This story is a work of fiction. It contains references to both sexual and violent behaviour, along with expressions of physical affection and compassion. If you find this type of story offensive, or if you are underage and it is illegal for you to read it, please exit now. All characters are fictional and in no way related to any persons living or deceased. Any such similarity is purely coincidental and uncanny.
This work is copyrighted by the author and may not be reproduced in any form without the specific written consent of the author. It is assigned to the Nifty Archives under the provisions of their submission guidelines but it may not be copied or archived onto any other site without the direct consent of the author.
I never know how well-received these chapters are. The only clues I get are in emails from readers. Do you like the story? Hate it? Think Evendal should take a vow of silence? Afraid I might have written other works? Let me know and I'll let you know.
I can be contacted at Bookwyrm6@yahoo.com
45 The Rarer Action
Prospero: Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th'quick,
Yet with my nobler reason `gainst my fury
Do I take part. The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance.
The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, lines 25-28
The King declined his head, first to the silent Eletthrha and then to the equally respectful Urhlysha.
"Good sir, We would ask your witness and advisement on a matter or two brought to Us this bell."
"I remain His Majesty's good and humble servant."
"Eletthrha Lady Siara'keb, We present Magister Urhlysha of the Nightingale Hobblers. We appreciate the Lady Siara'keb's patient forbearance. We would acknowledge Our truancy in courtesy, Lady Siara'keb, and ask if you wish a chair in which to rest?"
The plump woman smiled woodenly. "I am newly risen from some distress, Your Majesty, and feel I have had my fill of lying and sitting. Grant me the opportunity to rejoice in the continued usefulness of my legs."
Evendal nodded, glad his son was not quite in earshot. "Most certainly granted, gracious lady. We were speaking, Magister, of Siara'keb's turmoil. Do you know of this theme?"
"Yes, Your Majesty. Word has reached me."
"What do you think of Carder Kieralametth?"
Urhlysha was bold, not hasty. "As what, Your Majesty?"
"We know nothing of him but that he presented a secure and solemn countenance when We confirmed the Carders' grant to work and sell in the city. And that, on the day of Our first Council, Our ward proved no impediment to him."
"I do not understand, Your Majesty."
"Surely you have heard of Our son's bravery on that occasion?" Urhlysha nodded. Evendal looked to where Gwl-lethry and Drussilikh engaged Kri-estaul in an animated discussion. "At Sygkorrin's urging We permitted leave to only those courtiers who never sought more than the welfare of their people."
"Ah," Urhlysha drew the syllable out and nodded. "I have always wondered."
"What?"
"Acting the observer without prejudice, as I have, does not guarantee clarity, Your Majesty. The increase in the Carders' fortunes could have been a warning of Kieralametth's ambition and avarice. Or merely a sign of his industry on behalf of a growing number of people he felt responsibility for. His actions could mark him for either disposition. Your `test' of those courtiers present that day tells me that he is not personally ambitious."
"That does not mean he is not dangerous, Magister."
The old man's brows bunched. "How so, Your Majesty?"
"We are uncomfortable pontificating on a man not here with Us. Let Us see if We can rouse him. Lin-kaelug? Do you know the presentment of this fellow?"
"Well enough, Your Majesty," the Guard assured. "He sat but a table from Magister Urhlysha."
"Seek him out and let him know you are a deputy from Us regarding his advancement during Our absence, and that We seek clarity on that subject from him presently. Ask him, We emphasise...Ask him to return with you and of his kindness remedy Our ignorance."
Lin-kaelug preceded Kieralametth to bow and announce the craft-master to his King. Evendal nodded and signalled Kieralametth to approach.
The Master of the Carders could not have possessed twenty years, with a puglike nose and eyes that seemed to alternate between hazel and grey in the dimness. His fingers, Evendal noted, looked small, but every pad held calluses. The young man's shoulders curved slightly, bowed under labour or tension. His fine attire, plainly intended as an example of his guild's efforts, bespoke prosperity in its clearly personal fit. The company that Evendal kept was not lost on the young man.
"Greetings, Master Carder. Health and wisdom to you." The King altered the standard courtesy. If Eletthrha was to be believed, this man needed no one's wishes for further affluence.
"And to you, Most Gracious King. May wisdom ever be Your Majesty's guide. What speech may I share with my gentle Lord?"
Evendal could decipher the wishful thinking in the man's address readily enough. "Peace, Master Kieralametth. We have spoken with the Lady Siara'keb, who is in some distress. She has not come demanding your name expunged from all memory, but her cause is Our's: the care of Our people and Our home. And We know you have a similar drive."
Relieved to not be presumed a sycophant of the Interregnum, Kieralametth stopped hunching. "Indeed, Your Majesty. Then how might I serve Your Majesty?"
"First tell Us of your dealings with the late Usurpers."
"Might I sit, my lord?"
"No."
Put off at the unexpected refusal of a common courtesy, Kieralametth struggled to find a starting place. "The Lady Siara'keb needed our help. The death of the Siara'keb muster meant widows and widowers whose labour would garner no pay. Most of those who worked the raw wool previously had died at Mausna.
