Summer King, Winter Fool

by Lisa Goldstein

He had never encountered one of the gods, though he knew people who claimed they had. He glanced down at the man’s right foot to see if he had lost his big toe, but the other man wore old leather boots that came to his calves.

  Val shook his head. This man could not be Callabrion; Callabrion had ascended. “I’m sorry—I’m afraid I don’t know your name,” he said.

  A noise came from the corridor outside. Duchess Sbarra motioned to her poet, who stood and went to the door. “It’s a woman,” the poet said when he came back. He cast a knowing smile over the gathering. “She says she’s looking for Valemar.”

  Val stood, puzzled, and went to the door. “He’ll ascend to heaven tonight,” someone in the room said, and the others laughed. He closed the door behind him.

  Taja waited for him in the corridor.

  “Taja,” Val said, bowing slightly. “Good fortune.” He understood the poet’s amusement now; the man had no doubt seen immediately that Taja was from the lower rungs.

  “We can’t talk in the hallway,” Taja said. “Is there somewhere we can go?”

  “Of course,” Val said. Almost all the rooms in the palace would be empty; everyone had gone to the gathering in Duchess Sbarra’s apartments. He led her down the corridor. A cold draft blew through the stone and marble halls, and he shivered.

  They came to Duke Arion’s rooms. Val glanced inside and then motioned her to follow him. She looked around as they entered, but if she was impressed by the opulence, the tapestries and carved beams and huge hearth, she didn’t show it. Candles burned in front of displays of gold plate, casting a warm glow over the room.

  “What brings you to Etrara?” Val asked.

  “Queen Callia sent her men to Tobol An,” Taja said. “She wanted to consult some records in the library. Records of the royal family.”

  Val nodded, wondering why she was telling him this. Certainly Callia had the right to use the library.

  “I found the records after they had gone,” Taja said. “They … Here. You’d better read it yourself.”

  She took three folded pages from her purse and gave them to him. The first recorded a marriage between King Tariel III and a woman named Marea. The second showed that a child had been born to them in the seventh year of Tariel’s reign. The child had been named Valemar.

  He held the records loosely, uncertain what she wanted of him. Surely she didn’t think—

  “You’re the lawful king,” she said, whispering. “See, here—it says they had to keep the marriage secret because the king had so many illegitimate children. The mothers of these children were ambitious, and would have had Marea or the child killed. Would have had you killed. Etrara was at war with Shai then, and at least one of the mothers sided with Shai against Tariel. And look here—” She pointed to the third page. “Marea eventually died. Of unknown causes, it says. Usually whenever that appears in the records it means poison.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Here. Look here. There’s a description of the charm King Tariel gave his son—a heron, it says. You’re wearing it now. You’ve worn it every day since I’ve known you.”

  Without thinking, Val put his hand to the charm at his throat. “My mother gave me this,” he said. “My parents—are you saying the king gave me to them to raise?”

  “I don’t know. Your parents might not have known who you are. They could have been childless, and one of the king’s men could have given you to them. It’s happened before—an unmarried woman of the court has a child, and someone finds a place for it. Maybe that’s what your parents thought.”

  Val shook his head slowly. He remembered his parents’ discretion, their unwillingness to push themselves forward, and he thought that they might have been trying to hide him, to keep him and themselves from coming to the attention of the royal family. It would be dangerous to claim the throne, whoever ruled.

  His heart beat loudly against his chest. The throne, he thought. King of Etrara. Son of Tariel. Son of Sbona.

  “Callia tried to have you killed that night, at the Feast of the Ascending God,” Taja said. “She knew that the royal birth records are kept separate from the rest, and she guessed who you must be. When she became queen she tried to make certain. But she still doesn’t know.”

  Val said nothing. Only an hour ago Narrion had offered him Tobol An. Taja’s news seemed fantastic, a dream that would fade on waking. But at the same time it felt more real than anything that had gone before, the truth beneath the glittering deceptions of the court. King of Etrara. The rightful king.

