The Iron Wars

SEVEN

YEAR OF THE SAINT 552

Dim though the winter afternoon was, it was darker yet in the King’s chambers. It seemed to Isolla that lately she had been living her life by candlelight and firelight. She sat by Abeleyn’s bedside reading aloud from an old historical commentary on the naval history of Hebrion, glancing every so often at the King’s inert form in the great postered bed. In the first days she had been here she had constantly been prepared for some sudden show of life, some twitch or opening of an eyelid, but Abeleyn lay as still as a graven statue, if a statue could occasionally break into loud, stertorous breathing.

She stroked his hand as she read, the book propped on her knees. It was dry stuff, but it gave her a reason to be here, and Golophin believed that Abeleyn might yet be recalled to himself by the sound of a voice, a touch, some external stimulus which none of them had yet discovered.

It never for an instant occurred to her to wonder what she was doing here, by the bedside-or perhaps the deathbed-of a man she scarcely knew, sitting reading aloud to a man beyond hearing, in a country that was not her own, in a city half ruined by fire and the sword. Her sense of duty was too deeply ingrained for that. And there was an innate stubbornness too which her maid Brienne could have vouched for. A willingness to see something through to the end, once it was undertaken. She had never run away from anything in her life, had braved the snide asides of the Astaran court ladies for so long that it slipped like water from the feathers of a duck. She knew her brother the King loved her, also. That was one of the unshakable pillars of her life.

And he wanted her here with this man, or what was left of him. Isolla could no more have shirked this task than she could have grown wings and flown back to Astarac. Life was not to be enjoyed, it was a thing to work at, to be carved and polished and sanded down until at its end some form of beauty and symmetry might be left behind for others to see. Happiness was rarely a factor to be considered in that process, not when one was born to royalty.

The door opened softly behind her. One of the palace servants, an old man who was one of the few entrusted with the reality of the King’s condition. He stood unsure and silent behind her, coughed quietly.

“What is it, Bion?” She knew all their names.

“My lady, the King has a… a visitor, who insists on being admitted. A noblewoman.”

“No visitors,” Isolla said.

“Lady, she says that my lord Golophin expressly gave her permission to see the King.”

Isolla put away her book, intrigued but wary. Half the nobility of Hebrion had blustered or wheedled at the door at some point, eager for a look at Hebrion’s invisible monarch. Golophin had turned them away, but he was indisposed. Something had happened to his eye-he was wearing a black patch over it-and even his febrile energy seemed to be fading.

“Her name?”

“The lady Jemilla.” Bion seemed ill at ease, perturbed even. He could not meet her eyes.

“I’ll see her in the anteroom,” Isolla said briskly, unwilling to admit even to herself that she was glad of the interruption.

The lady was pale-skinned, raven dark-haired and assured: a doppelganger of half a dozen who had made Isolla’s childhood a misery. But things were different now.

The lady paused a moment as Isolla entered, black eyes watchful, gauging. Then she swept into an elegant curtsey. Isolla acknowledged this with a slight bow of her head. “Please, be seated.”

They took up positions on small, uncomfortable chairs with their robes spread out around them like the plumage of two competing birds.

“I hope I see you well, lady,” Jemilla said pleasantly.

A series of vapid exchanges essential to courtly conversation, all of which were meaningless, a convention. How had the lady Isolla found Hebrion? Cold, was it not, at this time of year, but more pleasant in the spring, surely. The summer far too hot-best to retreat to a lodge in the mountains until the turning of the leaves. And Astarac! A fine kingdom. Her brother the very model of a Ramusian monarch (his current heresy and excommunication blithely passed over). The lady Jemilla held a roll of parchment in one fine-fingered hand. It stirred Isolla’s curiosity, and pricked her into a fine-tuned wariness even as the empty talk slid from her mouth.

“So Golophin agreed that you be admitted to see the King,” Isolla said at last when the polite phrases had run their course.

“Yes, indeed. He and I are old acquaintances. The palace is like a village really. One cannot help but get to know everyone-even the King himself.”

“Oh, indeed?” Isolla’s face gave nothing away, but there was an apprehension growing in her.