"I made an agreement with the Lady Siara'keb, once I was assured of enough people to help her: We would convert the wool to marketable condition in exchange for a measure of the price and adoption into free citizen's families. She agreed."
Evendal looked to Eletthrha, who shuddered under the chill consideration in the golden gaze and then nodded her confirmation.
"How many years do you have, Master Kieralametth?"
"I own nineteen years, Your Majesty. After we..."
"Nineteen?" the King interrupted. "Mistress Eletthrha reminded Us how Our father gave you grant to assess her wool. But how could that be? You would have had to possess nine years at the most!"
Kieralametth grinned lightly at the misapprehension. "I am named after my father, Your Majesty. The grant was to my father, a charter." Giving one's child the parent's name was a convention of the more insular cantons, where a listener could blithely intuit who a speaker meant from familiarity and tonal cues in speech.
"And then Polgern gave his grant to you? A minor?"
"We were so fortunate, yes, Your Majesty." Kieralametth's wording reminded the King that, even at his young age, he had been representing a large group for some time. After a moment's consideration, Evendal suspected the young man's value to Polgern. Equating youth with sentimentality, the Wise Counsellor expected inexperience and his blatant philanthropy to indenture both a source of revenue and a tool for humbling a stubborn manourlord.
"So, originally you were indeed simply overseers?"
"Yes, during my father's tenure."
"And when you took up his title?"
The young man's face twitched at the recollection. "The change I just described, Your Majesty. Initially, the Lady Siara'keb had expected our authority to die with my father and your own august parent. But the Wise Counsellor was loath, in that moment, to make any further alterations beyond the shattering one he had already made in advancing himself and the late errr, uh, Beast. So he sanctioned me to continue in what he lauded as one of the many traditions he supported. He also permitted us to enter into whatever arrangement we wished, to expedite sellable products."
"So in your early travail you made common cause with Siara'keb."
"Yes. While the folk I cajoled poured their grief out in labour, the Lady poured her spleen out in betrayal. She did interview the surviving women or men of Siara'keb, supposedly to assure herself of their fitness to keep us. But she made it clear to them that they would be opening their homes to the worst of ruffians. She reported that we had threatened mayhem if she did not grant us homes and land. A lie she advanced to quell us. One of the youngest of my friends had been chosen as courier between the Lady and me; he heard her at this and told me of it. On her next interview, I stood under the eaves and heard it exactly as he had told me."
Evendal m'Alismogh raised his hand, and the angry young man stopped. "A moment, Master Kieralametth. Magister Urhlysha, did the gentry learn of this duplicity?"
"As quickly as thunder shadows lightning, so followed report of the Carders' extremity and its cause."
"Lady Siara'keb, are his words accurate?"
"Your Majesty, he makes too much of an opinion I indecorously proffered."
M'Alismogh raised his voice. "We did not ask how you want to wax(284) your actions, Eletthrha. Answer Us true."
"Ny. Ny. Yes."
"Continue, Master Kieralametth."
Nonplussed, the Master Carder glanced toward the blushing Manourlord every few breaths. The King, by gesture or word, had not sought to placate this, one of the larger cantons, but that did not reassure the guildmaster. "The second season she all but offered us the work itself as our wage. We could labour for her canton, with a slightly smaller percentage, or leave and cast ourselves on the mercy of her neighbours."
"So what did you do?"
Kieralametth lowered his face, to hide the anger and remembered helplessness from his King. "We became vagabonds, Your Majesty. Mercy did not enter into our fate, mutual need and honour did." Eletthrha's lip curled up in derision. "Other cantons accepted our numbers and gave us temporary solace, food and fair lodging, in exchange for our labour. For that season we existed as a fraternity only on paper.
"The season after that, Siara'keb drew the Wise Counsellor's wrath. And she suddenly grew as solicitous toward us as the Wise Counsellor himself had been."
"But the lure you accepted was Master Polgern's this time." Evendal spoke in as bland a tone as he could. He was well aware that not everyone felt cause to hate or despise the aged regicide. "And please, cease with his self-ascribed title. He was called `Polgern' and speaking that name will not offend Us."
While Eletthrha looked troubled at the liberty with convention, Kieralametth merely shrugged and then nodded. "Master Polgern, whatever else he chose to do, was fair with us. And continued to be."
"Under his...generosity, you took over those rights that Siara'keb had long enjoyed."
"Most of them. Master Polgern deeded me, as a fee expectant(285), a residence in Gentry Row. I have made it our Guildhouse. He acknowledged my people as a guild, with a voice in Court. He laid an embargo on Siara'keb's wool and offered us Throne sanction to assemble to grade, skirt and clean, bleach, card and rove. As our numbers grew, Master Polgern added to our responsibilities." Kieralametth looked gravely at the King. "We are not a wealthy guild, we have too many mouths to feed for that, but we work hard and smartly and keep our word."
