The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (53 page)

The marshal strode across the lists. The crowd hushed.

Amicia pushed on.

The Red Knight’s herald raised his trumpet from his hip, and it unfurled with the white dove on a sun-in-splendor of the Queen.

The crowd roared.

The sound was so loud that it startled Amicia and she almost let her working fall. Her heart was pounding—

She
wondered in the calm fastness of her palace what it was like to be in a closed helmet with nothing but the fear and all that sound, and all the hopes of thousands of people on your armour-burdened shoulders.

She reached out in the
aethereal
with her sight, and saw.

First she saw the Queen. The Queen burned like a small sun—bright gold, un-alloyed, undimmed. She was in a sort of pen at the base of the stands, and the wood of the barriers surrounding held a working on it—a curious and not particularly stable working.

Nearer at hand, she saw a group of men moving quickly—a young fat man with no talent whatsoever, and by his side a grey man who flickered with potency.

“Ah, yes,” she thought.

She glanced at the King, who was warded—ten times warded. He was covered in wardings, like a prisoner draped in chains. Amulets and sigils, runes and bindings were on him layer after layer. She had never seen anything like it, and suddenly—for the first time—she felt overmatched. For some reason she had expected a single, potent work—an internal mirror or a secret working that locked the target up as surely as a prison. Both Harmodius and the Abbess, in her head, remembered such working and had remedies.

But this tangle of cluttered thaumaturgy, with superstition, blind chance and careful science all mixed…

She looked again. It was like looking at the tangled remnants of a skein of linen after a kitten had attacked it.

Nor was she sure that the King’s will was in any way affected by it all.

He was merely… warded.

Nicholas Ganfroy had practised for a year for this moment. His trumpet rang out, loud and clear, piercing the tumult of the crowd.

Into his split second of crowd-silence, he roared the Red Knight’s challenge.

“He who styles himself the Red Knight bids defiance to any wight so craven as to pretend that the gracious Queen of Alba, high Desiderata, is other than the King’s own wife; loyal, faithful, and true. And he offers to prove this assertion on the body of any so bold in his blood or wanting in brains that will maintain her unfaithfulness, or will offer to exchange blows. And the Red Knight maintains he offers battle for no pride in his own prowess, but only to see justice done. And if no knight will offer to uphold the charges against the gracious lady Queen, the Red Knight demands her instant release by the law of arms, the Rule of Law of Alba, and also the Rule of War of Galle.”

Ganfroy’s lungs were as brazen as his trumpet, and he’d practised, shouting into basements and wine cellars. His words carried clearly.

There was obvious consternation in the royal stands.

Amicia was no more than an arm’s length from the Archbishop of Lorica, unnoticed in the press. The archbishop, and the Sieur de Rohan, had just returned, hurriedly climbing the steps to the royal box—Amicia was
interested to note that the archbishop was already sweating. She had also marked the thin, threadbare man in the badly dyed scholar’s scarlet as a hermeticist—his person carried two wards and a sigil.

Amicia was an observant woman, and she noticed that he wore a third device around his neck—a complex net of thin strands of dirty linen. It held no power, but the King wore a similar such amulet.

“Send the guard and have him taken,” shouted the archbishop. His words were received with hoots and catcalls from all the gentry seated nearby.

De Vrailly was grinning as if he’d just won a prize. “It is the mercenary—the sell-sword. The Queen must have bought his services.” He shook his head. “I understand him to be a good man of his arms, and his harness seems good.” His handsome face split in a wide grin. “Ah, God is good! An answer to my prayers. God has sent him that we may have a fair trial.”

De Rohan was trying to burrow through the close press towards the King. “Your grace—your grace!” he called.

Amicia was six feet from the King, below him, caught up amidst the press of Galles and Albans who followed the court.

Someone groped her.

She ignored her assailant and entered
into her bridge. There, she was interested to find, she wore the same kirtle in the
aethereal
that she wore in the world.

She found the King in the
aethereal
. She saw the welter and tangle of his protections and wards and curses and she bit her
aethereal
lip in frustration.

