Not a great deal, as it happened. Three houses had collapsed; there were two dead and five or six injured. By the standards of those who remembered the old days it was very little. But because the earth had been quiet for so long—I could not recall such a thing though my father told me there had been several during the first few years of my life—there was fear that the evil times were returning. In the city I found people talking of sleeping out in the open that night, abandoning the city as they had done in the past, and some were already loading their goods on carts. A long line had formed outside the tent-seller’s shop in the High Street and it was said he was asking twenty pounds for his smallest tents and finding eager buyers. The bakers had sold out of bread; all the food shops were besieged.
As the day wore by, though, with no more shocks, the panic died away. There were some who continued to move out of the city, but not many, and I saw others mocking them as cowards. Even if more quakes came the risk of staying was worth taking, provided they were no more severe than this. Our houses, after all, were built to withstand the smaller shiftings of the earth. (Our ancestors had built in stone and metal, their houses hundreds of feet high, and had died under the rubble of their tumbled pride.) Our houses were of wood and the beams so laid that they yielded one against another under pressure, but the structure itself remained intact.
In the afternoon a rumor spread which caused more alarm: that the Prince and his family were among those who were fleeing to open ground. Others were minded to follow suit and the streets began to be crowded again. Then my father and the other Captains rode out with troops of horsemen and branded the rumor as a lie: the Prince was in his palace and would remain there. The people should stay in their houses. Through Ezzard, the Spirits had advised this.
Before supper I was called to my father’s room by Ben, the polymuf who waited on him. He was hunch-backed and had only two thickened fingers on his right hand, one of them showing two separate bones beneath the skin. I found my cousin Peter there already. They both looked grave.
My father said: “You are old enough now, Luke, to listen to warrior’s business. But you know that, without my permission, you do not talk of things I have told you outside these walls.” I nodded. “There is trouble in the city.”
I waited. Peter said: “This may also be a rumor, Father.”
My father shook his head. “They were seen. And the Prince’s rooms in the palace are empty. It is no rumor.”
I asked: “Edmund, too?”
“Yes,” my father said. “But it is no disgrace to him. He obeys his father in this, as is proper. But for Stephen to run like a scared child . . .”
“He may find the going easier than the coming back,” Peter said.
“That is what I want to talk to you about. As Peter knows and you too may have heard, Luke, there have been grumblings before about this Prince of ours, who has kept us five summers behind walls. If the Captains could have agreed on a successor he would have been deposed a year ago. This has brought them to the sparking point. They are agreed—all but his near kin and even some of those—that an end must be made.”
Peter said doubtfully: “How? We have sworn loyalty to him, all of us. We asked the Spirits to take vengeance on us if we break our vows.”
“Who crowned him?”
“Ezzard.”
My father nodded. “In the name of the Spirits. And our oaths were made to him whom the Spirits, through Ezzard, named as Prince. What can be named can be unnamed.”
“Has Ezzard done that?”
“The Captains have spoken to him and he has called a Seance for tomorrow noon.”
“And will the Spirits unname him then?”
“You know Ezzard. He makes no promises. Nor can he. But the Spirits guard the city. Providing there is someone to take his place, I do not think Stephen will rule tomorrow night.”
“Who have given way,” Peter asked, “the Blaines or the Hardings?”
They were both great families, the Hardings with the longer lineage but the Blaines with, in recent years, more wealth and power. When my father had spoken about the difficulty of the Captains in agreeing on a successor to the Prince we had, I had guessed he was referring to the rival claims of these two factions.
My father said: “Neither as yet.”
“But if they don’t . . .”
“Neither will accept the other in authority over him. But they talk of the possibility of both accepting a third choice.”
“Who is that?”
My father did not answer right away. I thought from his silence that it must be someone of whom he disapproved. He said slowly:
“This is why I called you to talk with me. There are risks, a dozen ways in which it could lead to disaster; and the disaster would fall on a man’s sons as well as on himself.”
I understood then. I did not say anything. I could not mistake my father’s meaning but it was still incredible. He had been known as a great warrior in the time when the city’s army went out to fight its enemies and I knew he was well liked among the Captains. But he had been born common, ennobled within the lifetime of his elder son. They could not think of making him Prince in place of Stephen.
Peter said: “The honor is well deserved, sir. But . . .”
My father said: “I have put the questions to myself. Shall I tell you the answers I found in my mind?”
We waited for him to go on. He did not hurry. He was a man who thought slowly, except when he had a sword in his hand, and watched his words. He said:
“I found two answers. The first is that if the Blaines will not see the Hardings set above them, and the Hardings will not accept the Blaines, neither would wish to bow a knee to such as the Greenes or the Farrars.” These were both important families in the city. “They would rather have a Prince whose father’s adz marks can still be seen on the beams of their houses, which he helped build as a carpenter. It stings less.”
I was not sure I agreed but I held my tongue. I thought of Henry and Gregory whom I had beaten in the Contest along with Edmund. With them, I felt, it would sting more, not less, if my father became Prince.
“The other answer stems from the first. A Prince of poor lineage will be a Prince, they may think, whom they can rule. He has the title but the Blaines and the Hardings will have the power. Until such a time as one or the other feels strong enough to act. And then such a Prince is someone that can be discarded, having fulfilled his purpose.”
“The Spirits . . .”
“If the Spirits unmake one Prince they can unmake another. I do them honor, but Seers have acted under duress before, and the earth did not open up. I do not know that Ezzard would have called the Seance for tomorrow without a little prodding.”
Peter said: “You can refuse, if you wish. No one can say it is from lack of courage. You could think it too high an honor.”
“Do you say I should refuse?” my father asked him.
Peter said: “There are arguments on both sides. We accept your decision whatever it may be.”
“And I will make it on my own judgment. But tell me what you think.”
“You have said it: they plan to use you. It might be wiser to say no.”
My father turned to me. “Luke?”
“Take it, sir!”
“You speak fiercely.”
“He is very young.” Peter smiled at me, though it was with affection. “And after winning his jeweled sword he lusts for action.”
“Yes,” my father said. “A good fault, but a fault. Your advice is better, Peter. You are beginning to acquire wisdom. All the same, I shall do as Luke urges. I am to be a weapon against the Prince, discarded when the crisis is past. But they may not find it so easy. I knew a Captain once, many years ago in the fighting against Alton, who was proud of a sword that was longer and sharper, he claimed, than any man’s in the army. It slid off another’s shield and hit his foot. It did not take it off, quite, but the surgeon did later. Weapons can turn in the hand.