Kings Rising

  It didn’t keep anyone else occupied. Around them, the hall was stifling, the thick press of soldiers and onlookers a packed, fidgeting mass. The strain of standing in heavy irons was beginning to make itself felt in Damen’s back and shoulders. For Laurent, who had been here for hours, it would be worse: the ache that began in the back travelling to the arms, the thighs, until every part of the body was made of fire.

  Guion entered the hall.

  Not only Guion, but all the members of Damen’s party: Guion’s wife, Loyse, looking white-faced, the physician Paschal, Nikandros and his men, even Jord and Lazar. It meant something to Damen that he had given each of them the option to leave, and they had chosen to stay with him. He knew what they risked. Their loyalty touched him.

  He knew that Laurent didn’t like it. Laurent wanted to do everything alone. But it wasn’t going to be like that.

  Guion was escorted forward to stand before the thrones.

  ‘Guion of Fortaine.’ Mathe resumed his role as questioner as the spectators craned their necks, disliking the columns because they obstructed the view. ‘We are gathered to determine the guilt or innocence of Laurent of Vere. He is charged with treason. We have heard how he sold secrets to Akielos, how he supported coups, how he attacked and killed Veretians to further his cause. Do you have testimony that will bring clarity to these claims?’

  ‘I do.’

  Guion turned to the Council. He had been a councillor himself, a respected colleague known to be privy to the Regent’s private dealings. Now he spoke clearly and unequivocally.

  ‘Laurent of Vere is guilty of every charge brought against him,’ said Guion.

  It took a moment for those words to penetrate, and when they did, Damen felt the ground drop out from beneath him. ‘No,’ said Damen, as the hall erupted in comment for a second time.

  Guion raised his voice. ‘I have been his prisoner for months. I have seen first-hand the depravity that he has fallen into, how he beds the Akielon every night, how he lies in the obscene embrace of his brother’s killer, sating his desires at the expense of our country.’

  ‘You swore to tell the truth,’ said Damen. No one was listening to him.

  ‘He tried to coerce me to lie for him. He threatened to kill me. He threatened to kill my wife. He threatened to kill my sons. He slaughtered his own people at Ravenel. I would vote him guilty myself, if I were still a member of the Council.’

  ‘I think we are satisfied,’ said Mathe.

  ‘No,’ said Damen, his involuntary struggle aborted by his handlers as shouts of agreement and of vindication came from the Regent’s supporters in the hall. ‘Tell them what you know about the Regent’s coup in Akielos.’

  Guion spread his hands. ‘The Regent is an innocent man whose only crime is that he trusted a wayward nephew.’

  That was enough for the Council. They had, after all, been deliberating all day. Damen swung his gaze to the Regent, who was watching proceedings with calm confidence. He had known. He had known what Guion would say.

  ‘He planned this,’ said Damen, desperately. ‘They are colluding.’ A blow from behind sent him to his knees, where he was held down. Guion calmly stepped across the chamber to take his place by the Council. The Regent rose and descended the dais, to put his hand on Guion’s shoulder and speak a few words to him, not loud enough for Damen to hear.

  ‘The Council will now pass their sentence.’

  A slave approached bearing a golden sceptre. Herode took it up, holding it like a staff, end to the ground. And then a second slave came forward bearing a black square of cloth, symbol of the oncoming sentence of death.

  The bottom fell out of Damen’s stomach. Laurent had also seen the cloth. He was facing it without flinching, though his face was very pale. On his knees, Damen could do nothing to stop it. He struggled hard, and was held down, panting. There was an awful moment in which all he could do was look up at Laurent, helplessly.

  Laurent was pushed forward to stand across the width of the hall from the Council, chained and alone but for the two soldiers who held him by each arm in a hard grip. No one knows, thought Damen. No one knows what his uncle has done to him. His eyes swung to the Regent, who was gazing at Laurent with sad disappointment. The Council stood alongside him.

  It had a symbolic power, the six of them standing on one side of the hall, and Laurent—in his thin, tattered Akielon clothing held in the grip of his uncle’s soldiers—on the other. Laurent spoke.

