Redemption

her.

  'She's here, in the Palace as it happens.' Courtenay waved his hand.

  'May I see her?' the Duchess asked. 'I would like to apologise for—'

  'I shouldn't think that would be a good idea,' Courtenay said. 'She is a little...upset at the moment. Quite understandable, of course. She told me that she wanted to be alone to give herself time to adjust to her new status in life.'

  'What will become of her?'

  'An interesting question.' Courtenay looked thoughtful, pausing, choosing his next words. 'Truthfully, that depends on her. I am currently in discussions with her to determine whether we might work together in some way.'

  'Honestly?'

  Courtenay waved his hand in assent, but said nothing.

  'And if you cannot?'

  Courtenay laughed. 'I can imagine what must be in your thoughts, Kaitlynn, but I can assure you that whatever happens, Ysabel will have the final say in what the future holds for her.'

  Duchess Rennick nodded. 'She deserves better. She served her country well.'

  Courtenay passed a brief look of concern across his face. 'Oh, I know she did,' he fawned. 'Anyway,' he said, 'I did not bring you here to discuss Ysabel. I wanted to talk with you about something much more important.'

  'I just want my children, all the children, released.'

  'Of course,' Courtenay replied. 'I understand that. And that is precisely why I wanted to talk to you.'

  'About releasing the children?' Her face brightened.

  'In a manner of speaking.'

  'I'm listening.'

  'I believe in openness so I will lay all my cards on the table for you to peruse,' Courtenay held up his hands. 'I have a little problem. One that I would like to resolve through negotiation if possible, for as you know, I so abhor violence,' he said, shaking his head.

  'Naturally,' the Duchess said, with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  'Now, and I am sure you will understand me when I say, if I were to simply release the dear little things, what is to stop the Electors from simply re-running the very same process that we witnessed yesterday? That would not suit my purposes at this time.'

  The Duchess watched Courtenay intently.

  'I therefore have a proposal,' he said, 'which may very well resolve this whole situation to both our satisfaction.'

  'Which is?'

  'That you reconvene the council and use your obviously superior powers of negotiation to dissolve their authority to elect the monarch.'

  'What?' Kaitlynn stood. 'I may have misunderstood, but are you meaning that we should turn the Commonwealth into a dictatorship?'

  'Absolutely not,' Courtenay answered, shaking his head. 'What do you take me for?' A smile crossed his face and he emitted a brief laugh, trying to lighten the tone. 'I'm talking about handing over absolute power to a benevolent and responsible king. To bring the Commonwealth clarity of thought and vision, a single clear voice. Surely, you must see the benefits of such a move.'

  'They are just words, Your Majesty. You may dress it up in all the fancy terms and descriptions you like but a dictatorship is still a dictatorship.'

  Courtenay smiled. 'So you will do it?'

  'Never!'

  The smile remained on Courtenay's face. 'Then that puts you in a somewhat difficult position, Duchess. And there was me thinking that you wanted your children released.'

  'But you must see, we cannot throw away many hundreds of years of proven tradition. The system has always worked, until now.'

  'Which is my point exactly.'

  Courtenay rose from his chair and stepped out from behind his desk, sauntering across the room to the window. He looked out over the terrace where the sun was beginning to lower in the sky.

  'The current system has failed this land, Duchess. The fact that I am standing here, today, means that I have shown that it is fundamentally flawed. We wouldn't want anyone being able to manipulate results again, would we?' Courtenay looked around and smirked.

  'I cannot do what you ask.' The Duchess closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. 'I would be letting down all the peoples of this country.'

  Courtenay turned back to the window. 'You know,' he said, 'I have often thought that it must be wonderful to have such admirable principles, Kaitlynn. To see the world in terms of black or white, without the distraction of the greyness that dwells between the two poles. It must be wonderful to be able to stand up for what you believe in at the expense of all else. I truly admire you for that. But nonetheless, you still have a decision to make.'

  'How so?'

  'Well, on one hand, you can choose to abandon your clearly deep and heartfelt principles and convince the Council to vote as I wish. Or, on the other, you can choose to sentence your children to death.' Courtenay turned back to look at the Duchess. 'Which would you like it to be?'

