Sky of Swords

by Dave Duncan

  “Your Council recommends sending them to Pompifarth.”

  “So you said in your letter. But to turn mercenaries loose on my own people! That is abhorrent! And unpaid mercenaries, at that. I wish I could pay them off and ship them overseas.” She had been glad of their help three weeks ago, but drawing a sword was always easier than sheathing it again.

  “We do not propose storming the town, Majesty!” the Chancellor said, looking shocked. “We merely want to invest it, to block Neville’s call for an anti-Parliament to meet there. We expect very few lords or elected commons to attend, probably none, but he may claim that they have. If he puts on a puppet show, people may be hoodwinked.”

  “Starve him out, you mean?”

  “Not even that. Pompifarth is a major port, which we cannot hope to blockade without attracting the attention of the Baels, who would love to feast on your troubles. We propose throwing a cordon of Black Riders around the walls and declaring a siege. The inhabitants will not starve. I doubt very much that Neville himself is even there.”

  Malinda scowled at the window. The rain had started again, blocking out the view of Great Common. “Let us discuss it at a full meeting of the Council tomorrow,” she said reluctantly. She could not hold back forever; she must do something about Neville.

  Continuing rain ruined the roads and threatened the harvest. With Parliament due to convene in another four days, members were still struggling toward the capital, and messengers returning from Mayshire were long in coming. Prince Courtney’s reply to the warrant was a curt note pleading indisposition.

  By the time the Council assembled to discuss this defiance, Malinda was so furious that she could not bring herself to take her seat. The weather was murky outside and the mood inside even grimmer. Only the lashing of rain against the windows disturbed the silence as she paced back and forth on the rug; her ministers stood around the table and watched her. All except one.

  “Where is Grand Inquisitor? By the eight, if he does not appear in five minutes, I will send the Royal Guard to fetch him! What news from Pompifarth, Chancellor?”

  “No change, Your Grace. The town is sealed off from the land, but boats continue to enter and leave the harbor. There has been no fighting.”

  “And no news from Mayshire?”

  “Nothing official…rely on Grand Inquisitor…more rumors, of course.”

  Rumors, indeed! Lord Candlefen, Malinda’s squirrel-brained cousin, had arrived from Westerth that very morning with a whole cartload of rumors. He had been more interested in describing the hardships of his journey, but when pressed he had passed on stories of Prince Courtney raising an army with the help of Isilondian military advisors.

  “Where is he getting the money?” she demanded, still pacing. “Constable, how much has he spent already?”

  “Depends how many men he has hired, Your Grace,” Valdor rumbled. Before she could call him an idiot, he added,

  “Warm bodies come cheap, but assume at least one crown per man so far, including board and shelter. The problem will be weapons. Even a pike needs first-quality steel. Ash poles are cheap enough by the dozen, but just try to collect a thousand! Shields and arrows and helmets—all very specialized artifacts. Strong boots, warm bedding. Horses and oxen and carts. But weapons first. A good sword, even, can cost more than a matched team of horses; the Lord Protector stripped the country to arm his garrisons.”

  “So Neville Fitzambrose has them all now? Very comforting!” Still no sign of Horatio Lambskin…Had he fled to join his master, Courtney? “Commander Audley, since Grand Inquisitor has refused our summons to this—”

  There was a knock on the door.

  Audley, whose brows had risen very high at the thought of arresting the head of the Dark Chamber, said quickly, “By your leave, Your Grace…” and opened the door a crack. And then wider, to admit the gaunt, gibbet form of the missing inquisitor, who entered clutching a bulky mass of papers under his arm.

  He bowed to the Queen. She sat down and gestured for everyone else to do the same, leaving Lambskin still on his feet, heading for his usual seat.

  “We are not accustomed to being kept waiting.”

  He looked at her reproachfully, making her wonder if he had deliberately staged this entrance.

  “I humbly crave Your Grace’s pardon. I tarried to finish gathering some savory tidings, and I trust that they will compensate for my tardiness.”

