Tomorrow's Kingdom (17 page)

“Yes, Aurelia,” he said impassively.

She stared at him without speaking for a moment. Then tears welled in her bright eyes, and her lower lip began to tremble. She opened her mouth to speak but Lord Bartok cut her off before she had the chance to utter a single word.

“In spite of the fact that you are a girl and the younger, I have agreed to make you my heir over Atticus, Aurelia,” he reminded her. “I did not grant that privilege to you that you might shirk your duty to this family.”

Aurelia flinched as though struck. Then a wild look flashed in her eyes. Boldly taking a step forward, she slapped her hands down onto his desk—right on top of his papers!—and hissed, “You know perfectly
well
that you've no cause to accuse me of shirking my duty,
Father
, for you are the one who ordered me to suffer through my duty each and every
night
!”

Lord Bartok stared at his daughter's hands until she removed them. Then he looked up at her and said, “You struck a bargain, Aurelia. Do not complain to me now that you do not care for its terms. And remember that
attempting
to do your duty is not what matters—
succeeding
is what matters. Can you tell me for a certainty that the stable boy has impregnated you with a bastard you are going to be able to carry to term and deliver alive?”

Colour suffused the girl's face. “No,” she mumbled, stifling a small cough. “But—”

“But nothing,” interrupted Lord Bartok, returning to his papers. “You will play your part in this, Aurelia, and that is final.”

Face pinched with displeasure, Lady Aurelia watched him scratching away at his latest letter. Then she dipped him a stiff curtsey and left the chamber without another word.

TWENTY-TWO

L
ATER THAT SAME DAY
, in a far less sumptuous chamber within the imperial palace, General Murdock daintily slurped a raw oyster from its half-shell. Tipping his head back, he let it slide, unchewed, down his throat. As it joined its slimy brethren in his belly, the distant sound of a shouting mob floated in through the open window. The sound swelled as the mob drew nearer, reached a crescendo as it swept through the street on the far side of the palace wall and then faded again as the street veered away from the palace and the mob melted back into the noisy city.

After a moment's hesitation, General Murdock sighed and reached for another oyster. That his New Men had not been able to prevent a mob from forming was a troubling reminder that in spite of his best efforts, his grip on the city was growing more tenuous with each passing day.

General Murdock had expected those of noble birth to take exception to being trapped in the city against their will, of course, and he'd expected the merchant class to complain that the inability to trade with those outside the city walls was bad for business. He'd even expected the working poor to protest the abuses of the soldiers who invaded their narrow, crowded streets with intent to cause mischief.

What he'd not expected was that instead of cowering in the shadows hoping not to be noticed, the lowborns who'd thusfar escaped deportation from Parthania would start making trouble. It had begun with the disturbance they'd caused during the king's funeral procession almost a fortnight earlier and had gotten progressively worse from there. They were untrained and poorly armed, but they were also angry and suddenly, recklessly brave. It was as though they'd finally been pushed over the edge by the death of their king, the absence of their uncrowned queen and the omnipresent hordes of hated New Men who'd ever caused them so much suffering; it was as though they'd finally realized that they had nothing but their lives to lose—or give. And the more aggressively General Murdock and his soldiers tried to subdue them, the more defiant they became.

Like a snowball in the sun, the fear that had kept them in check all these years seemed to be slowly, inexorably melting away.

More concerning still were the reports of sabotage and revolt that had begun to trickle in from all corners of the realm. In the seaside village of Syon, a New Man had been beaten to death on the quay when he'd threatened to deport a pair of urchins to the Mines of Torodania. To the west, a hundred head of woolly sheep stolen from the
Khan had mysteriously escaped from their pens in the dead of night. On the northern frontier, someone had set fire to a half-built bridge at a lowborn work camp.

Taken in isolation, these were minor incidents.

Taken altogether, they spoke of a kingdom creeping toward chaos.

The previous day, General Murdock had been in the middle of crafting a carefully worded letter explaining all this to Mordecai—and requesting permission to begin executing children en masse to bring the Parthanian lowborns to heel—when he'd received a coded communiqué from His Grace. It had contained no information, only an order to kill Lord Bartok and Lady Aurelia as soon as may be. If possible, he was to make their deaths appear accidental; if not, he was to make their deaths appear the random acts of a madman.

Since Mordecai had always insisted that he wished to show the world that he did not need to kill Lord Bartok to triumph over him, the order had come as a surprise to General Murdock—but a most welcome one. He'd long believed that the Bartoks posed an unacceptable risk to His Grace's ambitions; having at last been given leave to eliminate this risk was a considerable relief.

Unfortunately, since Lord Bartok and his daughter did nothing together and went nowhere together, General Murdock knew it would be impossible to stage an accident that would kill them both. Taking a small nibble from the wedge of smelly cheese he'd selected from the artfully arranged tray of exotic cheeses that had been served alongside the oysters, he permitted himself a small smile.
Though he was a military man who always executed his orders to the best of his ability, there were some orders he enjoyed executing more than others, and eliminating Lord Bartok and his daughter in a manner that would convince people that it was the work of a madman was going to be one of these. All that remained was to find the perfect opportunity to—

A knock at the door interrupted General Murdock's thoughts
and
his dinner. Frowning slightly, he lifted the white linen napkin off of his lap, dabbed at the corners of his mouth and then nodded to the attendant that he should open the door.

