“All right,” she said, frowning. “I promise.” If she was to have a statue on the Kingsway, she supposed she would have to win it for herself.
“Good. Good.” Her father winced as he settled into his chair, drunken applause in the background as a dance came to its end. “The time may soon come when I cannot protect you any more.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing?”
“Believe it or not, I’ve been trying.” He frowned over the rooftops towards the dome of the Lords’ Round, the great black shape soaring high into the night sky, a grand replacement for the one destroyed the year Savine was born. “Sometimes,” he murmured, “the only way to improve something is to destroy it, so it can be rebuilt better. Sometimes, to change the world, we must first burn it down.”
Savine raised one brow. “Valbeck may be better in the years to come. But being there while it burned was far from pleasant.”
“The emperor’s prisons were far from pleasant.” He licked at his empty gums with a faint sucking. “But I emerged a better man. Being your father… is the thing I am proudest of. It’s the only thing I’m proud of.”
“And you’re not even my father.”
She wanted to strike some spark of anger from him. But all he did was slowly nod, a trace of a smile as he looked up at the stars, bright in the clear sky. “That should tell you what I think of everything else I’ve done.” Beyond the windows, the band struck up a jaunty reel, one of her mother’s favourites, people clapping and stamping and laughing in time. “Could you wheel me back in?”
She thought about wheeling him off into the flower beds. But in the end, she took the handles of his chair and turned it about, that one wheel slightly squeaking. “I can do that.”
Future Treasons, Past Affairs
Leo raised his fist to knock, and paused, clenching it so hard his knuckles clicked.
It was a bloody humiliation. He’d never had much respect for Orso as a man, and he’d been losing respect for the Crown as an institution for months. Now he had to spend part of his wedding night begging for forgiveness from his wife’s former lover. It was an utter bloody humiliation.
But it had to be done. He was a leader, and a husband, soon to be a father. He had responsibilities. He was starting to see that humiliations came with the territory.
He forced on a smile, seasoned it with just a sprinkle of shame, turned the doorknob and stepped through. “Your Majesty, I…”
You could’ve said there were a lot of kings in that vast salon. Twenty, at the least, of the Union’s best, in uniforms, hunting garb, full armour, perched on gilded chairs or astride mighty steeds, sneering, smirking, pouting down at Leo from towering canvasses. But of the current throne-stuffer there was no sign.
In fact, the only living occupants of the room were Lords Isher, Barezin and Heugen, gathered around a table in one corner in a secretive huddle.
“Leo!” called Isher, raising his glass. “It seems the king couldn’t stay.”
“More important matters,” said Heugen, leaning to light his pipe at a candle.
“At the whorehouse, I understand,” added Barezin, sloshing amber spirit from the decanter and nudging the drink towards an empty chair.
Leo felt angry colour rising to his cheeks as he limped over. “The whorehouse?” All the effort he’d put into his apology and the arrogant bastard couldn’t even be bothered to hear it?
“If you ask me…” Heugen puffed out sweet-smelling chagga smoke. “You’ve not a thing to apologise for.”
“You told the truth,” said Barezin. “Everyone knows it. He’s the one should apologise.”
“Kings don’t,” grumbled Leo, dropping into the empty seat and snatching up the drink.
“Not this one, anyway.”
“Well, shit on him!” Leo drained his glass in one swallow and slammed it down in a rush of fury. “I’ve had enough! We can’t let things carry on like this!” He glared at a painting of Orso’s father King Jezal, handsome enough but with a helpless set to his shoulders even as a young man. An ineffectual ditherer who lost every war he’d fought and achieved nothing but unmatched debts, and his reign was starting to look like a golden age. “We can’t let the Union just… slide into the fucking sewer!”
Isher gave Barezin and Heugen a significant glance. “There comes a point,” he said with great care, “when talking about a better world is simply not enough. There comes a time… when men of conscience, principle and courage must dare the unthinkable… and fight for a better world.”
There was a long, expectant silence. The hairs on Leo’s neck prickled. A clock on the marble mantel tick, tock, ticked. He looked the three lords in the eye, one after another. Isher spoke far from plainly but, at the same time, left no doubt what they were discussing.
“Mightn’t some men call that…” Leo licked his lips and shuffled forward on his chair, hesitating to say the word in full view of all those painted monarchs, and finally forcing it out in a breathy murmur. “Treason?”
Heugen gave a huff of upset. Barezin’s jowls wobbled in denial. Isher firmly shook his white head. “We would be acting in the king’s best interest. In the country’s best interest.”
“We would be freeing His Majesty from the chains of his Closed Council,” said Heugen, his airy gestures making Leo think of liberty and honesty, and most certainly not treason.
“We need to replace those corrupt old bastards with patriots,” boomed Barezin, filling Leo’s glass again.
“Men who can give the king the right advice.” Isher waved towards a painting of Harod the Great, who’d first forced the splintered kingdoms of Midderland together into a Union and looked exceedingly pleased about it, too. “Guide the Union back to its founding principles.”
“Back to glory!” Barezin punched his palm as if it was nowhere near glorious enough. “Men of action! Men who can make the Union great again!”
“Men like us,” said Heugen, eyebrows raised as though the idea had only just occurred.
“The Closed Council are the same self-serving liars who lost us three wars against the Styrians!” hissed Isher, and Leo could hardly deny it. “Who nearly drove Westport out of the Union! Who turned the commoners against us to the point they burned one of our greatest cities! They’re the enemies of the state. Ousting them is the act of loyalists.”
“Loyalists,” mused Leo, taking another drink and feeling its heat spreading. He’d always been fiercely loyal. No man more of a patriot. But what was he loyal to? A coven of greedy bureaucrats who’d sent him no help in war and only outrageous demands for tax in peace? A libertine king who’d had him thrown from the Lords’ Round and, it seemed, fucked his wife?
Leo frowned up at the painting of Casamir the Steadfast, who’d ripped Angland from the clutching hands of the Northmen—strong-jawed, fully armoured and pointing out something on a map. There was a king. There was a man. He seemed to be challenging Leo with his piercing stare, as if to ask him, What the hell are you going to do about all this?