Sky of Swords

by Dave Duncan

  “Those are some of the places Granville fortified? And garrisoned?”

  Burningstar nodded sadly, as if wondering how she had deserved this terrible job. “Not one of them has yet submitted to Your Majesty.”

  The ensuing silence was very long and very weighty, and yet when Malinda spoke her voice seemed unnaturally small. “Are you telling me that I have a civil war on my hands?”

  No one wanted to answer that question.

  “But what do they expect to gain?”

  “Bah!” the Duke mumbled. “Not civil war, just local rebellions. Armed rabble wanting to be paid off and sent home.”

  “They do not wish to be summarily disbanded,” the Chancellor agreed. “And their pay is in arrears. I do think we should give them time, Your Grace. Let them come to terms with Lord Granville’s death.”

  “The Black Riders are experienced in siege craft,” the Marshal volunteered, but even he was wary now.

  At least a score of hostile strongholds within her realm and she lacked the funds either to buy them out or pay troops to take them?

  The Duke cleared his throat. “As long as they have no banner and no leader they’re no danger. But, by the cold hands of death, Your Grace, it’s a good job you’ve got the Traitor’s son safely under lock and key, what?” He laughed.

  Chancellor Burningstar said, “Is something the matter, Your Majesty?”

  36

  It is not true that calamities come only in threes.They often come in sixes or nines.

  ANON.

  After that, the day could get no worse, but it certainly did not improve, at least not until close to midnight, when Malinda was able to cuddle into Dog’s embrace and weep all over his fuzzy chest. The wonder was probably that her Council had not just resigned en masse and left her to her fate. Why appoint a Council and then make crazy decisions like that without consulting it?

  “So why did you?” Dog growled.

  The Queen sniffled in very unregal fashion. “I was being kind! Neville had done nothing wrong. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Dominic tried to tell me and I shouted at him! I didn’t see that Neville had inherited his father’s claim and would be just as dangerous or even worse, because he was born in wedlock, which will carry weight with the snootier nobles. Even if he would have a baton sinister on his arms, plenty of them do. He can turn Granville into a martyr.”

  “He swore allegiance?”

  “He can always claim he did it under duress.”

  “I’ll kill him for you. Where is he?”

  “We don’t know! I sent him to Constable Valdor, who says he never showed up—but he may be lying, playing on both teams. Grand Inquisitor says the Dark Chamber has a sniffer spell it could use to track him if we had a suitable key—meaning something closely identified with him, that he’d owned for a long time. Which we don’t. He’s almost certainly far away by now…. Oh, Dog, I feel such a fool!”

  Her father would never have made that mistake. Ambrose would have let Neville molder in a dungeon for years, just in case. If she ever did get to sleep tonight she was going to have nightmares of her own head on a spike alongside Granville’s.

  Nobody had been so disrespectful as to call the Queen an idiot, but the Duke and Chancellor together then took over the proceedings and abandoned any pretense of being mere advisors. They arranged everyone in chairs around the table and kept the meeting going until sundown.

  The Council agreed that nothing could be done about Neville unless and until he showed up, and nothing should be done about the holdout garrisons at present. The Council summoned Parliament for the fifth day of Tenthmoon. The Council decided it needed more members and discussed names; Malinda humbly agreed to appoint the half dozen selected. The Council even found some money, or Master Kinwinkle did, when he pointed out that a tax known as “relief” must be paid whenever a vassal of the crown died. The Treasury and the College of Heralds, he said, had been working all summer, calculating the relief due for the nobles who had died in the Wetshore Massacre, and most of it had not yet been collected. With ill grace, the Dowager Duchess confirmed that the De Mayes relief was still owing; Baron Dechaise was ordered to raise ready cash by mortgaging these prospects.

  The Council even had the audacity to start discussing possible royal husbands. Then Malinda slammed her fist on the table and shouted that when she wanted advice on that matter she would ask for it. The Chancellor frowned at her as if she were still only nine years old and changed the subject, but the implication remained that the sooner they found a man to take the stupid girl in hand the better.

