The Path to Power

by Karen Miller

  “Feggit!” He grabbed his brother’s arm. “There!”

  “Oh,” said Benedikt, and laughed. “Now I see it.”

  He puffed out a breath. “Maybe I should think twice afore crossing swords with you. If ye can’t even see a feggit oak tree three times taller than—”

  “I can see it! I can see it!” Benedikt elbowed him in the ribs. “Come on. Don’t forget we have to catch Ma her fish and get back to the whistle afore dusk.”

  They raced each other to the hollow log. Took out the precious swords, left their fishing lines and hooks for safety and plunged back into the sheltering trees a stone’s throw from the stinky bogmarsh, where they could kill phantom men-at-arms with not a soul to see them.

  “Wait!” Liam said, as Benedikt rushed to slaughter a seeded sapling. “Benedikt, wait.”

  Disappointed, his brother stopped. “What?”

  “This b’aint a game,” he said slowly, feeling the weight of the sword in his wrists, his forearms, all the way to his shoulders. The weight of what it meant, and who he was, and what one day he’d have to do. “I’m duke of Clemen, Benedikt. And you be my trusted lord. We have to do this solemn. We have to do this right.”

  “Right how?” said Benedikt, uncertain. “Willem, we b’aint knights. We scarce know one end of a sword from t’other.”

  “We saw them men-at-arms in Bell Wood. They knew what to do. Just… let’s think on them. Y’know. How they held their swords and–and—”

  “Screamed when they got their hands cut off?”

  He glared at his brother. “Y’know what I mean!”

  “Iss, iss,” said Benedikt, rolling his eyes. “All right then. We’ll do like ye say.”

  “Good.” He took a deep breath and lifted his blade. Felt the weight of the sword. The weight of his future. Felt the rightness of forged steel and felt himself smile. “I reckon we start like this…”

  Standing at his closet window, Humbert scowled through the gently persistent rain falling on a dozen men-at-arms at their sword-training in the tilt yard.

  “Furthermore,” he growled, “His Grace can tell that jackanapes Ercole to spit on himself for a nock-doddled pizzlewit. His Grace knows full well Balfre’s a cockshite looking for tendered reason to shove a pike up our arseholes and only a brainless mankworm would oblige him! Yes?”

  Brentton, his trusted personal herald, stoically nodded as he scribbled ink across a sheet of paper. “My lord.”

  “So His Grace should know this,” he continued. “His appointed Marcher lord won’t bow to pizzlewit pronouncements. If it’s war in the Marches he’s after, he’ll need to find himself a new Humbert. This Humbert intends to leave law-abiding Harcian traders well alone from now on, and if Ercole and his coin-grasping goodfather don’t like it let them be the ones to wade knee-high in blood.” He glanced at the herald. “Yes?”

  “–high… in… blood,” Brentton muttered, then nodded. “My lord.”

  Humbert grunted. Brentton had lightning fingers, and put together a cypher no soul but himself could read. Next to Egann, the herald was his most important servant. “His Grace should also know said cockshite Balfre prances yet more green men-at-arms into the Marches. Since that bloody mess in Bell Wood I’ve laid eyes on a half-score new Harcian faces. My serjeant tells me others are rode away, just as before, so we’ll still not pinch the shite for treaty-breaking. But I don’t like it. Yes?”

  Brentton dipped his quill in the inkpot. “My lord.”

  Fingers tugging at his beard, Humbert turned away from the window and wrestled with the need for self-preservation, set against love. Self-preservation lost.

  “Roric,” he said, “I’d have you think carefully on whose counsel you lean the hardest. Our men-at-arms perished in Bell Wood for no good reason. A worthy duke preserves his people. He doesn’t toss them to rabid wolves on a whim. When he taxes, he taxes fairly. And when he imprisons, he turns the key with just cause. Don’t squander your duchy’s love for you. In hard times love is oft hard to find. It’s harder to keep–and woeful easy to lose.”

  “My lord?” said Brentton, when the silence had stretched for a good while. “Is that all?”

  Humbert roused himself from brooding. “Yes. Ride hard for Eaglerock. Read what I’ve said to His Grace in privy audience. And if for any reason you’re stopped unlawfully between here and the castle—”

  “Destroy the letter.” Brentton bowed. “Yes, my lord.”