  40

  'They did what?' Winterburne could hardly believe the words he had just heard.

  Conn repeated himself, 'They voted the Hood as King.' He shook his head and chuckled. 'I can still hardly believe it myself, although, they didn't really have much of a choice did they? He can be very persuasive when he wants to be.'

  Don't I know it, Winterburne thought to himself. 'So what happens now?' he asked.

  'He reckons that I'm some sort of fixer, whatever that is supposed to be, and he says he has some jobs for me to do. All I know at the moment is that he intends for the dust to settle a little before he gets rid of Ysabel.'

  'Gets rid of?' Winterburne didn't like the sound of that. 'What exactly does that mean?'

  'He's going to wait for a bit, until people forget about her, and then she's going to disappear.'

  'Where?'

  'Not anywhere.' Conn drew his finger across his throat.

  'Oh!'

  Winterburne tried to hide any look of the horror that he felt inside from passing across his face. There was more at stake here than he had ever previously realised and even from where he was standing he could feel that the balance of power had shifted throughout the world. Rampton had better have some luck finding Marek, he thought. But even if the man did find him, what then? How could what was only probably a handful of men prevent all this from breaking down into a bitter war that would consume the whole of both lands and account for the lives of so many people.

  'What's the Hood doing now?' he asked.

  'God alone knows,' Conn replied, 'but he's such a scheming, manipulative son-of-a-bitch that it's bound to be devious.' He laughed. 'Still, I'm sure that we will find out in due course.'

  Winterburne smiled, trying to give Conn the impression that he was also amused, but his mind was elsewhere, racing ahead as the stunning news of the morning piled on top of his already troubled thoughts.

  'What's gotten into you anyway?' Conn asked. 'Why do you care so much?'

  Winterburne brought his attentions back to the face of the man in front of him. Conn now held more power than anyone had any right to hold, he realised, perhaps even only second to the new king. Courtenay could give him the powers to do anything, go anywhere, without repudiation, and that was some prospect.

  'Oh,' he said, 'it's just being cooped up in here, for day on end.' He smirked, trying to make sure that Conn was not given any reason to be suspicious. 'I'm only trying to keep up with what's going on beyond the walls of this compound. And anyway, listening to Verkade singing three times a day is enough to send anyone mad.'

  Conn chuckled, nodding his head as if he understood.

  41

  The Twenty-Fourth Day of Lo-autumn,

  Imperial Year 2332

  How could people actually live in this city? Rampton thought to himself, as he looked along the pristine street. The flagstones all but sparkled in the morning sun, if that was even possible. It was just all too...clean! As he watched, clean men and women walked hand in hand with their clean children, and clean horses clip-clopped along the streets evidently not depositing their manure onto the clean roads. Not, apparently anyway, during the hou
rs of daylight. He shook his head. How did they do that? It was a near physical impossibility.

  The clothes he wore were typical of the sort seen in Highport; worn, used, functional. And dirty. This was not Highport, he reminded himself and as he looked around him and he couldn't help the feeling that he must have stood out like a heifer in a field of sheep. In Highport, the people considered that clean meant rich, and that made the clean person a target, either for the pickpockets and thieves that cruised the back alleys or the market traders and beggars that worked on an altogether different moral level—and some said that they were the worst, especially since they also had the law on their side. Here though, in the City of Towers, there seemed to be no targets, no one stood out like a victim; and that was worrying, because that would mean that it was most likely himself that would attract the most attention.

  A thought crossed his mind—perhaps they lock their dirty people away. But, somehow, on what he had seen so far, he didn't think that would be the case. Perhaps all the grime was all swept under the proverbial carpet as if the city was run by some kind of mad housekeeper.

  Another thing struck him. Whereas his home city was old, and stuck in its ways like a tried and trusted proven routine to polish his gear, White Haven seemed new, energetic...and young. But, he knew it was all superficial. A lie festered deep beneath the calm exterior. It was a swan trying to swim on the fast flowing river of change; serene, pure and beautiful above the surface but below the waterline its legs thrashed madly.

  He crossed the bridge over the canal that designated the second ring of the