Fortunately, there was a commotion further down the hall. A knight herald pushed through the crowd, winged helmet tucked under one arm. “Your Majesty, I have news.”
The king looked mildly annoyed. “That’s your job, isn’t it? Could you be more specific?”
“News… from the North.” He leaned in to whisper, and the king’s fixed smile sagged.
“My apologies, Lady Savine. My apologies, everyone! I am needed at the Agriont.” The gilt edge of His Majesty’s cloak snapped as he spun on one highly polished heel, his retinue crowding after like a gaggle of self-important ducklings behind their mother, not a smile among them.
Curnsbick puffed out his cheeks. “Do you think we could call ourselves endorsed by His Majesty after a visit of half a minute?”
“A visit’s a visit,” muttered Savine. The chatter was already louder than ever, people flocking towards the doors, jostling one another in their haste to be first to learn the news. And to profit by it. “Find out what that knight herald had to say,” she murmured to Zuri. “Oh, and make a note—I would like Kaspar dan Arinhorm to have troubles with his business in Angland.”
Zuri slipped her pencil from behind her ear. “Rumours, regulations, or just no one answering his letters?”
“Let’s start with a bit of each and see how we go.”
Savine had not made society a snakepit. She was simply determined to slither to the top of it and stay there. If that meant being the most venomous reptile in Adua, so be it.
Fencing with Father
“Wake up, Your Highness.” And there was the hideous scraping of curtains being flung wide.
Orso forced one eye open a slit, holding up a hand to block the savage glare. “I thought I said you shouldn’t call me that.” He lifted his head, but it began to throb in a most unpleasing manner, so he let it drop. “And how dare you presume to wake the heir to the throne?”
“I thought you said I shouldn’t call you that?”
“I’m being inconsistent. The Crown Prince of the Union—
“And Talins, theoretically.”
“—can be as inconsistent as he damn well pleases.” Orso’s fumbling hand closed about the handle of a jug and he lifted it and took a swig, realised too late there was stale ale in it rather than water, and spat it over the wall in a mist.
“Your Highness will have to be inconsistent while dressing,” said Tunny. “There’s news.”
Orso looked for water, couldn’t see any, and swigged down the dregs of the ale after all. “Don’t tell me that blonde from yesterday was carrying the cock-rot.” He tossed the jug rolling across the floor and sagged back into bed. “The last thing I need is another dose—”
“Scale Ironhand and his Northmen have invaded the Protectorate. They’ve burned Uffrith.”
“Pfft.” Orso thought about grabbing a shoe and throwing it at Tunny but decided he couldn’t be arsed, so he rolled over and cuddled up to that girl, what’s-her-name, pressing his half-hard cock into the small of her back where it was warm and making her give a semi-conscious mew of upset. “That isn’t funny.”
“You’re damn right it isn’t. Lady Governor Finree dan Brock is fighting a brave rearguard action along with the Dogman and her son Leo, the big, bold Young Lion, but they’re giving ground before the terror of the Northmen and their fearsome champion Stour Nightfall, the Great Wolf, who’s sworn to drive the damn Southerners out of Angland.” There was a brief silence. “We’re the damn Southerners, in case you’re wondering.”
Orso managed to get both eyes open at once. “You’re not joking?”
“You’ll know when I’m joking because Your Highness will be laughing.”
“What the—” Orso felt a sudden stab of…something. Worry? Excitement? Anger? Jealousy? Some feeling, anyway. It was so long since he really had one it was like a spur in his backside. He scrambled out of bed, got one foot tangled in the sheet, kicked it free and accidently kicked what’s-her-name in the back.
“The hell?” she mumbled as she sat up, trying to claw hair tangled with wine out of her face.
“Sorry!” said Orso. “Terribly sorry, but… Northmen! Invaded! Lions and wolves and whatever!” He grabbed his little box and took a pinch of pearl dust up each nostril. Just to blow away the cobwebs. “Someone should bloody do something.” As the burning at the back of his nose faded, that feeling became sharper. So sharp it made him shiver, the hairs on the backs of his arms standing up. You could try doing something to be proud of, his mother had said. Might this be his chance? He had scarcely even realised how much he wanted one.