  “And tell Laffet to ready my palfrey. Rain or not, I’d ride the Marches a while. With luck a steady face and a friendly smile will go a little distance in calming fluttered hearts.”

  But he’d not hold his breath for it. Pizzlewit Ercole and cockshite Balfre had between them stirred the Marches to a fever pitch of mistrust and resentment and naked, bloody fear. How could Roric not see that? How could he go on putting his trust in men like Ercole and Blane and the like, when their selfish advice served only to harm him–and Clemen?

  Feeling a shudder of ill-omen, he rubbed the tips of his fingers against his closed eyes.

  Roric… Roric… I wish you’d let me come home. I know you think you don’t need me. But you’re wrong, boy. You do.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The mood in the crowded guildhall was ugly.

  With Aistan seated by his right hand on the makeshift dais, Roric stared at the resentful faces of Broadthorpe’s pinch-pursing, miscreant men of means. Swept his gaze around the sullen townsfolk seated behind that crowded front row. A sleepy, southwestern artisan township, Broadthorpe, one long day’s ride from Eaglerock. Prosperous before the duchy’s hard times, and still not broken. Full of silversmiths, weavers, blacksmiths and fine leatherwork. Foolishly its leaders had chosen to defy the lawful demands of their duke.

  “Good people,” he said, keeping mellow, hoping that reason would yet carry the day, “your disobedience serves you ill. This is Clemen not Zeidica or Borokand where despotic tyrants hold sway, caring nothing for the people they rule. What I ask of you, I ask out of concern for your welfare and love for this duchy.”

  “Ha!” Broadthorpe’s bullish mayor jutted his chin. “Love for our coin boxes, more like.”

  “Curb your insolence, Jarvas,” Aistan snapped. “Or do you look for accommodation beneath Eaglerock castle?”

  Broadthorpe’s mayor stood, ponderous with the weight of his forty-nine years and bloated self-regard.

  “Your Grace,” he said, glancing angrily at Aistan, “since the arrival of your herald last week, we in Broadthorpe have talked most mightily on your demands for greater tithes, and taxes, and tollage of our bridges and roads. We do wonder now that you failed to ask a tollage for the air we breathe and the deposits in our nightjars. Mayhap you’d care to tax our eyelids for opening, our nails for growing and our arseholes for farting! In short, Your Grace, you ask too much!”

  The townsfolk of Broadthorpe loudly applauded their mayor. Some shouted their support of him, others drummed their heels on the wooden floor to create an ominous thunder.

  Aistan leaned close. “Now will you stop placating them, Roric?” he said, pitching his voice below the uproar. “These people are in need of a mailed fist holding a sword, not an empty hand stretched out in friendship.”

  “You’d have my men-at-arms spill Clemen blood? See the people tremble at the mention of my name?” He shook his head. “If that’s what you’re after, Aistan, you should’ve left Harald where he was.”

  “I understand your reluctance,” Aistan said sharply. “At one time I shared it. But Clemen can’t support such rank defiance. Would you have Broadthorpe’s pernicious rot spread throughout the duchy till we’re mired in open revolt?”

  He touched Aistan’s arm. “It won’t come to that.”

  “No?”

  “No.” Sitting back, he waited for the townsfolk’s clamour to die down. When the hall was almost quiet again, he steepled his fingers. “Mayor Jarvas, have you come to hear reasoned argument or simply for raucous, closed-m
inded dispute?”

  “We’ve come to tell you there’s no more coin for Eaglerock!” Jarvas retorted. “We’re citizens of a chartered township, Your Grace. Not cows to be milked whenever you fancy you’ve a thirst!”

  “Thirst?” He laughed, derisive. “You’re a fool, Jarvas. It’s starvation we face.”

  Jarvas thrust out his chest, pigeon-wise, be-ringed fingers clutching the front of his black velvet robe. His gold and peacock-blue enamel chain of office winked in the torch and lamplight as he rocked on his heels.

  “You look plump enough to me, Your Grace. You and Lord Aistan. Aye, and the rest of Clemen’s council and its barons and your men-at-arms. D’you think the people of Broadthorpe don’t know how things are done in Eaglerock?”

