The King's Hand

by Anna Thayer

  “Have a very pleasant evening, Lord Goodman,” Anderas told him.

  “Thank you, captain. You know where to find me if you need me.”

  It was dark when he left the Handquarters, slipping quietly out through one of the side gates, mostly unnoticed and certainly unrecognized. He wove his way through the streets until he came again to Stone Way and to the small house by the tree. The front door was open and lights twinkled in the windows, masked by thin curtains.

  Cats prowled on the steps, and as he approached the gate, a small figure leapt up from the doorstep and ran excitedly inside. A voice called:

  “Ma, Ma! He’s here!”

  Eamon smiled as Mrs Grennil advised her son to go and meet their guest rather than run about like a headless chicken. The small boy tumbled out of the door again. Damien ran happily down the steps to where Eamon stood and took him by the hand.

  “Come inside – we’ve been waiting for you! It’s nearly ready!”

  “Thank you,” Eamon replied, allowing the small boy to tug him into the house.

  The front room had been set with a large table, or rather three much smaller tables of slightly mismatched height set closely together, with a broad cloth over them. A group of chairs had been set to it – some of whole wood, some more like stools than chairs, some with straw seats woven into their wooden frames. About ten places had been set at the table, and Eamon wondered who else would be joining them. He soon learned, for as he cleared the doorway he saw a collection of people in the room speaking together. They rose to their feet as they saw him.

  “Mr Tiller?” asked one, a tall man who seemed at least a decade his senior. Eamon nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Mr Grennil. My wife told me about what happened with Damien the other day. Please, let me offer my own thanks once again –”

  “It really was no trouble.”

  “Thank you nonetheless. And welcome!” Mr Grennil took his hand and clasped it warmly.

  One by one, he introduced Eamon to the others. Present were the man’s elder son, whom Eamon had met in the kitchen, and Mr Grennil’s sister, who had come with her own husband and three children, two young girls and a boy of similar age to the Grennils’ eldest. The smaller children greeted him politely and returned to their play, involving some small wooden toys in a corner of the room, while the men and older boys invited Eamon to sit with them. The two young cousins watched him with interest, and the sound of the two women working filtered in from the kitchen.

  Mr Grennil rose and brought across a small tray of grey mugs filled with ale, and offered the first to Eamon.

  “Mr Tiller?”

  “Thank you,” Eamon replied, and took the heavy mug. It rested comfortably in his hand and he smiled as memories of the inn at Edesfield filled him. It felt closer than it had for a long time. He listened as Mr Grennil and his brother-in-law, Jehim, spoke a little of their trades. Jehim was a carpenter and one of the many men who worked for Lorentide.

  Food was swiftly brought to the table, and Eamon was invited to sit at its head. He greeted the two wives kindly and watched in admiration as they set down a bowl of thick soup, along with large slices of bread. As they took their places, and the children were encouraged to sit still, Mrs Grennil turned to him.

  “Would you like to say the majesty?” she asked quietly. He felt the eyes of the whole family turn to him.

  “Yes,” Eamon answered, and as he drew breath to speak they bowed their heads. “To the Master of the River and defender of the city; to his glory.”

  “To his glory,” came the hearty reply. Eamon couldn’t help but glance at Damien’s parents as they replied. He wondered if they too were wayfarers, as their son was. If so, did they direct the words meant for the throned’s glory towards the King as he did?

  “Thank you, Mr Tiller,” Mrs Grennil said, smiling. She gestured to the soup. “Please, do help yourself.”

  “You shan’t have to ask me twice, Mrs Grennil,” Eamon replied.

  “So, your name’s Tiller?” It was one of the older boys, Damien’s cousin, who spoke. He gazed at Eamon with deep curiosity. He was older than Neithan, perhaps sixteen.

  “Joel,” said his mother quietly, as though warding him from rudeness.

  “Yes, my name is Tiller,” Eamon answered, giving the woman an encouraging smile. An odd silence touched the table. Eamon glanced surreptitiously to check that he was not wearing his cloak. He was not – just his standard, Gauntlet-issue, white shirt.

