Corambis (23 page)

“As she treated Caloxa forty indictions ago?”
“
That
,” said Murtagh, “is exactly what I’m trying to prevent a recurrence of. The Convocation of the One Hundred Forty- sixth handled the war with Caloxa atrociously from beginning to end, and look where it’s gotten us.”
“Yes,” said I. “Quite.”
“Oh, damn. Sorry. But that
is
my point. I don’t want Corambis and Caloxa to be doing this again in another forty indictions.”
“Then what are you going to do about Charles?” I asked, for the question had been preying on my mind.
“Beg pardon?”
“You heard me. Charles Hume. Not to mention all Gerrard’s illegitimate half siblings.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“You want my honest opinion?”
“Yes. What would you do?”
“Kill him.”
In the ensuing silence, Murtagh pushed his chair back and moved away. “He’s only a baby. Two indictions? Three?”
“So was Gerrard forty indictions ago.”
“There must be a better way.”
“Did not say there wasn’t. You asked what I would do.”
“And you’d kill him?”
“Yes. He is the last legitimate heir of the Descent of Hume. If you truly do not want Caloxa to revolt ever again, kill him.”
“You don’t think we can compromise?”
“In forty indictions, with a man raised to believe he’s the rightful king?”
“Point taken,” said Murtagh and immediately switched ground. “And without Charles, the in de pen dence movement falls apart?”
“Did not say that, either. But they will have no
legitimate
candidate for the throne, and without that, they won’t be able to unite even as much of Caloxa as Gerrard did.”
“You’re very cold- blooded about it.”
“You’ve met my mother.”
A pause. I hated sitting still, but this room was too hazardous to pace in. Too many people going in and out, moving chairs and footstools, leaving strange objects in my path.
Murtagh said quietly, “Did you ever really care about Caloxan in de pendence, or was it all for Gerrard?”
Now I was grateful for that which I had hated a moment before. As I was sitting still, Murtagh could not tell that I had just frozen.
I said finally, choosing my words, “I followed Gerrard because I believed that he cared for Caloxa and her people, and because I believed— and believe— that Corambis and the Convocation do not. You will always put Corambis first, and I believe Caloxa deserves better than that.”
“Yes, of course,” said Murtagh, even more quietly. “I’m sorry.”
We did not speak of Gerrard again. My grief remained mine alone.
Two days later, Murtagh solicited my opinion about the candidates for the restored governorship of Caloxa. Were four of them, ranging from the corrupt and ineffectual former governor to a mad brainchild of Murtagh’s to make the Margrave of Quithenrick governor regent for Prince Charles.
“You’re still trying to compromise.”
“I have to believe compromise is possible,” he said. The heat and weight of his hands suddenly closed over my wrists. “Kay, I
have
to.”
“Is no business of mine,” I said, pulling my hands away. “Have no stake in the government of Caloxa now.”
After an ugly pause, Murtagh turned the conversation to his strategies for overcoming opposition to his plans, and we let the question of Charles Hume go. But I could not keep from showing myself a liar, for the question tore itself out of me that night, when Murtagh stopped by my room, as he often did, on his way to bed: “Do you truly think it will work?”
He might have pretended not to know what I meant; he said, “I think there is hope.”
“Hope,”
said I; the word was bitter.
“Don’t discount it. Isn’t that the cause of the Insurgence? Hope?”
“And the cause of the catastrophe that ended it?”
“Wasn’t that caused by despair?”
“How do we tell the difference?”
“I . . .” Silence while he struggled with it. “I don’t know.”
“Nor do I. Good night, Murtagh.”
I rolled to face the wall and did not turn back when he said, “Kay?” Another silence and then he said, “Good night, Kay,” and closed the door.
Grief was like black iron, a collar against my throat that could not be unlocked. I might forget about it for minutes or hours at a time, but it was always there. I could not take a full breath, could not be free of the weight of it.
Was neither reason nor purpose in weeping, I told myself savagely. Could not weep the blindness from my eyes. Was no saint to restore life to the dead with my tears. Was but childish self- indulgence, and had I not had enough of that?
I shoved the blankets back and got up. If I had to pace myself into exhaustion, then I would. Was better than weeping.

