Tales from the Isles

Some servants, proper servants, Gohler reminded himself, spend their days cleaning up dust and straightening bric-a-brac.  Gohler had been a proper servant once; now it was his fate to spend his days awash in madness.  And so today, when the house began to tremble, he did not worry overmuch.

The tea-cups shook against their saucers, first soft, then audibly.

“Mother save us,” Theresa gasped, hands bunched together in her dress.  “What fresh lunacy is this?”  She dashed here and there, holding out steadying hands.

The ringing of the tea-cups was insistent.  Gohler fancied that their clamor resembled a familiar melody.  “You’re wasting your time, my dear.”  He looked up from his broadsheet.  “You clean the spills up after it’s over.”

Theresa cursed as hot tea sloshed all over her hand.  “This happens often?”

“Mmn.”  Gohler figured it best not to answer.  He returned his attention to the news.  An excellent novelty, and too long in coming to the midlands, a proper newsheet.  He wondered how many gossiping housewives now found themselves bereft of importance — only to grow increasingly convinced, as he read on, that they had instead found themselves new employment as journalists.

An explosion sounded off somewhere in the bowels of Greenvale manor, and the trembling stopped.  “Perhaps she’s killed herself,” Gohler dared to hope, aloud.  He turned a page.

It was a decision made after much hand-wringing, to work for the Duchess.  Gohler was a manservant of the highest caliber, to be certain.  He had the breeding and bearing worthy of serving the most distinguished personages; he came from high nobility, in fact, albeit six generations removed.  Gohler might nearly be a baron himself, he often heard, if only he had any capacity for making money.  Three consecutive masters regarded him with the highest esteem — and it was another step up in the world, to serve a Grand Duchess.

That made it no less dangerous.  “This,” his cousin Gertrude had told him once, half-intelligible around the food in her mouth, “Is a woman who goes through servants like I go through flour.  She uses them up.  Bakes them in her oven.  Eats them in the name of expediency.”  She pointed with half a baguette.  “You haven’t got enough man in you to handle her.”

Indeed.  Here he was, in Greenvale manor, wondering which of the witchlights that sparkled regularly upon the patio were the Duchess’ doing.  They all were, of course — but he nursed the fear that one day, some demon would arrive at the house’s door, and everyone would be too deeply inured to strangeness to react.

“Is my guest here?”

Gohler, despite a strategically plased vase, found it prudent to hide his news-paper and stand at attention.  “Not yet, madam.”

Stellvia was, as ever, impeccably put together, all tight bodice and long skirt, high-piled hair and too-long sleeve.  She looked little more than half her forty years, though her stiffened leg did limit her.  Gohler did not comment on the soot clinging to her cheeks.  He’d have to ask what she’d destroyed.

“Good, good.” The Duchess clasped her hands, nodded.  “My guest is a very particular man.  Peculiar, too.  Theresa!”  She rapped her cane noisily against the floor.  “Pay attention.  You do not simply serve, you attend.  Yes?  Good.”  She swept her cane in a wide arc.  “Clean up this tea.  It’s a mess.  I pay you for better.  No — actually — no tea.  Wine.  The Sronnish vintage.  Let’s use it up before it turns to vinegar.”

“There were two footmen for you while you were…”  Words failed him.  “In the basement,” he decided on.  “A letter demanding signifigant remuneration in return for Lady Benevere’s assistance and vote in council, delivered in form of public works contracts to her broth–”

Stellvia let out an inelegant noise.  “Despicable.  It is the sort of thing I wish to change.  But one cannot clean a mess without dirtied hands.  Send a reply in the affirmative.”

“Also,” Gohler went on, “Darius Winthrop has offered you a position as his First Minister, if you withdraw your claim and lend your support to him in the election.”

“Cute.  It would put him far ahead.  Audacious on the face of it.  Reasonable upon further analysis:  I run the country, while he and his crew go indulge in necessary wars abroad.  He wants the authority of the throne, but is willing to let me decide largely where it is pointed.”  She pursed her lips.  “Send him back a letter offering him a tenative spot as head of the Admiralty.  It’s enough to continue dialogue without being outright offensive.”