He looked from the empty bottles about the bed to Tunny, standing against the wall with his arms folded. “I should do something! Draw me a bath!”
“Hildi’s already doing it.”
“Where are my trousers?” Tunny tossed them over and Orso snatched them from the air. “I have to see my father right away! Is it Monday?”
“Tuesday,” said Tunny as he swaggered from the room. “He’ll be fencing.”
“Then see if you can find my steels as well!” bellowed Orso as the door swung shut.
“For pity’s sake, shut up,” moaned what’s-her-face, pulling the covers over her head.
“One touch a piece!” The king grinned hugely as he offered his hand.
“Well fought, Your Majesty.” Orso let his father pull him to his feet, rubbing at his bruised ribs as he stooped to retrieve his fallen steel. He had to admit he was feeling the pace. His padded jacket seemed rather more padded than the last time he wore it. Perhaps his mother was right and he had passed the age where he could get away with anything. One sober day a week might be a good idea, from now on. A morning a week, at any rate.
But circumstances always conspired to stop him doing the right thing. By then, one of the servants was floating across the perfectly manicured lawn with two glasses on his polished tray.
The king wedged his long steel under his arm to sweep one up. “A little refreshment?”
“You know I never drink before lunch,” said Orso.
They looked at each other for a moment, then both burst out laughing. “You’ve a hell of a sense of humour,” said Orso’s father, raising his glass in a little toast. “No one could ever deny that.”
“To the best of my knowledge, they never have. It’s every other good quality they accuse me of lacking.” He took a swig, swilled it about his mouth and swallowed. “Ah, rich and red and full of sunshine.” Osprian, no doubt, which made him wish, if only briefly, that they’d conquered Styria after all. “I’d forgotten what excellent wine you have.”
“I’m the king, aren’t I? If my wine’s poor, there’s something seriously wrong with the world.”
“There are several things seriously wrong with the world, Father.”
“Doubtless! I was visited by a delegation of working men from Keln, you know, just yesterday, with a set of grievances about conditions in the manufacturing districts there.” He frowned across the beautiful palace gardens and shook his head in dismay. “Choking vapours on the air, adulterated food, putrid water, an outbreak of the shudders, awful injuries from the machinery, babies born deformed. Terrible stories—”
“And Scale Ironhand has invaded the Dogman’s Protectorate.”
The king paused, glass halfway to his mouth. “You heard about that?”
“I’ve been in a whorehouse, not down a well. Adua’s buzzing with the news.”
“Since when did you care about politics?”
“I care about a crowd of barbarians burning the cities of our allies, spreading blood and murder and threatening to invade the sovereign territory of the Union. I’m the heir to the bloody throne, aren’t I?”
The king wiped his lustrous moustaches—grey shot with gold these days, rather than gold shot with grey—and wriggled his fingers back into his glove. “Since when did you care about being heir to the throne?”
“I’ve always cared,” he lied, tossing the glass rattling back onto the tray
and making the servant gasp as he weaved about trying to stop it falling. “I’ve just… had some trouble expressing it. Ready, old man?”
“Always, young pup!” The king sprang forward, jabbing. Their long steels feathered together, pinged and scraped. The king stabbed with his short steel but Orso caught it on his own, held it, turned. They broke apart, circling one another, Orso’s eyes on the point of his father’s long steel, but flicking occasionally to his leading foot. His Majesty had a habit of twisting it before he struck.
“You’re a fine swordsman, you know,” said the king. “I swear you’ve the talent to win a Contest.”
“Talent? Possibly. Dedication, stamina, commitment? Never.”
“You could be a true master if you practised more than once a month.”