  “My cousin is not raising an illegal army?”

  Shaking his head sadly, Grand Inquisitor laid the papers on the table. “Indeed he is, Your Grace. About a thousand men, as near as my office can calculate. Abandoning subterfuge, he has now concentrated them in a camp just outside Lomouth.”

  “So we face two armed insurrections!” Malinda looked around at the shocked faces of her Privy Councillors and wondered which rats would start launching lifeboats first. “I thought you said you brought good news?”

  She had never seen Grand Inquisitor actually smile before. She hoped she never would again.

  “It seems very good news to me, Your Grace. Two nights ago, the Baels landed in force near Lomouth and attempted to seize the city. As I said, the Prince had just established his camp there. He organized resistance and sent out a sortie that engaged the Baels in battle and routed them. They withdrew to their fleet and attempted to depart, but another contingent of the Prince’s forces had so damaged the longships on the beach that a great many of them sank when they were launched. Hundreds or thousands of the invaders were drowned. At latest word the survivors were being hunted down in—”

  The room exploded. Even the Chancellor was on her feet shouting, waving her arms overhead, looking ready to start dancing. Never in the long and blood-soaked struggle had the Chivians ever managed to bring any significant Baelish force to battle. There was no precedent for even a real fight, let alone a victory. That Courtney should be able to claim credit! Among all the tumult of joy, Malinda sat in silence, wondering why the spirits of chance were being so kind to her cousin and so unfair to her.

  No, this could never be coincidence! She had feared all along that Courtney was being backed by Baelish gold, because Radgar Æleding had more money than anyone. Must she believe that the invincible Bael had blundered so badly?

  When the pandemonium faded enough for her to be heard, she said, “Are you quite certain this battle was genuine, Grand Inquisitor? Is there a reliable body count? Can we really believe such an improbable story?”

  The room fell silent, and the councillors sheepishly resumed their seats. This time Grand Inquisitor sat down, too.

  “I believe it, my lady. There are some questions still unanswered, yes. The messenger arrived just after dawn, exhausted, having ridden all night. He was still being interrogated when I came away to attend this meeting. I left instructions that I was to be informed at once if deeper probing revealed any inconsistencies in his story.”

  Malinda shuddered. “What does ‘deeper probing’ mean? You put your own agents to the Question?”

  “Oh no, nothing so severe, just a mild conjuration to search out details or omissions. The subjects rarely show much permanent impairment. The man is merely a part-time agent, you see. A trained inquisitor can be emptied like a bottle.”

  “It is not like the Baels to leave their ships vulnerable,” Constable Valdor rumbled.

  Grand Inquisitor favored him with a snakelike stare. “I hear of hundreds of dead and a large number of prisoners. Including one whom Her Majesty may wish to identify personally.” He paused to let the implications penetrate, eyes to widen. “Radgar Æleding.”

  Amid the renewed tumult his words had caused, ancient Horatio Lambskin sat in brooding stillness like a reef in surf, but his gaze was restless, assessing everyone’s reaction. Malinda was doing the same. The Chancellor had smiled at first, but now she was frowning. Master Kinwinkle was another who had seen that this seeming triumph held dangerous implications.

  “Military protocol is not my speciality,” Bur
ningstar said when order returned. “Am I correct in thinking that a royal prisoner automatically belongs to the monarch?”

  Several men spoke up in agreement, including Valdor and even Kinwinkle, the former herald.

  “Whistle for him right away!” the Duke boomed. “Have him brought to Grandon posthaste. Bird in the hand, what? A king ought to be worth a king’s ransom.”

  “Not in this case,” said Grand Inquisitor. “Granted he is rich beyond measure, he has no close family to ransom him, while he certainly has many rivals who would seek to block such a move. And his person is of no value, since kings of Baelmark are elected by the moot. The moment his capture becomes known, the earls will assemble to elect another. After that he will be just another pirate.”

