Queen Dahlia took Estoc’s other arm. She gently said, “Wait a moment, Your Majesty. Then we can talk.”
Lady Cinnamon, their chief lady in waiting, held the tent flap open for them. As the kings and queen went in Ironhelm looked over his shoulder at Lord Joyeuse. “See to it we’re not disturbed.”
“Aye, sire,” answered the squire. He blocked the trailing courtiers from following.
Estoc fell into the folding chair he was steered to. His mouth worked but he still couldn’t talk.
Lady Cinnamon pointed at a drawer as she glanced at the queen. Dahlia nodded to her lady in waiting. Cinnamon took out a quarter-full bottle of rum, poured a shot, and brought it to Estoc.
The young king swallowed half, coughed, and choked down the rest. “God. Did you see that? Did that really happen?”
Ironhelm said, “Sharpquill ordered Stitches’ tongue cut out. He’s threatening to actually do it.”
“He did it on my authority. I did it! He didn’t ask me, he didn’t tell me, he just said it. God. That’s horrible. Torture.”
“It’s period.” A wry smile flickered on the older king’s face.
“You wouldn’t laugh if you were in charge of this mess.”
“No, I wouldn’t. But in a very real sense you aren’t either.”
Estoc took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to be. I just wanted to give Camellia a fancy party. Oh, God.” He buried his face in his hands.
They waited for him to recover. When he straightened up Cinnamon made a handkerchief appear in his hand. He nodded thanks.
“I could fire him. I nearly fired him in Court.”
“Yes, you can. Who will you replace him with?”
“I don’t know. He was the only guy who applied for the job.”
Queen Dahlia said, “Not many people want to spend war weekend working instead of playing. Being in charge of how much food everyone gets—that they’ll fight for.”
“Yeah.”
Cinnamon poured a half-shot into Estoc’s glass. The king tossed it down.
“I don’t know what to do. What Camellia did to us was bad but she didn’t deserve to die for it. And Stitches. I can see executing people for murder. But mutilating them?” Estoc shuddered.
King Ironhelm waited for his fellow king to say something more. When the silence continued he said, “You have three decisions to make.”
“Oh God.”
The time Ironhelm kept waiting until Estoc couldn’t bear the silence.
“Dammit, Camellia made all the decisions. She talked to everybody and researched stuff and, and, and I trusted her. Fine. What’s the first one?”
“Will there be any additional punishment or pardon for Stitches?
“No. No. I’m not going to execute her just on my say-so. That would be murder. And I’ll be damned if I’ll do anything nice for her after what she did to—what she did.”
“That’s settled then,” said Ironhelm. “Next. Do you want to appoint someone else to handle administration of justice?”
“Take it away from Sharpquill? That’s a good idea. I could appoint Duke Stonefist. He’s a lawyer in mundane life. Everyone respects him. He’d be a good judge. Don’t know what I’d call the job though.”
“You could let him pick his own title,” suggested Queen Dahlia.
“If I do that he’ll be the Lord High Executioner.” A hint of a smile appeared on Estoc’s face for an instant.
“Which might be useful in making some of the boys behave,” said Ironhelm. “Most important decision. Are you replacing Master Sharpquill?”
“Damn. I don’t know. That’s tough.”
Dahlia took another turn as good cop. “Break out the pros and cons. What’s the good points of keeping him?”
Estoc paused to think. “He’s done a good job of holding us together. Everyone’s getting at least a little to eat. He’s made some bad decisions but some of those were probably because of Camellia’s . . . influence.”
He accepted a mug of water from Cinnamon. Sipped. “If he stays in place we avoid a shitstorm of drama over his replacement. People wanting the job, not wanting someone else to get the job, knifing each other over the job.”
“Does he want to keep the post?” asked Lady Cinnamon.
That surprised Estoc. “Why wouldn’t he?”
“The way he was acting in Court just now seemed . . . self-destructive. The rudeness, disrespecting the Crown. The sentence.”