“If I practise once a year, it’s a busy one.” In fact, Orso practised at least once a week, but had his father known, he might have suspected that Orso was letting him win. You wouldn’t have thought the monarch of the most powerful nation in the Circle of the World would care about beating his own son in the fencing circle, but throwing a touch or two was always the surest way for Orso to get what he wanted.
“So… what are we planning to do about the Northmen?” he asked.
“We?” The point of his father’s long steel flicked against Orso’s.
“All right, you.”
“Me?” And flicked the other way.
“Your Closed Council, then.”
“They plan to do precisely nothing.”
“What?” Orso’s steel drooped. “But Scale Ironhand has invaded our Protectorate!”
“That’s in no doubt.”
“We’re supposed to be protecting it. Practically by definition!”
“I understand the principle, boy.” The king lunged and Orso dodged aside, hacked with his short steel, the clang of their blades making the great pink wading birds in a nearby fountain look scornfully over. “But principles and reality are occasional bedfellows at best.”
Like you and mother? Orso almost said, but thought that might be a little too much spice for the king’s rather bland tastes in humour. Instead, he dodged another lunge and switched to the attack, catching his father’s long steel on his, blade flickering around it and whipping it from his hand.
He caught a despairing thrust of the short steel, guards scraping, then the blade of his long flexed lightly as he jabbed the king in the shoulder.
“Two to one,” said Orso, slashing at the air. Wouldn’t do to let the old man win too easily. No one ever values what they get without trying, after all.
He beckoned one of the servants over with a towel while his father snapped his fingers impatiently at another to fetch his fallen sword.
“There will always be some crisis, Orso, and it will always be the worst ever. Not long ago, we were terrified of the Gurkish, and with good reason. Half of Adua was destroyed driving them out. Now their great Prophet Khalul has vanished, their all-powerful Emperor Uthman is deposed, and their power has drifted apart like smoke on the breeze. Instead of conquering armies, it is desperate refugees who spill from the South.”
“Can’t we take a moment to enjoy the fall of an enemy?”
“Some of us find little to celebrate in the violent overthrow of a monarch.”
Orso winced. “I suppose it does strike a little close to home.”
“All it shows is that great powers can fall as well as rise. Murcatto has almost all of Styria under her heel and the Old Empire grows in strength, challenging our hold on the Far Country and inciting yet more rebellion in Starikland. Now the bloody Northmen break our hard-won treaties and come to war again. There’s no end to their appetite for blood up there.”
“For other people’s blood, maybe.” Orso tossed the towel over the servant’s head and found his mark again. “It’s surprising how quickly the toughest men tire of the sight of their own.”
“True enough. But it’s the enemies inside our borders that cost me sleep. The wars in Styria have left everyone out of pocket and out of patience. The Open Council never stops complaining. If the nobles didn’t hate each other even more than me, I swear they’d already be in open rebellion. The peasants may have quieter voices but they’re every bit as dissatisfied. I face disloyalty everywhere.”
“Then we must teach a sharp lesson, Your Majesty.” Orso cut, cut, thrust and the king turned the cuts aside, sidestepped the thrust, blundered into a bush clipped to look like a storybook magus’s tower and danced back into space. “A lesson delivered to the Northmen, but witnessed by your faithless subjects, too. Show our allies we can be relied upon, and our enemies that we won’t be trifled with. A clutch of victories, a couple of parades and a dash of patriotic fervour! The very thing to bring the nation together.”
“You’re giving me the same arguments I gave to my own Closed Council, but the coffers are quite simply empty. They’re beyond empty, in fact. You could fill the moat of the Agriont with the money I owe and still have debts left over. There’s nothing I can do.”
“But you’re the High King of the Union!”
Orso’s father gave a sad smile. “One day, my son, you’ll understand. The more powerful you are, the less you can really do about anything.”
The points of his steels appeared to wilt as he spoke, but it was quite clearly a ruse, Orso could tell he was ready by the way he held his back leg. Still, the king was so pleased with his trap it would have been rude not to blunder into it. Orso dived forward with a bark of triumph, then a highly convincing gurgle of shock at the parry he had known was coming. He suppressed his instinct to block the king’s short steel, let it slip past his guard and groaned as it thudded into his training jacket.
