The Madness of Kings

by Gene Doucette

  “Is that a lot?”

  “It is. I’ve got more room than I need for my regular functions. All right it’s in.”

  She closed the box and reattached it to the lattice, took off the rubber gloves and tossed them, and put the rig back on.

  “You sure that’s safe?” Makk asked.

  “Of course it’s safe,” she said. To the rig, she said, “power up. Scan new files.”

  She stood still for long enough to give the impression whatever she just did worked. This was incorrect.

  “It’s locked,” she said. “Needs a code to open.”

  “He didn’t give us a code.”

  “He must have. What would be the point otherwise?”

  “I agree,” Makk said. “But he didn’t give us a code. You’ve been with me the whole time; did you hear anything?”

  “It had to have been something he said.”

  He spoke of mad kings, Makk remembered.

  “The quote,” he said. “Something about the madness of kings. I think it’s a Derrigende.”

  “Did he? Hang on, my rig nabbed it.”

  She issued a set of commands to skim through the timeline and pull up the quote. Makk could only interpret the success of her navigation by watching her expression change.

  “Got it,” she said. “Pretty sure that’s from King Moyn III. Let me try it.”

  She repeated the line after a password prompt.

  “Nope, that doesn’t work. I think it wants a number series.”

  “How do we translate that into numbers?” Makk asked.

  “Nah, can’t be that easy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  To her rig, she said, “source the quote, many a bounty perishes unwhelped, confounded by the madness of kings, Display.”

  Her eye skimmed whatever was being shown on her eyepatch optical.

  “I was right: The line is from King Moyn III.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “Well, it’s from act four, scene three, lines 27-28 of the original Falshen folio. If that doesn’t work we can try the popular Endish translations to see if the positioning changes.”

  “I’m still not following.”

  “Scan new files,” she said to the rig. “Password: 4, 3, 27, 28.”

  She stood still.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Yeah, we’re in. Looks like a few files and an executable.”

  “What kind of files?”

  “One’s a…oh wow. It’s a credits purse. Looks like we’re rich?”

  “You’re already pretty rich,” Makk said.

  “Not this rich.”

  “That can’t be all there is.”

  “It’s absolutely not. There’s a list of names. Dorn Jimbal is on here. Don’t know any of the others. Ever hear of a Professor Magly?”

  “Nope.”

  “Thought he might be one of the Septals you interviewed.”

  “I can check with the House. What about the executable?”

  She shrugged. “Won’t know what it is until I execute it. Think I should?”

  “Your rig, your call.”

  “Execute program,” she said to the rig. Then her jaw dropped.

  “Wow,” she said. “I’ve heard of these kinds of programs but I thought they were theoretical.”

  “What does it do?”

  “It’s a geotracker, only it’s leveraging global data in a way that’s a little terrifying. You know how Daska found us by pinging your voicer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Imagine that, only without needing an active voicer first.”

  “Oh. How would that even work? What’s it use instead?”

  “I’m not a hundred on it, but…you know when he said he didn’t know where his daughter was? Total lie.”

  There was a knock on the ambulance door. Yordon Llotho poked his head in. “Makk?” he said. “You guys decent? We have a few things to maybe talk about.”

  “Just a sec,” Makk said. He turned back to Elicasta. “Where?” he asked.

  “Not this hemisphere,” she said. “I need a few minutes to narrow it down.”

  “Keep at it, I’ll be right back.”

  Makk climbed out of the ambulance, slowly. His knee was very unhappy with how it had been treated over the past hour.

  “So this was a shitshow,” Llotho said, waving Quibb over from across the street.

  “I don’t suppose you have Calcut in custody?” Makk asked.

  “We don’t. With his resources, this may have been our only chance.”

  “What happened, detective?” Quibb asked, as soon as he was in earshot.

  “Linus scheduled another exo to leave at the same time as we did,” Makk said, “and swapped the routes. Don’t know how he did that, but that’s less important than how did he know to do it? Someone leaked that we’d be dropping from Lys tonight, and I can tell you right now it wasn’t me.”

  “We’ll need a list of everyone who had that information,” Quibb said.

  “I’ll put it together,” Llotho said. “Makk, Kev’s murder is all over the Stream. Tell me that was spoofed.”

  “It wasn’t. What, did he take the body?”

  “I’m told the body’s there. It’s just missing a face.”

  Llotho slow-walked in a circle, looking like he needed a bacco stick.

  “Well,” he said to the C.A. “Looks like you and I’ll be looking for new work after this settles.”

  “Don’t think of it like that,” Makk said. “You’ve definitely got all the evidence you need to arrest Calcut Linus now.”

  Makk glanced back at the ambulance. ‘Casta was waving at him.

  “One sec,” he said, stepping away.

  “Did you find her?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Remember how we talked about taking a trip somewhere nice?”

  They had, but not seriously. More along the lines of wouldn’t it be nice if…

  “Sure,” he said.

  “She’s on a boat in the Midpoint,” she said. “Off the coast of Canos-Holo. How much vacation time do you have?”