  ‘No final advice? No uncle’s kiss of affection?’

  ‘You had so much promise, Laurent,’ said the Regent. ‘I regret what you became more than you do.’

  ‘You mean that I’m on your conscience?’ said Laurent.

  ‘It hurts me,’ said the Regent, ‘that you feel such animosity towards me, even now. That you tried to undermine me with accusations, when I have only ever wanted the best for you.’ He spoke in a saddened voice. ‘You should have known better than to bring Guion to testify against me.’

  Laurent met the Regent’s eyes, standing alone before the Council.

  ‘But uncle,’ said Laurent, ‘Guion isn’t who I brought.’

  ‘He brought me,’ said Guion’s wife Loyse, stepping forward.

  Damen turned—everyone turned. Loyse was a woman of middle years and greying hair that was lank after a day and a night on the road with little rest. He hadn’t spoken to her during the ride. But he heard her now, as she came to stand before the Council.

  ‘I have something to say. It’s about my husband, and this man, the Regent, who has brought my family into ruin, and who ended the life of my youngest son, Aimeric.’

  ‘Loyse, what are you doing?’ said Guion, as all of the hall’s attention riveted on Loyse.

  She paid him no attention, but continued to walk forward until she stood alongside Damen, addressing her words to the Council.

  ‘In the year after Marlas, the Regent visited my family in Fortaine,’ said Loyse. ‘And my husband, who is ambitious, gave him leave to enter the bedroom of our youngest son.’

  ‘Loyse, stop this now.’ But her words continued.

  ‘It was a gentleman’s agreement. The Regent could indulge himself in relaxed privacy at our home, and my husband was rewarded with lands and a position of greater prominence at court. He was made Ambassador to Akielos, and he became the intermediary between the Regent and the Regent’s conspirator, Kastor.’

  Guion was looking from Loyse to the Council, and he gave a laugh, braying and too loud. ‘You can’t be giving credence to any of this.’

  No one answered, the silence uncomfortable. Councillor Chelaut’s gaze shifted for a moment to the young boy sitting beside the Regent, his fingers sticky with powdered sugar from the sweetmeats.

  ‘I know that no one here cares about Aimeric,’ said Loyse. ‘No one cares that he killed himself at Ravenel because he couldn’t live with what he had done.

  ‘So let me tell you instead about what Aimeric died for—a plot between the Regent and Kastor to kill King Theomedes and then to take his country.’

  ‘These are lies,’ Kastor said in Akielon, and then he said it again in thickly accented Veretian. ‘Arrest her.’

  In the uneasy moment that followed, the small Akielon honour guard put their hands on the hilts of their swords, and the Veretian soldiers moved in opposition, halting them. It was plain from Kastor’s face that he had realised for the first time that he was not in control of the hall.

  ‘Arrest me, but not before you’ve seen the proof.’ Loyse was pulling a ring on a chain from her gown; it was a signet ring, ruby or garnet, and on it was the royal crest of Vere. ‘My husband brokered the deal. Kastor assassinated his own father in exchange for the Veretian troops you see here today. The troops he needed to take Ios.’

  Guion swung around to face the Regent, urgently. ‘She’s not a traitor. She’s just confuse
d. She’s been deceived, and coached, she’s been upset since Aimeric died. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’s being manipulated by these people.’

  Damen looked at the Council. Herode and Chelaut wore expressions of repressed distaste, even revulsion. Damen saw suddenly that the obscene youth of the Regent’s lovers had always been repellent to these men, and the idea that the son of a councillor had been used in this way was disturbing to them beyond measure.

  But they were political men, and the Regent was their master. Chelaut said, almost reluctantly, ‘Even if what you say is true, it does not clear Laurent of his crimes. The death of Theomedes is a matter for Akielos.’

  He was right, Damen realised. Laurent hadn’t brought Loyse to clear his own name, but to clear Damen’s. There was no proof that would clear Laurent’s name. The Regent had been too thorough. The palace assassins were dead. The assassins from the road were dead. Even Govart was dead, cursing boy pets and physicians.

