“Lord?” Rory snorted. “I’m a thief.”
“So are most of the nobility,” I said. “They’re just better dressed.”
The seneschal made shooing motions that sent us into the expansive court of Cynestol. “Isn’t he going to announce Bolt?” Rory asked.
Gael nodded. “Oh yes, but he doesn’t want anything or anyone to distract from his presentation.”
“Because he’s an Errant?”
“Because he’s the last Errant,” Gael said. “Their exploits are legendary.”
Behind us, the seneschal proclaimed Bolt’s presence in a voice that I imagined could be heard in Caisel’s capital city of Vadras. “Nobility of the realm, I bring you an unexpected honor . . .”
I listened as he described Bolt in mythical terms for the next five minutes. By the time he finished, the music and entertainment had stopped and every eye was fastened expectantly on the entrance.
Bolt stepped through, dressed all in white, his face like granite.
As one, the crowd bowed to him according to their rank and station, and it was as if a wind had blown across a field of flowers. When the music and noise resumed I got my first glimpse of court in Cynestol.
Chapter 15
I made some offhand comment on the appearance of court that was out of my head as soon as it left my mouth, and Bolt shrugged with his response. “The court of kings isn’t square or even close to it. The hall and the cathedral are both built to the same ratios, nine long, six wide, and four high.”
The numbers of the Exordium. I took a deep breath. I had my own date with those numbers, a task hinted at by Ealdor that left me guessing most of the time. Gael nudged me forward into a maelstrom of color and noise and scent that left me reeling. Three times the size of Bunard’s court, it wasn’t just its extents that overwhelmed me—the walls and pillars, each four paces broad at the base, were clad in silver to a height of five paces and polished to a mirror finish. Every time someone moved, countless reflections moved with them.
“The court in Cynestol is designed to overwhelm visitors,” Gael murmured in my ear.
“It’s doing a great job,” I said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Focus on a single point and concentrate on the sound of just one of the musicians, and the rest will become manageable.”
I nodded and squinted, locking my gaze onto Bolt’s back. No one else in the room had chosen to dress in white. I would have laughed if the contrast between Bunard’s court and this one hadn’t been so stark. People clustered around Bolt, drawing near but keeping a respectful distance, waiting.
Gael gestured to Rory and me. “Stay close together and keep watch while I circulate among the crowd. It’s customary in Cynestol for visitors to greet as many of the nobility as possible.”
I took a few quick steps toward Bolt, and Rory trailed me by half a dozen paces. A number of young women took the opportunity to come forward and make his acquaintance. Charisse was among them. I could have pitied our young thief.
When I stepped in at Bolt’s side, the crowd looked at me as though I’d blasphemed and Aer might strike me dead at any moment.
“You would think that after a few decades, people would have more sense than to behave like this,” he muttered.
“They look as if they’re waiting for you to say something.”
He grunted. “They are.”
“Why?”
He sighed, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d swear that my guard was on the verge of pouting. “I saved Queen Chora’s life and they’ve built that piece of history up in their minds until they’ve turned me into some myth that has no resemblance to flesh and blood. They’re waiting for me to make a pronouncement.”
“What?”
He didn’t get the chance to explain. A woman of perhaps thirty, wearing a gown that fired the imagination without requiring much of it, stepped forward and put her fingertips on Bolt’s bare arm. “Errant Consto”—she curtsied without breaking contact—“when will you declare your regency?”
“What?!” I squawked like a bird before I could help myself.
Bolt grabbed my arm and hauled me two steps back. “This is why I didn’t want to come back here, especially now,” he whispered. “The Errants have a history in Cynestol going back twenty centuries. On those few occasions when the king or queen died without passing on their gift, one of the Errants would serve as regent until the new ruler was found.”
I shook my head. “I’ve read the history books. The last time Aille had a regent was three hundred years ago.”