Ironhelm sighed. “I didn’t want to share this. A few days ago Sharpquill’s sleeve slid up and I saw hesitation marks on his arm.”
“What marks?” asked Estoc.
Lady Cinnamon answered. “When someone tries to commit suicide by cutting their wrists they make some weak cuts before they actually do it. That leaves shallow cuts, scabbing over, where they hesitated before making the lethal cut. Hesitation marks.”
“Oh. I can see that. He misses his wife.”
“He’s married?” asked Ironhelm.
“Yeah. Or he was. His wife was supposed to bring their two boys here Saturday morning. Guess they’re safe back home. But he misses them. I can see losing his wife making a man suicidal,” the widower said bitterly.
“Or he could have been trying to escape the mind control,” said Dahlia.
“Maybe.” Ironhelm shrugged. “How can we know?”
Estoc drank more water. “If he commits suicide I can replace him without it being my fault. But that would still be a shitstorm.
“The real con of him staying is bad decisions. I think he’ll do better than anyone else we can put in the job. I’ll look for parts of it I can carve out and give to someone else.
“So—I’m keeping him. And I hope he doesn’t kill himself.”
Ironhelm stood. “It’s settled then.”
“If we don’t want Sharpquill killing himself he needs a hug at least,” said Lady Cinnamon.
Dahlia said, “I wouldn’t ask that of you.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty. But keeping the linchpin of our food supply in working order is in my own self-interest.”
“What?” asked Estoc.
“I’m going to go see what I can do for Sharpquill.” She lifted the tent flap.
“What if he wants more than a hug?” protested the younger king.
She shrugged, and vanished.
***
A hand tapped on the tent canvas. “My Lord Autocrat? Are you there?”
Sharpquill lifted the flap to see his visitor. “I am. Come in.”
“Thank you.” Cinnamon, Chief Lady in Waiting of the Visiting Court, swept into the tent. She stood in the middle, studying its neat arrangement by the light of three candles on Sharpquill’s desk. The big bed was rumpled on one side. Two small cots were neatly made up.
Sharpquill said, “I presume you have a message from Their Visiting Majesties?”
“No, I’m here on my own business,” said Lady Cinnamon. “I am very impressed with how you handled that unpleasantness in court.”
“You seem to be the only one.”
“Oh, no. You’ve made it clear murder will be punished.”
Sharpquill mimed a pinch at his mouth. “People are attached to their tongues.”
“But she’s still able to work.”
“We need all the hands we have to survive.”
“Stitches is terrified you’ll carry out the sentence.”
He shrugged.
“It seems you only failed in one goal you were trying to achieve.”
He stiffened. “Oh?”
Cinnamon leaned in with a smile. “You didn’t get the King to fire your ass.”
“I will not shirk my duties.” He started an angry shout, but muffled the rest lest someone outside hear him.
“We know. Otherwise you would have found another way out.” She grabbed his hand and turned it, pushing up his sleeve to show healing cuts leading up from the wrist. Some freshly scabbed over, others nearly invisible now.
He shoved her awa
y. “Let go!”
She landed on the bed, smoothly as if she’d intended him to push her onto it. “Your duties are crushing you.”
He turned away and leaned on his desk. “I have to keep working. We can’t afford to tie up everyone in leadership arguments again, we’ve lost enough time to such already.”
“Then let me help you.”
That drew a bitter laugh. “You want the job? Fine.”
“No . . .” She stood and came up behind him, breasts brushing his back. “Help you personally.”
He twisted away. “My Lady, I am married!”
Cinnamon locked eyes with him. “You were married. Now you’re alone. However we wound up here, we’re not going back. You won’t see her again.”
Sharpquill turned to look at the empty beds. “I think of her every day. Her and our boys.”
“I’m sure she thinks of you. But she’s had a funeral for you already. We’re here now, and we have to take care of each other.”
