The King's Name (6 page)

Through the window I could see Second

Pennon drilling, and a ship unlading at the wharf. In the hall people kept coming and going.

Well into the afternoon, Veniva came back. She was still wearing the russet overdress she had worn that morning. It was flecked with blood where her apron had not covered it. She looked distressed.

"What news?" I asked.

"We must speak privately," she said, glancing around the hall. I followed her back into the little accounts room, where the three words of my letter were waiting ominously.

"What did he say?" I asked as she closed the door.

"Civil war," Veniva said tersely, and her lips closed on that single Vincan word as if she would say no more.

Then, as I gaped at her, she drew breath and spoke again. "You must write to all the kings and tell them it is not true and keep them from rising."

"What isn't true?" I asked.

Veniva looked drawn and hollow-eyed. "It is just like that time when Flavien wrote to all of us that Urdo was become a tyrant and meant to depose him," she said. "That time your father and Duke Galba and old Uthbad wrote letters to all the kings and they were reassured. It may work again, if we are quick."

"But what are they saying, and why has nobody said it to us?" I asked, feeling as if I was riding full tilt through a forest in a mist.

"It is this Breghedan affair. But that is just the spark. Some of the kings are restless with Urdo, and say he is a pagan and a tyrant and he prefers the Jarns to his own people. Daldaf told me there is a conspiracy between Cinvar ap Uthbad, Cinon ap Cinon, and Flavien ap Borthas, with Ayl and Angas and Custennin wavering about joining in. Aurien, of course, the fool, is deeply implicated."

"We're in a terrible position here," I said, reaching for a map. It was one of the new sharp ones Raul's people had drawn up. "I don't believe it about Ayl and Angas, but Custennin might be idiotic enough. What's happening in Wenlad?"

"He didn't mention it," Veniva said. "But wait. Marchel ap Thurrig is due to land in Magor with two alae of

Narlahenan horse. Apparently they hoped that, if you were ignominiously dead and Aurien urged it, our ala would join them. Then they could take the whole center of the land and the others would join them."

"Emlin has more loyalty than that," I said automatically. But Emlin had served under Marchel once. I didn't think he would have done that, but it wasn't impossible.

"That part of the plan failed. Daldaf was horrified to see you coming back and decided to poison you."

"He would have done better to stab me, if he wanted to get away with it. I wasn't expecting anything and it would have been less impious." I felt detached from the whole thing.

"He was never noted for strategic thinking, though he was a very good steward and I will miss that." Veniva smiled grimly. "He admits he has been intercepting your letters."

"My letters?" I echoed inanely. My letters to Urdo? But I had been getting answers, Daldaf certainly wasn't capable of forging them. The thought that he might have been reading them was
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dreadful enough. I wondered who else might have written to me and what they might have said. I hadn't heard from ap Erbin for some time.

"We trust the red-cloaks so much," Veniva said. "We think what we have written will be delivered. It seems many things have been going astray. We will have to check his room. He said he had destroyed most of them but there were some he was saving to send to Demedia."

"To Morthu?" I asked, though I knew it was true. Our eyes met, and she raised her chin in affirmation. Veniva had hated Morthu as much as I had since the day of Morien's death. I felt ill at the thought of Morthu reading

Urdo's letters and knowing so much of what he thought and dreamed. I took a slow breath and tried to clear my head. "The most urgent thing is Marchel," I said, putting my hand on the map again. "Did he say exactly where she would land?"

"He didn't know," Veniva said. "But you're wrong. The most urgent thing is writing to the kings. If Marchel lands that is an invasion; that doesn't break the Peace. If the kings rise—it will be the way it was after Avren's death. I have lived through that once, and we so barely saved anything of civilization that time. If it happens again that will be the end, I think, the end of everything that was good about Vincan ways of life, the end of Peace, and the world will go down in darkness and petty squabbling forever." She leaned forward and gripped my arm with surprising strength. "Even if Urdo wins he will not be able to hold the country without the trust of the kings. If there is constant war, the next time somebody manages to stop it there will be nobody left who knows how to make pipes for hot water or who can remember how to make laws people will keep. We must hold onto this fragment of Peace whatever happens or there will be nobody left to understand what Peace is"

I had never realized how much it meant to her. "I will write to them," I said. "But I am only one person, and I

am not sure how much they trust me. I don't know if they think of me as a king like them or if they think I am the High King's Praefecto first and Lord of Derwen afterward." I knew that some of them at least thought that.