"And when Master Polgern begged workers from you for his interminable building with Kul-stone?"
Kieralametth's eyes never shifted, his fortitude making it easy for m'Alismogh to gauge his honesty. "I did not refuse him."
Siara'keb smirked in relief, anticipating the guildmaster's fall from favour with the Throne.
"That is too laconic a response, Master Kieralametth," the King warned.
"I did not refuse him. Siara'keb had taught me how there is no essential kindness in the powerful. When he asked me to attend him in private on a certain day, I came prepared. I knew that Osedys had but two exports providing any returns at that time. Fleece and salt.
"When he asked me how many of `our' guild I was willing to spare, I told him I could only match his liberality(286). All or none, I said."
Evendal grinned, awed by the audacity. "That was both brave and foolhardy."
Kieralametth shook his head and refused the epithets. "I spoke the truth. If he conscripted so much as one of my people, we would fire every one of our carding-houses, with the sheep and rabbits in them. If one of our number was unaccounted for, for even a single day. And we had rosters, not that we needed them. I reiterated to Master Polgern that he would know from me all the respect a good ruler hopes for, but that we would not contribute to the destruction of our family or our homeland. If I did not return to the guildhouse before the sun set, and in the same wholeness I had leaving it, a signal would go out, and what I had promised him would come to pass. If one of our number or more were detained, he would no longer receive our respect or his taxes, and he would find himself staving off the ire of Plelladys, Osyma'Kalidem, and Silike."
"How did you determine that last item?"
"Our guild includes cadet children of the manourlords of those cantons. Were those `extra sons and daughters' to die or disappear, it would leave the successions too vulnerable. Master Polgern would only have to press the heirs into stonehauling, and then provide his own inheritors to the bereft lands. He had amply demonstrated to his Court that he respected no estate and had no care for the commonweal. Siara'keb can confirm that."
"And if he had demanded your avowed generosity?"
"Not all the secrets of the guild are mine to unveil. But I am a loyal citizen and would have made good my assertion. And the revenues that salt alone could provide would not have kept the desperate from turning on their fellow cantons. Polgern's life and command would have ended with the dissolution of the Thronelands."
"It has been so terrible in the eyes of the cantons and crafts?"
Eletthrha intervened; a callow man who had known only plenty with the interregnum had no right to answer such a query and call it truth. "Word out of Osyma'Kalidem changes every week. No one admits the true condition of the Mi'Ranndiel cantons, and the brown on Kernost's and Kanderre's noses was never soil. But for those exceptions, we have patently suffered. Nerruka should be renamed `Battleground of the Two Lor...Usurpers'. Decrees of horning(287) would have fallen like snow and sounded like thunder throughout the Os-tal, Your Majesty. There have been too many even now."
"Appertaining to that. Siara'keb approached you in the hopes of an accommodation. You refused. While refusal is a right We permit, the choice you made endangers people with whom you do not have a grievance."
Kieralametth rolled his eyes. "Did this gracious cockatrice detail the offer she made us?"
"No."
"She would have us reduce our herds to one tenth their current numbers, direct former residents back to Siara'keb, and relinquish our buyers to her people."
"In exchange for?"
Kieralametth scowled. "Her thanks."
"Not so!" Eletthrha flared.
The young man shrugged, yet scowling. "Her thanks and those homes, those families, we no longer felt a need for."
Evendal nodded his understanding of the guildmaster's exasperation. "Her thanks," he repeated, marking the one item he could credit because it cost her nothing. The son of Menam turned his tired but potent gaze upon the Shepherd of Siara'keb.
"What shall We do with a vassal devoid of honour?"
"Your Majesty," Eletthrha protested. "This man was a nobody, born of a nobody!" When the King failed to look impressed by that argument, the daughter of manourlords changed tactics. "My people were scared, wounded. How could I trust him?"
The King rolled his lambent eyes. "By assessing his actions, which were forthright. Both of you knew dire circumstance, but he alone acted in good faith. You had opportunity to offer other remuneration had you any doubts of him. Having agreed, your word bound you."
"I dared not trust them!"
"You trusted them sufficient to do the work for you. Now it is We who dare not trust you! Shown as faithless and libellous, how can We trust you?"
Eletthra's compact frame quivered slightly, either in outrage or fear. "I am Your Majesty's good and faithful vassal!"
"That is the formula, your habits say otherwise. You are good', it seems, only to your fee. And faithful' is not a dignity that you bear convincingly in this bell."
The Lady Siara'keb took a deep, unhelpful breath. "How might I better show my mettle?"
Evendal ald'Menam thought for a long moment. Something did not ring true; he had not asked the right questions. This woman, like so many, had endured innumerable trials and griefs. Yet because one was a victim to evil it did not follow the victim was virtuous. That caution could apply to Kieralametth as well as Eletthrha.
"Will you accept Our temporary imposition?"
Siara'keb's worried frown changed its cause. "What does Your Majesty propose?"
