The King's Justice (33 page)

At Her Majesty's arrival, my porters stopped so that she might address me. When I endeavored to rise from my litter, however, she halted me with her own hand. “Rest, Mayhew,” she commanded. “You will be taken to the physicians. Hear me but a moment, and you will be tended.

“We are saved, Mayhew. We have a common foe. That evil ship's coming promises war. Thus it rescues us from rebellion and barbarism. At the cost of your hand, and of my daughter's, you have redeemed us from enslavement. The dooms foretold have been averted. Now at last I am freed to become the Queen that my realm requires.

“Know that your fidelity and courage—like my trust in you—will not be forgotten.”

No doubt I should have made some seemly reply. Beyond question, I wished to do so. However, a greater need ruled me. Ere my Queen could hasten to Excrucia's litter, I begged, “A moment, Your Majesty.”

She remained at my side despite her open impatience for her daughter. “Yes, Mayhew?”

As well as I was able, I framed my query. “You informed me that I have a gift which others lack. What gift do you find in me that I do not find in myself?”

She regarded me gravely, but she did not hesitate to answer.

“You know your fears, Mayhew. Therefore you are able to overcome them. Others know only that they are afraid. Therefore their fears rule them—as mine have ruled me.”

Without another word, as though she believed that her reply sufficed, she turned to Excrucia.

Lifting myself higher, I watched Inimica Phlegathon deVry's reunion with her daughter.

Clearly Excrucia had emerged from stupor. She raised her arms to her mother, and at once my Queen caught her child in a fierce embrace. For a moment, no longer, I heard them weeping together. Then Her Majesty withdrew her head—though not her clasp—and said so that all in the courtyard heard her, “You are my beloved daughter. My pride in you is greater than my power to express it. Your courage humbles my extravagances. When the physicians have treated your wound, and you have rested, I will hear every word of your tale—every word since the day when you first formed an alliance with my Hieronomer.
Until that time, know that my realm will one day be yours. It will be yours
now
, if you wish it. I will defy the Articles of Coronation if I must. Indemnie can have no better monarch.”

“Mother,” Excrucia replied, still weeping, her voice wan and much abused. “I want only Mayhew.”

Did my Queen then retort, A servant? A hieronomer? A man of impure lineage? She did not. Rather she replied without pause or doubt, “Then you will have him, if your wishes are his as well.”

While I lowered myself to lie in my litter again, and my porters bore me away, I considered that life was altogether preferable to the oblivion of death.

T
hereafter much transpired that I did not witness. I was grateful to be rendered numb while my hand was removed, and the stump of my wrist much treated to relieve infection, the result no doubt of a long acquaintance with the contents of bowels. But when I returned to myself, I found Excrucia seated at my bedside. Her hand had been likewise removed, yet she bore the loss with a composure that exceeded mine. Also she appeared to heal with greater alacrity. For the long days of our confinement among the physicians, she served as my nurse, tending me with a tenderness that belied her severe frown and arid manner.

During those days, however, tidings were brought to us with some regularity by none other than the Domicile's Majordomo.
Though her demeanor remained stern, she was neither shrill nor censorious, and she spoke as though her visits to our infirmary gave her pleasure.

Her first reports concerned Venture and the black ship. The fires in the town had been quenched, and though much had been destroyed, a considerable portion remained. Better still, an unlikely number of Venture's inhabitants had been reclaimed alive. As for Riddance Glave's men, fully a third had surrendered. By my Queen's command, they were treated gently while they were questioned on every conceivable topic concerning their empire, its origins, its extent, and its designs. The ship itself, however, burned with fearsome concussions and screams until the flames reached the water-line and were extinguished.

To that extent, Excrucia and I shared the Majordomo's pleasure.

Later, however, the woman informed us that Opalt Intrix and other adepts of iron had been sent to the transfixed remnant of the vessel to study its cannon so that Indemnie might one day possess similar devices. Thereafter she described at some length the alterations which our sovereign had imposed upon the rule of the isle.

In Glare Estobate's absence, his place as Baron was given to Vail Immordson—how had I failed to ascertain that Vail was Slew's brother?—while Slew himself was set in imprisoned Thrysus Indolent's seat. The brothers were instructed to preside over their new lands justly—a command worthy of a now loved
monarch. Yet there was more. Vail and Slew were also urged to raise and train new armies, armies equipped and supplied to march at any moment to any threatened stretch of Indemnie's coast.

Apparently war occupied a substantial portion of Her Majesty's thoughts.

