King's Folly Page 9

  Zeroah and the woman were glaring at each other. Mielle filled the awkward silence with words. “Enjoy the midday,” she said, pulling Zeroah away.

  “Afraid of me, are you?” the woman asked.

  Mielle glanced back. She did not like the concubine’s superior tone or the way Zeroah looked ready to attack. “We don’t want to keep you from your important business.”

  “I do have important business,” the woman said. “A wedding to plan.”

  “Congratulations,” Mielle said.

  Zeroah spoke for the first time. “And whom are you marrying, mistress?”

  “You should well know I am marrying Sâr Wilek. Likely before he marries you.”

  Such words! This must be Prince Wilek’s concubine, the one Zeroah so feared. “You’re lying,” Mielle said. “Sâr Wilek would never marry you.”

  The concubine’s eyes flashed. “Silence, you stupid girl.”

  Far from stupid. Mielle smiled. “He’s already told you that, hasn’t he?”

  “You know nothing,” the concubine spat.

  “We must retire to my mother’s apartment for first sleep,” Zeroah said, tugging Mielle away.

  “Yes, run along, children,” the woman called after them. “Sâr Wilek will be waiting for me. We always spend first sleep together.”

  “Not for much longer!” Mielle yelled.

  “Do not bait her.” Zeroah squeezed Mielle’s arm as they rounded the corner. There were tears in her eyes. Not until they were safely within Princess Nabelle’s apartment did Zeroah let her emotions overtake her.

  “Evil woman. I hate her!” She threw herself onto a longchair and wept.

  The door opened and Princess Nabelle entered. “What is wrong?”

  Mielle held her tongue, hoping Zeroah would explain.

  Princess Nabelle strode to Mielle’s side and took hold of her elbow. “What has happened? Answer me.”

  “A woman spoke rudely to us,” Mielle said, uncertain how much Zeroah wanted her mother to know. “She implied that she and Sâr Wilek are to be married soon.”

  “It was her.” Zeroah sat up, wiped her eyes. “She said she was going to marry him before I did.”

  “Lady Lebetta?” the princess asked.

  Zeroah sniffled. “She said I was a child.”

  “Well, you are certainly behaving like one.”

  “But, Mother! She was horrible!”

  Princess Nabelle grabbed Zeroah’s arm and shook her. “Stop whining! When my father betrothed you to Sâr Wilek, my life changed forever. I had to move here. I had to infiltrate Rosâr Echad’s court. And I have spent the past ten years fighting with immoral men in hopes that you will have a better future. That our realm will fare better for all our toils. You will do your part.”

  “But how can I . . . ?” Zeroah broke off in a sob.

  “I will hear no more, Zeroah. We have been over this. The palace is filled with conniving women. If you do not grow a spine, once you are rosârah, women like Lady Lebetta will destroy you. You must learn to play the game. This . . .” She gestured to Zeroah’s tear-streaked face. “This is how you lose.”

  Wilek

  Father’s royal apartment originally had been on the fifth floor, but first his laziness, and later his ailments, prohibited the man from climbing to such heights multiple times a day. Therefore the royal apartment had been moved to the ground floor of the castle’s west wing.

  The King’s Guards outside the Throne Room saw Wilek coming and opened the doors. The hall was vast, walled in blue silk and bronze panels that were decorated with faces of the gods. Wilek crossed the worn white marble floor that scores of commoners had trod upon over the centuries. The throne itself—or shrine, as Wilek was prone to think of it—was made of bronze, with four legs that ran up the side of the chair in pillars to support a pointed canopy roof. Five bronze busts perched on top—Gâzar, ruler of the Lowerworld; Lâhat, god of fire; Mikreh, god of fate; and Yobatha, goddess of pleasure—each on one corner. Barthos, god of soil, stood upon the pinnacle. These were his father’s five chosen gods.

  King Echad Hadar sat wedged onto his throne, surrounded by his Wisean Council of advisors and a cacophony of chatter. The king had once been a muscular man. But sometime around Wilek’s twentieth ageday, his father had gained an abnormal amount of weight. His stomach ballooned, his chin multiplied, his muscles turned to flab, and his eyes sank into doughy cheeks.