The King raised one brow, darkly amused, knowing what response would follow his answer. "A brief hiatus from your onerous duties. The chance to bide with Us, to learn of Us, and to trust" he emphasized the word, "Us with the winter tending of your fee."
Evendal's subtle gibe got swallowed in Eletthrha's terror. "You would detain me? Isolate me? Divest me?"
"No. No summoning of Guard to escort you below. No attended oaken door between you and the liberties We have confirmed are yours. The mascot(288) We lent you We have not asked returned to Us, have We?"
Eletthrha calmed. "No."
"We but make a request, lest the presence of Our people in your feudum unsettle you overmuch. We must determine the condition of your home and subjects, which means a multitude of Our deputies roaming around like balls hoping to strike a kegel. You might countenance such a kindly invasion at a distance from it.
"Lady, would you leave off your desperate fancies for a time?" Evendal turned his head so that Kieralametth would not catch the look he sent Siara'keb -- indicating his discretion over the poison she had brought. "And let Us labour to determine the most helpful distribution of rights and liberties for all citizens affected?"
"All I have heard, and what little I have witnessed, bids me trust Your Majesty. Forgive me my fear and misgivings."
Evendal ald'Menam blinked three times in surprise at the gracious capitulation. "Forgiven now and hence. And what of you, Master Kieralametth?"
"Your Majesty?"
"While We think you honest, We yet wonder if you speak the same tongue as We."
"What do you mean, Your Lordship?" Kieralametth asked, puzzled.
"Just as with every manourlord, We suspect you see naught but good for your guild in its prosperity."
"Of course."
"And your guild's flourishing can only mean good for the city? For the Thronelands?"
"Of course."
"And were We to grant the Carders sole warrant to both the making and the selling of all Thronelander wool, permitting no canton or other fraternity any part in its fashioning? What would be your response?"
The Carder's eyes widened. "I, and my people, would be delighted that Ir moved Your Gracious Majesty to so favour us. We would accept, of course."
The King shook his head, his expression sad. "No advisement? No protests? No uncertainties?"
Kieralametth shook his head vigorously. "No, Your Majesty. Such was what I had long fancied for my guild. We are prepared for that very challenge."
"If you are so prepared, then it is no challenge, is it?"
The guildmaster did not know what to answer; neither did the manourlord.
"And if your prosperity comes at a cost to lives elsewhere, you cannot let that sway you from insuring that all you can attain go to those who are your exclusive care. You cannot be responsible for everyone in m'Os-tal."
"Your Majesty understands what is an unfortunate truth..."
"Not a truth, Master Kieralametth, an assumption." He paused in hopes the young man might grasp the distinction. The man showed no such comprehension. "So if, in your triumphal, your adversary has only the dust you raise to feast on, that is how Fortune's wheel turns. If you stopped to aid every beggar strewn in the path to your prospering, you would become one of them."
"As you say, Your Majesty. Regrettable, but I have a future to secure for those who look to me." Kieralametth's eyes glistened in excitement. "Only say the word and we shall commission more tools and purchase more sheep and rabbits. But say the word, Your Gracious Majesty!"
The King turned to the manourlord. "Are you not happy at the Carders' good fortune?"
Eletthrha's face and tone grew mournful. "How can you treat with me so, Your Majesty?"
"Have you not listened to his perambulation? Find fault. What he vows, he does. He is true to his word and thus is a man worthy of Siara'keb."
Stung, Eletthrha could think of no argument. "Your Majesty!"
Sharper in tone, Evendal repeated himself, insistent. "Have you not listened to him? Where is the flaw in his speech?"
After a moment gaping like a fish, the Lady Siara'keb found words for her indignation. "There will always be another use money or merchandise can be put to. But Kieralametth is wrong to grieve more that his people cannot afford a savoury when mine cannot scrounge for gruel. Master Carder is solvent enough to concern himself with his people's wants, where I am in despair of my people's needs. Since Mausna our entire kingdom has been bled near to death, but he thinks only in words like me' and mine'."
"Have you not taught this guildmaster that very `truth,' Eletthrha Lady Siara'keb, by providing him a similar circumstance?"
The plump woman's brow knotted, briefly befuddled. Under the royal silence, unable to find diversion, the woman allowed herself to see the cold and ironic justice of her situation. Unhappy, she nodded, her expression sour. "Such numbing...is how I excused my depriving Kieralametth's cohorts of what I promised..." The King's glare prodded her to amend her speech, "of what they needed. I told myself they were strangers. But in truth they were guests...and cousins. The fault was...is mine alone, yet too many others have frozen and starved for it!"
The King then turned back to the guildmaster. "That is why the Thronelands yet suffers a king: We are responsible for everyone in m'Os-tal. Master Kieralametth, rest assured that We shall never say that word."
Embarrassed to have been used as a tool in a bit of royal lessoning, the Master Carder frowned and all but growled. "Then for what did you offer...?"
"We did not. We asked you what your response would be. Very much to a purpose. Tell Us, how many brothers' and sisters' have you?"
