The King's Hand

by Anna Thayer

  Ashway sat in a great chair by the windows, his clothes torn, his face bruised and unshaven, and his long hair lank about his jowls. Ropes lashed him to his place. He watched the courtyard trees as they swayed in the night breeze. At first glance he seemed calm and in his right mind.

  Anderas led Eamon to the window. At their approach Ashway looked up sharply. His eyes and tone were cool.

  “Lord Goodman,” he said.

  “Lord Ashway,” Eamon answered with a bow. He wondered what help Anderas had needed; the Quarter Hand seemed as placid as a sea becalmed.

  He glanced at Anderas. The captain looked both terrified and ashamed.

  “Lord Goodman, I am sorry to waste your –”

  “There has been no waste. All is well, captain,” Eamon replied.

  He looked back to Ashway. The Hand watched him intently.

  “Have you come to kill me?” Ashway said. Fear glimmered in his hollow eyes.

  “Your sight is dimmed, Lord Ashway,” Eamon answered gently. “I have not come to kill you.”

  Ashway shook his head slowly. “No, no; it will not be you to kill me. But you will kill him.”

  For a moment Eamon wondered whether the Hand meant Anderas. Ashway’s eyes took on a faraway look.

  “You will kill him for what has already been done this night. I have seen it.” Ashway looked back at Eamon. His voice changed. “I too am bound,” he said quietly. “I too will die tonight.”

  “Lord Ashway,” Anderas began, stepping to the Hand’s side. “You only hurt yourself to take such notions to heart.”

  Ashway looked at him witheringly. Anderas fell back. Ashway fixed Eamon with a grave face.

  “I tell you, Lord Goodman, that this captain loves you more than he has ever loved me.”

  Anderas stopped in his tracks, alarmed. Ashway laughed.

  “Do you see so little? It is true, just as it is true that he will serve you, Lord Goodman, more heartily than he shall ever love or serve the throned. I have long known it.”

  “You mean the Master, Lord Ashway,” Eamon countered quietly.

  “I mean the throned,” Ashway spat. His eyes passed up to the painting on the wall and a scowl darkened his face. When he next spoke, Ashway’s voice was caustic. “I mean Edelred. Thus he named himself, and thus I call him.”

  Eamon froze. What could he say?

  Ashway’s eyes were fixed on the painting, his bruised and bloodied face coloured with distant remembrance. “He thinks himself safe. But it is not only the Star of Brenuin that he should fear.”

  “The Serpent,” Eamon corrected.

  Ashway fixed him with a blistering gaze. “You cannot feign before me, Eamon Goodman,” he sneered. “You know his name better than I.” He turned his gaze to the window once more. Suddenly, Eamon saw a tear moving down his mottled cheek.

  “Anderas?” Ashway whispered faintly. Suddenly he cried: “Anderas!”

  The captain was already at the Hand’s side. “I am here, my lord.”

  Ashway searched the space before him. “I can no longer see, Anderas,” he breathed. Tears marked his pale face and his eyes took on a faraway look. “I saw the star shining in the streets. And now I see nothing else.”

  There was a long silence. Anderas trembled. Eamon felt gagging hesitation. What should they do?

  “All that I have done…” Ashway half-spoke, half-sang. He laughed sadly. “All that I have done will come upon me.”

  “No, lord –” Anderas began.

  With a wordless screech, Ashway rounded on the captain.

  “What do you know of it?” he howled. Anderas leapt back before his overwhelming rage. “Were you there when Edelred drove his sword through the heart of Ede? Were you there to see the Serpent’s house scattered in ruins? Were you there when Edelred took the throne? Were you there to see the founding of this city, and the dressing of the throne in blood?”

  “No.” Eamon spoke quietly. “He was not – but you were.”

  Ashway fell silent and stared at him. Eamon felt the chill move through him.

  “Yes,” Ashway said at last. “Yes. I was there.” He fell heavily back, and turned his unseeing gaze to the moonlit garden. “I was there.”

  There was a long silence.

  Courage, Eamon.

  Filled suddenly with deep conviction, Eamon stepped before the Hand.

  “You have seen how this will end,” Eamon told him. “What would you choose?”