A servant in Bartok livery stepped into the room. In his hand, he held a folded piece of parchment.

Pursing his thin lips, General Murdock wondered what the doomed Lord Bartok wanted now. Then he read the note, and his eyes seemed to protrude a little farther out of his narrow face.

The note was not from whom he'd expected it to be, and the message it contained was similarly unexpected.

Unexpected—but most convenient.

Much later that night, General Murdock quietly rapped on the unattended door of one of the finest suites of chambers in the castle. Almost immediately, the door swung open to reveal Lady Aurelia dressed in the same black satin dressing gown she wore each night when she received the servant who studded her. Like a frightened little bird, she poked her head into the torch-lit corridor. She cast one jerky glance to the left and one to the right. Then, apparently satisfied that there was no one lurking about, she hopped back and nervously gestured to General Murdock that he should step inside.

Wordlessly, he did as she bid. By the time he'd closed the door and turned around to face her, she'd flitted halfway across the room, which appeared to be deserted but for the two of them.

Laying a hand at the gaping collar of her peignoir, Lady Aurelia cleared her throat several times as though in an effort to remove a persistent tickle. Then she said, “Thank you for coming, General.”

If General Murdock had been the sort of man to feel awkward, uncomfortable or even desirous, he might have felt those things at that moment. But of course, he was not the sort of man to feel any of those things, and so all he felt was the slight weight of the sharpened straight razor he was carrying in the front pocket of his perfectly tailored black doublet.

“I was pleased to answer your summons, my lady,” he said, taking a step toward her. “However, I must confess that it surprised me, for it is rather … unusual for a woman of your station to invite a man of my station to her chambers, let alone to receive him at night and in the complete absence of attendants.”

“I know,” said Lady Aurelia with a toss of her honey-blond curls. “And I'd not have sent for you or received you in such an unseemly manner if I was not in
desperate
need of your help.”

General Murdock nodded, pleased that she'd confirmed that they were alone. Though he could easily have disposed of a few terrified female attendants—and though doing so in a frenzied manner would certainly have heightened the impression that Lady Aurelia's murder was a random act of madness—their presence would have complicated the mission, and a military man always avoided complications when he could.

“I understand completely,” he murmured now. Casually slipping his hand into the pocket of his doublet, General Murdock closed his fingers around the handle of the straight razor and took another step toward the little noblewoman. “Tell me, how can I be of assistance?”

Instead of answering, Lady Aurelia abruptly fluttered over to a chair near the fire, flung herself down and began to weep.

Hand still in his pocket, General Murdock started toward her. “There, there,” he said, repeating words he'd heard other men say to other teary-eyed women.

“Forgive me my womanly weakness, General,” said Lady Aurelia with a dainty sniffle. “I just … I didn't know who else to turn to. My father is so powerful, so frightening …” Leaning forward so far that General Murdock could have seen her breasts if he'd been inclined to drop his gaze, she dropped her voice a notch and added, “You cannot
imagine
the wicked things he has made me do—nor the unspeakable thing he would have me do now.”

“What wicked things has he made you do?” asked General Murdock, who already knew at least part of the answer and thought it prudent to learn the rest of it before
he silenced Lady Aurelia forever. “What unspeakable thing would he have you do now?”

The noblewoman opened her mouth, but instead of replying, she bolted to her tiny bare feet, fixed her bright eyes upon something behind him and gasped, “What was that?”

“What was what?” asked General Murdock, looking around.

“Out in the corridor!” whispered Lady Aurelia frantically. “I heard a noise!”

Lifting his long, thin nose as though he might be able to smell the threat, even if he could not hear it, General Murdock said, “I heard nothing—”

“Come quickly, General,
please
!” interrupted Lady Aurelia in a panicked whisper as she flew across the room and flung open the door of her bedchamber. “You must hide under the bed at once, for if that is my lord father out there and he finds you in here, I swear to you that he will kill you and beat me to within an inch of my life!”

His eyes gleaming in the firelight, General Murdock hesitated for just a moment before adjusting his grip on the straight razor in his pocket and starting after Lady Aurelia. Though he was quite as sure that she was having hysterics over nothing as he was that her lord father would never in a thousand years be able to kill him, the bedchamber was as convenient a place as any to take her apart. As long as—

He saw them hiding in the shadows the instant he stepped into the bedchamber. Unfortunately for General Murdock, it was an instant too late, for although he managed to slit two throats, slash one face and bite off the lobe of one ear, in the end there were simply too many attackers to fight off.

When the Bartok lackeys disguised as New Men had finished binding General Murdock's arms behind his back and beating him for the injuries he'd inflicted upon their number, Lady Aurelia flounced over to the place on the floor where he was lying.