“As Your Grace desires.”

Theresa made the mistake of speaking.  “Your Gr–”

“No, no.  Not now.  You are underfoot.  Invisible.  Other folk of high station desire their servants thus, and my guest might arrive at any time.  Through any window.  He is dramatic.  Oh, and pull down your bodice a bit.  He likes women.”  She pondered that a moment.  “Not boys.  I think.”  She allowed a half second, then, “Wine! Go to!”

Gohler headed for the door, and brushed off his green livery as he went.  “I will take his coat, Your Grace,” he explained.  If the man had embraced the newer fashions, anyhow.

“What do you know about our guest?”  The Duchess, apparently, was not about to let him go.

“I know that he will have votes in the Assembly,” Gohler said.

“Oh, yes.  Very droll.  That is why I keep you around.” Stellvia raised up her cane, and looked at its polished-brass tip, perhaps in search of her own reflection.  “He is foreign.  Like the Armiger.  A survivor of Viroth.  I had hoped you might know a bit more about the country than I.”

He knew nothing, but best not to admit that.  “I heard their country was flattened by abominations.”

“Yes, a pity.  So many red-headed men, perished.”  Always was the Duchess analyzing this or that man, sizing them up as a potential second marriage on any and all sundry criteria.

“Last week you preferred blondes, Your Grace.”

“Well.”  The Duchess lowered herself into a chair with a wince, giving her half-crippled leg special attention.  “That was last week.  A lonely woman’s fancies run free.”

Personally, Gohler suspected that the Duchess was incapable of sexual attraction.  She treated the whole thing like a mathematical exercise.  Or perhaps a dog breeder:  These traits, those traits, positives and negatives.

“Do you think you will gain this guest’s support?”  Theresa’s voice was wavering, uncertain, as she returned with wine bottle in hand.

“Oh, most certainly,” Stellvia said.  “I suspect I have him in the palm of my hand.  I will make him a most generous offer.  There are not many weeks left before the Assembly, but I suspect my momentum shall begin to pick up admirably…”  She frowned.  “No, no, Theresa.  Not the seventy-five.  The sixty­-five.  Back to the cellar, dear.”

Gohler worked this over in his head.  “But how can you be so certain you have his vote?”

“My charming good looks, of course,” Stellvia tossed off, back of her hand wiping away the soot on her brow.  “Perhaps he will be the author of my third marriage proposal this year.”  Her look went distant.  “More seriously, he is what I am:  A channeler.  And thus he will align naturally with my agenda.  Even if he isn’t as…charitable as the Greenvales, he’ll still have his uses.  Men are easily manipulated for the greater good; all it takes is a bit of religion or leg.”

Theresa frowned at her ankles like they’d betrayed her.

“Yes, the mage will support the mage.  I suspect it’s useless for me to hide it any more — it seems one of my former staff has been telling all and sundry.”  Her cane made a loud clack as it hit the floor again.  “And the smallfolk believe it.  Fine.  Let them.  Better a monarch with the power to defend her realm, than one with the money to make others do it for her.”  Stellvia frowned at Theresa.  “Enjoy this day’s lackadaisical luxury; it will not last, if you stay with me.”

Gohler left without a word.  Coats be damned, two dabblers in witchery under one roof!  He would need a shield.  And a mop.

Warren had heard of rain falling in sheets before, but the tactile fullness of that metaphor had never meant anything to him until now. It was not so much droplets of water he pressed through as absolute, unyielding walls of the stuff; not even the oil coating his cloak had been enough to ward off the damp. He was soaked hair to toe, and it was anyone’s guess what time of day it was. The suns were obscured behind impenetrable grey. For all that he grinned. He lived for this kind of misery.

Words like ‘masochist’ were very fashionable among intellectuals, but Warren figured he just wasn’t satisfied with idyll. ‘Adventurous’ worked. Some folk lived in luxury, other folk suffered to build it for them. He was a fixer, a problem-solver, a weed-puller. So it happened some of the weeds were men, and the nastiest ones dripped bile and venom. Or maybe he was more like a doctor, he reflected, as he adjusted the sit of his sword-sheath, currently wrapped in canvas. Few maladies of the body could be cured without a bit of pain. His was just a more permanent kind of surgery.

