Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  “I swear I do not know the law you speak of, Countess. Tell me what angers you, and I will discover what I can.”

  She turned, and for a moment she looked at him with incredulity. Gradually the anger left her features. “Is it possible? Very well,” she said. “The Royal Establishment on Sea Ports, signed and sealed by your hand—yours, Majesty, not the queen’s nor any lesser noble’s. It purports to set laws for the neutral ports, but underneath the flowering language it festers with unpleasant intent. Everything that could be done to undercut the freedom of the Sindigato lurks in those words. You have stripped us of any right to sell our goods north of the Nabbanai border, and harmed your own citizens by allowing the Northern Alliance a monopoly. Without having to compete, they can set any price they wish.”

  Simon could only shake his head. “I swear to you, if I signed such a law, I did so without proper knowledge of what it said.”

  “A poor apology for a monarch to make,” she said with more than a touch of bitterness.

  “What do you want?” His weariness had turned to anger—it was all he could do not to upend the table and send the wine and bread and cups crashing to the floor. “What do you want of me, Countess? I can only tell you what I know, and I know nothing of this. The fault may be mine—by the Bloody Tree, my wife says often enough that I do not hear all I should!—but that does not make what I am saying false. I do not know of this!” He stared at her, but her return gaze was not what he expected. Instead of fear or anger, he saw something else, although her expression—a narrowing of the eyes, a flush in the cheeks, mouth half-open in surprise—could have been either. But her next words proved he had guessed correctly.

  “So the Commoner King is indeed swift to passion.” She returned to her chair. The servants, still cowering in the doorway after Simon’s shouting, did not spring forward this time to help her. “I will not apologize, Your Majesty, for what I said was true. But perhaps you do not know everything that is done in your name.”

  He scowled. “I fear that may be the case, more than I ever guessed. And I will find out what happened, this I promise. I will find out the truth of this law.” He saw that his fists were tightly clenched on the tabletop and eased them. “Let me bring in all my councillors. We will get to the bottom of this.”

  “I doubt they will tell you the truth—some of them, in any case—if I am here.” She rose. “But I look forward to another meeting between us, King Simon, and I look forward to learning what you discover.” She drifted toward the door, suddenly as light and unperturbed as a sailboat catching the morning breeze. Then she turned. “Ah! I have forgotten! I beg your pardon, Majesty, after you have given me so much time and have let me speak so frankly, but may I presume on you a few moments longer?”

  He was calmer now and did his best to be expansive. “Of course, Countess. And any more time in your company will be a pleasant burden to bear.”

  She made a mocking little courtesy, smiling. “But it is not I who needs your time, it is one of those who came with me. He has been waiting outside, craving a moment of speech with you—a swift moment only, he swears.”

  Simon wondered why any of the other Perdruinese would want to speak to him. “He has been waiting all this time?”

  “He comes from a patient race,” she said. “Shall I send him in as I go?”

  Taken aback and not certain what he had let himself in for, he nodded. “Of course, my lady.”

  “You are very kind, King Simon. I think the Commoner King could teach some of supposedly nobler blood a few lessons in manners.” And with that she made a full courtesy, then swept out.

  In the moment of silence that followed Simon again felt the tug of exhaustion. It seemed sometimes that he was back in the Aldheorte Forest of his youth, stumbling through snow, hungry, weary, and without hope. So many things to do, and none of them what he really wanted—to have Miri back, to have a quiet kingdom to govern, to know that his family and his people were safe.

  The door opened. In the first moments, as he stared at the hooded stranger, Simon felt a shock of superstitious fear. Then the visitor threw back the hood and Simon was even more surprised. “By Rhiap,” he said, “—you’re a Niskie!”

  The stranger bowed his head in acknowledgement. His color was a bit like Tiamak’s, but the large, wide-set eyes and the roughness of the skin on his cheeks and neck marked him out. “I am, yes, Seoman King.”

  Simon laughed in surprise. “Very few people call me by that name, and almost all of them are Sithi. Who are you?”

