The Madness of Kings

by Gene Doucette

  The device was in the back, under a board meant to look like the bottom of the drawer.

  A voicer, they called it, out in the rest of the world. Forbidden, except she wasn’t the only one in the royal household to have one; Kenson did as well. Thanks to a convenient religious loophole, nothing the king did was forbidden, by definition. Likewise, nothing he allowed his wife to do was forbidden.

  Kenson took his everywhere, while she mostly kept hers hidden and unused. But she knew her way around it well enough to be capable of activating the tracking device in the voicer he never parted with; it was an excellent way to quickly discern his current whereabouts.

  She turned on his beacon, and cursed the Five.

  He’d gone back to the library.

  Porra marched there in her dressing gown, a long coat and slippers, with a thousand curses on the tip of her tongue. Nearly all of them were meant for Battine and her outsider companion, with a few more choice offerings reserved for the king.

  She would have them both in chains. Battine would be exiled properly. Damid Magly (or Bagly) would be marched to the border and kicked into Mursk, or dropped into the waters of the Elonian Gap, or…or something.

  She hadn’t decided yet.

  Down the hall, past a couple of confused-looking palace guards—what good are palace guards if they can’t keep the king from wandering off in the middle of the night?—into the library, and around the corner, to Batt and Kenson’s secret place. It was where they used to talk about Porra when they didn’t know she was only in the next row listening.

  And it was where they had sex: Under the table, in the middle of the night, when they didn’t know Porra was in the next row, still listening.

  She spun around the corner, ready for the furious confrontation to follow. Ready for anything, except what was actually waiting for her there.

  Then, the swallowed scream from before, the one that threatened to shatter windows and fell stone walls, escaped her lips, and the entire castle came running.

  Chapter Seven

  Morning’s arrival was significantly less pleasant than the one only a day prior, when Battine was still in her bedroom at the Delphina bequest with a different man in her bed. The natural light was weaker, the view from the window was worse, and the chill in the air—they never got a fire going—was somewhat more pronounced.

  Or maybe it was just her and not the room. The bitter remnant of the drink from the night before was still in her mouth, and the alcohol’s lingering impact could be felt in a spot just behind her eyes. And she woke up angry, which was a profound departure from the prior day.

  Battine sat up, rubbed her head to see if that made things any better—it didn’t—and considered what to do with herself.

  They’ll be leaving for the hunt soon, she thought.

  It was tradition that there be a great hunt in the King’s wood on the morning of the second day, with the game being added to the feast of the second and third (if it was a prosperous hunt) nights. This was an idiosyncrasy specific to Totus and Orch, done out of respect for Ho, the god of the hunt. (Ho had her own day, but it was celebrated quite differently: Ho was also the god of procreation.)

  Before the queen decided to call her a whore for daring to have a private conversation with the king, Battine was prepared to rise with the sun and go out on the hunt. She hadn’t been invited—very few women in Totus hunted and none were invited—but saw no reason to let that stop her.

  Now it made more sense to just dress, get her bags and go home. If Kenson needed an explanation for her premature departure he could ask his wife.

  But first, there was the matter of the professor sleeping next to her.

  “Hey,” she said, nudging him, “the day’s begun.”

  He groaned, opened his eyes for a millisecond, and slammed them shut again.

  “So it has,” he grumbled. “What of it?”

  “I think you should find your clothes, don’t you?”

  “Should I?”

  “I won’t mind if you feel like walking around naked, but it may raise eyebrows in the halls.”

  “Ah,” he said, sitting up. “I take it the wedding’s off, then.”

  “Postponed indefinitely,” she said, heading into the bathroom.

  “Sorry to hear that,” he said, calling after her. “At least I managed to get you to take off your boots. I feel as if that was no small accomplishment.”

  She laughed. “Boot removal is the extent of my commitment to you at this time.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She started to draw a bath, while hunting down what soaps were available. A loud clang came from the bedroom.

  “Found your sword,” he said. “How is it possible we had that in bed with us all night without getting cut?”

  “We didn’t,” she said. “I put it under the bed after you extracted me from my dress.”

  He showed up at the bathroom door, shirtless but wearing his breeches.

  “I’m going to have to find someone who knows what room I’m in,” he said. “I have a feeling this castle is not a good place in which to get lost.”

  “It’s an excellent place to get lost, if getting lost is your intention.”

  “Sounds like an undesirable outcome. And this is what I’m talking about. Your sword.”

  He held up a half-sword that didn’t belong to her.

  “That’s not mine. Where did you find that again?”

  “In the…hold on.”

  He stepped out of the bathroom, which was lit only by the spillover of sunlight from the windows on the far side of the bed, and held up the sword where the light was better.

  “There’s blood on it,” he announced. “Have you been cut?”

  She checked; easy enough as she was still naked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Neither have I.”

  “Where did you find that?”

  “In the bed.”

  “Not under the bed, or on the floor.”

  “Wrapped up in the bedsheets,” he said. “Why, is it customary to store bloody swords under beds around here?”

