“There’s no need for making threats like that, sir,” Griselda declared firmly, pushing her way between the two as Annabel sagged back against the wall in relief. “I take care of my staff, and they do exactly as I say. There’ll be no more mention of this, and that’s that.”
“You’re word’s good enough for me, Missus,” Randwick nodded eventually. Turning, he glanced across at the standing clock and noted the hour for the first time. “Dragonfall take me, it’s already almost noon! Come, girl!” He continued, turning back to Charleroi and extending both hands to help her to her feet. “Let’s have the ladies here get you all cleaned up and looking pretty: we’ve perhaps a half-hour before the king finishes his next appointment, and I’d rather we were waiting for him when he does…”
It was almost an hour before Phaesus, having concluded his latest round of meetings with inconsequential local land owners, noblemen and unashamed social climbers, was finally provided the opportunity to take a short recess and partake of a late luncheon. A small antechamber had been set aside as a private dining room, leading directly off from the main hall behind the throne, and it was there that the king sat down alone to enjoy a large platter of roasted meats, bread and local cheeses, all complimented by a fine selection of red wine. He was seated at the table, facing the only entrance as Randwick knocked softly and slipped inside the room, a very pale and subdued Charleroi following close at his heels.
“I had thought I’d directed the guards to allow entry to no one…” Phaesus observed drily, knowing full well that no sentry with any sense and a desire to keep his vulnerable parts intact and unbruised would ever refuse Randwick passage. “No matter… there’s plenty for all. Come… come…!” He added, beaming now as he spied his daughter for the first time, but that smile died on his lips as he caught the sorrowful expression on her face and the tracks of tears on her cheeks that she’s not been able to stop. There was clearly something wrong – something he didn’t know about – and that it might involve his only child caused his stomach to lurch slightly as his appetite left him.
“I’ve some news, Sire…” Randwick began carefully, nowhere near prepared for what was to come next as he and Charleroi took adjacent seats on the opposite side of the table. “News regarding the Keepsake found out on Round Hill beach this morning…”
“Oh, yes…? The ‘sea monster’ that was washed up overnight…?” Phaesus asked cautiously, using the standard nickname for any such Keepsakes brought in on the tides. They were rare nowadays – far rarer than they had been in his father’s time, were the histories to be believed – but they did still turn up from time to time, sometimes creating havoc and sinking ships as the waves carried their invisible bulks inshore and smashed them against rocks, beaches or city wharves alike.
“Aye, Your Majesty: the very same…”
“It appears this may be ill news, judging from your expressions here,” the king observed seriously, pushing the plate of leftovers off to one side and leaning forward, elbows on the table and propping up his goateed chin as his eyes bored deeply into Randwick’s soul. “Come on, man: out with it. There’s no service to either of us in beating about the bush.”
“Sire, I’ve no words…” he began, faltering a little, before biting the bullet and going on. “Mistress Griselda called me to the princess’ chambers this morning, and…” he paused again, swallowing deeply as the hairs on the back of Phaesus’ neck rose in fear. “Your Majesty, your daughter has seen the Keepsake…”
Even as he uttered that last sentence, Charleroi began to sob softly and buried her face in her hands beside him. He’d steeled himself for some kind of outburst from the king – some raging denial or sorrowful wail of anguish – but instead received just the barest flinch of reaction in return, as if Phaesus had suddenly slipped completely into shock. It was a reaction – or lack, thereof – that Randwick had never expected.
“Sire… the princess… your daughter…” he began, lowering his voice to a whisper and leaning in as if proximity might somehow aid the man’s hearing. “She can see Keepsakes!”
As silence once more reigned, the king’s sad eyes stared into his for a moment and then moved on to his daughter, the pair meeting each other’s gaze through a curtain of Charleroi’s hair that had already managed to break loose from the pack and dangle down in the front.
“Sire…?”
“I hear you, Randwick… I hear you…” Phaesus assured finally, reaching out both arms across the table and taking his daughter’s hands in his. “Charli, my beautiful one…” he began slowly, “I am so sorry…”
An apology was the last thing either had expected, and Charleroi was shocked as she realised a tear had also formed in the corner of her father’s eye and trickled its way down along the forward edge of his left sideburn. Sitting there and allowing the scene to play over and over in his mind, it was a few more seconds before the rest of the picture came into focus for Randwick.
“You know…?” He asked simply, losing all sense of royal protocol momentarily from the shock of that realisation. “You know…!”
“I’ve known for a very long time, Randwick, yes…”
“But, father… why…?” Charleroi demanded, sorrow and anger filling her equally now as she too realised the truth. “Why is this happening to me? Why didn’t you tell me…?”