  What should he do? His parents had been right; it would be dangerous to act. But if Callia knew his secret it would be dangerous not to.

  “What will you do?” Taja asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Was that the truth? He thought that it was. He could hide his knowledge from Callia, remain a minor nobleman at court. But he would watch very carefully as the counters of fortune fell. Perhaps he could rise to the highest rung a mortal might attain, just below the gods in heaven.

  “Your life is in danger,” Taja said. “Callia’s tried to have you killed once already.”

  “I’ll be safe. The queen will see that I have no desire to rule. But I thank you for coming all this way on such a cold night.”

  “Well, then—give me the records back.”

  “What will you do with them?”

  “They’ll be safe.”

  He studied the records again before he gave them to her. Three pages, and his life and fortune were changed utterly. Had the Maegrim come for him on that dark night? But then why had they predicted ill fortune? “Do you have a place to stay?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I have a room at an inn. Good fortune, Val.”

  He bowed to her as she left. It was too late to return to Sbarra’s gathering, and he needed time alone to think. He walked down the darkened hill to his house. His parents, his real parents, had been a king and queen; he was king of Etrara.

  Halfway down the hill he understood why King Gobro had sent him to Tobol An. Gobro had wanted him to discover the truth about his birth. The king had known his place on the ladder was uncertain and had wanted to abdicate, but could not risk favoring one brother or sister over another. Perhaps he thought that if Val learned the truth through his own efforts he would return to Etrara with an army. Poor man, poor doomed man. He had not understood Val’s caution; he had guessed wrong in this as in so much else.

  Taja led the horse she had borrowed through the streets of Etrara, looking for the inn she and Val had visited the night of the feast. The streets wound beneath her feet like a skein of yarn, and she wondered how anyone in the city managed to get from one place to another. Tobol An was an honest place compared to the cunning of Etrara; everything there was open, in plain sight.

  A group of people came out of the house in front of her, singing and laughing. She cursed and reined in the horse. She felt angry with Val, angry with herself for coming all this long way on a fruitless errand. And it had started to snow again; she shivered in her light homespun clothing.

  He was hiding something from her, she felt certain of it. “I have to admit I’m as frivolous as everyone thinks I am,” he had said once. But she had seen the shadow that came over his face as she talked to him, the watchful, guarded expression in his eyes; he had lost a little of his innocence.

  She cursed again. She had lost her way in Etrara; there could no longer be any doubt of it. Her talent for finding things seemed to have deserted her in this strange place. She had been unable to reach to Val’s heart, to discover what he planned.

  Well, it was her own fault, after all. No one could receive such astonishing news and remain unchanged; she should have expected that. But already she found she missed the lighthearted courtier who had come singing to Tobol An.

  She would have to rest soon; she was weary from her long journey. Up ahead she saw the signboard of an unfamiliar inn, and she urged the horse forward.

  What these fine men and wome
n did was none of her business, she knew that. But she remembered the frivolous woman she had met at the Feast of the Ascending God, and she could not help but think that Callia’s reign would be disastrous.

  Five

  A FEW DAYS LATER VAL WENT TO A LADDER maker on the Street of Spiders. As he carried his ladder through the streets of Etrara folks smiled to see him, and a few called out “Good fortune!” as though to share in his luck. People in the city bought ladders to commemorate especially fortunate days, birthdays or weddings or festivals. Val had gotten his to thank the god Callabrion for ending his exile.

  He set the ladder against the wall of his house and stepped back to look at it. The first ladder of the new year, the first piece of good fortune to come to the house of the willow tree. Later he would plan how to decorate it. He said a brief prayer to Callabrion and then went off to the Street of Apricots to take care of some errands. The food in his buttery had rotted in his absence, and his clothes were several months out of date.

