Kingmaker (21 page)

In a dark corner, though, she found a history book that looked like it hadn't been opened in a couple hundred years.

She flipped through it and discovered a single reference to the purple glow of magic at some long-dead King's coronation.

So, she and Lawgrave had done it right and the Bishop had done it wrong. She wasn't sure what that meant, or if it mattered at all. After all, how many coronations does any King need?

The sun was setting when she left the library.

A city has different faces under daylight and under the light of the moon. With sunset, those who fear to be recognized sneak from their hiding places and try to make their livings. Prostitutes, cutpurses, and muggers ply their trades. All of these, and worse, were crawling from their holes as Ellie found her bearings and headed away from the river.

A wise martial artist avoids overconfidence. Ellie could probably handle anyone she could see, but the streets were narrow and dark. Someone hidden in the rooftops might trap her with a net or simply gut her with a spear or an arrow.

As the last wedge of the sun slipped beneath the chimneyed roofs, Ellie sensed someone watching her.

She drew her katana and continued.

As she passed a tavern, a drunk stumbled out, propelled as if he'd been thrown—or jumped at her.

She sidestepped, then used the flat of the katana to speed him even further.

The steel of her blade clinked against mail armor beneath his rough tunic.

"Help, assassin,” the drunk shouted.

Ellie turned in time to see the two bandits step from nearly hidden alcoves off the street.

"I'm not looking for trouble but I'm in a bad mood,” she told them.

"It's a woman."

"She's got a sword. Gotta be a Nob. Leave her alone. She'll be more trouble than she'd be worth."

The fake drunk looked like he wanted to argue but Ellie ignored him and he dropped off after following her for a minute or so.

So, her senses had gotten all worked up about a few casual thieves? She relaxed and continued on.

She heard nothing when the hand grasped at her back.

She whirled around, her katana singing as it cut through the air.

"Easy, Ellie."

"Lawgrave?"

"I heard you were looking for me.” He motioned her into a tumbledown structure that had lost most of its roof and seemed supported only by the buildings on either side.

"I've been worried about you. And I wanted to talk to you about the coronation."

"A bad business."

"Really? Because the magic wasn't there?"

Lawgrave nodded. “Of course you would see that. The crown is the thinking, calculating part of kingship. The hammer is for building, creating. The flail is sustaining. Lubica needs all three. A King who lives by brain but without heart is a disaster to the nation."

That made more sense than what the bishop had tried to say although Ellie still suspected that there was a farmer/worker connection there somewhere.

"So why not do it right?"

"Sergius's great grandfather was the last king to receive the full magic of the nation. For centuries, the church has held that only it should have the right to control magic, but recently, even church magic has been seen as defective, as a step away from the purity of the faith."

Which could explain why things hadn't gone so well in this succession. “Okay, so we need to finish the job."

Lawgrave shook his head. “I've got to stay out of sight. If the bishop's acolytes find me, I'll be banished to one of the remote monasteries."

She shouldn't be surprised. Lawgrave had disobeyed the Bishop's orders, after all. “Got it. Sergius is set to announce a parliament for the commons. It would be brilliant if we used the occasion to re-invest him with the regalia of kingship. You could stay in hiding until then.” The occasion could let her combine her own insights into the meaning of the symbols with those that Lawgrave believed in.

"Be careful. I haven't fully recovered from my exertions outside of Dinan, but I can see enough to know that there are dangers ahead for you."

She laughed. “I ran into one of those threats tonight. A few drunk highwaymen tried to mug me."

He shook his head angrily. “Not that. There will be more serious dangers, and there will be news that troubles you. Try to remember your purpose in coming to our world."

On that discouraging note, Lawgrave blended into the murk and left Ellie to make her way back to the army's camp.

Her nightmares descended on her hard that night. She relived her father's murder while she hid, helpless. She endured, again, every fight she'd had, every life she'd taken. The burned and blackened faces of the peasant dead glared at her, blaming her for their deaths and for her failure to deliver on her promises.

