Call of Wizardry, page 30
“I wanted to have you all to myself a little longer than usual,” Alaric said. He balanced the tray on the end of the bed and climbed up next to her without disturbing it. “And since you’re usually the one who makes breakfast, I thought this would be a nice change.”
She kissed him, then picked up the bowl and dug in. “It’s a very nice change. But I want to know what really brought this on.”
“I can’t just want to do something nice for you?”
“You can, but not if you have the look that says you’ve got something unpleasant you’re softening me up for.”
Alaric helped himself to a couple of slices of bacon and sighed. “You know me too well.” He chewed for a while, then said, “We need to figure out what we’re going to do when the others leave.”
The delicious porridge wasn’t sitting so well on her stomach anymore. “Go out on jobs, I assumed. It’s not like we have to stop being scrappers.”
“No, but don’t you think it will feel strange, going with, well, strangers?”
“Our friends were strangers once too. Maybe we’ll make new friends.” It sounded stupid and facile even to her. “And maybe we’ll do like Kalanath used to, take temporary jobs here and there.”
“I was thinking,” Alaric said, a little too casually, “I might take a job with the city guard.”
Sienne’s eyebrows climbed almost to her hairline. “You, in the city guard? Working with Denys?”
Alaric’s cheeks went pink. “It wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Yes, but…what would I do?”
“Anything you want. Teach. You still haven’t decided what you’re going to do about the coming of age ritual.”
She’d almost forgotten about it in the whirlwind of travel and the king’s summons. “I should make a decision, I know.” She pushed her mostly-empty bowl away. “Can we discuss it after we meet the king? Maybe we’re wrong, and they don’t want to leave.”
Alaric took her hand and ran his thumb over the back of it. “Sweetlove, they’ve already made their decision.”
She sighed. “I know.”
Alaric finished his bacon and started in on the pile of eggs. “I think,” he said between mouthfuls, “you’re going to end up taking people a lot of different places today.”
They met the others downstairs in the kitchen, all except Perrin. “You’d think he’d be an early riser today of all days,” Sienne said.
Dianthe smirked. “He and Cressida shared a room last night. Without the children. I think he’s entitled to sleep in a bit.”
“Oh. Well. Even so, we shouldn’t be late.”
Footsteps sounded outside the kitchen door. “We will not be late,” Perrin said cheerfully, “because Sienne will transport us straight to the palace. Am I correct?”
He looked so happy her irritation vanished. “You are correct,” she said. “Was Cressida included in the king’s summons?”
“She was not.” Perrin’s cheerfulness subsided a little. “I choose to see it as a good thing, despite having no reason to believe it so.”
“It will be fine,” Dianthe said, casting Alaric, who’d opened his mouth to speak, a warning look. Alaric subsided. “But let’s go now. I’m starting to get nervous, and when I get nervous, I pace.”
“We know,” Kalanath said. He propped his staff against the kitchen wall, next to Alaric’s greatsword and Dianthe’s smaller weapon. “It makes me itch when you pace.”
“See?” Dianthe took Sienne’s hand. “It can’t hurt to be early.”
The comforting jerk above her navel of transport was the only comforting thing about the morning. Sienne brought them to a spot in front of the palace’s grand front entrance, with the broad, shallow stairs flanked by rows of fluted pillars and the arched doorway flanked by liveried guards holding ceremonial pikes. They didn’t look any less deadly than they had the first time she’d come this way, accompanied by her parents and prepared to plead her case with the king. The memory of her failure on that occasion didn’t cheer her at all. Just because it had all worked out in her favor didn’t mean she wasn’t fully aware that the king’s idea of justice didn’t always include mercy.
Though it was still well before noon, and nearing the end of true summer, the outer court was warm enough that the shady interior of the palace grand hall felt cool by comparison. The murals in shades of blue and green added to the effect, making Sienne feel as if she were underwater, swimming with the fanciful and sometimes mythical ocean creatures depicted there. The only light came from the open doorway and the skylights high above, frosted with invulnerability, and Sienne blinked to accustom her eyes to the dimness.
A man in red and yellow livery, Rafellin colors, approached them. He looked unexpectedly uncomfortable, as if his clothes itched. They were gaudy enough to look like a costume rather than anything anyone would wear voluntarily. “Perrin Delucco?” he said.
“That is I,” Perrin said, stepping forward.
The man cast his gaze over them. He appeared to be counting. When he reached a conclusion that satisfied him, he said, “You will all come with me, please,” and turned on his heel without waiting for their assent. Perrin hesitated, looking at Alaric, and Alaric gestured for him to lead out.
Sienne took up her usual position behind Alaric. The last time she’d been here, she’d been too nervous to pay much attention to her surroundings. Now she calmed her nervousness by examining the halls. The ceilings were high enough to be shrouded in shadow, with the lights affixed to the walls too low to illuminate them fully, and she amused herself by pretending the palace was a ruin they’d been hired to explore, shadowy and mysterious. Though it would be the nicest, most well-kept ruin ever.
Paintings hung at intervals between the doors that opened off the hall. She’d had instruction in art appreciation at school in Stravanus, but none of it had stuck, so she had no idea how valuable any of the paintings were beyond a vague notion that they were probably originals and not copies. Dianthe would know.