  Taja had told him that there was no ladder maker in Tobol An, that the villagers made their own ladders. But already the flat, dreary plain of the village was fading from his mind like a dream, replaced by the bustle and color and clamor of his city. Nothing could stop the business of Etrara, he thought as he went, not even the lowering sky and the threat of snow.

  A group of actors dressed in the costumes of The Sorcerer’s Tragedy stood outside the theater, arguing heatedly. A merchant drove his cart toward them without stopping, and they scattered, turning to shout curses at him. Past them a broom seller called out her wares, and beyond her Val saw a solitary student leaning against a statue of Patience, the scholar’s Virtue.

  But all the time Val made his way through the streets of Etrara, he was conscious of the extraordinary news Taja had brought him. King of Etrara. King of the actors, and the broom sellers, and the students. He would have to be careful now, as cunning as Narrion. Did Callia suspect he knew? Did Taja guess his ambitions? It was best for the moment to remain hidden, to remain Val.

  A battalion of soldiers on horseback blocked the road in front of him. “Good fortune!” the passersby called to the soldiers as they passed, and one or two grinned back and made the sign of the Ascending God. They looked shockingly young, almost like children.

  The soldiers continued toward the river and across Darra Bridge. People lined the road now, forced to stop until the procession had passed. A few cheered. “They’re going to fight in the border wars with Shai,” one woman said to another. “We’ll show those king-killers they can’t have our ports,” a man near Val said.

  Val watched the soldiers go. He frowned. He had heard enough court news to know that the war with the Shai had not begun yet. And if the soldiers were on their way to Shai then why were they riding south, toward the Gate of Stones and Thole Forest? Shouldn’t they be headed east?

  The soldiers reached Tobol An late in the afternoon. The ghost-knight sounded his trumpet but the commander had been told what to expect and rode through him with only a barely perceptible shiver of fear. His men followed.

  Taja had returned to Tobol An several hours earlier. She had hidden the records of Val’s birth in the library and then gone home to tell Pebr what had happened in the city. “He said he doesn’t want to be king,” she said.

  “Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Pebr asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s hiding something, I’m certain of that much. He’s become like the courtiers he used to talk about, the ones who say one thing and mean another. I’m afraid for him—he’s never really learned to be deceitful.”

  Pebr shrugged. “It’s none of our business what those grand folks get up to at court.”

  Now, hearing the trumpet of Thole Forest, Taja knew exactly what had happened. The queen’s men had returned for the records. Would they be able to find them where she had hidden them, among tax registries from the reign of King Gobro II? She didn’t think so. She and Pebr hurried out and watched as the soldiers rode toward the cluster of cottages.

  “Citizens of Tobol An,” the commander said to the people who had gathered in the dirt road between the cottages. A thin rain fell. Wind blew across the plain, bending the hardy grasses that grew in the dirt, and Taja shivered. “We are here by the queen’s command to protect you from the Shai. We are here to see that these barbarians do not gain access to the port of Tobol An, or to any of our lands beyond the seas. By the power of the queen I am authorized to garrison my troops in your houses, and to requisition any food that they may need. Are there any questions?”

  “Aye,” someone said, an old woman whose husband had died in the great storm the year before. “We’re not one of the great ports here—no one has ever set off from Tobol An to any of the lands beyond the seas. Why do we need protection?”

  The commander motioned to two of his men, who dismounted and took the old woman by the arms. The men looked very young, almost like boys. “Mother of light!” Pebr said, moving forward. A few of the others came forward with him.

  The expression on the commander’s face stopped them. “It is treason to question the commands of your lawful queen,” the commander said. “I’m going to cage her, as a warning to the rest of you. Do you understand?”

  “No,” an old man said. The commander signaled to his soldiers again, but before they could move the old man said quickly, “What does that mean, to cage someone?”

