The Briar King

by Greg Keyes

  What really kept it hidden, Anne was sure, was Virgenya's will. She had hidden for over two thousand years from everyone but Anne and Austra. She seemed to want to keep it that way.

  And so, after a few moments on hands and knees, Anne found herself once more before the sarcophagus.

  They had never been able to move the lid any further, not even with a wooden lever, and after a time Anne had come to believe she was not supposed to look inside, and so she stopped trying.

  But the little crack was still there.

  “Now,” she said. “Have you got the stylus and the foil?”

  “Please, don't curse Fastia on my account,” Austra pleaded.

  “I'm not going to curse her,” Anne said. “Not really. But she's become insufferable! Threatening you! She deserves punishment.”

  “She used to play with us,” Austra reminded her. “She used to be our friend. She made us overdresses of braided nodding-heads and dandelions.”

  “That was a long time ago. She's different, now, since she married. Since she became our mistress.”

  “Then wish for her to be the way she was. Don't put any ill on her. Please.”

  “I just want to give her boils,” Anne said. “Or a few pocks on her beautiful face. Oh, all right. Give those here.”

  Austra handed her a small, paper-thin sheet of lead and an iron scriber. Anne pressed the lead against the coffin lid and wrote.

  Ancestress, please take this request to Saint Cer, petition her on my behalf. Ask her to dissuade my sister Fastia from threatening my maid, Austra, and to make Fastia nicer, as she was when she was younger.

  Anne considered the sheet. There was still room at the bottom.

  And fix the heart of Roderick of Dunmrogh on me. Let him not sleep without dreams of me.

  “What? Who is Roderick of Dunmrogh?” Austra exclaimed.

  “You were looking over my shoulder!”

  “Of course. I was afraid you would ask for boils for Fastia!”

  “Well, I didn't, you busybody,” Anne said, waving her friend away.

  “No, but you did ask for some boy to fall in love with you,” Austra said.

  “He's a knight.”

  “The one who chased you down the Snake? The one you just met? What, are you in love with him?”

  “Of course not. How could I be? But what could it hurt for him to love me?”

  “This sort of thing never turns out well in phay stories, Anne.”

  “Well, Cer likely won't pay attention to either of these. She likes curses.”

  “Falling in love with you could easily be a curse,” Austra replied.

  “Very funny. You should replace Hound Hat as court jester.” She slipped the lead foil through the crack in the lid of the sarcophagus. “There. Done. And now we can go.”

  As she stood, a sudden dizziness struck her between the eyes, and for an instant, she couldn't remember where she was. Something rang brightly in her chest, like a golden bell, and the touch of her fingers against the stone seemed very far away.

  “Anne?” Austra said, voice concerned.

  “Nothing. I was dizzy for an instant. It's passed. Come on, we should get back to the castle.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE KING

  “NOW, LET ME INTRODUCE MYSELF,” the big Hansan said to Neil. “I'm Everwulf af Gastenmarka, squire to Sir Alareik Wishilm, whom you've insulted.”

  “I'm Neil MeqVren, squire to Sir Fail de Liery, and I've promised him I will not draw steel against you.”

  “Convenient, but that's no matter. I'll tear your head off with my bare hands, no steel needed nor asked for.”

  Neil took a deep, slow breath and let his muscles relax.

  Everwulf came like a bull, fast for all of his bulk. Neil was faster, spinning aside at the last instant and breaking the big man's nose again with the back of his fist. The Hansan pawed air and swayed back. Neil stepped in close, snapped his elbow into the squire's ribs and felt them crack, then finished with a vicious jab into the fellow's armpit. The breath blew out of Everwulf and he collapsed.

  The rest of the squires weren't playing fair. From the corner of his eye, Neil saw something arcing down toward him. He ducked and kicked, struck feet. A man went down, dropping the wooden practice weapon he held in his hand. Neil scooped it up, rolled, and caught his next attacker across the shins. This one screamed like a horse being stabbed.