“I miss her,” he whispered.
She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down with her to sit on the bed. He buried his face in her shoulder as the tears came. She rocked him and stroked his hair, saying nothing.
***
“Enough,” said the sorcerer.
Ithuil pressed on the cut to stop the blood flow.
“Sit.”
The apprentice tilted his body up, kneeling on the dirt floor inside the hollow tree. He studied his master’s gestures as the sorcerer transformed the blood into a broad puddle, and then a window to the forest.
The sorcerer exclaimed over the latest developments by his pets with all the excitement of an elfling watching birds build a nest.
Ithuil wasn’t close enough to the scrying pool to see what his master was exclaiming about. His attention drifted to the walls.
The inner surface of the trunk was pocked with shelves and cubbyholes carved into the wood, the work of prior generations of apprentices. All of them were full. There were jars and bundles of wild herbs, some collected by Ithuil. Stoppered bottles of potions with cryptic labels no one but the sorcerer understood. Book after book with the sorcerer’s records of his experiments. Scrolls with the perfected spells.
“They’re ranging widely now. Outside the circle of my protection. Ah, yes. There. Five deaths, oh, a hand of days ago. Eaten, I’d wager. They’d tried to claim land outside their fence. Good. If they’re being that bold they’ll be effective at exterminating the vermin.”
The apprentice flinched at the venom in his master’s voice. Attempts to wipe out the menace directly had been . . . costly. Now these strangers from another world would do it.
The sorcerer stepped back from the scrying pool. After a moment’s thought he said, “Yes, it’s time. They no longer need my protection.”
He turned to Ithuil, who flinched and picked up his blade again.
“No, no, this won’t need more blood. You will take down the protection spell. It’s made from your blood. You should have no difficulty.”
A scroll in the middle of a pile wiggled loose and soared into the master’s hand. He offered it to Ithuil.
The apprentice forced his hands to not shake as he took it. Other apprentices shared rumors of a scroll that left the caster as dust, a trap set for thieves and nosy apprentices. Another rumor said all the scrolls would dust their readers.
Even if that was true it would be a better end than the punishment he would suffer for defying his master’s will.
He read through the whole scroll. It should “Unmake a distant enchantment” as the title claimed, based on the thaumatological theory he’d been taught. The leather of the scroll was still supple. It had been made less than a decade ago.
Staying on his knees he shuffled to the edge of the scrying pool. His right hand hovered just above the surface, as flat as he could hold it.
Scrying wasn’t just for sight. Ithuil could hear the murmur of the river. He felt with his magical senses and found the protection spell. It was a sphere centered around the stockade on the bluff. Touching the currents of power in it he confirmed that it was only meant to exclude the green vermin from the protected volume.
He looked back at the scroll. The symbols burned into the leather specified the sounds and gestures needed to unravel the spell. He began the chant. His fingers moved in synchronicity, interlacing then pulling apart, interlacing then pulling apart.
A current pulled loose from the sphere and came to him through the scrying pool. He changed his hands to pulling and guiding. A glance at the scroll verified he was doing it right. As the sphere weakened its power flowed back to him faster. At the end the remaining power rushed into him with such force Ithuil fell onto his side.
“How do you feel?” asked the sorcerer.
From a stew of possibilities he chose, “Warm.”
“Yes. That’s the magic of your own blood come back to you. A pleasant feeling.”
The apprentice rolled onto his back. He saw his master’s face above him wearing an unfamiliar expression. Amusement? Happiness? Surely not the latter.
“You did well, Ithuil.”
That was not just unfamiliar but unprecedented. Disbelief delayed his response. “Thank you, Master.”
Ithuil hoped the delay hadn’t been rude.
“You are now a senior apprentice. Stand.”
He stood up, half expecting to be clouted back down for his presumption.
“That’s enough for today. Alas, it will take another hand of hands of days for the vermin to find their way back to the protected woods. I must be patient. Oh, you may go tell your news to the others.” The sorcerer opened his current book and held a needle in a flame.