  “So what can you do?” Dog growled.

  “Just this.” She kissed him. He needed no more encouragement than that, having managed to lie still in uneventful embrace while she recounted her woes. The resulting frenzy drove her worries away, for a while.

  They returned later, when she had her breath back. “It isn’t fair. A man makes mistakes and he needs experience. A woman makes them and she needs a husband!”

  “You’ve got a man already.” The turmoil had left them turned over so that Dog’s head lay on her breast.

  “And a wonderful one, the only man in the kingdom who isn’t seeking preferment.” The Council meeting had been followed by a long audience and even longer dinner, honoring the nobility flocking to court to pay its respects to the new Queen. “They all want appointments or settlements or their daughters made maids of honor or grants of this or that. You don’t expect me to dress you up in jewels and make you a marquis…do you?” The thought of the Council’s reaction made her mind boggle.

  Dog just snorted.

  “You never ask me for anything,” she whispered. “What do you want?”

  He took a while to answer. “To be your man always. To have you as my woman.” He nuzzled her breast.

  She stroked the massive muscles of his arm. “All the Guard knows you’re my lover, so I don’t suppose it will stay a secret much longer.”

  “What the Guard knows Ironhall knows. Heard you’re going there to harvest more Blades.”

  “That’s a state secret. Nobody’s supposed to know that, except Audley and Dominic and Chancellor Burningstar.”

  “Probably just someone’s lucky guess, then. Makes sense. I heard Grand Master has a dozen ripe ones for you to pick.”

  “So did I,” she said, annoyed. “Why can’t men keep secrets? I expect you’re the subject of political classes. You suppose they’re holding you up to the juniors as Royal Gigolo, an example of rewards available to the diligent student. You want that?”

  “No.”

  He moved his tongue and lips to her other breast, making it even harder to concentrate on other matters. They were experienced lovers now, knowing every pore of each other’s bodies, every secret whim, every unspoken thought—and also every evasion.

  “You haven’t told me what else you want. Crave a boon, Trusty and Well-Beloved Subject. Anything.”

  “Send me back to Sixthmoon of 350 to tell my pa not to kill my ma by making me.”

  She shivered and stroked his hair. There was no arguing with him on this. No such enchantment existed or could exist, she was certain, for it would create an impossible paradox. He wanted to cancel out his own existence, but if he did not exist he could not do that, so he would exist after all and could do it, and so on, round and round forever. Conjuration could do many things, but that was not one of them.

  “Then you will never meet me and become my man.”

  He did not answer. He could not accept that his desires were contradictory, let alone impossible. Crushed by guilt for deeds that were not his fault, Dog was not always entirely rational.

  “Listen, love,” she said. “As queen, I can give you a letter to Grand Wizard ordering him to find you the spell you want or make it up. If he says it’s impossible, will you believe him?”

  Dog stopped his foreplay. “I won’t understand his talk. Can I take Winter with me?”

  “Yes, love, you can take Winter with you.”r />
  They lay in close and sticky silence for a while, then she said, “Aren’t you going to finish what you were doing?”

  “You go ahead,” Dog said. “I’ll catch up.”

  On the twelfth day of her reign, Queen Malinda rode off to Ironhall, escorted by the entire Royal Guard. Her purpose was not only to raise the strength of the Guard by adding a dozen recruits; she had also summoned a general assembly of the Order. She left by moonlight and did not travel the most direct road—precautions her father had taken during the Monster War, and which seemed only sensible now, when a dozen garrisons scattered around the coasts had either declared for King Neville or refused to declare allegiance at all.

