AMBRIDGE
“Shall we sue for peace with Wulfstan?” the Archbishop asked that morning.
“I honestly do not believe he would oblige,” said the Queen.
“So what are we to do?” Lord Gilroy demanded, “simply let him languish in prison under Osric? Wait to see what that false king in the north does?”
“Edmund is gone,” Edith replied. “It is sad, but there it is. The same happened with those before him, and now we must look to a new reign.”
“One cannot help but think,” the Lord of Arendall noted, “that this is a matter all too convenient for you, one which the Queen is more than philosophically undisturbed by.”
“What are you implying?” Edith murmured from the small wood throne where her husband usually sat.
“We all know your family has fallen out of favor in the last year,” Lord Gilroy pointed out.
“Go on,” Edith encouraged.
“It seems as if what has happened might play into the hands of the Baldwins. It seems as if the new and inspired leadership in Inglad might just fortuitously spring from the House of Baldwin.”
Here there were applause about the table and mocking laughs, but Edith had dealt with men all her life and she said, “Why insinuate when you can simply say what you mean.”
“We all know you intend to place Allyn on the throne.”
“And would many object?” Edith asked. “Is Allyn Baldwin not a leader of men? Even after my father is gone, do not my cousins still have ties to important familes here and in the north?”
“Then Allyn on the throne?” Sedifore Gilchrist exclaimed. “The final coup of the Baldwin family!”
And while they began to complain one to another, a few raising their voices to her, Edith sat low in her seat watching them, watching men like hens and marveling at how they always talked of women clucking. She waited until they saw her waiting, and then they heard her laughing.
“Your Grace?” Lord Sedifore said.
Edith was laughing still, and she was shaking her head.
“My brother will not be King,” she said at last. “Not today, at least. My husband still lives.”
“And as long as he lives you are still Queen?”
“And if he does not live,” Edith continued, “I will be Regent.”
“That, Lady,” Lord Gilroy said, “is not the law.”
“It is very much the law if I am with child. If the next King of Inglad is in my belly.”
While she savored the collective gasps of the room, and old Lord Barrell mumrued, “But…. That is not possible…” Edith, laughing, asked, “Why?
“Because I am too old? But you have it confused. Edmund was old, thirty when he came to the throne, but I still a girl. And I am still in my youth.”
At the brave few who gave a scornful laugh, Edith repeated, “I am still in my youth, and there is gallows for anyone who has says otherwise. I am with child, and my child will be King in Inglad.”
When the door to the chamber flew open and Allyn Baldwin, his black eye healing, entered with Lord Roderick, Lord Gilroy called, “This is perfect theatre! Now we all must call her Queen.”
But Lord Sidefore said, “Now she is the Queen. She is. That is law.”
Allyn looked from them to Edith, his eyes wide and then Edith said, “Brother, what is it?”
“Osric Wulfstan has the King.”
“Of course he does,” Edith said. “We already know that.”
“Sister,” Allyn said. “Your Grace, a word?”
“What is this?” Lord Malcolm began.
“Be silent,” Edith snapped. “I am Queen.”
And so the Queen lifted her skirts and left the room, Roderick closing the door behind her as she demanded, “What are you going on about?”
“Somehow,” Allyn said, “Osric Wulfstan learned we were hiding Edmund, learned we had pinned it on him.”
Edith’s eyes widened right before they narrowed.
“Osric has Edmund.”
Allyn nodded.
“Well,” she murmured, “let him keep him.”
And then she raised her skirts, and returned to the council room.
SENACH
They rode out of the city and into the southern valley of Queshac, Prince Adrian ahead of them all, Princess Linalla beside him and Teryn riding with Cody.
.“Do you know what Queshac means?”
Because no one else answered, it was Teryn who said, “No, Lord.”
“Neither do I,” Adrian said. “But I know it isn’t Royan. Just as those are not.”
He had gestured to the great stone heads, elongated, thick lipped, that lined the hills.
“And no one knows what the Heads are for. They belong to the Tribes or even the Tribes that were here before the Tribes.”
They rode around the great harbor hugging town of golden limestone and Adrian continued, “People, when they think of the Tribes, think of a few people in tents or huts living in the south of Westrial. That isn’t true. That city, Queshac, the cities around us are Tribal cities. Some tribes chose to only live in villages and some still maintain the tents, but that is only some. The Tribes were here before the Royan and welcomed the Royan and some of them are almost indistinguishable from them. They revere the women of the Rootless Isle and live all over Senach and all through Westrial, especially the south. I can see the Tribes in the tilt of your eyes, Teryn Wesley.”
Teryn nodded, but thought that a boy who had seemed pleasant enough was now beginning to sound strange.
“Are you coming to a point?” Princess Linalla asked, and Teryn was glad for this.
“Yes,” Adrian said. “I ramble sometimes. Teryn, Cody, what do you know of Ifandell Modet?”
“She was a witch,” Cody said.