  “Tey Seiso is my name, and I am the sea-watcher of Countess Yissola’s ship Li Fosena . . . but I myself am not important. I bear a message for you from the Spar.”

  Simon was feeling overwhelmed by all the things he did not know. “And what is that?”

  “The council of elders of my people, the Tinukeda’ya of Nabban. They have entrusted me with words for you alone. Not even my mistress, Countess Yissola, knows what I will tell you.” He cast a sideways glance at the servants. “I must speak so only you can hear.”

  Simon looked the messenger over carefully. Tey Seiso was small but also wiry, with the long, strong arms of his folk. By the Tree, Simon chided himself, if I do not trust myself alone with a little fellow like this I might as well just take to my bed and never get up again. He sent away the servants and all but two door guards. “Well, then,” he said when they were gone. “It is just you and me, sir. What is this secret dispatch?”

  The Niskie bowed his head in acknowledgement. “We are tied to your house by our love for your wife. She came and spoke to our elders in Nabban, because they had concerns to share with her—but those concerns are not the reason for my commission.” He blinked hugely, like a frog. “The sea-watchers of Perdruin and Nabban are of the same people. Borders mean little to us. In the ports of Ansis Pellipé we hear news from our southern brothers and sisters every day as they arrive. My commission was given to me by Gan Lagi herself, one of the chief servants of the Spar, and it is to tell you that Nabban is in a grave state and Queen Miriamele is in danger if she stays.”

  Simon’s breath caught in his throat. “What do you mean? What danger?”

  “Drusis, the Earl of Trevinta and Eadne, the duke’s brother, is dead. Murdered.”

  It was all Simon could do not to lean across and grab the Niskie to drag him closer. “Dead? How? When did this happen?”

  “A fortnight ago. He was stabbed to death while at chapel in Count Dallo’s house. Many people blame his brother the duke for his murder, and there are riots and fires across the city. Niskie-town, as some call the district near the old docks, has suffered particularly badly, as it always does in times of unrest, but that is beside the point. This anger is being steered, the Spar believes, perhaps by House Ingadaris.”

  Simon was trying to make sense of it all, but he was terrified for his wife. “Then she must leave. Miri must leave! Why is she still there?”

  Tey Seiso gave strange, wriggling shrug, like an eel sliding out of grasping fingers. “We do not know much of what goes on in the Sancellan Mahistrevis, we know only what happens on the ships of Nabban. You must ask someone else why the queen lingers, but the elders of the Spar are concerned for her.”

  “Nabban is weeks away, even if I had soldiers on ships already.”

  “We do not seek to counsel you, Seoman King, but my people had this news first and believed that you should have it too. Nabban is afire, and very few think matters there will end well.”

  His embassy finished, the Niskie bowed and went out. Simon paced back and forth across the Bishop’s Reflection Room until a knock at the door reminded him he had forgotten to summon back the guards and servants. When he opened the door, he told them to call for Tiamak, Pasevalles, Sir Zakiel, and the rest of the Lords Military and that he wanted them there on the instant.

  * * *

  Although the news was dire, Tiamak wa
s heartened to see the king returned to something like his old vigor. Simon did not wait a moment before demanding to know how soon soldiers could be sent to Nabban.

  “We are not like the Nabbanai or the Pedruinese,” said Colfrid, the Lord Marine. “We do not have ships ready for war, Your Majesty.”

  “And most of our able guardsmen are already on the border with His Grace, the duke,” added Lord Zakiel, recently granted a baron’s title to reflect his growing importance in Osric’s absence.

  “I know that,” the king said, giving the two lords a look that few had seen from their monarch, and which even fewer would have wanted to see again. “By God’s Bloody Tree, I want to know how long it will take to put soldiers on cogs and get them there. Can nobody answer a simple question?”

  “We will have to seize merchant ships and refit them,” offered Pasevalles. “The guilds will not like it, nor will the Northern Alliance.”

