The King's Hand (23 page)

Had the hands that had taken Ashway's life taken Mathaiah's also?

His grief gagged in his throat until it choked him.

 

He did not know how long it was until Anderas returned.

The captain showed him the rest of the Handquarters, detailing its every room and use. Eamon was shown his bedroom, a grand affair wrought in dark wood with green drapes surrounding its four posts and a long view across the garden. He met some of his servants. He saw the reception room and dining room, the countless corridors, the kitchens and the servants' quarters, the washroom, the cellars, and the stables. Anderas spoke to him about each, but he barely heard what the captain told him.

After the Handquarters, Anderas took him to the East Quarter College. It was very similar to Waite's college, but the insignia over the gate was slightly different, bearing the expected ash tree. Anderas seemed utterly at his ease there and Eamon was impressed by how smoothly it ran. The cadets, ensigns, and officers on duty saluted smartly, calling the captain's name with pride; others bowed. The men watched Eamon oddly as he passed, almost as though they feared for the safety of their captain with the new Hand.

The captain smiled at him. “You have a fearsome reputation in this quarter, my lord,” he said. “There isn't a man in the whole city who hasn't heard about the Easter head.” He lowered his voice. “There isn't a man in this college who hasn't heard of your boldness before the Right Hand.”

Eamon imagined how the college must have lived in fear the whole time he strove for Feltumadas's head in Hughan's camp. Apart from the many East Quarter Gauntlet and militia who had stood in peril, Anderas himself would have lost his life – and the East Quarter College its clearly beloved captain – had Eamon failed.

“What do they say about me?” Eamon asked.

Anderas laughed gently. “Much,” the captain confessed, “and very little exaggerated.”

 

It was a long day. Eamon wondered how it was that it seemed to him so much longer than the time it took for the sun to rise and cross to the western skies. Anderas took him through some of the papers he had to sign, ranging from trading licences to permissions to release or imprison men, and orders for detachments from the East Quarter College for the following weeks. There was a list of candidates from the college who were to be sworn in, a list of families seeking permission to leave the city, and requests for various cases to be taken from the Crown Courts and set under the jurisdiction of the Quarter Hand. Some Gauntlet units still needed reshuffling and their numbers adjusting after the losses sustained at Pinewood; new cadets needed to be gathered from the quarter, and death warrants needed authorization. There were reports on the progress of the quarter's culling efforts, accompanied by a list of those sent to the pyre that night. This Eamon quickly pushed away, fearing to read what he knew would be there. There were papers for the distribution of food and drink to be reviewed and passed on to the logistics draybant, invitations to a dozen minor events in the quarter itself, requests for clemency or vengeance, notices of buildings and roads that needed repair, or of suspicious behaviour that needed to be investigated.

Eamon looked at the papers, all of which wanted his signature. He drowned as he surveyed them.

Anderas lit lamps at the desk to aid the failing daylight.

“Which ones should I sign, which should I seal, and which… should I mark?” Eamon asked. Anderas had already explained it to him, but he hadn't been listening.

Anderas picked up the first paper from the pile. He moved slowly, perhaps aware of the odd nature of his position. “This one needs signature and seal, Lord Goodman. The rest can wait until the morning.”

Eamon looked at the parchment – an order authorizing one of the college's lieutenants and his unit to carry out the arrest of suspected wayfarers in the nether parts of the quarter. Two families were named.

Eamon stared at the paper. Suddenly, he was watching Dorien Lorentide racing across into the arms of his horrified father.

“What did they do?” He tried to make his voice neutral.

“Hindered the Gauntlet in the rightful extraction of a known wayfarer,” Anderas answered. There was no emotion to his voice. As Eamon looked up, he remembered Ladomer's praise of the East Quarter captain who had filled whole pyres by himself.

Slowly Eamon took up the quill. He could scarcely feel it in his hand – his mind already spun with so much grief. He could not refuse to sign. That could not be his first act as the Lord of the East Quarter.