After a telling pause, the man answered, "I am unsure of the number."
Evendal began to release his questions more rapidly, encouraging the same for Kieralametth's answers. "How many members have you?"
"I am sure I do not know." Kieralametth chose his words for their capacity to obscure without lying outright.
"And a third time We ask. How many brethren have you?"
The guildmaster's capitulation came out as a whisper. "My adjutant tells me over four hundred and twenty."
That was too many people for one guild. "And do you keep a list of paid-up masters, novices and applicants?"
"How could I possibly keep up with..." The glow off His Majesty's eyes reminded Kieralametth that he did not deal with a common courtier. "Of course."
"And were We to ask you for that roll, what would you give Us?"
"Whatever His Majesty asks after!"
Evendal shook his head again, feeling as he fancied a tired parent would in dealing with a stubborn child. "Your speech has been indifferently honest with Us up until now. Please do not change it and Our good opinion of you."
Kieralametth sighed, and then answered with an upward curve to his lip. "Likely I would deliver up our death toll. As I did for Master Polgern."
"Were We to ask you to confine your guild's function to washing, felting and classing, would you obey?"
The man visibly braced himself before responding, his amiability forgotten. "When pigs sweat. Your Majesty. The guild is in need also. In need of the commissions that feed us. We can make rugs and clothes of every grade in our homes as easily as we do in the Kernost talmkaust(289)." Evendal m'Alismogh heard the lie, the bravado, in that assertion and let it pass. "And we know of homesteads that will house our livestock." That much rang true.
"Are you producing your own rugs and clothing now?"
"Ahh...yes. Not as yet for market, just for our own."
"This is in contradiction to your pledges to Us, but We will not quibble over a stricture We could never enforce. We ask that you abide here for a time, until another can come from your guild to provide a registry of your breathing members, to discuss the changes We will charge your guild to accomplish, and to draw up a new charter."
"You would detain me also?" The guildmaster's astonishment came across as more from innocent surprise than self-importance.
Evendal grinned, amused. "We are your king. We see no need to detain you against your will as yet. Had We need, We could summon you whether you hid from Us or no. What is your adjutant called?"
Kieralametth groaned in dismay. "Oh, Thunders, not her! She has no thought for what we can achieve and fights me like a ralur in a cage."
"We made a request of you. Two, in truth." Lord Evendal granted the Carder a moment to consider.
"I remain a loyal citizen, and only hope my stay serves my guild. In my absence or debility, the guildmaster pro tem is one called Porffarèlok."
"Our thanks. What do you know of Siara'keb's impoverishment?"
Surprised that he was not being promptly and eagerly interrogated regarding his people, Kieralametth took another moment to reorient and reply. "It has been entirely fruit from Polgern's seeding. I had nurtured my own childish fancies for yon grimalkin's desolation. None were as thorough as what came to pass. All serious thoughts of vengeance bled from me with her land's wounds."
"Siara'keb's extremity is genuine?"
"Of course."
The King glanced at Urhlysha, who nodded his concurrence.
"Did We take you away from your enjoyment of the meal?" Evendal looked from one vassal to the other.
Both Eletthrha and Kieralametth shook their heads.
"Did we interrupt any intercourse you might wish to resume?"
Each murmured a negative.
"Lin-kaelug, see the guildmaster and the manourlord are securely ensconced, with Guard and all the amenities of friends."
"I gave my parole!" Kieralametth protested, feeling suddenly slow-witted and worn out.
"The Guard are for your safety. Both you and the Lady Siara'keb have been in mortal danger. You could be walked out of here at knifepoint and no one the wiser." No need for the man to know that he stood beside his `mortal danger' and that Eletthrha's danger stemmed from the execution that would have followed her poisoning him.
"You are too gentle, Your Majesty. Too patient," Urhlysha tendered when the two had left.
Evendal huffed a breath out; half disbelief, half amusement. "We imagine that will change with time." He looked to Gwl-lethry, still engaging Kri-estaul and Drussilikh. "We have good exemplars to chastise Us out of Our more petty moments."
"His Highness is looking well. Better than when last I saw him."
"Yes. This is his first public occasion. The sombre demands of the event suit his need for a gentler introduction to this...rarefied menagerie. Magister, We have something of yours."
The old courtier turned his face to the King, a grin flickering on his lips and a good-natured twinkle lighting his eye. "Yes. Your door warden is a skilled fellow. Might I borrow him on occasion?"
"Perhaps. After We have put him to training Our Guard."
"Am I to be detained?" Urhlysha's tone remained jocund.
The King did not answer directly. "Is Shontrekh the threat?"
"Hardly. She thinks herself formidable. Or thought herself, rather. But then, `thought' and her are not comfortable companions. Were you to watch her sweating this bell, you would learn how lakes are filled."
Evendal frowned. "Like you, she brought her own addition to Our meal. Which reminds Us." He took Gwl-lethry's cup and poured it out on the floor. Then he took a cloth from inside the sling, wiped the vessel, and let the linen cover the spill. Urhlysha watched without comment or change of expression.