  “Watch,” the commander said. Taja, who had twice seen the caged criminals in lower Etrara, thought there was a slight smile on the man’s face; he seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Other soldiers went to the provision carts and took out an iron cage, and the old woman’s guards forced her into it. There were none of the cage supports in Tobol An that Taja had seen in the city; the soldiers looked around for a moment before they found a tree whose branches looked high enough and strong enough. One of the soldiers lifted the cage by himself, and he and the others joked about how light the woman must be.

  Another man set up a ladder near the tree. Taja saw with shock that the man carrying the cage paused to say a prayer to the Ascending God before he climbed the ladder, and she wondered how in Callabrion’s name he could possibly consider himself godly. And these people called the Shai barbarians!

  After the soldiers had hooked the cage on a tree branch, the commander addressed the people again. “If you think that this woman’s dreadful crime—and treason is a dreadful crime—merits her punishment, then you will avoid her until she has served her sentence.”

  “How—how long will her sentence be?” someone asked. The woman in the cage had not spoken a word since the soldiers had pinioned her arms, but her face had turned the color of bleached linen.

  “As long as I want it to be,” the commander said.

  “But—” someone else said, and was hushed.

  The commander looked around at the assembled faces. Taja saw that he didn’t understand the villagers of Tobol An, that of course the woman’s friends and kinfolk would feed her while she remained in the cage. Even people who had quarreled with her, who hadn’t spoken to her in months, would band together against the invaders from Etrara. Folks did things differently here.

  She watched stolidly as the commander assigned a soldier to the house she shared with Pebr. Pebr opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed it.

  Taja went with him to their house, intending to see that he kept out of trouble. She knew that the old woman, now swaying above them in her cage as if in judgment of them all, had been right. The soldiers hadn’t come to Tobol An to protect the harbor against the Shai. They had come for the birth records. Callia intended to make certain that her claim to the throne was secure.

  The proclamations appeared in Etrara within the first months of Callia’s reign, large sheets of paper glued to the walls of the city and to houses and merchants’ shops and stalls. It was forbidden to stay out-of-doors past a certain hour, except on feast days. All visitors to the city must register with the w
atch, stating where they came from and how long they intended to stay. Anyone overhearing treason against the queen had to report what they heard to the watch. All the Maegrim must come forward and give their names to the Queen’s Pen.

  This last proclamation caused the most surprise, and some outrage, when the queen’s men posted it on the walls, when those who were literate read it aloud to people from the lower rungs. No one knew for certain who the Maegrim were. Most folks thought them ordinary women—seamstresses and actors, laundresses and noblewomen—who heard the call of the gods and came to dance. There were always six of them; the seventh was summoned during the dance and disappeared when the dance ended.

  Val had heard people guess that they must be unmarried; no one with a husband or children could hide their calling so successfully. But others thought that they might have married especially discreet men, people who could keep the secret entrusted to them.

  Within a few days the astronomer-priests had formed a delegation to protest the decree. The Maegrim were holy women, the priests claimed in their petition, bound to the goddess Sbona herself. Their rituals were older than recorded history. Acting, they said, had developed from these rituals, just as the custom of poets’ feuds had grown out of the wars of the poet-wizards.

  Queen Callia kept the priests waiting in the palace antechamber for three days before finally letting them see an official, who turned out to be the assistant to the undersecretary to the Queen’s Pen. The assistant would not take their petition, explaining that Callia’s decree could not be changed. “We can’t allow magic to flourish unchecked in this city,” he said. “Those who are not directly under the queen’s control might someday turn against her, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not that simple—”

  “Do you remember the king’s banquet last year, when the Maegrim prophesied ill fortune?” the assistant said. A few of the priests made as if to speak, but the official raised his voice and spoke over them. “Yes, we know about that last cast, that it was a summer cast instead of a winter one. You see, that’s my point. Everyone knew, or had heard rumors. People panicked—some even packed up and left the city. With the Maegrim speaking only for the queen this sort of thing won’t happen in banquet halls or public streets anymore. No one need worry about things that don’t concern them.”