“What was there to tell, my dear?” He asked with simple resignation, releasing her hands and raising one of his own in supplication as emphasis to his point. “I discovered what you could do when you were still very small… no more than three summers,” he began slowly, seeing no point in withholding the story now. “I doubt you’d remember any of it. You’d been given your first pony… a little Shetland with a tiny saddle and reins tailored to size, and you could already ride him like a champion. You were a natural on horseback and I’d promised to take you for a ride that morning…” he paused then for a moment, wiping at his suddenly-dry lips and deciding to take a small sip of wine from the goblet at his right hand before continuing. “I shouldn’t have – not beyond the walls – but you were so young and I’d promised, after all: what could be the harm? We’d travelled perhaps two hours or more and stopped to take a meal by a creek that emptied into the far side of Peaceful Lake…” He almost smiled then, thinking of it. “I remember it well… I was so proud of you that day, riding like a true horseman already…” He smile disappeared again as he continued the tale. “It was midway through our meal that you looked up and pointed at a clearing at the end of a narrow track, leading off into the scrub. ‘Wagon!’ you said… ‘Funny wagon…!’ I’ll never forget those words…” he breathed softly, another tear making its way down to his chin.
“I didn’t think anything of it at first, but you kept saying it over and over again… and eventually, I got up, drew my sword and moved closer to where you were pointing, using my blade like a blind man’s cane.” His voice broke then, he lowered his head to his hands, and it was a moment or two before he was able to continue on. “Sure enough, right where you’d been pointing the whole time, the blade catches hard against something I cannot see: a phantom of clanging metal in the forest.”
“And you did nothing about it,” Randwick nodded knowingly, sympathy and understanding in his voice now as Charleroi simply stared on in shock and disbelief. This was no king seated before him in that moment… only a desperate father instinctively trying to protect his child.
“What could I do?” Phaesus asked, his voice shaking. “So soon after what happened with Illyra, I couldn’t bear to lose my child as well. Just the thought of it was too much to bear. There was no one else present, so I decided there was no need for anyone to know. We packed up our picnic, rode back to Cadle, and all was well again…”
“And you’ve been hiding me from the whole world ever since, father!” The princess hissed bitterly, so many things now making sense where none had before. “All the chaperones and the shuttered windows… all those times I couldn’t come with you because it ‘w
asn’t safe’ or the roads were ‘too rough’ for a carriage. I see one of these stupid things when I was a baby, and since then you’ve done everything you could to stop me from ever seeing anything again! And to what end, father?” She demanded in the end, somehow feeling that part of an entire lifetime had been cheated from her without recompense. “What have all these years of ‘protection’ gotten me?”
“You were only supposed to be here for two weeks…!” He tried to explain, desperate to water down the terrible guilt he already felt. “There hasn’t been a sea monster wash up on one of our beaches in a ten-year. How could anyone have possibly guessed?”
“Sire, something must be done,” Randwick ventured, cutting off pointless recrimination and returning the conversation to the present. “I’ve a proposal… something that might work for all of us… but we’ll need resources that only you can give.”
“Tell me, sir…” Phaesus urged, trusting the man completely. “Whatever you need, you shall have it…”
“A fast cog for a start, with a loyal crew and provisions enough to make landfall anywhere in the Osterlands that we so desire.” He answered immediately. “She can’t be here for the Endweek service – that’s assured – but neither can she leave too early either: a missing princess would raise too many questions. I know just the ship and crew for the task, but I’ll need your order to allocate supplies.”
“Leave…?” Charleroi asked sharply, shock once more filling her words as the concept of going somewhere came up for the first time. “Why should I leave…? I’ll go back to Cadle…”
“There’s nowhere safe in Huon right now, lass…” Randwick replied sadly, turning to face her with a serious expression. “Much as I know most of it’s smoke and mirrors, there’s no denying there’s some kind of power behind those crystals they carry with ‘em and we can’t risk you taking part in another o’ the weekly blessings; not now you know what’s wrong. One hint of what’s happened and you’ll be locked up where even a king can’t save you.”
“But… but, it’s my home…!” She pleaded desperately, unable to even conceive of being away from Cadle and her father.
“Not anymore, lass…” Randwick said sadly, shaking his head.
“There’s nothing to be done, my darling,” Phaesus confirmed, fighting to hide the heartbreak filling his own soul. “Randwick’s right… it’ll not be safe here. I would defend you with my life, but if the truth is revealed and I defy The Brotherhood, there’d be no hope of a treaty: the Kings’ Council would disavow me and every kingdom in the Osterlands would stand with Harald as he wiped us out. Thousands would die…the kingdom would be destroyed…” another tear coursed down his cheek then. “And you would still be dead at the end of it all.”
“Father, you can’t… you can’t…!” She wailed, becoming more frantic as she realised he might actually stand by his decision. “I’m the princess… your daughter… you can’t do this…!”
“I cannot bear this, Randwick… go now, please… I beg you…” Phaesus moaned softly, turning his head away now so as not to show the weakness of a king in tears.
“Come on, lass…” he sighed sadly, nodding to the king as he rose from his chair and turned to the sobbing princess. “There’s no gain to be had talkin’ more on this while everyone’s upset.”
“Father, noooo…!” She moaned, overcome with feelings of abandonment as Randwick placed his hands gently in her shoulders and guided her to her feet, at which point she immediately collapsed against his chest sobbing uncontrollably.
“Who else knows, Randwick…?” Phaesus asked softly, never turning his head back to face them for a moment.
“Just Griselda and one of her handmaidens, Annabel, Sire…”
“You trust them…?”