“Two each!” cackled Orso’s father. “Nothing like a bit of self-pity to bring the hothead rushing in!”
“Richly done, Father.”
“Life in the old dog yet, eh?”
“Fortunately. I think we can both agree I’m not quite ready to take the throne.”
“No one ever is, my boy. Why are you so interested in a Northern expedition, anyway?”
Orso took a deep breath and held his father’s eye. “I want to lead it.”
“You want to what?”
“I want to… you know…contribute. To something other than whores’ purses.”
His father gave a snort of laughter. “The last body of soldiers you led was that toy regiment the Governor of Starikland sent you when you were five years old.”
“Then it’s high time I gained some experience. I’m the heir to the throne, aren’t I?”
“So your mother tells me, and I try never to disagree with her.”
“I have to mend my reputation at some point.” Orso stepped to his mark for their deciding touch, hacking a muddy divot out of the perfect lawn with his heel. “Poor thing’s in a wretched state.”
“Worried this Young Lion will steal all the glory, eh?”
Orso had heard that name too often for comfort lately. “I daresay he could spare a few shreds for his king-to-be.”
“But… fighting?” Orso’s father worked his mouth unhappily and the old scar through his beard twisted. “The Northmen don’t fool about when it comes to bloodshed. I could tell you some stories about my old friend Logen Ninefingers—”
“You have, Father, a hundred times.”
“Well, they’re bloody good stories!” The king straightened a moment, lowering his steels and giving Orso a quizzical little frown. “You really want this, don’t you?”
“We have to do something.”
“I suppose we do, at that.” The king sprang forward but Orso was ready, parried, twisted away, parried again. “All right. How about this?” Cut, cut, jab, and Orso retreated, watching. “I’ll give you Gorst, twenty Knights of the Body and a battalion of the King’s Own.”
“That’s nowhere near enough!” Orso switched to the offensive, almost caught his father with a jab and made him hop back.
“I agree.” The kin
g paced sideways, point of his long steel describing glittering little circles in the air. “The rest you’ll have to find yourself. Show me you can raise five thousand more. Then you can rush to the rescue.”
Orso blinked. Raising five thousand troops sounded worryingly like work. But there was an unfamiliar energy spreading through him at the thought of having something meaningful to do.
“Then I bloody well will!” He’d got all he’d get by losing. He felt like winning for once. “Defend yourself, Your Majesty!”
And steel scraped on steel as he sprang forward.
Fencing with Father
“Jab, jab, Savine,” said her father, craning forward from his chair to follow her movements. “Jab, jab.”
Her shoulder was on fire, the pain spreading down her arm to her fingertips, but she forced herself on, struggling to make every jab sharp, tight, perfect.
“Good,” piped Gorst as he turned her efforts away, always balanced, always calm, the sounds of scraping steel echoing about the bare room.
Nothing was ever good enough for her father, though. “Watch your front foot,” he snapped. “Keep your weight spread.”
“My weight is spread.” And she pumped out three more jabs, lightning-quick.
“Spread it more. I know how much you hate to do anything badly.”
“Almost as much as you hate to see me do anything badly.”
“Spread your weight, then. We’ll both be happier.”
She widened her stance and let go some more jabs, her steel scraping against Gorst’s.
“Better?” asked her father.
It clearly was, but they both knew she would never concede defeat by admitting it. “We’ll see. How are things in the North?”
“A procession of disappointments, like most of life. The Northmen advance, the Anglanders fall back.”
“People say we can expect no better with a woman leading our troops.” Savine lunged, steel clashing as Gorst caught her sword on his own and steered it wide.
“We both know what utter fools people are.” Her father sneered the word as though the very thought of humans disgusted him. “Since the death of her father, I daresay Finree dan Brock is the Union’s most competent general. You know her, don’t you, Gorst?”
A Little Hatred Page 11