Lin-Kaelug had returned and, at the King's directive, escorted a sickly-looking woman to the royal presence. Though she held on tightly to the Guard's arm, on one occasion her grip failed and she clapped her hands together hard a couple of times, as though trying to restore circulation in them. Likewise her legs moved as though her next stepfall might not end on solid ground. At first glance Evendal thought her sun or wind burned; her face looked oddly wrinkled.
After a mockery of a curtsey, Shontrekh drew nearer. Indoor light could not hide the puffy varicosity in her face, the source of her ruddiness. And what the King had thought facial lines proved moulting skin. Shontrekh swayed slightly and with her free hand cradled her stomach.
"Priestess!"
Sygkorrin strode up to the magistrate and guided her to the chair Ierwbae had abandoned. Then the Priestess examined the woman's nails, eyes, tongue, the elasticity of her facial skin, and the palms of her hands.
After a moment's whispered conference with Shontrekh, Sygkorrin addressed the King.
"This woman has been slowly poisoned. Arsenic."
"She moved like a belladonna lover." Evendal noted.
"That would not account for her complaints. It is arsenic that is making her skin flush and dry out, her stomach rebel; it is arsenic that has numbed her limbs so that walking is treacherous and her hands cannot grip."
"Odd and determined woman, to attend in such distress. We know little of arsenic but that walking and talking hurt. Peace for now." Evendal looked Urhlysha's way. "Did you know of this? Did she come to you for aid?"
Troubled, the Magister watched his angular contemporary tremble in her seat. "I knew only that she had suddenly let word slip of an illness, even as you summoned the Throneland justiciars. So I did think it a ploy to avoid you out of fear."
"Had you any grievance with your neighbour?"
Magister Urhlysha took no umbrage at the implication. "None, Your Majesty. She was not to my liking, but few are. She courted the late Wise Counsellor's tolerance. Of course, so did I when under his scrutiny."
"Magister Shontrekh," the King addressed the woman, but waited as nausea or a cramp struck her. "Magister, We regret that you must permit Her Eminence to host you for a goodly amount of time. If you had apprehended what was poisoning you, you would not be so wrecked. So your wisest course is removing yourself from those particulars you have surrounded yourself with; everything you touch, wear, eat or drink in your home. The last We were apprised, there is no tincture that might counter arsenic."
Sygkorrin nodded. "That is still true. What His Majesty has suggested is the only remedy. Time away from whatever is tainted will unburden your body."
Evendal stared at the pain-wracked woman. A stranger to him. Depending on how long ago the poisoning was begun, Shontrekh might never fully recover. Arsenic, like lead, damaged so much. That thought brought up a memory of lead platters that Onkira had commissioned for the Palace on the occasion of her twenty-second year of marriage. She had presumed an ignorance of poison among the gentry that the then Temple emissary did not share. Afterwards, Lord Menam made it a habitual threat that he would feed Onkira off her own plates if she continued whatever aggravation she was pursuing at the time.
"Magister Shontrekh, has someone gifted you with precious drinking cups or platters within the last two seasons?"
The unfortunate woman forced herself to attend, forced her body to stillness, and then slowly nodded her bowed head.
The King but dimly recalled arsenic as a white salt. "Of milky or opalescent glass?"
Again the woman, trembling with effort against her nausea, managed a deliberate nod.
"Who?"
"The late Wise Counsellor." Shontrekh's voice evinced a rasp even as she winced at the added pain.
"Your Eminence, We hope it would not be too inconvenient to press the carriage that brought Our mother here into service again?"
"You but voice my intent, Your Majesty. It was made ready to return me home. It can securely carry yet another." Sygkorrin lifted the magistrate's head and made eye contact. "You are most fortunate. If those cups were the mediator, it is a wonder you yet live."
"Stay awhile yet. We must offer Our vassals Our wellfaring, then We have a labour about which We beg your advisement."
"Ever Your Majesty's friend. I shall have this, your magistrate, taken to Temple, then have the coach return for me."
Just then Ierwbae returned, garbed in another set of blues, silent and solemn.
"Our thanks, good Ierwbae. One more task we would ask of you."
"I stand ready, my liege."
"Go to or send to the archive for Guard Darhelmir. To meet with Us in the Council Chamber."
"Is his brother permitted to accompany and attend?"
Evendal considered. "Yes. On the way, ask from the Empress her largest krater, weighted with oatmeal and brought to the Chamber. Tell her the condition of both food and receptacle is irrelevant as neither is for eating. We might have need for it, We might not."
He turned to a silently observing Karondeo. "Beloved..."
"The Songmaster and I are well acquainted, Evendal. What would you?"
That was the question. And he had Kri-estaul in his charge. "We would have you beside Us. Our son, however...Darhelmir might baulk at a witness so tender in years."
Karondeo disagreed. "Darhelmir or you? Your Guard will accept whatever you wish them to. What is toward?"