She prayed. And curiously, as she prayed, she thought of her Abbess, that towering figure of wit and good sense, power and character—the old King’s mistress, and a potent magister.

What would she have done?

Amicia moved her focus back, looking over the crowd around the King. She was looking for a link—a thread of gold or green that might connect any one of them to the King.

She didn’t see any such.

It was possible, of course, that the King was acting of his own accord. The Prior didn’t believe that though, and neither, apparently, did Gabriel.

She sighed, completing her prayer, and tried another tack. She looked at the King not as a hermetical practitioner, but as a hermetical healer. As her Order taught.

As quick as thought, she was praising God inside her head, and acting.

De Rohan clasped the King’s hand. “I have ordered the arrest of the herald, and his knight,” de Rohan said.

The King nodded heavily. “Yeess,” he said slowly. His head barely raised off his chest.

“Sire!” De Vrailly pushed de Rohan roughly. “Sire—do not listen to him!”

The King made no movement.

“Stand down, de Vrailly. No one doubts your honour. But the King needs no champion in this.” De Rohan gave his most placating smile.

The archbishop put a hand on de Vrailly’s armoured elbow. “Do not presume—” he began.

The King’s head shot up, as if he’d been stung by a hornet. For a moment he had a look of wild insanity.

Then his eyes focused.

De Vrailly was no longer looking at the King. “De Rohan, by all I hold sacred—I will strike you down with my own right hand if you impede the cause of this quarrel. The herald—presumptuous as his speech might be—has every turn of the right. We must fight, or be found to have lied. I am ready, armed in every point.
What possible exception can you make to the law of war, de Rohan?
”

The King stood.

A ring of silence spread out from his person, like the ripples of a pebble tossed in a pool of water.

His voice was low and rough, as if unused. “Do I understand that the Queen has a defender?” he asked slowly.

He took a step—an unsteady step. De Rohan clasped his elbow.

“Get the King a cup of his wine,” he said to an attendant. “Your grace—”

But de Vrailly’s face was mottled with anger, and he pushed de Rohan—quite roughly. They were both big men—de Rohan had, after all, been de Vrailly’s standard bearer and was reckoned by some the best knight after de Vrailly himself. But de Vrailly’s anger was like an angel’s wrath, and he moved de Rohan as if he was made of paper.

“Your grace—the Red Knight, the sell-sword, has been paid by the Queen to defend her. And I am happy—indeed, delighted”—his face bore anything but delight—“to engage this wastrel on your behalf.”

The King’s eyes went back and forth. “The Red Knight?” he asked, his voice plaintive. “Oh, sweet Christ.”

Inside the King’s aura, Amicia felt the wave of pain pass over him.

Out in the lists, the Red Knight changed horses. He did nothing showy—he merely dismounted easily from his riding horse and remounted a huge roan war horse with nostrils so red that he appeared to breathe fire. Then he took a lance from his squire and raised it in the air.

The herald blew his trumpet again. “For the second time, the Red Knight challenges any child born of woman to meet him, steel to steel, in the lists. He maintains the right of the Queen, the chastity of her body,
the purity of her heart. Let any who stand against her beware! My knight offers a contest of the weapons of war, until one shall be defeated, or dead.”

The crowd
roared
in approval
.

The Red Knight began to ride to the head of the lists, lance in hand.

The King was seen to bite his lip. His face writhed as if inhabited by snakes.

De Rohan glared at de Vrailly. “Your grace, this is mere foolish posturing. Let me press the order of arrest.”

De Vrailly looked at his former standard bearer with utter contempt. “You are not only a caitiff but a fool,” he said. “By God and Saint Denis, D’Eu was right about you. If you do not let me fight, these people will go to their graves believing their Queen was innocent.”

De Rohan and de Vrailly locked gazes—Amicia could see that each thought the other a fool.

Amicia also noted—with shock—that de Vrailly burned like a second sun in her alternate,
aethereal
sight.

Out in the lists, a dozen Royal Guardsmen stood sullenly under the royal box. A man in de Rohan’s livery was gesticulating at the Red Knight.

De Vrailly turned to the King. “You must let me fight—for your honour!”