“Thank you, Master,” he said again. He ran from the hollow tree. Who to tell first? Greet the other senior apprentices as an equal? Or gloat in front of the relatives who’d predicted he’d be dead within a year?
One Month After Queen Camellia’s Death
Newman was hungry. His breakfast was half the size he was used to. His stomach wanted more.
The rest of his squad looked hungry too. The month since the aborted crown tourney had been hard on everyone.
He gathered them around him rather than making them form a line. “The game’s getting scarcer. We have to go farther out to find near-deer. They’re in smaller groups when we do find them. Between us and the wolves and whatever the other predators are there’s a lot of pressure on them.
“So we need to adapt. Instead of one group with a bunch of bearers we need more hunters and smaller groups. Easiest is to split in two with me and Deadeye as hunters. We’ll do that this afternoon.”
The squad was waking up. Deadeye liked having his own team. The rest were realizing this wasn’t just a pep talk.
“We’re going to train you as hunters. Stalking. Tracking. Archery you already know, but we’ll work a bit on moving targets. Lesson one is walking without scaring the hell out of the deer.”
They’d gone far enough from camp that the woods weren’t trampled over. Newman stepped off the rhino trail into the trees.
“Watch my feet as I walk. I’m not going in a straight line. I’m stepping on dirt or moss. Dead leaves and twigs make noise.”
He took a few more steps.
“That’s a root. I can step on it. It’s too solid to crack. Notice how I’m putting my feet down. Gently. I’m walking at normal speed but slowing the foot right before it touches the ground.”
The hard part was analyzing what he’d been doing his whole life so he could teach it. For the past three days he’d felt like a centipede tying himself in knots trying to figure out the order his feet moved in.
“Borzhoi, your turn. Everybody listen to him walk.”
Teaching these guys to be decent hunters was a pain in the ass. But they were too short on food to wait for them to figure it out on their own.
***
Stitches saw some fan-weed growing by the side of the rhino path. A few cuts with her knife a
nd she dropped the intact plants into her basket. She looked at the accumulation and smiled. Not bad for a half a day’s work.
Finding edibles was easier when you spent your time looking instead of gossiping about who’d broken up with whom or what awards the King might give out next. And your basket filled faster when you didn’t have to share your finds with the rest of the group.
Gathering on her own worked much better for Stitches than trying to be part of a group. Avoiding the cold shoulders and whispers of ‘murderer’ was a benefit.
Dumping out a full basket at the commons impressed people. Hungry people didn't carry grudges. They said thank you for food. And they said it louder for filling food like vineroot or eggs.
Which was why Stitches was out here, deeper in the forest than other gatherers had the nerve to go. Everywhere close to camp was picked clean. So she listened to the hunters and went where they'd found game.
Today she was guaranteed a good reception at the common pavilion. A tree had yielded a dozen plum-like fruits. More were still ripening on the tree waiting for her return. Stitches wouldn't be sharing its location with anyone. Or giving the fruit to the Court. They'd all rejected her. It was time to make new friends. Sweets were one way to do that.
Calories were an even better way. She spotted the flowered tendril of a vineroot plant curling around a bush. Her mouth watered. Stitches followed the tendril around to where it poked out of the dirt and started digging with her knife. She'd have to dig down a foot or two, and cut some roots from other plants growing over it to pull this tuber out. Then she'd be done for the day. This would overflow her basket. She'd have to carry the tuber home under her arm.
A rustling made her look up from the work. Figures stood over her. "Um . . . hi?" she essayed.
Then fangs tearing into her flesh made her scream.
***
The stream just downriver from camp was the preferred bathing spot for everyone wanting to avoid cuttlefish. Its cut through the bluff was steep enough to let one person shower in it. The channel on the floodplain was knee-deep at most but some logs and stones had dammed it up to make a pool against the bluff.
The Lost War Page 11