  To hide his girth he wore velvet robes and heavy capes in Armanian shades of blue and brown. He had a short, pointed beard that had been dyed black to hide the gray, and eyebrows penciled darker with kohl. Under a massive crown, hundreds of black warrior’s braids threaded with jeweled beads hung to his elbows. They were none of them attached to his head. His illness had caused his hair to fall out. Wilek shuddered to think about what had become of the fighting man—or men—whose hair made up his father’s wig.

  Pontiff Rogedoth stood on the king’s right, as always, in the position Wilek would occupy if and when his father declared him Heir. Wilek and the Pontiff did not get along. The man was far too controlling and often acted as if he were king. He believed priests, being so close to the gods, were superior to others. For some reason, Father put up with his nonsense.

  The herald blew Wilek’s call on the trumpet, one short note and four long ones. “His Royal Highness, Wilek-Sâr Hadar, the First Arm, the Dutiful.”

  The bustle around the king ceased. Wilek bowed low to his father, who waved him forward.

  “We must increase the offerings to Barthos, my son,” Father sputtered, eyes wide and eager. “His anger is plain. How many in the prison are sentenced to die?”

  Wilek struggled daily to temper his father’s impulsiveness. “I am glad to see you well, Father,” he said. “How fares the castle?”

  “Havoc!” said Canbek Faluk, Earl of Ravensham. Hinckdan’s uncle was a greasy bachelor obsessed with sand cats. He owned several as pets and was currently wearing a cape of tan and black fur, buttoned at the throat with a fang as long as Wilek’s hand. “Two dozen servants were injured in my home and one was killed when a chunk of stone fell from the ceiling not three paces from where I was taking my morning repast.”

  “Rosârah Laviel twisted her ankle,” Avron Jervaid said, entering the room after Wilek. “She was descending the stairs when it hit.” Jervaid was an ugly man with pitted skin and an onion-like nose. He was the wealthiest merchant in Everton and owned a fleet of thirty-eight ships, though his fear of water kept him from sailing himself.

  “I am of a mind to move to my yacht,” Canbek said.

  “Are you daft?” Jervaid glared at Canbek. “Have you so soon forgotten how Captain Livina’s Half Moon went down? Boats are no safe haven from the earthquakes. I have lost four ships myself from their malevolence.”

  “What about the city?” Wilek asked, seeking facts over panic. “Two buildings collapsed in the Sink, that I know of, and a third tenement structure will have to be knocked down before it falls on anyone. My men report at least twenty dead and some fifty injured. Has Captain Alpress given a King’s Guard report?”

  “He is busy at present in the castle foyer,” Father said. “Those pillars are load-bearing. They must be repaired at once, or the crossbar will fall.”

  “The hub on the larger waterwheel broke,” Jervaid said. “And a boy fell off the south end of the Cobweb Bridge. He’d been walking the rail on a dare.”

  “Forget the city,” Canbek said. “I require a new apartment. And the Sun Chamber is still a shambles from the quake two weeks ago. The rosâr has had to meet his mistresses in his bedchambers.”

  “Those women have no business in my private rooms,” Father said. “Tell the master builder and his crew that if the repairs on the Sun Chamber are not complete by the next full moon, they’ll all be fed to Barthos!”

  “But, Father, if the builders are sacrificed, who will repair the castle?”

  “I’ll hire builders from Sarikar! Think, boy. There is more th
an one way to shine a coin.”

  “What of the sacrifices, Your Highness?” Pontiff Rogedoth asked, pulling Wilek’s attention away from the throne. He spoke slowly, calmly, always looking into the eyes of his subject. “Barthos could again shake the ground at any moment, maybe even destroy the castle. We must act quickly.”

  “I agree, worthy rosâr,” Jervaid said. “Barthos is a fierce god, one we must not provoke.”

  Father grunted and turned his beady eyes on Wilek. “Son? What say you?”

  Wilek would not encourage his father to murder more people to mollify his superstitions. “I do not know the number of prisoners sentenced to death.”

  “Find out,” Father said. “Nothing matters more than appeasing Barthos.”