  A fresh swell of muttering in the guildhall. Roric felt himself tense. He’d spurned Aistan’s suggestion that he appear at this meeting wearing mail beneath martial leather and he’d left his serjeant, Homb, and his other men-at-arms outside rather than range them around him in an unspoken threat. Had he made a mistake? Were Broadthorpe’s hackle-raised townsfolk about to start snarling and snapping?

  Perhaps. But only if they scented fear.

  Ignoring Aistan’s choked-off protest, he stood and stepped down from the dais to confront Jarvas face-to-face. Waited for the townsfolk’s muttering to cease, for their mayor to deflate his puffed chest. When he was sure of their attention, he looked Jarvas in the eye.

  “You speak of whispers, man. Gossip. Let me tell you what I know. I know our harvests are yet meagre. I know intemperate weather is not our friend. I know plague and black-lung and slough and chalk-bone still stalk through Clemen, despite the precautions taken in Eaglerock harbour and no matter what our leeches do. I know desperate men take desperate measures to feed their hungry families, and though we’ve beaten back the pirates who came ashore to steal innocent Clemen-folk and sell them into vile bondage, they are still plundering those few merchants brave enough to dare the open waters. And most of all, Jarvas, most all, I know this. It takes coin to repair our ravaged duchy and every man, however great, however humble, must bear the burden of supplying it.”

  Jarvas blinked. “Your Grace—”

  “You people of Broadthorpe!” Swinging aside, Roric began to pace between the dais and the township’s prominent citizens seated in the front row. Swept his cold gaze across their wary faces. His sword, belted close, thumped against his leg with each stride. “You hear scurrilous whispers and shout from your rooftops that they’re true! They are not true. I demand coin and more than coin from my barons. I command them and their sons to raise their swords in Clemen’s service. I tell them their men-at-arms must serve me first, leaving their homes and families at the mercy of any danger. And those men-at-arms I hold ready to protect any town or village in Clemen, should it be threatened by a foe. To die for you, uncomplaining. And you begrudge me coin? You ask Clemen’s barons to pay for everything? You should hang your heads in shame.”

  In the hush, as Broadthorpe’s people exchanged uneasy glances, their mayor’s nervous cough sounded loud. “Your Grace—”

  Still pacing, Roric raised a hand. “Be silent.”

  The townsfolk stared, frozen, as Jarvas closed his mouth. No more raucous clamour. No drumming heels now.

  “You boast of Broadthorpe’s charter,” Roric said, giving his contempt free rein. “Where do you think it came from? Who granted it? A faery? It was granted you by Harald. And what one duke can give you, another can take away. So here is fair warning, Jarvas. You know, and I know, it’s within your means to pay Broadthorpe’s reckoning. So within a tenday you’ll see that exact amount surrendered to an official from Eaglerock’s treasury–or you’ll learn, to your great sorrow, what it means to wake my wrath. Broadthorpe’s charter will be revoked, its independence shattered. You’ll once again be chattel to be disposed of as I see fit.”

  Jarvas swallowed. “Your Grace.”

  Halting, he seared the mute townsfolk with a measuring glare. “I am not Harald. I do not punish imagined slights or shed blood capriciously. But do not mistake my mercy for weakness. Heed this warning, Broadthorpe. You defy me at your peril.”

  The frozen silence continued, unbroken, as he and Aistan swept out of the guildhall and into Broadthorpe’s market place. Serjeant Homb and his men-at-arms, seeing them, came to straighter attention.

  Roric glanced sidelong at the man who’d taken Humbert’s place. “Well, Aistan? Satisfied?”

  Aistan smiled briefly. “I am.”

  “I thought you might be.” He nodded at his serjeant. “Let’s go.”

  They journeyed back to Eaglerock sweating. The weather was sultry for so late in the year, charcoal-grey clouds gathering, a threat of thunder and lightning and more crop-rotting rain. Water lay in stagnant pools along both edges of the sunken clay road that meandered some three leagues from the township to the edge of Cudrotham Wood, and the open fields on either side of them were so green their brilliance hurt the eye. Brindled milch cows, hides scabby with rain-scald, stood in grass so high it brushed their pendulous udders. Their swishing tails were soaked in liquid manure, the waterlogged grass so plentiful they seemed content to do nothing but drowse.

  With the road too slippery and potholed for riding faster than a slow jog, Roric was able to peruse Aistan at his leisure. They were riding side-by-side, leaving their men-at-arms escort to discreetly bring up the rear.

