by Karen Miller
“Now, good people of Dorana City, it falls upon me to answer the greatest question of all,” said Holze. He wore his finest vestments; the lowering sun struck multicolored fire from threads of gold and silver, from rubies and emeralds and deep purple amethysts. There were so many fresh blossoms tied into his braid he could!ve opened a flower shop. “Tradition dictates it is the Master Magician who names our next WeatherWorker. But our dearly beloved Durm still recovers from his injuries, so it falls upon me to stand in his place. Barl, in her infinite and mysterious wisdom, has decreed we must live our lives henceforth without the loving guidance of King Borne or the expectation of his glorious daughter Fane’s reign thereafter. But in her magnificent adoration of us, her children, Barl has yet kept the promise made to our forebears and ensured our continued peace, prosperity and safety. Therefore in her great name I give you His Majesty King Gar, WeatherWorker of Lur!”
As a swell of sound surged from the crowd, Asher heard shocked gasps behind him. He turned and there was Gar himself, walking through the gap between the gathered Justice Hall staff. Still dressed in unrelieved black, his bruised head bare of circlet or crown, his face was pale and set in grim lines. As though completely alone he passed between his staring subjects, straight by Asher, out through the open doorway and onto the steps of Justice Hall.
When the crowd saw him the noise threatened to shatter the sky. Shrieks. Shouts. Great cries of welcome, and of woe. Somewhere in the gathered press of flesh a man’s voice screamed, “King Gar! King Gar! Barl bless our King Gar!”
Another voice echoed him. Then another. And another. Then two voices in unison. Three. Ten. Thirty. Fifty. Louder and stronger, man, woman and child, the chant leaping from throat to throat like flames in a wheatfield.
“King Gar! King Gar! Barl bless our King Gar!”
There were Doranen voices raised out there, along with Olken. They were raised in here, too, Asher saw. Not as loudly as the folk outside, but with the same amount of passion. In the faces of the gathered staff he saw love, relief and a transcendent joy. Lur had a new WeatherWorker. They could go to bed tonight feeling safe, protected, knowing the world could continue unchanged, and for that they gave thanks. Which was all well and good and a nice way to finish the day, but how long would joy and gratitude last if Gar wasn’t ready?
Holze had dropped to his knees, head bowed to his chest in homage to the new king. Gar left him there for three heartbeats, then bent and drew the elderly cleric to his feet. Embraced him. The crowd’s chanting doubled in fervor and volume. Asher could feel his bones vibrating. The noise was so loud he thought it might bring the roof of Justice Hall down on all their heads and tumble the City’s buildings into rubble and dust.
On the steps outside, Gar released his hold on Barlsman Holze and turned to face the crowd. His hands lifted high overhead and a stream of golden light burst forth irom his outstretched fingertips. Up and up and up into the air it poured, and suddenly the world smelled of free-sias and jasmine and all sweet things. The crowd fell raggedly silent, watching, as the raw magic coalesced over their heads, becoming a thick golden cloud.
Gar clenched his fingers into fists. The golden cloud shivered. Shuddered. Collapsed into thousands and thousands of flower petals that rained onto all the upturned faces of his people. As the crowd gasped in wonder, Asher swallowed his own surprise. It was hard to get used to Gar doing magic. It was like watching a crippled bird spread its wings and fly effortlessly, casually, the way it should’ve flown from birth.
“Citizens of Dorana!” Gar cried. “Yesterday there walked among you a man known in this kingdom as His Royal Highness Prince Gar of Lur. Yesterday that man died, along with all his family, and today is reborn as your king. Your servant. Barl’s instrument in the world, whose only ambition is to maintain and nurture the strength of her Wall. Whose only reason for living is to keep you as you are: loved and safe and obedient to her will. Yesterday I was a prince with one father, one mother, one sister. Today I am a king with more fathers and mothers and sisters than I can count. Yes, and brothers too, aunts and uncles and cousins and children. For the people of Lur are my family now. And I will love my family unto death, and defend them from any who would wish them harm. In Barl’s name I swear it, and may magic desert me if my heart and oath are not true!”
