The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (46 page)

So it was with a quiet heart that Henry sat in his room one night, candle lit, book open, catching up on the reading for Doctor Rugg’s course, which he’d fallen behind on. When he heard a knock at the door, his first thought was that it must be Blake, come to tempt him away to the Nest. Well, Blake could knock his knuckles raw; tonight, Henry meant to be virtuous.

“Bugger off!” he shouted, when the knocking renewed. “I’m busy. I’m sleeping. I’m not in.”

The latch rattled, and the door opened. Henry turned in his chair to blast Blake for disturbing him, but it wasn’t Blake. It wasn’t anyone he knew, although he’d seen him at the Nest, or someone very like him. As tall and nearly as thin as Henry himself, his visitor wore his long hair in dozens of tiny braids down his back, and his face was as bleak as a week of rain.

Henry swallowed sudden nausea and cleared his throat. “I don’t believe I know you,” he said weakly.

“But I know you,” said the Northerner. “You are Henry Fremont, of the College of Humane Sciences.” His Northern accent was thicker than Finn’s, but Henry could not miss the irony of his tone. “You are also, by your own calling, a friend. I have come to see whether you are a friend of Alaric Finn’s, or a friend of ours.”

Feeling very much at a disadvantage, Henry stood up and tried to get a grip on the situation. “I don’t know that I was, strictly speaking, a
friend
of Finn’s—more a colleague, really, but we won’t fuss over terms. I don’t know who you are—apart from being Northern, of course—and I don’t know anything about Northerners—apart from the ancient variety—so it would be foolhardy of me to call myself your friend, in the personal sense, anyway.”

“Enough,” said the Northerner. “If you are not our friend, you are our enemy. And therefore I have this to say to you, Henry Fremont. The Land has been deprived too long of blood and honor. It thirsts, Henry Fremont; it hungers. It needs a king again to feed it properly. Until that day comes, it will accept whatever sacrifices it may come by—even the poor, thin blood of such a Southron fool as you.”

Henry listened to this speech with mounting indignation, and by the time the Northerner had come to his ringing conclusion, he was almost as angry as he was afraid. “That puts me in my place, doesn’t it? Well, let me tell you something, Master King’s Companion. It’s not too bright of you to go around threatening people who might, if you’d keep your mouth shut, be more sympathetic to whatever you’re up to. I’m an ancient historian, you idiot. I know the Northern kings weren’t barbarians, and I know that their Companions were much more than a bunch of drunken, rutting, strutting thugs.”

The Northerner looked amused. “Do you call me a thug, Southron?”

“If the hat fits—or should I say, the leaf? You’re really something, with your little secret society and your badges and your silly, girlish braids. If I’d known how you were going to behave, I’d have left Finn to rot in the grove, as Lindley wanted us to, and be damned to the lot of you.”

Henry stopped, appalled at what he’d said, waiting for the Northerner to draw the long knife gleaming at his belt. But the braided man just stared at him silently, mouth stern, pale eyes slitted. “Yes,” he said finally. “That would have been best. You know nothing. You understand nothing. You are no threat to us. But take good care, Henry Fremont. Ignorance is not always innocence.”

He did not close the door after himself.

chapter
VII

AS THE DAYS AND WEEKS WORE ON TOWARD SPRING, the first stray tepid breezes brought a tentative thaw to the land. In the oak grove and in the gardens of the Hill, snowdrops showed their heads above the damp ground. In the city streets, gelatinous mud sucked at the boots of the rich, worked its way into the shoes of the poor, and caked upon the floors of taverns, shops, council chambers, and tenements. There was an outbreak of ague among the mathematicians, and a big-bellied mercer’s daughter brought suit in City Sessions against a Fellow of Astronomy who she swore had promised to marry her. The Council of Lords was much concerned with the unrest in the North, and how to bring the Duke of Hartsholt to a better sense of his duties without setting a precedent that might threaten their own power some day.

