If she was one of the best physicks in Kingseat it had nothing to do with her bedside manner. “Yes, Ursa,” he murmured, and did as he was told.
First she gently washed Zandakar’s stubbly skull, softening the scabs and sores and drowning the desperate remaining cooties. Then she examined the head wound, tut-tutting. Trimmed its edges to bleeding and stitched it up. Beneath her skilled, sensitive fingers Zandakar moaned a little, but did not wake.
“Right,” she said at last, snipping the final thread. “Now for the rest of him.”
Between them, with exquisite care, they washed every inch of Zandakar, scouring him clean of scabs and pus and hidden maggots, dirt and excrement and old dried blood. Pared the nails on his hands and feet, soothed his many hurts with ointment and salve and bandaged the worst of them. Dexterity thought he could have played a tune on the man’s ribs, so starkly did they spring beneath the skin. Every scar and weeping wound told a story of depravity and suffering, so that by the end his eyes were burning and he could have hung his head and cried for what the man had endured.
Ursa looked at him. “For all we know he could be a murderer, Jones,” she said. “For all we know he could have deserved this and worse.”
He shook his head. “No. I won’t believe that.”
“Why?” She snorted. “Because Hettie told you to save him?”
He met her sceptical gaze squarely. “Think what you like, Ursa. She came to me. She told me to find the ship with the red dragon figurehead, speak to the man with the triple-plaited beard and buy the slave with the blue hair. All three were there as she said they’d be. I can’t explain it. I don’t need to. Hettie said it, and it was so.”
“But Jones …” said Ursa, and he could see she was trying very hard to be reasonable.
“I know!” he said raggedly. “Do you think I don’t know, in my empty bed and my empty house? In all the places where Hettie used to be? But whatever it was, dream or vision or ghost from the grave, here am I, and here are you … and here is Zandakar. And how would you like to explain that, eh?”
Ursa sighed. “I wouldn’t. I don’t even begin to have an opinion on what’s happening here, Jones.”
He was cross enough to be waspish. “Glory be! I’ll just run and put a note on the calendar, shall I? Sixth day of spring, Ursa didn’t have an opinion!”
She scowled. “Oh, hush up. Keep your mind on the essentials, Jones. Where are you going to put this Zandakar? He certainly can’t stay in the kitchen.”
“He can sleep in the spare room.” The room he and Hettie had planned for a nursery. “I’ll hear him in there if he should stir.”
Ursa nodded. “It’ll do, to begin with.”
Zandakar didn’t wake as they settled him into the narrow spare bed. Dexterity lit a lamp and drew the curtains as Ursa straightened her patient’s limbs and drew the light blankets over his long, still body. He looked almost respectable, with his clean, sweet-smelling skin and his close-cropped blue hair and the worst of his wounds hidden beneath salve and bandage.
“Well, Jones,” she said, folding her arms across her middle. “For better or worse, legal or not, it seems you’ve got yourself a slave. It even seems he’s likely to live. And if he does, what are you going to do with him?”
Dexterity gave the curtains a last tug and turned to look at the sleeping Zandakar. “Ursa,” he replied, with a sigh. “If you tell me then the both of us will know.”
CHAPTER SIX
Basking in the sunshine, Prolate Marlan stood at the royal reception chamber’s leadlight windows and watched, with pleasure, the thriving, bustling industry of Kingseat Harbour. Eberg’s castle stood on a hilltop overlooking the kingdom’s sole remaining port. Every window and casement on this side of the massive stone building afforded a magnificent view of the calm blue waters, the crush of visiting ships with their garishly painted sails and their heathenish carved figureheads, the official harbour skiffs darting like pondskaters about the king’s business: checking for overladen vessels, embargoed captains, crews or cargoes, sniffing out any sign of trick or trouble. Even though each visiting ship and boat was inspected before entering the harbour, the royal skiffs were ever-vigilant. Of late even more so, since the deaths of the princes Ranald and Simon, may God rest their careless souls.
