Within the Hollow Crown

by Antoniazzi, Daniel

  “Lady Vye,” Calvin said. “We should probably put the army on ready alert, and--”

  Vye looked to Calvin, to see why Calvin had stopped mid-sentence. Calvin was looking at Vye’s chest. Typical, she thought. Looking down her blouse while she was...

  Vye looked down at her chest. Nope. He wasn’t checking her out. Turns out her hand was glowing. It wasn’t lighting up the room, but clearly, under her palm, it looked like there was a blue flame burning.

  Funny, Vye thought, it does feel a bit warm. Not hot, but soothing. She thought, in her rational mind, that she should remove her hand quickly, but the sensation was so relaxing she couldn’t help but keep her hand there.

  And then the glow just subsided and went away.

  “Umm…” Calvin said. Vye looked up to him. “Umm…” he repeated.

  Vye rotated her shoulder. There was no pain. There was mild stiffness, but there was no pain in her ribs.

  “What, exactly, just happened?” Calvin asked.

  “I don’t...” Vye said, “My ribs are better now.”

  “How?”

  Vye paused for a few seconds, thinking this over.

  “Magic?”

  Vye didn’t like that answer. There had to be another explanation.

  “Well, I know it was magic,” Calvin said, “But…how?”

  “I don’t know,” Vye said. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

  “It isn’t, as far as I know.”

  Vye’s mind twisted and turned. She was experiencing one of the universal facets of humanity. She had encountered an event, a series of events, that didn’t fit into her worldview. And her brain was working overtime to make it fit. She had trained with Tallatos in the Hilwera Mountains. If she forgot everything else she ever learned in all her life, she would always remember one thing: There is nothing but steel.

  And magic wasn’t steel. So there had to be a mistake.

  “You’re right,” Vye admitted. “It’s not. I think my ribs were never broken in the first place.”

  “You were in a lot of pain before,” Calvin pressed.

  “Must have pulled some muscles in that fight. Good night’s rest was all I needed.”

  “Your hand...”

  Vye’s brain hadn’t yet accounted for the glowing hand. That one was a doozy. But in typical form for someone clinging desperately to a belief, she was going to make it fit rather than consider what it truly meant.

  “I must have had some... you know, they doused me with perfume for the wedding. I bet it just caught fire for a second.”

  Calvin looked skeptical. Vye felt skeptical. But her brain had set things right. She could go back to being the best sword-fighter in the County, and the world would keep turning, as it always had. Vye gave Calvin some orders, setting the standing army on ready alert and calling up some of the reserves. Then she headed for the basement.

  “Julia!” Gabriel exclaimed when Vye burst into his room, “What are you doing up? Your ribs are broken.”

  “Actually, I don’t think...”

  Gabriel approached Vye to within a very uncomfortable distance. If Vye had any reasons to suspect him of ungentlemanly behavior, he would have been dead four feet earlier.

  “Even if they were set by an expert, you couldn’t… What happened?”

  Gabriel was pressing his hands against her ribs, feeling the ones he remembered to be broken.

  “Stop it, that tickles.”

  “Julia, your ribs aren’t broken.”

  “I know. I think it was all a mistake.”

  “Julia, I was with the healer when she was caring for you. It wasn’t a mistake.”

  “You know what’s funny, is Calvin thought that I somehow healed them magically.”

  Gabriel paced in a circle. He was like Vye in many ways. His brain, too, had tried to make all the facts fit into his neat little world view. The one where magic wasn’t a real thing. But he was too smart for his brain.

  “Did you?”

  Vye was flustered.

  “Master, I... I don’t even know... I wouldn’t know how...”

  “You were the only one who survived the fight with the Turin. He arrived in Deliem using magic. He almost defeated our entire Castle with spells. And, according to your own account of events, he killed the Prince with a flash of light.”

  “Yeah, but that was... Look, I’m sorry to bother you.”

