The Path to Power

by Karen Miller

  Heart pounding, Liam took his place at the barrel then shoved his hose down.

  I’m a duke. I’m a duke. Dukes are brave. Dukes are strong.

  A few steps away, Benedikt’s knees buckled and he folded to the cellar floor. Face hidden against his arms, welted rump stuck high, he rocked to and fro, weeping. One flattened hand slapped the flagstones, pounding out his pain.

  “Willem,” said Molly. Her voice sounded ragged. “I don’t know which of ye thought to play swords and ye needn’t bother telling me. I don’t care. Iddo’s right. The two of ye lead each other into mischief turn and turn about and I’ve been soft on it. But ye b’aint babbies no more. Ye know if ye be found playing swords it be yer life, and Benedikt’s, and this inn taken off me and me thrown into a ditch to starve. Ye know that, and still ye ’ticed Benedikt to break the law, or ye let him ’tice ye, ’cause yer be heedless and ye never want to believe there be rules ye have to obey. Willem, I tell ye truly, today ye’ll learn to believe.”

  He heard Iddo’s switch make a whistling sound before it cracked across his arse. The pain was so bad he nearly bit through his tongue. He watched his fingers spasm on the whipping barrel, felt rough splinters poke his skin. The first welt was rising like breakfast bread in the oven. The switch cracked his arse a second time. He howled.

  No, no, I’m a duke, I’m a duke, I’m brave–I’m–

  But he couldn’t think through the whistling cracks that set his arse on fire. All he could do was press his belly across the barrel and stare at the stone floor as Iddo whipped him and whipped him ’cause he and Benedikt had played swords. Not even proper swords, just bashing about with sticks. Why was that agin the law? Why did that call for dying and Molly starving in a ditch?

  He was blubbing now, like Benedikt. Iddo was whipping the tears out of him. He could feel himself dancing, just like Benedikt danced. But Molly wasn’t his mother so he didn’t beg her to make it stop. She wouldn’t listen if he did. She hadn’t listened to Benedikt and she wasn’t his Ellyn.

  Crack… crack… crack… crack… crack.

  “That’ll do,” said Molly, sighing. “Let ’em smart on their lonesome. And let this be the last time ye tell me I go too soft.”

  “For once ye were hard enough,” said Iddo. “They’ll smart a goodly while, I’ll lay.”

  Through his fiery pain, Liam heard an odd note in Iddo’s voice. Snot-slicked and weeping, he looked behind him–and saw in the man’s face a flash of gloating satisfaction.

  Serves ye right, ye little shite, it said, loud as a shout. I hope ye smart till Crackbean morning.

  Which was nigh three months away.

  Hatred surged, even hotter than the roaring fire roasting his whipped arse.

  You’ll be sorry for that, Iddo. One day I’ll make you sorry.

  And so would Molly be sorry. One day, somehow, he’d make both of them pay.

  Molly and Iddo closed the cellar door, leaving the lamp with its warm light and flickering shadows. Shuddering, Liam forced the tears back behind his eyes. Still holding onto the whipping barrel, ’cause he couldn’t risk letting go. If he could stay on his feet he could believe he wasn’t defeated.

  Benedikt had stopped pounding the flagstones with his hand, but he was still blubbing. His welted arse still stuck in the air. And then, slow as an old tortoise, he curled onto his side with his muddied hose a tangle round his ankles.

  “I’m sorry, Willem,” he whispered, all jerky with tears. “This be my fault.”

  “I didn’t have to play,” he whispered back, sounding the same. “It’s my fault too.”

  “My arse hurts, Willem. It hurts ever so bad.”

  He saw again that flash of gloat in Iddo’s heavy, stubbled face. “Mine don’t. And neither does yours.”

  Benedikt whimpered. “It does, but. And—”

  “No, Benedikt, it don’t!”

  Silenced, Benedikt stared at him. Then he closed his eyes and blubbed some more. Sorry for shouting, Liam let go of the whipping barrel and curled on the flagstones beside his weeping brother, even though every move made him want to howl. Shame was a hot coal burning its way through his guts. Sick with anger, he did his best to stamp it out.

  I’m a duke. I’m a duke. I’m brave. I’m strong. I’m a duke.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Vidar? Vidar, where do you go?”