"Guard Darhelmir serves Us in defiance of a mortal malady that felled others of his kin. Our hope is that the King's touch might affect a cure."
With a fond brush of his hand up the back of Evendal's head, Karondeo jested, "I aver that the King's voice will better accomplish that goal."
His Majesty silently wished that the vagrant hand had lingered.
Anxious to end what seemed an interminable fête, Evendal stood and nodded to the Guard at the door. Those at and around the King's table rose with him. Then gradually everyone in the hall stood as the alerted Guard sounded a horn.(290)
Kri-estaul flicked a quicksilver gaze to the doorways and corners, then awkwardly turned his chair to hurry to his father.
"What is happening?"
"Be at ease, Kri. As King We must now give Our subjects permission to leave Us; to exeunt from the hospitality of the Palace, if they so choose.
Having met in peace we part in peace.
You vassals, whose soft hearts have survived
Leave less troubled than when you arrived.
Maintain Our Peace with all in your path.
Treat all folk justly or face Our wrath.
Prosper your good works and virtues too.
Tend wisely and well Our gifts to you.
Having met in peace now part in peace.
Aldul raised his eyebrows, curious about the tradition and choice of words.
Alekrond and Melianth made their farewells to the King and their son. When Evendal gave Urhlysha leave, the magistrate asked to accompany his liege. The King assented with misgivings.
Because winter had been mostly wet thus far, repairs to the Council Chamber had been put off. Canvas lay indifferently rolled up in corners with shapeless sacks and a tool or two. Evendal manoeuvred Kri-estaul over the rise in the entryway, and then allowed him his autonomy. The boy looked up and back at the King, who ruffled his hair and waited on his son to speak or move.
With a hard pull backwards on the hand-rims, the Prince of the Thronelands sailed across the dais, barely missing the Throne. Palms calloused from the under-ground's floors easily gripped those same hand-rims to stop the chair just short of the hearth against the far wall. Unimpeded now by concern for people's feet, Kri-estaul released one hand and used his momentum to do a precarious turn around.
Evendal had watched with his heart in his throat, caught unawares. Standing yet at the entry, by the time his mind formed an entreaty, Kri-estaul was grinning at him from the other side of the dais. Evendal had no doubt that his countenance conveyed his fury, for he saw the child's grin falter. Aldul, at the King's left, gripped his shoulder.
"Don't," the Kwo-edan breathed, mindful of the room's fine acoustics. "He knows how to survive, my friend. How to act a catamite, a slave. He does not yet know if it is acceptable to act a child."
Watchful at the King's right, Karondeo nodded. "Let him, beloved."
Evendal swallowed roughly on the indigestible words he wanted to shout, took a step into the chamber and, looking for the glint of Kri-estaul's eyes, spoke with a calm he did not know he had. "Do you want to wheel a few circuits around the Throne?"
When the boy did not answer or move, Evendal responded to his leaden silence. "I was afraid for you, Kri. Is it fun?"
"I guess," Kri-estaul offered eventually, uncertainly, not wanting to ask belated permission for fear of refusal. "I was bad, wasn't I?"(291)
Stunned at the twisting to a common child's query, Evendal's gaze brightened. "Thunders, no."
"But you're angry..." The enunciation was an unpractised six-year old's.
Evendal thought to deny it, then let that thought pass. He walked slowly across the dais and knelt beside a worried Kri-estaul. His eyes bright, his lips curved upward, he leaned forward to hold his son. Kri-estaul threw his arms around his father's neck, eager for the offered comfort.
"Yes." Evendal admitted, speaking softly into the straw-like hair. "It is how I hide my fear, sometimes. And pouring out that anger onto you is not fair. You did nothing bad. You did nothing bad. Without the legs to run -- which is what boys do spontaneously, it seems ^Ö- you can only rush forward in this chair. It surprised me. I was afraid for you. But you showed mastery over Pohul-halik's gift."
A grin returned, if a fragile one; Evendal felt the change in the untensing body he held.
"May I do that again? May I? May I?" The rush of Kri-estaul's words conveyed his excitement and fear of refusal.
Evendal inhaled slow and deep, and exhaled in the same fashion, forcing his own shoulders to relax. He relinquished his son and stood. "Yes. So long as no one is in or near your path. And so long as I, Karondeo, Aldul, Gwl-lethry, or one of those Guard you almost feel safe with, is attentively watching -- you may do such at anytime. But if they say `no,' you are to accept their decision for that day."
The King motioned his entourage in. They ranged themselves along the wall on both sides of the entry and waited.
Kri-estaul ignored them, thinking how Papa demanding such conditions was equivalent to forbidding him: Who would have the patience to watch over a crippled prat awkwardly wheeling his chair about?
From the tightness around the boy's eyes, Evendal had a fair idea what harboured in his son's mind. How ingrained self-loathing was in Kri had just been demonstrated; incised into him by masters of degradation. His son had a right to his doubt.