  Neil bounced to his feet. The fellow he had tripped was scuttling away. Everwulf was panting in a heap on the ground, and Shin-struck was gurgling. Neil leaned on the wooden sword casually. “Are we done with this?” he asked.

  “It's done,” the one fellow still capable of talking said.

  “A good night to you then,” Neil said. “I look forward to meeting you fellows on the field of honor, once we've all taken the rose.”

  He dropped the wooden sword, brushed his hair back into place. High above, he could just make out the moonlit spires of the castle.

  The court! Tomorrow he would see the court!

  William II of Crotheny gripped the stone casement of the tall window, and for a moment felt so light that a rush of wind might pull him out of it. Alv-needles pricked at his scalp, and a terror seemed to burst behind his eyes so bright it nearly outshone the sun. It staggered him.

  The dead are speaking my name, he thought, and then, Am I dying?

  An uncle of his had died like this, one heartbeat standing and talking as if everything was fine, the next, cooling on the floor.

  “What's the matter, dear brother?” Robert asked, from across the room. That was Robert, attracted to weakness like sharks to blood.

  William set his jaw and took a deep, slow breath. No, his heart was still beating—furiously, in fact. Outside, the sky was clear. Beyond the spires and peaked roofs he could see the green ribbon of the Sleeve and the distant Breu-en-Trey. The wind was blowing from there, the west, and had the delicious taste of salt on it.

  He wasn't dying, not on such a day. He couldn't be.

  “William?”

  He turned from the window. “A moment, brother, a moment. Wait for me outside, in the Hall of Doves.”

  “I'm to be ejected from my own brother's chambers?”

  “Heed me, Robert.”

  A frown gashed Robert's forehead. “As you wish. But don't make me wait long, William.”

  When the door closed, William permitted himself to collapse into his armchair. He'd been afraid his knees would give out with Robert in the room, and that wouldn't do.

  What was wrong with him?

  He sat there for a moment, breathing deeply, fingering the ivory inlay on the oaken armrest, then stood on wobbly legs and went to the wash basin to splash water on his face. In the mirror, dripping features looked back at him. His neatly trimmed beard and curly auburn hair had only a little gray, but his eyes looked bruised, his skin sallow, the lines on his forehead deep as crevasses. When did I get so old? he wondered. He was only forty-five, but he had seen younger faces on men with another score of winters.

  He brushed away the water with a linen rag and rang a small bell. A moment later his valet—a plump, balding man of sixty—appeared, clad in black stockings and scarlet-and-gold doublet. “Sire?”

  “John, make sure my brother has some wine. You know what he likes. And send Pafel in to dress me.”

  “Yes, Sire. Sire—”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you feeling well?”

  John's voice held genuine concern. He had been William's valet for almost thirty years. In all of the kingdom, he was one of the few men William trusted.

  “Honestly, John? No. I just had some sort of … I don't know what. A terror, a waking Black Mary. I've never felt anything like it, not even in battle. And worse, Robert was here to see it. And now I have to go talk to him about some-thing-or-other, who knows what. And then court. I wish sometimes—” He broke off and shook his head.

  “I'm sorry, Sire. Is there anything I can do?”

 
; “I doubt it, John, but thank you.”

  John nodded and started to leave but instead turned back. “There is a certain fear, Sire, that cannot be explained. It's like the panic one has when falling; it simply comes.”

  “Yes, it was much like that. But I wasn't falling.”

  “There are many ways to fall, Sire.”

  William stared at him for a moment, then chuckled. “Go on, John. Take my brother his wine.”

  “Saints keep you, Sire.”

  “And you, old friend.”

  Pafel, a ruddy-faced young man with a country accent, arrived a few moments later with his new assistant Kenth.

  “Not the full court garb,” William told them. “Not yet. Something comfortable.” He opened his arms, so they could take his dressing gown.

