by Brent Weeks
“Queen!” Luc said. “Your queen!”
Momma K lifted her eyebrows as if he were trying to put one over on her. A little reminder to everyone how far and how fast Terah Graesin was attempting to rise. “But here stands the rightful king,” Momma K said. “Designated heir by King Gunder IX and received by common acclamation. The man to whom you’ve already pledged fealty.” But she knew she’d already lost. She saw it in the defiance, the absolute hatred, in Terah Graesin’s face.
“That’s enough, Gwinvere,” Logan said.
She smiled her acquiescence. She stepped back, her head down, abruptly meek.
“May I remind everyone,” a voice near the maps said, “that tomorrow we face the Godking and his wytches?” It was Count Drake, ever the peacemaker.
“We need no reminders,” Terah Graesin said. “We have our army, we have our battlefield, we have the advantage, and in a few more moments, we’ll have our battle plan.”
“No,” Agon said.
“Excuse me?” Terah asked, indignant.
“You have His Majesty’s army,” Agon said. “My lords, many of you were there at the feast before the coup. Garret Urwer, your father died beside me in the north tower. As did your uncle, Bran Braeton. They died going to save our king, Logan Gyre. You were there—”
“Enough!” Terah Graesin cried. “We know what the mad king said.”
So the king had been insane when he’d designated Logan his heir. It wasn’t a perfect line of attack, but it was good enough. Given time, Momma K would have reminded everyone of the timing of the coup, of the irrelevance of the king’s sanity to the legality of his decrees, and of Logan’s marriage to Jenine. Given time, Momma K could have orchestrated pressure from all sides to get Terah to surrender her claim. Now all that was immaterial. She simply had to wait for the inevitable.
“My lady,” Duke Havrin Wesseros said, “they say only what would be said in backrooms and great rooms throughout the kingdom if there were time. It seems to me that we all have decisions to make now, and little time in which to make them.”
“I won’t hear their lies,” Terah hissed.
“Don’t you see?” Duke Wesseros said. “If you won’t hear them out, Logan will leave, and he won’t leave alone. He’ll take half of our army with him, maybe more. Does anyone fancy taking on the Khalidorans with half an army?”
Closer. But you’re worried about the wrong person leaving.
Agon said, “As you say, the king was mad when he died. The Sa’kagé poisoned him at the feast.”
“Poisoned? You murdered him, Brant!” Garret Urwer cried out.
“Yes, I killed him,” Agon said. “I won’t justify that deed now. What’s important is that Khalidor wished to wipe out the royal family to cause exactly this. They wished to split any resistance before it could begin. King Gunder saw that coming, which is why—not the night of the coup, when he was poisoned, but earlier in the day—he married his daughter Jenine to Logan. Many of you have sworn oaths to Lady Graesin. But your fealty was already owed to Logan Gyre. Thus, you’re released from your oaths to the duchess.”
“I release none of you!” Terah Graesin shrilled.
Pandemonium broke out. Nobles were screaming at each other, gathering in clumps to talk with their advisers and the lords closest to them, some pressing toward Terah Graesin, others pressing toward Logan. Logan watched it all, impassive. He understood, too.
“Hold on,” Duke Wesseros said. He looked a lot like his sister Nalia, the last queen. He’d been out of the city checking on lands the Lae’knaught had seized in eastern Cenaria when the coup had occurred. He raised his hands and gradually the nobles quieted. “The hour grows late, and an army waits for us,” Duke Wesseros said. “Stand to the side of the man or the woman you would have rule us.”
“Why don’t you vote with the stones instead, that people may vote for who they truly wish to lead?” Momma K said. Inwardly, she cursed. She should have let one of the other lords suggest it, but Wesseros had brought up voting so quickly that Momma K hadn’t had the chance. All the talk was worth nothing if they didn’t have a blind vote.
“Tomorrow we must stand on the field of battle. I think today we have the courage to stand in a tent,” Terah Graesin said. Clever bitch.
Silence fell again, and then people started moving.