  Seething with a barely controlled rage, Vidar glanced up as his fingers continued to belt on his sword. His timid wife, Aistan’s ruined daughter, stood in the doorway that led from the manor hall to her dayroom, and twisted her fingers in the folds of her green linen skirts.

  “To see Balfre on Marcher business,” he said, trying to gentle his voice. She flinched and startled so easily. Aistan had been woefully wrong when he said the exarchite women’s house had healed her. “I’ll be back soon enough.”

  “Balfre.” Hesitant, Kennise entered the hall. “I wish you wouldn’t go. The man is dangerous, and we’ll be losing the light before long.”

  The man had that morning murdered five desperate, defenceless Clemen innocents. Dangerous didn’t begin to come near it. And Waymon, who’d so arrogantly told him to go play hide and seek at the Pig Whistle, he was no better. Mad dogs, the pair of them. For Clemen’s sake they should be put down. If only Clemen’s duke could be made to understand that.

  He tied the end of his sword-belt out of the way. “I must go, Kennise. Don’t fret. There’ll be moonlight enough to ride by.”

  “Why must you go? Why can’t it wait until morning?”

  She didn’t know about the murders. He had no intention of telling her. He’d brought the severed heads back with him in the burlap sacks Balfre had used, and given them to Humbert’s watchdog Egann, for soaking in pitch. Egann, who’d brought his own dire news from Eaglerock.

  Roric’s closing the harbour? What was Aistan thinking, letting him get away with that?

  But he couldn’t give himself over to pondering Clemen’s woes. He had woes enough of his own, trying to keep peace in the uneasy Marches. Keeping his men-at-arms from fright over the rumours of plague. Keeping himself from provoking outright confrontation with Balfre. From worrying and wondering over Lindara. She was with child again. Punished with silence, with distance, it was all he knew for sure. His poor Lindara. She’d suffered so much since they were forcibly parted. A day never passed when he didn’t think of her with pain.

  “Balfre…”

  He turned on the woman he’d mistakenly made his wife. “Kennise, I must go. You’ll not be alone. Egann is here, and he’ll stay with you till I return.”

  She was fearful, and damaged, a lump of ice in his bed. That frozen wasteland had somehow delivered him two daughters. No son, as yet, though he still had hope. But despite her failings Kennise was also Aistan’s daughter, which meant she was no fool.

  “Something’s happened,” she said, taking another step towards him. “Tell me, Vidar. Stop treating me like a silly child.”

  Irritated, he pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. The pair he’d worn to the Pig Whistle were ruined. “I don’t. I’m not.”

  “Is it the pestilence? Has it breached the border with Clemen?”

  “No,” he snapped. Fuck. Let that maggot fester and she’d wake screaming out of sleep every night for a week. Turning, he took hold of her frail shoulders. Wanted to shake her. Instead he pulled her close. “No. Balfre’s done something… unwise. It could stir violent feelings, which is the last thing we need. I must have it out with him at once, lest he take my delay as permission to go his way unchecked.”

  She shivered against him. “Then take Egann with you. There are servants here. I won’t be alone.”

  Take Humbert’s watchdog, and give the man more gossip for his letters to Lindara’s unforgiving father?

  “Egann has his own duties in the barracks,” he said, releasing his wife. “Have you so little faith in me, Kennise, that you think I can’t scold Balfre without coming to blows?”

&nbs
p; She flushed. “No.”

  “Well, then.”

  “But if you won’t take Egann, take a horde of men-at-arms instead. Please, Vidar. Do you want me sick with fretting?”

  He did not. “Very well.” He kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back in time for dinner. You might see a flagon of Evrish red opened. But refrain from emptying it yourself before I return.”

  “Be careful,” she called after him. Then her breath caught. “Vidar—”

  Pausing, he looked back. “What?”

  “How much longer must we live in the Marches? I miss my family. I want to go home. Can’t you tell Roric it’s time he called you home?”

  He almost laughed. Tell Roric? As if he could. That bastard Humbert stood between him and Roric in all things, and Roric so loved the old rump there was no shoving him aside. Just as there was no softening Humbert’s animosity. Egann’s continued presence was proof of that.

  “The Marches are your home,” he said harshly. “And as loyal subjects of Clemen’s duke, you and I must live here for as long as it pleases him. As for family–what am I and your children, for you to say such a thing?”

