“You do not,” Janus said. “Matters have not proceeded quite according to plan, but the result seems satisfactory. Your presence here is no longer necessary.”
Who the hell are you to tell me that? Raesinia’s brain felt as though it still wasn’t functioning properly. He knows about me, obviously. How? How much has Sothe told him?
“Besides,” Janus continued, “you are urgently required at Ohnlei. The next act of the drama has already begun.”
There was a long silence. Raesinia swallowed, tasting blood and river water. There was only one thing that could mean.
“My father?”
“I’m very sorry to tell you that the king is dead. Doctor-Professor Indergast did his utmost, but His Majesty’s constitution was simply too frail to recover from the surgery, as he had in the past. He passed away in the small hours of the morning.”
“I see,” Raesinia said. It was news she’d been expecting on a daily basis for months, but it still felt like a steel-gauntleted punch to her gut. He’s dead. He’s really. . “Is this widely known?”
“Not yet. The duke has been containing the information as best he can. But it will not stay quiet for long.”
Raesinia nodded, trying to think. It felt as if her mind were in a fog.
Janus bowed his head, as low as he could. “As a noble of Vordan, as I once swore my loyalty to your father, I now offer it to you. I, Janus bet Vhalnich, the eighth Count Mieran, do swear to serve and protect Queen Raesinia of Vordan, though it means my life.”
It was a standard oath, one she’d heard her father accept hundreds of times. Here and now, though, there was a strange solemnity to it, and Raesinia felt a chill that had nothing to do with the breeze or her soaked clothing. Though it means my life. It had already meant Ben’s, and Faro’s, and God knew how many others. And more, before we’re done.
“You’re right.” Raesinia shook her head. She saw Maurisk’s scowl, Sarton lost in his books, Cora sobbing, Ben gasping out his unrequited love with his last breath. “Back to Ohnlei.” And you are going to have a great deal of explaining to do.
Thunder rolled overhead. A moment later, the rain began.
PART FOUR
ORLANKO
The grand bishop of the Sworn Church of Vordan was a big, soft man, made bigger by the fantastical crimson robes that hung in complicated folds around him, secured by jeweled clasps and tricks of embroidery. He looked like a flower, Duke Orlanko thought, an enormous, poisonous flower of the sort that grew in southern jungles and smelled of rotten meat. He spoke with a trace of a Murnskai accent, mostly audible in the way he attacked his hard K’s as if he meant to spit.
“The cathedral is full to bursting with my frightened flock,” he said. “They have fled the rioting, and they bring most terrible, terrible stories. Sworn Churches pulled down, gold plate looted, icons used for firewood. Sworn Priests beaten to death and their corpses abused and hung from lampposts. Gently born women taken in the street like dogs, by gangs of a dozen men or more. .”
The grand bishop’s face was as red as his outfit, and he looked as though he were about to faint. The Borelgai ambassador, Ihannes Pulwer-Monsangton, sweating in his heavy furs, started up in his place. “I, too, have heard these stories. And now we hear that the Vendre itself has fallen, with the captain of Armsmen inside? The archdemagogue Danton and his followers have been freed, and bands of his men roam the city at will.”
Orlanko looked around the Cabinet table. Count Torahn looked as though he were in shock, and Rackhil Grieg was staring at Ihannes like a starving man at a side of beef. The chair for State was unoccupied, as always, and in place of the Minister of Justice sat a pudgy man in the green uniform of an Armsman lieutenant, looking very uncomfortable.
It was this last that worried the duke. Where the hell is Vhalnich? It was too much to hope that the man had gotten caught up in the rioting and been himself killed, though the captain who’d been taken prisoner at the Vendre had been one of his creatures. No, he’s out there causing trouble. And Orlanko would need to make his move soon; rumors of the king’s death were already spreading, in spite of all his precautions. There were too many servants in the palace for even the Concordat to keep anything quiet for long.
“Before he, uh, left,” the lieutenant said, “the captain instructed me to make every effort to secure the cathedral and the eastern half of the Island. We also have men in place on all the North Shore bridges.”
“My analysts put the number of rioters at more than twenty thousand,” Orlanko said, not without a hint of contempt. “If they were to storm the bridges, do you really expect your men to stop them?”
“My men will do their best, Your Grace,” the lieutenant said. “Until we receive further instructions from the captain or my lord Mieran.”
“No offense to our boys in green,” Torahn said, “but the Armsmen are clearly inadequate for this crisis. We must summon the regiments.”
Those words hung in the air for a long moment. Orlanko looked around the room-at his fellow Cabinet members, at the two foreigners, and at the small queue of courtiers behind them, waiting to present their grievances. Nearly everyone, he guessed, was thinking the same thing.
It had been nearly a hundred years since royal troops had entered the city, following a tradition upheld through the reign of four kings. The last time, when Farus IV had marched his triumphant legions across the Old Ford, had been the beginning of a civil war and the Great Purge. Every one of the carefully tended family trees in the room had branches that had been pruned during those tumultuous years, great-uncles and cousins who had died on one side or the other, or were simply caught in between. And there were more ancient families that had been extinguished by the vengeful king for their insurrection, including four of the five great ducal lines dating back before the time of Karis.
All but Orlanko’s, who’d chosen the right side. One by one, every face in the room turned to him. The Last Duke cleared his throat.
“Do you think,” he said carefully, “troops could arrive in time?”
Torahn nodded emphatically. “I smelled something in the wind when all this started, so I sent to the camp at Midvale to be ready to march on three hours’ notice. That’s a good forty miles from here, but the post can get there in a day’s ride. There’s a good road all the way. If I put a messenger on a horse within the hour, we can have eight hundred cuirassiers here by tomorrow evening, and six thousand infantry a day or two after that. Three at most, if the damned rain keeps up.”
Ihannes caught Orlanko’s gaze. “Eight hundred heavy horses would go a long way toward assuring His Supremely Honorable Majesty that the Vordanai Crown intends to do what is necessary to safeguard Borelgai interests.”
There were mutterings of assent from the courtiers.
“It would be a momentous step,” Orlanko said. “But if the sacrifice of our brave captain of Armsmen has accomplished nothing else, it has alerted us to the gravity of the situation. And yet. .” He paused, as though consulting a mental document. “Only the king or a regent can order the Royal Army into action, I seem to recall?”
“If the king could speak,” Torahn said, “he would tell us not to let the particulars of the law bind us at such a crucial moment.”
“On the contrary,” Orlanko said. “It is at such moments the niceties must be precisely observed, lest any hint of illegality taint our actions. Remember, my lord, we will be judged by history.”
Another silence. Orlanko scrupulously did not look at Rackhil Grieg, who had been briefed at length in the Cobweb for just this moment. He would heal, eventually, but the duke trusted he would not forget again where his interest lay. And, indeed, he spoke up right on cue.