Dipping the quill into the inkpot he signed his name and laid the instrument aside. He remained still for a long moment. Anderas watched him.

“Forgive me, Lord Goodman,” the captain said at last. “Your seal is needed.”

Eamon took the candle and allowed some of the wax to drip down onto the paper. It was thick like blood. Awkwardly, he turned his hand and pressed the ring down. He felt heat in his hand, and for a moment caught sight of the red light between it and the paper.

He pulled sharply away to see an owl embedded in the wax. Eamon stared.

Slowly, Anderas took the paper. “I'll see to this, Lord Goodman. Shall I have the servants see you to your bed?”

“No,” Eamon answered weakly. He could not endure anyone watching him. The papers that had condemned Mathaiah had been signed and sealed just as this one. His hand shook. He set it discreetly beneath the desk.

If Anderas saw his hands, he said nothing. Instead, the captain nodded. “Very well. Good night, Lord Goodman.”

“Good night, captain.”

Eamon watched as the captain left, his heart silently begging the man to stay. He needed solace; he needed the freedom to speak out everything that had tormented him since he had seen Ashway bound and Mathaiah blinded.

But Captain Anderas could not hear him. Even if he could, even were he to ask for his ear, Eamon knew that he could not speak. The man served the Master by filling pyres.

The door closed. Eamon stared at it.

He seized the quill. With a cry he crushed it in his hand before hurling it brutally across the room. It struck the painting, disfiguring a soldier's face before falling pathetically to the floor.

Eamon sank back into his chair. His chest heaved and sobbed, but still no sound came from him and no tear touched his eye. He curled his limbs together in the high-backed, deep-seated chair, and drove his face down into his shaking hands and arms.

He would not go to a bed. In her bed had he been poisoned and betrayed.

He did not sleep that night. When the dawn stirred him, he was still in the chair, his cheek marked by the ring against which it had lain.

C
HAPTER
XII

T
he days that followed seemed interminably long, the hours of light marked by a hundred things he could not grasp, and those of night by memories he could not bury. He could not eat, he could barely sleep, and during the nights he sat in the tall-backed chair until he could no longer feel his limbs.

Anderas showed him the quarter's streets and buildings, many them steeped in significance. He met the Hands who worked for him and answered to him in and beyond the quarter. They stood in relation to him much as he had stood in relation to Lord Cathair. Seeing them fawn filled him with disgust. Eamon met First Lieutenant Greenwood and the quarter's officers, as well as many of the cadets and ensigns. He heard their names as Anderas introduced their faces. Each seemed anxious to please him but he seemed unable to keep hold of them; they turned into so many staring faces which meant nothing to him, unless it was to remind him of the face that he had lost, and the one that had caused him to lose it.

When he walked through the Handquarters he sometimes heard the servants flee before him. Where once he would have sought them out, he now preferred their absence. He often sat alone, a prisoner of his thoughts. No escape came to him unless it was the hated voice that counselled him to bury his grief and rage all the deeper, to turn them against the Serpent that had allowed Mathaiah to die.

One evening it grew unseasonably cold. Eamon sat in his office, staring at the papers that he should sign, seal, and mark. Anderas usually came to collect them in the evening, and signed any that were left on his behalf.

That night Eamon had neither read nor signed any of them. His cold, vacant eyes saw nothing. He barely heard the captain when he entered. He did not even know if the man had greeted him, for he saw and heard nothing until a sudden smell touched him. It drove him to his feet with a furious cry.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

Anderas was standing by him, checking various papers, and a small boy knelt in the corner by the fireplace. He had stacked some logs together and a fire now licked at the dry wood. The boy had frozen, his hands suspended by the grate that he was setting back. He cowered before Eamon's anger, but Eamon did not see it: he saw only the fire – the all-consuming, man-eating fire.

“It is cold, Lord Goodman,” Anderas spoke quietly. “I think if you feel your hands, you will find that you are, too.”

“Do not presume to tell me whether the temperature is to my liking,
captain!
” Eamon's voice quivered with rage. He turned ireful eyes on the boy. “Put it out!”