  Damen thought of that—of Govart holding something over the Regent. It had kept Govart alive, kept him in wine and women, until the day it hadn’t. He thought of a trail of death that extended all the way to the palace. He remembered Nicaise, appearing in sleeping clothes the night of the assassination attempt. Nicaise had been executed only a few months later. His heart started pounding.

  They were connected in some way. He was suddenly sure of it. Whatever Govart had known, Nicaise had known it too, and the Regent had killed him for it. And that meant—

  Damen was pushing himself up abruptly.

  ‘There’s another man here who can testify,’ Damen said. ‘He hasn’t come forward on his own. I don’t know why. But I know he must have a reason. He’s a good man. I know he’d speak if he were free to do so. Maybe he fears reprisal, against himself or against his family.’

  He addressed his words to the hall. ‘I ask him now. Whatever your reason, you have a duty to your country. You should know that better than anyone. Your brother died protecting the King.’

  Silence. The spectators in the hall looked from one to another, and Damen’s words seemed to hang awkwardly. The expectation of a reply came and went with a lack of all answer.

  Paschal stepped forward, his face lined and rather pale.

  ‘No,’ said Paschal. ‘He died because of this.’

  He took from the folds of his clothes a bundle of papers, tied with string.

  ‘The last words of my brother, the archer Langren, carried by the soldier called Govart, and stolen by the Regent’s pet, Nicaise, who was killed for it. This is the testimony of the dead.’

  He drew the string from the papers and unfolded them, standing before the Council in his robes and his lopsided hat.

  ‘I am Paschal, a palace physician. And I have a story to tell about Marlas.’

  * * *

  ‘My brother and I came to the capital together,’ said Paschal. ‘He as an archer, and me as a physician—at first to the Queen’s retinue. My brother was ambitious, and rose quickly through the ranks, joining the King’s Guard. I suppose that I was ambitious also, and soon won a position as royal physician, serving both Queen and King.

  ‘They were years of peace and good harvests. The kingdom was secure, and Queen Hennike had provided two heirs. Then, six years ago, when the Queen died, we lost our alliance with Kempt, and Akielos took it as an opportunity to invade.’

  He had reached a part of the story that Damen knew, though it was different, hearing it told in Paschal’s voice.

  ‘Diplomacy failed. The talks fell through. Theomedes wanted land, not peace. He sent away the Veretian emissaries without hearing them.

  ‘But we were confident in our forts. No army had taken a Veretian fort in over two hundred years. So the King brought his army south to Marlas, in full complement, to repel Theomedes from its walls.’

  Damen remembered it—the gathering banners, the swell of numbers, two armies of immense power, and his father confident, even in the face of those impenetrable forts. They are arrogant enough to come out.

  ‘I remember my brother before the fight. He was nervous. Excited. Wild with a kind of confidence I had never seen in him before. He talked about a different future for our family. A better future. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned why.’

  Paschal stopped, and looked across the hall right at the Regent, who stood beside the Council in his red velvet robes.

  ‘The Council will recall how the Regent advised the King to leave the safety of the fort, that our numbers were superior, that there was no danger in riding out onto the flat, and that a surprise attack on the Akielons would end the war swiftly, saving many Veretian lives.’

  Damen looked at the Council. They did remember it, he saw; as he did. How cowardly he had thought the attack. How craven. For the first time, he wondered what had happened behind Veretian lines to cause it. He thought of a King convinced it was the best way of protecting his people.

  ‘Instead, Veretians fell. I was nearby when the word came that Auguste was dead. In grief, the King pulled off his helm. He was careless. I think in his mind, he had no reason left to be careful.’

  ‘A stray arrow took him in the throat. And with the King dead and the heir dead, the Regent ascended to the throne of Vere.’

  Paschal’s eyes, like Damen’s, were on the Council. They would all recall the days after the battle. As Council members, they had sanctioned the creation of the Regency.