  She turned off the water and threw on the cotton bathrobe that was hanging off the back of the door.

  “Let me see it,” she said.

  He flipped it around and handed it to her, hilt-first.

  “And this was in the bed,” she said.

  “I don’t know how many ways I can say it.” He looked down on the floor under the bed. “Ah, but here’s yours. No blood on this one.”

  “Thank Honus for that, I guess.” She held up the pommel in the sunlight. It had no family crest.

  This is a message, she thought.

  “I think we need to get dressed,” she said, throwing the sword back onto the bed.

  “That’s what I was doing.”

  “I mean both of us, right now. We’re not safe here.”

  “You’re the queen’s sister and this is your bedchamber. I can’t think of many safer places to be.”

  “Except that someone came into this room while we slept and set a bloody sword between us. It’s a message. I don’t know what we’re being told, other than that the messenger could have done worse than simply leave behind a weapon, but this is a message.”

  “Or a threat,” he said.

  “Or a threat, yes. Either way, we need to go.”

  The bells started sounding then.

  The bell tower was at the very tip of the eastern wing, very nearly the farthest point in Castle Totus from their current position. The view from the tower was said to be the best, strategically speaking: it rose up well above the outer defenses and had a clean look at all four corners of the wall. In a siege, guards on the wall could signal the bell tower, and whoever was manning the tower could—if events warranted—sound the bells to communicate information to the rest of the castle’s defenders.

  It had been well over four thousand years since the castle encountered anything like a siege, but the bells still worked. Under n
ormal circumstances, they rang a midday bell at ten, and that was all.

  It was not midday.

  “What’s that for?” Damid asked.

  “Shh.”

  There were about twenty distinct bell-ringing patterns. They trained a new vassal every season for the important responsibility of bell-tolling; he or she would have to master each of the patterns before being handed the keys. (Literally. The ringer would be expected to live in the chamber just beneath the tower for the entire season.) It was because of this training that anyone who’d spent sufficient time in the castle came to recognize each combination.

  “One long, two short,” she muttered, counting the bells. “Two long…one, two, three…no, no, no. Give me a fourth.”

  “It’s a signal?” Magly asked.

  “It is. One long, two short, two long, four short means a fire in the King’s wood.”

  “I didn’t hear four short,” he said.

  “Neither did I. Hang on, it’ll come around again.”

  She held her breath and waited.

  One long, two short.

  Two long.

  Three short.

  Battine collapsed to her knees.

  “No…it can’t be,” she cried.

  “What?” Damid asked. “What is it? What does three bells mean?”

  “It means the king is dead,” she said.

  Kenson’s body remained on the floor of the library until daybreak. This was how long it took for the royal physician, the captain of the guard, and the chief minister to declare what was already obvious: the king had died thanks to a stabbing. There was no heart attack, he didn’t choke on something, and he didn’t fall, unless one counted falling onto a sword. That sword had been thrust under his ribcage and into his heart.

  Such a wound would have killed him almost instantly and since the weapon wasn’t present at the scene, suicide could also be ruled out. (Not that suicide was ever under serious consideration.)

  In short, the king had been murdered.

  Porra already knew all of this. She knew it the second she found Kenson lying on his back on the library floor in a pool of his own blood. She knew it after she’d stopped screaming and the captain of the guard was trying to rein in her hysteria by holding her down. (He claimed she had been hitting herself.) She still knew it when the king’s doctor checked Kenson for a pulse. She didn’t need any of them on-hand to make an official proclamation.

  But process is process. There were requirements that had to be met when a king died. If he’d passed in his sleep, those same three people would be standing at his bedside.

  Ringing the bells was also part of the process. That one she really didn’t agree with.

  “Who gave those orders?” she asked dully. They were in the hall, watching Kenson’s body get marched past on a stretcher, carried by members of the royal guard under the instruction of Dr. Opan, the royal physician. Logina, the captain of the guard, was beside her, a hand out in case she was about to fall over. (She felt as if she was about to fall over, and probably looked it too. She was still in her night clothes, and kept shivering, partly from the shock and partly from the chill of the stone floor.)

  Chief Minister Fandaine stood at her opposite. He was an elder Alcon in his forty-fifth year. He served as minister for Kenson’s father as well, and was probably the most valuable member of the current government, if not technically its most powerful. His guidance and advice in a moment such as this would likely be extremely valuable—he was notoriously cool-headed—but as an Alcon, all he was doing was reminding Porra of what her husband would look like in another twenty-seven years, had he not been gutted in the botany section.

  “I did, my queen,” Fandaine said. “The bells are protocol.”

  “Are the bells mandated while the king’s blood is still warm?” she asked.

  “The…timing is unspecified.”

  “What you’ve done is put his killer on alert. Or did it not occur to you that a murderer is still loose in the castle?”

  “We should return you to your chamber, Queen Porra,” Logina said.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “That would…I need to fix my clothes.”

  “What you need is to rest,” Fandaine said. “This has been a terrible shock.”