  Makk looked back at his captain and the county attorney, two very unhappy men.

  “A lot,” he said. “And between Calcut Linus still looking to murder us and the legal fiasco I’m about to be in the middle of, this seems like a great time to get away. When can we leave?”

  Part III

  The Engine of the World

  Chapter Nineteen

  The ship left port in the early morning on the third day of Ta-Sevvitch, a simple sailing vessel on a short journey halfway across the Elonian Gap. It sounded innocuous, but the route was actually one of the more challenging voyages in the two continents.

  The Elonian Gap was the channel between North and South Eloni, and also the connective tissue between two oceans. On the west was the Norton Ocean, featuring a modest southerly current, while on the east was the Midpoint Ocean and the northerly Great Current.

  Since the Great Current was…well, great…it exerted the most influence on the movement of water in the Elonian Gap. It was therefore more common than not for the water to flow through the channel west-to-east.

  This should have made the ship’s outbound voyage simple enough, as that leg was a northeasterly one. However, the Great Current’s influence was a masterpiece of chaos that had confounded the finest minds in fluid dynamics for two thousand years. A vessel might find itself initially heading in a favorable direction only to end up abandoned in an eddy halfway through that was intent on spinning the boat around. And sudden reversals were so common the sailors had a word for it—“We’ve struck a river,” they’d say—and there were days when, inexplicably, the water seemed to want to flow south-to-north or north-to-south.

  That was before factoring in the winds. Most days, the wind traveled west-to-east as well, meaning there were some trips in which the ship’s only concern was arriving at Temple Island so quickly it crashed into the shore. But of course the wind didn’t a
lways blow that way. This was a fairly standard thing for most winds, though, and not something exclusive to the Gap.

  What was unusual—if not wholly unique—was the waterspouts. The continental pressure systems sometimes produced what on land would be called a tornado, but over the water of the Elonian Gap became something just as perilous, if not more: giant columns of watery funnels roaming the sea and looking for ships to destroy.

  These were rare, but not that rare. Sailors spotted them routinely—or thought they did, such was their fear of the phenomenon—and quickly learned to identify the signs that one was forming nearby.

  “Outcast winds!” they’d shout. “Eye the horizon and batten down!”

  Battine had never heard a sailor shout any such thing, but she knew the stories well enough that she expected to hear the cry at any second, even on a clear day such as this one.

  She was standing at the railing on the starboard side of the ship. It afforded the best view of the Great Temple, or would once it came into view. The captain’s intended route took them out into the shipping channel before tacking eastward, which would put the island on their starboard.

  Battine might have worried about being recognized out in the open, but she was currently dressed as a Septal monk from head to toe. This might have stood out as well, except fully half of the ship’s complement were dressed the same. Even if a guardsman boarded the vessel already knowing the fugitives Battine Alconnot and Damid Magly were passengers, it would take half a day to find them.

  The ship was called Allyra’s Chariot, after the legendary (and possibly mythical) first High Hat of the Great Temple. Twice yearly the vessel was chartered by the Totus Septal House to ferry pilgrims to and from the mainland.

  The ship left from a dock in a small town called Dolt. The Dolt bequest—which currently belonged to cousin Jabo Alcon—was just on the other side of the hill Battine could see from her bedroom window.

  My former bedroom window, she thought.

  The ship took the route twice weekly (year-round) anyway, but on most occasions, it was to take lay Septals on day trips and ferry supplies for the island, weather permitting. Someone would surely recognize them had they sailed on one of those trips, if not on the dock then while sharing the half-day’s boat ride. But not on the pilgrim’s voyage: Nobody would dare ask a monk to lift their hood, not even when hunting down the killers of the local sovereign.

  That she and Damid had even made it this far seemed sufficiently miraculous that the hand of the Five almost had to be involved.

  A peculiar reality of a life lived in a place that was a few millennia behind everybody else was that news traveled far more slowly than it really should. It was just past twenty by the time they’d reached the Delphina bequest in the stolen royal airship/secret aero-car. By then, Kenson had been dead for nearly a full day, and the news of his death was roughly fourteen hours old.

  This news had been conveyed, but with no detail attached. After the bells rang at Castle Totus, the same ring was repeated in every bell tower in the country—a crude but effective way to disseminate simple information. (A similar communication chain would later herald the crowning of the new king.) But the bells lacked sufficient complexity to explain how the king died or who was being held responsible for it. That detail would have to be spread by word-of-mouth, which could only go as fast as the fastest horseman.

  There had been plenty of time for the fastest horseman to have reached the Delphina, had that been the goal. But for much of the day the search for Battine and Magly had been confined to the castle itself. Not until after it was clear that they’d escaped did a countrywide bulletin become necessary. And Kenson Alcon’s aero-car was a good deal faster than any horse.

  When they reached Battine’s home—landing the car on the roof rather than using the airship dock, which still had her private dirigible in port—they were greeted by a very perturbed Haupid. He had only two questions at first (“What happened to the king?” and “Where did this airship come from?”) and then many, many more.