  Circumstances had changed since her first visit to Starkmoor. The presumptuous princess had become queen, overturning a revolution while losing only a single Blade. The entire school was assembled at the main door to cheer her arrival, and Grand Master had become a model of cooperation. Hammered by the Old Blades and forged in the fires of necessity, he declared, a dozen sharp and shining youngsters were ready to serve Her Majesty; indeed he would now venture beyond his written reports and release fourteen. Starting with Prime and Second, they were summoned in groups and asked in turn if they were willing to serve. Each declared his readiness and knelt to kiss the royal hand. With a couple of exceptions, they all looked absurdly young, but of course she did not say that; she reminded them instead that they were special, because they were the first to be bound by a reigning queen in almost a hundred years. She did not mention that they might be the last Blades ever bound, if Parliament proved as antagonistic as she expected.

  The following day she had no trouble finding food for thought during the hours of meditation that must precede a binding. On her first visit she had spoken with the candidates out of boredom, this time she did so to take her mind off her troubles. Hunter and Crenshaw she recognized, but there were another dozen names to memorize: Lindore with the smile, Vere the tall one, Mathew the freckled one, Loring the gorgeous, Terrible the fidget…all eager, all scared. They all had their sword names ready: Avenger, Glitter, Lady, Gadfly, and so on.

  Several times Sir Lothaire, the Master of Rituals, came around in his fussy, absentminded fashion. Uncertain how to address his sovereign when she was sitting on the floor leaning back against the side of a raised hearth, he tried to bow while kneeling, which was not a success. And once, after a fatuous query about her preference in wine for the banquet, he said brightly, “Sir Dog is performing satisfactorily?”

  Anything the Guard knew, Ironhall knew. Malinda turned to him in shock. Did he not realize she could have his head for that remark? His eyes were hidden by the reflection of firelight on his glasses, but the inane grin on his mouth seemed innocent enough. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, she decided that the school bookworm was unaware of the gossip. The onlookers were not—fourteen young faces around the octogram struggling very hard not to leer. Her cheeks were probably as red as the coals in the grates.

  “Of course. He wields a mighty sword,” she said.

  Vere and Terrible developed coughing fits, confirming her suspicions.

  Lothaire was still not flying with the flock. “Ah. I am pleased to hear that. It is wonderful how the binding solves problems, sometimes.” There must have been some other purpose behind his question. Here it came—“I was just talking with Sir Jongleur…old classmates…both here and later at the College. He mentioned that Sir Dog came to see him, posing a problem in conjuration. Apparently—”

  “Sir Jongleur is here?” She had given Dog the letter to Grand Wizard, but he had not taken Winter with him when he went to the College—probably because he still could not bring himself to reveal his secret past to a friend. Grand Wizard had referred the question to another conjurer. Dog had refused to say much about their discussion, meaning he had not understood a word of it.

  “He’s come for the assembly. Lots of knights—”

  “Go and fetch him,” the Queen said. “Now!”

  As Lothaire scrambled to his feet and scurried away, she glanced around the circle. Twenty-eight eyes avoided hers. She was almost as angry at herself for being embarrassed as she was with the conjurers for discussing Dog’s private problems. She rose in silence and headed for the stair.

  The door led out to a grassy space between the gym and the perimeter wall at the northeast corner of the complex, not overlooked by anyone. She was standing there, studying cloud shadows on the sunlit tors, when Lothaire came hurrying back with another sword-bearing knight. He was in his forties, with a belly and jowls, which were unusual on any member of the Order. His beard was streaked with gray and hung halfway down his chest, but he bowed nimbly enough. Lothaire fidgeted, uncertain whether to go or stay.

  Malinda ignored him, concentrating on the conjurer. “Last week we sent Sir Dog to see Grand Wizard. He told us later that he had been sent to you.”

  Jongleur chuckled lightly. “Blades in the raw unnerve the old gaffer, so he always refers them to me. Sir Dog is a deeply troubled young man, as I am sure Her Majesty is aware.”

  Her Majesty was mainly aware of hunger and worries and shortness of temper. “Then why do you breach professional ethics by discussing his case with an outsider?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I am sure Sir Lothaire will be discreet.”

  “Why should he be, when you are not? Furthermore, the letter Dog brought bore our seal. That made it crown business. You have violated your oath of allegiance.”