Custennin had never made any secret of it.

"And are you?" Veniva asked, never taking her eyes off mine for an instant.

I hesitated. "I never wanted to be Lord of Derwen, but I have always done my best for land and people, as my father did. I am Lord of Derwen; I stand between land and people, before the gods. They are my responsibility, and I accept that as I have accepted it since we came home after Morien died. But I still serve Urdo the High

King, and always will."

"That would go very badly with Flavien," Veniva said, releasing my arm. She stood up. "Still, you must write to them for whatever little good it may do to hold the Peace. Tell them you support Urdo and he is no tyrant, whatever he is doing in Bregheda."

"What choice does he have in Bregheda?" I asked. "Glyn is—"

"If the kings won't accept it, and it seems they won't, then Urdo is being stupid," Veniva said firmly.

"There is nobody alive who is the child or the grandchild of a king of Bregheda," I said.

"Cyndylan's horse tripped and he broke his neck, then old Penda died of grief for the last of his sons. Urdo had to make a decision."

"Make a decision, yes. He didn't have to make one that would antagonize half the kings.

Glyn is the great-grandson of Minmanton of Bregheda, yes, but he is also Urdo's own man, and everyone knows it. It looks as if he is trying to control the kingdom."

"Why ever would he need to bother to?" I threw up my hands. "When I heard, I thought it was another burden he was putting onto Glyn and Garah, and I wondered that he was prepared to manage without them at Caer

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Tanaga."

Veniva gave a brief choked laugh, and turned to look out of the window. "You may be sure this is not what

Cinvar of Tathal or Cinon of Nene thought when the news reached them. They know their fathers and grandfathers back to the days when they married the trees. Glyn is being raised to be their equal, and he is

Urdo's own man and his wife was a groom and the daughter of a farmer. I knew the kings would hate it. But whatever Urdo is doing, there is no choice but to support him."

"Is it better to argue it in the letters to Cinvar and Cinon or not?" I asked.

"There is no use writing to Cinvar at all," she said, turning to look at me. "If Uthbad One-Hand were still alive he might pay attention to you, but Cinvar will not. We have killed Daldaf ap Wyn, who he considers a kinsman. He and Marchel will never forgive us for that. But if it is only Tathal and Magor that is not so bad.

Magor will be safe in any case; Aurien will have been careful to make sure the boys know nothing."

"Good," I said, and meant it. I took up my pen and a fresh parchment, fit for writing to kings.

"So should I

mention Bregheda, and my friendship with Glyn?" I hesitated, looking up at her. "Oh Mother, will you write as well?"

She blinked at me, surprised. "What good would that do? I am not a king. I am not your father."

I smiled. "No, but there is power in your name. There are those among the kings who may pay more attention to you than to me. You know what arguments will move them. You are respected, and you are one of them."

"One of them?" She stared at me across the little room as if I had gone mad. "I have never been one of them.

I was born in Rutipia, in Bricinia that is now Cennet, in the year the last Vincan legions left Tir Tanagiri. When

I was twelve years old Avren banished us from our land and our towns and gave all of Cennet to his new

Jarnish father-in-law, Hengist. He made an alliance with the very Jarns we had been fighting outside our walls

all my life. The Tanagan lords fought Avren and each other but cared nothing for us, no more than Avren did.