Lawgrave's last words haunted her. She'd come to this world to track down the people who had killed her parents, hadn't she? She'd sort of abandoned that goal when she'd learned the reality of killing and murder. Her parents wouldn't want her to kill for them, they'd want her to live for them. And the way she could contribute was to share what was good about America with the people of her birthland.

Anyway, Sergius would be moving against his uncle Harrison soon. And Lawgrave's castings had confirmed that Harrison had sent the killers even if some of them had ended up in Dinan.

The sound of cheering finally pulled her from her uneasy sleep. She rubbed her eyes, wished someone had invented coffee here, and struggled to her feet.

The army was whooping it up, breaking into kegs of ale and wine as she stumbled from her tent.

"What happened?"

Dafed gave her an uneasy look. “Harrison has arrived to treat and to plea for the King's mercy."

"That's not possible."

The sergeant shrugged. “He could see the writing on the wall. It wasn't so much Sullivan and Sergius joining as it was Sergius's victories. The barons think they have the Fell Prince back and they're abandoning Harrison quickly enough that he needed to make his peace before he didn't have enough power to negotiate a deal.

Ellie shook her head. “Harrison threw in with the Rissel. He's everything we're fighting against."

"They're nobles, Ellie. Wake up to reality. They play games with lives and, when it's over, pick up their pieces and go to a party together. Did Sullivan's murdering all those peasants stop Sergius from making peace with him? Of course not."

Dafed had a point, but Ellie needed more closure. “Maybe I can break this up before they come to an agreement."

Dafed shrugged again. “You are a princess, after all.” He didn't make it sound like a compliment.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"How many soldiers, how many peasants do you think will get killed if Sergius marches against Harrison? For you to avenge the murder of two people, you'd kill hundreds, probably thousands of people who've already given everything for you. I guess you are ready to play the game of nobles."

"That isn't fair. It isn't like that."

"Yeah? Tell me how it's different. And then tell that to the parents, the children, and the wives of the soldiers you get killed in your vendetta."

Ellie didn't back down from fights, but she backed away from Dafed. Because he was right. Harrison had allied with his nation's enemies, killed her parents and would now be able to pal with the king, and that wasn't right. But nothing she could do would bring back any of the dead. Keeping the war going would only mean more dead.

"What do you think I should do?” She swallowed hard to push back the tears that threatened to spill out. “Lawgrave said I needed to remember why I came here. I came here to avenge my parents."

Dafed crouched beside her. “I think you should do what you're already trying to do. Forget about avenging anyone and concentrate on making things better, on building a world where nobles won't kill peasants simply because they got in the way. ‘Course I'm only a sergeant. I don't know about noble things."

Ellie wasn't sure she knew much about noble things, or the way nobles thought, either. She'd been raised in California, after all, where nobility is conferred by the silver screen and only lasts until the next star comes along.

"If Harrison and Sullivan both pledge fealty to Sergius, does that mean the war is over?” She'd invested herself in the fighting, in raising Sergius to his rightful place. So much so that she didn't have a clue what she'd do outside the army.

"The Rissel won't back off. We've been at war with them for a hundred years or so. Between marriages and conquest, they occupy about a third of the north directly, without any connection to Harrison. They'll just fight for their own King's claim instead of Harrison's."

Ellie nodded. Regardless of Harrison, the war would go on. Still, it wouldn't really be a civil war. When you fight a foreign enemy, you can think of them as someone who's simply following another master. When you fight people at home, words like traitor get tossed around quickly and often.

She tried to look on the bright side of things. “You'll be moving up, Dafed. I wouldn't be surprised if you became captain of a thousand, at least."

He didn't look pleased.

"Everyone is happy with Servius's money but I have a bad feeling,” he said. “There's something going on and I can't figure out what it is."

She had a bad feeling too, but she thought she knew exactly what it was. It stuck in her craw that Sullivan and Harrison were going to get away with murder. And together, they would be able to limit any real power devolving to her Parliament.

