Retribution (Drakenfeld 2) (38 page)

Now and then the crowd would rise as finalists for various skills moved before the main stand, and the queen and her daughter would file through the throng in order to exchange pleasantries. That aspect was very informal – such a thing would never happen at the Stadium of Lentus, unless under very special circumstances. The fact that the king would have been standing some distance from the chariot racers, and would have seen himself as a different level of being entirely, would have prevented that. The queen appeared to thrive on
being seen
as someone at one with her people – though admittedly it was simply a large inner circle of her people. When I asked Sulma Tan if there were any politicians present, she pointed out the Rukrid clan’s senators down below, alongside those of the Tahtar family. Both clans were garbed in resplendent silks of blue, red and purple, but the Rukrids’ clothing featured the family crest of a sickle and star. They were completely at ease with the day and their position below the queen. If there were any rivalries, they were not on display today. Perhaps that was the whole point of the games – to show that all was well with society.

‘Sulma Tan – in your census speech, something came to mind concerning Lydia Marinus. I have read elsewhere of discrepancies in population information.’

For a moment her usual calm countenance felt fragile. ‘My census gatherings are accurate.’

‘Oh, I’m not questioning how robust they are. Something piqued my curiosity. Do you think the discrepancies could be because of things like Lydia Marinus’ orphanage work? She must have taken many children out of official statistics, educating them and perhaps resettling them.’

Sulma Tan leaned in close to reply. ‘I have communicated with the operators of the orphanage, and they confirm well over a thousand children passed through Lydia’s unofficial channels over the years. Lydia donated handsomely to the orphanages.’

‘Grendor did too, if I recall.’

We gave each other a knowing look as another connection was confirmed. ‘A thousand children or more were bettered. The orphanages, which were happy that their capacity was expanded thanks to Lydia, suggest many became workers for her operations abroad as she sought to grow her businesses. The queen requested that the orphanage be set up two decades ago. She wanted to get children off the streets and looked after. Well, it seems that Lydia helped them even further by educating and reforming many of them.’

‘Lydia thought the census was a waste of resources,’ I remarked. ‘I would wager one reason was so that attention was not drawn to her reform work. It seems so strange that such honourable deeds are concealed.’

Sulma Tan merely gazed through the sun across the heads of the elite of Kotonese society. I remained unconvinced as to the discrepancies in the population. There remained many more who were unaccounted for.

While people drifted in and out of the garden areas, their hazy shadows began to lengthen. Men and women fought; some lost, some won, but there never seemed to be a loss of dignity. The aromas of foods caught my senses when the wind remained calm and I considered getting something to eat.

I was about to ask Leana if she, too, would like a snack, but paused upon seeing her expression of intense focus as she looked to her left, across the hundreds of faces in the stand.

‘Is everything all right?’ I asked.

‘No. There is a man, approximately your height and build, though of a slightly paler complexion, moving ever-closer to Nambu. He has been watching her for some time – though I cannot say for how long precisely. Long enough that I have noticed, and I can confirm he does not look trustworthy.’

‘I can’t quite make him out . . .’ I tried to follow her gaze, but she quite rightly did not want to point at him in case he spotted us.

‘He is standing under the banner pole nearest the lower step, looking away from the events.’

‘Oh yes, there he is.’ The man was tall with blond hair, and a gaunt face, wearing what looked to be a fitted leather breastplate and a black cloak.

‘We should probably get a bit closer.’

No sooner had I spoken, when the crowd all rose and applauded as another pair of finalists – two bare-chested and enormous wrestlers – moved before the stand and stomped their feet into the grassy mud opposite each other.

‘Go quickly,’ I urged, and we shoved our way through the great and good of Koton, apologizing as we went.

We were nearing the banner pole where we had seen the man, but he had now moved.

‘He is higher up,’ Leana said, ‘nearer the queen.’

‘No, the queen is further down there.’ I pointed to where she was speaking with the wrestlers. ‘He’s going after Nambu.’

We changed course and headed right for him, but he was using the opportunity of the moment to move quickly up the steps of the stand, right towards where Nambu was seated and to where the queen was returning.

Leana vanished amid the throng as she sprinted nimbly towards him, leaving me to continue ungracefully pushing my way there.

I caught a glimpse of his leap towards Nambu.

Leana intercepted him and engaged in close-quarter combat. A scream came from the crowd. People turned their attention to the two individuals fighting on the upper step of the stand, pushing each other against the waist-high stone wall that was between them and a forty-foot drop.

I reached Nambu just as the eunuch, Brell, ushered her to safety.

First Leana disabled the attacker’s knife arm by smacking his wrists repeatedly against the wall until the blade fell over the side. Then, while pinning down his wrist, she stamped sideways into his stomach before slamming his head upwards with her knee. Still he attempted to fight back, losing all sense of control now as he flailed his arms. The crowd watched, curiously silent, as Leana finished him off with blows to his legs.

As if realizing that he would be captured, he leapt head first over the side of the stand. With a collective shriek, the crowd, myself among their mass, surged towards the wall and peered over to see if he had survived.

The man’s body lay sprawled and broken on the stone below.

If he had landed on the grass a few feet to one side, he might have survived, but a trickle of blood began to emerge, suggesting his head had connected with the hard surface.

Leana moved next to me, breathless and regaining her composure, sweat glistening on her brow. There was a small cut to her hand, but aside from that she looked well, and soon she had regained her breath.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘He was very good though. I am sorry if he is dead. I tried not to kill him. Though at least it is not my fault this time, no?’