They gave us no help at all. My father was the magistrate of Rutipia; he was killed when we opened the gates to leave. The people scattered like chaff. There were no towns left. Towns need so many different kinds of people, and they were all scattered and helpless. Gwien ...

your father—" She hesitated, and clearly thought better of what she was going to say. "They call me the last of the Vincans. There are none of my people left now. There are monasteries instead of schools, clusters of farmers' houses around lords' houses instead of towns. My own child thinks it is splendid that there is acknowledged law and very few people actually die fighting before they are grown up, at least most years. And what is worst, you are right!"

I didn't know what to say. "You never told me any of that," I said, at last.

She laughed. "What good would it do you to know? I brought you up safely and properly and taught you as well as I could. And I never think of any of that, never think about the time before I came here. For years I

believed the Vincans would come back one day, but now I know they will not. Only the raiders come from over the sea. Narlahena is fallen and Lossia is overrun and Vinca itself is fallen to the barbarians, and there are only Caer Custenn and us with a sea of them between us, squabbling and killing the people who know and care what civilization is."

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I had never really thought about where Veniva had come from. She was my mother. She was a Vincan, yes, I

knew that, but I had not thought she meant it so literally. All my life she had always been at Derwen. "You could still write to the kings," I said, hesitantly. "They think of you as one of them."

"Not those of them who remember where I come from, which will be few enough by now,"

she said. "Very well, I will do it, if you think it will be any help at all. I would do anything that can sway the straw in the wind to help this Peace hold."

So we sat there the rest of the afternoon writing letters to all the kings. I wrote first to Cinon and Flavien and

Custen-nin, difficult letters all, trying to stop them rising treacherously while avoiding accusing them of intending to. Then I wrote to all the other kings. To my surprise the easiest letters were those to Alfwin and

Ohtar, who I had no reason at all to distrust. It was very strange that distant Jarnish kings were easier to understand than my kin close at hand, but that was the way of it. I knew what to say to reassure them.

I was in the middle of writing to Ayl, and yawning over my work, when a servant came in to tell me that Emlin was here, with the half ala from Magor. I was glad to take a break, although I left Veniva still writing. I have rarely done anything so difficult or so completely useless as writing those letters to the kings.

—4—

My running child, from your first step you passed me, stretched out your arms and charged across the field.

What could I do? You would not heed my warning, the more I called, the more you would not yield.

How fast you ran! How much you wanted glory!

How brave you were, the world stretched out before.

A name you won, my child, all know your story, No deed of mine could make you safe once more.

How far you ran, my laughing child, beyond me.

How great you grew, my child I could not save.

How bright you burned, how little you have left me;

nothing but ashes cold within the grave.

— Isarnagan Lament

Emlin was sitting on the window ledge, looked tired but unhurt. He stood as I came up. When I saw him I felt as if a weight had been lifted from me. If Aurien was prepared to murder me then she might have been

prepared to bar doors and burn barracks. The safety of my armigers and my horses had been on my mind all day, though I'd pushed the thought away every time it surfaced.

"Sulien! You're better!" he greeted me.

I waved him back to the seat and sat down beside him. So much had happened that the poisoning and paralysis seemed long ago by now. "The land healed me. But Garian and Conal the Victor are dead, killed by some of Aurien's household. How about you and the ala?"

"They're all here safe," he said. "I spent the night in the stables and left at dawn as you said."

"Any trouble?" I asked.

"No. Well, Galba's lady asked us to stay. She said those who had more loyalty to Galba and the White God than to you and Urdo should stay. When she saw we weren't going to she seemed
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glad to let us go, almost hurried us out."

"Did any of them want to stay?" I remembered how they had all cut their hair for Galba. Even the recruits who had come into the ala after his death knew all the stories about him, and one of the stories was his great love for Aurien. I had never tried to discourage this love of Galba. He had been my friend, too; he had formed this ala and given it much of its spirit. I tried to command them well, I had expanded them from six pennons to nine, but they were Galba's ala still and fought with the Rod of Magor on their ala banner. As for the White God, many of the armigers had taken the pebble. It was interesting that Aurien was making that claim. I