The King's Justice (32 page)

“I understand,” I replied, resuming my false calm. “I will deliver your terms to Her Majesty. Vail will confirm that I have served her honestly.” Seeing that the captain was done with me—that he meant to turn away—I hazarded asking, “Yet ere I depart, will you permit one query for my personal edification?”

At once, he confronted me with his fists knotted on the hilts of his cutlasses. “So that you will know what you must say to your fellow alchemists? Tell them
this
, little man. You will learn that they relish it.

“We resemble brigands. At one time, we were. But now we are commissioned rovers committed to an empire bent upon expansion.

“The empire's most recent conquest was your former homeland, a miserable place scarce able to sustain itself. From documents found in archives, we learned that our new subjects had once been prosperous and wealthy—and that their bounty had been provided by the power of alchemy. Yet some madness had overtaken them. Entirely deranged, they concluded that ease and plenty were not desirable. Bounties and power were curses that stifled the spirit. Rather than seek expansion—rather than discover
some
worthy use for their prosperity and wealth, as sane men would have done—your forebears elected
to banish their alchemists. You were abandoned here, and the
spirit
of your homeland fell into decay.”

As he spoke, he gathered force until his words resembled thunder. “
We
will not decay. We are an empire, and will grow until the world entire is ours. At any cost, we will acquire your alchemists. We will have them so that they may support our greater glory.”

Now I was done. I had accomplished my duty. The inference that our foes possessed no alchemists themselves completed my assigned task. With that revelation, as with those that had gone before, my Queen would call herself content. Only my true purpose remained.

Excrucia had said,
I will have you or nothing
. She had vowed to cast away her life. I could not part from her. Nor could I permit Indemnie to suffer a fortnight of bombardment, only to face open war when the captain's terms were refused.

Had I been craven? Through my life, craven? I was not so now. And I remembered Opalt Intrix.
The gift is the gift
.
Only purity, talent, and character vary
. My heritage, and Excrucia's, lacked purity. Of talent I was uncertain, though I had chosen to believe that resolve might serve in its place. And for character I could rely absolutely on my friend, my ally, my love.

I waited only until Riddance Glave began to turn away, gesturing dismissal as he moved—only until the guards who had escorted us earlier shifted themselves to advance—only until I had caught Vail's eye, and had clasped Excrucia's hand in mine.
Then, with a suddenness that might serve to startle the captain and his crew of brigands, I cast my halberd into the center of the foredeck.

Clattering on the planks, it caught Glave's notice so that he wheeled toward it. Likewise it plucked at the attention of the assembled men. For a moment, every eye on the foredeck was fixed, not on me and my companions, but rather on my halberd as it skidded to rest.

For that moment, I held my breath, waiting—and praying that Excrucia and Vail would remain as still as I.

Then Slew's shaft struck straight into Riddance Glave's back. Spewing blood, he pitched headlong to the deck. After a moment's writhing, he did not move again.

Around the foredeck, consternation reigned. Tumult, yelled curses, and wild rushing surrounded us. Now, however, I did not wait. Indeed, I was already in motion. Within a few heartbeats, some guard or sailor would recover his wits and cut us down.

As I plunged to my knees, I dragged Excrucia with me. Gripping her hand as though it held the meaning of my life, I slapped its back and knuckles to the deck and covered it there with mine. During the instant that our gazes met, she had no time for words. She could only plead with her eyes.

Immediately I looked away. I had to see what I did. Made swift by long practice, I snatched my hieronomer's blade from beneath my hauberk. Raising the iron high, I hammered it down.

Whetted to a precise keenness, it pierced my hand and Excrucia's, and drove deep into the deck, pinning us where we knelt together.

Blood burst from our wounds, hers and mine. It splashed our hands and the boards, formed a pool of augury. In it, I could have foreseen our futures in every detail, yet I did not pause to regard it. Moving still, I withdrew Opalt Intrix's pouch of
chrism
from its concealment and poured its entire contents over my blade and our hands and our blood.

Now I had done all that I could. My gambit would succeed or fail, I knew not which. Indeed, I felt certain that it would fail. How could it succeed? By blood, talent, and character, I was no alchemist. As Excrucia opened her mouth to cry out, I pulled her to me and kissed her—an act of contrition or farewell, but also of longing.

Past her shoulder, I saw that Vail had crouched low, readying himself to spring. Perhaps in the confusion he would be able to effect his escape, as I had urged him to do. My life was now certainly forfeit. Excrucia might be spared, if only to punish her for my deeds, but she would not be relinquished. Therefore Vail's escape was vital.

Excrucia's kiss clung to mine as mine did to hers. Persuaded of failure, I resolved that I would not release her until we were torn asunder.

In the clamor of shouts as another man fell to Slew's second arrow, in the frantic pounding of boots, and in the utter
necessity of Excrucia's kiss, I was slow to recognize that the hurting of my hand had changed.

It had become agony.

Compelled, I turned my head to gape at what I had done.

The wooden hilt of my blade had grown too large for my grasp. It increased visibly before me. And the iron of the blade extended itself likewise, growing in both length and girth—but much more in length. From it came screeching sounds like the violent splintering of boards.