Thus Warren found himself at the head of the Duskwind Company, the most prestigious mercenary outfit currently serving northern Heas, which was to say it was a cut-rate band of desperate, aging nobodies, but with the world a wreck they were almost something like respectable. Their convoy, some hundred men and two dozen horse, with carriages and camp followers besides, struggled up the incline to the Highlands.

The only one keeping pace with him was Moira, the witch. She’d been forced on them for the assignment. Warren had to yell to be heard over the storm. “So what do your auguries say today?”

A mischievous twinkle caught her pale-blue eyes. “That you’ll die, of course.”

“Good! Wouldn’t want to break with form.” The auguries, bone-tossing, bone-burning, crack-reading, they always ended with the same dour pronouncement. ‘You’ll die,’ the witch would say, or ‘mortal peril looms,’ and so on. Warren would have thought it an amusing bit of mummery if he wasn’t convinced the witch believed all her fatalistic predictions.

For one seeing doom behind every rock, Moira projected remarkable cheer and vivacity. Always she smiled at the storm. The witch was dressed like a tribal in summer, legs and elongated torso both largely bared, bead and fringe and tassel hanging every which way. For all that Moira was damnably unaffected by the cold, even if her ringleted hair looked damp. No doubt that owed to some subtle working of her craft. The country men didn’t like her, nor did most of the old-timers – really, nobody liked her, and it was for that reason that Warren felt a kind of grudging respect. It took a certain amount of grit to put up with all that scorn and still soldier on. Besides – she wasn’t bad-looking, even with the burn scars that crept from wrist to breast.

Moira slowed her steps, walking backwards, just ahead of Warren. “Well,” she ventured, “Perhaps you won’t die today, hmmn? The spirits weren’t specific.”

“Are they ever specific?”

“Not really. It was never my strong suit. I’ve met others better. Most of them dead now. Analyn, she made the spirits answer.” Her knee-high boots sloshed in the mud, somehow staying pristine.

“Most of them are dead to the things we’ve been sent to slay.” Warren would not shed a tear over dead magi. They deserved their lot, most of them, toying with the very nature of things. Moira, for her few winsome qualities, was much the same, but the contractor insisted there was good reason for her presence, and Warren obeyed the terms of contract. That didn’t mean he had to trust her: He adjusted his sword-sheath, again. It would not go far from his side for many days, he suspected.

“This,” Moira said with a sweeping gesture, the sort that conjured imagination rather than magic, “Was the gateway to the Northlands.”

“It still is the gateway to the northlands,” Warren said dryly.

Moira was little deterred. “Thousands passed it, some days, on their way to great Tolivaria, jewel of the highlands.” She twisted on her heels. Mud sprayed at Warren’s feet, and Moira gestured up towards the top of the incline, above. “And I can see why they chose this place for their grand entrance.” Her voice was nigh-breathless, her eyes wide like tea-saucers. They darted this way and that, taking in sights unseen to Warren’s more mundane – or perhaps more sane – perceptions. “Such sacred geometry. The dividing line, the connecting point, the interstice. Mandorla and Vesica Piscis.” She shuddered. “You can’t see it. But how can you not see it? The significance, the tumultuous confluence of kha, nature flooding through and into nature…” She seized his hand, expectant, only for her features to fall, a moment later. “You see nothing.”

“I see a real big gate.” That came out more defensive than he meant to. Warren shook away his hand, and his chin tilted towards the triumphal arch of Elric the Clever, sixth King of Seahaven, the great stone mass of it just cresting the hill. It was tall enough for elephants, wide enough for ten men abreast, of intricate stonework with spiraling patterns like filigree. “Get your damned wits about you,” he grunted. The men were starting to pass them.

“I’ve no need of wits. I’ve inspiration.”

“Watch the ground, there!” Warren swept out an arm, spraying a passing cavalryman with water. In the oppressive rain the man didn’t even notice. “Last thing we need is a horse to break its leg in a sinkhole,” he muttered. There were precious few horses on Heas, these days. Truthfully the Company would be better off trading their breeding stock for fresh steel, but the prestige and mystique of armored horse might be what kept them in work.