“Such a man! Such a monarch! He is greatly loved, lady, as I am sure you are aware. The kingdom is riddled with worry for him. But the dearth of news as to his progress has been quite worrying.” She put out a hand as Isolla stirred. “Not that I mean any reflection on Golophin or the worthy Admiral Rovero, you understand, or General Mercado either. But the people who bled for Abeleyn have a right to know, as do the great men of the kingdom. After all, if the King’s convalescence is to be a long one, then it is only proper that some other personage of fitting rank be nominated to help steer the course of the kingdom. These… professionals are very well in their way, but the common folk like to see good blood at the head of the government. Do you not agree?”

There it was, the gleam of steel through the velvet. Jemilla smiled. Her teeth were small, fine, and very white. Like those of a cat, Isolla thought. Could Golophin actually have given this creature leave to see the King? No, of course not. But what was she to do, tell this lady she lied, to her face? And what was in that damned parchment?

Isolla’s face, unknown to her, grew severe, forbidding almost. It was what her brother Mark called privately her “beat to quarters expression.”

“I will not speculate on the policies of the man who is soon to be my husband, nor on those of his closest and most trusted advisors. It would not be fitting, you understand,” Isolla shot back, watching the little barb slide home. “And unfortunately, the King is very fatigued today, and unable to receive anyone. But be assured, lady, I will convey to him your best wishes and hopes for his recovery. I am sure they will hearten him mightily. And now, alas, I too am not mistress of my own time. I am afraid I must bring this delightful interview to a close.” She paused, expecting the lady Jemilla to get up, to curtsey and to leave. But Jemilla did not move.

“Forgive me,” she said, purring, “but I am afraid I must beg your indulgence for a few moments more. I have here”-the parchment at last-“a document of sorts which I have been charged to deliver to you, as the King’s betrothed. Little do I, a mere woman, understand of these things, but I believe it to be a petition signed by many of the heads of Hebrion’s noble families. May I leave it in your hands? It would be a weight off my mind. Thank you, gracious lady. And now I must bid you farewell.” A curtsey, only just as deep as custom demanded, and a swift exit, the triumph flashing in her eye.

The bitch, Isolla thought. The scheming, insolent bitch. She cracked open the seal-it was the house seal of some high born princeling or other-and scanned the long scroll which fell open in her hands.

A petition all right, and the names on it made Isolla purse her lips in a silent, unladylike whistle. The Duke of Imerdon, no less. The Lords of Feramuno, Hebrero and Sequero. Two thirds of the highest aristocrats in Hebrion must have their signatures here-if the document were genuine. She would have to check that, although did not doubt that it would be genuine. Who was this Lady Jemilla anyway? She was not married to anyone of rank, or she would have taken his name instead of parading around under her own. A husband’s name was the label of a woman’s stature in this world.

And what did this petition request? That the King reveal himself to his anxious subjects and prove that he was the ruler of Hebrion, not the triumvirate of Golophin, Mercado and Rovero. Or, if he were too ill to do so, that a suitable nobleman, one whose bloodline was closest to the King, be named regent of Hebrion until such time as the King himself was capable of ruling again. Second, that access to the King’s person be granted for the signatories, his noble cousins, whose concern for him was overwhelming. Third, that the aforementioned triumvirate of Golophin, Rovero and Mercado be broken up, these gentlemen to resume their proper duties and station and allow the kingdom to be ruled by whomsoever the Council of Nobles decreed regent. And, by the way, the Council of Nobles-an institution that Isolla, for all her reading on Hebrian history, had never heard of-would be convening in two sennights in the city of Abrusio to debate these matters, and to call on the King to marry his betrothed Astaran princess and give the kingdom the joyous spectacle of a Royal wedding, and perhaps, within due time, an heir.

There it was, the gauntlet tossed down before her. Marry him or go home. Produce him, upright and breathing, or let the nobles squabble over his successor. It was what it amounted to, for all the flowery language. Isolla wondered how deeply Jemilla was buried in this thing. She was more than a mere errand-runner, that was plain.

“Bion!” Her voice snapped like a whip.

“My lady?”

“Ask the mage Golophin if he will receive me at once. Tell him it is a matter of the direst urgency. And be quick about it.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Hebrion had just gone through one war, now it was to suffer another; but this one would be played out in the corridors of the palace itself. Strangely enough, Isolla was almost looking forward to the prospect.