  Vye spun around, striding for the door as fast as she could go and still technically be walking. Just before she could leave, though, Gabriel spoke again.

  “It’s dangerous, Julia,” Gabriel said, very calmly. “Obviously this magic comes from some dark source.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Nothing that powerful comes without a price.”

  Vye left, letting Gabriel have the last words. Those words clattered around in her head, her mind in a fog, racing with thoughts and dreams and half-understood riddles. Before she knew where she was going, she stood in the darkest corner of the dungeon, facing the Turin soldier. The assassin. The wizard.

  Halmir was a brute of a man, by the standards of the Rone. He was tall and muscular, and his broad shoulders looked capable of holding the world upon them. Even restrained and gagged, Vye flinched when he stared at her. It wasn’t a spell, but Halmir was able to transmit pure hatred from his eyes to hers.

  She motioned to the guard to open the cell. The guard, on another day and in another situation, may have been inclined to say something silly like, “Nobody’s supposed to see the prisoner,” or, “I’m under orders.” But Vye’s expression forced him to swallow his objections.

  Vye stepped into the cell, standing over the Turin agent. She waited for the cell door to close behind her. Then, she let the silence sink in.

  “I’m going to remove your gag. You know you can’t hurt me, right? Nod if you understand what I’m saying.”

  Halmir narrowed his gaze, his piercing eyes boring into Vye’s. He nodded, but he wasn’t happy about the situation. Vye pulled the gag from his mouth. He spat and coughed, flexing his jaw. Vye backed away. Not a time to take any chances.

  “What’s your name?” Vye said.

  Halmir responded, but not with his name. He spit out a string of curses, insulting Vye’s questionable heritage, and her definitively incestuous heritage. He spoke in Turin, so Vye didn’t know the words, but she got the general gist.

  “I’ll ask again,” Vye said, stepping closer, “What’s your name?”

  Halmir said some other things in his own language, none of which was the proper thing to say to a Lady. Vye waited out his rant.

  “I’m just asking for your name,” Vye said. “Or do you prefer I gag you again?”

  After a moment, he answered, “Halmir.”

  “Wasn’t that easy? Let’s keep it that way, Halmir. Now, moving onto the next question: What’s the rest of your plan?”

  Halmir started cursing Vye again. Vye introduced him to the back of her hand. Her right hand, to be precise.

  “Typical Ronish brutality,” Halmir spat.

  “Ronish brutality? You just assassinated the Royal Family.”

  “So kill me. Get it over with.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get to it eventually.”

  “So, do it now, I’m ready,” Halmir lowered his head, exposing his neck, as though he expected Vye to decapitate him on the spot.

  “Stop it,” Vye said. “I’m not going to kill you here.”

  Halmir looked up, confused. “Why not?”

  “Because that’s not up to me,” Vye said. “Even us brutes have laws. I just hope you get the worst barrister in the history of our Kingdom.”

  “Vye!” Landos charged into the dungeon, breaking Vye’s concentration. She gagged the prisoner and waved to the Guard to let her out. Yeah, she knew she shouldn’t have been down there. She walked alongside Landos as he began his scolding.

  “Lady Vye, what are you doing?”

  “I’m asking him some questions.”r />
  “He killed the Prince. He’s a prisoner of the Kingdom. We just keep him locked up and keep him alive. Wait!”

  “What?”

  “Your ribs…”

  “They’re better now.”

  “OK.”

  “Landos, we need answers from him. And we may not have time to wait.”

  “What do you--”

  “I mean I don’t think these assassinations were the endgame. Do you think the Turin organized this whole attack just to make us angry? There must be a next step, and if there is, then we have to assume they’re already at least that step ahead of us.”

  “I do wish Michael were here. At the end of the day, he was always the guy with the plan. Do you think he’s alive?”

  “I always assumed he would live forever. But for now, we have to make do with what we’ve got. And we’ve got your smarts and my sword. And if we ask nicely, we have Gabriel’s sage wisdom.”