There were sculptures on pedestals now and then, and she liked those better, miniature versions of sculptures she’d seen around the city. How interesting if these were models for those originals, practice sculptures that had been presented to the palace after the final ones went up. She saw a foot-tall replica of the sculpture of the six avatars that graced a fountain in the Plaza of Sighs. The full-size version was ugly, but this miniature appealed to Sienne. It was something she could see herself putting in her own home.
The hall took a few turns and then opened up into a room nearly as large as the entrance. Had Sienne not been here before, she would have thought it was the audience chamber. But it was just the antechamber, designed to make petitioners as uncomfortable as possible. That said something about the king’s personality, but Sienne didn’t want to think too hard about it.
A few lumpy chairs upholstered in red velvet with over-gilded frames stood under the tall, narrow windows glazed with palm-sized square panes. Some of them contained red or yellow glass through which the morning sunlight shone, casting a random, blotchy pattern on the wall opposite and on the door set in that wall. It looked so ordinary it might have been the door to the linen closet instead of to the king’s study. One of the yellow blotches fell on it, blending with the wood.
Sienne turned her back on it and walked to the window. It looked out over a courtyard in which a couple of spindly trees and some blue hydrangeas grew. She couldn’t see a door giving access to it, but the blooming hydrangeas were too neatly trimmed not to have someone tending them. It made her feel sad to see the plants trying so hard and their show going unnoticed. That made her feel stupid, getting maudlin over a bunch of flowers and trees, so she returned to her friends, who stood together near the center of the room. The gaudy costumed man had disappeared.
“I hate this room,” Dianthe said. “Too many bad memories.”
“But we won,” Kalanath said. “I think it is good.”
“Only because Sienne’s parents came to their senses.” Dianthe rubbed her arms as if she were cold. “I’ve never forgotten how Sienne looked when she came out of that room behind the king.”
“How did I look?” Sienne asked.
“Like you’d taken a wound to the gut and been shown your insides,” Dianthe said.
“That’s how it felt, too.”
The door opened. A man dressed all in black stepped out. “Perrin Delucco,” Benedict Gambrus said. “And friends. Please, come in.”
Sienne followed the others, lingering at the rear. She remembered too well how it had felt the first time, walking into the monster’s maw. Not that it looked like a maw. It looked just the same as it had the first time: a windowless study with a couple of bookcases, an enormous claw-footed desk, and a globe on a stand. The one change was that the two velvet-upholstered armchairs Sienne remembered were gone. A curved row of smaller chairs was lined up facing the empty hearth and a somewhat larger but still very plain chair. Flame-lit lamps flanked the fireplace, casting their light on the little tableau.
King Derekian Fiorus sat in the large chair, his foot casually crossed over one knee. He was dressed as informally as he had been the last time Sienne had seen him, in a red tunic that reminded Sienne of the Niskanen over a finely-woven white linen shirt and twilled cotton trousers dyed a deep blue. His neatly trimmed black beard framed firm lips that at the moment bore the ghost of a smile. “Have a seat, all of you,” he said, gesturing with a hand on which winked the signet ring he’d sealed his summons with.
Sienne sat between Alaric and Dianthe and folded her hands in her lap to keep them still. Alaric’s chair creaked ominously when he sat, and Sienne prayed it wouldn’t collapse under his weight. That would make everything so much more awkward.
The king surveyed them all without speaking. Sienne waited. She didn’t know what to say, and besides, he was the one who’d summoned them; it was his responsibility to explain himself. Finally, the king shifted his foot and leaned forward slightly. “Perrin Delucco,” he said, his voice deep and smooth as always. “I understand you have a petition.”
“Alcander Verannus speaks on my behalf. On my family’s behalf,” Perrin said.
“By law,” the king said, “you have no family. But I understand that’s the substance of the petition.”
“It is.”
Derekian pursed his lips in thought. “You ask that I overturn centuries of legal procedure for one man’s sake?”
Perrin’s hands, resting on his knees, closed into loose fists. “I am not the only man who suffers under these unjust laws. And I ask only that you change those laws to conform to what is just and merciful.”
“Just and merciful? Not things that are generally compatible under the law.”
Perrin shook his head. “Just, because there is no justice in allowing a family patriarch’s whim to dictate the law. Merciful, because permitting families to remain intact partakes of God’s mercy and love for Her creations.”
“And you claim you have been treated unjustly before the law?”
“You refused Pontus Verannus the right to disinherit his children as he saw fit on the grounds that his whim should not be allowed to disrupt the dukedom,” Perrin said. “I do not dispute a patriarch’s right to protect his family against heirs who will harm it. What I dispute is the notion that differences of opinion, including a man’s choice of what avatar he worships, should be grounds for disinheritance. And I dispute utterly a patriarch’s right to annul his children’s marriages on any grounds whatsoever.”
Derekian tapped his lips with one long finger. “And you claim you are not the only one harmed by these existing rights?”
“You have Alcander Verannus’s documentation, which contains evidence of other men and women whose situations are similar to mine. It is, in my opinion, past time to rectify these wrongs.”
