‘They all are,’ muttered Almspend, rifling through an enormous grimoire. ‘Oooh! This stinks of Archaic necromancy.’ She literally held her nose. ‘My lady, what are we looking for?’
The Queen looked back and forth between her two most trusted friends. ‘Do you two know what old wives whisper about my husband? That he is impotent, and cursed?’
There was a pause. Hermetical light is very white, and unflattering and the two women looked at their Queen under its glare, each struggling to hide something.
Almspend bowed her head. ‘I have heard this, yes. And worse.’
Lady Mary nodded. ‘Although the Galles all say it is you, my lady. That you are barren.’ Even in the cold white light, she flushed.
Almspend nodded. ‘The Galles are the most vicious gossips I’ve ever heard, for men. I thought only women were so poisonous. Once or twice I’ve wished I wore a sword and could use it, so I could cut the comb of a braggart who needed it.’
The Queen put a hand to her belly. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. ‘By the King, if that needs to be said.’ She sighed.
In some ways, she was the most human that Lady Mary had ever seen her.
‘My husband has a secret,’ the Queen went on. ‘It concerns the Red Knight. Beyond that, I know the older women say the King had an affair, and she is the woman that cursed him with impotence.’
Mary smiled. ‘Well, if that was the case, you seem to have cured him.’
The Queen smiled. ‘I have powers,’ she said, her voice low. ‘And after the battle – that woman, Amicia? She healed us. I think her power and mine combined sufficed to break the curse.’
To Mary, who had no access to power whatsoever, this was too much information; like hearing about another person’s toilet habits. But Almspend leaned forward. ‘Really!’ she said. ‘Fascinating!’
‘I want to know who cast the curse and why,’ said the Queen. ‘So that I can fight it.’ She shrugged. ‘Among other things, it occurs to me that whoever cursed him in the first place might want to harm my baby.’
The two ladies-in-waiting nodded slowly, but Mary smiled. ‘Perhaps you were just slow to kindle?’ she asked.
The Queen laughed. ‘I have lain with the King upwards of three times a day since we were wed,’ she said with a low chuckle. ‘More, when the fancy took us.’ She met her maid’s eye. ‘I know by my powers that I am fecund. Absurdly so. Need I say more?’
Mary blushed so hotly that she fanned herself.
Almspend took a deep breath. ‘Your Grace?’ she asked quietly. As the women hardly ever addressed the Queen by title, she bowed her assent to let her secretary go on.
‘Your Grace must understand that the study of history is littered with unpleasant truths,’ she said.
The Queen nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘That’s all,’ Almspend said. ‘You may well learn something you do not wish to know. Or need to know.’
‘I intend to save my baby,’ said the Queen.
Harndon – Ser Gerald Random
Random was comfortably and pleasurably abed with his wife when the wings began to beat at the window. His first reaction was annoyance, and then fear – the wings were immense and, to a veteran of combat in the Wild, portended something worse than a messenger pigeon. He rose, naked, and drew his sword from its place over his bed, knelt because hopping on one foot is not the best way to face a monster, and pushed his wife’s naked flank to hurry her from the room.
Thump thump thump
Thump thump thump
Once, when he had been a boy, great luna moths had come to the horn windows of his father’s house in South Harndon. His mother, a seamstress, had purchased beeswax candles to allow her to work late – a special commission – and the moths had been drawn by the light. They had been as big as his head or bigger; creatures of the deep Wild. And the thump of their alien, insectile bodies against the mullioned horn and glass windows of his parents’ house had been terrifying and yet fascinating. And very young Thomas Random had watched their shadows flit and nudge and, greatly daring, he had stepped out into a summer night to watch them. The largest moth had fluttered about in its clumsy flight and come to hover just a few inches from the tip of his nose and he’d missed it at first in the dark, and then felt the breeze of its wings, each as big as his hand. He’d felt no urge to kill it. In fact, he’d wondered what it saw when it looked at him.
He’d always been curious about the Wild. He’d ignored his father’s instructions, cashed out his apprenticeship and marched with the Royal Army as a young man – just to see the Wild.
And now, he used the tip of his sword to throw the catch on his bedroom window. The windows opened outward, so he pushed.
The sheer size of the thing outside took his breath away, and then he saw the colour and laughed.
The gigantic raptor was half black and half white – and every child knew what an Imperial messenger looked like. Random had never seen one before, but he knew it, even soaked with rain and desperate with fatigue, and he threw the windows wide so the poor bedraggled thing cartwheeled in and fell in a sodden mass on his bed.
By the time his wife, now decently arrayed, dared return to her bed chamber, Random had the message. He was sitting on the bed, shaking his head.
‘These sheets are ruined,’ Lady Alice said. ‘Six weeks sewing wasted. Couldn’t you have let the damned bird into the stables, or something?’
Random grinned at her.
She stepped back. ‘This isn’t some damned adventure- Oh, no! You are directing the Queen’s tournament.’ She leaned forward. ‘So you can’t leave.’
He caught her and kissed her. ‘It’s a different kind of adventure,’ he said. ‘All I have to do is raise a hundred thousand Etruscan ducats.’
Harndon – Edmund the Journeyman
The first corpse in the square shocked every man and woman in the neighbourhood.
The body was that of a young man – a handsome young man. His murderer meant him to be found – he was spiked to the stump of the maypole with a pair of daggers. He’d been killed with a sword. He was expensively dressed in red and yellow wool and silk.
Edmund saw the crowd around the corpse and waited his turn to see the thing itself. He’d seen enough corpses to know the look – white as milk, a slackness about him that threatened any man’s belief in an afterlife. Dead was dead.
Friars came and took the man down and by late afternoon, when he and his apprentices were taking turns boring the latest barrel, a shop boy told them that the body was one of the Queen’s squires.
‘It was them Galles,’ said Sam.
Tom and Duke kept working.
‘Well, it stands to reason. Jack Drake tried to take our square, and he’s the king of them Galle lovers. One of the Queen’s squires dead? The Galles kilt him.’ He shrugged. ‘Or Jack Drake did. To warn us off.’ Sam looked at his acting master, who shook his head.
‘What a lot of foolery,’ Edmund said. ‘The Galles are knights. They don’t go around killing other gentles-’
‘But they do!’ said Duke. ‘Christ on the cross, Ed! Where’ve you been? Their top knight, Vrailly, kilt the Earl of Towbray’s nephew in cold blood! Just hacked him down.’
Tom shook his head. ‘Kilt him in a duel, fair as fair. That’s the way I hear it.’ He went back to turning his drill, and then paused. ‘Mind you, Vrailly is as big as a house and the other was just a boy – but a fight’s fair if both parties agree to fight – eh? Ain’t it?’
‘Galle lover,’ Duke spat.
‘Nope,’ said Tom. ‘I just like to have my facts straight.’
‘Could have been Drake, though,’ Sam said.
Edmund nodded. ‘That’s enough. Let’s get this job done.’
Duke grunted, angry. The boy was often angry, these days. The city air was poisoned with the new factions – the Galles, the Jarsays, and the Northerners. Galles dressed in bright colours, wore their cotes and gowns very short, and walked about looking for trouble.