  Landos and Vye shared a small laugh. Just a little one, amidst the chaos that had so suddenly overtaken their young lives. They were charged with deciding the fates of the people and the Kingdom, yet they had not fifty years between them.

  Landos sighed, “Well, let’s find out if what we have is enough.”

  Chapter 20: A Match Made In A Match Factory

  Timothy Brimford and his wife, Emily, traveled south for the funeral of the Royal Family. For Timothy, it was a formality. People died, so you have to bury them. But for Emily, this was a devastating trip. The Royal Family was also her family. As far as she knew, she was the last surviving member of that same Royal Family.

  Timothy was the second son of Duke Brimford. This had given him many reasons to pout as a child. While is brother Eric was destined to earn the title Duke, Timothy would forever remain a Lord. In other words, he wouldn’t get to rule over a lot of people and carry a nifty scepter.

  But his father, being the political strategist that he was, didn’t like to let a child go to waste. If Timothy couldn’t rule something, the least he could do was enhance the Brimford influence through marriage. So, Duke Brimford arranged for Timothy to marry Princess Emily Rone, the third child of the recently deceased King Vincent.

  The arrangement was a bit unorthodox. Timothy had just turned twenty when Emily Rone was born. But as long as the couple was biologically capable of having children, it was considered a smart match. The happiness of the couple, at this level of politics, wasn’t really a factor.

  So, it was a strained relationship from the beginning. Timothy continued to live in Brimford, in the north, while Emily Rone grew up in Anuen, on the southern shore. It was kind of bizarre, meeting her for the first time as an infant. And as he wiled his twenties away, she was still only ten. They didn’t have a lot to talk about.

  It was even weirder from Emily’s perspective. When she was a toddler, Timothy was just this awkward guy who would show up once in a while in her life. Whenever the Brimfords were in town, there he was. And he always talked to her as though he cared what a five, six, or seven year-old had to say. Why couldn’t he be like the other adults? Why couldn’t he just say hello and then go off and talk to adults about adult things?

  When she turned eight, her sister Helena broke the news to her. And so ended all her dreams of meeting a Prince and living happily ever after. She loved her father, and wanted to please him, so she held her tongue. She didn’t complain, not once, about the arrangement. But she dreaded becoming this man’s wife. The best that could be said of Timothy was that he was well dressed. Other than that, he was a Dork, as far as she was concerned. A social misfit, powerless, passionless, and probably, she mused, impotent.

  Unfortunately for her, he wasn’t. And while the official story was he was saving himself for his wife, he was a man, after all. And he had money. He became a regular fixture at the local brothels. At least the working girls acted happy to see him, though they were really just happy to see his coin purse. If he didn’t look too closely, he could pretend it was the same thing.

  When Emily turned fifteen, she was wed to the thirty-five year old Timothy. She had kept her matrimonial promise, and was a virgin entering the marriage. She lost her virginity the same night she gained half a dozen sexually transmitted diseases.

  For a short while, Timothy enjoyed the novelty of a woman living in the bedroom, where she couldn’t really do anything but obey him. He was older, he had home-court advantage, and he was certainly more practiced in what they were doing. But never had sex been less impassioned. Never had it involved less emotion, less love. Timothy was sure he had experienced more meaningful encounters at the houses of sin.

  Eventually, Timothy tired of the convenience of his live-in lover. Emily was relieved when he started spending nights out. She didn’t care that he came home smelling of other women. She didn’t even mind when he started having an affair with his brother’s wife. The only thing worse than not having sex was having sex with her husband.

  When news of the assassinations reached Brimford, Timothy was little comfort. He had no idea how to deal with Emily. They had been living as husband and wife for almost a year, but they still had no common ground. She was sixteen, he was thirty-six. He wasn’t a comrade or a peer, and he was only a lover in the technical sense.

