Servant of the King (The Fledgling Account Book 3)

by Y. K. Willemse

  “I suppose you are glad to have your father back,” he said.

  They were standing on the balcony that adjoined Rafen’s plain, yet clean room. The air was crisp. They were already two weeks into winter, and the leaves were floating away from the trees.

  Rafen looked askance at Alexander.

  “He is in the palace, you know,” Alexander said. “You have seen him since… since the incident, haven’t you?”

  “No,” Rafen said. “I haven’t.”

  Alexander’s eyebrows sunk lower. “I thought he would have visited you. After your mother’s death, your family should stay close.”

  “My brother and I do.”

  “I thought your father wanted you two.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Rafen had said. “When he’s not scared or uncomfortable, he wants us very much.”

  *

  The day after this visit, Rafen decided he wasn’t going to wait for the royal family to come to him. It took him forty-five minutes, interspersed with much questioning of the guards, to find the large sitting room they were in. By this time, he was so weary he was reduced to crawling. Resisting the impulse to feverishly brush away spirits flitting in his vision, Rafen dragged himself to the arching doorway of the room. The guards on either side of it helped him to his feet.

  “Say, lad,” one said, “what on the Pillar are you doing crawling about on the floor?”

  “I want to see the Selsons.”

  “I’m afraid they are admitting no one. It is a family meeting.”

  Rafen gritted his teeth. “I am family.”

  The two guards looked at each other. With a shrug, one turned the door handle gently.

  “If you are not family, you will be the one to suffer for it,” he said to Rafen, with a kindhearted wink.

  He swung the door open and ushered Rafen quickly inside before closing it, taking care to stay out of sight.

  The sitting room was a long, rectangular affair with arched windows on the back wall. A small table in the center bore a lit candelabrum even though it was morning. The candles gave off light fragrance that wafted through the room. Settees stood against both the left and right walls, so far away from each other that Rafen thought it would be ridiculous for people to have a discussion from opposite sides of the room.

  But the Selsons were. King Robert sat on the left with Etana, Bertilde, and Kasper. On the right, Queen Arlene was frowning with Robert next to her. Her empty right silk sleeve was a grim reminder of all that had happened.

  Still unnaturally pale and blotchy in the face, King Robert had his mouth open as if he were going to say something. Then his eyes slid to Rafen. There was a general intake of breath around the room.

  “Oh no,” Etana said in alarm. “Rafen, you are not supposed to be here.” She stood up. “You will kill yourself.”

  “I’m fine.” Rafen leaned heavily against the door.

  “Do you mind waiting?” Etana said, glancing around at her family. “I will escort him back.”

  She moved over to him alarmingly fast.

  “No,” Rafen said quickly. “I have to rest, Etana. Here. I can’t go back… not yet.”

  He sank to the ground in a credible act, clutching his head with his hands.

  “Oh, Rafen,” Etana said. “You are deathly pale. I don’t know why you came. Are you able to come to the settee?”

  Rafen allowed her to help him up. Savoring every moment of physical contact, he draped himself over her as she half dragged him to the settee. Queen Arlene was in an agony of mortification. He flopped onto the plush cushions and partially closed his eyes, feigning semi-consciousness. He desperately wanted to ask the others how they were, what had happened to each of them while they had been apart, but something told him now was not the time. Tension made the air stiff.

  “Do you think he is listening?” King Robert said softly to Etana.

  “I don’t think he is,” Etana said. “I think he is asleep.” When she waved a hand before his eyes, Rafen maintained his pose. “I must watch him, though,” she said. “Do go on, Father. We’re all dying to hear it.”

  “We all know what he’s going to say,” Robert said loudly from the other end of the room. “It’s all: ‘I’m weak, I’m stupid, I was never meant to be a king’. And do you know,” he said venomously, “I’m starting to believe it.”

  Rafen tensed, his blood burning.