Momma K had been depressingly accurate in her estimations of who would end up where. For the most part, the minor nobles looked like they would prefer to go to Logan but didn’t dare defy their lords, which was why Momma K had wanted the blind vote. Terah had concentrated her bribes on the powerful.
As it was, they had a three-way split. Logan, Terah, and undecided.
“As I suspected,” Duke Wesseros said. He led the undecided camp. “The rhetoric has done nothing. With the assassinations of the Gunders, only three great families are left in our country, and here we stand. It seems to me that there is a golden mean, a middle way. Logan Gyre, Terah Graesin, with the fate of all your countrymen at stake, will you put aside your own selfish ambitions?” The buffoon. The idiot. The pox-ridden windbag. He thought he was being smart. If the duke hadn’t created a third camp, Logan at least would have had a majority. They would still have had a chance.
“What are you talking about?” Terah asked.
Logan already knew. Momma K could see it in his stony face.
“This night, on the eve of a battle that will determine the future of our land, will you split our forces, or will you join them? Logan, Terah, will you marry tonight?”
Terah looked around the room quickly, judging who stood with her. Her support was eroding. She looked at those who stood defiant on Logan’s side, those who stood passive with Duke Wesseros. Then she looked at Logan. It wasn’t the look a woman gives a suitor. It was a probe for weakness.
“For the country I love, yes,” Terah Graesin said.
“Logan?”
“Yes,” Logan said woodenly. Gods help him.
60
They had erected a platform so the entire army could see the wedding. Men had already gathered from their fires, and their officers were beginning to organize them into ranks for the ceremony as the moon rose. Besides the army, several thousand commoners and camp followers had crowded around the platform.
“Logan,” Count Drake said, closing the flap of the little tent where Logan was getting ready, “You can’t do this.”
For a long moment, Logan didn’t answer. When it emerged, his voice was low and stern, “What else can I do?”
“The One God says he will provide an escape from every temptation.”
“I don’t believe in your god, Drake.”
“Truth doesn’t depend on your belief in it.”
Logan shook his head slowly, like a bear emerging emaciated after months of hibernation. “Marrying Terah is no temptation. My father married a beautiful, poisonous woman and I saw what it did to him.”
“A lesson you would do well to heed. The difference being that your mother wasn’t capable of nearly as much destruction.”
Logan’s eyes flashed, the bear slowly raising his head to tower above all others. “If there’s a way out that doesn’t destroy us, you tell me what it is! I don’t want to marry—”
“I didn’t say marriage was the temptation.”
“Then what is?”
“Power,” Count Drake said, thumping his cane.
“Damn it, man! It’s marry her or doom us all. You think I haven’t figured out a way to get the majority of these people to follow me? I have! I could take maybe two-thirds of them and leave. That would leave a third to die. You want me to ask thousands to die so I can avoid a bad marriage?
“No, Logan.” Count Drake leaned on his cane. He looked like he needed its support. “My question is, can you be the king that you need to be with such a queen beside you? Terah Graesin was caught off guard today. You caught her in a moment of weakness. That won’t happen again.”
“Well, thank for you illustrating th
e bleakness of my future,” Logan said. “But if you can’t help me escape it, help me get dressed.”
“My king,” Count Drake said, “sometimes the way out of a hole isn’t climbing.”
“Get out,” Logan said.
Count Drake bowed and left sadly.
Logan lifted the circlet and put it on his head. Momma K had seen to it that he looked a king. He had been shaved, his hair cut, his body anointed with oils and adorned with furs. He was dressed in a fine dark gray tunic and cloak trimmed with white samite. He’d reached the age of majority immediately before the coup, but he’d forgotten to choose his own sigil. Now he saw that Momma K had chosen one for him. It incorporated the Gyre’s white gyrfalcon on a field sable, but his falcon wore broken chains on its feet, and the sable field was a black circle reminiscent of the Hole. The gyrfalcon’s wings were spread. It was a worthy sigil. His father would have been proud.
What would you do, father? As a young man, his father had married to save the family. With the benefit of hindsight, would he have done it again?
