The Second Empire (8 page)

“Bravo, sire. He’s the leading candidate.”

“I knew Jemilla was ambitious, but I underrated her.”

“A formidable woman,” Golophin agreed.

“When is the vote?”

“This afternoon, at the sixth hour.”

“Then it would seem I do not have much time. Golophin, call for a valet. I must have decent clothes. And a bath.”

The old wizard approached his King and set a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Are you sure you are up to this, lad? Even if Urbino is voted the regency today, all you have to do is make an appearance at any time and he’ll have to give it up. It might be better if you rested a while.”

“No. Thousands of my people died to put me back on the throne. I’ll not let one scheming bitch and her dried-up puppet take it from me. Get some servants in here, Golophin. And I want to speak to Rovero and Mercado. We shall have a little military daemonstration this afternoon, I think. Time to put these bastard conspirators in their place.”

Golophin bowed deeply. “At once, sire. Let me locate a couple of the more discreet palace servants. If we can keep your recovery quiet until this afternoon, then the impact will be all the greater.” He left noiselessly.

Abeleyn sagged. “Give me a hand here, Isolla. Damn things weigh a ton.”

She helped him arrange the wooden legs on the bed. He seemed to find it hard to keep his eyes off them.

“I never felt it,” he said quietly. “Not a thing. Strange, that. A man has half his body ripped away and it does not even register. I can feel them now, though. They itch and smart like flesh and blood. Lord God, Isolla, what are you marrying?”

She hugged him close. It seemed amazingly natural to do so. “I am marrying a King, my lord. A very great King.”

He gripped her hand until the blood fled from it, his head bent into her shoulder. When he spoke again his voice was thick and harsh, too loud.

“Where are those damn valets? The service has gone to hell in this place.”

A BRUSIO had once been home to a quarter of a million people. A fifth of the population had died in the storming of the city, and tens of thousands more had packed up their belongings and left the capital for good. In addition, the trade which was the lifeblood of the port had been reduced to a tithe of its former volume, and men were still working by the thousand to clear the battered wharves, repair bombarded warehouses and demolish those structures too broken to be restored. A wide swathe of the Lower City had been reduced to a charred wasteland, and in this desolation thousands more were encamped like squatters under makeshift shelters.

But in the Upper City the damage was less, and here, where the nobility of Hebrion had their town houses and the Guilds of the city their halls, the only evidence of the recent fighting lay in the cannonballs which still pocked some structures like black carbuncles, and the shallow craters in the cobbled streets which had been filled with gravel.

And here, on the summit of one of the twin hills which topped Abrusio, the old Inceptine monastery and abbey glowered down on the port-city. Within the huge refectory of the Inceptine Order, the surviving aristocracy of Hebrion were assembled in all their finery to vote upon the very future of the kingdom.

T HERE had been a scurry of last-minute deals and agreements, of course, men shuffling and intriguing frantically to be part of the new order that was approaching. But by and large it had gone precisely as Jemilla had planned. Today Duke Urbino of Imerdon would be appointed regent of Hebrion, and the lady Jemilla would be publicly proclaimed as the mother of the crippled King’s heir. She would be queen in everything but name. What would Richard Hawkwood have made of that? she wondered, as the nobles convened before her in their maddening, leisurely fashion, and Urbino’s face, for once wreathed in smiles, shone down the great table at his fellow blue-bloods.

A crowd had gathered outside the abbey to await the outcome of the council. Jemilla’s steward had bribed several hundred of the city dregs to stand there and cheer when the news was announced, and they had, in the manner of things, been joined by a motley throng of some several thousand who sensed the excitement in the air. Jemilla had also thoughtfully arranged for fifty tuns of wine to be set up at various places about the city so that the regent’s health might be drunk when the criers went forth to spread the tidings about the change of government. The wine ought to assuage any pangs of uneasiness or lingering royalist feeling left in the capital. Nothing had been left to chance. This thing was here, now, in her hand. What would she do first? Ah, that Astaran bitch Isolla. She’d be sent packing, for a start.

