Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) (31 page)

A trumpet blared.

The sound meant his father was about to appear. Would always mean that. Mean the theater was beginning, and his da was about to enter the great hall, with his crown and sword, his long ermine-rimmed red robe, take his seat on the throne, hear the grievances of the guildmasters, and the occasional petitions from his citizens.

Because his father taught him what it meant to be a man before teaching him what it meant to be a king, he always saw the king holding court as a performance. That man up there had little to do with his father. It was an act. His privy council knew it. Probably the civil authorities knew it. The people watching, however, the citizens, had no idea. This was the king, they thought. 

Now, at 38 years of age, his father long dead, he knew it would always be thus. The trumpet would never be his sound. He had no children…yet. Probably would have none, he thought. And he would never hear the trumpet and think of it has anything other than the opening of his father’s court. Ah well. Did da ever hear it as his own? Hard to imagine. Surely he heard grandad’s trumpet.

But then Richard never adopted the performance. Maybe his da really did hear his trumpet. He certainly acted like it was his. Gave no indication it ever belonged to anyone else, heralded the opening of twenty generations of the kings of Corwell.

The trumpet blared again. Richard shook off his reverie and strode through the door.

“All stand,” the herald said. The room was already standing of course, had been for a few minutes. “For the king, Richard, Sword of Cavall.” There were other titles, but Richard eschewed them except when he needed to make a point to visiting dignitaries. Here, in his own hall, Sword of Cavall was enough.

Richard strode purposefully but, he knew, much less magisterially than his father, to the throne. He wore the crown and sword, but no cloak. He wasn’t a man interested in theater. He was interested in justice. And for some reason, as king, found the theater of state distasteful in its pursuit.

He sat down, and the great hall sat. Except for the guards lining the walls and his knights. To his left and right, stood two of the White Hart.

Before him, on a lower platform, sat his privy council. Four men representing his best advisors. Because they were on his side of this whole affair, they faced away from him.

Facing him, in two rows of chairs placed on the floor, were the heads of all the guilds, and orders, the churches, civic leaders from every section of the city. They were the official reason for this meeting. Behind them, a row of guards in chain with pike, and behind them about two-hundred citizens. Agitated, fearful, hopeful. Hoping the king could do something, fearing he couldn’t, or fearing it would be too late, or just fearing because they had so little power in the whole thing.

Absent was the one man who could actually do anything about the count and the deathless plaguing the city. The castellan. The ragman, they called him, and for good reason.

The king took a deep breath. Nodded at the herald. The young man said, in a clear, masculine voice that echoed through the hall, “Having charged the members of the city council with bringing order over the city, the king will hear their reports.”

The hall exploded in shouting from the people.

“Order!” Sir Anduiros, one of the knights standing by the throne shouted.

The king nodded to a man in long black robes.

“The king will hear the report from the Archmaster of the Quill!” Sir Anduiros said, his voice echoing in the hall.

Laqueus, the Archmaster of the Quill and first among the three equals of the wizard orders, stood up.

“Master Laqueus,” the king said. “Half my city is currently under the control of the count, and the other half become ungovernable with fear. He has mastery over an army of deathless. I asked you to look into this. Now what have you found?”

“Your majesty, we know much about the night dust now,” he said. “But we cannot find its source, or discern the means by which it is manufactured.”

The crowd agitated at this.

“And why have you not?” the king asked. He knew the answer, had already gotten all the answers he needed, but the people needed to see the process.

“He has taken precautions my lord. But he’s not invulnerable. He has a network, weaknesses. We’ll find him.”

“Someone knows where he is!!” a woman shouted.

“Indeed,” the king said as the guards policed the crowd. He nodded at another councilmember.

“The king will hear the report from Bishop Conmonoc of the Church of Llewellyn the Valiant!” Sir Anduiros bellowed.

But the bishop was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is the representative from the church?” the king asked, as if he didn’t know.

“Ah,” a handsome, well-dressed man stood up. It was Gwiddon. “His grace Conmonoc, Hand of Cavall, Bishop of the Church of St. Llewellyn the Valiant, is old and could not make the journey,” he said. There was a rumbling among the people. “As his personal attaché, he sent me to speak on his behalf and assure the king, his council, and the people, that the church remains well-disposed to handle this threat, and has already dispatched many of the deathless the count’s agents have summoned.”

“You can’t be everywhere!” someone in the crowd shouted, causing the crowd to further erupt in chaos.

Gwiddon pursed his lips and sat down.

“The wisdom of the people again shows itself,” the king said. “The church has power over deathless, but priests are few and the count’s agents are many. The church is not sufficient to the task.”

This went on, with other council members either complaining about the situation, or apologizing for being unable to do anything about it. After a turn, the king stopped the whole thing.

“Alright,” he said wearily, then raised his voice to be heard. “Our thanks go out to the Quill and her allies, and the Church and her efforts,” he said. “But as the will of the people cannot be denied or subverted, it is incumbent on me to act on their behalf.”

