The Madness of Kings

by Gene Doucette

  They walked through the main gates that led to the water dock, marching in two rows, each with no more than a couple of bags on their backs. After a brief introduction to High Hat Alva, who delivered a speech Porra couldn’t hear, they were led to the quarters they’d be staying in until the first week of Shi-Sevvitch.

  Following these eight months of study, most of them would be returning to the mainland while a select few would be chosen to remain on Temple Island to continue their studies. (Great Temple Septal was an exalted position. Porra had no idea what the qualifications were and had never been brave enough to ask.)

  After that, Alva had other things to keep her occupied, evidently, because it was another two hours before her Highness found time to greet the queen.

  Other Kawabir retrieved Porra for the meeting, bringing her down the hall she could have walked on her own at any time—it was literally just a left from her quarters and straight to the end—but which she didn’t do because that would have been improper.

  Orean, she decided, would have just gone and done it on her own, about an hour earlier. Orean also nearly ended up hanged for behaving as she does, Porra reminded herself. Keep your perspective.

  “Porra!” High Hat Alva exclaimed, as soon as the queen darkened the threshold of her office. Alva shuffled around the desk and gave Porra a long hug, which felt a lot better then she expected it to. “I’m so very sorry!”

  “Hello, Vilto,” Porra said, pulling out of the hug. “And thank you.”

  “Please, sit.”

  Alva went back around the desk, gesturing as she went that Porra should take the nearest chair.

  It had been less than a year since the last time they’d shared one another’s company, and yet Porra couldn’t shake the sense that Vilto Alva had quite suddenly gotten old. The problem was that she’d known this woman since Porra was a child, and so in her mind she continued to expect the younger, livelier version to manifest. However, she didn’t remember suffering this conflict on the prior visit.

  I’m thinking about death a touch more now, she decided.

  Porra knew hardly anything about the High Hat. As children, she and Battine caught a rumor that Alva was a Horace under her hood, which—since they couldn’t verify it without getting the woman to appear face-naked—seemed like a definitively true thing. (It wasn’t: Alva wasn’t tall enough.) Aside from that, Porra knew her as being strict and unforgiving and occasionally cruel. Although Battine got it worse than she did.

  Porra had also never met an adult less impressed by royalty than Vilto Alva. That alone made her terrifying to Porra, her sister, and all of their cousins. “Your blood may have fixed your visage,” Alva used to say, “but not your heads. If you turn out stupid it’s your own blessed fault.”

  “You’re owed an apology,” Alva said, once reclaiming her post behind the desk. “I meant to go to you some time ago. Kenson dead at the hands of your sister, of all people! I should have been there for comfort.”

  “Thank you, Highness. But I understand. You’ve much to attend to here. I didn’t expect you.”

  “But the burden. I can think of no one in the nine kingdoms facing such a stark turnabout. I should have…ah well, but now you’re here.”

  “I’m here,” Porra agreed. “I think the time away from Castle Totus will serve me well.”

  “Of course! And as you know we hold services daily. They’re intended for oath-takers, but we can welcome the unhooded as well, if you have interest. A communal with the Five may be just what your spirit needs.”

  “Thank you. I’m sure I will avail myself.”

  “And I can arrange private sessions. With me if you wish, or with someone less familiar if you’d prefer. I find when it comes to confessing private matters, it’s often easier in the presence of a Septal not known to you.”

  “That’s very generous,” Porra said. “I think I will wait to see what needs surface before acceding to a specific palliative. But I wonder if you could clarify one point. Confession seems a strong choice. Why did you land on that particular word?”

  Alva’s chin expressed gravity, somehow. “I meant only that the admission of private thoughts can feel like a confession, Porra.”

  “I see.”

  “Guilt is one of the things you’re working through, dear. Misplaced, of course. You’ve outlived your husband, your Alconnot sister has damaged your future, and you don’t even have a child to show for any of it. I expect guilt and rage and shame. All of it, as I said, gravely misplaced.”

  Porra could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing.

  “Gravely, is it?” she asked. “Vilto, all I feel right now is rage, and it’s not at all misplaced. But as to whom that rage is directed, and why? That isn’t for your consumption. Nor is it for any other faceless monk. On that I keep my own counsel. I welcome your guidance but do not presume to know my emotions.”

  High Hat Alva nodded maternally.

  “I see we have some work ahead,” she said.

  “Perhaps we do,” Porra said.

  “Water?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Would you like some water,” Alva said. “I’ve been speaking all afternoon and I’m parched.”

  She climbed out of the office chair and stepped over to a small table holding a ewer and two glasses.

  “No thank you,” Porra said.

  “You know, I always prided myself on my voice. There are scarcely any other ways for High Hats to distinguish themselves aside from our voices. Mine used to carry across a crowd.”

  “I remember.”

  “Nowadays, I find I’m shouting more often than not.” She drank an entire glass, refilled it, and sat back down. “So,” she said, “this audience is at your request and yet I seem to be the only one interested in talking. What else did you want to discuss, if not the tragedies of your recent past?”

