by Dave Duncan
“Oh, no. Athelgar regards fencing as a sweaty indignity.” Beau’s mood darkened. “But losing one’s ward is another way, and bringing back a Lackwit is a third, for that is every Blade’s nightmare.”
“This is a wonderfully soft mattress. It would be good for sleeping on, too.” She squirmed luxuriously.
“Don’t get comfortable just yet. Athelgar is not known for patience, and he’s been waiting many days to question me. We may be summoned before the Council sooner more than later.”
“We?” she squealed, struggling to sit up.
“Of course,” Beau said. “I keep telling you—I am not under arrest! I am the King’s servant reporting to him on the death of the faithful friend he charged me with defending. Naturally he will receive you, although I expect you will be allowed to withdraw before we get down to business.”
For once Beau was only half right. Isabelle had not even completed her toilet before word came that His Majesty was on his way to the Bastion.
The hall was lofty and dim; dust motes silvered the shafts of light angling down from high windows. A great crackling fire smoked as if recently lit, adding to the centuries of soot stain on masonry walls and the many tattered banners hung among the rafters. At least two dozen Blades in the livery of the Royal Guard stood watch around the walls.
Isabelle entered on Beau’s arm, following Constable Bandale, with Arkell and more Blades behind her. The King, made conspicuous by his crimson robes and the heavy gold chain across his chest, stood to the right of the great fireplace, alongside a swarthy-faced Blade wearing an official-looking baldric. Two men in black robes and birettas stood on the left. Athelgar was surprisingly short and plump—a pompous, middle-aged cock robin, not at all as she had imagined him. Then she realized that the procession was not heading in his direction. The young man pacing back and forth was the King.
This genuine Athelgar was slender and restless, with a narrow, bony face spoiled by a foolish tuft of ruddy beard. His attire was subdued but faultless, repeating the exact same shade of green from plumed hat to pearl-embroidered boots. She had not decided if his fidgetiness was a sign of anger before she was too close to stare and must lower her eyes. Baron Bandale made the presentations.
“Pray rise, Lady Beaumont,” the King said. “I see your husband stayed true to Blade tradition by winning the fairest damsel, even if he fell short in other ways. Constable, you have our leave to withdraw.”
Startled, Isabelle glanced around and confirmed that no one was waiting to escort her out; seemingly she was expected to stay. She found that situation worrisome and edged closer to Beau.
The King inspected Arkell with distaste and tried speaking to him. Winning no response, he turned abruptly to the Blade by the fireplace. “Commander Vicious?”
“Ward bereavement, sire. Correct, Beaumont?”
“Plus a hefty bang on the head, Leader.”
“How did that happen?” the King snapped.
“It was him or me, sire.”
“Your counsel, Commander?”
“Ironhall, Your Grace. Let Master of Rituals see what he can do.”
The King nodded. The Commander nodded. Two Blades came forward and led Arkell away. He went without demur, smiling vaguely, as if he recognized the liveries.
Isabelle, unable to stare at the King, glanced around at the cordon of Blades. They stood too far back to overhear the conversation, but Arkell’s performance had left them understandably bleak.
The two motionless inquisitors by the fireplace were nondescript men of middle years, yet somehow they seemed more sinister than their black vestments and glassy stare justified. The red-robed, red-faced man on the other side must be an important official. There was not a seat in sight and she was bone weary.
“Now, Sir Beaumont!” Athelgar resumed his pacing. “Grand Master praised you as a Blade worthy of your Order’s ancient glories, and we entrusted our dearest friend to your care.”
“I was proud to serve him, Your Grace. I wish it could have been for longer.”
“We have read your report and find it incomprehensible. You expect us to believe all that scurrility about the Czar?”
“I stand by what I wrote, sire. I do not presume to judge a crowned monarch and certainly not an absolute autocrat, but by commoners’ standards he would be deemed a homicidal maniac. He slaughters his own subjects without any pretense of a trial, he—”
“You have witnessed this behavior?”