The boy hesitated. Eamon's voice rose almost to a scream.

“
Put it out!
”

Anderas laid down the papers he held. He moved to the boy and touched the child's shoulder to send him from the room. Eamon did not know whether either of them spoke; all he knew was that he shook, grief writhing inside him like a wild beast. The smell of the flames threatened to draw it, retching and clawing, from him.

Anderas doused the flames in silence, his face pale. Eamon knew that fear had to be in the man's mind, but he did not care. He drew his cloak up around him and strode from the room, out, out into the garden where the servants and stars fled from him. He needed air, space, help…

Help? Eamon drove the word away in disgust. There was no help for him, and he needed none. Silence was all that could cover him.

He pressed deeper into the garden's inky dark. Captain Anderas did not follow him.

 

It was mid-March. Eamon sat, as was his custom, in his chair. It had been six days since he laid himself down in a bed to sleep – his whole body ached for it. Each day the lines about his eyes grew broader, thicker, deeper. But there was no peace for him, no rest. There was nothing for him anywhere but in his chair. It was the only thing that could hold him and the only thing that could bear the whisperings of his virulent, wretched heart.

At about mid-morning there was a knock at his door. Wearily he granted entrance. One of the servants came in and bowed low. Eamon recognized the man, the major-domo in charge of ensuring the smooth working of the Handquarters' many servants.

“Forgive my intrusion, Lord Goodman.” He was tall and thin, with grey wispy hair and a timid face. “I wondered if I might ask you a few questions about the supper?”

“Supper?” Eamon looked at him, struggling to gain any memory of either his name or the supper he mentioned.

There must have been anger in his voice, for the servant flinched. “The formal supper to welcome you to the quarter. I believe that Captain Anderas –”

“What does that require I do?” Eamon said more brusquely than he meant. The servant froze. Annoyed, Eamon sighed heavily and gestured for the man to approach. “Tell me what I have to do,” he repeated. The man held a piece of paper on which a list was written in rough script. He laid it gingerly in front of Eamon.

“My lord, it is not often that the quarter has the honour of celebrating a new Hand. It is traditional for the one being feasted to choose the meal. If it is too much trouble, I can –”

“I will choose,” Eamon answered. He swooped the paper up from the table and steadied it in front of his eyes. He had to squint at the script to make any sense out of it, but eventually words suggested themselves from the tangled strokes.

“There are five services to choose, my lord.” The butler, emboldened by Eamon's taking of the paper, continued. “There's the starter, soup, principal, dessert, and cheeses, and of course wines.”

Eamon peered at the different suggestions for each service. A frown creased his face.

“I want to change the order of the courses.” The major-domo looked alarmed. Eamon ignored it. “I have never held with this odd notion that cheese should be eaten after something sweet,” he said flatly, setting the paper down again. “Put it before.”

There was the briefest hesitation on the butler's part. “Yes, lord,” he said, hastily making an amendment to the paper. He pointed to the starters. “Would you prefer dried fruits or nuts to begin?”

Eamon sighed. Surely there could not be much fruit in the city to dry after a harsh winter? “I have no preference,” he answered.

“But, my lord –”

“I have to choose? Very well: nuts.” He watched as the major-domo made a note.

“For soups –”

“The thickest one,” Eamon answered, jabbing at the paper. “I cannot abide the thin, watery kinds of which this city seems so fond.”

“I'm sorry that you feel that way, my lord. It will be the Crown Medley – a seasonal speciality of this quarter.” The butler made another note. “And for your principal?”

Eamon looked hard at the menu, wanting nothing better than for the torture to be concluded. His choice was between various red meats – a selection called the “Crown Platter” – and dozens of different kinds of fish. He chose one of the former.

“My lord, wouldn't the fish be a higher complement to –?”

“I have made my choice,” Eamon interrupted, aggravated. “Please make sure that it is well cooked,” he added as the butler jotted once again on the paper. His face paled slightly.