De Rohan looked a moment and gestured to the archbishop. “The so-called Queen is safe enough,” he said.
“The canaille would save her, if only to spite me,” the archbishop said. His chairmen grunted under him.
“We’ve dispersed them,” de Rohan said. “And caught the go-between the Queen used with her lover. Let’s go and tell the King.” He motioned to his own black-and-yellow-clad retinue, and then he moved toward the King with something like unseemly haste.
“Hurry, de Rohan,” Desiderata called, her voice fey. “Hurry to your end.”
Twenty of the purple guardsmen remained. They used their spear points on anyone in the crowd who came closer than a spear’s length to the barrier. Men cursed them, but none had the spine to resist them.
Amicia left the column as they rounded the last bend in the road. The lists were clear to see, even in the odd hazy light. The heat was stifling, the damp oppressive, so that in two layers of linen she felt she might wilt.
But she had Gelfred with her. He rode with her to an enclosure full of horses. There were two Royal Guardsmen there who seemed to think very little of his dismounting with a beautiful woman.
“You won’t be leaving this way,” he said. He smiled. “God be with you, my lady.”
She handed him her reins, bobbed her head, and began to walk towards the back of the royal box above the stands. There were a dozen Royal Guards here at the back, and a small mob of other liveries-servants in almost every conceivable heraldry, with trays and bottles and linen towels over their arms, and a double dozen of various soldiers all eyeing each other with malice.
Amicia entered her palace and began to work. It was a simple enough beguiling-few men wanted to stop a beautiful woman from going where she would, anyway, and those who would stop such a woman were even easier to dissuade, their lust a weapon with which to deceive them. Her beguiling was subtle and strong. She watched her body move over the grass, and saw them notice her and saw men smile, one to the other…
She passed the guards. Behind them were two sets of wooden steps into the royal box, equidistant to right and left. But under the box was a small chamber-a retiring chamber that Amicia suspected had been placed there so that the King could be moved out of sight-if required.
She passed into the chamber as if it was hers by right.
“Bless you, Gelfred,” she whispered.
She stood as close to directly beneath the King as she could manage.
She sighed. The wood was too dense, and blocked her aethereal sight completely, or at least too much for such a delicate working.
She passed back through the curtain, and past the guards. Men looked, and saw, or did not see, but now she passed among them, her will adamant, her face radiant.
One man sighed, and another groaned. But no one moved to stop her.
It was fifty paces to the end of the tall bleachers. She walked all the way, painfully aware that she had the eyes of a dozen men on her slim back. But no one shouted.
She passed the end of the bleachers. Out here, away from the pavilions and the enclosure for spare horses, the noise was greater. Above her in the stands, hundreds of ladies and gentlemen sat, eating morsels and drinking wine.
She turned and began to climb the steps. She climbed until she was parallel with the royal box. She could see a man in red who was probably the King, but long rows of people separated them, and his head bobbed back and forth.
The whole path from her position to the King was blocked with seated spectators.
She took a deep breath, and steadied her working. Then, to the first woman in the row, she said, “I’m sorry, I need to get to my father.”
The woman stood to let her pass, frowning.
“There’s someone coming,” her husband said. The man was short, and wide, and wore too much gold. “By God-it’s a whole team in red. Is it the King’s men?”
Amicia couldn’t help herself. She turned and looked.
Down at the entrance to the stands, fifty feet below her, there were ten knights and ten squires, all in brilliant steel armour-plate over maille, often edged in laten or bronze or brass.
She could see the Red Knight and the Green Knight, too. And Ser Tom.
The trumpeter was there as herald, dressed in the company scarlet with the lacs d’amour on his tabard.
Everyone in the stands was on their feet. Whether luck, fortune or God-she had her moment, and she scrambled along, no more interested in stealth, with the instinct of the pickpocket when a distraction is made available. She pushed and pressed almost recklessly.
The marshal strode across the lists. The crowd hushed.
Amicia pushed on.
The Red Knight’s herald raised his trumpet from his hip, and it unfurled with the white dove on a sun-in-splendor of the Queen.
The crowd roared.
The sound was so loud that it startled Amicia and she almost let her working fall. Her heart was pounding-
She wondered in the calm fastness of her palace what it was like to be in a closed helmet with nothing but the fear and all that sound, and all the hopes of thousands of people on your armour-burdened shoulders.
She reached out in the aethereal with her sight, and saw.
First she saw the Queen. The Queen burned like a small sun-bright gold, un-alloyed, undimmed. She was in a sort of pen at the base of the stands, and the wood of the barriers surrounding held a working on it-a curious and not particularly stable working.
Nearer at hand, she saw a group of men moving quickly-a young fat man with no talent whatsoever, and by his side a grey man who flickered with potency.
“Ah, yes,” she thought.
She glanced at the King, who was warded-ten times warded. He was covered in wardings, like a prisoner draped in chains. Amulets and sigils, runes and bindings were on him layer after layer. She had never seen anything like it, and suddenly-for the first time-she felt overmatched. For some reason she had expected a single, potent work-an internal mirror or a secret working that locked the target up as surely as a prison. Both Harmodius and the Abbess, in her head, remembered such working and had remedies.
But this tangle of cluttered thaumaturgy, with superstition, blind chance and careful science all mixed…
She looked again. It was like looking at the tangled remnants of a skein of linen after a kitten had attacked it.
Nor was she sure that the King’s will was in any way affected by it all.
He was merely… warded.
Nicholas Ganfroy had practised for a year for this moment. His trumpet rang out, loud and clear, piercing the tumult of the crowd.
Into his split second of crowd-silence, he roared the Red Knight’s challenge.
“He who styles himself the Red Knight bids defiance to any wight so craven as to pretend that the gracious Queen of Alba, high Desiderata, is other than the King’s own wife; loyal, faithful, and true. And he offers to prove this assertion on the body of any so bold in his blood or wanting in brains that will maintain her unfaithfulness, or will offer to exchange blows. And the Red Knight maintains he offers battle for no pride in his own prowess, but only to see justice done. And if no knight will offer to uphold the charges against the gracious lady Queen, the Red Knight demands her instant release by the law of arms, the Rule of Law of Alba, and also the Rule of War of Galle.”
Ganfroy’s lungs were as brazen as his trumpet, and he’d practised, shouting into basements and wine cellars. His words carried clearly.