  He fell on his knees and bowed his head. He said nothing, which was his wisest option. Malinda looked at Master of Rituals, who promptly dropped beside his friend. She let them shiver for a moment before she spoke.

  “Taking the inquiry on that basis, what answer did you give our messenger?”

  “What he wanted would not have worked, Your Grace,” Jongleur told her shoes. “It would violate the laws of conjury.” He was almost as pompous as the Duke of Brinton.

  “What laws of conjury?”

  “Well, to start with, Damiano’s Axiom and the Prohibitions of Veriano, my lady.”

  “I am aware of Damiano’s Axiom: ‘Action prescribed without available resolution will dissipate the assemblage.’ Alberino Veriano’s Prohibitions are merely a list of things that he considered conjuration could not achieve, many of which have been accomplished since his day. Be more specific.” Malinda had put her mother’s library to use during the summer, seeking either a solution to Dog’s problem or proof that it had none. She had found neither.

  The men looked up in surprise. Sunlight flashed on Master of Ritual’s spectacles; Jongleur tugged nervously at his beard.

  “Your Majesty shames me…. The principle of superposition.”

  “Continue.”

  He gulped, worried now. “To assemble elementals and command them to perform an impossibility is extremely dangerous, leading to uncontrolled release of spiritual power. It is impossible for one thing to be in two places at once, which rules out traveling in time—even conjury will not let you go back and strangle yourself. Nor can you exist when you do not exist, that being another forbidden outcome. Sir Dog’s desire to visit his childhood cannot be satisfied by any means known to modern spiritualism.”

  “And did you explain that to him in words he could understand, or did you amuse yourself by confusing him with technical jargon and overblown vocabulary?”

  Jongleur hung his head. “I did not understand that he was acting on Your Majesty’s behalf.”

  “Well you do now. You will go and find him at once and explain the problem in detail, until he is completely satisfied. Do you understand? Furthermore, since my request was directed to Grand Wizard, I shall expect a written reply from him to be delivered to my secretary, Master Kinwinkle, before I return to Grandon. Otherwise you may see the inside of the Bastion.” She turned her glare on Lothaire. “And you, Master, will remember that Sir Dog’s past is none of your business. Nor his future, either.”

  She stalked back into the
Forge, leaving them on their knees. The whispering there stopped abruptly when she entered.

  Now she had something else to worry about. She should not have lost her temper! Dog was her weak point. Enemies could strike at her through him. She did not have time to work up a good fret over this, though, before Audley came trotting down the steps and presented her with a dispatch just in from Chancellor Burningstar.

  The ports of Horselea and Tharburgh had declared for Fitzambrose. Neville himself had been reported in Pompifarth, claiming royal honors and issuing a summons for Parliament to meet there, instead of in Grandon.

  Members of Your Grace’s Council, the letter concluded, respectfully recommend that Your Grace consider declaring Pompifarth to be in a state of insurrection and in breach of the Queen’s Peace; and that Your Grace may wish to charge the Black Riders with freeing its loyal inhabitants from the traitors who have deflected them from their true allegiance and to bring all contumacious subjects under the royal mercy; but the Council will of course loyally wait upon Your Grace’s instructions. The Council, in short, was not going to start a civil war without the Queen’s command but was protecting itself in case things got worse before she returned.

  The Queen was in no mood to start a war, civil or uncivil, but as she rammed swords through fourteen young hearts that night, she found herself wishing that one of them belonged to Neville Fitzambrose. That one, she would cheerfully chop in slices.

  She still had to preside over the general assembly before she could leave Ironhall and race back to the capital. Knights and some private Blades had been flocking in ever since she arrived; and on the morning after the binding the Loyal and Ancient Order of the Queen’s Blades assembled for the first time since 361, when Sir Saxon had been elected Grand Master. Master of Archives, that professional pedant, muttered that there was no record of a general meeting of the Queen’s Blades, not ever. Now there was, for the Head of the Order, seated below the broken sword of Durendal, was Queen Malinda the First, bejeweled and wearing a crown.