“Well, yes,” Adrian agreed, reluctantly. “That’s one way of putting it. She was a great teacher, schooled on the Rootless Isle. She brought together the teachings of the Isle and the Teachings of the Ard. Many people here, especially of the Tribes, are her disciples. Queen Isobel is her great-great granddaughter, the late Queen Ermengild was her granddaughter. That is peripheral. My family are disciples of Modet.”
“Didn’t Modet call this land Locress?”
“Yes,” Adrian said. “She revived the ancient prophecies. Certainly not every disciple of Modet follows that, but part of what she believed was that the old prophecies would be fulfilled, that this was still the land of the Royan and of the Tribes. She said that one day the descendant of Avred Oss would return, and he would sit at Ondres, and then there would be a king over all Locress and in the north there would be a king as well.”
“There has been a King in the North,” Linalla said. “That is the problem. We keep getting a new king in the north who ever wants to drag us into battle.”
“Yes,” Adrian said, “but it is believed that in time we ourselves will be united, and then no kings in the north or anywhere shall trouble us. We will cease to be little kingdoms, little lands descended from different Ayl barbarians, and again be Locress.”
“Prince,” Wesley said, “I respect your beliefs, if these are your beliefs, but I would rather look at what I can actually do now than wait for a prophecy to make things better.”
“I understand,” Adrian said.
“But you still believe.”
“I do,” the young man said, “and when the son of Avred Oss comes, then I will offer him my sword.”
“You act as if he is already in this world and not a prophecy.”
“It is said that he will be born of the Rootless Isle and of an Ayl House, blood old and blood new to unite the Young Kingdoms with the Old, that he will be scorned by his brethren and of into the West, only to descend below the earth, that he shall possess a singing sword and I believe he is in this world, just as my whole family does.”
Linalla looked at her cousin coldly, and then said to Teryn Wesley:
“They all believe it is my uncle Anson.”
HALE
“Let me get a good look at you again,” Edmund demanded, but when Cynric said, “Ignore him,” Hilary said, “I fully intend to.”
Their horses were crunching through the wood on their way back to Herreboro, for Osric had decided that he wished to have Edmund where he could see him.
“You see,” Edmund continued, “I really don’t remember fucking you. Poor girl, you don’t understand how many there were before you and, in truth, after you. Maybe you were just upset that you didn’t impress me more—”
Suddenly Cynric leapt from his horse pulling Edmund half off his horse.
“We’ve had enough of you, you raping bastard.”
“Are you really going to let him do this?” Edmund drawled toward Osric, “let some highland hayseed with Dayne on his breath molest your beloved uncle?”
“Talk all you wish,” King Osric turned to him. “Soon you shall be talking to walls again in the deepest dungeons of Herreboro.”
“That’s why I had to get rid of your grandfather,” Edmund said, “and the girl’s. Neither of my brothers had the killer Wulfstan instinct. After all, Wulfstan is Wolf. Isn’t that what they call you? And yet what I see before me is a boy who doesn’t really have the heart to—”
Dispassionately, Wolf has taken out his sword and, reversing it, rammed his pummel twice, and then again into Edmund’s head.
“That’ll shut him up for a while,” Osric noted as he look at the unconscious man blood oozing from the middle of his head.
“What’ll we do with this bastard?” Cynric wondered.
When Edmund woke, head throbbing, the first thing he heard was, “What do we do with this bastard?”
Pain made everything before his eyes swim, and as he blinked he saw, sitting before him, smiling, Osric Wulfstan.
“It is the question I have to ask myself,” he said. “What do I do with this bastard? Killer, murderer, rapist that you are. No. no… Don’t talk. Don’t move,” Osric said from the other side of the dungeon. “It will only chafe your wrists.
“Rufus is gone to Daumany, not to return. Yes, your wife saw to that with the help of another. Your wife and her brother, they do not want you. You have no children, none legitimate at any rate, who would want you. You are not, therefore, even worth trading. All of Hale and North Hale is mine. The nobles of Inglad, who do not love the Baldwins, will probably be all too glad to turn over their kingdom to Myrne as well.”
Edmund summoned all of his strength and leaned forward to spit, but the spit landed before the King of Hale’s booted toes.
“Is that the sum of your eloquence?” Osric asked. “Not even a blessing, uncle, as we take your place.”
“Damn you.”
“No,” Osric said. He stood, and he was tall, well built, handsome. How had Edmund not known him the first time he snuck into Ambridge in that party from Saint Clew? How he he not known this lord with the sword at his side, undeniably a king.
“Say what you will,” Osric told him. “Say what you can, for you will never leave this dungeon alive, that is sure.”
Edmund tried to laugh, but instead he coughed. He sat up and said, “Do you know what your father did? When I killed him? He cried. He cried as he died. He cried for me to let him live. Uncle!” Edmund’s voice rang from the walls. “Let me live! I don’t want to die!”