  “The guilds can go straight to Hell,” Simon said. “We are talking about the queen’s safety. We are talking about my wife, curse it!” He turned to Tiamak. “As for the Alliance, is not one of their most important factors living here under my roof, eating my venison and roast capon and drinking my wine?”

  Tiamak might have smiled, but he thought the king might kick him if he did. “You mean Aengas ec-Carpilbin, Majesty. Yes, he is here.”

  “By God, that name is a chewy mouthful! Tell him I want his help and I want it now. Tell him that the Alliance must give me their aid if they hope to ever again have a sympathetic ear in this court.”

  Tiamak promised he would do it as soon as the Inner Council was dismissed. “I am certain he will help, Majesty. Aengas is a good man.”

  “I don’t want good men, I want men with ships. I want soldiers. I want my wife out of that cursed nest of vipers before Saluceris loses control of things completely.” Simon stared around the table as if hoping someone would dare disagree.

  “I will be honored to lead the rescue party as captain,” said Earl Rowson, and before Tiamak could intervene, Simon turned on him.

  “You? Do you think I would send you with my wife’s safety in question, Rowson? You have not done any fighting since the Thrithings days, and you have grown fat and soft.”

  “Your Majesty, that is unfair—” the nobleman began.

  “Silence! And if you speak again before I ask you, our flagship will sail to Nabban with your head nailed to the bow!”

  Rowson turned white. His mouth opened, and it seemed he might test the king’s threat then and there. Instead, he swept his velvet hat from the table and then turned and walked out of the throne hall.

  “That might have been done more . . . kindly, Majesty,” said Tiamak quietly.

  Simon looked at him. The king’s face was red, and he had disarranged his hair by clutching at it until he looked a little mad. “I do not care what Rowson thinks. The man is a fool, and I will not pamper a fool when Miri is in danger.”

  “Nobody expected you actually to send him, Simon—” Tiamak began but did not get the chance to finish.

  “Good. Because I would rather send the most dimwitted stable boy to Nabban than him.” He turned back to the rest of the table, where his councillors were looking at him with more than a little alarm. “What do you all wait for?” Simon demanded. “The heir has been kidnapped by Thrithings-men, Norns roam the north of Erkynland, and your queen is in danger. Go! Find me ships and men! I will announce a captain soon. God, but I wish I could go myself—I would gladly cut Dallo Ingadaris into small pieces with my own hands and feed them to the gulls. Go, all of you! Go and see to what needs doing!”

  * * *

  • • •

  Tiamak dutifully delivered the king’s message to Aengas, who had the sense not to ask too many questions, since Tiamak warned him that the king was in a shouting mood. After his friend had promised to contact the local Alliance merchants immediately, Tiamak made his way back to his rooms, wondering at what terrible news might next be delivered.

  I was right that day back in the snows of the Frostmarch, he thought. My gods sent me a sign of evil times ahead. But I could never have imagined the dangers to be so many and so widespread!

  When he reached his chambers he found his wife holding a glass beaker so she could examine its contents against the flame of an oil lamp.

  “How went the council meeting?” she asked without looking up. “Was I missed? Did you give the king my apologies? I was at a most delicate moment in my investigation.”

  “To be honest, dear wife, the king did not notice your absence. Simon is in high dudgeon. He insulted Earl Rowson and all but threw him out of the throne room.”

  “Tch.” She shook the beaker, squinted. “Rowson is a famous idiot.”

  “Do not shake it so!” It was all Tiamak could do not to snatch the vessel from her hand. “Those were made by the finest craftsmen in Ansis Pellipé! They are ungodly dear, and I fear it would take half a year or more to replace one.”

  “Calm down, husband. I promise you I will not damage it. I have already done the worst.” She finally looked at him. “You look grim.”

  “Nothing you have not heard,” he said, then gave her a summary of the Inner Council’s arguments and Simon’s impatience. “Now,” he said when he had finished, “let me put aside these grim matters of state for a moment, dear wife. What exactly have you been doing with my best glassware?”