The crowd was silent. Everyone waited for the pronouncement they all demanded.

He took a deep breath. “As Count Irlicht of Haas presents a clear and immediate threat to the well-being of the city, as he has taken up arms against us, committed murder, treason and…,” the king waved his hand. “And as he has furthermore refused to produce himself and answer these charges as is required by the noble charter that grants him his title, I hereby charge the knights of the White Hart to seek out the count, to capture him, and bring him here before this court where judgment will be done upon him.”

The knight to the king’s right shouted; “So sayeth the king!”

“The king!” the people shouted. “The king! The king!” This was what they wanted. The Hart on the case. How could the count stand against the finest knights on life?

King Richard stood up, nodded to the knights of the Hart to his left and right, threw a wary glance at the assembled city council, and strode off the stage where his throne sat.

“The Hart’s never going to find the count,” Heden said.

The king removed his crown, threw it on a large divan, and closed the door behind him.

He appraised Heden for a moment. The arrogate was leaning, arms crossed, against an ancient bookshelf.

“Don’t you think I know that?” the king snapped.

“So…,” Heden offered.

Richard removed his gloves and poured himself a drink. He glanced at Heden.

Heden watched the brown liquor splash into crystal and shook his head. Drinking now would be a kind of betrayal, he felt. Though he couldn’t articulate why. He was used to being unable to explain his moral sense.

“I have to do something, dammit,” the king said.

“Have to be
seen
doing something,” Heden said.

The king took a drink, put his glass down.

“Don’t quote me back at me,” he said. “I’m the one taught you the difference between the perception and the reality. As I recall you hated it, and made sure I knew you thought less of me because of it.”

“I was a young man then,” Heden said.

“You were an insufferable prick.”

Heden nodded, “You were an entitled, arrogant wastrel. I only seemed like a prick by comparison.”

Richard nodded. “That's true. Probably why you were the only ratcatcher I trusted.”

“You didn't trust Stewart?”

The king took another drink. Quickly, mechanically. It was powerful stuff, from Rhone, and Heden knew Richard was trying to drink it no more quickly than propriety allowed.

“Stewart was a good man. But motivated by piety, you by morality. I invite you to think on the difference, and consider why you are still here while he is not.”

“I don’t want to talk about Stewart,” Heden said darkly.

The king shrugged. “You brought him up,” he said.

They both sat down. The king on one couch, Heden on another in the small receiving room. A huge portrait of the king’s father hung on the wall to Heden’s right. The old king had the same dark, dusky black skin all the kings of Corwell had for generations, but all had jet black, tightly curled hair while Richard’s was coppery red.

“Did your granddad have red hair?” Heden wondered. The old king, his black hair grey in the painting, radiated health and power. His skin looked earthy. Like dried sod that might soon blow away. He reminded Heden of his own father.

“Nope,” the king said.

“Where do you get it?” Heden asked.

The king shrugged. “Somewhere in the frenzied fucking of my heritage one of the menfolk rutted with a young lady with some Gol blood. Comes up every few generations they say.”

“Caelians have a lot to answer for,” Heden said. It was the Caelian Empire that last conquered the world, destroying as much of the distinct cultures that came before them as possible through an aggressive program of expatriation.  The best way to make Caelians of all the world’s people was to drag many thousands of children away from their parents and resettle them in distant lands.

It was painful, bloody, but it worked. Even four hundred years after the fall of the empire, everyone in Orden spoke Tevas and wrote in the Delian script.

“They liked order,” the king said. “When I was a boy, I thought they were brutal dictatorial thugs. Now that I’m king, I appreciate their position better.”

Heden smiled. The king didn’t smile back. He’d brought Heden here for a reason.

“The count is going to rip this city apart,” he said. “And he doesn’t even know it yet. If he becomes Underking, his subjects will be rats and fleas because that’s all that’ll be left within the city walls.”

“How does it happen?” Heden asked. “How does one become the Underking, or the shadow king, or whatever?”

“It’s a negotiation, like anything else,” the king explained. “The count goes to the castellan and says ‘it’s time we worked out a new arrangement,’ meaning he gets free run of all the crime in the city. One guild, under the count. He’ll say he wants his men to get special treatment from the citadel. The castellan says it’ll be up to the count and his guild to keep all the thieves and murders and rapists in line. There’ll be concessions and threats and everything you’d expect.”

“And the castellan will have to deal.”

“Of course he will, that’s not the point. The point is it’ll be a
bad
deal. He’ll have no leverage. With three guilds, he can play one off the other. If the count can eliminate his rivals, then he gets to call the tune.”

“How long have we got?” Heden asked.

“Brick already folded,” the king said. “He had no choice.”

“What about the Truncheon?” Heden asked.

“I don’t know,” the king said. “He’s a meat-brained thug it’s hard to guess what….”

Heden coughed discreetly. Reminding the king what he knew.