Not that he believed in God, of course. But it was the proper sentiment … and he was nothing if not a proper man.
For every vessel the tugs guided from their moorings, helping them reach the open ocean beyond the walled harbour’s heavily guarded mouth, three more waited to take its place. And each one bound to pay tariffs, taxes and imposts, each one full of sailors and travellers who spent their money freely in the town.
Once, not so long ago, foreign sailors and visitors had been looked at askance. Eberg had changed that, viewing each sailor and visitor as a potential source of information, of news that stirred in the wider world. During his reign such information-gathering had been actively encouraged and widened and had yielded many useful results.
Marlan smiled. Eberg’s legacy is not to be sneezed at. Ethrea is richer now than ever before, its value never greater. Every trading nation supports an ambassador here, every potentate and minor lordling keeps his treasure in our vaults. I wonder if they realise that this small island kingdom without an army or navy is the uncrowned ruler of the civilised world?
Most of them didn’t, he was sure. The lesser nations, whose influence was minor. To them Ethrea was merely a toothless convenience. Indispensable, certainly, for anyone desiring to sail north to south or east to west, in the same way a belt was required to keep one’s breeches from falling. But beyond that?
They are so consumed with their intrigues and wranglings, their petty wars and insignificant alliances, they have failed to notice what we have known for years: that without Ethrea their trading empires would wither and die.
A pity the same could not be said of the three major trading nations: Harbisland, Arbenia and Tzhung-tzhung-chai. For those three principalities he had a healthy respect. If his plans were to ripen as he desired he must tread most carefully around their ambassadors.
Their leaders are not blind. They know full well that without us their personal fortunes would be hostage to fate. The conversations they prefer to keep secret, from each other and their own people, would not be secret any more. We have become as the air to them: essential for continued life.
And at the first sign of a threat to their security he had no doubt they would act to protect themselves.
So I must be careful to ensure they perceive no threat.
Marlan sighed, smoothing a wrinkle in the sleeve of his magnificent black and gold vestments. Soon now he would meet with an anxious delegation of ambassadors from a handful of the minor nations, all of them eager to learn the progress of Eberg’s recovery. Their masters knew that much, at least, to be concerned over the question of his successor.
He had kept the truth of Eberg’s failing health secret for as long as he could, but he’d always known it must come out eventually. Even a king was but a man and like every man every king must die. The ambassadors knew that. And provided there was a smooth transition from Eberg to the new king, the fact of his dying would cause no trouble.
Provided there is a smooth transition …
And there was the rub. For if Eberg had failed in any way, it was in raising a daughter who refused to accept her womanly place.
With an effort Marlan relaxed his suddenly tensed shoulders. Rhian would not be a problem. She had not attained her legal majority and therefore, in the law’s eyes, remained a child. The statutes governing orphaned minors of the nobility were unequivocal and sacrosanct. Her brothers were dead and she had no other living relatives. The moment her father drew his last breath she would be a ward of the Church.
But still that permits her too much leeway. Eberg must make the girl my personal ward, bound in obedience only to me. She will then choose the husband of my choosing. A husband who will rule Ethr
ea as I see fit, and who will control the girl’s waywardness as it should have been from the first. Unlike her soft father I have no intention of indulging Rhian’s wilfulness and unpleasing independence. Eberg was a fool to encourage her. A fool to let her think she could be anything more than a woman. When Eberg is dead I shall draw her attention to the error of her ways.
A knock on the door turned him away from the window and thriving harbour to the courtier standing in the open doorway. “The ambassadors are here?”
The courtier bowed. “They are here, Your Eminence.”
So the time for careful game-playing had come. Whatever these minor ambassadors might suspect, however inevitable was Eberg’s demise, it did not suit him to reveal too much truth just now. Misdirection. Obfuscation. An ungentle reminder that they were supplicants, not lords. These foreign delegates so easily got above themselves if their pretensions were not strictly repressed.
The asking of questions does not guarantee answers.