  “Ah!” Her face suddenly lit with pleasure. “I have made a rare find, I think. Even you will not fail to marvel, husband. Do you recall that I found the pitchy stains of the poison that felled the Sitha-woman on some bedsheets?”

  “I recall that you found some soiled bedsheets,” he said drily. “Everything else was conjecture. That is my memory.”

  “Like all your heathen kind, you ask for proof when you should have faith,” Thelía said, as fondly as if she spoke to a beloved but troublesome pet. “Meanwhile, I have let my faith lead me to discovery!”

  “And that is?”

  “Look. Hold this beaker up to the lamp’s flame and look, Tiamak.”

  He set down his wine, already half-finished, then took the vessel from her and angled it in front of the light. “It is cloudy,” he said.

  “Because you have shaken it,” she told him. “Wait for it to settle. That is the ash left after I subjected the poison to the heat of your bread-oven for more than an hour. Nothing was left but the gray powder you see swirling there.”

  He was about to ask her what property of wet ash could be so important when everything around them was under threat but held his tongue. Simon might get away with berating people—he was the king. But within this household of two, Tiamak was in no way the ruler.

  In fact, I am lucky if my voice counts as equal measure, he thought, then was arrested by what he saw at the bottom of the beaker. “Pass me my seeing glass, please.”

  She put it in his hand so quickly he did not doubt she had been using it herself. “What do you see?” she asked, sounding almost childlike with anticipation.

  “You sound like young Lillia,” he told her, but he was squinting at the particles floating in the bottom of the beaker. “Crystals,” he said at last. “Though I have seen none quite like them.” He moved the seeing glass back and forth until he could make them out clearly. “Long and strangely-shaped. You say these were left in the ash of the burning?”

  “Yes.” She moved around the table and brought back another beaker. “Now look at this.”

  “Two of my best beakers? Two?”

  “Quiet. Look carefully.”

  He did. The murk in the bottom of the second beaker gradually resolved itself; at the bottom, just as with the first, he saw a few long crystals, smaller than a grain of southern island millet. “I see them. What are they? Is this a second batch of your bread-oven poison?”

  “No.” She came and took the second
beaker back. “No, my husband. As to what they are, I cannot tell you, but I can tell you with great certainty where this second batch came from.”

  “Would you make me guess? From the moon? Did you build a long ladder this afternoon and climb to the sky?”

  “Don’t be foolish. Beside, the answer is even stranger. In both cases—both your beloved glass beakers—what sifts to the bottom is what remains after burning dragon bones.”

  Tiamak stared at her. “What are you saying? How could you know? You said only that it was a dark poison, black and pasty.”

  “That was the smears taken on the Sitha’s bedsheets. But the second sample—well, that I know for a fact was once the bones of a dragon.”

  “But how could that be?”

  “Because I took some so I could compare. The first was the poison. The second was dragon’s bone.”

  “Where would you find . . . ?” But even as he said it, Tiamak suddenly saw the whole thing clear. “Oh, my wife, you didn’t!”

  She made a dismissive face. “The back of the throne is riddled with cracks and fissures. Goodness, Tiamak, the king and queen do not even use it!”

  “You broke off a piece of the Dragonbone Chair?”

  “Scraped a little bit from a hole in the back.” She was clearly not in the least ashamed. “But you are missing the point, husband. I had read in one of your own books that the residue of dragon’s bone contains small, angular crystals. When I saw what the burnt poison yielded—well, what else could I have done? I needed something to compare it to.”

  Tiamak did not know whether to laugh or to cry out in horror. “So you carved a piece out of the most sacred object of Prester John’s High Ward.” But now another, much more disturbing thought was beginning to make its way up from the darkest parts of his memory.

  Thelía was pleased with herself. She poured herself a cup of wine and drank the first few sips with hearty enjoyment. “You are not the only one gifted in natural philosophy, Lord Tiamak of the Wran.” She saw his expression. “Why are you so horrified? Surely you do not think the king will be angry I scraped off a bit of the throne.”