“I heard tell you’d let it go,” she murmured.
“That’s what I told Black Calder. I love to fight, but I hate to lose, and the odds are long against me.”
“So you haven’t let it go?”
“I have not.”
“And you’ve come to Uffrith looking for my help.”
“I heard you’re a bad enemy to have. I know Stour fears you. Thought maybe, with my sword and your eye, the odds would be shorter. Uffrith and the West Valleys together. That’d be a thing no one could dismiss.”
She looked thoughtfully up at him. Quite a long way up, since she was standing downhill. “My da told me vengeance was an empty chest you have to go bent under the weight of. He told me to let it go.”
“Your da was a tough man and a crafty man and a man to be admired.”
“No doubt,” said Shivers, quietly.
“But you don’t agree?”
“I do not,” said the Nail. “I’ll have Stour’s head or die trying. I saw you and him swap barbs before the duel. Thought you might feel the same.”
“Oh, I feel just the same!” she snarled, showing him a glimpse of the fury she kept burning. “My father swore to see Black Calder dead, and I swore to see Stour Nightfall dead, and I mean to keep both of our words, how’s that?” It brought a little smile from him. A little brightening of his eye. “But I’ve folk to look after now.” She softened up, holding her hand out to Uffrith, looking quite pretty in the sunlight as it sloped down to the sea. “Can’t be sprinkling vengeance about willy-nilly. You see those Union guests of mine just leaving?”
“The woman wrapped up like a feast-day gift? Aye, there was no missing her.”
“Well, that was the Lady Governor of Angland. I made a deal with her and her husband.” Rikke worked her mouth like there was a bad taste in it. “And it puts me on the same side as the King of the Northmen.”
The Nail shook his head. “Ah, that’s a shame.”
“I tend somewhat to agree. No reason you and I can’t be good neighbours, though. Why don’t you come inside? I’ll toss a fresh log on the firepit and crack a keg of my father’s ale.”
“I’d sooner have vengeance.”
“Were you going to run off to Carleon and grab it ’fore sundown?” asked Shivers.
“My da used to say only the dead can’t spare time for a cup,” said Rikke. “Let’s drink and talk about the future. What might happen. What I’ve seen will happen. Uffrith and the West Valleys together, after all. That’d be a thing no one could dismiss.”
Ever so slowly, the Nail thoughtfully raised his pale brows. “It won’t last for ever, then, your deal wi’ Nightfall?”
Rikke set a gentle hand on his shoulder and steered him towards the door of her father’s hall. “Nothing lasts for ever.”
The Little People
Orso took a breath of the crisp morning air and let it sigh away. It felt good to be out of the city. The vapours seemed to get worse and the demands of kingship more suffocating every day. Lord Hoff and his wearisome timetable, the pointless functions, the tedious rituals, every moment scrupulously wasted far in advance with never an opportunity to actually do anything. Even Orso’s toilet habits were precisely circumscribed, catalogued, overseen. He would not have been surprised to find there were a bevy of highly lucrative offices for the purpose. Lord High Warden of the Royal Stool. Chief Custodian of His Majesty’s Passage. Piss-Smeller General.
He twisted the circlet gently from his head and held it up, looking through it towards the gleaming track. Towards the expectant crowd. He gave a little giggle.
“Something amusing?” asked his mother, for whom nothing was ever amusing.
“I never realised before. The thing about crowns… there’s nothing in them, is there?”
Orso flinched at a sudden blast of steam from the machinery, a ripple of “oohs” and “aahs,” followed by polite applause. A band played something brassy and optimistic. Smiling children waved little Union flags. The famous device itself was a madman’s nightmare of cogs, rods and rivets, a beast of brass and iron gleaming with grease, vapour puffing from its valves like smoke from a dragon’s nostrils. It was mounted on a pair of polished rails that stretched across two fields to a bridge fluttering with coloured bunting. On top of it, a noted actress wore a headdress and flimsy robe that presumably marked her out as inspiration or some such abstract virtue. The sun kept going in, though, and despite her beaming smile she looked mostly rather cold.
“However does it work?” mused Orso, jamming his circlet back on. The engine might as well have been a sorcerer’s wand for all he understood its workings.
“I believe a coal-fired furnace heats water in the vessel to boiling,” said Dietam dan Kort, his waistcoat straining dangerously about the buttons as he leaned across Curnsbick’s empty chair. “The formation of steam within creates pressure which drives a reciprocating piston converting expansive to rotational force, then transmitting it through a sequence of gears to the wheels. Would Your Majesty like more detail?”
Orso raised his brows. “If anything… less.”
“The fire makes steam,” pronounced Queen Terez, deigning to speak a few words in the common tongue but insisting on doing so with an overpowering Styrian accent. “The steam makes it go.”
“That,” admitted Kort, “is the essence.”
Honrig Curnsbick, the great machinist himself, stood near his creation with tall hat and riotous side whiskers, surrounded by cheering well-wishers, shaking a fistful of drawings at his oil-blackened engineers. One of them shovelled coal furiously into the glowing maw of the machine. Another weighed a giant wrench while frowning towards the royal box with an intensity bordering on hatred. Sadly, there was nothing remarkable in that. Orso regarded anything warmer than strong dislike from one of his subjects as a delightful surprise.
“You really should have a queen beside you,” observed his mother.
He grinned sideways at her. “I do.”
“I mean a wife, as you well know. Help me, High Justice.”
“Her Majesty. As always. Makes a fine point.” Bruckel leaned past Orso’s mother to jab out a few phrases. “See what marriage has done. For the Lord Governor of Angland.” Orso winced. He would rather have been squirted with poison than with more news of Leo dan Brock’s happy union. “The government there was paralysed. Antiquated. Incompetent. Since his wedding? Turned. Around.”
“Lady Savine is an immensely talented woman, though!” Kort leaned in from the other side to unwittingly make matters even worse. “I must confess, I was reluctant to embrace her as a partner but, well, I couldn’t have completed my canal without her. Stupendously talented.” Kort shook his head, chin vanishing into the roll of fat beneath. “Not many like her around, Your Majesty.”
“That settles it, then,” said Orso. “Lady Savine will simply have to marry me and her husband.” The real tragedy was that he would likely have clutched at that arrangement with both hands.
His mother was less taken with it. “Don’t be facetious, Orso, it’s beneath your majesty.”