Did not speak to Murtagh again until the morning of Gerrard’s funeral. The Convocation appointed Peter Albern, a cousin of Glimmering’s, as Governor Regent of Caloxa, a compromise which left Murtagh so lividly furious that he was incapable of civil conversation. Governor Albern was, however, persuadable, and although I thought this trait boded very ill, Murtagh used it unapologetically to get matters in train to move the government back to Wildar. That was the limit of what he could accomplish in Caloxa; we would be going to Esmer soon, and I tried not to think about what that was going to mean for me.

And then Governor Albern released Gerrard’s body for burial in Our Lady of Fogs, Bernatha’s sanctuary.
“The funeral’s today, passion hour,” said Murtagh. He was standing in the doorway of my room, as if uncertain I would permit him to come closer. I did not stop pacing; an I paced, I did not have to guess where I ought to be looking. “Do you want to go?”
“
Can
I go?”
“I’m offering to take you,” Murtagh said sharply. “You will be neither arrested nor pilloried— you may, in fact, have to save me from the latter fate. It was the Convocation they were burning in effigy in St. Melior, not the most heroic and ill- used Margrave of Rothmarlin.”
“Am not—”
“I know, I know. You’re very conscientious about reminding everyone you meet.”
“What wouldst have me do? Lay claim to what the most heroic and ill- used Convocation hath stripped from me? Raise my banner here in this hotel room?”
“Curb your instinct for melodrama. Will you come to the funeral or not?”
“Yes,” I said and stopped in the middle of the room, facing a wall I had never seen. “I will come.”

Tinder dressed me, in a Corambin suit which fit, meaning that Murtagh had had it made for me— another gift I could not refuse and did not want.

Tinder was, as always, patient and silent, and I finally braced myself and said, “Tinder?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do you think someone in the hotel might have a coraline I could borrow? For the funeral?”

Tinder was of course Caddovian— all respectable Corambins were— but he said, “I don’t know, sir, but I will ask.” And when he came back to take me to out to the sitting room to join Murtagh, he said, “I am asked, sir, to present this to you as a gift from the kitchen staff of the Althammara.” And he took my hand to pour the cool beads of a coraline into it.

