Now there was no more king. There was no more Burgrave. Only, now, a Lord Mayor. There had been much debate about what to call the new leader of Ness. The title they’d eventually chosen was not a Skraeling honorific at all-it was the name given to the men of the Northern Kingdoms who were elected to serve as the leaders of their mercantile cities. It was technically incorrect, since Malden was no lord by birth or right, but the people did love calling him by his new title.
A title Malden hated, because it made him the enemy of freedom.
Freedom was one of the few things he truly loved or believed in. Freedom was what he’d sought all his life, even as all the lords and knights and kings tried to take it away from him. Freedom was wonderful-at least until your neighbor decided to be free with your property, or your spouse, or your life. Then someone had to step in and take away his freedom to preserve yours.
Malden, who had spent his entire life hating watchmen and judges and especially rulers, was now the one who sent people to the gaol. The one who sat in judgment at their trials and decided who was worthy of freedom and who must be constrained for the good of Ness. The one who would have to punish miscreants, as soon as he figured out a way to do so that didn’t make his stomach cramp and tie itself in knots.
There had been no hangings in Ness since the night Castle Hill was razed. There had been a dozen murders, though. Just that morning he’d had to send Velmont and a crew of thieves into a bad part of the Stink. Because there were no watchmen left, it was up to the thieves to maintain order-something they found hilariously funny, though Malden had not laughed when he asked this of them. A man, a citizen, deranged in his faculties, had killed his own daughter. He claimed he was going to take her blood to the Godstone and make proper sacrifice there. The madman thought that reinstituting human sacrifice was the only way to drive off the barbarians.
Malden had him put in chains. After talking briefly with the man, he was convinced that were the murderer’s freedom returned to him, he would only find somebody else to kill. The murderer had six more daughters, and two infant sons.
“Enough,” Malden said out loud, up on the rooftops, because all this thinking nearly made him miss a step. Twenty-five feet aboveground, on a roof of crumbling shingles, a misstep would be fatal.
And if he died here, who would keep Ness from descending into anarchy?
He ran the rest of the way to the Lemon Garden feeling like a black wind was howling through him. When he dropped down into the courtyard beside the withered lemon tree-all its fruit was gone now, he saw-he felt almost human.
Unfortunately, the courtyard wasn’t empty. The whole city knew that Malden had taken the private room upstairs as his office. Men and women from every corner of Ness came now, and paid the tupenny fee Elody demanded (the price of her quickest and least sanitary engagements) just to get in the door.
“Lord Mayor! There’s no one working the grist mill in Chapeldown Lane-I can’t get the flour I need to make bread!”
“Lord Mayor! My wagon threw a wheel this morning, but the wheelwright says he can’t find any bodgers to make new spokes!”
“Lord Mayor! I put an image of the Lady in my window last night, you know, just in case-and a gang of boys broke my window with rocks!”
“Lord Mayor, please, a moment!”
“Lord Mayor!”
“Lord Mayor!”
Their breath filled the courtyard, cutting through the chill in the air but making Malden’s head spin. They pressed close and grabbed at his clothing, all trying to get his attention, just for a moment.
Malden felt faint. He felt a desperate need to escape. He scuttled up the swaying trunk of the lemon tree and jumped to the gallery above. More supplicants awaited him there, but he was able to duck inside his private room and bar the door before they could do more than shout his name. They knocked and begged through the portal, but for a moment, at least, he was alone.
Or rather-alone with the one person in all of Ness he wanted to see. On the bed, Cythera turned over and opened one bleary eye to look at him. Then she smiled.
There were some small compensations for being called Lord Mayor.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Malden leaned down and kissed Cythera gently. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him into the bed. They lay there together for a while, just holding one another. Lovers in a busy time, stealing precious seconds.
In a moment, Malden knew, he would have to get up and go back to work. He could ignore the people knocking on his door, ignore their constant pleas, for a little while, but it turned out that having power mostly meant having to listen to every person with a complaint and finding some way to reassure or help them-lest one lose that power again.
He would have given it up for a bent farthing. He didn’t dare give it up for all the treasure in the world’s coffers.
“You seem to like men of position,” he said with a smile, as Cythera ran one finger up and down his arm.
“Some positions more than others,” she laughed.
He brushed hair away from her forehead. He had so many questions he wanted to ask her. So far he hadn’t dared. The night after the sacking of Castle Hill, she had come to him. It had not been their first night together, but it felt different. It felt like something real had grown between them. Something fragile but invaluable. Something that could be lost as quickly as it was found.
This was Cythera. He knew-knew it with all his heart-that she was not merely attracted to his new powers or the money that came with them. Yet he didn’t understand why she had chosen this moment to show it.
“I could buy us a house now, on the Golden Slope,” he told her. “We could live there as man and wife.”
Her shoulders tensed. She couldn’t seem to meet his eye. “Why would I want that?” she asked, her smile gone. “I’ve spent the last seven nights in a whore’s bed, and there have never been seven sweeter.”
Malden ran a hand across the coverlet. He hadn’t considered that he’d brought her to a bawdy house, or how she would see that. The place just felt like home to him.
“I had Elody change the sheets,” Cythera jested.
“Marry me,” Malden said, suddenly urgent.
He had asked her as much a thousand times. He’d made a game of it, because every time she said no, but in such a way as to suggest she might one day change her mind. That she longed to be his wife, as much as he longed to be her husband.
“No,” she said again.
This time there were no promises hidden in her eyes.
Malden sighed and laid back, his head on a pillow. He wanted to ask why not. He wanted to force the issue. When would it ever be the right time, if not now? Yet he was terrified of finding out why she would be his leman but not his lady. He was terrified of what she might say.
Especially because he had begun to suspect he might know the truth.
“Seven nights of bliss,” he said, wandering around the subject, “but eight nights ago I spoke with your mother. Together she and I watched Castle Hill burn. She told me I would have to take up this mantle, or someone else would, someone not of my choosing.”
“She sees much. Perhaps more than she should,” Cythera told him. She reached over and grasped his hand tight, as if afraid a great wind would come and blow away everything they had.
“Even before that I think she knew this would happen. When I tried to give my sword to Ommen Tarness, I could not lift it. Witchcraft held it down.”