As the hubbub within the abbey died down and the nobles took their places it was possible to hear the clamour of the crowds outside. It had risen sharply. They sounded as though they were cheering. Mindless fools, Jemilla thought. Their country is in ruins about their ears but splash them a measure of cheap wine and they’ll make a holiday.

The nobles were finally assembled, and seated according to all the rivallries and nuances of rank. Duke Urbino rose in his space at the right hand of the King’s empty chair. He looked as though he was trying not to grin, a phenomenon which sat oddly on his long, mournful face. The horsetrading which had occupied them day and night for the last several days was over. The outcome of the vote was already known to all, but the legal niceties had to be observed. In a few minutes he would be the
de facto
ruler of Hebrion, one of the great princes of the world.

“My dear cousins,” Urbino began—and stopped.

The din of the crowds had risen to a roaring pitch of jubilation, but now they in turn were being drowned out by the booming thunder of artillery firing in sequence.

“What in the world?” Urbino demanded. He looked questioningly at Jemilla, but she could only frown and shake her head. No doing of hers.

The assembly listened in absolute silence. It sounded like a regular bombardment.

“My God, it’s the Knights Militant—they’ve come back,” some idiot gushed.

“Shut up!” another snapped.

They listened on. Urbino stood as still as a statue, his head cocked to the sound of the guns. They were very close by—they must have been firing from the battlements of the palace. But why? And then Jemilla realised, with a sickening plunge of spirit. It was a salute.

“Count the guns!” she cried, heedless of the shrill crack in her voice.

“That’s nineteen now,” one of the older nobles asserted. Hardio of Pontifidad, she remembered. A royalist. His face was torn between hope and dismay.

The echoing rumble of the explosions at last died away, but the crowds were still cheering manically. Twenty-eight guns. The salute for a reigning king. What in the world was going on?

“Maybe it’s for the new regent,” someone said, but Hardio shook his head.

“That’d be twenty-two guns.”

“Perhaps he’s dead,” one of the dullards suggested. “They always fire a salute on the death of a king.”

“God forbid,” Hardio rasped, but most of the men present looked relieved. It was Jemilla who spoke, her voice a lash of scorn.

“Don’t be a fool. You hear the crowds? You think they’d be cheering the death of the King?” It was slipping away—she could feel it. Somehow Golophin and Isolla had stymied her. But how?

The question was soon answered. There was a deafening blare of horns outside and the clatter of many horses. A Royal fanfare was blown over and over. Beyond the great double doors of the refectory they could hear the tramp of feet marching in step. Then a sonorous boom as someone struck the doors from the outside.

“Open in the name of the King!”

A group of timorous retainers belonging to Urbino’s household stood there, unsure. They looked to their lord for orders but he seemed lost in shock. It was Jemilla who rapped out, “Open the damn doors then!”

They did so. Those inside the hall stood up as one, scraping back their chairs on the old stone. Beyond the doors were two long files of Hebrian arquebusiers dressed in the rich blue of Royal livery. Banner-bearers stood with the Hibrusid gonfalons a silk shimmer above their heads. And at the head of them all, a tall figure in black half-armour, his face hidden by a closed helm upon which the Hebrian crown gleamed in a spangle of gems and gold.

Wordlessly, the files of arquebusiers entered the room and lined the walls. Their match was lit and soon filled the chamber with the acrid reek of gunpowder. The solitary figure in the closed helm entered last, the banner-bearers closing the doors behind him. The assembled nobles stood as though turned to stone, until a hard voice snapped, “Kneel before your King.”

And the figure in black unhelmed.

The aristocracy of Hebrion stared, gaped, and then did as they were bidden. The figure in the black armour was without a doubt Abeleyn IV, King of Hebrion and Imerdon.

He was taller than they remembered, and he looked old enough to be the father of the young man they had once known. No trace of the boy-king remained. His eyes were like two glitters of black frost as he surveyed the kneeling throng. Jemilla remained in her seat by the fire, too paralysed to move, but he did not even glance at her. The chamber stank of fear as much as the burning match. He could have them all shot, here and now, and no-one would be able to lift a finger.

Hardio and a few others who had been against the regency from the first were beaming. “Give you joy of your recovery, sire,” the old nobleman said. “This is a glad day for the kingdom.”