The king’s eyes narrowed. “In your opinion.”
“Yes, your Majesty. It is the only one I can lean on.”
“Indeed.” Derekian’s gaze shifted to Alaric. “The Delucco children, according to Lysander Delucco, have been kidnapped. I don’t suppose you know anything about that.”
Alaric said nothing. To Sienne’s surprise, Derekian smiled. “Of course not,” he said. “Since I have reason to believe Delucco intended to remove his grandchildren from any possibility of their mother’s recovering them, I choose not to pursue the matter other than to hope they are quite well, wherever they are.”
“So long as they’re out of his hands, I’m sure that’s true,” Sienne said. Dianthe kicked her ankle.
“Ah. Sienne Verannus,” Derekian said, smiling again. “And are you happy with your choice?”
“Yes, your Majesty,” Sienne said. “Very happy.”
“To each his own, I suppose.” Derekian let out a long breath. “The law is an unnatural beast,” he said. “It has only the power we give it, and is capable of regulating behavior insofar as men and women are inclined to allow it to do so. And yet we speak of law as an immutable force, intrinsically powerful and eternal. I have hopes that Rafellin’s laws may yet reflect the character of its citizens, but that day may be far in the future.”
He fell silent. Sienne wanted to ask what he meant, but a glance at Alaric told her he was following this very closely and knew exactly what Derekian was talking about. Finally, Derekian said, “It has long been a problem in this country that there are those who believe laws do not apply to them.” He was looking at Alaric, and Sienne opened her mouth to protest that they were all law-abiding citizens, but Dianthe kicked her again, harder this time, and she subsided.
Alaric nodded. “That’s the case in most countries,” he said, his voice neutral as if they were discussing a horse for sale.
“In Rafellin, our issue is that there are those in power who give lip service to the law, but seek to turn it to their advantage,” Derekian went on. “For example, there are men who, denied what they believe are their rights, take illegal action to gain what they claim is theirs.”
“Of course, they’re punished when they’re caught,” Alaric said.
“Which is small comfort to those they harm,” Derekian said.
“Naturally.”
“How much better,” Derekian said, “if they could be prevented taking such action before the harm is done.”
“I agree.”
Derekian smiled again. “And here I thought the two of us might never come to an agreement about anything.”
Alaric smiled in return, his eyes lit with unholy pleasure. “Miracles can happen. I’m living proof of that.”
The king’s eyebrows lifted. “Really? Perhaps someday you’ll explain that.”
“Perhaps,” Alaric said, and fell silent.
Derekian surveyed them all again, once more tapping a finger against his lips. “Dianthe Katraki,” he said. Dianthe startled and sat more upright. “Corbyn Rameldus speaks highly of you.”
“He—I owe him my life,” Dianthe stammered.
“But apparently not enough to take his offer.”
Dianthe glanced from side to side. “I…haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“Don’t take too long. He’s unwell.”
Sienne cast a sidelong glance at Dianthe. She didn’t look very well herself. “I know,” she said quietly. “He said he’s not suffering.”
“He has the best care the Crown can provide for him.” Derekian’s gaze shot to Kalanath, who regarded him placidly. “And Kalanath Oushikdali. How are you finding Fioretti?”
“Very well,” Kalanath said. “It is not Omeira but it is good.”
“The Hierarch tells me you’re free to return. Do you intend to?”
Kalanath’s eyes never left Derekian’s face. If he was disconcerted that the king knew so much, he didn’t show it. “I have parents again,” he said. “I will see them soon.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Derekian once more looked at Alaric. “Still not respectful?”
“You’re still not my king,” Alaric said. “But I always give respect where it’s earned.”
Derekian laughed, throwing back his head in pure delight. “And why is it I feel respect earned from someone like you is worth something indeed?” he asked. “Go on. Get. And this time I really don’t want to see you again for at least a year. How five ordinary people can cause so much unrest is a mystery even Benedict can’t solve.” He stood, prompting them to do the same. “But then,” he added, “you’re none of you exactly ordinary, are you?”
This time, Alaric led the way out of the study. “Not a word until we’re on the street,” he said when Sienne once more opened her mouth to speak. She followed him, bursting with curiosity, through the halls—no one appeared to escort them—and out the entry into the sunny courtyard. “That was unexpected,” he said.
“I do not understand what he says about law, except that people break it, and that is not news,” Kalanath said.
“He’s cannier than I gave him credit for,” Alaric said. “And more morally flexible.”
“But what did it mean?” Sienne asked, somewhat plaintively. She didn’t like being left out of things.
Alaric grinned. “He’s going to rule in favor of Perrin,” he said. “And he gave us permission to take Lysander Delucco out of the picture permanently.”
27
“He wants us to assassinate him?” Sienne exclaimed.
“Why don’t you say it a little louder, Sienne?” Dianthe said. “And no, he doesn’t want us to assassinate him. He’s the king. He’s probably got his own assassins on tap and doesn’t need to hire us.”
“But—”
“He wants us to set up Delucco, catch him breaking the law in a way that will put him in Derekian’s power,” Alaric said.