  ‘In the aftermath, I searched for my brother, but he was missing,’ Paschal said. ‘I learned later that he had fled the battlefield. He died several days later, in a village in Sanpelier, stabbed in an altercation. The villagers told me that there was someone with him when he died. It was a young soldier named Govart.’

  At the mention of Govart’s name, Guion jerked up his head. Alongside him, the Council stirred.

  ‘Was Govart my brother’s killer? I didn’t know. I watched, not understanding, as Govart rose to power in the capital. Why was he suddenly the Regent’s right-hand man? Why was he given money, power, slaves? Hadn’t he been thrown out of the King’s Guard? It occurred to me that Govart had received the bright future my brother had talked about, while my brother lay dead. But I didn’t understand why.’

  The papers Paschal had in his hand were old, yellowed, even the string that had held them together was old. He straightened them, unconsciously.

  ‘Until I read this.’

  He began to untie the string, drawing it away and opening the papers. They were covered in writing.

  ‘Nicaise gave it to me for safekeeping. He had stolen it from Govart, and he was scared. I opened it, never expecting what I would find. In fact, the letter was to me, though Nicaise didn’t know it. It was a confession, in my brother’s handwriting.’

  Paschal stood with the unfolded papers in his hands.

  ‘This is what Govart used to blackmail his way to power all these years. This is why my brother fled, and why he lost his life. My brother was the archer who killed the King, for which the Regent promised him gold and delivered him death.

  ‘This is the proof that King Aleron was killed by his own brother.’

  There was no outcry this time, no clash of sound, just a silence, in which the creased papers were delivered from Paschal to the Council. As Herode took them, Damen recalled that Herode had been a friend to King Aleron. Herode’s hand was shaking.

  And then Damen looked at Laurent.

  Laurent’s face was completely devoid of colour. It was not an idea that Laurent had entertained before, that much was clear. Laurent had his own blind spot when it came to his uncle. I didn’t think he’d really try to kill me. After everything . . . even after everything.

  It had never really made sense that the Veretian army had attacked in the open when their strategic dominance had always been their forts. The day that Vere had fought Akielos at Marlas there had b
een three men between the Regent and the throne, but what might not be accomplished in the chaotic mess of battle?

  Damen thought of Govart in the palace, doing what he pleased to one of the Regent’s Akielon slaves. Holding a threat over the Regent would be a dangerous cocktail, heady and terrifying. Six years of looking over your shoulder, of waiting for the sword to fall, not knowing when or how it would happen, but knowing that it would. He wondered if there had been a time in Govart’s life before the power and the fear had wrecked him.

  Damen thought of his father struggling to breathe in his sickbed, of Orlant, of Aimeric.

  He thought of Nicaise in oversized bedclothes in the hallway, caught up in something too big for him. And dead now, of course.

  ‘You can’t believe this? The lies of a physician and a boy whore?’

  Guion’s voice was jarring in the silence. Damen looked to the Council, where the oldest of the Councillors, Herode, was looking up from the papers.

  ‘Nicaise had more nobility in him than you,’ said Herode. ‘He was more loyal to the Crown than the Council, in the end.’

  Herode stepped forward. He used the gold sceptre like a staff as he walked. With the eyes of every person assembled on him, Herode crossed the hall, stopping only when he stood in front of Laurent, who was still held in the tight grip of one of his uncle’s soldiers.

  ‘We were here to hold the throne in trust, and we failed you,’ said Herode, ‘my King.’

  And he knelt, with the slow, painstaking care of an elderly man, on the marble stones of the Akielon hall.

  Seeing Laurent’s shocked face, Damen realised that something had happened that Laurent had not imagined.No one had ever told him before that he deserved to be King. Like a boy who has been given praise for the first time, Laurent didn’t know what to do. He looked suddenly very young, his lips parted wordlessly, his cheeks flushed.

  Jeurre rose. As the onlookers watched, Jeurre left his place with the Council and crossed the hall to drop to one knee alongside Herode. A moment later, Chelaut followed. Then Audin. And finally, like a rat deserting a ship, Mathe moved away from the Regent and hurriedly fell to one knee in front of Laurent.