  “As you wish, Sire. If I may? Today is Tiffsday, so of course the colors of Saint Tiff are appropriate, but we are also in the season of equinox, which is ruled by Saint Fessa …”

  They put him in raven hose with gold embroidered vines, a bloodred silk doublet with a standing collar and gold florets, and a robe of black ermine. The familiar routine of dressing— complete with Pafel's nonstop explanations—made William feel better. This was, after all, an ordinary day. He wasn't dying, and there was nothing to be afraid of. By the time he was dressed, his hands and legs had stopped shaking, and he felt only that distant foreboding he had carried for the past several months.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” he told his dressers. When they were gone, he composed himself with a few deep breaths and went to the Hall of Doves.

  The hall was as light and airy as a room all of stone could be, built of dressed alabaster and appointed with drapes and tapestries in pale greens and golds. The windows were broad and open; after all, if an army won past the floodlands, three city walls, and the outer fortress, all was lost anyway.

  A faint rusty stain in the otherwise unblemished floor reminded William that it had happened once before. Thiuzwald Fram Reiksbaurg, the Wolf-Coat, had fallen here, struck through the liver by the first William Dare to reign in Eslen, just over a hundred years ago.

  William stepped past the stain. Robert looked up from an armchair—William's armchair—where he pretended to study a prayerbook. “Well,” he said. “There was no need to pretty yourself up on my account.”

  “What can I do for you, Robert?”

  “Do for me?” Robert stood, stretching his long, lean body to its full height. He was only twenty, decades younger than William, and to emphasize the fact he wore the small mustache, goatee, and close-cropped hair that was currently in fashion among the more effete courtiers. His regular features were somewhat marred by a smirk. “It's what I can do for you, Wilm.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “I went for a walk last night with Lord Reccard, our esteemed ambassador from Saltmark.”

  “A walk?”

  “Yes. We walked first to the Boar's Beard, then to the Talking Bear, over the canal to the Miser's Daughter—”

  “I see. The man isn't dead, is he? You haven't stirred us up a war with Saltmark, have you?”

  “Dead? No. He's alive, if somewhat remorseful. War … well, just wait until I've finished.”

  “Go on,” William said, trying to keep his face straight. He wished he trusted his brother more.

  “You may remember Reccard's wife, a lovely creature by the name of Seglasha?”

  “Of course. Originally from Herilanz, yes?”

  “Yes, and a true daughter of that barbaric country. She cut her last husband into a gelding, you know, and the one before that was hacked to pieces by her brothers for slighting her in public. Reccard is quite terrified of her.”

  “Not without cause, it seems,” William said.

  Robert arched his brows. “You should talk, married to that de Liery woman! She's at least—”

  “Speak no ill of my wife,” William warned. “I won't hear it.”

  “No? Not even from your mistresses? I've heard a few choice complaints from Lady Berrye concerning your wife, in words I do not think she invented.”

  “Robert, I hope you didn't come to lecture me about proper behavior. That would be the goat calling the ram hairy.”

  Robert leaned against an alabaster pillar, folding his arms across his chest. “No, brother dear, I came to ask if you knew that Hansa had moved thirty war galleys and one thousand troops into Saltmark.”

  “What?”

  “As I said, poor Reccard is quite terrified of his wife. I guessed correctly that he wouldn't want her to know about the games we played at the end of the night, with the ladies in the Lark's Palace. So I convinced him that he ought to be … friendly to me.”

  “Robert, what a schemer you are. It's not fitting for a Dare to act so.”

  Robert made a disgusted sound. “Now who is lecturing on morality? You depend on my ‘unworthy’ behavior, William. It allows you to keep the armor of your righteousness clean and polished, while at the same time retaining your kingdom. Will you ignore this information because I obtained it so?”

  “You know I cannot. You knew I could not.”

  “Precisely. So do not lecture me, Wilm.”

  William sighed heavily and looked back out the window. “Who knows about this? About these Hanzish ships?”

  “At this court? You and me, and the ambassador, of course.”

  “Why would Hansa invest Saltmark? Why would Saltmark allow it?”

  “Don't be silly. What other reason could there be? They're preparing something, and Saltmark is with them.”