  “It’s just that there haven’t been any Tillers in the city for years – they left long ago. Chased out. Where did you say you were from?”

  “Neithan! Mr Tiller, please allow me to apologize for my son,” said the boy’s mother, leaning forward. “He asks too many questions.”

  “I never asked enough when I was his age,” Eamon replied with a laugh. “I came from Edesfield, originally. I’ve been in Dunthruik almost a year.”

  “Edesfield? Did that just fall to the Serpent?” said Joel.

  Mrs Grennil gave him a withering stare. “That is a conversation better left for when we are not entertaining company.”

  “Do you know who else is from Edesfield?” interjected Neithan. “They say that Lord Goodman is from there.”

  “And we don’t discuss the Lord of the East Quarter either!” Mrs Grennil warned.

  “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with talking about Lord Goodman,” Mr Grennil added, and his son smiled at him thankfully, for the words saved him from his mother’s wrath.

  “It’s difficult not to,” Jehim added grimly, pausing to help himself to some bread.

  “He’s done some real good in this quarter,” Mr Grennil continued, with a strange look at his brother-in-law. “I was talking to some of the folk who saw him down at Tailor’s Turn a month back, when the building caved in. Said they’d never seen anything like it. I mean, how many Hands – and Quarter Hands at that – go crawling through wreckage to pull the likes of us from danger?”

  “And he brought back the Easter lord’s head,” said Joel enthusiastically. His eyes were wide – Eamon wondered if the young man had been down to the Blind Gate to see it. “They say that he struck it clean off himself!”

  “And that he saved the men who served under him at Pinewood doing it,” Jehim’s wife added.

  “Did you hear what he did the other day by the Good Man?” Neithan asked.

  Feeling more than a little awkward, Eamon dipped his spoon into his soup and blew over it.

  “Mrs Grennil, please allow me to compliment you on what is a very fine soup indeed,” he said. Mrs Grennil smiled at him across the table.

  “I’m glad you like it, Mr Tiller.”

  “Hush, Ma! Nei was going to tell me the story!” Damien hissed, tapping his mother’s wrist gently. The small boy looked pleadingly across at his brother. “Tell me the story!” he cried. “I want to hear it!”

  Neithan grinned at him and began to tell the tale. As he did so he affected voices and manners to go with it such that the whole table was caught up in the words he wove together.

  “They say that there was nobody else there in the street that day, except this great big mountain of a Gauntlet officer. Now, the officer wanted fruit without paying for it, and the seller refused him. ‘Well, nobody refuses a Gauntlet officer’, cried the man, and he threatened the seller, but still the seller refused. So the officer began taking the fruit anyway. When the man protested, he knocked him down hard to the ground. The cadets with him crushed the seller’s fruit into the mud, and the officer demanded that the seller lick it all up. The seller didn’t do it.”

  “Oh no!” Damien breathed, his tiny hands clutching at his spoon. “What happened?”

  Smiling, Neithan took an enormous piece of bread and put it into his mouth. He chewed it slowly. Damien gaped at his brother.

  “That’s not fair!” he cried. “Ma, ma! He’s doing it on purpose!”

  “You’ll have to be patient and wa
it for him to finish,” Joel answered. Damien huffed and folded his arms. He drummed his fingers impatiently – and loudly – on the table.

  His brother made a show of swallowing his bread, took up his mug, drained it, refilled it from the jug on the table, sat back for a moment as though trying to remember what he had been doing, then reached for more bread. Damien pointed at him.

  “You promised to tell me the story!” he cried.

  “So I did,” Neithan answered, grinning.

  “Well?”

  “I may just not finish…”

  Damien gasped and looked around for support. “Somebody tell him –”

  “Neithan, stop torturing your brother,” Mr Grennil said.

  Neithan turned back to the little boy. “Where was I?”

  “The fruit seller was on the ground,” Damien answered, leaning forward with deep, barely restrained excitement. He began bouncing up and down in his seat. “Come on!” he cried.