  “The throne is built on my blood also,” Ashway answered. His words were bitter, regretful. “I have nothing left – no sight, no choice.”

  Agony wracked Ashway’s face. Eamon saw, and knew what stirred it.

  “It is the voice of Edelred who counsels you thus,” he said.

  “My choices have brought me here,” Ashway answered fiercely. He looked up with proud eyes and smiled. “I rue none of them! I will die as I have lived. Save your words; they will avail you nothing. You will not live to see what was shown to me. You will perish, impaled and writhing, before your enemy. You will drown, gagging, in your own blood. But you will suffer much before that day. You will suffer this very night! Ah, how you will suffer. And you will crumble before the throne that you malign!” Ashway’s voice grew strange and strong, his eyes wild in the moonlight as he laughed. “Benighted and forlorn you shall be, Eben’s son!”

  Eamon fixed him with a stony glare. “Hence, voice of Edelred!”

  Ashway gave a horrendous cry and tried to grip his head with his hands. As he thrashed, Eamon laid his hand on his shoulder.

  “Tureon.”

  Ashway froze. Hooded eyes searched Eamon’s face, and then grew round with tears. “What?” he breathed.

  “That is your name.” Eamon did not know how he knew it. He knelt down by the Hand, grasping his hands in his own. “Peace, Tureon.”

  Ashway watched him for a long time, face torn by long remembrance.

  “I may not turn, Eamon,” he whispered at last, gesturing ironically to the cords on his arms. “I am bound, just as you are.”

  He wept freely. Eamon pressed his hands.

  “I will not be bound,” he said, “and you need not be.”

  Ashway did not answer him.

  Eamon did not know how long he knelt there, holding Ashway’s hands. Suddenly the Lord of the East Quarter looked up sharply.

  “Lord Goodman, you must go.”

  Eamon frowned. “I will not –”

  “Fool and simpleton!” Ashway snarled. “He is coming – can you not feel it?” The Hand trembled wildly. “He comes to take my life for what I have done – and he does not know the half of that. He will take the lives of any he finds here.” He fixed Eamon in a fierce gaze. “I will say nothing to him of you, but only if you go.”

  Eamon stared.

  “Go now, or lose all that you seek!” Ashway yelled. The Hand’s eyes filled with tears – yet they were clear.

  Eamon rose and turned to Anderas.

  “Come with me, captain.”

  Anderas shivered, as though disturbed from some terrible dream.

  “Lord Goodman –”

  “We will go.” Eamon looked once more at Ashway. The Hand met his gaze.

  Without another word, Eamon drew Anderas from the room.

  They staggered out of the Handquarters into the night air. Anderas still shook when they stopped in the Ashen.

  “Lord Goodman…”

  “Are you afraid, Anderas?”

  “After the things that I have seen and heard, these days and this last night…? I am afraid of many things, Lord Goodman – of war and death and famine, of this city falling in ruin to the Serpent, and of the Serpent himself. I am afraid for this quarter,” he added quietly, “entrusted to a captain when a Hand should hold it. I am afraid for the men under me and for the Hand over me. He is a seer, and he…” He looked at Eamon in terror. “What he has howled fills me with fear. And yet all of this is but nothing compared to how much I fear you.”

  Eamo
n gaped. Anderas tried to steady his uncertain breathing.

  “Anderas, do not be afraid – least of all of me.” Eamon laid a light hand on Anderas’s shoulder. “Go and rest, captain. The quarter will have need of you in the morning. I will come and find you when my duties permit me to do so, and we will speak of all of this.”

  “Yes, Lord Goodman,” Anderas answered, and bowed low. “Thank you.”

  Eamon watched the captain return to the East Quarter College. Anderas supported himself a moment on the threshold and then went inside.

  Drawing a deep breath, Eamon walked back to the Four Quarters.

  He desperately needed rest.

  The streets were quiet and the music from distant alley inns was faint. Ashway’s words burned in his mind. As he considered them he felt himself turn cold.

  How could Ashway have been there at the battle where Ede had fallen? And when the voice of Edelred had spoken, what exactly had the seer seen? Was he truly to die – in his own blood?

