Inversions (28 page)

‘You fucking cretin, Vosill,’ she muttered to herself.

My blood ran cold at her words. I wanted to hug her, to hold her, to take her in my arms . . . and at the same time I wanted to be anywhere else but there, then.

‘He wants stupidity, well . . . Oh, do you see the irony of it, Oelph?’ she said. ‘The only moronic thing I’ve done since I landed was to tell him I loved him. It was utterly, completely, definitively and absolutely imbecilic, and yet it still isn’t enough. He wants consistent dim-wittedness.’ She stared into her goblet. ‘Can’t say I blame him.’ She drank. She coughed, and had to put the goblet down on the bench. The goblet’s base settled on her old dagger, so that the vessel over-balanced and fell with a crash to the floor, breaking and splashing the alcohol across the boards. She brought her feet down from the bench and put them under the chair she sat on, her head in her hands again as she curled up and started to weep.

‘Oh, Oelph,’ she cried. ‘What have I done?’ She rocked to and fro on the seat, her face buried in her hands, her long fingers like a cage around her tangle of red hair. ‘What have I done? What have I done?’

I felt terrified. I did not know what to do. I had been feeling so mature, so grown up, so capable and in control over these last couple of seasons, but now I felt like a child again, quite perfectly unsure what to do when confronted with the pain and distress of an adult.

I hesitated, a terrible feeling growing in me that whatever I did next it would be the wrong thing, the wrong thing entirely, and I would suffer for it for ever more and worse still so might she, but eventually, while she rocked back and forth and moaned piteously to herself, I put my goblet down at my feet and got out of my seat and went to squat by her. I reached out one hand and placed it gently on her shoulder. She did not react. I let my hand go back and forth with her rocking, then slid my arm further round her shoulders. Somehow, touching her like that, she suddenly seemed smaller than I had always thought her.

Still she did not seem to think I had committed any terrible transgression by touching her so, and, finding my courage and taking it by the scruff of its neck, I moved closer to her and put both my arms around her, holding her, slowly stopping her rocking, feeling the warmth of her body and tasting the sweet air of her breath. She let me hold her.

I was doing what I had imagined doing only moments earlier, doing something I had imagined doing for the last year, something I thought would. never, could never happen, something I had dreamed about night after night after night for season upon season, and something that I had hoped, and still hoped somehow might lead to an even more intimate embrace, no matter that that had seemed almost absurdly unlikely, and indeed still did.

I felt her grip on her head loosen. She brought her arms out and put them round me. Embraced by her. My head seemed to swim. Her face, hot and wet from her tears, was next to mine now. I shook with terror, wondering if I dare turn my face towards hers, bring my mouth close to her lips.

‘Oh, Oelph,’ she said into my shoulder. ‘It is not fair to use you so.’

‘You may use me as you wish, mistress,’ I said, gulping on the words. I could smell some delicate perfume rising from her warm body, its tender scent not swamped by the fumes of the alcohol, and infinitely more heady. ‘Is it. . . ?’ I began, then had to stop to swallow on a dry mouth. ‘Is it so terrible to take the risk of telling somebody the feelings you have for them, even if you suspect they feel nothing similar for you? Is it wrong, mistress?’

She pushed herself gently away from me. Her face, tearstreaked, puffy-eyed and red, was still calmly beautiful. Her eyes seemed to search mine. ‘It is never wrong, Oelph,’ she said softly. She reached down and took both my hands in hers. ‘But I am no more blind than the King. Nor any more able to offer requital.’

I wondered stupidly what she meant for a moment before realising, and feeling a terrible sadness fall slowly on my soul, as though a great shroud had been dropped inside me, settling with a sorrowful, implacable inevitability over all my hopes and dreams, obliterating them for ever.

She put one hand to my cheek, and her fingers were still warm and dry and tender and firm at once, and her skin, I swear, smelled sweet. ‘You are very precious to me, dear Oelph.’

I heard those words and my heart sank farther, and steeper.

‘Am I, mistress?’

‘Of course.’ She drew away from me and looked down at the smashed goblet. ‘Of course you are.’ She settled back in her seat and took a deep breath, pushing a hand through her hair, smoothing down her gown and attempting to button its yoke. Her fingers would not do as she willed. I longed, from far away, to help her, or rather not to help her with that task, but eventually she gave up anyway, and just pulled the long collar to. She looked up into my face, drying her cheeks with her fingers. ‘I think I need to sleep, Oelph. Will you excuse me, please?’