The severity on the seamed face of the King lifted somewhat: they glimpsed the youth of a few months past. “My thanks, Hardio. Noble cousins, you may rise.”

A collective sigh, lost in the noise of the aristocrats getting off their knees. They were to live, then.

“Now,” the King went on quietly, “I believe you were gathered here to discuss matters of import that concern my realm.” No-one missed the easy emphasis on the
my
, the momentary departure from the Royal
we
.

“We will—if you do not object—take our place at the head of this august gathering.”

“By—by all means, sire,” Urbino stammered. “And may I also congratulate you on the regaining of your health and faculties.”

Abeleyn took the empty throne which headed the long table. His gait was odd: he walked on legs which seemed too long for him, rolling slightly like a sailor on the deck of a pitching ship.

“I was not aware our faculties had ever been lost, Urbino,” he said, and the coldness in his voice chilled the room. The nobles were once again aware of the lines of armed soldiers at their backs.

“But your concern is noted,” the King continued. “It shall not be forgotten.” And here Abeleyn’s eyes swept the room, coming to rest at last on Jemilla.

“We trust we see you well, lady.”

It took a second for her to find her voice. “Very well, my lord.”

“Excellent. But you should not be worrying yourself with the problems of state in your condition. You have our leave to go.”

There was no choice for her, of course. She curtsied clumsily, and then left the room. The doors boomed behind her, shutting her away from her ambitions and dreams. Jemilla kept her chin tilted high, oblivious to the roaring jubilation of the crowds outside, the grinning soldiers. Not until she had reached the privacy of her own apartments did she let the tears and the fury run unchecked.

“A very satisfactory state of affairs,” Himerius, High Pontiff of the Ramusian Kingdoms of the West, said.

It was a day of brilliant sunshine which blazed off the snow-covered Narian Hills all around and glittered in blinding facets upon the peaks of the Cimbric Mountains to the east. Himerius stood foursquare against the bitter wind which billowed down from those grim heights, and when he exhaled his breath was a white smoke shredded instantly away. Behind him, a group of monks in Inceptine black huddled within their habits and discreetly rubbed their hands together within voluminous sleeves in a futile effort to keep the blood in their fingers warm.

“Indeed, your Holiness,” bluff, florid-cheeked Betanza said. “It could not have gone more smoothly. As we speak, Regent Marat is preparing an expeditionary force of some eight thousand men. They should be here in fifteen days, if the weather holds.”

“The couriers have gone out to Alstadt?”

“They went yesterday, under escort of a column of Knights. I would estimate that within three months we will have a fortified garrison in the Torrin Gap, ready to repel any Merduk reconnaissance or to serve as a stageing post for further endeavours.”

“And what news from Vol Ephrir?”

“King Cadamost will accept a garrison on the Astaran border, but it must not be of Almarkan nationals. Knights Militant only—it is a question of national pride, you understand. Unfortunately, we do not currently have any Knights to spare.”

“Almarkan troops are now the servants of the Church as much as the Knights Militant. If it will ease Perigraine’s conscience the Almarkans can be clad in the livery of the Knights, but we must install our troops in southern Perigraine. Is that clear, Betanza?”

“Perfectly, Holiness. I shall see to it at once.”

“Cadamost shall be made an honourary presbyter, of course. It is the least I can do. He is a faithful son of the Church, truly. But he cannot afford to think of Perigraine alone at a time like this. We must present a united front against the heretics. If Skarp-Hethin of Finnmark is willing to accept Almarkan garrisons, then Cadamost has no reason not to do likewise.”

“Yes of course, your Holiness. It is merely a question of prestige. Skarp-Hethin is a prince, and his principality has traditionally been closely allied with Almark. But Perigraine is a sovereign state. Some of the diplomatic niceties must be observed.”

“Yes, yes. I am not a child, Betanza. Just get it done. I care not what hoops you have to jump through, but we must have the forces of the Church garrisoned throughout those kingdoms which acknowledge her spiritual supremacy. This is a time of crisis. I will not have the debacle of Hebrion repeated. We lost an entire kingdom to the heretics there because we had insufficient forces on the ground. That must never happen again.”