He sighed. “Cynestol has been here for almost two thousand years. These people regard tradition with the same reverence as the people of Moorclaire hold the mathematicum.”
“But there aren’t any more Errants,” I muttered. “You’ve been attached to the Vigil for decades.” I searched through the memories of all my history lessons, wishing I’d paid more attention. “What happened to them? Why are you the last one?”
Something flickered across the background of his gaze, something hot. “The ones who fell with me were never replaced. The attack on Queen Chora was orchestrated by Bael Waerloga.”
I nodded. “I think I remember that part.”
“Ha!” Bolt laughed. “But likely not all of it. Bael was one of us, an Errant, but he was also cousin to the pretender.”
“Do you have to serve?”
He looked out across the crowd, and I followed his gaze. Even the people who weren’t looking at us directly had their bodies turned so they could watch us without seeming to. “No, but I’m going to have to offer them something in return.”
A shadow fell across the space between us.
“Errant Consto?” the woman in the diaphanous dress called his attention, the tips of her fingers working their way up his arm toward his neck. “Are you currently unattached?”
I admired the way he managed to keep his gaze from drifting away from her face. He bowed, and I tried to remember if I’d ever seen him offer that gesture to anyone else before. “Duty precludes me from such sweet entanglements,” he said in a voice that carried well past our circle. “I have spoken with the Archbishop, and we have decided it would be better if I declined the regency.”
A buzz of collected mutters and whispers swept through the crowd like ripples on a pond. People no longer pretended to look elsewhere. Everyone faced my guard. “However, my companions and I have been asked by Archbishop Vyne to aid him in verifying the rightful heir, and it is a task we have accepted.”
I watched the crowd with their innumerable reflections to see if any of them might betray themselves. I’d assumed it to be a scant hope. If any of them were scheming for the throne, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to let their objection to Bolt’s announcement show, but waves of displeasure washed over the crowd like clouds drifting in front of the sun. Mutters of disapproval built into an angry buzz that reflected from the walls with almost as much clarity as their likenesses and a few of the closest went so far as to show their backs to us.
I leaned toward my guard so that no one else could hear me. “I don’t understand.”
He shook his head. “By having me decline the regency while verifying the ascension, Vyne just removed the last fiction that the church and the throne were separate.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. In Bunard the priests always test for the gift of kings when the throne comes to another. I should know. I killed a man who’d stolen enough of the gifts to pass the test and take the throne.”
Bolt nodded. “The Errants performed the same function here. The difference is that I just placed myself under Vyne’s authority in that process.” Disapproval had created an open circle of space around us, but he checked to make sure no one was within hearing anyway. “The Errants were much like the Vigil, birthed from the church, but autonomous. The crowd would have preferred me to say that I would use my power to ensure the selection is correct.”
I nodded. “That way, you would have been seen as an outsider
, there to make sure the church didn’t place a pretender on the throne. Now, they think you’re part of a plot.” I thought about that for a moment. “Is Vyne so mistrusted, then?”
The last Errant shrugged. “Who in power isn’t?”
“Lai—” I stopped. Laidir had been the best king I could imagine, but even so, nearly half his nobles had objected to his authority.
“Exactly,” Bolt said.
“Why say it that way, then?” I asked as I waved my arm at the crowd. “They despise you now.”
“Because if I hadn’t, they’d keep pestering me to take the regency. This will make our job easier.”
“Oh yes, the job is always easier when people hate you and are trying to kill you.”
“Humph. You really should do something about that sarcastic streak.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Gael emerged from a knot of nobles and their wavering reflections to step across the isolation and join us. “You certainly know how to charm a crowd.”
Bolt’s eyes narrowed. “‘Better the wounds of a friend than the kisses of an enemy,’” he quoted. “They’ll thank me later, when the rightful heir sits the throne.”
Nice as that sounded, I’d seen enough of human nature to know it wasn’t true. “No, they won’t.”