Basil St Cloud did not notice the weather. Sunk deep in his studies, he hardly knew whether it was day or night. His lectures and Theron were the only punctuation in days spent prying the secrets of the past from the papers and books his students brought him.

Basil was beginning to believe that he had been mistaken in his theories of the Northern kings. The more he read, the more evidence he found suggesting that the oldest kings, the Northern kings, had indeed been a little mad. The way the wizards spoke of them, the deeds they did of battle and of love; the way they knew things and the way they heedlessly sacrificed themselves . . . these were not the sane and reasoned acts that Basil admired in their successors. Since several sources suggested that it was the wizards who controlled that madness, it then followed that the union of the wizards and kings must be critical to the prosperity of the Land. So much was clear. What was less clear was why the Northern kings had been mad in the first place. Had the wizards chosen only madmen as their Little Kings? Or had they deliberately driven sane men to madness? The evidence pointed that way: a Little King was wholly under the tutelage of a single wizard from the time he was chosen until he stood his trial. But why? No source that Basil could find would say.

And then the kings rode south. If the wizards ruled the kings either by choosing madmen or driving them mad, it followed that once the kings began to marry women and to father heirs who were not chosen by wizards, the ruling family would begin to grow sane at last. Look at Laurent, Peregrine, and of course Anselm the Wise, the greatest of them all, who formally curtailed the wizards’ power over the throne and its workings. But by this reasoning, Anselm’s heirs should have continued to grow, if not wiser and saner, then certainly no madder than their fathers. Which was abundantly not the case.

After Anselm, the place of the wizards in the royal court became less well-defined. Wizards came and went in the royal households of Anselm’s heirs as advisors, as spiritual guides, as supernatural guards, finally as spies and inquisitors; as everything, in fact, but tutors to the king’s children or mentors to the king’s heir, as they had once been.

That was something, but was it enough to account for the great decline that took place over the hundred years between Anselm the Wise and his Wizard Querenel to Iron Tybald and his flock of sadistic wizardly councilors? There had to be something else as well. Was it something to do with the book of spells and the lost language, or the shift of the Wizard’s College from North to South? Were the wizards spreading themselves too thin, caring for the two lands at once, when the roots of their magic lay in the North? Or could it be that, with Anselm, the king had sundered the old bond between them by refusing to let his son take a wizard as his lover?

It galled Basil that he had no documentary answers to these questions, but he knew enough to form some theories, and his instincts told him that his theories were near the truth. Whether the kings liked it or not, their fates were entwined with the wizards. When the kings withdrew from the control of the wizards, they began to lose control over themselves; when the wizards lost their traditional purpose, they also began to lose their wisdom and their abilities. In the end, the very last kings—Iron Tybald, Hilary the Stag, and finally Gerard—turned to the wizards again, to strengthen them, to heal them, to protect them from a realm that had grown to hate them. But it was too late. Guidry’s Book survived, but the key to unlock its wisdom had been irrevocably lost. So the kings were mad again, the wizards useless . . . The nobles had been right: there was nothing left to do but wipe out the whole boiling of them, kings and wizards both, and start over again.

It made perfect sense. If only he could find enough concrete proof, even the Governors would have to accept his reasoning. So Basil applied himself to sifting studiously through the flotsam and jetsam of ancient history. But studying ancient history meant studying power and ancient kings, meant studying the Book of the King’s Wizard, meant studying Theron. Meant pinning Theron to the mattress, meant touching the Book when he touched his flesh, touching flesh when he touched the Book. Almost impossible these days to unknit the strands that bound them all together. And all of them seemed to be leading him to some great conclusion, a final knowledge that would not only defeat Crabbe but change all of history as it had been studied. Spending time on anything else was almost unbearable. Every moment spent away from his books or his lover was a sojourn in a trackless waste.