Other tidings occasioned less concern. Praylix Venery was much ignored, though my Queen named his eldest son—he had an abundance of sons with an inordinate number of mothers—to be his heir, on the condition that the youth would be dispatched at once to spend five years in the household of Jakob Plinth. There he might conceivably learn the merit of such qualities as rectitude and fidelity, and would certainly be taught the requirements of command.

As for Quirk Panderman, my Queen made no attempt to disturb his habitual carouse. However, she commanded the delivery of his archives to the Domicile. Also she asked the loan of several scribes to aid in the study and interpretation of the documents. Thus Indemnie—in the person of its monarch—at last acquired an interest in its singular history.

This alteration gratified Excrucia, though it discomfited me. Beyond question, I had gained much by my love's study of the isle's past. Nevertheless I had sensed a theme in the Majordomo's discourse, a preponderance of import that undermined my ease.

Subsequently our visitor's reports chiefly concerned the rebuilding of Venture and its harbor by teams of timber-men, carpenters, and alchemists drawn from every barony. Even there, however, I detected the same theme. The Majordomo did not
neglect to mention that the remade town would have fortifications unheard-of since the arrival of our people upon the island, barricades and gates of stone strategically placed within Venture itself as well as between the town and the harbor. Also Her Majesty had charged the isle's adepts of stone to raise obstacles from the seabed of the harbor, obstructions hidden by the waters in locations that would be known to our sailors, but that would endanger or perhaps cripple any unwelcome vessel. Such a task would demand years of effort, many alchemists, and much
chrism
, but Inimica Phlegathon deVry deemed it a necessary ward against subsequent intrusions, of which she appeared to expect a great number.

Clearly war and defense were much on my Queen's mind. Therefore they were much on mine. I had begun to understand that she was born to give battle and protect her own.

In due course, I became well enough to quit my bed. When my strength had returned to an extent that exceeded the bounds of the infirmary, Excrucia slipped her truncated arm through mine, and together we exercised our renewed health by exploring the intricacies of the Domicile—passages, chambers, and halls intimately known to her, largely unfamiliar to me. We circled the bailey, revisited the ballroom, entered her apartment when we desired rest, peeked briefly into the far larger and more munificent private chambers of her mother, and engaged in long circumnavigations of the high balconies. Elsewhere the vistas were much as I remembered them, placid and pleasant, but to the north we were able to observe the beehive of labor that was
Venture, the still smoldering wreck of the black ship, and the skiffs and rowboats of men who plied the waters of the harbor, apparently taking soundings to gauge the seabed's depth.

Everywhere we were greeted warmly by persons of every station, sometimes with applause, occasionally with effusive shouts. Nevertheless Excrucia frowned incessantly, a woman who wished to reclaim her reputation for plainness, and thereby to pass unnoticed. And I received both common greetings and extravagant commendations with an increasing chill. Wherever we gazed—at the courtyard increasingly crowded with men at training, at the much augmented number of guards within the house, at the stone walls among the wooden structures of Venture, at the tense alacrity with which commands were obeyed on all sides—I witnessed evidences of the theme that the Majordomo had disclosed.

The peace of Indemnie had been replaced by preparations for war. Its prosperity had been dedicated to the service of those preparations.

This was an alteration in which I had played no small part, and though I did not regret what I had done, I could not regard its outcome—apart from my place at Excrucia's side—with any satisfaction. Much that I had treasured had been lost ere I knew that I treasured it. Now I did not require entrails and blood to foresee that Indemnie's future—once a blank wall of doom—had become a succession of perils and culling.

Perhaps such an outcome had been inevitable from the first. Perhaps prosperity and peace were unnatural, and uncertainty and strife were the fate of all the world's folk. Nevertheless I
had participated in delivering the world's fate to Indemnie. For that reason, I no longer regarded the use that I had made of my gifts with any clear sense of good purpose and worthy service.

When Excrucia and I were entirely recovered, I resolved to pursue a new ambition. I had once tasted
chrism
—and thereafter I had witnessed augury in an entirely changed manifestation, a chicken with its heart still beating after death. If
chrism
could work such an alteration in me, or in my impure blood, it could do as much or more for others of my gift-kin. For that reason, my goal became to form an academy for hieronomers, a place to discover and refine the effects of nature's catalyst upon our ability to scry.

Inimica Phlegathon deVry IV had become a woman altogether changed, no longer manipulative, willful, or cruel, but rather devoted to the freedom—indeed, the survival—of her people. Therefore she would require more precise and insightful auguries if she hoped to find her balance between the attractions of peace and the necessities of strife.

To serve that balance, hieronomy itself must become altogether changed. As I
had.

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