He nodded. “You’re right, they won’t, but it sounds good.” He pivoted on one heel and made for the west end of the hall, where Queen Chora had held court. On a raised dais stood a throne of dark polished wood gilded with silver and gold. The jeweled headpiece, a gull perched on an oak branch, symbolized the sea and the land from which Aille drew its vast wealth. The throne sat empty, but the chairs flanking it weren’t.
Two men more different would be hard to describe. One, perhaps a score and five, sat alone in the left-hand chair with the fixed scowl of a man wishing for an offense. Muscled, he could have passed for a soldier but for the silver and gold thread that adorned his tunic and hose of rich green.
Bolt sighed. “Prince Maenelic,” he said. “Delve him if you can do it without being obvious,” he muttered.
I couldn’t see anything particularly menacing about the prince, other than the fact that he was a noble who outranked me and appeared to be in foul humor—a circumstance with which I had more than passing familiarity. “Why?” I asked.
“Because by now the entire nobility of Cynestol knows the gift of kings must have passed to someone else,” Bolt said. “His presence here is a needless exercise in humiliation. It would be interesting to know what motivates him to endure it.”
“Alright.” I nodded to the other chair, where a Merum bishop sat surveying the crowd with scarcely concealed amusement. Four uniformed cosp stood watch, guarding him. The dichotomy between the bishop and the prince was stark, to say the least. “What about him?”
“Bishop Gehata,” Bolt said. “He’s the Merum advisor to the throne. The death of Queen Chora means he’s Archbishop Vyne’s fulcrum. That makes him the second most powerful man in Aille, just after the Archbishop.”
Younger than I expected, the bishop surveyed the crowd, his lips curled in condescension. My elevation to the nobility in Collum had given me the opportunity to meet any number of men who’d been born into wealth. Most of them had learned very quickly how to carry themselves as if they deserved it. Gehata could have been the man who gave them lessons. “He makes Duke Orlan look almost humble.”
“Lineage is far more complicated in Aille,” Bolt said. “Their habit of getting divorced and remarried turns all the family trees into one giant hedge, but his sits very close to the top.”
I trailed Bolt and copied his bow to Prince Maenelic, making sure to go a bit deeper on mine than he did, since he was the last Errant. Gael’s curtsy showed enough skin to catch the prince’s gaze.
“Your Highness,” Bolt said, “may I offer my condolences on the death of your mother?”
Maenelic’s expression never changed, but he did swap targets, bringing his scowl to bear on Bolt. “Why would I want them?” he spat, but he slurred his words, and random splashes of red marked the floor by his chair. “She died without passing her gift to me.” He let his gaze sweep over the bishop and his guards. “Do I merit even a single guard any longer?” He waved a hand at the nobles before him. “Look at them, dancing with as much spring in their step as always. Do they have sense enough to wonder how a dancer could die by falling? Did they fast for her death? Should I?” He laughed a bitter sound, like a saw tearing through wood, and pointed at a random nobleman of considerable girth. “I think that fellow might have missed a snack. All continues as it has since the beginning. Kings and queens are like grass.”
Bolt dipped his head but didn’t respond. “We will do everything we can to find her killer, Your Highness.”
Maenelic lurched to his feet, wavering. “You fool!” He gripped his wine glass like a club. “My place has been given to another! I don’t care if she was killed. I don’t care if you find her killer!” He cocked his arm and threw.
The goblet leapt from the prince’s hand, but Bolt snatched it out of the air, his motions almost too quick to follow. I was surprised at first that he would put his gift on such broad display before I remembered every one of these people knew him as the last Errant. They would have expected no less of Tueri Consto.
He held the goblet out to the prince with a bow. “I crave your pardon, Your Highness. You seem to have dropped your glass.”
The prince’s anger, deprived of a target, drained from him, and with a glance around the throne room, he reseated himself.