“A gift?” I said, even as my fingers closed convulsively around it. “Tinder, I can’t—”
“The head cook was most insistent, sir. He is from Benallery originally.”
“Ah blessed Lady, I can’t . . . All right. All right. Tell him thank you. Tell him I’ll . . . I’ll trea sure it. Is it stone or wood?”
“Stone, sir.” Tinder sounded mildly perplexed, but I had not the strength to explain that Benallerine coralines were always made of stone, unlike the tradition in the rest of Caloxa, which was for coralines made of wood. Benallery’s own coraline, which I’d seen him telling over more times than I could count, had been fobbed with a stone from the Crawcour where it ran beneath the walls of Beneth Castle.
“Thank you,” I said and slid the coraline into my pocket.
“Are you ready, sir?” said Tinder.
“Yes,” I said; he helped me on with a greatcoat, and I allowed him to take my arm.
Murtagh and Wyatt were waiting in the sitting room. I was handed from Tinder to Murtagh like a package, and Murtagh told Wyatt to get the door.
“Am not that fragile,” said I.
“You only say that because you can’t see yourself,” said Murtagh.“Truthfully, Kay, are you sleeping at all?”
“I sleep,” I said.
“Not enough,” said Murtagh and led me out.
I remembered quite distinctly climbing the staircases of the Althammara, so I was baffled when we emerged onto the street without descending a single step. “How . . . ?”
“One of the
other
reasons I like the Althammara,” Murtagh said. “The top floor has a private entrance.”
“Which you didn’t use when you brought me from the Clock Palace because . . . ?”
“I wanted you to suffer,” Murtagh said cheerfully. “Here. Wyatt hired a carriage. Mind your head. Actually, from the Clock Palace, it’s a much shorter distance to the hotel’s main doors. I thought the stairs were better than the streets.”
I settled onto the padded leather seat. Murtagh sat next to me; he smelled, not unpleasantly, of limes. From the jostling of knees, Wyatt sat opposite. Murtagh rapped the roof, and we lurched into motion.
We did not speak as we drove to the sanctuary. I kept my head lowered; after a few minutes, I took the coraline out of my pocket and began telling the beads. The fob was intricately carved in a pattern I couldn’t make out; the other beads were smooth as water. I said over the stations of the meditation for the Lady in my mind, replacing word by word the memory of the last time I had done so. This would be a memory better only by comparison, but it was a memory I could go on from, unlike the reeking nightmare beneath Summerdown.
The sanctuary of Our Lady of Fogs was windy, a sharp scouring wind that seemed to want to flense the flesh from my bones. And there were people here— too many people, and I clutched at Murtagh’s arm before I could stop myself.
He gave no indication of having noticed; a few steps later, however, he checked briefly, then continued walking. “ ’Sdeath,” said he under his breath. “Some idiot told Clara Hume.”
“He
was
her husband,” I said, trying to be reasonable.
“She must be wearing Bernatha’s entire supply of black crepe. There’s
miles
of it. And dear sweet merciful Lady, how did she convince Quithenrick to bring Charles?”
“Charles is here?”
“Unless she’s hired some other woman’s baby, yes. Poor little sprout looks positively smothered. And Quithenrick looks like he’s sat on a porcupine.”
“He probably just caught sight of me,” I said.
“Do you hate each other that much?”
“I have nothing but respect for Quithenrick. He thinks I am a blood- drinking savage and should be put down like a rabid dog.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Oh may the Lady give us strength, Glimmering’s here. He either has no sense or no shame, and I’ve given up trying to decide which. He’s talking to Governor Albern in what one can only describe as a pointed fashion.”
“His Grace of Glimmering is not a subtle man,” I said. I couldn’t release my locked grip on Murtagh’s arm, but at least my voice was even.
“No,” said Murtagh, on an exhalation that sounded half like a laugh and half like a sigh. “Here. We shall stand here opposite Clara Hume, and hopefully she’ll be so busy glaring at us she’ll forget to faint. She hates you, you know.”
“Yes,” I said. “I told Gerrard not to marry her. And then he had me stand witness at the wedding.”
“Well, that explains a great deal. Oh dear. Wyatt, will you intercept Mr. Beckett, please?”
“Beckett’s here? Why?”
“I’m not sure,” said Murtagh. He sounded like he was frowning. “That is, I can take a well- educated guess at what he
wants
, but why he thinks this is either the appropriate time
or
the appropriate place . . .”
“Mr. Beckett has not shown himself particularly sensitive to ‘appropriate,’ ” I said dryly.
“Point,” said Murtagh. “And he may well be desperate by now.”
“Desperate? The last you told me of him, he was being adulated in the newspapers.”
“Ah,” said Murtagh, almost sheepishly. “Yes. Well, that was before the rash of suicides became quite so obtrusive.”
“Suicides?”
“People are killing themselves to get away from the ticking. Or, at least, that’s what the notes they’re leaving say.”
I could sympathize with the impulse. The ticking of the Clock of Eclipses saturated the Crait. There was no way to escape from it; I had tried blocking my ears and had discovered I could still
feel
it. And it was always just some immea sur able fraction of a second too slow, so that one found oneself listening for it, waiting for the next hammer blow to strike. “And Edwin Beckett is to blame,” I said softly.