"We will know better than you if where you...play is safe." Karondeo explained as he stepped further into the room and looked around doubtfully. "One displaced cobble or bit of mortar and that chair would spill you to the ground. Your strong grip would not suffice were that ground wet or ice."
"Also, I have tried entertaining myself," Evendal added ruefully. "`Twas not as fun as with companions. Do not worry overmuch for the hazards, that is the assignment of old men like me. But I would recommend you first practise on this dais. And later, perhaps, on the decline from the common entry at the back of this room."
"They will hate me," Kri-estaul mumbled.
"Who will?" Evendal asked obligingly.
When Kri-estaul could not untie his tongue, Evendal had mercy on him. After a fashion. "Do you truly think that Hielbrae would begrudge you anything?"
The King waited, unrelenting, for Kri-estaul's pained head-shake. "Or Aldul? If you had a heartfelt want easily satisfied and failed to voice it out of fear of their displeasure, that would wound Ierwbae and Metthendoenn. And Gwl-lethry."
"And the Mistress of Oaks," Ierwbae added. Both King and Prince glanced at the Guard, surprised at his comment. Ierwbae clarified. "Pohul-halik put handrims on Your Highness's chair in anticipation of a healed Prince's purposes. It is her deliberate alteration to the invalid's chair, to grant you a measure of autonomy."
"Handrims?" Kri-estaul put a wealth of doubt and puzzlement into the interrogative.
"Only one other wheeled chair that I have seen displays them. Her's. All other wheeled chairs are built for the enfeebled."
Kri-estaul mulled over his uncle's words, and almost squirmed in dismay. "You mean someone would have had to push me...everywhere? All the time?"
Evendal nodded. "So watching you exercise your liberty of motion is hardly onerous to those of us who love you, Kri."
"I can race? I don't have to go as slow as you do?"
"As long as I can see you and reach you readily. Besides, I intend to test your speed down the Causeway when the weather grows clement. You in your chair, and I afoot. For now, do you want me to give you a push?"
Almost, Kri-estaul asked if Evendal was sincere. But the question answered itself in his mind. What his Papa promised, that he did. "Yes, Papa."
The King sat on a Throne covered in stone-dust, satisfied at having restored his son's equanimity. Karondeo moved to stand behind him, still puzzling at the condition of the Chamber.
"How did you know of the chair's nearly unique accoutrement?" Evendal hissed to his Guard.
Ierwbae replied in like manner. "I have pushed her chair on occasion, when her joints suffered but guild concerns required her appearance at Court. Annoyed of her infirmity, she has wrested the pilot's place from me often enough. Enough for me to recall that singular aspect of what she calls her `second crib'."
Three times Kri-estaul circled Throne and King in large ellipses. Each time striving to move faster that the previous. During the first circuit, Kri-estaul, clumsy in stealth, shot glances like arrows hoping to pin down his father's reaction. With each successive glance his father's smile looked wider. Not for him to know the pride Evendal felt in seeing this breathing bulls-eye for so much cruelty -^Ö Kri-estaul -- defy its lessons and reclaim his first nature. After the third pass, the Prince stopped, winded, and sore in his backside and his hands.
"Do you know what I miss?" Evendal asked his son when the child rolled to a halt beside the Throne.
"What? My tummy hurts."
Evendal twisted to his right to look at Sygkorrin who, calm of countenance, nodded her informed indifference to the child's complaint. "Rest," the King advised unnecessarily. "You have not exerted yourself so in quite a while. I enjoyed having you on my shoulders, rushing from the Scrivener Guild to the Palace."
"Me too," Kri-estaul agreed, grinning again at the memory.
"I had not thought of this before, but if our besayle permits, we might could retire on occasion to Kh'Anderif and discover if we can outpace a summer breeze!"
"But it's woods!"
"Oh, I think our kinsman has places that would serve." He looked about. "What say you, father of Our fathers?"
"Kri-estaul and I shall hold you to that."
Judging from the startled looks on Urhlysha's, Danlienn's and Gwl-lethry's faces, Surn-meddil's conversational volume and inflection had yet reached everyone's ear. "Within the next sennight," Evendal asserted, and was rewarded by the steadying of Kri-estaul's grin.
"What passed here?" Karondeo finally asked, glancing pointedly at the walls, unperturbed by the disembodied voice.
"My first Court. I...lost all patience," m'Alismogh answered inadequately. To his surprise, Karondeo simply nodded, content with the spare answer.
(284) Place a deceptive veneer over...
(285) A name sometimes applied to an estate created where lands are given to a man and his wife and the heirs of their bodies.
(286) One of the 10 royal virtues. See http://www.lankalibrary.com/Bud/dasa-raja-dhamma.htm
(287) Proclamations of brigandage. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigandage
(288) ~A manourlord's festuca is meant
(289) ~Barn, covered bridge.
(290) ~Turbinella pyrum is what is meant here. For more heavy ceremony Charonia tritonis is used.
(291) ~Hramal do not use stative verbs in the context Kri-estaul is using 'to be'. A Hramal parent would expect "I did wrong, didn't I?"