold an inaugural commoner. Performances would be ready for delivery on the tenth of May. The news encouraged him greatly, as did Cartwright’s ongoing presence in his house.
The Master’s doctor continued to monitor him and at last promised to drop the threat of leeches, seeing no need for them. Eamon thanked him wholeheartedly.
He returned once or twice to the rose garden, but always alone and in secret. The place was more enduring, it seemed, than the palace that surrounded it, and Eamon wondered how long it had stood in that secluded corner beneath the eagle’s very wing.
On the afternoon of the ninth of May, Fletcher came to him. “Lord Goodman?”
“Mr Fletcher,” Eamon acknowledged, looking up from his latest report. “How was your meeting with the Master’s secretary?”
“It went well, my lord,” Fletcher replied. “We ironed out a few of the quibbles in how the Master’s house and yours interact.”
“I am glad of it.”
“He sends me word that the Master wishes to see you, my lord.”
Eamon frowned; he had been with the Master not an hour before.
“I shall go at once. Please could you have these papers delivered to Lord Dehelt?”
“Of course. The Master is in his quarters.”
Eamon tried not to blanch. When the Master summoned him it was usually to the throne room, or to the private dining room. The idea of going to the Master’s own quarters…
He swallowed. “Thank you, Mr Fletcher.”
He could have taken the south balcony but he feared to go that way. Instead he took the corridors to the West Wing with practised speed. Reaching the corridors where the tailors had measured him, Eamon followed all the way to a grand staircase at the end of the long passage. The steps were fashioned from red and black marble with banisters bound boldly with gold filigree.
Eamon paused at the foot of the grand case, his heart pounding, and gazed up into the darkness. He saw nothing but a tall window high above him. It looked out to the open sky.
He saw none in the hall. He set his foot to the first stair; his step echoed upwards with dreadful clarity.
He felt giddy as he climbed up to the high landing. There he found a long hallway stretching out before him, lit by streams from huge windows. The carpet showed a sea of snakes that were crushed beneath Eamon’s feet as he walked the hall. He shuddered and hurried on.
Two of the throned’s own house stood guard at his monumental chamber doors. These men did not incline their heads towards him nor make any gesture of respect; they simply opened the door. It parted back, opening into an enormous reception hall where every detail was red and gold. Eamon staggered; he had not eyes and brain enough to take in the opulence that lay before him in an endless landscape of gilt blood.
He heard a noise as a servant, doubtless as mute as those who served at breakfast, bowed then rose and walked to one of the hall’s many doors.
“Am I to follow?” Eamon asked.
The servant gestured along the corridor and moved on. Feeling shaken, Eamon followed.
They walked silently into the corridor beyond. It led to another grand door whose dark panels bore eagles. The carved creatures held a book between them and the handles of the doors were like thickly coiled snakes.
Eamon shuddered as the servant reached forward and knocked three times on the door with a firm hand. He stepped back as the door opened inward on a fiery room. The servant receded, then retreated. The door lay open before him. Eamon recognized the floor, the walls, and the light: he had been there before, in dark dreams of long ago.
“Come hither, son of Eben.”
Girding on every ounce of courage, Eamon approached. The doors closed behind him.
The Master stood by a great window, so high that Eamon felt dizzy to see it. The sunlight streaked the Master with gold.
He turned to look at his Right Hand. “There is little that escapes me, son of Eben.”
“How could anything escape you?” Eamon breathed. In that moment, surrounded by light and framed by the high window, the throned seemed more powerful and unassailable than Eamon had ever seen him. There was iron beauty in his face as he turned his grey eyes towards his Right Hand.
The Lord of Dunthruik laughed softly. “You know this place, son of Eben.”
“Yes.”
Eamon looked at the walls. They were red, but nothing adorned them; there were no eagles and no twists of gold. They were simply red, as was the floor. In the centre of the room stood a broad table made from dark, wizened wood. It was strangely carved in no style that Eamon had ever seen in Dunthruik, though the fluted edges reminded him of the ceiling in the East Handquarter.
On the table was an ornate glass orb in which rose ruddy light. Eamon stared at it. He assumed it to be a lamp but could not see how it burned and did not dare ask. The strange light illuminated the whole room and showed forth letters set deep in the wood of the table. Eamon shuddered at their rigid forms: the same letters hung on the blade at his side and those same letters marked a design on the paving stones beneath his feet. Everywhere the letters swirled around him. He stood at the centre of the great web of words where every stroke seemed aimed at him.
The Master came to him. “You have proven yourself sure in my service, son of Eben.” It was a terrifying pronouncement. “I have seen the work of your hands and I have received it with joy.”
“Ever to your glory, Master,” Eamon answered. He bowed his head, fearfully reducing his gaze to some unmarked part of the floor on which he stood. Even so, from the corner of his eye he saw the throned. It was as though a roaring lion prowled about him, waiting for the moment to take him by the t
hroat.
Yet never could a lion seem as majestic as the Master that stood before him, regarding him with a deeper gaze than he felt he could know or endure. Eamon tried to meet it but he could not equal the vastness of the Master’s power; it was enthralling.
“What would you, Master?”
Those grey eyes looked at him, testing him, assessing him. He had to excel their every desire and command! Eamon’s heart raced, his blood pulsed. He desired the Master’s council, more than all else! This man, this very man, was the desire of his heart…
Eamon, be true. You have one lord alone. Hold to him.
He blinked. What caused this change in him? He looked at the Master with renewed fear, for he knew too well the sway that the throned held over the hearts of men. It had swayed Eben and it sought to sway him. Heat grew in his palm and brow. The fire of the throned’s mark lived there. Even as he tried to stem the flames, his soul issued from them as from open wounds. The letters on the ground about him were on fire. They glinted evilly in the light.
Astounded, he leapt back; the fire subsided and the Master smiled.
“These letters know you, son of Eben. Do you know them?”
“I have seen their like, Master.” Eamon’s thought went to the Nightholt and his hand strayed anxiously to the blade at his side.
“Yes, they are on your blade,” the throned told him. “They are on your doors and on your posts, in your heart and in your blood, for in striking your blood was bound. But there is another place where you will find them, one that you have not seen.” The Master reached out and traced Eamon’s face. “It is of this which we must speak, now that your loyalty to me is proven.”
Eamon shivered. For a moment the Master seemed lost in thought, but then his eyes returned to Eamon’s own.
“Son of Eben, these letters are also to be found in a book.”
Eamon gaped at him in alarm. The Master knew it.
“A – a… book?”
“At the time of its writing, it was known as the Tierrascuro,” the throned told him. The air chilled about Eamon as the ancient word tumbled from the Master’s mouth. “In the tongue of the River Realm, it is known as –”