“He claimed responsibility,” Murtagh said, and I felt his shrug. “Also, I understand that several of the suicides have been among his coterie, which gives no very good impression. The House of Honesty has sent a letter to the Institution, inviting them to come study the clock— and, the letter strongly suggests, learn how to turn the damn thing off. And that leaves Mr. Beckett distinctly out in the cold.” He straightened. “All right, brace yourself. Here comes the intended.”
It was part of the ceremony: the sanctuary- intended spoke to every mourner before he began the ritual, asking their name and their relation to the dead person. “Ferrand Carey,” said Murtagh. “I never met Gerrard Hume in life, but I mourn his death.”
“And thou, my child?”
I blinked hard— against the wind, I told myself. “Kay Brightmore. I was his friend.”
The pause was awkward; then the intended recovered and said, “The Lady blesses thee in thy grief,” and moved on.
His voice sounded young, and I was confirmed in that supposition by his evident ner vous ness when he began the ritual of burial. He stumbled over phrases he’d surely pronounced a hundred times before, and when he reached the eulogium, it was painfully clear that he forgot the words he’d prepared. “The poor boy,” Murtagh murmured. “He’s gone so red I’d be worried about apoplexy if he were older.”
In Rothmarlin and Hornhast and Gormont, even in Benallery, the mourners at a funeral took the eulogium after the sanctuary- intended spoke the formal words of grieving. The business of the sanctuary- intended was with the dead; he was not expected to be able to speak about the grief of the living. But the more northern and western parts of Caloxa were being corrupted by Caddovian practices, and clearly Bernatha was following them, at least in this instance. Perhaps someone had come to the honest realization that there was no one who could safely be asked to speak Gerrard’s eulogium
except
a sanctuary- intended who had never known him.
Gerrard would have wished to be buried in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Caverns in Barthas Cross, where all the Humes were buried, and I hated the fact that I understood— and agreed with— the decision to bury him here instead. His grave might still become a martyr’s shrine, but not on account of the people of Bernatha.
I tried not to listen to the sanctuary- intended; it seemed kinder to let his words escape unheeded. Instead, I did as Intended Joyce had recommended when my father died: I remembered Gerrard as I had known and loved him— the honest love of a man for his friend, of a soldier for his leader, not the sin I had confessed to Intended Gye— and as best I could, I forgave him and said good- bye to him. The wind stung my eyes to tears, and in my heart I whispered the truth,
I am sorry I did not defy thee and in so doing save thee.
Finally, finally, the sanctuary- intended struggled through to the end of the ceremony, and the mourners were released.
But Murtagh and I had not gone two paces before Clara Hume shrieked like the mother of banshees, “Rothmarlin! This is your fault!”
“Keep walking,” Murtagh muttered, but I shook him off and turned, guessing as best I could at her location. “And how wouldst know, Clara? Wert thou with him when he died?”
“How dare you!” cried Clara Hume.
“Kay, for the Lady’s sake,” Murtagh said, grabbing at my arm.
I shook him off again. “Didst cleave to thy husband, Clara? Didst pledge thy faith to follow him? Or didst wear his ring and bear his child so thou mightst be princess and bowed to and made much of? Thou lovedst him not— thou lovedst him
never
— so speak not to me of
fault
.”
Murtagh grabbed my arm again, and someone else grabbed the other. “Overwrought,” Murtagh said loudly and distinctly as they turned me bodily about, and Clara Hume went off in strong hysterics. It saved her thinking of a response.
Murtagh and Wyatt all but carried me, and after the first few strides, I quit fighting them. “Next time,” said Murtagh, “warn me before you start tearing strips off Clara Hume.”
“Will be no next time,” I said; I was disgusted with myself. “I cry your mercy, Murtagh. I forgot myself.”
“I’m not
blaming
you,” Murtagh said. “I’m sure I would have done the same. Just . . . What do you want, Thomas?”
“To offer my respects to the Margrave of Rothmarlin,” said the Duke of Glimmering.
“Is not here,” said I. “May apply to Rothmarlin Castle, where I am sure he will be most delighted to receive you.”
“Don’t think I’ll forget,” said Glimmering. Why had his parents not taught him elocution as a child and rid him of that dreadful nasal whine? Better yet, why had they not drowned him in a bucket?
Murtagh made an exasperated, wordless exclamation. “Forget
what
, Thomas? That there was a war? None of us will forget that, I assure you. Now stand aside. I have much to do today, and so do you.”
“It doesn’t bother you, Ferrand, that you’ll have a murderer in your house?”
“Stand aside or I will move you,” said Murtagh, and apparently even Glimmering heard the danger in his voice, for Murtagh jerked me forward and I heard Glimmering call, off to the right now, “Will you protect him forever, Ferrand?”
Murtagh didn’t respond until we were in the carriage and well away from Our Lady of Fogs, and what he said then was vile, and obscene enough to make a horse drover blush.