The tent flap opened and Momma K stepped inside. She looked at him with a shallow but genuine compassion. She couldn’t understand. She’d never loved as Logan had loved. To her, it must look like this was the obvious choice. Marry Terah, deal with the problems later. In his position, Momma K would scheme and manipulate and have Terah killed if it came it to it.
“It’s time,” she said.
“The sigil is perfect,” Logan said. “Thank you.”
“Did you notice the wings?” she asked. “The wingtips extend beyond the circle, Your Majesty. The gyrfalcon will always fly free.”
Together, they walked up onto the platform. It was a circle almost the same size as the Hole. It was a circle to symbolize the perfect, eternal, unbreakable nature of marriage. As Logan climbed, with thousands of eyes turned on him, to take his place right at the center, where the fall to death had been, his heart lurched. He felt sick, claustrophobic. He remembered stretching over the Hole, stretching as far as he could. For what? For pissed-on bread he wouldn’t give to an animal.
Music began playing and his pissed-on bread stepped up daintily onto the platform.
Part of Logan was ravenous for her, as he had been ravenous in the Hole. For the past three months, he’d been so weak, so starved, so preoccupied with surviving that he’d barely spared a thought for sex. Before the Hole, it seemed he’d barely spared a thought for anything else. Now that he was out and regaining his strength, that old Logan was coming back. Terah Graesin was tall and lithe, her curves almost boyish, but her smile was all woman. She moved like a woman who knew what men liked and knew that she had it. The starving, greedy part of Logan wanted to fuck her.
And pissed-on bread always looked so good, until you tasted it. But at least it filled you up, no matter how you felt about it afterward. At least he’d have sex. By all the gods; at twenty-one, he was still a fucking virgin!
The irony of the thought made him smile grimly. Terah saw the smile and smiled back. She did look fantastic. Her hair was teased up into—well, something fancy. Logan wondered how many tailors had been cursing at each other for the last two hours as they’d somehow altered one of her dresses into a wedding dress. It was the traditional green of fertility and new life, slim cut to Terah’s slim body, with ornate groom ties up the back, and a long expanse of leg exposed that was certainly not traditional but welcome nonetheless. It was completed with a stylish veil symbolizing chastity that worked perfectly with the dress, if not so well with the woman in it.
Well, I’ll have as much sex as I want, if her reputation is at all deserved. The thought sloshed in his stomach like warm piss. No, better not to think about her reputation.
Whatever he felt, Terah Graesin somehow pulled off what he had thought was impossible. She was sexy and regal at the same time—to her it was all power, whether it came from her status or her personality or her body. They were all tools to impose her will.
Power. Count Drake said the temptation was power.
Terah came to stand beside him and took his hand shyly. The people cheered. It was just like Jenine Gunder had taken his hand when her father had announced their marriage. Logan swallowed his rising gorge. For Jenine, it had been a spontaneous act. Terah had been at that dinner. She’d seen what Jenine had done and how people had approved. She was imitating Jenine deliberately.
“Relax,” Terah said. “You’re five minutes away from everything you ever wanted.”
You’re a fool if you believe that, Terah. Logan painted a smile on his face and willed his body to relax. No, it wasn’t what he would have chosen, but he would be able to change everything. He could defeat King Ursuul. He could root out the Sa’kagé. He could abolish the poor laws. He could …
That was it. That was what Count Drake meant. That was the temptation of power. He’d turned his ambition in his own mind. It isn’t for me, he’d told himself, it’s for the people. But that wasn’t altogether true, was it? He’d liked ordering Gorkhy’s death; he’d liked dismissing the count: Logan spoke and things happened. People obeyed. He’d been so powerless for so long in the Hole that the idea of never being subject to anyone was honey on his tongue.
Fine, Count Drake, I understand. Now where’s the way out?
It was too late. On one side stood a hecatonarch in his rich cloak—a hundred colors for the hundred gods. On the other stood a man in simple brown robes, a patr of the One God. Duke Wesseros took his place in the middle. Terah had made sure that their marriage would be performed in triplicate. The cheering crescendoed as fifteen thousand people shouted themselves hoarse for the couple they thought would save them.
“May I address the people?” Logan asked.