A serious workout was in order. If she could sweat, dish out some licks, and take a few as well, she might not feel better but at least she'd have a reason to feel lousy.

"Let's get drilling,” she suggested. She gathered up her katana and stepped toward the training grounds where the sound of clashing steel blended with the chink of pottery beer mugs. “By the way, did Mark tell you about his idea for paper cartridges?"

Mark wasn't enough of a scientist or metalworker to develop a breach-loading weapon but he had participated in Civil War reenactments. Even with muzzle-loaders, paper cartridges like those soldiers of both sides had used during the American civil war could increase rate of fire by as much as fifty percent compared to the old-fashioned manual loading practiced by Sergius's army. Replacing awkward matchlocks with percussion caps would speed things up even more. That could have made a big difference in their battle at Dinan. It would certainly make a big difference when they took the battle to the Rissel.

Dafed brushed her question away. “Do you want to talk or do you want to fight?"

"Fight.” She headed down to the training ground to see if she could scare up some knights who'd attack her from horseback. She'd gotten lucky against the Dinan cavalry but wanted to make sure she relied on skill rather than luck if she ever had to face that kind of attack again.

For the next five hours, she forgot about war, forgot about Sergius and his uncles, forgot about everything but the pursuit of a perfect cut, the matching of wits on the field, and the almost mystical feeling she got when she performed her Kata and found something new buried in the form, some new technique that had been obscured because she hadn't been ready for it, and was suddenly made clear by what she'd learned on the battlefield.

For a while, at least, the King's banquet was a long ways away.

"Leave your weapons here, please."

Ellie didn't recognize the guards at the ballroom door, but then, the army had been growing so fast, she didn't recognize most of the soldiers any more.

"I'm Ellie Winters,” she explained. “The returned Princess."

"Only the King's bodyguard is allowed weapons tonight.” The sergeant in charge of the guards looked embarrassed, he didn't look like he was going to back down from his orders, either. “Sorry. With Sullivan and Harrison both paying court to the King, there are too many chances that someone will drink too much, say the wrong thing, and launch a blood feud. That's the last thing His Majesty needs right now."

She, and all the sergeants, had worn their swords to the King's coronation so she didn't think this rule should apply to her, but no one else was objecting.

Maybe Sergius was worried that she'd take her revenge on Harrison for murdering her parents and create an incident. She reluctantly handed her katana over.

"If you lose it, I'll hunt you down,” she promised. She didn't have much to remember her parents by. The book, the jewels, and the sword were it. And she didn't want to lose any of them.

"Don't worry."

Easy for him to say. He wasn't the one who was walking into the lion's den without his defenses. But Ellie would go in naked to hear the King's final announcement of the parliament. A couple of hours away from her weapon was a small price to pay.

Dinner was massive, heavily spiced, and not very good.

Ellie found that she and Mark were seated with Dafed and some of the other sergeants from the early days in the army. The King sat halfway across the ballroom between his uncles, flanked by the Bishop, Arnold's father Ranolf, and several of the other barons who had thrown their support to Sergius even before his victories. Ranolf caught Ellie's eye and nodded.

She nodded back, then glanced around and caught the glare of the man at the table beside hers.

From the strangely styled clothing, she guessed he was foreign.

"He's the Rissel Ambassador,” Dafed whispered. “Word is, he sees you as the main reason Rissel ambitions have been thwarted here in Lubica. Good thing we had to drop off our weapons, huh? He looks like he wants to kill you."

The way the Ambassador kept looking at Ellie, she felt as if she were naked. His brown eyes were hard and cruel. He stabbed his knife into the roast pork in front of him and Ellie knew he wished his knife were plunging into her body as well.

"I didn't know the Rissel were here,” Ellie whispered back.

"Yeah. Supposedly we're at peace with them now. That's part of the reason they were supplying Harrison. So we could fight amongst ourselves and they could stand there with their hands supposedly clean. It won't last. Sergius has to clear them out of the north if he's going to have a Kingdom to rule."