  She bowed her head, fingers clutched and trembling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “I don’t care what you meant. Put Eaglerock out of your mind. I am Clemen’s Marcher lord, Kennise. My duties are here.”

  The ache in his hip as he rode to Balfre’s manor house was a grinding reminder that he should send again for Izusa. Despite her foreign strangeness, it seemed she had the knack of healing. Certainly no other leech he’d ever met could ease his pains so well.

  If only she had the remedy for a broken heart. I’d pay her whatever she asked if she could numb my life as she numbs my body.

  Of course, hoping for such respite was a fool’s errand. For the crime of loving the wrong woman he was sentenced to a living death here in the Marches. Only when Humbert died might he find a way to escape his prison. Rebuild his life into something closer to what he’d dreamed it would be, when he was a younger man.

  Provided Roric’s not been poisoned utterly against me these past five years. And that’s a frail reed for a drowning man to clutch.

  Balfre’s hard-bitten serjeant, Grule, challenged him and his escort of four men-at-arms as soon as they appeared at the Harcian’s manor house gates.

  “Stand and be recognised–or meet the point of my sword!”

  It was a formality, nothing more. Grule knew him well enough. Marcher law held that in the interests of keeping the peace, every Marcher lord had right of way to ride the length and breadth of the Marches. Past skirmishes between the old lords Wido, Jacott, Bayard and Egbert had oft had the abusing of that right as their cause. But Aimery’s son put those former lords to shame. Every week he disported himself in Clemen’s Marcher lands. When the mood took him he spilled blood the way other men pissed out beer. Since the confrontation at the Pig Whistle he’d spilled only deer’s blood, and boar, and once hanged two Harcian Marcher men for breaking the law.

  But now, with the butchery of this helpless family from Clemen…

  Ignoring Grule’s men, belligerently ranged behind their serjeant, Vidar rested his hand upon the hilt of his sword. “Lord Vidar to see Count Balfre. Stand aside.”

  Grule nodded, accepting that much. Then his gaze raked over Clemen’s men-at-arms. “You have leave to pass, Lord Vidar. Your men-at-arms do not.”

  Marcher law again. A raised hand told his escort to hold fast. Then he kicked his horse forward, past the serjeant and his staring men, and cantered over cut grass to Balfre’s front door.

  As he dismounted in the manor house’s forecourt, Balfre came out to meet him. “Take Lord Vidar’s horse,” he told the stable lad who’d come running. “See it to water. But don’t stable it. His lordship won’t be here that long.”

  Vidar threw his reins in the lad’s face and limped to confront Harcia’s next duke. “Balfre! What the fuck is wrong with you? Execute thieves and rapists and murderers if you must, but children? Starving peasants? What manner of nobility did you learn at Aimery’s knee that you’d slaughter—”

  “A criminal is a criminal, Vidar,” Balfre retorted, strolling insolent towards him. “Those peasants by their own admission trespassed on sovereign Harcian soil. And today’s thief is tomorrow’s murderer when coin’s not surrendered swiftly enough to suit.”

  “Children, you murderous fuck! No more dangerous to you than a mouse in the wainscot! When Roric learns of this—”

  Balfre laughed, mocking. “He’ll doubtless wring his hands, weeping. From what I hear it’s all he’s good for. Vidar, your outrage is as twisted as your lame and crippled body.” Abruptly, his laughter died. “Those peasants had the plague.”

  He stared. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  It was a fair question. He didn’t know how to answer it.

  “I did what I had to do, Vidar,” said Balfre, and shrugged. “I’ll not grovel apology for it. Only a fool kisses pestilence on the lips.”

  “How are you so sure they were diseased?”

  Balfre lifted an eyebrow. “Has your duke left you ignorant of the plague’s appearance?”

  “Of course not. But even so, you had no right to—”

  “I had every right. They were trespassing. Marcher law is on my side.”

  “Fuck the law and fuck you,” he said, his vision blurring with rage. “I’ll take your word they were trespassing and I’ll accept they were diseased–though you can offer no proof of either. But you didn’t need to kill them. You could’ve given them to me. I’d have sent those peasants close-kept to Eaglerock and seen them first healed, if they could be healed, then punished for their crime. Why did you have to put them to the sword?”