He surveyed the lines of soldiers, unarmored and rain-battered, and bit into his bottom lip in an attempt to keep his smile under control. It was not so different from actions he’d seen in the past. Warren was young, but he’d seem campaigns on sea and shore, and that before the first Darkfall. He’d lied about his age to join up.

No, this was more exciting: It was a voyage into the unknown. If there was one thing the Cataclysm had given man, it was a fresh age of exploration, new mysteries to be solved. Here, to discover the fate of the Aruta Highlands, of Great Tolivaria, a full combat company had been dispatched.

“Do you think it will be enough men?” Moira had an unnerving habit of asking whatever happened to be on Warren’s mind. She was good at reading people but the contractor assured him she was no mind-twister. She’d been strip-searched for the mark of the Dryth, and subjected to more painful inquiries besides. Or so he was told. Warren could only obey the contractor’s whims.

“It’ll be enough.” He smirked. “It’s us.”

“The Duskwind Company,” Moira said musically. “Never defeated on land or sea. Never lost more than a dozen men in a single engagement. But you weren’t the Captain then, Warren Vrikes. This is your first dispatch, and it’s harder than any faced by your predecessor.”

He lofted a brow. What was her game, to talk down a pristine record? What was to be gained from putting doubt in him now, when it was too late to turn back?

“I’m only testing your resolve,” Moira said, as their heads were swallowed up by the shadow of the arch. “I want what’s best for my Master.”

It was in an odd streak, in her, the absolute subservience to their employer, in a person otherwise so individualistic and carefree. He said nothing.

“You know why I raise the issue.”

“You’re worried that we, mercernaries, will cut and run when it looks like the profit outweighs risk. You realize that I, the leader, Il Condotierro, as they say in certain easterly lands, will naturally be the one to make that call.”

It was her turn to say nothing.

“Well, don’t worry,” he said, feeling bravado well up within him, as the rain atop his head abated for a few blessed moments. “The Duskwind are daredevils all. Besides. Every man dead means a bigger share for the men still alive.”

She snorted, at that. “A life loyal to gold is a shallow life indeed.”

“I’m not loyal to gold. I’m loyal to the things gold buys.”

“Wine, women and song, is that it? Slavery of a more pleasant sort, but slavery nonetheless.”

He eyed the prominent curves at Moira’s scanty neckline. “Yes, and you’re an absolute monk, I’m sure.”

“I am not without my own asceticisms,” Moira said breezily, completely missing Warren’s pointed glance at her cleavage. “Without them I would go quite mad.”

If that rant of a minute ago is sanity, Warren thought, then her madness would be stark indeed. “The mission is simple enough. Assess the state of Tolivaria. Determine the reason why the newly-minted Marquis stopped sending messages back. Determine whether or not he was successful in retaking the city.”

“You’re assuming we’ll get to the walls, poke at some corpses, and leave?”

He laughed. “Nothing so simple! Doubtless there will be hellspawn to kill and very fine houses to loot before we turn back around. We’ll trot back with the noble jewels of Tolivaria offered in our arms, and its silverware hidden in our pockets.”

Up ahead, just past the arch, a cavalryman swore, and held up a closed fist. A gesture of warning, of ready.

Warren hastily unwrapped his longsword, and tossed the wet mass of canvas into Moira’s arms. He aimed there, anyway; it ended up concealing her face. Ignoring her muffled protests, he crept forward, blade swift to hand. “What’s up there?” He had to yell, stealth be damned.

“Sacrilege,” the answer came back.

Statues of mermaid and undine, daughters and handmaidens of the Mother, lined the road at intervals. It looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to them all – some missing hands, others noses, some with their heads knocked off entire. They lay in the ground, some with moss already starting to cling to them. The damage had been done some time ago. Of much greater concern was the corpse propped up against one. It was fresh. It was a soldier, a full royal regular, speared to the nearest statue with his own halberd. It pierced through breastplate, flesh, bone, and rock. The crows had not even yet had at the man’s eyes.