  “Preparing what?”

  “Reccard doesn't know. If I had to guess, though, I'd say they have designs on the Sorrow Isles.”

  “The Sorrows? Why?”

  “To provoke us, I wouldn't doubt. Hansa grows fat with men and ships, brother. The emperor of Hansa is an old man; he'll want to use them soon, while he still can. And there's nothing under the sun that he wants more than that crown you wear on your head.”

  Marcomir Fram Reiksbaurg isn't the only one who wants my crown, William thought sourly. Or do you think me too thick to know that, dear brother?

  “I suppose you could simply ask the Hanzish emissary,” Robert went on. “His ship anchored yesterday.”

  “Yes, that complicates things, doesn't it? Or simplifies them. Perhaps they've come to declare war in person.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “In any event, I'm not scheduled to speak to that embassy until the day after tomorrow, after my daughter's birthday. I will not change that; it would seem suspicious.” He paused, considering. “Where is Reccard now?”

  “Sleeping it off.”

  “Put spies on him, and on the Hansans. If any correspondence passes, I want to know of it. If they meet, let them, but make certain they are overheard. Under no circumstances must either get a message out of the city.” He knitted his fingers and looked at them. “And we'll send a few ships to the Sorrows. Quietly, a few at a time over the next week.”

  “Wise moves all,” Robert said. “You want me to act as your sinescalh in this matter, then?”

  “Yes. Until I tell you otherwise. I'll draft the formal writ of investment this afternoon.”

  “Thank you, William. I'll try to be worthy of you and our family name.”

  If there was sarcasm in that, it was too subtle to detect. Which meant nothing, actually. William had known his brother only since his birth. It wasn't long enough.

  A bell jangled faintly, from the hallway.

  “Enter!” William said.

  The door creaked open, and John stepped in. “It's the praifec, Sire, just returned from Virgenya. And he has a surprise with him.”

  The praifec. Grand.

  “Of course. Show him in.”

  A moment later, the black-robed praifec Marché Hespero stepped into the chamber.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, bowing to William. He then bowed to Robert. “Archgreft.”

  “How good to see you, Praifec,” Robert s
aid. “You've made it back from Virgenya in one piece.”

  “Indeed,” the churchman replied.

  “I trust you found our kinsmen as thickheaded as us?” Robert went on.

  William wished, not for the first time, Robert would keep his mouth shut.

  But Hespero smiled. “Let us say, they are as seemingly intractable in many ways, even in the matter of heretics, which is troubling. But the saints dispose, yes?”

  “I trust they do,” William said lightly.

  Hespero's smile didn't falter. “The saints work in many ways, but their most cherished instrument is the church. And it is written that the kingdom should be the knight of the church, the champion of it. You would be distressed, King William, if your knights failed you?”

  “They never have,” William replied. “Praifec, what may I have brought for you? Wine and cheese? The jade pears came ripe while you were away, and they are excellent with the blue Tero Gallé cheese.”

  “A cup of wine would suit me well,” Hespero replied.

  John poured a goblet for Hespero, who frowned as he sipped at it.

  “If it's not to your taste, Praifec, I can send for a different vintage,” William said.

  “The wine is excellent, Sire. That is not what troubles me.”

  “Please. Speak your mind, then, Your Grace.”

  Hespero paused, then rested his goblet on a pedestal. “I have not seen my peers on the Comven. Are the rumors true? Have you legitimized your daughters as heirs to the throne?”

  “I did not,” William said. “The Comven did.”

  “But it was your proposition, the one we discussed while you were drafting it?”

  “I believe we did discuss it, Praifec.”

  “And you remember my opinion that making the throne heritable by women is forbidden by church doctrine?”

  William smiled. “So thought one of the churchmen in the Comven. The other voted for the reform. It would seem the issue is not as clearly drawn as some believe, Eminence.”

  In fact, it had taken some doing to get even one of the priests to vote William's way—more of Robert's dirty but effective dealings.