  “Indeed, sire, you are very wise,” Rogedoth said, and the other men nodded, whether they truly believed it or not.

  Beaming bootlickers . . . Wilek found another matter far more pressing. “Did you know Magonia means to take over our realm?”

  Rogedoth turned his amber gaze on Wilek. “They’ve threatened for years. It is nothing new.”

  “I just arrested a Magonian woman and her daughter who were living in the Sink,” Wilek said. “They moved here, illegally, because they believe the prophecy is at hand, that their Deliverer is coming to destroy us.”

  “A superstitious people, Magonians,” Father said, as if the Magonian belief in prophecy was somehow worse than the five garments of clothing Father wore each day, or the five-stemmed candelabra that hung about the castle, or the fact that Mother had named Wilek “Willek” but the rosâr changed the spelling to five letters. Most people in the mother realms believed his name was pronounced Wile-ek.

  Clearly Magonians were the superstitious ones.

  “Regardless, Father, we cannot allow them to break the treaty, can we?” Wilek asked.

  “Absolutely not,” the king said. “Any illegal foreigners found in Armania are to be arrested and sentenced to sacrifice. Those you arrested today will go to Barthos next full moon along with three others. I’m raising the sacrifice from one to five from now on.”

  “A clever idea, sire,” Rogedoth said. “That should please Barthos.”

  A pang of regret kept Wilek silent. The Magonian women he met that morning would be killed because of his report. He hesitated now to broach the topic of the Athosian priest at the gate for fear his father would sentence him to death as well.

  “It’s good to sacrifice more convicts,” Jervaid said. “But we don’t want Magonian scum crossing our borders either. We should send word to Raine and have them increase the guards at the Cross Canyon Bridges.”

  “Actually,” Wilek said, “the women I met this morning came from Ebro to Pixford.”

  Rogedoth scoffed, nose pinched in disgust. “You’d think those prudish Sarikarians would recognize debauched women passing through their realm and arrest them.”

  “On the contrary,” Canbek said. “Sarikarian men have such temperate wives, they probably bring the Magonian wenches across the border in packs.”

  Several of the men laughed, including the king.

  Wilek did not. “Do not forget, Lord Ravensham, that my betrothed is from Sarikar.”

  “Indeed, Your Highness.” Canbek nudged him. “Fortunate, then, that your concubine is not.”

  The men laughed harder.

  “You misunderstand my meaning,” Wilek said, though he doubted anyone could hear him over their guffaws. “Princess Nabelle is also from Sarikar and is usually one of your number. It is callous to—”

  “Yes, yes,” Father said. “It was a joke, son! You’re too intense. You must learn to laugh.”

  Wilek gritted his teeth and forced a small smile. He feared his inability to revel with this group was perhaps the one thing keeping Father from naming him Heir. Janek never struggled with revels. “We should increase security on the Sarikarian border as well.”

  “Indeed,” Rogedoth said. “But this is King Jorger’s blunder. If Magonians are crossing his borders, he must be made to take action against it.”

  “Dictate a letter to King Jorger warning him of the Magonian trespassers,” Father snapped at Schwyl, his onesent.

  The discussion droned on. The first sleep bells tolled, yet long after them the men continued to plague the king with trivial matters: squabbles over marital dowries, merchant disputes, a series of stolen ships, a scandal involving a young lord and some missing jewels, a shortage of grain and produce at market, and a plea from a farmman claiming a mantic destroyed his crop with a spell. The Wisean Council should have ruled on these matters already, on their own, but these men lived for the power Rosâr Echad’s presence provided. And Rosâr Echad lived to be needed.

  Wilek had better things to do than join in the bootlicking. There was much to be done in the city. In the present, however, he wanted to escape to his chambers where he would find Lebetta, warm and waiting.

  When his father finally dismissed them, Wilek went to his chambers with Kal and found Lebetta standing inside the door in her black robes. Kal swept through until he was satisfied all was safe, then left them alone.

  Lebetta gazed at him, her eyes dark and sultry, and threw off her robes, revealing a sheer black gown. “You’re late.”