The King’s eyes went back and forth like those of a trapped animal.

At the base of the stands, the Queen sat on a stool in her plain grey kirtle, her golden-brown hair lank but her face at rest. She looked at her champion—and then up into the royal box.

“Even now, I pity him,” the Queen said.

Blanche—over her first terror—cursed. “Pity who, your grace?” she asked. The coming of the Red Knight—Master Pye’s friend, and Ser Gerald Random’s and thus a good knight in her books—gave her hope, and Blanche had desperately needed some hope.

The Queen smiled. “The King, of course, my dear.”

“Christ on the cross, your grace! Why spare the King any of your pity? He’ll have no mercy for you.” Blanche looked down the lists and clapped her hands. The Red Knight’s near twin—the Green Knight—was cantering along the lists, entertaining the crowd, and shouting insults at the Galles.

The Queen was serene. “Those who have known pain should have mercy on others,” she said. “There sits my husband—whom I swore to defend ’til death do us part.” She frowned. “I find it hard to make room in my heart for him. But I would not wish his fate on any man.”

Blanche sighed. “Beyond my likes and dislikes, I suppose, your grace,” she said in obvious incomprehension.

The Queen raised a very sage eyebrow. “My gallant defender is the King’s son,” she said.

Blanche’s white hand went to her throat. “Jesu Christe!” she said—a true prayer and no blasphemy. “The Red Knight is the King’s by-blow?”

The Queen frowned.

Blanche cast her eyes down. “Apologies, your grace. I’m a laundress, not a courtesan—er—courtier.”

The Queen flashed her a smile. “You are no courtesan,” she said. “And you made me smile.”

The Red Knight clasped gauntlets with the Green Knight and then rode down the lists towards the Queen. The whole of the crowd, gentle and common, was on their feet.

Amicia watched a servant bring a cup. She needed no potent workings to know that the cup held poison. Or some poppy or other sleeping stuff.

There was no one around her to help her, and she knew of no way to affect this in the
aethereal
, without giving away her working. So she pushed past a pair of purple-clad guardsmen. Her path was eased by a sudden movement of the archbishop, who was looking at the red-clad lawyer.

“Just see to it,” the archbishop hissed.

His eyes went right past her, but his bulk opened a path until she was able to put her hip into the serving man. He didn’t fall, but the cup of wine soaked Du Corse.

She stepped back—her heart beating overtime. Heads turned, but every head looked at the serving man.

He was red in the face, protesting his innocence.

De Rohan struck him with the back of his hand, his two rings cutting furrows in the servant’s cheek. Amicia flinched.

The King shook his head vehemently.

De Vrailly stood his ground. “I am your Champion!” he said. “If I do not fight then you are
admitting the charges are false.
” His accented Alban carried.

“
Free the Queen!
” shouted a bold onlooker.

The cry was taken up.

The archbishop leaned over and whispered in the King’s ear.

The King turned. He was pale—but in control of his face.

The King stood straighter. “De Vrailly,” he said. “For what it is worth, I believe my wife is innocent. Will you still fight?”

De Vrailly spat. “Bah!” he cried. “I’ll prove her faithlessness and the murder of my friend D’Eu on this Red Knight.”

The archbishop made a signal.

The King shook his head. “Very well,” he said, with real regret.

De Vrailly began to walk down the steps to the lists.

The archbishop followed. As the King began to follow the archbishop to the lists, Amicia did her best to move along with him, an arm’s length away.

The man in red looked at her—right at her.

He was in the midst of a working. Magicking a silver chalice—a chalice of water.

He went back to his working, the traces of his fingers and his symbols leaving marks in the
aethereal
. She lacked the kind of training that would tell her what he was doing—another poison?

Suddenly his eyes came back to her—now wide with realization.

She had no idea what gave her away.

The Red Knight walked his horse to the base of the steps as if he had nothing to fear from the Galles or the purple soldiers waiting there. The marshal of the lists had beckoned him, and now stood with a sword in one hand and a set of gospels in the other. All eyes were on him.

Amicia moved a few inches closer to the King and the archbishop, and readied her shields.