  “Because I don’t trust you! Not with Harcian lives.” Balfre sneered. “How noble. You’d have seen your precious peasants to a leech. But Vidar, you and I both know there is but one sure way to cure plague. Kill those infected and burn their putrid bodies after. Which is what I did. You’re welcome.”

  “You kill and burn infected sheep, Balfre! Those people weren’t sheep!”

  “Well, Vidar…” Balfre shrugged again. “They were from Clemen. So there is an argument to be made.” Then he sighed, like a man fast running out of good will. “My lord, don’t be a fool. Sixteen other Clemen criminals have my men-at-arms found trespassing before today, and sixteen times I kept Harcia’s sword in its scabbard and handed the trespassers to you. Much good that mercy did me. Do you think my patience has no limit? Even if those villagers hadn’t been diseased, did you think I’d wait till a Clemen dagger slit a Harcian throat in the middle of the night before—”

  “I should’ve slit your throat, Balfre, when I had the chance! That would’ve been blood well spilled!”

  “Try again if you dare, Vidar,” Balfre taunted. “I’m not so glutted on Clemen blood that spilling yours would cost me sleep!”

  He wore a sword and a dagger, but he yearned to beat Aimery’s arrogant son with his fists. Heedless of his painful hip, his halting stride, the edge of youth that favoured Balfre, blinding himself to the murderous bastard’s strength and speed and violence-honed instincts, he shouted and leapt.

  Balfre scythed his legs out from under him and smashed him to the ground with one fisted blow to his face. Breathless, he lay there. Then, body screaming with pain, humiliation setting him on fire, he struggled to rise.

  “Stay down, Vidar, you fucking fool,” Balfre advised, and dropped to a knee beside him. “It ill becomes me to beat a cripple.”

  Though Balfre had struck him with a naked fist, no mail or gauntlet to lend power, still he could feel his eye and cheek swiftly swelling. A good thing the blow had landed on his blind side or he’d be wholly useless. Betrayed by his scarred and shuddering body, he stayed down.

  “Plaguish or not, it ill became you to murder those peasants,” he said, choking. “Your sense of honour is inconstant. You’re owed a thr
ashing for those deaths, Balfre, and if I’m not the man to beat some shame into you, surely I will find the man who is.” He twisted his lips in a stinging smile. “I’m sure Roric would be interested.”

  “And here I thought I was the only hot-head in the Marches.” Amused, Balfre shook his head. “I like you, Vidar. I shouldn’t, since you’re of Clemen and you did press a blade to my throat once, but… I like you. Roric’s a fucking poor excuse for a duke but you’re loyal. I can admire that.”

  Breathing hard through his nose, Vidar glared at him. “Should I feel flattered?”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you feel, Vidar.” Balfre stood. Tipped his head to one side, considering. “I think we’re done here. Only–one last thought. If I were you, I’d not trumpet how close the Marches came to plague. I said nothing of it at the Pig Whistle and my men know to keep their mouths shut. If you’re wise, you’ll follow my lead.”

  If he was wise. So many things he’d have done differently, if he was wise. But Balfre was right. Let word escape that the plague had crossed from Clemen into the Marches, no matter how briefly, no matter it was contained…

  “Agreed,” he muttered.

  “And can we also agree that you should exercise increased vigilance along your Marcher border with Clemen? Those peasants came from Dipford. You might warn Roric of that. And Vidar?”

  “What?”

  “Here’s fair warning from me. How you deal with those found sickened is your affair. My remedy you already know. I’ll not hesitate to use it again.”

  Vidar swallowed. Butchery and burning. The spirits have mercy on all of them once Balfre was made a duke.

  He couldn’t stand without help. Hating the man, hating himself, Vidar took Balfre’s offered hand and without grace found his feet. Re-mounted his horse, his hip an agony, and rode away from the manor house feeling Balfre’s following gaze like a dagger stuck in his back.

  The Pig Whistle was quiet that night. Word of the severed heads had swiftly spread. The four Zeidican merchants ate supper early and hid themselves after in the dormer. A weeping pity that, no chance of wheedling gossip from them to sell. Some dozen or so regular customers had braved the chill, though. Molly served them pies and ale, cheerful as always, but her smile was forced and they knew it. Their smiles were forced too, and nobody called for music. What man made merry upon the graves of the dead?