For one astonished moment, I was able to imagine that my blade had already penetrated the foredeck—that even now it extended its piercing through holds and compartments until it embedded itself in the next deck—that it might grow far enough to hole the ship. I had supplied my blood and Excrucia's and my iron with a considerable quantity of
chrism
—enough, Opalt Intrix had suggested, for an alchemist's lifetime.

There my moment ended. Agony became excruciation as my iron's growth forced the bones of my hand apart, crushing them against their neighbors until my flesh tore. For the space of a heartbeat, or perhaps two, I screamed with force enough to shred my throat, and Excrucia screamed with me.

Then some heavy impact drove us from our knees, ripped our ruined hands from my blade. As I fell, my head pounded the deck. At once, the forecastle and the coiled hawsers and Riddance Glave's corpse became stars, and the distraught tumult of men faded from the world. I understood that I was dead, and with that realization I was content.

D
eath, however, was not the oblivion that I had anticipated. It was a staggered jolting that shifted me from side to side. It was the agony of my bound hand. It was cool air freed from fires and blasts. It was the sound of breathing not my own. Also it was the damp cling of raiment that had been immersed in blood, and the caking of salt upon my face, and the sensation that my body had been beaten with clubs. It was the conviction that miracles had been wrought.

Some time passed ere I opened my eyes to gaze upon an afterlife in which I did not believe.

At first, I beheld only the moon riding high above me amid its panoply of stars. The heavens appeared entirely at peace, and as I regarded them, I found that they filled my eyes with tears.

Thereafter more immediate matters claimed my notice. By increments, I recognized that I lay upon a sheet of canvas that had been stretched between two long shafts to form a crude litter. Beyond my head and past my feet, men held the ends of the poles, and their motion resembled running, though I could not determine where they ran. My thoughts were sluggish or hampered, as though the life in my veins had begun to clot. I required long moments to note that the dark shape trotting at my side belonged to Vail.

He appeared heedless of his wound, a detail that bewildered me. As my sight cleared, however, the moon's shining enabled
me to discern that Glare Estobate's cut—indeed, the entire lower half of Vail's torso—had been heavily bandaged. He was able to match the pace of my porters because his bleeding had been stanched, because he was inordinately strong, and also because his visage suggested that his dour nature had been transformed by triumph.

Coughing to clear my throat, I endeavored to speak the query uppermost in my mind. Unfortunately that effort caused fresh knives of pain to pierce my hand. Indeed, it caused my flesh to throb from head to foot. I was unable to utter a word.

Vail glanced down at me, then called elsewhere, “Water! Water for Her Majesty's Hieronomer!”

At his command, my porters halted. Various boots and sandals scrambled in the distance. Then a flask was thrust into Vail's hands. Bending over me despite his own hurt, he lifted me so that I could drink.

While I gulped water—bliss to my sore throat—he instructed me, “Do not speak. When we gain the Domicile, you will ask and answer every question.” Briefly he looked away, then met my gaze once more. “Her Highness lives. Her litter follows yours. Her hand has been bound. She is unconscious and pale, having lost much blood, but I do not fear for her.”

Again I attempted to form speech. Again I failed.

Nodding as though he knew my needs, Vail gestured for my porters to resume their trek. Now, however, they bore me more slowly so that he could walk at my side in less discomfort.

“You will be pleased to hear,” he announced with unfamiliar
satisfaction, “that our foes cannot move their ship. They have raised anchors and unfurled sails. They rush about, shouting. Their helmsman works his wheel to no purpose. They cannot move. They are fixed in place. Your iron has nailed them to the seabed. They will never return to their empire.

“And they dare not lower their longboats. From vantages which those cannon now cannot reach, Baron Plinth's men have begun to rain flaming arrows at the ship. Already sails burn, fire feeds on the midmast, and a structure that I take for the galley is alight. Should those brigands hazard their longboats, they must first show some clear sign of surrender. Otherwise their boats will be set aflame.

“Glare Estobate's forces,” he continued as though he understood the hampered trudge of my thoughts, “were at first reluctant to accept Baron Plinth's authority. But when they were informed of their Baron's death, they began to obey. We now have men enough to attempt rescues within Venture, to combat the fires, and still to assail Riddance Glave's ship.”

With an effort that threatened to overwhelm me, I contrived to croak, “How—?”

Still Vail understood. “I ripped your hands from your blade and bore you overboard. Having lost blood myself, I lacked strength to swim away. But Slew saw us. He joined us in the sea. With this aid, you were brought ashore. Now he rides to speak with Her Majesty.”

When I had assembled Vail's tidings into a sequence that I was able to comprehend, I found that this afterlife was tolerable
despite the state of my hand and the unpleasantness of other discomforts. Thereafter I renewed my acquaintance with oblivion.

L
ater I returned to consciousness with a mind somewhat clearer. Without undue difficulty, I observed that my porters even now bore me through the gates into the Domicile's bailey. And when I lifted my head to consider my surroundings, I found that Inimica Phlegathon deVry herself had come to my side.

She appeared as I had last seen her, altogether drenched by the rain now past. With her hair dripping from her head and her raiment a shambles, she was a bedraggled mess. Yet she remained magnificent, a queen of unmarred beauty in every line and glance.