“Well, that was unfortunate,” Gehata said to Bolt. “We must remember to pray for poor Maenelic. The stress of his mother’s death weighs more heavily upon him than we supposed.” He spoke as if the prince was no longer present, and his expression never shifted as he wielded his amusement like a rapier. “It’s just as well,” he said. “Please, Errant Consto, join us.”
His gaze sharpened a fraction when Bolt made no move. “Oh, I see. You have no place to sit. Come, Prince Maenelic. Errant Consto can hardly be expected to stand for the duration of court. Where are your manners? Give the last Errant your seat.”
The prince locked gazes with Bishop Gehata, and rage mottled his face, but at last the bishop’s disdain and the collective scrutiny of the court proved to be more than he could bear. With an oath owing its origin to the barracks rather than the palace, he left the hall. The nobles parted for him, but their expressions conveyed uniform contempt. Not one face in the entire hall spared Maenelic enough compassion to even pretend a show of sympathy.
Then I understood. Maenelic’s behavior had unmasked them. In his grief, the prince had dispensed with cordial niceties and put the true nature of court on full display. He had stripped away their pretense, and that was unforgiveable.
“Well, that was amusing, if uncomfortable,” Gehata said, his voice dropping to a purr. “I will have to ensure the prince does not return to court. Perhaps some time with Aille’s forces will allow him some measure of healing.” He laughed. “Or I might permit him to watch as you give his birthright to another. Of course, to do that you’ll need to hear the petitions of those who wish to state a claim to the throne.” The bishop’s smile turned predatory. “As counselor to the throne, it will be my privilege to advise you. Please, Errant Consto”—Gehata’s voice sharpened—“sit.”
I’d seen men of all stripes kick a man who was down, both literally and figuratively, but I’d never seen anyone take as much pleasure in the act as Gehata. The bishop had just emasculated the prince in front of the entire court and had forced Bolt to take part. I’d been wrong when I thought I couldn’t hate anyone more than Duke Orlan.
The buzz of the crowd grew behind us as Bolt approached Maenelic’s seat. “They don’t seem too pleased with the prospect of you sitting there,” I said.
Bolt shook his head. “They’re not. If I had declared myself regent, I would have had the right to it until the rightful heir was found. I’ll need
you to flank me.”
“And why are we doing this?” I asked. “Other than to make ourselves targets in a room full of people you’ve just disappointed.”
He almost smiled. “As the bishop said, to receive claimants to the throne. Vyne wants to know who the next king or queen is going to be. This is how we find them.” He cut his eyes toward me. “I hope. Any noble who wishes to make the claim to the gift of kings will have to introduce themselves.”
I almost stumbled. “You want me to delve them? Just in case you needed reminding, I can’t see gifts.”
We turned to face the crowd and their myriad reflections. “You won’t have to,” Bolt said. “If they hold the gift of kings, their memories will show it.”
“This soon?” Gael asked. “It took the priests weeks to verify Cailin’s son held the gift after Laidir’s passing.”
“That’s because Brod was a child. It’s different with adults.” Bolt sat in the right-hand chair while Gael and I flanked him on either side. “They know almost from the moment it comes upon them.”
I looked out across the crowd, struck again by the lack of mourning for Queen Chora and the sheer amount of naked ambition present in the room. “And what do we do when each and every noble in here claims to hold the gift of kings? I can’t delve more than five or six a day.”
Bolt’s shoulders, still thick with muscle after three score plus years, shifted, shedding my concerns. “We exert the privilege to make them wait until the next day or the one after that or next week or month.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “What did you think, Willet? Cynestol boasts a ponderous history. Nothing here moves quickly.”
Strains of music drifted to us from the musicians stationed at each of the corners of the throne room. Somehow through all the tumult they had managed to stay in time with each other, and their music reflected the mood of the court, their chords ascending first into augmented mystery before dropping into a cascade of notes that reflected the diminished hopes of the crowd. I wondered if they were mocking us. Was it possible to make a mandolin sound sarcastic?
The Wounded Shadow Page 12