“I trust the old woman,” he answered with cold honesty, laying a steading arm around the stricken princess as comfort. “As for the girl, I know not, but it was promised she’d be kept in line…”
“Thank you, Randwick…”
“Your Majesty…” he nodded simply, then returned to the task of guiding Charleroi toward the door.
“Daddy… please…!”
The king collapsed to the table the moment the door had closed behind them, sobbing silently with his head in his hands.
She woke late into the night, startled at first in the semi-darkness of the crackling fireplace set into the opposite wall, only to find her father seated beside her on the bed, tears in his eyes.
My beautiful girl…” he whispered softly, reaching out to brush the hair from her face and instead accepting her embrace as she threw her arms about him and buried her face in his chest. “My poor, beautiful girl…”
“What shall I do, father… what shall I do…?”
“You’ll survive for the moment, my darling, while I find some way to fix this. I must away with the official party to Demon’s Port tomorrow morning and shan’t be back until nextday, for the official ceremony. You must be seen at the celebration, but you shall be away from here directly after… you cannot be part of the Endweek service.”
“No one knows, father… how could they…?”
“You’ve never seen them use the crystals to uncover a witch,” Phaesus observed, pausing for a moment before recounting a memory that had just come to him. “I saw it once… back when I was about your age. It was an Endweek service, and the prelate was moving about the congregation as usual, Shard necklace in one hand as he delivered the Holy Blessing. There was a young girl there –no more than eight or nine, she was the daughter of a nobleman – and when his hand touched her skin, the crystal in that necklace flashed brightly and there came a sharp, keening like the unholy buzz of some great insect.”
He paused again then as unpleasant memories came to him.
“They took her away there and then,” he continued, shaking his head faintly at the recollection. “The father – old Prendergast, I think it was – screamed and raged against them but it was to no avail. He pleaded and wailed as his daughter screamed for her daddy and his wife collapsed in a faint over the shock of it all; yet they would hear none of it. What else could he do… to save his own flesh and blood? Enraged and devoid of all reason, he drew the dagger at his belt and tried to kill the prelate, as if that might somehow put everything to right…”
“What happened?” She asked slowly, not sure she wanted to her the answer as she pulled back, staring up into his sad eyes.
“He was shot down by the Captain of the King’s Guard: his own brother…” Phaesus answered after a moment, and she felt him shudder at the memory. “His own kin took a crossbow and fired a bolt into his back, in front of his screaming daughter and a hundred fellow nobles, and not one of ‘em raising a hand against it… myself among them!” There was guilt in his tone, now. “The mother killed herself in grief that night and they burned the girl next morning, with no family to say goodbye. Her name escapes me, now, I’m ashamed to say, but I would think of what happened to her often in the early years, as you were growing up… after I found out what you could do…”
“How horrible…!” She murmured, then a thought occurred to her. “But… father if I have been a witch all this time, how is it that the brothers have never found me out? I’ve sat through hundreds of Endweeks…”
“That, I do not yet know for certain,” he shrugged, “but I suspect they can only see what the person knows. You were too young to understand at the time, and I never told you… in your own mind, you were as innocent and pure as you truly are, and there was no darkness in your thoughts for the crystal to find. Most men aren’t like Randwick,” he continued darkly with a grim expression. “Most of us are foolish, stupid creatures, and ignorance is easily led. If my own guard thought for a moment I’d betrayed the Laws of the Shard, every one of them would strike me down in The Brotherhood’s name without a thought.
“I know The Brotherhood fears this age of machines – fears that their congregations will turn away from the ‘old’ gods – but those fear
s are groundless, really.” He continued tiredly. “There are no unbelievers when the battle rages, believe me… and in this life, people need something to believe… something that promises some kind of ‘paradise’ they can look forward to when their days are short and their time approaches. Machines can give them none of that.”
“Do you believe them, Daddy? Am I a witch…?” She asked in a soft, broken voice that tore at his heart. “Am I evil…?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore, darling girl,” he admitted, almost managing a wry smile then, “but I do know this, Charleroi: that you are the kindest, smartest, most wonderful girl in this whole, wide world and the one thing you are not is evil. I may not yet be able to prove it, but I am as certain now as I was that afternoon we went riding, all those years ago: witches may exist or they may not but whatever The Brotherhood say, seeing Keepsakes is no proof of being one for you are no witch, and if you can see these things, there must be – must be – some other explanation. You must go away for now to be safe, but I’ll do everything I can to find out what that explanation is… this I promise on my very soul, as a king, and as a father…”
XI
Catalyst
There was pain and dizziness as Nev struggled back toward the unpleasant reality of consciousness. Not quite ready to open her eyes, she could already feel a dull ache at the back of her skull where she’d clearly been hit by something hard, and a growing migraine threatened to split it in two whenever she moved her head. It was also quite clear that she was tied to a chair, her hands secured behind her back in a position that was quite uncomfortable, if not actually painful. It took just a few seconds for fear to take over from confusion and although she knew it would make no difference whatsoever, her first instinct was to keep her eyes shut tight as if not being able to see what was happening might somehow make it all go away. In the end, it was the sound of other voices that gave her the strength to overcome her mounting terror and open her eyes.
Dragonfire Page 27