“Oh, right,” the king said. “Gwiddon will
never
fold. The Darkened Moon is a pit of murderous, sadistic, evil men and Gwiddon thinks working for me is their chance at redemption. And
someone
,” he said, sneering at Heden, “gave him that idea.”

“I never said anything like that,” Heden said.

“No, but you wouldn’t, would you? You lead by example. Did you know it was four months after you became Arrogate that Gwiddon proposed he take over the Moon? Turn them into our tool? Give them a chance at salvation through murder and theft? Where do you think he got
that
idea?”

“Don’t pin this on me,” Heden said.

“Someone has to stop the count,” the king demanded.

“Because Gwiddon won’t relent.”

“I may have created a monster,” the king said. “Gwiddon has the power, as my secret minister of operational affairs to keep the Moon running long after any other thieves’ guild would have to relent. It’ll be war. A war of thieves in my city. And no one has any idea how it will end.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” Heden asked.

“I want you to forgive him,” the king said.

Heden stared blankly at his king. This was not what he expected.

“You need each other,” the king said.

When Heden recovered from being stunned he said, methodically;

“You said the Moon’s thieves were ’Murderous, sadistic, and evil?’ Gwiddon can
have
them. They deserve him.”

“You hate him,” the king said.

“A little,” Heden nodded.

“Do you know who else hates him?” the king asked. Before Heden could answer, the king pressed on. “My enemies.”

Heden had no answer for this.

“You think he manipulated you, lied to you, and that your friendship these last 12 years was a deliberate fabrication.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Heden if I asked you to undertake a mission, in secret, and I told you that for the good of Corwell you couldn’t tell anyone why, would you accept?”

“You’ve done that before.”

“And did you tell anyone? Your brothers, your father? The abbot?”

“No, my lord.”

“Do you think they shouldn’t trust you because of that? Because you were keeping my secrets?”

Heden bit his lip. “No, my lord.”

The king let the reality of this seep in.

“Do you know what Gwiddon did before I placed him under the bishop?”

“He told me he was a solicitor in the…”

“He was a squire for a knight of the White Hart.”

“What?” Heden was unable to process this. It was a day for revelations.

“The year before you met him,” the king began smoothly, enjoying telling the tale, “he was about to become a knight, getting his spurs in the traditional ceremony. It’s a fortnight of fasting and there’s something about throwing the spurs into a soup tureen that I’ve never understood. The purpose of the fasting is to cause the supplicant to enter into a delirium wherein he sees visions, presumably of his god, but after a week’s fasting I think mostly he sees fish and fowl with carrots and sauce. Normally the knights sneak in and bring him little bits of food in secret, it is a fraternal brotherhood after all, but in this case it’s the White Hart and so no one,” he said, emphasizing the point, “brought him anything.”

Heden was fixated. The king’s speech flowed on.

“Twelve days into this and seeing who knows what, the rectory was attacked by the High Necromancer deliberately targeting the building because he knew all the knights would be there for the ceremony and there was fire and a dozen ghouls, the real thing you understand, not the kind the acolytes used to bring up in graveyards.

“Naked, armed only with a sword, Gwiddon put down eight of them while the other knights spent a whole turn getting their armor on. When they found him they thought he was dead because he was unconscious and covered in blood and his back had been broken.

“He’d saved the rectory and almost single-handedly saved the Hart. The priests healed him, of course, but when they did some of the bones in his back fused together and that couldn’t be cured. He couldn’t walk for six months, could never become a knight, and has to spend the rest of his life sleeping on a special bed that keeps him upright.

“Now then,” the king straightened up. “I am your king, sanctified by Cavall and I could order you to allow Gwiddon to place his prick into your bunghole, and you would have to do it but I have plans for you and they don’t involve either you or Gwiddon getting ass-fucked by the other.”

The king let this sink in. His voice more gentle when he continued.

“So. I leave it to you. Do what you want. But you might want to consider just this once, forgiving Gwiddon because I asked you to, and he was only lying to you under my explicit command.”

There was silence for a few moments. The king smiled.

“I would have forgiven him on your command without the history lesson,” Heden said.

“Not the same. I’m not ordering you to forgive him, I’m asking you to.”

Heden took a deep breath.

“I need his help.”

The king nodded. “I could order him to help you, and he would have to.”

“Yes.”

“But I won’t.”

“For the same reason you’re
asking
me to forgive him, not
telling
me to?”

“Correct.”

“You can be a real piece of shit sometimes, you know that my lord?”

The king suddenly smiled as broadly as Heden had ever seen. “We are brothers in this.”

Heden frowned.

“Alright,” he said. “I probably wouldn’t have been able to stay angry at Gwiddon anyway but…,” he stopped. King Richard raised his eyebrows in anticipation.

“I would have liked trying for a little while longer at least.”

The king nodded and stood, Heden followed suit.

“What an insufferable prick he is,” the king said, and then put his arm around Heden. “Not like us, huh?”