He crossed to the elaborately carved and gilded mahogany chair—almost a throne, in fact—on its dais against the chamber’s short wall. Once seated, with the skirts of his vestments arranged to their best advantage, he nodded to the courtier.
“Admit the ambassadors and their escort.”
They came in a gaggle, five of them, herded by three Church scribes, Council Secretary Lord Dester and his ink-stained assistant.
“Gentlemen,” he said, favouring the ambassadors with a frosty smile. “I trust God sees you in good health and good spirits?”
They muttered something appropriate, he hardly paid attention. Their religious beliefs did not concern him. Their gold was gold, what and how they worshipped was none of his affair.
“Your Eminence,” said the ambassador from Slynt. As usual he was naked to the waist, his short, thick legs encased in deer hide. When it snowed he pulled on a deer hide poncho. An uncouth fellow, with no sense of style. “I give you greetings from my sovereign. He commands me to ask you when he might look to sending his funeral delegation.”
My, my, that was subtle. How typically Slynt. “Return the king’s greetings to your sovereign, Ambassador,” he replied, graciousness personified. “Inform him we have no plans for a funeral.” Which of course was a lie, but then that was diplomacy, wasn’t it? Lies that smiled and hid their teeth.
“Eminence,” said the Icthian ambassador, who at least knew enough to wear velvet and many jewels. “Do you tell us King Eberg is not dying?”
He frowned. “We are all of us dying. But to presume we know the precise moment of our death is to usurp God’s manifest omniscience. I, for one, am reluctant to do that.”
The Keldravian ambassador tugged one earlobe, pendulous with the weight of its eight wife-rings. They clashed and jangled, much like his household, surely, with so many women in it. “God-matters not the purpose. We come for news of your king.”
Marlan lifted his eyebrows. “Then you have spent your time without a purpose, Excellency. I have no news of Eberg to give you.”
The ambassadors from Haisun and Dev’karesh exchanged glances. “So we have been misinformed?” Haisun’s man enquired, delicately. He had a hard face to read, flat and wide with no betraying frown lines or crow’s-feet, or even a suggestion that he knew how to smile. Like his lean body, his emotions were sleekly clothed in silk. “King Eberg is not mortally ill?”
“Your Eminence, you must surely know that is the whispered word on your streets,” added the ambassador from Dev’karesh, the words wafting on a cloud of cloves. “King Eberg is dying without an heir to follow him.”
Marlan raised his eyebrows. “You place your faith in unsubstantiated lies and rumours, Ambassador? Perhaps that is how your master conducts his affairs of state, but I can assure you that is not the case in Ethrea.”
Dev’karesh was a young principality, only recently taking to the high seas in trade. The ambassador’s pale skin darkened with blood and his pale fingers tightened by his sides. “Naturally my master does not give credence to gossip. But—”
“Excellencies,” said Marlan briskly, “we are all busy men. Therefore allow me to put your minds at ease so we might be about our important business. His Majesty King Eberg is indeed unwell. This is common knowledge, we do not hide it. He has a fever but is physicked daily. As to the question of his succession, you must agree that is something of a delicate matter, an Ethrean matter, best left to His Majesty and those of his advisors made privy to his thoughts. Surely you are not suggesting your masters desire you to meddle in our private affairs?”
It was a calculated attack, neat as a stiletto. Nations caught dabbling their fingers in Ethrea’s domestic politics faced the severest of sanctions. Huge fines, loss of harbour privileges, confiscation of goods both on board docked ships and in the warehouses given over to their nation’s use. Public humiliation, private censure and the weight of every other nation’s disapproval—which usually meant more sanctions, trade embargoes and much warlike talk behind closed doors. Sometimes those doors opened … and bloodshed resulted. In the past, transgressing nations’ entire ruling families and their countries had been bankrupted, changing the course of more than one history.
No. Meddling in Ethrea’s private affairs was never wise.
The ambassadors broke out in a babble of protest, denial and eager reassurances. Marlan let them fuss, considering them with a dispassionate gaze. When the noise abated he nodded.