  “I had some questions about the last time we were here,” she said.

  “You and Kenson?” Alva clarified.

  “Yes. We were here for the pre-conception counseling. You remember.”

  “I do.”

  “You spent more time with the king than I did that weekend, Highness,” Porra said. “I’m wondering if you noticed anything odd.”

  “Anything odd? I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I.”

  The way pre-conception counseling went was fairly straightforward, if not a little regressive. The women and the men (or in the case of non-binaries, the child-bearing and non-child-bearing) were separated for the day and then were shown and told different things.

  When Porra and Kenson went they were joined by cousins Luell and Phenton Horace. (Adding to the pain of the past three weeks, the young couple announced just a few days prior to Porra’s departure for Temple Island that Luell was with child.) Porra and Luell were given a tour of the chambers where they’d be staying along with the birthing chambers in the clinic beside the temple, along with a brief walkthrough of the various medical procedures they’d expect to undergo in the course of carrying a (presumed) blessed to term.

  Porra remembered thinking that it was needlessly complicated. Peasants reproduced rather effectively without any of these peculiar tests and procedures. Likewise the specially compounded vitamins and closely monitored diet they were expected to abide by didn’t exist outside of Temple Island, not to mention the two fairly invasive procedures meant to, “Closely monitor the health of the fetus in the most direct way possible,” according to the Sister who gave them the tour. It was nearly alarming enough for the queen to decide she’d rather squat in a field and drop her little Alcon in the mud. He or she would no doubt come out just fine.

  She didn’t say this, and didn’t really mean to do it, but she did think it.

  But, this was the way Porra’s mother carried her to term, and her father’s mother before that, and so on. Porra could find a way to do the same.

  Meanwhile, Kenson was in another part of the temple getting his own priv
ate education on what was involved in producing a blessed child.

  What he was told simply couldn’t have been more extreme than what Porra heard, much less what Porra would have to endure. Really, all he had to do was stick the right body part in the right place at the right time and then his work was done. Porra imagined at the time that his “training” probably consisted of a five minute talk and then an afternoon of dirty jokes.

  She was wrong, but she didn’t know how she was wrong. Not yet.

  “I think what I mean,” Porra said, “is that I don’t know what Kenson’s pre-conception counseling involved. But I would like to know.”

  “That…isn’t something we can discuss,” Alva said.

  “He came back different, Vilto. Not a good sort of different.”

  “Again, I’m not sure I understand.”

  “He was…reluctant.”

  The High Hat drank more water, which was becoming the way she hid her expression from betraying too much.

  “I knew you were having trouble conceiving, Porra,” Alva said. “In another month I was prepared to recommend a return trip to examine you both medically. Make sure everything was functioning.”

  “It was all functioning before we came here. The difference was in his commitment to performing the function.”

  “I…”

  “He wouldn’t lay with me. And the pivot point between him sharing my bed and not is the pre-conception counseling. So I would like to know what my husband heard and saw that day.”

  “Why, the same thing we tell and show all the kings, and have done for thousands of years,” Alva said. “The same thing we showed and told Phenton. You’ll recall he and Luell were here for the same counseling.”

  “I recall that perfectly well, thank you. You’ve not answered the question.”

  “I think I have. I appreciate the logic which brought you to this conclusion but Porra, honestly, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “You can give me the same tour.”

  “I can’t do any such thing. It’s absolutely forbidden. And not germane. I’m sure…Porra, I’m sure this is the grief talking, so forgive me if I’m perceived as being unfairly blunt but it has been a long day. If Kenson didn’t want to lay with you any longer the problem was between you and him. Not with me, not with the Temple, and not with the pre-conception counseling.”

  It was a good thing Porra didn’t have anything sharp with her because if she had, she’d have leapt across the desk and pressed it against the High Hat’s throat and demanded to be taken to whichever part of the temple Kenson had been taken to. Because Vilto Alva was lying to Porra, and she could prove it. If she had half of Orean’s brazenness—or Battine’s—she’d present that proof and dare Alva to lie about it some more.

  That’s what you would do, sister, isn’t it? she thought. If only you were here.

  But Porra didn’t leap across the table as she had no weapon, and since Battine was the only one of them who ever took swordsmanship, Porra also wouldn’t have known what to do with it if she did. And the proof was in the voicer pressed up against her ribs below her bosom, the only safe hiding place when wearing her black mourning frock. (It was plain and hideous, and she was supposed to wear it for an entire year.) She wasn’t going to brandish the forbidden tech in front of the High Hat; she was afraid of anyone knowing she had it, including her own staff.

  So, with clenched fists, Porra stood.

  “I see,” she said through gritted teeth. “Then I’ll take your leave, Highness. Until later.”

  Porra retreated to her room for the remainder of the day, missing dinner and the evening services in the cathedral. She had Orean bring her food (wisely recognizing a foul mood when she saw one, the girl delivered the meal in silence and then left) and banished Vexy and Aleiti to their tiny room.