  “Ah yes! So the fruit seller was on the ground, and the officer was going to beat him and humiliate him. But what the officer didn’t know was that Lord Goodman was there, and Lord Goodman had seen it all. He wasn’t wearing his cloak or jacket, and as he strode across the silent street to meet the officer, nobody recognized him.”

  Eamon shuffled in his chair.

  “Lord Goodman brought the seller up from the ground and demanded that the officer pay for what he had done. ‘Why should I?’ the officer asked him. ‘You’re nobody important. If it matters that much to you, you can take his place and lick the fruit off the ground yourself.’”

  Damien gasped. “What did he do?”

  “Lord Goodman looked the officer straight in the eye and said: ‘You add crimes to your crime, lieutenant!’” The young man imitated the voice of the infamous Lord of the East Quarter – not a bad approximation, if a little theatrical. Eamon smiled. “‘How dare you torment the people of this quarter, and ridicule the lord of it, to his very face? Now you will pay for everything that this good man has lost, and you shall be arrested, and right now I take away your rank, for speaking as you have done dishonours you and dishonours the Master.’ And Lord Goodman made him pay back to the fruit seller the worth of everything that had been lost, and demoted him on the spot.”

  Damien laughed in delight and clapped his hands. “It’s just like in that story you told me last night –”

  “Lord Goodman has certainly done a lot of good,” Mr Grennil interrupted, and Damien fell quiet, deflated. “A great deal of good. Particularly to the Renovation and Repair lists.”

  “They’re certainly keeping Jehim busy at the Crown Office just now,” the carpenter’s wife said with a smile.

  “The problem is that his capabilities are not solely good,” Jehim replied harshly. Eamon, and the whole table, looked across at him. The man was older than his brother-in-law, and his voice grew harsher as he spoke. “The Lord of the East is not a man with a stable head.”

  “Jehim –” Mr Grennil interjected.

  “That’s what happens when your head is fixed to a pike, Pa,” Joel told his father, grinning. “Tends to wobble a little bit.” He wobbled his own back and forth wildly. Damien and the two little girls burst into furious laughter.

  “Do it again!” one of them cried, and Joel obliged.

  “You’ll be sick,” his mother warned, as her son stilled his gyrating head.

  “I might just,” he answered, and reached across for one of his sisters’ plates as though to do just that. When she squealed, he grinned and handed it back to her.

  “You can say what you like about the good he’s done, but it won’t last,” Jehim continued, and the mood at the table grew uncomfortable. “Have you all forgotten that he served two crowns, and for weeks his captain did all his work while he did nothing at all?”

  Eamon swallowed. It had not been weeks. He supposed that, just as stories of what good he had done were exaggerated, so were those of his mistakes.

  “Jehim, this is not a conversation for –”

  “When he brought in more grain and the prices went down, the whole quarter rejoiced,” Jehim continued. “Now what has he done? He’s buying up over half of every load that comes in, and we’re paying for his indulgence. We’re paying it out of our own pockets, and most are so infatuated with him that they won’t say a word.”

  “What’s there to say, Jehim?” his wife asked quietly, as though trying to encourage him to drop the matter, but he laughed bitterly.

  “What’s there to say? He’s a Hand, just like any other – this is proof of it. And he’ll soon be like all the others.”

  Eamon sat back in his chair uncomfortably, hoping that the men might somehow forget that he was there, and hoping that he would have the wisdom not to speak out of turn. After all the good that he had done, did people in the quarter still eye him with suspicion? Had he achieved nothing?

  “You cannot judge that,” Mr Grennil said at last.

  “You cannot be defending –”

  “Jehim,” Mr Grennil said firmly.

  His brother-in-law shrugged his shoulders. “We suffered under Lord Ashway, and we’ll suffer under this one just the same,” he said viciously. “They don’t care at all for the likes of us.”

  “What do you think, Mr Tiller?” It was Neithan who asked it, and as he did, all eyes turned to Eamon. He set aside his bowl of soup, and looked carefully at those who watched him.

  “Of the Lord of the East Quarter?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Neithan nodded.

  There was no way of avoiding the subject. Eamon paused for a moment, measuring his words carefully. “I think he’s young,” he said.

