The Second Empire (34 page)

A sunlit hillside above Aekir in some age of the world long past, and he was sitting on crackling bracken with Heria by his side, sharing wine. His wife’s smile rent his heart.

Andruw laughing amid the roar of guns, a delight in life lighting up his face and making it into that of a boy.

Barbius’s Fimbrians advancing to their deaths in terrible glory at the North More.

Berrona burning low on a far horizon.

A smoky hut in which his mother wept quietly and his father stared at the earthen floor as Corfe told him he was going for a soldier.

Dappled sunlight on the Torrin river as he splashed and swam there one long summer afternoon.

And the roar and blare of many trumpets, the beat of heavy drums rising even over the clamour of war. The press of bodies about him eased. He was hauled to his feet and found himself looking through a film of blood at Aras’s slashed face.

“Andruw has come!” he was shouting. “The Fimbrians have struck the Merduk flank!”

And raising his heavy head he saw the pikes outlined against the fuming sky, and all about him the men of Armagedir were cheering as the Merduks poured away in absolute panic. The dyke veterans were lined on a hillside to the north, blasting out volley after volley into the close-packed throng of the enemy. And the Fimbrians were cutting them down like corn, advancing as relentlessly as if they meant to sweep every Merduk off the edge of the world.

Corfe bent his head and wept.

TWENTY-TWO

T HE levee had gone very well, Murad thought. Half the kingdom’s remaining nobility seemed to have been present, and they had listened, agog, as Murad had told them of his experiences in the west. It was good of the King to have allowed him to do it. It announced that the Lord of Galiapeno had returned indeed and, what was more, enjoyed the Royal favour. But it had also been a draining experience.

Traveller’s tales. Is that all they thought he had to tell? Empty-headed fools.

The King had limped down from his throne and was now mingling with his subjects. He had a genius for gestures like that, Murad thought, though it was hardly fitting, not so soon after these same men who were now fawning about him had been conspiring to take the throne away from him.

If it were I wearing that crown, Murad thought, I’d have executed every last one of them.

His head was swimming. He had been able to keep down nothing but wine since stepping off the ship. I am back in my own world, he thought. And what a little world it is. Time to retire. He craved a dreamless slumber, something that would restore the weariness of his very soul. Oblivion, without the bloody pictures that haunted his sleep.

“Lord Murad,” a woman’s voice said. “How very honoured I am to meet you.”

She was a striking, dark-haired lady with intelligent eyes and a low-cut bodice. She was also very pregnant. Murad bowed. “I am flattered. Might I ask—?”

“I am the lady Jemilla. I have a feeling you probably know of me already.”

He did indeed. Abeleyn had told him everything. So this was the woman who bore the King’s child, who had tried to set up a regency. Murad’s interest quickened. She was a beauty, no doubt of that. Why was she at liberty? Abeleyn was so damned soft. She ought to be hidden away somewhere, and the brat strangled when it was born.

“I believe,” she went on, fluttering her fan under her chin, “that you now enjoy the happy distinction of being the man closest by blood to the King himself.”

“I am,” Murad said, and smiled. It would be nice to bed her. It was obvious what she was doing: fishing for a new puppet to play against the King.

“It is so hot in here, lady,” he said. “Would you care to take a turn with me outside in the gardens?”

She took his arm. Her eyes had suddenly lost their coy look. “What woman could refuse such a gallant adventurer?”

S HE gasped and squealed and moaned as he thrust into her, pulling her hips towards him with fistfuls of her dress. Murad clenched his teeth as he spent himself within, gave her one last savage thrust and pulled away with the sweat running down his face. Jemilla sank to her side in the deeper shadows under the tree. Twilight was fast sinking into darkness and her face was a mere livid blur. The gardens were alive with the birds’ evensong, and he could still hear the buzz and laughter of the chattering guests in the reception hall. Murad refastened his breeches and leaned on one elbow in the resinous-smelling dimness under the cypress.

“You have a direct way of approaching things,” he told Jemilla.

“It saves time.”

“I agree. You have hopes for your child, obviously, but what exactly is your fascination with me? I am no young girl’s dream. And I have been away from court a long time.”