“Not personally, sire, no. But Sir Oak testified—”
“That is still hearsay!”
Beau remained silent.
“Well?” snapped the King, spinning around at the end of his beat.
“With respect, sire, Oak was reporting to me, his leader, on a matter relevant to the safety of our ward. His binding would not have let him lie.”
“Commander?”
“Correct, sire.” Sir Vicious was as impassive as ancient timber and seemingly little more talkative.
The pert little man in the red robes spoke up for the first time. That he did so without being bidden indicated that he must stand high in the King’s esteem. “But he could have been mistaken. Blades are not infallible. It was night. The man was seriously, even mortally, injured. Yet he thought to identify his assailants by their voices alone.” His own voice was distinctively squeaky.
“He also knew the dogs, Your Excellency,” Beau said. “Only the Czar courses hounds the size of horses.”
“Rubbish!” the King snarled, still pacing. “Dogs have ancestors and siblings. Granted that the Czar may be strict or even brutal by our standards; granted that his power is absolute, you have no personal knowledge that he abuses it, have you?”
“No, sire.”
“The witness is lying.”
The voice came from the two inquisitors. Isabelle had not seen which spoke, and now she realized that they were identical twins. Somehow it was that bizarre equivalence that made them seem so sinister.
Athelgar stopped in his tracks to stare at Beau. “Well?”
Beau spoke carefully. “I did not witness any of the crimes I mentioned in my report, sire.”
The fire crackled merrily in the silence.
“I see,” the King said uncertainly. “Then let us discuss his son, Czarevich Fedor. Another homicidal maniac?”
“An extremely violent man, Your Grace. It was public knowledge, confirmed to me by many people—”
“More scandal? Is it relevant?”
“Very relevant, sire.”
“Go ahead then.”
“Not long before we arrived in Kiensk, the Czar took exception to three of his son’s friends and ordered Fedor to flog them to death in the market square. Which he did.”
The King spun around to the inquisitors, as if daring them to support this appalling tale. They remained silent and yet somehow it continued to defy belief. Here in sane and civilized Chivial, princes did not perform as public hangmen.
“There may be more to that tale than you heard. You saw the Czarevich die?”
Beau hesitated, as if hoping one of the listeners would object to the question or the King would withdraw it. Eventually he said, “I did, Your Grace.”
“Who killed him?”
“Sir Arkell.”
He had never told Isabelle that. He was in far greater danger than she had realized. Athelgar was out for blood and the Czar would soon be demanding Beau’s head, if he had not done so already.
“Describe what happened.”
“There was a fireplace much like— If Your Majesty would permit me to stage this, it would be easier to describe. If you would face this way, Your Grace, and be the Czarevich. Commander Vicious, stand here, please and be Sir Arkell. Lord Chancellor, you will stand in for Lord Wassail?”
“I fear I am a poor substitute.” The tubby man in the gold chain came waddling forward. That beak-nosed little pigeon was First Minister of Chivial?
Beau gestured Isabelle forward. “My wife will be Quee
n Tasha.”
“Princess Tasha,” Athelgar said coldly.
“I crave pardon,” Beau said.
Poor Tasha! Would she not win even the consolation prize?
“She sat about here, with her lady-in-waiting. And I, here, am myself. Now, sire, remembering that you are a much larger man even than Lord Wassail—and younger, my age almost exactly—you strike at him. Arkell blocks your arm with the flat of his sword. Now you go to draw…”
The King made him run through the events three times, then said, “Well, Lord Chancellor?”
“Drawing against a Blade defending his ward? In Chivial it would be classed as suicide, sire.”
Isabelle approved of the cocky little redbreast. The King glared. No one dared smile.
“How do I explain that to the Czar?” Athelgar demanded, obviously not expecting an answer. He began pacing again and the others scuttled back to their previous positions, Isabelle moving even closer to Beau. “In his last dispatch, Lord Wassail indicated he would remain in Kiensk until late spring or early summer. Now you tell us he changed his mind. He deserted most of his followers and set off on a mad dash through the Skyrrian winter. That does not sound like my old friend! Whose idea was this change of plan?”