  “I’ll rest on my schedule, minister, thank you. And another thing. If I hear one word about crowning Tannik before we have this crime sorted, you’ll be nobody’s chief minister ever again.”

  “But…”

  “Lecture me on protocol and I’ll have Logina put you to the sword, Fandaine, I swear to the gods.”

  Logina had the good sense to look as if he’d do so, and also slightly embarrassed about it.

  “Fandaine, you need to cancel the hunt, and tonight’s festivities. Everyone who is on the castle grounds right now will be remaining on castle grounds, and nobody will be allowed in, by order of the queen. Lock down the airship docks as well. When you’ve done that, come find me and we’ll discuss the next steps. I’ll be in the throne room. Well? Why are you still standing here?”

  “Yes. Yes, Queen Porra, of course,” Fandaine said. He scurried off as quickly as his forty-five year old legs could carry him.

  “Logina, after you’ve seen me safely to my chambers, you’re to take however many guards as you deem appropriate to locate my sister and the man she’s with and bring them to me.”

  “Princess Battine?” he asked, for clarification. She had no other blood sisters, so his need for clarification came from the nature of the request and not the subjects of it.

  “His name is Damid Magly, or Bagly. He was last seen entering her bedchambers. Unless I’m grossly misinterpreting the nature of their relationship, he’s still there this morn.”

  Logina was a large man with a scruffy face and a scar over his right eye. He looked like he’d been in more fights than were strictly necessary for his position as captain of the palace guard. If Porra wasn’t numb from head to toe she’d likely find him blushing to be a source of amusement.

  “I only mean…you don’t believe she had anything to do with the king…?”

  “I have cause,” she said.

  He didn’t ask for details, which was a blessing, because Porra’s head was swimming. It was only a matter of pride that kept her from demanding she be physically carried back to her bed.

  She nearly made it on her own, but was interrupted by Dr. Opan, waiting in the common room.

  “My queen,” he greeted.

  “What is it, Opan? Is my husband not still dead?”

  “He is, yes.”

  Opan stepped closer to Porra.

  “I recovered this on the king’s body, my queen,” he muttered. “I felt certain you’d want to retain it for your own interests.”

  He slipped Kenson’s forbidden voicer into her hand.

  “I would,” she said. “Thank you for your discretion.”

  He bowed and took his leave.

  “Go find my sister,” she told the captain of the guard. He bowed as well, and left.

  Porra stumbled into her private room then and collapsed onto the bed.

  No time for sleep, she thought, even though her body ached for rest. They’ll pry my crown from my head before I’ve had a chance to open my eyes again.

  She sat up and took a look at Kenson’s voicer. It was the same kind as the one she had, so she performed the same steps to activate it, but the device’s security prevented her from getting any further.

  There were probably ways to circumvent the security measures, but the nearest expert in such matters was a half a continent away.

  But that was all right. There might be interesting things on Kenson’s voicer, but nothing that would make him any less dead. She put it in the drawer with her own device. Then she pulled the cord. The ladies streamed in.

  “I need coffee, food, a bath, and mourning clothes,” she said. “At once. Right this instant.”

  “I don’t understand,” Damid said, as the bells repeated. “Was Ken sic
k? He wasn’t, right? That’s not normal. I mean…”

  “Alcons have been known to perish from cancer,” Battine said. “But as children. He was healthy. For him to die would mean an accident or…” Her tear-soaked eyes found the extra blade in the room. “I think I know whose blood this is.”

  Damid’s eyes followed hers to the half-sword.

  “No,” he said. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Battine dropped the bathrobe and began pulling on her riding leathers.

  “The sword’s not a message; it’s evidence. Someone has decided to frame us for the murder of the king. Presumably that’s not the only evidence lying about the castle. Now I have no plans to be here when the guard show to take us away but you’re welcome to stay if you’d like.”

  The threat of leaving without him got Damid moving again.

  “But why would anyone seriously consider framing you for this?” he asked. “Assuming you’re even right. What if Kenson fell? Or, what if he isn’t dead and someone got the bells wrong and this sword is…is unrelated? Or it could be a joke!”

  “The bells aren’t wrong.”

  “Battine, this is ridiculous. You’re the queen’s sister.”

  “I’m the unblessed spurned lover of the king, Professor Magly, returned to court after years in the equivalent of exile. If you were looking to assign blame, could you name a better person?”

  “Spurned lover?” He looked amused.

  “It’s what they’ll call me.”

  “Really!”

  “Now is not the time to have this conversation.”

  “I just didn’t know, that’s all. Is this why you met with him last night?”

  “Later.”

  Dressed, she went to the door and put her ear up against it. Hearing nothing, she cracked it open.

  The hallway was empty, but she could hear someone coming. It sounded like five or six, all of them members of the guard. (She grew up to the sound of palace guards marching in the halls. They all had the same sword/belt combination that clicked and clacked in an aurally distinctive way.) They were at the stairs, which was the only way up or down from this floor.