“Precisely. You are not tainted by the events which have been transpiring in Abrusio. Your hands are clean. We could be useful to one another,” Jemilla said calmly.

Murad brushed the dead leaves from his shoulders. “I could be useful to you, you mean. Lady, your name is mud at court. The King tolerates you out of some outdated chivalric impulse. Your child, when it is born, will be shunted off to some backwater estate in the Hebros, and you with it. What can you offer me, aside from the occasional roll in the grass?”

She leaned closer. Her hand slid down his belly and over the brim of his breeches. He flinched minutely as her hot fingers gripped his flaccid member.

“Marry me,” she said.

“What?” Murad actually chuckled.

“I could not then be shunted off, as you put it. And my son’s claims would be all the stronger.” Her hand started to work up and down on him. He began to harden again in her grasp.

“This may be true, but I ask again: what do I get out of it?”

“You become the legal guardian of the King’s heir. If something were to happen to the King after my son is born, he would be too young to be crowned. And you would be regent automatically.”

“Regicide? Is that your game?” He wrenched her hand out of his breeches. “Lady, if something were to happen to the King, I would be next in line anyway, have you thought of that? I would have no need to play uncle to your bastard.”

“You may be the King’s cousin, but you are not of the Hibrusid house. You might find some difficulty persuading the rest of the nobles that your claim is preeminent. With myself as your wife, the King’s only son as your legal ward, your position would be unassailable. Call yourself regent if you would: you would be King in everything but name.”

“And what would you be—a dutiful little wife? I’d sooner share my bed with a viper.”

She sat up, and shrugged. Her bodice had come down and her heavy, dark-nippled breasts were bare. She took his hand and set it upon one of them, squeezed his fingers in on the ripe softness.

“Think on it awhile,” she said, her voice a low purr. “Abeleyn is a travesty of a man held together by sorcery alone. He will not make old bones.”

“I may be many things,” Murad said, “but I am not yet a traitor.”

“Think on it,” she repeated, and rose to her feet, tugging up her dress, shaking grass out of her hair. “By the way, your ship was piloted by one Richard Hawkwood, was it not?”

“Yes. So?”

Her voice changed. She lost some of her assured poise. “How is he? I have a lady’s maid who wishes to know.”

“A lady’s maid with a yen for a mariner? He’s well enough, I suppose. Like me, he survived. There is not much more to be said.”

“I see.” She became her assured self again, and bent forward to kiss Murad’s scarred forehead. “Think on my offer. I am staying in the West Wing—the guest apartments. You can visit me when you like. Come and talk to me. I am lonely there.” She brushed one delicate finger along the scar that convulsed the skin of his temple, then turned and walked away across the garden towards the lights of the palace, her fan fluttering all the way.

Murad watched her go. A peculiar hunger arose within him. There was something about the lady Jemilla which challenged his pride. He liked that. Her schemes were dangerous daydreams—but he would visit her, of that he was sure. He would make her squeal, by God.

He left the shadow of the tree and looked up at the first stars come gleaming in the spring sky. Abrusio. He was home at last. And that murderous nightmare he had left behind him could be forgotten. His venture had been a failure, but it had taught him many things. He had information now that could one day prove useful.

Tomorrow he would visit the city barracks and see about getting back his old command. And he needed a new horse, something bad-tempered and spirited from the Feramuno studs. Something he would enjoy breaking down.

There were many things he was going to enjoy breaking down. Murad lifted his face and laughed aloud into the starlit sky. It was good to be alive.

EPILOGUE

S PRING, it seemed, had come at last. There was a freshness to the air, and primroses had come out in bright lines about the margins of the Western Road. Corfe stood on the summit of the tower and watched the light tumble cloud patterns over the hills. If he turned his head, he could see the sea glimmering on the world’s horizon. A world at peace.

“I thought I would find you here,” a woman’s voice said. She touched him lightly on the arm, her long skirts whispering around her. She wore a crown.

An aged woman. She looked old enough to be his grandmother, and yet she was about to become his wife.

“It looks so quiet,” he said, still staring out at the empty hills beyond the city walls. “As if it had all been a dream.”