  “He may be willing to ransom himself,” Chancellor Burningstar said. “I agree with the Duke’s suggestion that a troop of lancers be dispatched to Lomouth to remove the royal prisoner here. We should not give him time to buy his way out of jail.”

  “Not unless he pays the rent to Her Majesty!” Brinton said, much taken with his own wit.

  Malinda sprang to her feet in fury. “I remind you, Cousin, that Radgar Æleding murdered my father and broke a formal treaty to do it. All he will buy from me is a stroke of the headsman’s ax and for that I will not charge him one copper mite. Constable? Go and get him!”

  The Trial, Day Three

  “You killed him,” the chairman rasped. “The moment you heard that the King of Baelmark had been taken prisoner, you dispatched a troop of lancers posthaste to Lo-mouth with a royal warrant to seize him and bring him back to Grandon. Is that not correct?”

  “Yes,” Malinda said wearily. It had been a hard day, the third of three hard days. Dusk was settling on Grandon and its Bastion. Workers must now be heading home to their families, wives preparing the evening meal, footsore horses munching oats in warm stalls. On the river ships rode at anchor. In the Hall of Banners flunkies were setting out candelabra so the commissioners could see the witness and clerks record proceedings.

  The farce was almost over. She had almost ceased to care. Her first brave illusion of something approaching a fair trial had been as ephemeral as a rainbow. With distortions, half truths, browbeating, and his own lies, Horatio Lambskin had served her up to his master like a trussed calf. He had also intimidated the commissioners until they had abandoned any pretense of having authority. They asked no questions now. She was obviously guilty and they would vote as instructed.

  “So, without even an attempt at a trial, you struck off his head and stuck it on a spike. You put your husband’s head alongside your brother’s?”

  Some faint remnant of the famous royal temper stirred—“If Radgar was my husband, then my claim to the throne was invalid, so why did you pledge allegiance to me right here in this hall, Master Lambskin?”

  “The inquiry will take note that the witness refused to answer.”

  “The answer is simple—I followed the advice of my Privy Council, to which you belonged. It was you who instructed us, Chancellor. If we wanted to execute the King of Baelmark, you said, we must do so quickly, before he could be demoted.”

  “But did I not argue that so important a prisoner should first be put to the Question, or at least thoroughly interrogated?”

  “I do not recall.” She half expected the inquisitor jailers standing alongside her to call her a liar, but she spoke the truth and they remained silent. “He had been thoroughly interrogated, in Lomouth, before my men even reached him. Interrogated most horribly! I did not see him myself, but I was told that, as Lord of the Fire Lands, he bore some sort of conjuration that made him immune to fire. Flame would hurt him but not burn him. He had already been tortured out of his wits.

  “Besides, I saw what the Question did to Lord Roland and I vowed I would never treat any man so, no matter how evil he was. Am I charged with being too soft-hearted? The Council agreed to Radgar Æleding’s execution and you were present at the meeting.” She could not remember which way he had voted in the end, though. She certainly remembered the Radgar she had met briefly on the longship at Wetshore, and her conviction then that he was not the monster of his reputation. She remembered her revulsion at the thought of turning such a man into a gibbering rabbit.

  The chairman peered along the table, first left, then right. “The honored commissioners may well wonder whether the Bael’s hasty execution was designed to suppress his version of what exactly passed between the two of them before her father was assassinated. A transcript of the testimony he gave in Lomouth will be placed before the commissioners in due course.”

  “Testimony given under torture?” Malinda shouted. “Or did you write it yourself this morning?”

  “The witness will speak only when addressed. But let us by all means discuss Lord Roland, since you mention him.” The chairman bared yellow stumps of teeth. “The traitor Roland. Now that one was put to the Question, whereupon he confessed to treason against the Council of Regency, the supreme authority in the land. Before he could make a full and detailed statement, your agents took over the Bastion and you ordered the prisoner released from his cell.”

  “I did. I still have nightmares about what you had made of him. How do you manage to sleep at all, Chancellor?”

  “You ordered the prisoner moved to—”

  “He was not a prisoner then.”