I lifted my goblet from the floor and put it on the workbench. ‘Of course, mistress. Is there anything I can do?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, there is nothing you can do.’ She looked away.

‘I told the boy a story of my own.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes. It was a pack of lies.’

‘Well, all stories are lies, in a way.’

‘This was worse. This was a true story turned into a lie.’

‘You must have felt there was a reason to do that.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘What was the reason you felt that way?’

‘Because I wanted to tell the story, but I could not tell it truly to a child. It is the only story I know worth telling, the story I think most about, the story that I live again and again in my dreams, the story that feels as if it needs to be told, and yet a child could not understand it, or if they could, it would be an inhuman thing to tell them it.’

‘Hmm. It doesn’t sound like a story you have ever told me.’

‘Shall I tell it to you now?’

‘It sounds like a painful story to tell.’

‘It is. Perhaps it is painful to hear, too.’

‘Do you want to tell it to me?’

‘I don’t know.’

The Protector returned to his palace. His son still lived, though his grip on life seemed tenuous and frail. Doctor BreDelle took over from Doctor AeSimil but he was no more able to determine what was wrong with the boy than he was able to treat him successfully. Lattens drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes unable to recognise his father or his nurse, on other occasions sitting up in bed and pronouncing himself feeling much better and almost recovered. These periods of lucidity and apparent recovery grew further and further apart, however, and the boy spent more and more time curled up in his bed, asleep or in a halfway stage between sleep and wakefulness, eyes closed, limbs twitching, muttering to himself, turning and moving and jerking as though in a fit. He ate almost nothing, and would drink only water or very diluted fruit juice.

DeWar still worried that Lattens might be being poisoned in some subtle way. He arranged with the Protector and the superintendent of an orphans’ home that a set of twins be brought to the palace to act as tasters for the boy. The two identical boys were a year younger than Lattens.

They were slightly built and a poor start in life had left them with delicate constitutions which made them prone to any passing illness. Nevertheless, they thrived while Lattens weakened, happily finishing off each of the meals he barely tasted, so that by the proportion consumed it might have seemed to a casual observer that it was he who tasted the food for them.

For a few days after their even more hurried return to Crough, UrLeyn and those in his immediate party had out-distanced the news from Ladenscion, and there was a frustrating lack of new intelligence from the war. UrLeyn stamped about the palace, unable to settle to anything, and found little solace even in the harem. The younger girls in particular only made him annoyed with their simpering attempts at sympathy, and he spent more time with Perrund than with all of them, just sitting talking on most occasions.

A hunt was arranged, but the Protector called it off just before it started, worried that the chase might take him too far away from the palace and the sick bed of his son. He attempted to apply himself to the many other affairs of state, but could find little patience for courtiers, provincial representatives or foreign dignitaries. He spent longer in the palace library, reading old accounts of history and the lives of ancient heroes.

When news did eventually arrive from Ladenscion it was equivocal. Another city had been taken but yet more men and war machines had been lost. A few of the barons had indicated that they wanted to discuss terms that would let them remain loyal to Tassasen in theory and through token tribute, but retain the independence they had achieved through their rebellion. As generals Ralboute and Simalg understood that this was not a course the Protector wished to pursue, more troops were called for. It was to be hoped that as this news had undoubtedly crossed with the fresh soldiers already on their way to the war, this last request was redundant. This intelligence had been delivered in a coded letter and there seemed little to debate or discuss as a result of it, but UrLeyn convened a full war cabinet in the map-hall nevertheless. DeWar was invited to attend but commanded not to speak.

‘Perhaps the best thing would be for you to take yourself away, brother.’

‘Take myself away? What? Go on an improving tour? Visit some old aunt in the countryside? What do you think you mean, “take myself away”?’

‘I mean that perhaps the best thing would be for you to be somewhere else,’ RuLeuin said, frowning.

‘The best thing, brother,’ UrLeyn said, ‘would be for my son to make a full and swift recovery, the war in Ladenscion to end immediately in total victory, and my advisors and family to stop suggesting idiocies.’