  I spoke it, Eben’s son! the voice proclaimed, with such force that Eamon staggered. You shall see how truly I did so!

  Eamon turned from the voice, shivered it away. He pressed his hands into his eyes, drew deep breath. He would not choose to believe it. He would choose the King’s way. He was the First Knight.

  Have courage, Eamon. The other, quieter, voice stirred in his mind. He wondered at it. Courage.

  He looked up. Something came down the Coll towards him. At first he could not make out what it was, but it became clearer as torchlight pooled upon it. He stopped.

  It was a low, open-topped, horse-drawn wagon whose driver, a militiaman, yawned as he urged his beast on. Eamon realized what grisly load the wagon bore through the streets in the dead of night: bodies, for the pyre.

  The wagon reached the Four Quarters and the driver turned his vehicle towards the North Gate. Eamon stepped back to let him pass, shadows shifting over man and beast. As the driver spoke quietly to his horse, the voice drew Eamon’s attention. He looked up to measure the man, and doing so, saw the wagon’s burden clearly.

  Suddenly his eyes were caught, his breath stolen. He rushed forward and, as he saw, his heart was torn in two.

  “Stop!” His cry throbbed in the empty street. “Stop!”

  The driver halted and turned to stare at him, his lips parted to the platitudes of lordship to which a Hand was entitled. Eamon did not care. He saw nothing – nothing except that one face, lying among a dozen others.

  “Stop!” he cried, as though he could somehow undo what had been done. He could not.

  The driver stared at him, his mouth voicing words. Eamon did not hear them.

  With shaking hands Eamon tore down the back latch of the wagon. But the face before him did not change – it was still that face, a face he had long loved.

  It was unreal. It could not be true…

  He reached, touched the pale forehead, traced bloodied hollows where bright eyes had once lived and laughed, reached for hands that had once clasped his own in friendship. They were hewn at the wrist.

  Eamon’s chest heaved with grief as his shaking fingers confirmed what his eyes saw so unwillingly. It would never, could never, be un-seen. He opened his lips to cry out – but no cry came, and no tears could unbind his eyes.

  It was Mathaiah.

  He reeled. His breath came in ragged gasps through the constricted, contorted passageways of his breast. That this could be done… that this could be done to any man, had been done to many a man before, was known to him. But that this could be done to him…

  Again and again he looked – the eyeless hollows violated his sight. Robbed of their light, they mocked him. Grief lay thick in his stomach.

  The voice of Edelred crawled amidst his thoughts.

  Look, it told him.

  Eamon looked, and the dull, blackened voids consumed him.

  With a cry he reached out. He could not look, he could not, and with his hands he sought the face and covered the hateful hollows. Suddenly there was blood and gore on his hands and it seemed to slip inside of him and work its grisly way into his very heart. He cried out again and clenched his eyes shut. But the hollows were there and met him in the darkness, and the voice taunted him with the story of their making.

  He retched. He tore his hands away, forced his eyes open. His whole body shook as the maelstrom gripped him.

  “Who did this?” His voice was nearly a scream. The driver shook before him.

  “My lord, I do not –”

  “Who did this?”

  “My lord –”

  His rage crumbled into helpless grief, and, taking Mathaiah’s head between his hands, he laid his quaking face next to his friend’s. The mess of the sockets smeared him.

  The words pronounced by Ashway’s tongue came to him: “You will suffer this very night.”

  He had delayed too long: it was his doing. He could have endured any grief, any treachery, any accusation…

  Any but this.

  “Lord Goodman.”

  He looked up from his place among the corpses.

  Ladomer was there. The Right Hand’s lieutenant watched him.

  Trembling, Eamon choked back the feelings surging in him. He could not weep, he could not cry, he could not howl. He was watched. He said nothing.

  “Come down, Lord Goodman.” Ladomer’s voice was cold.

  It was also a warning. Ladomer’s harsh, unyielding stare drove into him. He knew that the Right Hand also watched him through those eyes. Ladomer was right: for his own sake, he had to come down. He knew it as surely as he knew that his place was there, cradling the broken corpse.

  What a man you are, Eben’s son! The voice wove deftly among his tormented thoughts. Twice you would betray and abandon your wretched ward – once to the Pit, again to the pyre.