  Wilek’s eyes absorbed every curve. “You know how the rosâr can be.” He circled her waist with his arms and pulled her close. He wasn’t an overly tall man, but Lebetta’s soft flesh pressed against him made him feel like a demigod. He nuzzled her neck and feasted on her spicy smell, her velvety skin.

  Lady Zeroah’s face flashed before his mind, unbidden. Lebetta was a woman where Zeroah was a skinny child. He pushed thoughts of Lady Zeroah away and gave himself over to the soft warmth of the one woman who knew him better than anyone.

  Movement jostled Wilek awake. Lebetta was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him.

  “How late is it?” he asked.

  “Nearly evening. You sent a guardsman to check on me after the quake today. Can I expect more of that, now that your bride-to-be is living in Everton?”

  She was angry. She was always angry of late. “I cannot be so many places at once. The guardsman assured me you were safe.”

  “But you went to her. I don’t like her. Or her little honor maiden. If I can’t marry you, then I should have a say in whom you marry. Why don’t I have a say?”

  It was impossible to follow her. “You spoke with Lady Zeroah? When?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? The way we came upon each other in the hallway, it would have been rude not to.”

  “Etta, I cannot have you causing trouble with my betrothed.”

  “That child caused the trouble, not me. She shouldn’t get to marry you, Lek. I’ve known you longer.”

  “Not true. I met Lady Zeroah just after she was born. Five years later on my majority ageday, I received you both as gifts, you as my concubine, Lady Zeroah as my future bride.”

  “But I came home with you that day, and I’ve been here ever since.”

  His nerves began to smolder. He could not have this conversation again. “You question my devotion?” He reached for her hand, but she stood and stepped away from the bed.

  “Any woman would question the devotion of a man who marries another.”

  He wanted to scream. “I’m not just any man, Etta. I’m a prince of Armania. It’s my duty to serve my realm and produce a legitimate and noble heir.”

  “Noble . . . what a filthy word. You’ll marry her, then. And she’ll take my place in your bed.”

  “Yes, I’ll marry her. But she will have her own chambers just as you have. Just as I have. Very little will change. I’ll see her only at dinners and formal gatherings.”

  “But you’ll lie with her.”

  “It’s my duty!”

  “Grave duty indeed.”

  He took a deep breath, hoping to calm himself. “How can I appease you, Etta? Tell me how to mend your anger and I shall do it.”

  “Marry me.”

&
nbsp; Woes! This was getting old. “You know full well it is against the king’s law for a man to marry a concubine. If I become king someday, perhaps I can change that law. For now, the subject of marriage is closed.” And please never speak of it again.

  “I thought you loved me.”

  He climbed out of bed and pulled her into his arms. “I do.” He tipped up her chin and kissed her softly.

  She turned her face and pushed away from him, but he grabbed her and kissed her again. For a moment she relaxed against him, but again she broke away, this time looking into his eyes.

  “If you truly love me, then I would ask something else.”

  He paused, dreading what she might want now. “Go ahead and ask.”

  “Make me one of Lady Zeroah’s bedchamber women. The positions will be filled long before you marry. It’s the highest honor in the realm for a woman to serve the rosârah.”

  Wilek didn’t know how to answer. He might never become rosâr in the first place. “Why would you want to?”

  “Because it’s an honor. And it’s a way to be a bigger part of your life. As one of her ladies, I’ll hear all the important things, attend all the important events. You must get me a position, Wilek! I want to be where she is—where you’ll be.”

  “You would have to serve her well, Etta. Treat her with respect. Be obedient to her every command. I would not think it easy.”

  “I’ll have to do that anyway. At least as one of her servants I’ll get paid.”

  He could not see this ending well. “I will make the suggestion.”

  “Not a suggestion, Wilek. A recommendation. And to Princess Nabelle. There’s a difference and you know it.”

  “I will think on it.” He could just imagine how the princess would react to such a recommendation.

  Lebetta released him and stepped back. “You’re not going to do it, are you? It’s because you hate me. I’m nothing to you but a body to warm your bed.”

  He rubbed his temples. “I don’t wish to fight, Etta.”

  “I’m merely trying to provide for my own happiness since you will not. Your brother’s concubines are paid, did you know that? Prince Janek offers jewels and fancy titles, sometimes eats with them at their table.”