“Or a nightmare,” Odelia retorted.

He said nothing. The great burial mounds of Armagedir were too far away for him to see, but he knew he would always feel them there, somewhere at his shoulder. Andruw lay in one of them, and Morin and Cerne and Ebro and Ranafast and Rusio—and ten thousand other faceless men who had died at his bidding. They were one monument he would never be able to forget.

“It’s time, Corfe,” the Queen said gently.

“I know.”

If he looked east, towards the sea, he would find a large, ornate encampment pitched there, gay with the silk pennons and horsetail standards of the Merduks. The enemy had come calling in the aftermath of defeat, not exactly cap in hand but with a certain strained humility all the same. Corfe had given leave for the Merduk Sultan and a suitable escort to pitch their tents within sight of the city walls. His representatives had been permitted into the city this very morning, entering in peace the place they had squandered so much blood to take. They wanted to witness the crowning of Torunna’s new King, the man with whom they would be treating in the days to come. It was too bizarre for words. Andruw would have found it so immensely funny.

Corfe blinked away the heat in his eyes. It was hard, harder than he could have imagined.

“He died well,” Odelia said gently, “the way he would have wished. They all did.”

Corfe nodded. He, too, would have been happy to die that day, knowing the battle was won.

“There is still the peace,” Odelia said with that disquieting prescience of hers. “It remains to be achieved. What you do today is part of that.”

“I know. I’m not sure it is the way I would have chosen, though.”

“It is the best way,” she said, pressing his arm. “Trust me, Corfe.”

He limped away from the parapet with her hand still on his arm and turned back towards the city below. From this height, Torunn looked like some fairy-tale metropolis. The streets were packed with people—it was said a quarter of a million had gathered in City Square—and every house seemed to be flying some flag or banner. The citizens crowded upper-floor windows like tiers of house martins in their nests, and Torunnan regulars in full dress were stationed at every corner.

“Let’s get it over with,” Corfe said.

F ORMIO had drawn up an honour guard of pike-stiff Fimbrians in the court-yard of the palace, and as Corfe and Odelia appeared they snapped to attention like automatons. The Fimbrian adjutant saluted his commander with a rare smile, one arm still in a sling. He looked pale and somewhat ethereal, but had insisted on leaving his sickbed for this day. The chill in Corfe warmed a little. Aras was there too, the huge scar in his face nearly healed. The Queen had worked tyrelessly in the aftermath of Armagedir, saving countless lives and wearing herself down to a shadow in the process. “Give you joy, sir,” Aras ventured.

“Thank you, General.”

Corfe and Odelia climbed into the open barouche that awaited them, and set off out of the palace flanked by fifty mounted Cathedrallers—all that had survived. As soon as they appeared at the palace gates a great roar went up from the waiting crowds. They trundled through the cobbled streets with the Cathedrallers raising a clattering din of hooves about them and the people cheering madly. The air was full of blossoms that spectators were scattering from the windows overhead.

“Wave, Corfe,” Odelia said out of the corner of her mouth. “They’re your people. They are what you won the war for.”

The cavalcade halted before the steps of the city cathedral and there they got out in a cloud of footmen, dignitaries and whirling blossom. There was a salute of massed trumpets. They paused on the stone steps, Odelia smiling and nodding graciously at the Merduk ambassador, one Mehr Jirah, Corfe giving him a cold glance before they walked on, pageboys lifting the Queen’s train and the hem of Corfe’s long cloak.

And into the cathedral, its pews stuffed to overflowing with what nobility the kingdom still possessed, their numbers augmented by the great and the good of Torunna. Corfe’s eye was caught by Admiral Berza, near the aisle. The old admiral winked at him as he passed by, his face as stiff as wood. There was Passifal’s white head amongst the assembled military. Corfe recognised no-one else. He limped up the aisle staring straight ahead, expressionless.

Up at the altar Macrobius stood ready, smiling his blind smile. He was flanked by Bishops Albrec and Avila, who each bore velvet cushions. On one rested the crown of Torunna. On the other was a pair of plain gold wedding rings. One led to the other: both were deemed necessary for the well-being of the country.