“I am relieved to hear it. Allow me to say again, Excellencies, so you might report the truth to your curious masters: Eberg is king. The House of Havrell rules, and will continue to rule in God’s grace until the world is no more. As Prolate of Ethrea, be sure I speak the truth.”
“Of course, Your Eminence,” said the Icthian ambassador, and sketched a flourish of submission with three graceful fingers. “Your Eminence is a byword for honesty wherever good men gather.”
Marlan had little time for Icthians. A sly race, hardly better than grocers. They permitted women in their priesthood. What greater folly could any Church commit? “Wherever bad men gather also, I venture to hope,” he said, faintly smiling. “Bad men, after all, are in the greatest need of honesty.”
A wave of nervous laughter, too loud and too prolonged. Good. He had unnerved them, turned their busy thoughts to their own welfare, away from the vexed question of Eberg and his unsettled succession.
Not that it will remain unsettled for much longer. Rhian will see reason … or suffer the consequences.
The ambassadors were anxiously staring at him, waiting for his next pronouncement. He smiled at them, benevolently.
“Excellencies, His Majesty will be most touched to learn you have come here today out of concern for his wellbeing. Convey to your masters his appreciation for their good wishes.”
“We shall,” said the ambassador from Keldrave, and was echoed by the men of Slynt, Haisun and Icthia.
“Most certainly,” added the pale Dev’kareshi.
He nodded. “Excellencies, I bid you good morning.”
It was an abrupt dismissal, lacking the customary invitation to expound on other matters of concern. The five ambassadors hesitated then removed themselves. Doubtless they would congregate somewhere beyond the castle to compare their impressions and seek to sow discord where it might prove most useful. Ah, ambassadors. To a man, the living definition of a necessary evil.
Marlan nodded his dismissal of the Church scribes and Lord Dester, but the council secretary sent off his assistant and remained behind. An irritating minor noble, with a slavering ambition to rise higher than his current post.
“You require further instructions, Secretary Dester?” he asked. Pretentious men, like ambassadors, required judicious deflating.
Dester’s face flushed with annoyance at the slight. “Eminence, I require no instructions. I understand my duty.”
Marlan stared. “Do you imply otherwise of me?”
“Prolate, you play a dangerous game,” said Dester, foolhardy.
“Those ambassadors—”
“Left here uncertain,” he said sharply. “Dester, be guided in this. Diplomacy can best be compared to a chess game, and I have been playing a lot longer than you .”
“I realise that,” said Dester. “But Eminence, you speak not only for the king but for his councillors, too. Would you make of them pawns, that—”
“We are all pawns, Manfrith,” he replied, mildly enough. “God’s pawns. Perhaps you should pay closer attention in Church. I believe I’ve spoken on the matter often enough.”
Dester flushed again. “You may have thrown those minor ambassadors off the scent, Prolate, but the others won’t be so easily duped. Eberg’s perilous condition cannot be kept secret for much longer. Ardell tells me—”
“More than he should, I have no doubt. If you are truly his sponsor, my lord, I suggest you educate him on the topic of discretion.”
“Eminence,” said Dester, through gritted teeth.
“My lord, you allow yourself to be distracted by trifles. Bend your thoughts instead to the tasks of your position. I imagine you have much to do before tomorrow’s important council session. I take it you’ve received the final tally of candidates to be considered for Princess Rhian’s hand?”
“Yes,” said Dester. “The list is being copied and distributed as we speak, Eminence.”
“Excellent.” The list wasn’t complete, in fact. He had his own candidate to put forward. But that could wait until the council meeting proper. The less time his fellow councillors had to prepare, the better. “Then do not allow me to detain you further, Secretary.”
Dester, the blind fool, refused to take the hint. “Do you think the king is well enough to consider the list, Prolate? The decision is a momentous one.”
“The question is not relevant. The king will consider it. As a father and a monarch he has no choice but to do so.”
Dester nodded slowly. “And if, God forbid, the king should die before he makes his decision?”