  It was a long carriage ride from Cliffhaven to Anuen. Over the six days it would take, Timothy and Emily would say very little to one another. Perfunctory comments about whether they should stop for the night or keep going until the next town. Timothy offered to switch seats with her, a couple of times, so that the sun wouldn’t be in her eyes.

  The only time he actively said anything was when he thought ahead to the coming days.

  “If things go according to plan,” Timothy said, “I’m going to need an heir. Won’t that be nice? You can have a little baby.”

  Emily didn’t even respond. The thought of bearing a child to Timothy was repugnant, and it wasn’t what she wanted to think about on the way to burying her entire family.

  But all Timothy was thinking about was what would happen after the funeral. Once the King and his male heirs were buried, there would have to be a coronation. The Chief Magistrate would be charged with crowning someone. And Timothy was certain he would be the next King.

  It wasn’t a clear-cut law. The King James Standard had numerous pages detailing the line of succession. But it had never anticipated this kind of catastrophe. King James never would have imagined that, in one day, the King AND his two male heirs would all die. The convoluted language in the Standard talked about sons of sons, brothers of fathers of sons, and eventually uncles and nephews and cousins.

  But Timothy figured he would cut through all the garble. He was married to the only living descendent of King Vincent. If Emily had been a boy, she would get the crown. Since she couldn’t, clearly it would go to him. Who was going to argue with that logic?

  Castor Rone. That’s who.

  Castor was King Vincent’s younger brother. He had been serving as the Minister of the Treasury under his brother’s reign, so he was already in Anuen, and he was already familiar with the ins and outs of Rone politics. He was mourning his brother’s death, but of course it crossed his mind: If Vincent AND his male heirs are all dead, surely the crown would default to him. He was already practicing his coronation speech.

  And the King James Standard was silent on the matter.

  Chapter 21: The World Crumbles

  A knock on the door startled Landos from his nap. He had fallen asleep at his desk, writing orders for troops and supplies. He tried to recall the last time he had slept in a bed. But he was too sleep-deprived to remember.

  There was the knock again. It wasn’t insistent. It was quiet. An apology of a knock. He expected it to be Vye, asking to question the prisoner again. Or perhaps Gabriel, with news of Flopson. He even imagined it could have been Calvin, there to explain that they needed more supplies, incase of a siege. He imagined they would be under siege at any moment, ever since Vye’s warning.


  What he wasn’t expecting when he opened the door was the Countess Sarah Deliem.

  “Oh dear!” Landos said.

  “What? What’s wrong,” she said.

  “Nothing,” he said. “We just… We have to go somewhere, right now.”

  He tried to go around her, but Sarah blocked his way.

  “Landos, what’s wrong?”

  “You must go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Landos said, “Because I made a promise.”

  Sarah lifted her left hand, which sported a jade ring, a smaller version of Michael’s signet ring. “So did I.”

  “Sarah…”

  “Landos, do you remember standing on the catwalk?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And do you remember what you felt then?”

  Landos would remember those feelings until he died, and possibly longer.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you feel differently now?”

  “No.”

  “My husband-- The Man I was married to for...minutes-- Michael is dead. I know you hold onto hope, but Lady Vye told me about the fight. About his wounds. He’s dead. You’re being loyal to a man who isn’t there anymore.”

  “He is there,” Landos said, “Not necessarily alive, but-- I can’t. I made a promise.”

  Sarah stepped right up to Landos, their faces inches away.

  “We both did.”

  She kissed him. If someone had been there timing them, they only kissed for a few seconds. But Landos would later describe it as the longest, sweetest kiss he had ever known.

  In part it was because it was an emotional release that he had not allowed himself in the week since the wedding. He had been walking in a trance; always tense, trying to hold an entire County together while dealing with the loss of a close friend and the fact that the Prince had died on their turf.

  But mostly because it was Sarah, and he wanted to kiss her so badly, and he had been afraid that if he did, the walls would collapse and the world would be thrown into chaos. Once he started kissing her, though, he realized that the world had already been thrown into chaos, and that perhaps this was a small way to make it right again.