  “It is not only that,” King Robert said, with a hint of the old fire seeping into his voice. “I am tired, Robert. The Lashki tortured me, and I can still feel it. Take a look at Rafen. Is he fit for the throne?”

  “Fitter than you!” Robert spat. “And fitter than the Sartian magistrates will ever be!”

  “Robert, please,” Etana said.

  Queen Arlene spoke over her evenly. “There is nothing wrong with a Sartian magistrate.”

  Rafen couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The woman who had wanted him to face the Lashki so that Siana would be rewon had only ever intended it to be saved for Sarient. Too tired to rule again, Queen Arlene wanted a Sartian government, rather than a Sianian one. Rafen recalled with pain how she had always extolled the conventions of Siana’s mother country.

  “Haven’t the Sartians been waiting for years to take over Siana entirely?” Bertilde said. “They simply hated what King Joseph did for the people. That’s what Father says.”

  “King Joseph and your grandfather Fritz encouraged moving the country toward independence when it was not ready for it,” Queen Arlene said.

  “Siana was ready for it!” Etana cried. “They only did what was right.” She pointed an index finger at her father. “He means to give the country up without a fight!”

  “We will lose all our independence and become slaves of the Sartian government, mere puppets on display,” Kasper said. This serious statement was so unlike him that Rafen wondered if he had misheard it.

  “It would have still happened in Richard’s time,” King Robert protested, but Etana interrupted him.

  “I would never allow it!” she said, leaping up. “We are joint heirs, and I will have my say.”

  “You will not rule alongside Richard if your father gives up the throne now,” Queen Arlene said in a tone prophetic of gratified doom.

  So this was why King Robert and the others had been avoiding Rafen. They hadn’t wanted him to hear any of this.

  “I am not giving away the throne,” King Robert said. “I am passing it onto more competent hands.” He looked as if he were facing bloodhounds.

  “If you were, you would pass it to Etana,” Robert said.

  “She is not of age, Robert,” the king said, his voice rising. “We have spoken of this before.”

  “There are different rules for Secrai,” Etana said.

  “I will not allow my child to become a ruler so young!” King Robert shouted. “It would be unfair in the extreme.”

  He was still sitting, but he was nearly the only one. Kasper was up beside Etana, gesticulating with his one unharmed hand and arm, the other bandaged at his side. Queen Arlene and Robert were also standing at the other end.

  “Then why can’t Mother rule alone?” Bertilde cried, jumping up also.

  “It’s impossible,” Robert said, the frustration flushing his face. “No one in Siana is allowed to rule without a spouse as a joint authority, remember?”

  “That’s why Grandmother remarried so quickly after Grandfather

  was murdered,” Etana pointed out. “And before that, she had a

  regent.”

  “Well, you know what Grandmother said!” Robert shouted. “She said we would be fools to give the country away. She is furious.”

  “Siana will be quite safe in the hands of the Sartians,” Queen Arlene said, her large blue eyes glittering.

  “The fact is,” King Robert said loudly, with the air of a dying man mustering his last strength to say something important, “I am no longer capable of ruling Siana.”

  Etana glanced back at Ra
fen, whose eyes were now wide open.

  “You are not asleep,” she said angrily. “Do you know, I think you were faking that sudden weak spell.”

  “I was,” Rafen said.

  King Robert turned a watery gaze on him.

  “Leave now,” he said. “Etana, escort him out.”

  “No,” Rafen said.

  He watched King Robert whiten with shock.

  “You say you are no longer king,” Rafen said, “so why should I listen to you?”

  “You should listen,” King Robert said, his face drawn, “because this is family business.”

  “I am no longer family.”

  As Rafen said it, he realized the implication of his own words. They hit him like an iron fist. Etana swooped back and seized his hand.

  “Rafen, he didn’t mean it.”

  “Etana,” Queen Arlene’s shocked voice came from the other end of the room, and Etana hurriedly released his hand.