  Satisfied that she’d be undisturbed for a while (the door had no lock, so this was important) she reached into her dress and extracted the hidden voicer.

  She’d spent hours going through the files she’d forwarded from Kenson’s device. The information there was frustratingly incomplete, but it pointed to something being seriously the matter with her husband, and Damid Magly was his only confidante.

  Their conversation went back more than three years, beginning the day Kenson obtained the voicers. It ranged across dozens of topics, but the thesis was clear: Her husband had been radicalized by his time at Callim University. He rejected the concept of blessedness entirely, and actively discussed tearing down the entire political structure of the Middle Kingdoms from within.

  It was truly startling, discovering that the man she loved and devoted her entire life to was, in many respects, a complete stranger. Because she very definitely did not know the person who wrote these messages.

  Then there were the captured images. As Kenson said in the later messages, he’d found evidence of something. To Magly and Porra’s frustration alike, the king adamantly refused to explain what he meant by this. But it was supposedly big enough to, “Tear it all down.”

  But he lacked the courage to do anything with it himself.

  I’ve been sitting on this for months, Damid, he said in the first message that mentioned his discovery. I don’t know what to do with it, but I can’t do nothing with it. I’m not sleeping. Can you help?

  That message was written less than six months after their pre-conception counseling, which struck her as propitious timing. It wasn’t enough to prove anything, but she was nearly positive he hadn’t left Totus for any other reason during that period.

  Then there were the images. These, too, were frustrating in their lack of explication.

  He’d captured them while standing in an unfamiliar location, meaning not in Castle Totus and not in a place Porra recognized. There were only a handful of times when he was outside of the castle and someplace where Porra was not; their pre-conception counseling was one such time.

  That still wasn’t proof that the images had come from Temple Island, but it was pretty close.

  But then she focused on the odd numbers beneath each of the images. She’d been ignoring them for a time, thinking they were some programmatic artifact of the mechanical device she was using. They weren’t.

  One night, she jotted down some of the numbers and then opened up the Streambox on her voicer.

  “You can just enter a phrase, deliver it, and get back a list of sources,” he said one time, regarding the Stream. “It works for everything.”

  No doubt he told her this so that she’d try it herself, which she didn’t do until after his death, with the numbers. The Stream responded immediately with news: the numbers represented coordinates on a global map.

  She followed the option to geolocate and waited. What she got was a world map with a glowing pinpoint in one spot: Temple Island. Specifically, directly beneath the Great Temple itself.

  And that was how she knew High Hat Alva was lying to her.

  Alva took Kenson somewhere on that day. It was a room with vials and tubes and machinery that still meant nothing to Porra, but which she now knew—thanks to the geotag that came with the image-capturing function of his voicer—that he was standing somewhere in the temple when he caught the image.

  For whatever reason, that room made him so agitated that he exiled himself from her bed, and some months later reached out to his old friend Damid Magly, promising the delivery of evidence that would, “Tear it all down.”

  She began to wonder if her husband also died because of that evidence.

  Porra didn’t know the significance of that room, but she knew where it was, and she also knew that the High Hat didn’t want her to see it.

  But it was in the Great Temple, and now so was she. If she could find it on her own maybe some of this would start to making sense.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Battine and Damid couldn’t do much of anything in the first week aside from attend various orientation sessions designed to smooth out the experience of their furthered Septal edu
cations, and conduct a little light exploring.

  It probably should have been difficult for them to not stand out, given they were both laypersons unfamiliar with any of the teachings that were exclusive to the oath-sworn Septals. It wasn’t though, either because the faith was a lot shallower than either of them appreciated or because there was nothing about orientation that required advanced knowledge.

  Since she’d spent a significant portion of four years on the island, obtaining an education that was exclusive to royalty—blessed and unblessed alike—she was intimately familiar with the campus.

  It all seemed much smaller now; the vast expanse of the courtyard was actually just a modest yard, and the huge buildings were just regular-sized buildings that only seemed large if one happened to be a child. Even the Great Temple looked a little less massive than the temple of her memories.

  When not pretending to pay attention to seminars, they visited every part of the campus to which they were allowed access. This included such mundane regions as the dining hall and all the classrooms, and most of the rooms on the upper floors of the Great Temple. It was a bit of a risk, because according to rumor Queen Porra was actively wandering the halls of the temple. (It turned out Septal monks were accomplished gossips, so much so that Battine sometimes felt as if she’d never left court.) But they never ran into her.

  There was some divergence in Batt’s access between her royal childhood and her anonymous monk adulthood. As a child, she wasn’t allowed outside the walls save for when they took the path to the dock, but the monks were free to wander. This access satisfied a youthful curiosity but didn’t get them any closer to finding what they were there for; the land outside the campus courtyard was notable only for being uninteresting.

  Far more importantly, when she was younger she was allowed in the first of the Great Temple’s sublevels. But only resident monks were permitted to go down there, so neither she nor Damid could explore that part of the island.