“He did not,” Osric said, with no emotion. “You are a liar. I do not doubt he may have cried to save my mother and me, which makes him a father. But you are a liar as you have ever been. Still,” Osric took Edmund’s hand with a surprising firmness, and extended his middle finger, “I will make sure that before you die, you will cry.”
And so saying he broke Edmund’s middle finger and the old king screamed.
“See,” Osric said, “you are crying already.”
“I cannot go back there,” Osric said. “I broke the man’s finger. Hating him, standing in his presence, I shall be like him. If I must be King then fine, but I do not want to stop being Wolf,” he said to Myrne. “I want to be the person you met on your way to Kingsboro. The boy who told jokes and laughed.”
“You were never that boy,” Myrne said. “Or, at least, you were never not this. We were always cousins who fathers and grandfathers had been killed by that man.”
“You’ve never met him. Not since he’s been here.”
“And I never shall. For the same reasons as you. But someone will have the keeping of him.”
“Who?”
“Does it matter?”
“It didn’t,” Wolf said to her, “until you asked in that way.”
“Cynric.”
“He’ll kill him.”
“Someone will kill him, Wolf. He cannot leave here alive, and he certainly cannot stay.”
“I remember you,” Edmund said. “You were the headstrong hayseed who almost throttled me today.”
“Here is your food,” Cynric said, placing the bowl down.
“Do you love the girl, Sir Cynric? After all, I’ve heard that you have a wife, some half Dayne slut. The Daynes who displaced my family and sat on my throne for years, whom you make so much of in the north. Can she even speak our tongue? No matter,”
Edmund pushed the gruel away with his toe.
“I won’t eat this slop. Ah, but to return to you, you love that servant girl.”
“Service is no crime.”
“She is low born.”
“That is an Inglad thing. Perhaps once your family was of Hale, but you are a Dauman.”
“As was my mother, the late Queen who wed a barbarian and had his children and saw them all killed—by me—for her troubles. But back to you. See, I told a lie. A small lie. Well, not so small, not to her, not to the wench you love.
“I do remember. My memory never fails. I had just come home from my cousin Rufus’s coronation, and I called for my woman, but she was not there and so they sent me your slut.”
“We’re done here.”
“She was so unskilled. So… poor, limp of mouth as I made her suck my cock. I mean, I really shoved it down her throat, the way you’d like to. But as I shoved it in her mouth, trying to make her suck it right, her lack of effort, her gagging, her tears!—enraged me so that finally I just turned around and fucked her.”
Cynric seized Edmund’s throat, and the older man was coughed through his laughter.
“Oh, she screamed,” Edmund screamed. “She screamed while I fucked her. She screamed while she bled, but a bleeding cunt is just so….slick. In the end it only made me harder. Still, the poor bitch had to limp away and that was—”
And suddenly Cynric was thrown on the floor with a knee in his chest and Edmund knelt over, pressing hig dagger to Cynric’s throat.
“It was a real shame,” Edmund continued, grinding his knee into Cynric’s chest, “just like this moment, when a young man is about to lose his life,” Edmund cut Cynric’s face quickly, “all for the love of a slut.
“By the time they find you I’ll be long gone. You forget, whatever I am I survived my mother and her stepfather, all of Dayne and the enemies of my house besides. Men fear me because I was and am the conqueror, and you stand here a nothing and a boy, treating me like a naughty old man. Well, now you learn,” Edmund said, “and it is the last thing you will lear—”
But his speech ended when the rock hit him in the head and he lost the dagger. Cynric skipped away with the dagger, but Hilary, who had simply walked into the room on her bare feet,
“Why do villains always make speeches?” she wondered.
Edmund, head throbbing, finger broken, blinked up at her, but before he could say a word, Hilary, no villain, simply took the dagger from Cynric, and drove it into Edmund’s throat. As blood geysered up, spraying the dungeon, she pulled the knife expertly across his neck, like all the pigs she had killed in the slaughter yards at Ambridge, and moved away while her dress was showered in blood.
Cynric lay on the ground looking up at her and she said, as the last spurts of blood shot up from the dead Edmund’s throat, “You should have known I would never let you come here alone with him.”
She looked on the body and said, “Since the day your men came for Hilda, I swore I would kill you. Now I avenged myself, The Abbess who helped me and saved the love of my life. There is nothing else to do.”
In the hall that night, King Osric sat sober faced his hands planted on the arms of his wooden thrown.
“No one is angry at her,” Osric said. “Someone was going to kill him, and it was fair that it be Hillary.”
Eryk Waverly nodded. Myrne did not speak.
Now King Osric said, “But any plans of peace with Inglad are gone now. They were gone the moment Allyn Baldwin abducted his brother in law so that he could keep his family in power. We were only stalling.”
“Send the head to the archbishop,” Queen Myrne spoke now. “Send it to the cathedral. Tell them all it is from us. There is no time to lose.”
“We must send our armies into Inglad in the morning,” King Osric said. “We cannot stop until we have seized Ambridge.”