Warren raised fingers, twisted his wrist, lowered his arm. Such was the nature of the signs the Company used, to command by lines of sight when the din of war drowned out sound and sense. To his command, three soldiers, soaked and moving far too slow, took up positions behind him. “Tear him off of there. Strip him. Search for missives or anything we might learn from.”

It was when the first man reached the body that the creature struck. It was an indistinct blur, falling from the sky atop the men, the first crushed beneath the weight and the second impaled between its claws. The third soldier, who Warren vaguely remembered as Rem, narrowly avoided a swipe of arm – or was it tail? – and stumbled back to Warren’s side. The cavalryman, keeping his distance, prepped a crossbow.

Warren let out a cry: “Demon!” That cry, moving back down the line, brought forth clamor – wagons opening, weapons coming free, the murmurings of the men as adrenaline took hold.

The beast ignored them – the promise of mortal flesh taking sole hold of its attention. It devoured its meal bones and organs all, teeth rending through man easily as a knife through fresh bread. It was perhaps as large as two men – and not one of the Darkness-tainted creatures of the south. This was a true demon, a stranger to the world. It walked on reverse articulate legs, with arms lengthy and spindly, tipped with razor-thin claws good for nothing but rending. Its torso was nearly nonexistent; the demon was a thing of long leg and long arm, with a muzzlelike jaw that stretched at least two feet long. The creature had no eyes: only massive nostrils, that dilated as they sucked in the scent of its prey.

Warren had no intention of being its next meal. Rem, a stout lad by any standard, drew a broadsword from his back, hefting the thing with both hands. “Don’t charge it,” Warren murmured. “Let it eat its fill. Others will come, and then we’ll–”

A frecious bellow escaped Rem’s throat, and he charged out like a raging skrel. His blade swung in a wide arc, an overhand chop powerful enough to shatter a man’s skull.

His foe was not a man. Guts still hanging between its teeth, those skeletal arms came up, and its claws, bone like steel, parried the strike well above its head. One claw broke, and then the broadsword was snapped in twain. Rem let out a savage cry.

The cry that followed was more a pained gurgle. Unbent, the arms were perhaps nine feet long, and no man had a reach like that. The demon put its claws through Rem’s chest without even bending its arms all the way.

Warren swore, and felt his blood pound through his skull. He had fought demonspawn before, killed them, too. But never one he couldn’t stand toe to toe with. His eyes turned to the cavalryman. “Shoot, damn you, shoot!”

The bolt struck true – straight through the demon’s snout, tearing through teeth and sinew. So far as Warren can tell, the hole through its head only made it mad. Its attention fixed on Warren, and it charged.

Watching it run held a strange fascination. Warren had seen a gorilla once, and the way it loped, using hands and feet, not quite upright, resembled nothing else more. Curious too were the spiked holes left in the ground by its claws, and the green ichor that leaked from its two wounds. In the back of his mind, he wondered if he might die.

As always, his body moved despite his mind. Lightning-fast he parried, left, right, the beast possessing speed and strength but nothing of subtlety. With deft footsteps he was behind and past the monster, taking no small portion of its side along with him. At the arch he could hear the sound of a crossbow team winding their arrows. None had expected combat so soon.

Moira at last made herself known. Wind and rain whipping tightly about her, in a ball, almost as though she took into herself, she let out a primal scream. There was a lot of screaming going on, in this battle, and only one enemy, Warren realized. That did not bode well for their chances ahead.

The demon sailed backwards, as though slapped by the fist of a god. One sea-maiden statue shattered into rock and dust – and a volley of quarrels finished the job. The creature twitched, and at last went still.

Far on the horizon came a chorus of howls, warbling and uneasy – none of them a noise a wolf might make.

“Weapons,” Warren called out breathlessly. “Armor! Rain or no rain, it’s a full battle-ready march!”

The Duskwind Company prepared.

“Lady Benevere is in the fountain, again,” Fulton said, amused now near as much as he was a week ago in the grip of madness. The suns were low and the County Hall was lit by too-few sputtering candles, desks of barristers and functionaries awash in paperwork.