“Mostly mine, sire,” Beau said.
“The witness is lying.” That was the left-hand inquisitor.
Beau tried again. “It emerged in discussions between my ward and myself, and I cannot recall exactly who first suggested—”
“The witness is lying.” Now the other. How did they choose?
“Sir Beaumont!” the King roared. “Loyalty to your ward is commendable, but your ward is dead! Your sovereign lives. Answer!”
The watching Blades must have heard that.
Beau sighed. “His idea, sire. I agreed that it would be possible.”
“Yet it was obviously dangerous. Why did you encourage him in such folly?”
“Because I believed he would be in greater danger if he remained in the Czar’s realm.”
“Danger from this mad, homicidal sovereign?”
Athelgar continued firing questions. The tale that unfolded was new to Isabelle, because Beau had refused to speak of his ward’s death. Soon anger drove away her weariness. Obviously the King was going to make Beau the scapegoat for the disaster, yet Beau seemed absurdly reluctant to clear himself. Any fool could see that the escape had gone so horribly wrong only through an absurd combination of chances: the change of weather, the bizarre meeting with the Czarevich, Lord Wassail’s apoplexy, but no one said so. She decided Beau was too proud to make excuses, shouldering blame needlessly, yet when he finally balked, it was only to make matters worse.
By then Athelgar was almost shouting. “You arranged it, you said. You must have had help, Skyrrian help. Who were your fellow conspirators in devising this midwinter madness? Who were the traitors?”
“I humbly beg Your Grace’s leave not to answer that question.”
The King stopped pacing to glare. “Permission denied! Answer!”
“I am honor bound not to reveal names, sire.”
“Your loyalty is to me, your sovereign lord.”
The fire crackled.
A question that should not be asked must not be answered.
Athelgar turned scarlet. The silence continued.
“This is lese majesty, Sir Beaumont!”
“I deeply regret the offense, Your Grace.”
“I can force an answer, you know!”
Beau knelt and bowed his head. “I humbly beg forgiveness.”
The King began pacing again. “The Princess had brought a lady attendant. What happened to her?”
“She, too, was slain in the massacre.”
“Who did that?”
“I did not see, sire.”
“How many people did you kill personally?”
“I do not know. My memory of that time is very blurred.”
“Sir Vicious?”
The Commander nodded. “Standard symptoms, sire.”
“Grand Inquisitor?”
“He speaks the truth,” said Left.
“So who survived?” the King demanded.
“Her Highness,” Beau said, “Sir Arkell, and myself. A few Skyrrians escaped on horseback, but they likely died in the blizzard.”
“You then proceeded to the next town?”
“Not the nearest. We reached Dvonograd two days later.”
Athelgar swung his attention to Isabelle. “And that was where you joined this itinerant disaster?”
She gaped, bewildered. “Me, sire? No, sire?…”
“My wife was still at home in Isilond, Your Majesty,” Beau said. “My future wife, then.”
“I thought—” The King scowled at having been caught out in error. “You mean you obtained no substitute attendants for Her Highness? You brought her all this way without any female companionship at all?”
“We dared not reveal her identity. She was masquerading as a boy.”
Athelgar stared at him in disbelief. “You have destroyed her reputation utterly.”
“Such was never my intention, sire.”
Isabelle wanted to scream. What else could Beau have done? Abandon her in the forest? Why did he not ask the King that? Why did he not comment on Tasha’s courage and endurance, lead the man to the romantic idyll?
“I trust that you always obtained separate accommodation for her?”
“I could not do that either, not without betraying the deception.”
“You mean you shared rooms!?” The King was chalky white with rage.
“When necessary, sire.”
“And beds?” demanded one of the inquisitors.
Beau gave him a look of intense dislike. “When necessary—and when there were beds to share. Often there was only straw, or rushes.”