  “Be that as it may, that night he was murdered. Who killed him?”

  “I do not know.” The Blades, of course, but she did not know which.

  “Who do you think killed him?”

  “My suspicions are not evidence.”

  “The inquiry takes note that the witness refuses to answer. Was he not murdered so he would not testify to your part in his foul treason?”

  “I do not know why he was killed.”

  “The witness is lying!” barked one of the guards alongside her chair.

  “All right, he was murdered out of pity! Murdered by one of his best friends—and I do not know which—because your horrible conjurations had turned him into—”

  “Silence! The witness will speak only to answer a question.” The chairman sighed. “Radgar, Roland—I am sure the honorable commissioners have noted that witnesses to your crimes had very brief lives. Now let us consider Pompifarth. You sent the mercenary troops known as the Black—”

  “You were at that meeting! You know how I fought to have the terms of engagement restricted! You know—”

  “If you persist in interrupting the court,” the chairman said hoarsely, “then I will have the guards gag you and allow you to testify only by gestures. Your seal was on the warrant by which those mercenary brutes sacked Pompifarth. Those violent men were ragged and hungry, yet you sent them to storm a city you claimed to rule. The killing, rapine, and looting were done in your name and by your authority.”

  “Is that a statement or a question? In either case it is a lie. Souris was strictly forbidden to enter any part of the city other than the fortress that abuts it on the north. The massacre was ordered by—”

  The chairman nodded and a hard, rough-skinned hand clapped over Malinda’s mouth, banging her head back against the wood of the chair. Other hands grabbed her arms, immobilizing her.

  “This is your last warning. The next time you speak un-bidden, you will be gagged and bound.” The chairman glanced to left and right. “At this hour we usually adjourn for the day. Howsoever, I do believe that we can wind up this tedious business fairly rapidly now. May I suggest that the honored commissioners take a brief break to partake of some of Governor Churle’s splendid hospitality and then reassemble in about an hour? At that time we can question the witness about the last and perhaps most terrible of her crimes, the murder she committed with her own already blood-soaked hands.”

  38

  We see most clearly out of the backs of our heads.

  FONATELLES

  News of the Pompifarth disaster reached Grandon early on the fourth of Tenthmoon. Malinda’s
first notice of it came while her maids were dressing her—Chancellor Burningstar was in the anteroom, begging an audience at Her Majesty’s earliest convenience. She called for a robe and the visitor and shooed the girls away.

  Burningstar came hurrying in, her flustered manner utterly out of character. She bobbed a small curtsey at the door, came close, and then lowered herself unsteadily all the way to her knees.

  “Something is wrong,” Malinda said, offering a hand.

  “And that is not a good position for clear thinking. Here, let me help you up.”

  “But I am tendering my resignation, Your Majesty. I have failed most—”

  “Your resignation is refused. Come and sit here.” Rejecting protests, she led the old lady over to the chairs by the fire, and only when they were both seated would she listen.

  “Bad news, obviously.” Was there any other kind?

  Out it came: Pompifarth, sack, murder, looting, mass rape…Within minutes Burningstar was close to tears, and the redness of her eyes said she had wept hard and long already. “Even the Baels are never that bad!” she finished. “They leave the towns standing so the people can generate more wealth to be looted the next time. This was total destruction. I cannot continue as Your Majesty’s—”

  “You will continue.” Malinda felt no desire to weep. She wanted to kill someone. “I think you have been doing amazingly well, and you know I speak the truth. Did I fall into the same pit as Granville, trusting unpaid mercenaries? Souris has switched sides again, obviously. Who put him up to this?”

  “Fitzambrose himself, of course! The fake call for an Anti-Parliament…it was a trap and I led you into it. His men opened the gates for the killers, I’ll swear! Look at the timing—Parliament meets tomorrow and now everyone thinks you made an example of the city.”

  Malinda sighed. “You are right, I fear. Well, write the truth into my speech and let’s hope they believe me.” She looked at the Chancellor’s careworn expression. “There is more?”