  A stunned silence fell on the room. Jehim and Mr Grennil stared openly at him.

  “What do you mean?” Neithan asked.

  “Just what I say,” Eamon replied.

  “H-h-how old is he?” Neithan stammered.

  “About my age,” Eamon answered him, “and so about ten years older than you. Not only is he young, but he has been promoted very swiftly indeed. That’s to his credit, I’m sure,” he added, “just as I am sure that he would not have gone so far so fast if he were not skilled. But with that promotion goes responsibility that his shoulders are perhaps too young to fully bear.”

  Neithan frowned and leaned forward as Eamon spoke.

  “Your father, Neithan, is responsible for the safety of this family, for its care and well-being, for getting food to your table every night.” He paused and his voice grew passionate as he went on. “Lord Goodman is responsible for the entire East Quarter and a college full of cadets about your cousin’s age. He is also responsible for many other ensigns, lieutenants, militia, and the Hands of the Quarter.

  “Suppose for a moment that this city is attacked by the Serpent. What will happen then? The people of the East Quarter will go to Lord Goodman for leadership and support. But what if he has not made adequate preparations for the safety of this quarter?”

  “People will die.”

  “Yes,” Eamon answered. “People will die, and if he has not carried out his responsibilities as he must, Lord Goodman will bear their innocent blood on his hands.”

  “Innocent blood never seemed to bother Lord Ashway,” Jehim sniffed. Eamon looked firmly at him.

  “Lord Goodman is not like Lord Ashway.”

  There was an odd, shocked silence.

  Jehim looked at him strangely. His son leaned across the table.

  “Do you know Lord Goodman?” Joel asked.

  “I do,” Eamon replied.

  “You are very bold, Mr Tiller,” Mrs Grennil said at last.

  “You’re not the first to tell me so,” Eamon answered. Seeing their shocked faces, he laughed and tried to relax a little. “I am sorry – I have worried you by speaking frankly,” he said. “I have said nothing to you that I have not said to Lord Goodman himself. He knows what I think of him, and he is content.”

  “Well, all things considered,” Jehim said at last, �
��things are better under Lord Goodman than they were under Lord Ashway.” Eamon wondered if the man didn’t look at him oddly as he spoke.

  “So, he’s a good man!” Neithan grinned at his joke, but Joel rolled his eyes.

  “Well then, tell us a little about yourself, Mr Tiller,” Mrs Grennil added with a smile.

  Eamon paused. “I am afraid there is little to tell, Mrs Grennil, but that I serve in this city and in this quarter. I count myself very fortunate in that.”

  “Were you at Tailor’s Turn when it collapsed?” Mr Grennil added.

  “Yes, I was.”

  “The Gauntlet did a fine job in rescuing the survivors.”

  “My friend Ellen was there,” Damien said, “and she says that Lord Goodman was there, and she said that he rescued her!”

  Mrs Grennil offered Eamon an apologetic smile. “Ellen is a very sweet girl,” she said. “She has a bit of an imagination.”

  “We play together,” Damien added, “when Neithan doesn’t get in the way.”

  “I make them study,” Neithan interrupted, eager to rescue his sullied reputation. “They’d never do it otherwise.”

  “They spend a lot of time building small shelters for the cats that live round here,” Joel added.

  “Yesterday Joel helped us build a new one!” Damien enthused, his little eyes shining brightly. “He found some old wood and we fixed it all together and the cat even went in!”

  “An aspiring carpenter, perhaps?” Eamon said with a smile.

  “Like his father,” said Jehim’s wife.

  “Don’t know if I want to be a carpenter,” Joel added. “Uncle has a better job, I think.”

  “I work at the port,” Mr Grennil explained. “A big merchant ship came in two days ago, carrying a lot of grain, and wood too. Both bought up pretty quick. Loaded the same ship full of wines from the Raven estate. The captain was a strange man!” he laughed. “All dressed in these ridiculous purple breeches and in a shirt that was so thick you might think he’d come to port in December. Had a very self-important air – was from Calatia,” he added, as though that explained everything. “All a bit theatrical.”