Lannadon drowned in it. All his life a legal clerk, he was old enough to remember a time when presses were rare and messages need not be recorded a thousand times over, and missives of value cost a dead animal. It made people stop and think about what to say, and how many words they wished to use. Not so, now. Lannadon focused on the scribblings of his pen and spared Fulton nary a glance.

Unfortunately, Fulton was his own best audience. He slapped a hand at his too-large belly, and let out a guffaw. His middle strained against his doublet, a garment unfashionable and out of date by decades, despite its obvious fine make. Fulton had waxed enthusiastic about how he got an excellent deal on it from a recently-deceased Viscount’s estate, and its deep scarlet dye mostly hid the bloodstains coughed upon it in days past.

The pen moved; Lannadon sneezed. That still got a jump out of Fulton, and brought a smile to the old man’s lips. No one knew if one could catch the plague a second time. Reports varied.

It was remarkable to Lannadon how bureaucracy had returned to its full stifling thickness, with tens of thousands infected and swaths of the city still smoldering. His father had always said that inertia was the strongest force in human affairs. Lannadon was inclined to agree. The slant-ears have no respect for tradition; the savage folk have no tradition worth speaking of; humans, of course, clung tightly to their ways even in the face of their complete failure. So it was now. Malady and regicide and no one acted at all different. Many of the infected had kept going to the taverns.

At last, Lannadon could no longer consider his silence polite. “She’s in the fountain?” His voice had taken on a bit of a wheeze lately, even if he’d evaded infection. His daughter gave him tonics but he could never stomach the stuff.

“Mmn, yes, and thrashing every which way. Goodness, but she should not have worn white.” Fulton did his level best not to look too interested, but his eyes did stare.

“Curious. M’lady was given vaccine.” So had they all, the members of civil government and Royal Guard alike, some more deserving than others, every vial bought at extortionate rates.

“Unfortunately, no one can cure Lady Benevere’s aversion to work. I suspect she liked madness.” Fulton gave a knowing chuckle. “You should have see her at a masque.”

Madness indeed. More likely she was too deep in her cups to know up from down. That was her wont even before the plague, and the problem had only become worse, of late. Lannadon looked out the frosted-glass window, to see the indistinct shape of a too-large woman, still young, splashing about like a child in a river. All this in a fountain sanctified to the Mother, no less. It was a sign of the times that he could not be bothered with outrage.

Still, Lannadon could not help but feel some sympathy for the young woman. Lady Benevere held no small amount of influence on the Royal Closed Council. She’d been appointed as a childhood friend of the too-recently deceased King, and she too felt the weight of determining succession.

Succession was the word on everyone’s minds. It passed no one’s lips. Instead people spoke of “the problem” or “our present difficulty” or any of the sundry variations thereof.

“Fulton,” Lannadon said. “Who do you think will reign?”

Benevere was forgotten in an instant, and Fulton could only stare.

“Oh, very well.” Lannadon enjoyed the pause. “Who would you think most fitting?”

“Erm, I…perhaps Lord Lir–…. Or perhaps Her Grace the Lady of Ar–…” Fulton stammered on in this vein.

Lannadon smiled inwardly, but in the back of his mind he shared Fulton’s distress. He was the senior clerk, and Seahaven did not run without his work, unglamorous though it may be. The other clerks would vote with him, to be sure. Pressure would come from below and above.

Fulton at last found his voice. “What do you think, Sir Hughes?”

‘Sir Hughes’ indeed. That knighthood, ceremonial, embarrassed Lannadon more than it did anything else. Tenth son of an insufficiently rich lord, interested neither in war nor religion…Some manner of face-saving gesture was needed. And thus a knight he was made. It proved useful very occasionally over the years. He’d tried jousting once; it had not gone well.

“I think it’s all a sham,” he found himself saying.

“A what?”

“A lie. Falsehood. Pretense. It’s no small secret that the Wolf was the glue that held the present Council together.” He crumpled a sheet of paper into a ball. “They had weeks to make a decision. Months, almost. And they shirk it with this ridiculous farce.”

“Run for King, like it was a county sheriff’s office,” Fulton said, poorly disguising his discomfort with amusement. “Well, it’s very…egalatarian.” He tugged at one of the golden buttons on his doublet. “Why, even I could be King.”