  “You’re pensive, Aistan,” he remarked, after they’d ridden in silence for some time.

  Aistan grunted. “I’m weary. The years have crept up on me.” He patted a disordered lock of his horse’s mane into place. “And, if you’d know, I worry about Kennise.”

  He rarely mentioned his youngest daughter. “How does she go on? I hope time has eased her grief.”

  “Kennise was ever fragile,” Aistan said, eventually. “Harald left his mark on her. And it seems her life with Vidar was not as content as she let me believe.” He released an unsteady breath. “But I think she improves, now the Marches are behind her.”

  Roric blotted trickling sweat from his temple. Poor Kennise. One way and another, his family hadn’t done well by this man’s youngest daughter. “I’m sorry she’s had to endure so much pain.”

  “I know.” Aistan frowned. “And you, Your Grace? How do you go on, without Lindara? At least Kennise has her daughters. But you—” A heavy sigh. “Forgive me. I don’t mean to pry.”

  He watched his gloved fingers tighten on his reins. “I’d know who asks the question, Aistan. Clemen’s councillor… or my friend.”

  “Are we friends, Roric?”

  “You tell me, my lord.”

  “I’ll tell you this,” said Aistan, sombre. “After Humbert’s sons perished, leaving you fostered alone beneath his roof, I watched Harald deliberately set you apart from Clemen’s other young lords who would gladly have drawn you into their company. He made sure to deny you natural companionship so he might keep you tied to his whims and selfish generosity. Played up your bastardy even as he pretended to ignore it.”

  Roric stared sidelong, jogging his horse stride for stride with Aistan. “You think I don’t know that?”

  “I think…” Aistan smoothed his silvered beard. “Roric, I’ve long suspected there is some darker truth behind Humbert’s shift to the Marches. A reason beyond Clemen’s safety that keeps him penned there. What it is, I don’t need to know. Nor would I call him home. Humbert serves us well as a Marcher lord. But without him, without Lindara–and thanks to Harald’s machinations–you are bereft of family. I think it unhealthy. Both for you and for Clemen.”

  Pasture had given way to hedgerows on either side of the sunken clay road. Roric listened to the rustling and chep-chep of hedge-birds in the dark green foliage. Listened to the soggy, rhythmic thud of hooves striking damp clay. Their horses’ bits jingled. One of the men-at-arms behind them coughed. The cloud-bruised sky seemed to sink lower towards the ground.

  “I take it you’
ve a remedy in mind.”

  “I have a sad, lonely daughter, Roric. And you need a son.”

  Laugh or weep. They were his choices. “You’d give me your family, Aistan? Since I lack one of my own?”

  Aistan turned to look at him, his eyes deep and shadowed. “I’d give you a way to put the past behind you. A chance to make a happier future for yourself, and Kennise, and Clemen.”

  By wedding and bedding the woman Harald had ruined. The woman Vidar had married because he couldn’t have Lindara, who’d birthed him two daughters and now lived like a mouse in her father’s manor. Coldspring sat empty, a waste of good land.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You can say yes,” Aistan replied. “Roric, surely you know your childless state has long concerned the council. Given how Lindara died we’ve said nothing, to spare your feelings, hoping you’d come to admit the urgency of this for yourself. But you can’t, or won’t, and we can keep silent no longer. Indeed, to keep silent is to be derelict in our duty.”

  His skin was crawling. “I see.”

  “You’re displeased. I understand that. And were you an ordinary man the choice to wed or not would be yours, no one else’s. But—”

  “But I’m a duke. Which means my cock and seed belong to Clemen.”

  “Crude. But true.”

  “Except were I a stallion, Aistan, instead of a man, an astute horse-keeper would’ve have gelded me long since. Or has it slipped your mind that before I was widowed I sired no living child?”

  “Why so quick to blame yourself? The fault might have been Lindara’s. Roric—” Shifting in his saddle, Aistan fixed him with a steady stare. “You stand today in the same place you stood the morning after Heartsong. Now, as you were then, you are a duke in want of an heir.”

  And if that wasn’t a cruel faery-trick, he didn’t know what was. So many things Aistan and the council couldn’t be told. Truths he had to keep secret lest Clemen be torn apart. But the alternative was impossible. Marry Kennise, another reluctant daughter? And who would she fuck, to numb her hurting heart?