  Rafen stared straight into King Robert’s blue eyes. “I know you’ve suffered,” he said in a voice that cracked with both weakness and manhood. “We all have. But you were meant to rule Siana. Zion gave you the throne.”

  “How do you know what Zion wants?” King Robert said quietly, with the barest trace of contempt.

  Everyone watched them.

  “I’m his Fledgling,” Rafen said. “And I did not save your life that night to see you let King Albert’s men take over!” The last few words were bellowed. His muscles tensed as he glared at King Robert. “Nor did we win Siana,” he went on loudly, “to see it thrown away. Have you no love for this country? Have you no respect for Zion?”

  There was a ringing silence. King Robert stared at Rafen as if he had just been told he was about to be hung.

  “I will leave,” Rafen said softly. He struggled to rise, and Etana darted back to support him.

  “Etana, no,” Queen Arlene said sharply. “It is inappropriate. Kasper, get him out.”

  “Quickly, Kasper,” King Robert said, sounding eager to get rid of Rafen.

  As Kasper escorted him out, Rafen said to him, “Your arm. What happened to your arm?”

  “Oh, that,” Kasper said. “It’s all right, old chap. Broke a bone falling off a gallery in the battle. We used some kesmal to mend it, but I think the philosopher put the bone back wrong.”

  At the mention of the battle, Rafen turned back to King Robert before they passed through the door. “I would rather die than see Siana handed over to the Sartians.”

  The tyrannical King Albert and his snob-nosed son Richard rose before his mind’s eye as he said it.

  Before the door closed behind them, Rafen glimpsed King Robert with his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking silently.

  Chapter Forty-One

  King

  Robert’s Choice

  Elizabeth’s burial had been a hasty affair. After Rafen’s rapid disappearance, Francisco had instigated it while waiting for Jacob to organize the men. He had not wanted to let the corpse decay. Already, it had smelled, he had said. Rafen had never noticed. And he hated their calling her “it”, as if she had been reduced to a thing. She had been translated; she had risen above them all. She had reached the Top and now abided with Zion, watching her children below.

  Rafen had always wanted to return to the Hideout, and two weeks later, they all did: Etana, Sherwin, Francisco, Rafen, and even Roger, whom Rafen had only seen sporadically. Etana had kept putting off the moment, telling Rafen he had to be stronger. Rafen was trying, but it was hard work.

  His spirits were scraping on the carpet, and when he woke in the morning, he didn’t even want to get up. He lay there, listening to the business in the corridors beyond as servants and soldiers and noblemen in the palace prepared for the arrival of the Sartian magistrates. As Jacob had observed, the Lashki had killed many of those who had been part of Siana’s ruling structure. It would have been a huge loss to King Robert, if he had intended to continue ruling. Now the Sartians were going to have to rebuild most of the government. Rafen had made their job easier by saving many of the lords near New Isles, who would provide support for the new regime. When Rafen asked Etana if King Robert had sent the official letter yet, she had answered, “Yes, I suppose so.”

  While her face was set, her eyes were red. Then she handed him the gold circlet set with the amethyst. It had been cleaned since Rafen had torn it from the Lashki’s head, and now it glittered in the light from Rafen’s windows.

  “We found this in the throne room,” she told him. “Father would not take it, and I would hate to see it Sartian hands. Perhaps you would…”

  “Keep it safe?” he murmured, staring at in his maimed left hand.

  “Yes,” she had said softly.

  All her years of being groomed for the throne had been wasted. King Robert’s period of rulership would be forgotten under the Sartians, who would grow more and more tight-fisted and authoritarian as they sought to win back what they had lost when Siana had moved toward independence. Worse – much, much worse – was that all the effort they had spent to win Siana and set King Robert back on the throne was fruitless.

  For nothing.

  “What would you think of it?” he whispered to the mound of dirt amid the cleared rocks and stones.