  The jaws of the trap that held him were strong. He could not stay and yet… how could he go?

  Where is your brazen courage, Eben’s son? the voice sneered.

  A shudder ran through Eamon with the intensity of a blow. As the voice mocked him, it snatched from him even the smallest victory he had ever won against it.

  How little it takes to subdue you! But then, son of Eben, there never was much of you to subdue.

  The voice deadened his thought and senses. It had to be true: he was defeated, had been from the start. What other explanation could there be? He had been a fool to pit himself against the powers that strove in him. Mathaiah had paid for it – for his folly. Surely there was nothing left except surrender to the voice of the throned?

  But the idea of surrendering stoked some last reserve of courage in his heart. Had he not faced this voice before? Had it not been cast down in Hughan’s name? Was the voice not, by nature, that of a liar? Hughan had said as much, and, as Eamon grappled for his sense, the King’s words came clearly into his mind:

  “It is your heart that the throned will strike, because it is there that he must conquer you…”

  The voice might have held sway over him once, and he did not doubt that it would try to sway him again, but its power lay in his own choice. Choosing to heed it now would be the true betrayal of his friend and obeisance of his courage. Eamon realized that, until he yielded, he was neither a traitor nor defeated.

  He looked back at the face between his hands. Fresh doubt assailed him. He could choose to renounce the voice and its insidious counsel, but could he truly choose to leave his friend? His throat was taut with grief and he stared at the hollows, their darkness reaching for him.

  How could he go?

  You would not be leaving him, Eamon.

  The words washed over his heart. This voice called him by his name – his true name – and he trusted it. It called him on to courage. You would not be leaving him; he is not there. Even unto his last hour, he loved you. He loves you still.

  The whispered comfort faded. Strange quiet stilled his heavy heart.

  Yes, he would go down; it was right and necessary for him to do s
o. But he would not do so for Ladomer or for Edelred.

  Slowly, Eamon bowed and kissed Mathaiah’s forehead. It was cold and bloodied, and though that grieved him still it held less fear for him than when first he had seen it. It was not the farewell he would have chosen, was scarcely a farewell at all – but he chose it.

  Silently, he stepped down and met Ladomer’s hard gaze. The Right Hand’s lieutenant crisply closed the back of the wagon before stepping back and gesturing for the alarmed driver to move on.

  The driver did not need to be asked twice. Eamon watched as Mathaiah’s broken, eyeless body was taken away to feed a pyre where it would be reduced to nothing.

  “Lord Goodman, he was a traitor.” Ladomer had followed his gaze. His voice was deathly quiet. Eamon did not flinch from it.

  “He was my ward, Ladomer,” he answered simply, turning to face his friend. Emotion surged from him with power and grief he did not understand. “He was my ward, and I loved him.”

  Ladomer stepped towards him with an ireful look. “You tread dangerous ground, Eamon,” he said, pressing something into Eamon’s fingers. It was cold and sharp. As it rested in his hand Ladomer watched him, daring him to move. He stood still. “You are summoned to see the Master in the morning.”

  “Yes.”

  At last the wagon was gone. Ladomer nodded once to him. “Good night, Lord Goodman.”

  Eamon watched him, a shadow that melted into the streets. Then he looked down.

  A signet ring was in his palm. The seal that it bore was an owl.

  He wept.

  CHAPTER XI

  The Coll seemed unreal beneath Eamon’s feet, the whole road both familiar and alien to him. The doorways that lined the road, each darkened by the tenebrous night, were beyond his wit and sight, as was any man whom he passed.

  Ashway and Mathaiah were dead.

  His exhausted limbs grew desperate and heavy. His hands shook and he was unable to muster strength enough to raise his head to face the gates. Mathaiah was dead. As Eamon walked, sorrow and grief fell into step with him, threatening to trip him or crush him with the weight of their burdens.

  He passed the Hands’ Gate, the long colonnade, the posts of the Hands’ Hall, and at last climbed the stairway to his own room. None stirred in the hall – no man met him and none heard him pass. His hands shook as he tried to open his door, the handle slipping between his bloody fingers. He gagged and tore at the handle.