DeWar hoped RuLeuin would hear the annoyance in his brother’s voice and take the hint, but he kept on. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘the better thing, I should have said, rather than the best, might be to go to Ladenscion, perhaps. To take on all the responsibilities of the war’s command and so to have less room in your mind for the worry the boy’s illness must be causing you.’

DeWar, sitting just behind UrLeyn at the head of the map table, could see some of the others looking at RuLeuin with expressions of disapproval and even mild scorn.

UrLeyn shook his head angrily. ‘Great Providence, brother, what do you think I am? Were either of us raised to be so lacking in feeling? Can you simply turn off your emotions? I cannot, and I would treat with the gravest suspicion anybody who claimed they could. They would not be a man, they would be a machine. An animal. Providence, even animals have emotions.’ UrLeyn glanced round the others gathered about the table, as though daring any of them to assert such coldness for themselves. ‘I can’t leave the boy like this. I did try to, as you may recall, and I was called back. Would you have me go and then be worrying about him every day and night? Would you have me there in Ladenscion while my heart was here, taking command but unable to give it my full attention?’

RuLeuin finally seemed to see the wisdom in remaining silent. He pressed his lips together and studied the table top in front of him.

‘We are here to discuss what to do about this damned war,’ UrLeyn said, gesturing at the map of Tassasen’s borders spread out in the centre of the great table. ‘The condition of my son keeps me here in Crough but other than that it has no bearing on our meeting. I’ll thank you not to mention it again.’ He glared at RuLeuin, who still stared tight-upped at the table. ‘Now, has anyone anything to say which might actually prove useful?’

‘What is to be said, sir?’ ZeSpiole said. ‘We are told little in this latest news. The war continues. The barons wish to keep what they hold. We are too far from it to be able to contribute much. Unless it is to agree to what the barons propose.’

‘That is scarcely more helpful,’ UrLeyn told the Guard Commander impatiently.

‘We can send more troops,’ YetAmidous said. ‘But I wouldn’t advise it. We have few enough left to defend the capital as it is, and the other provinces have been stripped bare already.’

‘It is true, sir,’ said VilTere, a young provincial commander called to the capital with a company of light cannon. VilTere’s father had been an old comrade of UrLeyn’s during the war of succession and the Protector had invited him to the meeting. ‘If we take too many men to punish the barons we might be seen to encourage others to emulate them by leaving our provinces devoid of policing.’

‘If we punish the barons severely enough,’ UrLeyn said, ‘we might be able to convince these “others” of the folly of such a course.’

‘Indeed, sir,’ the provincial commander said. ‘But first we must do so, and then they must hear about it.’

‘They’ll hear about it,’ UrLeyn said darkly. ‘I have lost all patience with this war. I will accept nothing else than complete victory. No further negotiations will be entered into. I am sending word to Simalg and Ralboute that they must do all they can to capture the barons, and when they do they are to send them here like common thieves, though better guarded. They will be dealt with most severely.’

BiLeth looked stricken. UrLeyn noticed. ‘Yes, BiLeth?’ he snapped.

The foreign minister looked even more discomfited. ‘I . . .’ he began. ‘I, well . . .’

‘What, man?’ UrLeyn shouted. The tall foreign minister jumped in his seat, his long, thin grey hair flouncing briefly.

‘Are you . . . is the Protector quite . . . it’s just that, sir…’

‘Great Providence, BiLeth!’ UrLeyn roared. ‘You’re not going to disagree with me, are you? Finally found a sliver of backbone, have we? Where in the skies of hell did that fall from?’

BiLeth looked grey. ‘I do beg the Protector’s pardon. I would simply beg to ask him reconsider treating the barons in quite such a fashion,’ he said, a desperate, anguished look on his narrow face.

‘How the fuck should I treat the bastards?’ UrLeyn asked, his voice low but seething with derision. ‘They make war on us, they make fools of us, they make widows of our women-folk.’ UrLeyn slammed a fist on to the table, making the map of the borderlands flap in the breeze. ‘How in the name of all the old gods am I supposed to treat the sons of bitches?’