His books were faithful enough, but Theron was increasingly occupied with lectures, with family gatherings, with various appointments on vague matters of business too dull to tell his lover about. It was not remarkable for him to appear an hour or even two after his promised time, penitent, affectionate, and eager.

Which was why Basil was sitting in the Blackbird’s Nest one foggy afternoon when he should have been working. As they’d kissed and parted that morning, Theron had said that he would come to the Nest at noon for a bite and a word before Doctor Tipton’s rhetoric lecture. “I’ll buy you a beer,” he’d said. “We’ll sit and talk. We haven’t talked properly for ages.”

NOON CAME AND WENT. BASIL, COLLECTING A BATCH of notes from Blake and Godwin, hardly noticed how the time passed until they left for their afternoon lectures and he realized that Theron was still not there. He had half a mind to leave himself, let Theron learn his lover had better things to do than cool his heels waiting for a thoughtless boy to remember him. But the Archives were dank and smelled of mildew and mold, and the Nest was warm and bright, and the mulled ale he was drinking was fragrant with hops and cloves. He ordered another, and was still waiting for it when Theron arrived, breathless, on the tolling of the University bell. He was two hours late.

Theron flung himself onto the nearest bench. “Sorry! Beer? No, wait—it’s two already—I must get to Tipton’s rhetoric—”

“Theron, what is that you’re wearing?”

The young noble’s black robe was open over a pair of tight-fitting striped yellow breeches and an embroidered waistcoat. He looked ruefully down at his splendor. “Sorry— had to go see the lawyer this morning, no time to change—”

Basil laughed. “Well, cover them up, and maybe no one will laugh at you. Lawyer, eh? Nothing’s wrong, I hope?”

“Oh, no. I think it will all be fine. Thanks, Basil, I’m off—”

“Wait.” The black whirlwind froze. “Tell me if you’re coming to Minchin Street tonight.” There was a note of command in his voice that brought a speculative smile to Theron’s lips.

“Will you be there?”

“Will you?” Basil insisted.

“There’s a party,” Theron began apologetically.

“There have been other parties. I’ll be up late.”

Theron looked his lover full in the eyes, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I will come.”

THERON TOLD HIMSELF HE WAS NOT NERVOUS. THE difficult part had all been done: the contracts, the lawyers with their endless talk of rights and property, duty and dowries. Marcus and his aides had handled the bulk of it, but the family (in this case, Sophia, Katherine, and Marcus all united) had agreed that it would be good for Theron to attend some of the negotiations himself, so that he had a true understanding of what was at stake. It had been hard for him to pay attention. He could not bring himself to care about the fine points of income from land he’d never seen, or which pieces of the family jewelry his wife would be entitled to wear. His thoughts kept straying to Basil, hot in bed and cool at his desk, rising this morning from the papers he was examining as Theron dressed to kiss him again and again as though setting his seal on him until next they met. The lawyers with their endless arguments had made him late, but he’d gotten away in time to meet Basil at the Nest before Tipton’s lecture. After all, Theron was there to observe, not to negotiate; he had perfect faith that his people would not let the Randalls get one brass minnow more than was their due.

But tonight was different. Tonight he was on his own, with business only he could take care of. He dressed in green the color of his eyes, with starched white linen at his neck and wrists. He put rings on his fingers, a diamond at his throat. He went to the ball where all had agreed that he would ask Genevieve Randall to marry him.

He found her sitting with a group of girlfriends, including Charlie Talbert’s fiancée, Lady Elizabeth Horn. Ever since Theron’s pursuit of Genevieve had become known, the Talbert cousins and their circle had made a point of befriending the pretty Randall girl. He supposed once he was married they would all be coming to the house. Genevieve could entertain them; she seemed happy in their company. When they saw Theron, Lady Elizabeth nudged her. Genevieve looked up, her clear face lit with a smile. The other girls shifted their billowing skirts to let him approach her, and he held out his hand across the sea of flounces that remained. He marveled, as always, at how light and tiny her bones were. Tonight, her hand was cold.