Down below, a few spectators had moved to the side of the body, crouching down and gesturing over it.

‘We should get down there and take a look,’ I said, ‘before that lot mess with him too much.’

‘It will take us just as long to get down there as it did to get across the stand,’ Leana replied, indicating the thick mass of bodies that stood before us. ‘Is it not interesting that, despite all the civilized competitions that have been going on today, this lot are still far more interested in the sight of a corpse.’

‘You saved my daughter’s life,’ the queen announced.

I hadn’t noticed the queen approaching until she spoke to us. There was a renewed firmness in her voice and only now did I realize how tall she was, how much presence she possessed within a group of people. That others bowed at her arrival only added to her lustre of a goddess among them.

The sun was almost ready to set now and an orange light washed across the scene. Leana, Sulma Tan and myself were kneeling by the sprawled body of the attacker. The crowd were separated from us by a ring of twenty soldiers in the blue and black of the equestrian regiments. Surrounded by a coterie of eunuchs in red gowns, Nambu was standing between two soldiers. Her expression was one of embarrassment, though she had no reason to feel that way. Perhaps, with youthful pride, she felt that she could defend herself now thanks to Leana’s lessons in swordplay. Still, at least she had witnessed just how talented Leana could be in combat.

‘It was my duty.’ Leana never liked a fuss being made over her, but she was probably going to have to put up with what was coming.

‘You are a hero of this nation,’ the queen declared, loud enough for anyone nearby to hear. ‘You have protected the Sorghatan lineage. I knew it was wise to leave her in your skilled hands.’

‘Again,’ Leana bowed her head, ‘please think nothing of it. You entrusted your daughter to our care. This is our job.’

‘You shall be rewarded,’ the queen declared. There was no getting out of it. But, as if the previous conversation had not happened, she snapped her fingers at the corpse. ‘Who is this man?’

‘I hoped you might be able to shed some light on the matter.’ The words escaped my mouth before I had a chance to think. Even Leana looked surprised.

‘Why?’ the queen glared at me. ‘Do you think I
know
him?’

There was a tension thickening the air between us. Though I represented the Sun Chamber, I knew I had to be respectful before a royal – especially one who clearly did not suffer fools, or challenges to her authority.

But it was Nambu, surprisingly, who came to my assistance, pushing forward from her eunuch escort into the parted circle. ‘He means, Mother, that he’s not
stupid
.’

‘Do not speak to me like that, girl.’

‘You don’t just hand me over to strangers without being seriously worried for my safety in the palace. He knows that. We both know that. If he thinks there might be more to this, he’s entitled to know.’

The crowd were utterly silent. Birds shrieked from the nearby treetops and the banners could be heard snapping in the wind. The queen’s gaze moved repeatedly between her daughter and myself. I was anxious to see how a subtle tyrant queen might react to her daughter’s indiscretion.

She gave a command for the soldiers to widen the circle and to disperse the crowd. They held aloft their glaives and the crowd, naturally fearful, stepped back. The horses began to canter clockwise, edging out more and more until the nearest person was a good hundred paces away.

‘Now that any spies are out of earshot . . .’

Or rather, I thought, now anyone else at all was out of earshot.

The queen now stood in a noble pose, her head tilted up, her face stern. Her make-up was cracking slightly. ‘First you should realize this: I know very little about the attack, the attacker, or indeed why Nambu is being targeted. I am the queen and yet I remain in the dark – this is not something I am accustomed to. You will notice I have very few servants compared with many other rulers – this is not representative of how we are as a people. Indeed, as a result of my father taking over Koton by military might, to make a show of his power he possessed hundreds of servants, many of whom were barely more than unsanctioned slaves. No, the reason I surround myself by so few is because I trust so few people. A guard may slip a knife into one’s back with remarkable ease.’

Though I never spoke the thought, it did occur to me that her father had claimed the throne with a military coup, and that he may well have passed on his paranoia to his daughter. ‘And you fear that would happen to Nambu – that one of your guards would hold some grudge against your family?’

She remained perfectly still as she regarded me. ‘I do not know what others think. I can judge only on what I see. But what I do know is this: there have been moves in the past, within the palace, to take Nambu. To take her from under my eye. Two men we caught previously were both killed while trying to escape. One cut his throat before my guards could get to him.’

A silence fell upon the scene, and I contemplated the efforts to claim Nambu. It did not seem prudent to divulge that there had been another attempt recently. The queen did not need to know such things at the moment.

‘Do you know of any schemes to end your lineage?’ I asked.

The queen laughed. ‘I suspect schemes are being planned all the time,’ she replied. ‘But it is nearly always talk cooked up in taverns known for their political discussions.’

‘People wish for more say in the affairs of state?’ I asked.

‘What good would it do? They would only derail our nation’s progress with their own trivial desires. They would seek to redistribute wealth among their own kind and say it is for the good of people. Petty men with petty ideals make up my government. They are ill-suited to
lead
and to bring about progress. They would have the women of our nation at home weaving again, instead of being my secretary,’ she gestured to the quiet Sulma Tan, ‘or a future queen’ – a gesture to her daughter. ‘No, old feuds coming to the fore are the usual reason for talk against me. But as I say, this is only talk. But there is action to take a young girl and do Nastra-knows what to her. That is why I wanted her to go with you, so she would not follow the predictable rituals of state. So whoever it is who has repeatedly breached my court will not have an easy opportunity.’

She steered me back towards the corpse. All of us stood in a circle, staring down at the attacker. Leana knelt down and turned him over.