A breathless hush. A quivering silence. Then:
“King Gar! King Gar! King Gar!” Asher felt the small tight knot in his gut unravel just a little. Gar had sounded calm. Confident. At peace with himself and the burden Barl had placed, for no good reason, on his unready shoulders.
He’d sounded like his dead father. Like a king. As Asher watched, weak-kneed with relief, Gar started down the steps of Justice Hall. Holze reached out a hand to him, saying something in an alarmed undertone; the words were lost in the crowd’s cries of adoration and acclaim. Gar ignored him. Asher pushed forward to the doorway, incredulous. Was Gar mad? He couldn’t just saunter into that mob on his own! Not that he was in danger, not from any deliberate unlawful act. But all those people! The unbridled emotion! They’d want to touch him, talk to him, he’d be overwhelmed. Horrified, Asher stared at Holze and Holze stared back, his hands spread in helpless disbelief.
“Do something,” he hissed. “Start up another prayer or a hymn, quick! We can’t let him—”
But it was too late. Gar had reached the bottom of the marble steps. Was stepping into the crowd. The Doranen before him fell back, pushing against the people behind them. A hesitant middle-aged Doranen man in blue brocade spoke to him. There were flower petals caught in his unbound yellow hair. Gar replied, then nodded and rested a hand on his shoulder. The man stared at Gar, speechless, then burst into sobs. Gar embraced him. Held him close for a heartbeat, then let go.
The simple gesture broke the stunned silence and the crowd’s uncertain stillness. Suddenly Gar was surrounded by eager, reaching hands, Doranen and Olken both, seeking to touch their miracle king. To comfort and be comforted in this time of pain and loss and new beginnings. His aura glowing like a candle, Gar moved through the press of bodies in the square, embracing and being embraced, and his people made way for his progress. Welcomed him into their arms and their hearts and laid the ghosts of his family to rest.
Asher watched in silence for a time, then turned again to Holze. “Well. Seems he knows what he’s doin’ after all.”
There were tears on Holze’s seamed cheeks. “He is indeed his father’s son,” he whispered, hungry eyes following Gar’s slow progress through the square. “For the first time since I saw that terrible gap in the Eyrie’s fence, I am not afraid.”
Asher bit bis hp. “Don’t s’pose you know where Lord Jarralt is, do you? Thought he’d be here for this.”
“I have known Conroyd Jarralt all his life, Asher,” Holze said softly. “He is many things, not all of them comfortable, but a heretic and a traitor he is not. Conroyd loves this kingdom. He would never do anything to harm it. If you believe nothing else, believe that.”
There was no point arguing. Asher nodded. “Aye, sir.”
“I’ll return to Barl’s Chapel now, and pray for their late Majesties and Her Highness. If His Majesty should need me for any reason, send a runner.”
“Aye, sir,” said Asher again, and stood aside to let Holze pass. Before following him back into the hall, he cast a last look over the crowd and his king. Likely Gar would be out there for hours yet, the way every last Olken and Doranen was trying to lay a hand on him. Which meant it looked like another late night for one Meister Asher, formerly of Restharven.
Hooray.
A cleared throat behind him distracted his frowning attention. He turned.
“Is the staff dismissed then, Asher?” asked Lady Marnagh. “May I send them home?”
She’d never deferred to him like that before, not in all the time he’d known her. Yet he wasn’t the one who’d changed. Was this what he could expect from everybody now? Some of Gar’s kingly luster rubbed off on him? He nodded.
“Might as well, m’lady. Ain’t no work to be done, and they’ll be wanting their families, most like.”
“What about you?”
He shrugged. “Reckon I’ll be stayin’ on for a bit, till that crowd out there’s seen its fill and gone home. Might be something the king wants doing.”
“Yes, of course.” She hesitated, and fresh tears brimmed in her eyes. “Will you tell His High—His Majesty how sorry I am? How sorry we all are.”
“Aye.”
She brushed her fingertips across his sleeve. “Thank you. Good evening to you, Asher.”