“They’ll never let anyone win whom they frown upon. They’d arrange a convenient accident.” His paper, crumpled as it could get, rolled scrunched between his fingertips. “They did not even limit it to dukes. And then there is the inordinate registration fee.”

“So why do you think they did it, then?” Fulton always was the type to want things handed to him, Lannadon reflected.

He obliged. “Money. It’s very timely. Nearly simultaneous with the Guild’s own announcement of a cure.”

“And the fee they demand.”

“Exactly. It buys them time. I would not be surprised if they soon trotted out some platinum-blonde, baseborn girl, and proclaimed her the bastard offspring of our late King’s father.”

“That’ll be the trick, won’t it.” Fulton tugged at his vandyke, large lips pressed tightly together for a moment. “That hair.” The silver locks, the color and the mark of the royal house. All of Rossiam’s descendents carried it.

Tales differed on whether it was something the First King himself inherited, or whether it was something that manifested on his coronation as a sign of the Seamother’s favor. Lannadon sided with more sober accounts, but fact was that most of the peasantry would not well accept a brunette upon the high seat. There were no small number of people that would expect a miraculous silvering of hair at the coronation ceremony, whensoever it occurred.

“Not even a regent’s been named,” Lannadon half-wheezed, then paused to indulge in a fit of coughing. He beat a fist against his chest, and tossed away his much-abused sheet of paper.

“They’re all weighing their chances for a takeover,” Fulton ventured.

“They’re afraid of being made to rule. Only the Wolf had iron in his blood. The rest of them are careerists, functionaries, courtiers. None of them have the steel it takes to lead.”

“Well, with two dead monarchs in as many years…”

“And those with divine right,” Lannadon added with grim amusement.

Benevere’s thrashings were finished, outside, and the suns were dancing on towards twilight. An indignified gasp could be heard, far down the Hall. No doubt the sopping-wet Lady was re-entering, downstairs.

Fulton gazed at his wavering reflection in the window, arraying his lengthy hair carefully into place. “Perhaps the Council will officially sponsor a candidate.”

“The council has ceded control of the lower quarters to the Watch. They’re content to let us run things up here. They’re giving the throne to the mob. Why do you think they’ll develop a spine?”

“It’s not the Watch, any more,” Fulton said with levity.

Anything to change the subject, Lannadon all but muttered aloud. “Yes, the ‘Cloaks.’ Because ‘Tyrants’ was too subtle.”

Fulton frowned. “You are too cruel to them. They’re desperately seeking material to furnish a large quantity of cures, I hear. Free of charge.”

Not nearly desperately enough, Lannadon reflected. If they were truly worried about the cure, they would have lifted their ban on travel in and out of the city. Quarantine was a joke: Milford and the Tir camps had suffered cases near simultaneously with the city, and it was trickling north up the coast from there. The Sayaki were killing travelers that passed their arbitrary line in the sand, but that wouldn’t save them forever.

The Watch needed that cure, Lannadon figured. They needed the prestige it would bring them, the agents of the city’s deliverance at its greatest time of trial. If they cured the smallfolk, and a public referendum was held, whatever candidate they sponsored would win.

It was not too late for the gallant Sir Hughes to pick up a broken lance, round up the Royal Council, and force out of them a decision. Lannadon smiled a moment, at that. Him, the old clerk, senior functionary for decades, finally given a reason to appear in the histories. But why would he succeed where the Royal Guard failed?

No, he decided, that was madness, of the lingering sort that currently drew down the populace at large. A malady that kills none but the eldery and young, that puts the rest into unending, lingering torpor: Perhaps it was the goddess’ wrath, as the smallfolk believed. Perhaps the city deserved that wrath, if its gross incompetence of late was any indication.

Benevere sashayed up the stairwell, close at hand, and hopped off the top one, her shoes making a wet smack upon the hardwood floor. She approached Fulton, hands clasped together, her smile lax and her voice thick with drink. “Things are so dull, here! Prep my carriage. You may inform all my relatives that I am on indefinite holiday.”

And that is our problem, Lannadon thought but did not say. Our entire government, on holiday.