  An hour later, the three of them were at Battine’s dining table, eating leftover cooked meat that had been donated by the townspeople over the course of the past two days. Haupid had the King’s Justice brooch on the table before him next to the scroll that designated Fergo Horace as the administrator of that justice.

  “I would just like to hear you say this one more time, milady,” he said. “You believe the entire Middle Kingdom sovereignty arranged to have Ho-Kenson assassinated?”

  “That’s what the evidence indicates, Haupid,” she said. “You have it before you.”

  “I do. But my eyes are poor and my mind is stubbornly refusing to process it. And they would have your heads for the crime?”

  “It’s an easier sell,” Damid said, between bites. Magly ate with a lack of decorum that no doubt would have given her manservant fits were he not so occupied with the reality of Kenson’s murder.

  “It is,” Haupid agreed. “Sir, I’d rather believe that version myself. Why would they do this?”

  Damid treated Battine to a glance then, a silent question: How much should we tell this man?

  “We don’t know for certain,” she said, which was the truth, although they had enough time in the aero-car to cobble together a theory or two. “But we mean to find out.”

  “Well,” Haupid said. “I imagine your intent is to work this out from the other side of the country’s border. How far can that device on the roof take you?”

  “Pretty far,” she said. “But we’re not leaving the Middle Kingdoms yet.”

  “You can’t stay here. I speak not for my safety or that of this household, but for your own. They will surely check the Delphina estate first. I know it looks to be a castle, but we’ve no proper defenses. Nor do you command an army. The newly crowned king does.”

  “I don’t mean we’re staying here,” she said. “We’ll leave Totus but we have another destination in mind. The pilgrim’s voyage leaves in three weeks; I intend for us to be aboard.”

  Haupid treated her with one of his more withering looks of disbelief then. It was the one he pulled out when she announced her intention to do, well, more or less anything unsuited to a lady, only magnified somehow.

  “Where will you wait out the three weeks?” he asked. “In the woods? You’ll not last three days. Not without help. I’ll begin making the arrangements immediately.”

  “No, don’t do that.” The sacrifices already made by Orean and Matron Limasse sprang to mind immediately. She’d surely put their lives in jeopardy, and had no desire to add Haupid to her conscience. “They’ll hang you for offering aid.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “The lady of the house returned in a ship on loan from the king himself. I’d received no word of her treachery, nor did she speak on the matter. I did my duty by her and her guest and then, well? They left. To where I do not know! Certainly, they would never confide in a humble servant such as myself.”

  “I’m convinced,” Damid said.

  “You would do this for me?”

  “Battine, for as long as you continue to be Lady Delphina, I remain at your service. Now let’s awaken your favorite stable boy. I’ve need of a horse.”

  The story they decided to go with was an amended version of the truth. Yes, Battine and Damid arrived at the Delphina in the middle of the night, via the stolen royal airship. But they only did so to pick up as many platinum dorins as could be carried before leaving again.

  “Something about taking it to Mursk,” was what Haupid would say, if asked.

  It was a good story, largely because it was precisely what they should have been doing, rather than what they actually were doing. The border between Totus and Mursk was soft when heading south even for ground travel. Their southern neighbor had no issue with kingdom citizens traveling in their direction, while Murskites meaning to enter Totus had to pass roadside checkpoints first. (Mursk shipping lorries were effectively the only mechanical mode of tra
vel allowed into Totus.)

  Better, there were zero border restrictions imposed on midair travel. They could have piloted the counterfeit airship into Mursk, landed in a secluded area and stripped the fakery from the car, and then simply continued driving.

  The nearest port city was Quile Bay, less than a half day’s travel from the border. From there they would have been able to book passage to essentially anywhere in the world and been out of the kingdom’s reach for…well, possibly forever. A lot depended on how loudly the kingdom of Totus felt like being regarding Battine and Damid’s fugitive statuses. Since none of the nine kingdoms much appreciated news escaping their collective insular existence, there was a decent chance nobody would know to look for them.

  That they were not fleeing Totus through Mursk was a testament to their shared mania. The fury that drove Battine to seek out Fergo within the walls of Castle Totus rather than attempt an immediate escape hadn’t been quelled after Damid ran him over with the car. Rather, it had been transferred to new targets: the eight sovereigns, and their collective decision to invoke the King’s Justice.

  Likewise, Damid Magly—who could have left on his own fairly easily, given he was the only one capable of piloting the aero-car—believed Kenson’s murder was directly related to something Ken promised Damid. He very much wanted to find out what that was. It made his motives somewhat less bloodthirsty than Battine’s, but no less intense in application.

  As to what was promised…the two of them had plenty of time to consider that over the three weeks between the end of Nita’s Feast and the beginning of Ta-Sevvitch. Although in truth, most of what needed to be discussed already had been, on the night they fled Castle Totus.

  “He almost didn’t come back,” was the first thing Magly said once they were clear of the castle walls and had charted a route to the Delphina. She had to spot the King’s Highway from the air and tell him to follow it, which wasn’t too difficult; it was the only road with consistent lighting.

  “From his Haremisva? I know. He told me. I didn’t believe him.”