“And you, Lady Marnagh.” . He watched as she gathered her staff together and herded them towards the rear doors. Outside, voices in the crowd swelled and crested like the restless, roaring ocean. Abruptly reminded, suddenly homesick, he turned on his heel and followed the tail end of Marnagh’s staff out of the Hall.
CHAPTER SEVEN
In the Hall stables where Cygnet had been left to browse on hay, Asher found Ballodair dozing in the box beside Cygnet, and a single stablehand polishing brass.
“You can go, Vohnie,” he said. “Since there ain’t no other horses to mind. I’ll wait here till His Majesty returns and see the horses come to no harm.”
Shy Vonnie nodded his thanks, lit the stable-yard lanterns against the creeping dusk and scarpered. Asher found an empty water bucket, upturned it and sat with his back braced against the wall between the two occupied stables. Passingly curious, Cygnet whuffled in his hair. Asher patted his nose. With no apples forthcoming the horse lost interest and withdrew to doze in the deep straw. Asher stretched out his legs, folded his hands in his lap and followed suit.
He woke some time later when somebody kicked him in the ankle. “Ow!” he said, and opened his eyes. It was dark and he was cold. “Where’s Gar?”
“He’s still out there,” said Dathne. She was buttoned into a black woolen jacket and carried a cloth-covered basket in one gloved hand. “Hungry? I brought dinner.” He creaked to his feet. “What time is it?”
“Nearly half-seven.” She put down the basket and uncovered it. The air filled with the scent of hot cornbread; he sniffed appreciatively, suddenly ravenous.
As Dathne busied herself with the basket’s contents she added, “The square’s still straggled with people. They won’t go home till they’ve touched their new king, and he won’t send them away, even though he must be exhausted by now. People are singing his praises up street and down. If they were afraid before, or uncertain, they aren’t any more.”
He held out his hand and took the napkin-wrapped food she was offering. “How’d you know I was here?”
Her smile was brief and affectionate. “Where else would you be but nearby, waiting for him?”
He shrugged, his mouth too full for speaking. The corn-bread was soaked in butter; he nearly moaned aloud at the taste. She smiled again, enjoying his enjoyment, and took a dainty bite of fried chicken wing. He had melted butter running down his chin and inside his sleeve. He didn’t care. She’d thought of him and brought him dinner.
She said, “Tell me, if you can: how is Master Magician Durm? Really?”
“Not dead,” he replied, reaching for a plump seasoned drumstick. “Were you out in the square then? When Holze announced Gar king and he gave his pretty speech?”
“It was a pretty speech. It made a lot of people cry.”
He sucked butter and chicken fat from his fingers, watching her face. “You?”
“Would you like more?” she asked, and bent to the basket. “There’s plenty.”
He held out his napkin and she filled it again. Bloody woman. If she had cried, she’d never tell him. Did that mean she’d never be his, if she couldn’t even share that much of herself? He thought it might. Despair chilled him. He could feel his dreams and desires for her, for them, fading like mist in the morning. Once, just once, he wished he could know her true heart.
“What?” she said, staring.
He shook his head. “Nowt. This is good,” he answered, and filled his mouth with more hot sweet cornbread before he said something else. Something he could never take back and would go to his long-distant grave regretting.
“Everything’s going to change now,” she said, bending again to fuss with the basket. “Have you thought about that?”
Every bloody moment, waking and sleeping, since the horror of Salbert’s Eyrie. “A bit.”
“He’ll have no time for Olken administrating now. The WeatherWorking will swallow him alive, just like it swallows all of them.” She straightened. “I imagine he’ll ask you to take over for him for good. Olken Administrator Asher. Asher of Dorana, instead of Restharven.”
The words were a harpoon between his ribs. “You sound like bloody Matt,” he said, more roughly than he intended, or wanted. “So I’ll tell you what I told him. Dorana’s my home for now, not forever.”
“Fine. But while it is ‘for now,’ what are you going to do?” she demanded. “If the king asks you to serve him as his Olken Administrator, what will you say?”
He dropped his chewed chicken bone and the butterstained napkin into the basket. “What d’you reckon? I’ll say what I always say when he asks me to do things,” he muttered. “I’ll say yes.”