  They were in the chilly cavern near the stream running through Fritz’s Hideout. This was where Francisco had chosen to bury her. He, the floral-robed philosopher, and Sherwin had cleared away the rocks and dug a hole. Etana had been there too. It warmed Rafen’s heart to know she cared about this. They had laid Elizabeth in the grave, and Francisco had told him she looked very at rest. And then they had covered her.

  Rafen felt like he was suffocating as he looked down at it, remembering what it was like to be swallowed in the earth, to be dead, worse than dead. He wanted to crash to his knees and dig madly until he found her and freed her. Instead, he stood rigidly, fighting the spirits around him, fighting the world of lies that had nearly consumed him.

  “She is with Zion.” His eyes blurred.

  “She is,” Sherwin said vehemently. “She is, Raf.” He laid his hand on his arm.

  Roger’s occasional visits had done nothing to improve Rafen’s spirits. He had no hope to offer, and only told Rafen he was a child, he was pathetic, and knew nothing about the pangs of life.

  Rafen could have bitten his head off.

  Now Roger had his head on his chest as he wept, his shoulders heaving. “Dear God,” he said. “She loved me…” He wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve and stared down at the dirt. “I don’t know why she loved me,” he said, as if it were a revelation. “She’s gone now… for good. That is where all men and women go.”

  He looked white-faced at the thought of it.

  “What is death?” he muttered. “It is unnatural, Rafen.”

  He moved suddenly toward him, and Sherwin ducked out of the way. Roger reached out for Rafen, but did not touch him, as if he were afraid he wasn’t quite real.

  “It will be you next,” he said softly. “And then me.” He shuddered. “And then Francisco. Would you like to be buried here?” he asked Rafen.

  Rafen stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “I’m not dying. Not just yet. She wouldn’t have wanted me to.” He gestured to the grave.

  “What would she have wanted?” Roger said.

  “Victory,” Rafen said quietly. “Ultimate victory. She thought I had a part to play…”

  His mind drifted back to when Elizabeth had advised him to leave the Hideout without Robert, to find support for the king.

  You are a leader… unlike any other.

  He had done the right thing, in the end, even when he had gone to confront the Lashki. That deadly confrontation had been the perfect solution to Siana’s dilemma. He was able to harm the Lashki, unlike anyone else.

  Francisco watched him with a silent desperation, as if Rafen had the answers. Sherwin too was looking on, obviously unable to speak. His face was peaky and pale.

 
Rafen raised his head. “It was worth nothing,” he spat, his eyes watering infuriatingly. “Siana will go to Sarient, and it won’t be free. It will become like Tarhia…”

  “Don’t say tha’, Raf,” Sherwin broke in.

  “Rafen, there is hope,” Etana said, sweeping to his side and grasping his hand. Her mother was not there to disapprove. “You have Spirit Awareness, Rafen. You can feel Zion, can’t you?”

  Rafen closed his eyes and allowed his sixth sense to wash over him. The spirits that clouded his mind unsettled him. He sifted through them uneasily, trying to ignore their voices and strokings. Beyond their feathery limbs was a light. It seemed far away, but as he kept his eyes on it, it became closer and closer. He laid his hand on his phoenix feather as he meditated.

  “Rafen,” a voice said.

  It wasn’t Zion’s.

  His eyes flicked open, and King Robert was standing on the rocks three steps behind them, less haggard than before. Some of his old color had returned. His hair had been groomed, and he was in royal clothes – a crimson tunic and a linen slashed sleeve shirt. His watery blue eyes had steel in them.

  “Arlene and I will rule,” he said in the old voice of sonority.

  Rafen’s hand tightened on Etana’s. He couldn’t speak. Sherwin stirred, giving an exhilarated, “Yes!” Francisco still appeared incredulous.

  “Father, that’s wonderful!” Etana cried.

  Rafen released Etana and leapt across the rocks to the king, dropping on his knee. King Robert watched him with horrified fascination.

  “I am your most loyal servant,” Rafen said, looking up at him.

  “And I am rightly humbled.” King Robert laid a hand on his shoulder.