Athelgar seemed to be speechless.
Into the silence crept the soft voice of the pert little Chancellor. “This is not unusual, Your Majesty.” Kings’ experience of hostelries must be limited. “Travelers often sleep five or six to a bed, and quite often men and women are bunked together.”
Athelgar continued to glare down at the kneeling Beau. “You give us your word, to be verified by Grand Inquisitor, that nothing improper happened between you and her Highness?”
Beau sighed. “May I ask Your Majesty to define ‘improper’?”
“I thought any man of honor would understand plain Chivian. Let us start with words of endearment, then.”
More silence, much more.
“So?” said the King. “Will you answer if I send your wife away?”
Beau sighed again. “No, sire.”
“I do not have to be Czar Igor to find such insolence intolerable. We have devices here in the Bastion that will make brass statues talk.”
Beau remained silent.
Again the little Chancellor showed his mettle. “Torture and the Question are reserved for cases of treason, Your Grace, and the Council should first consider whether there is a prima facie—”
“Grand Inquisitor?” Athelgar snapped.
The right-hand twin said, “During the first session the witness will be encouraged to make confession of treason and thereafter the point is moot.”
“Commander, inform us of the procedures for expelling a man from the Blades.”
“As Head of the Order, Your Majesty may expel any man, without recourse or appeal.”
“Prepare the deed for our signature. Charge Beaumont with high treason and chain him in the lowest dungeon in the Bastion.” King Athelgar headed for the door.
• 8 •
Chivians had no idea what food should be. Although Isabelle appreciated the Bandales’ kindness in treating her as a houseguest, she found their table disappointing, while the muck thrown to prisoners was unfit for pigs. It made even the rats sick, Beau said. Most inmates were fed by visiting friends or relatives and Isabelle carried meals down to her husband twice a day—he would not let her come to see him more
often, or stay very long. It wasn’t healthy there, he insisted, in grotesque understatement. He had endured two weeks of it so far, but he was losing weight and he coughed a lot.
Table scraps were not good enough. The Baroness allowed Isabelle to cook him special treats in her kitchen. That was why, this sunny spring afternoon, she was haggling at one of the stalls in the bailey for fresh eggs. Eggs were expensive now that the laying season was over, and Beau’s money had been confiscated by the inquisitors, who claimed it belonged to the King or Lady Wassail and muttered darkly of an audit and embezzlement. Isabelle’s own purse was almost empty, so she was haggling hard. She had nothing better to do with her day.
“Lady Beaumont?” The speaker was a dandily-clad man of middle years, sporting a neat red-and-silver beard. A very large mouth and a button nose made his smile both comical and winsome. She need not look at the pommel of his sword to guess that here was yet another of the ubiquitous Blades.
“I am.”
“My name is Sir Intrepid. I’m Master of Rituals for the Order. I brought a friend of yours to see you. Or, to be exact, he brought me, for otherwise I’d never have found you in this mob.”
She looked past him, at Lackwit’s dead gaze.
“He is no better?”
Intrepid’s smile waned. “Only very slightly, perhaps. He asks for Beau once in a while and even for yourself. Arkell, here’s Belle.”
Nothing. Hawkers and hucksters shouted all around; customers shouted right back. Arkell heeded none of it.
“Lackwit?” she tried.
His eyes turned to stare over her head. “Common law itself is nothing else but reason, gotten by long study, observation, and experience, and not of every man’s natural reason.”
“Well done, brother!” Intrepid said cheerily, thumping him on the shoulder. “That’s good. Keep trying. Now, where’s Beaumont?”
Arkell pointed, mostly downward.
“I can take you to him, Sir Intrepid.” Isabelle welcomed any excuse for an extra visit.
The guards at the top of the stairs knew her, saluted Intrepid’s sword, and dismissed Lackwit as unimportant at first glance. But the stairs were long and steep, twisting down from sunlight into foul, stygian dark. About halfway, Intrepid began coughing violently.