She reached out and touched his hand. Smiling now, temper forgotten. A shock blazed through him, lightning in a hot sky. “Don’t be so gloomy. There are worse ways to pass the time.”
“No, there ain’t,” he said, fighting the urge to take the fingers that had touched him and hold them captive till the end of time. “ ‘Cause it means I got to work hand in hand with that bloody ole Darran like he and I never wanted to kill each other every day from the first day we met. And since we did—we do—”
She laughed. “Oh dear. Sounds to me like you need an assistant. Somebody to save you from him ... or him from you.”
“Of course I need a bloody assistant!” he said, glowering. Reaching again to the basket he helped himself to more hot cornbread, lukewarm now, and chewed savagely. “I’ve needed one ever since Gar got his magic and I been left to pick up the pieces of everything else.”
“Will I do?”
It took a lot of red-faced coughing and a few well-placed blows on his back to dislodge the cornbread that had gone down the wrong way. Eyes streaming, chest heaving, he stared at her. “You be my—ha! That’s very funny, Dath!”
Her smile was unsettling: cool and contained and faintly challenging. “It’s not a joke.”
He looked more closely and realized, no, it wasn’t. “What about your bookshop?”
She shrugged. “What about it? I can hire someone to sell books for me. I’ve been selling them myself for a long time now, Asher. Perhaps I’d like to do something different.”
He wiped his hands up and down the front of his breeches, heedless of grease stains. If she’d sprouted hooves and a tail he doubted he’d feel more surprised. Dathne as the Assistant Olken Administrator. His Assistant Olken Administrator. It was crazy. She’d want to run back to her books inside of a week. All that pettifogging detail and dealing with the guilds. She’d lose her temper and bite them on the nose at the first sign of contrariness...
“I handle people as much as I handle books, Asher,” she said, reading him. Drat her. “You’re not the only one who has to deal with the guilds, you know. And flibbertigibbet shillyshalliers who couldn’t make up their minds if their lives depended on it Plus I’m an excellent record keeper, and well-known in the City. Not to be immodest, but I’m well liked too. I could be very useful to you, in all sorts of ways.”
She meant it. She really was offering herself as bis assistant. “It ain’t great pay,” he warned her. “It’s long hours and lots of argy-bargy and aggravation and no matter how hard you try you almost never please everybody. And nobody thinks you got a life of your own, they think you’re there to listen to all their problems any hour of the night or day and then fix ‘em with a snap of your fingers. And when you can’t, or won’t, they p
out and whinge and threaten to lay a complaint.”
She grinned. “Don’t you think I know all that? After a year of listening to you moaning into your ale down at the Goose, Asher, don’t you think I know exactly what this job entails?”
“And you still want to do it?” When she nodded, he threw up his hands. “See? You are mad.”
“If you don’t want me, you can say so. But don’t think I’m not serious.”
“What does Matt say?”
“What’s Matt got to do with it?”
He grimaced. “Seems to me you talk to him about practically everything. Seems to me every time I turn around there’s you and him nose to ear in a corner somewhere, whispering. Thought you’d’ve asked his opinion on this afore scarin’ the life out of me with it.”
“This has nothing to do with Matt,” she snapped. “It’s about you and me, and whether or not you want me as your assistant administrator. So. Do you?”
Did he want her? Barl save him, he wanted her so much he sometimes feared his bones would melt. The thought of working with her... of having her with him every day ... hearing her voice, smelling her hair, watching her glide through a room, dividing the air like a beautiful knife. It meant he’d have all the time in the world, then, to learn that secret heart of hers. To coax it out of her close keeping and hold it in his careful hands.
“What?” she said as he cloaked intemperate desire in a fresh fit of coughing. “What’s wrong, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said, and banged his chest. Grinned. Every day... every day... “Indigestion. Must be some-thin’ I ate.”
That made her laugh, and smack the side of his head. “Ungrateful lump! That’s the last time I—” And then she stopped, the smile vanishing. Sober, serious, she dropped to the ground in a deep curtsey. “Your Majesty.”
He spun about. Gar. Looking exhausted and exultant and subtly not himself. “Sir,” he said, and bowed.