“Absolutely not,” Terah said. “What kind of a ploy is this?”
“It’s not a ploy. I just wish to speak to those who will bleed and die for us. I haven’t had the chance to do that.”
“You’re going to set them against me,” Terah said.
“How about,” Duke Wesseros said, “how about Logan swears not to say anything negative about you? And if he does, I’ll step in and stop him? Is that acceptable, my lord?”
“Yes.”
“My lady?” Duke Wesseros said, “He is their king.”
“Make it quick.”
“Logan, five minutes,” Duke Wesseros said. He stepped close and lowered his voice. “And may the spirit Timaeus Rindder inspire you.”
It was a contingent declaration of support. Timaeus Rindder had been an orator of such skill he’d turned a chariot race loss into a coup, though he had been bound by exactly the restrictions that Duke Wesseros had put on Logan. In framing the rules the way he had, Duke Wesseros was saying, “If you can get the people on your side, I’ll come, too.”
“My friends, tomorrow we will stand together in the clash and roar of battle.” Logan had barely spoken the first sentence when his words were doubled and redoubled in volume. He paused, then saw Master Nile standing near the front, smiling. Logan pretended that it wasn’t important, and in a moment, everyone else did, too. “Tomorrow, we will face a foe whose face we know. You have seen his face darkening your doors. You have seen his boots muddying your floors. You have seen his torches setting fire to your fields. You’ve felt his fists and whips and scorn, but you refused to yield!”
Logan’s nerves and self-criticism—Could I have said that better? Is my voice steady? Why is it so hard to get a full breath?—faded as he looked at the upturned faces of the people who would be his people. He’d had no idea just a few months ago who the Cenarian people were. He’d known and loved the Gyre’s smallfolk, but had shared the noblemen’s fashionable disdain for the unwashed masses. How easy it was to ask a nameless, faceless mob to die.
“My friends, I spent the last three months in the depths of Hell’s Asshole. I was trapped with the shit and the stink of humanity. I spent my time fearing death and things worse than death. They took my clothes. They took my dignity. I saw the
good suffer with the evil. I saw a woman violated and a woman kill herself so she wouldn’t be violated again. I saw good men and bad make their deals with the darkness. And I made my own. To survive.
“My friends, I was imprisoned beneath the ground. You were imprisoned above it. You knew the fears I knew. You saw the horrors I saw, and worse. We had friends killed. We knew that to resist was to die …and my friends, my people, we looked at the odds against us and we saw no hope. We fled. We hid.” Logan paused, and the people were silent.
“Were you there with me?” Logan asked. “Did you feel rage? Did you feel powerless? Did you watch evil and do nothing to oppose it? Were you ashamed?”
The men and women didn’t look to the left or the right, afraid that their neighbors would see the tears in their eyes. Their heads nodded, yes, yes.
“I was ashamed,” Logan said. “Let me tell you what I learned in the Hole. I learned that in suffering, we find the true measure of our strength. I learned that a man can be a coward one day and a hero the next. I learned that I’m not as good a man as I thought I was. But the most important thing is this: I learned that though it costs me dearly, I can change. I learned that what has been broken can be made new. Do you know who taught me that? A prostitute. In a bitter woman who made her living in shame, I found honor, courage, and loyalty. She inspired me and she saved me.
“Today, there are women here who taught you the same lessons. Many of you are ashamed of your mothers and your wives and your daughters who were raped, who were pressed into sexual slavery at the castle, who sold themselves in brothels so they might survive. You’ve shunned them, rejected them.
“But I say your wives, mothers, and daughters have shown us how to fight. They gave us the Nocta Hemata. They have given us courage. They have shown us the road from shame to honor. Let every woman who fought that night stand forth!”
A few women stepped forward immediately. Bolstered by their courage, others emerged. Men moved aside silently. In moments, a crowd of three hundred women gathered in front of the platform. Some let tears fall, but their backs were straight, their chins high. Men in the ranks were openly weeping now. Not just the men who must have known this small sample, but men from the countryside, men who must have known their own women to be shamed and dishonored, men who were now ashamed of themselves.
