Lucky to be the son of vicious killers?
Lucky to have betrayed his own mother for high treason? He remembered that.
Judging by the stars, it was around ten o’clock. The Honouring Ball would be nearly over. He had promised to be there, and he was not. He had broken his word, shamed his father and humiliated his mother. And, oddly, their crimes could not excuse his own behaviour. If a man’s word was not sacred, what kind of a man was he?
He must attend the Honouring. He would perform that last duty for his parents. And then? What came first, duty to them or obedience to the law? Was he supposed to turn them in for murder? That would, unquestionably, destroy House Ricinus. Did his duty to House and family outweigh the victim’s need for justice?
He did not know, but one thing was very clear. If he turned them in it would destroy him too, because he would know in the chambers of his heart that he had betrayed those whom he had vowed to honour.
Rix stumbled down to his studio. The cellar painting was gone. Tobry must have put it away and Rix thanked the Gods for that. He could not bear to look at it.
He smiled grimly as he put on the ceremonial garments Lady Ricinus’s maid had laid out for him, adjusted the angle of the lapis cravat and his scarlet, plumed hat, and wiped a speck of dust from his gleaming boots. After buckling on the titane sword, he checked himself in the scalderium mirror. He would perform this final service, put on this final show, as best the heir of House Ricinus could.
Not even Lady Ricinus could fault his presentation this time. Even if she had brought the chancellor down, Rix would see his unworthy father honoured, then walk away. Let House Ricinus rise, or all come crashing down behind him. He would never look back. He would go to the front lines and die there, defending his country and trying to assuage his blighted honour the only way he knew.
The halls were empty — every servant in the palace would be called to witness the Honouring. Outside, people were still partying in the streets. Fireworks climbed the sky near the city gates, though the celebrations rang falsely in his mind. If they thought the enemy had gone, they were as deluded as the priestesses who gathered on the sacred mountain and commanded the ice to withdraw from Hightspall, the magians who tried to melt ten thousand cubic miles of icecap with their pathetic spells.
And always, always in the back of his mind, was the unanswerable question — why had the ten-year-old Rix been there when Tali’s mother had been murdered?
He thrust open the doors of the Great Hall so hard that they slammed back against the wall to either side. He was not going to sneak into this hypocritical ceremony. The ball was over and the dance floor crowded with people, all looking up at the stage where the dignitaries were taking their places for Lord Ricinus’s Honouring.
Rix’s heart missed three or four beats before restarting with a lurch. The chancellor sat centre stage, smiling. Had Lady Ricinus’s plot failed, or were her assassins waiting for the end? Or would the executioners be the chancellor’s? Rix faltered.
The high constable took his place on the chancellor’s right, the lady justiciar to his left. The chief magian was there too, and Abbess Hildy. All the mighty of Hightspall were in attendance. Had they come to witness the rise of House Ricinus, or to gloat in its fall?
He reached the edge of the stage unnoticed. Rix’s head was throbbing and he felt a dire urge to scream at his parents, Why did you murder Tali’s mother?
The preliminaries must be going well; even Lady Ricinus was smiling. How could that be? The chancellor had threatened House Ricinus with ruin if she did not hand Tali over. Did Lady Ricinus’s smile mean that she had taken Tali and was ready to deliver her? Or, after events at the Crag, did the chancellor no longer care?
Abbess Hildy, a plump, soft-faced woman of indeterminate age, lumbered to her feet. ‘Lord Chancellor, Lady Justiciar, High Constable, Chief Magian, Dignitaries, ladies and lords, welcome to this Honouring.’
She paused to catch her breath.
‘Much has been written about the House of Ricinus, and much has been said. That they were thieves and brigands who made their gold in dirty trades.’
Someone in the audience tittered, and Lady Ricinus looked uneasy. Was this a set-up to lull House Ricinus into false hope, then bring it crashing down? The chancellor’s ironic smile suggested he had such a plan in mind.
Hildy continued, in a sneering tone. ‘That they were upstarts who bribed their way to the top. Scoundrels unworthy to sit among the noble houses of Hightspall, or to occupy this, the most magnificent palace in Caulderon, which was first built by the greatest of the Five Herovians, Axil Grandys himself, not long before his mysterious disappearance.
‘I too looked down on the upstarts. I knew that, generous though they were to all manner of causes, House Ricinus was beneath contempt. And I told the chancellor so, that he might find a way to topple this unworthy house.’
The whole room was buzzing now. Lady Ricinus’s red fingernails were gouging varnish from the arms of her chair. Was this the chancellor’s revenge — the Honouring to be a public humiliation? From the gleeful faces of the nobility, they hoped so.
Hildy paused, looked around the gathering and, after a dramatic pause, said, ‘But I was wrong.’
Heads turned. People whispered among themselves. The chancellor rose halfway from his chair, his famous composure lost for a few seconds, before settling back, tight-lipped. What was going on? Had Lady Ricinus won after all? Rix prayed that she had not. Any such victory would be a travesty. And yet, for the sake of his house …
Hildy opened a flat leather case, withdrew a ragged, dirty piece of parchment, and held it up.
‘For two thousand years it has been held that our founding hero, Axil Grandys, died without issue, despite that he was renowned as a vigorous and lusty man.’
She paused for a full minute, until the whispers died away.
‘This document proves otherwise. This parchment shows that Axil Grandys fathered a daughter, Mythilda, and acknowledged her before his disappearance. And Mythilda’s line, it has been proven to my satisfaction, runs unbroken all the way to the present time. To the father of Lord Ricinus, and therefore to his son, Rixium Ricinus.’
‘Bastards sprung from bastards, back to the beginning of time,’ sneered a red-faced nobleman on Rix’s left.
Rix was not inclined to disagree.
‘House Ricinus,’ said Abbess Hildy, taking a sheaf of documents from the case, ‘has always been seen as the lowliest, its lord and lady as greedy upstarts. But no more. Should these papers pass the final test, Ricinus will take its place among those houses who can trace their line all the way back to the founding fathers.’
She bowed to Lord and Lady Ricinus.
‘I present the documents for authentication,’ said Abbess Hildy, handing the stunned chancellor the parchment and the other papers.
And Rix knew, from the smile on his mother’s face, that the critical document was a forgery. It would be a masterful one, doubtless written on two thousand-year-old parchment in ink equally ancient. And the monumental bribes she had been paying for the past three years, that had almost emptied their treasury, had been to smooth its passage to authentication and her house’s rise to the top.
The chancellor rubbed the parchment between his fingers, held it up to the glow from a brazier behind them, then raised it to his horn-like nose.
‘It looks authentic,’ he said reluctantly, sourly, and handed it to the chief magian. ‘Though I can scarcely believe it is.’
The chief magian probed the parchment with the heel of his staff, and then with the tip, and passed an object like an ivory-rimmed spectible over it.
‘This parchment is ancient,’ said the chief magian, a tubby, balding little fellow with tiny feet and hands, after some minutes of increasingly frustrated magery. ‘So ancient that it was not made in this land. It came, no doubt about it, on the First Fleet from our lost homeland of Thanneron, now crushed beneath the ice that draws ever closer to our own fair isle.’