BiLeth looked as if he was about to cry. Even DeWar felt slightly sorry for him. ‘But sir,’ the foreign minister said in a small voice, ’several of the barons are related to the Haspidian royal family. There are matters of diplomatic etiquette when dealing with nobility, even if they are rebellious. If we can but prise one away from the others and treat with him well, then perhaps we can bring him to our side. I understand’

‘You understand very little, it would seem, sir,’ UrLeyn told him in a voice dripping with scorn. BiLeth seemed to shrink in his seat. ‘I’ll have no more talk of etiquette,’ he said, spitting out the word. ‘It has become clear that these scum have been teasing us,’ UrLeyn told BiLeth and the others. ‘They play the seductress, these proud barons. They act the coquette. They hint that they might succumb to us if we treat them just a little better, that they will be ours if only we flatter them a little more, if only we can find it in our hearts and our pockets to provide them with a few more gifts, a few more tokens of our esteem, why then they will open their gates, then they will help us with their less cooperative friends and all their resistance so far will prove to have been for show, a pretty fight they have been putting up for the sake of their maidenly honour.’ UrLeyn hit the table again. ‘Well, no! We have been led along for the last time. The next leading will be done by an executioner, when he pulls on the chain of one of these proud barons and brings him to the public square to be tormented like a common murderer and then put up to burn. We’ll see how the rest of them respond to that!’

YetAmidous slapped the table with the flat of his hand and stood up out of his seat. ‘Well said, sir! That’s the spirit!’

ZeSpiole watched BiLeth shrink further in his seat, and exchanged looks with RuLeuin, who looked down. ZeSpiole pursed his lips and studied the map on the table. The others gathered round the table lesser generals, advisors and aides busied themselves in a variety of other ways, but none looked directly at the Protector or said anything in contradiction.

UrLeyn gazed round at their faces with a look of mocking admonition. ‘What, is there nobody else to take my foreign minister’s side?’ he asked, waving one hand at the subsiding form that was BiLeth. ‘Is he to remain alone and unseconded in his campaign?’

Nobody said anything. ‘ZeSpiole?’ UrLeyn said.

The Guard Commander looked up. ‘Sir?’

‘Do you think I am right? Should I refuse to entertain any further advances from our rebellious barons?’

ZeSpiole took a deep breath. ‘I think we might profitably threaten the barons with what you have mentioned, sir.’

‘And, if we take one, carry it out, yes?’

ZeSpiole studied the great fan of window on the wall opposite, where glass and semi-precious stones shone with sunlight. ‘I can appreciate the prospect of seeing one of the barons so humbled, sir. And as you say, there are enough widows in this city who would cheer his screams sufficient to drown them out.’

‘You see no intemperateness in such a course, sir?’ UrLeyn asked reasonably. ‘No rashness, no cruel impetuousness which might rebound on us?’

‘That would be a possibility, perhaps,’ ZeSpiole said, with a flicker of uncertainty.

‘A “possibility”, “perhaps”?’ UrLeyn said in a voice that mocked the Guard Commander’s. ‘But we must do better than that, Commander! This is an important matter. One that needs our gravest consideration. We cannot make light of it, can we? Or perhaps not. Perhaps you disagree. Do you disagree, Commander?’

‘I agree that we must think hard about what we are going to do, sir,’ ZeSpiole said, his voice and manner serious.

‘Good, Commander,’ UrLeyn said with what appeared to be sincerity. ‘I am glad we have extracted a hint of decision from you.’ He looked round everybody else. ‘Are there any other views I should hear from any of you?’ Heads went down all around the table.

DeWar began to be thankful that the Protector had not thought to turn round and ask him his opinion. Indeed he still worried that he might. He suspected nothing he could say would make the General happy.

‘Sir?’ said VilTere. All eyes turned to the young provincial commander. DeWar hoped he wasn’t going to say something stupid.

UrLeyn glared. ‘What, sir?’

‘Sir, I was, sadly, too young to be a soldier during the war of succession, but I have heard from many a commander whose opinion I respect and who served under you that your judgment has always proved sure and your decisions far-sighted. They told me that even when they doubted your decree, they trusted you, and that trust was vindicated. They would not be where they are, and we would not be here today’ at this the young commander looked round the others ‘were it otherwise.’

The other faces round the table searched UrLeyn’s for a response before they reacted.

UrLeyn nodded slowly. ‘Perhaps I should take it ill,’ he said, ‘that it is our most junior and most recently arrived recruit who holds the highest opinion of my faculties.’