He was not going to sneak into this hypocritical ceremony. The ball was over and the dance floor crowded with people, all looking up at the stage where the dignitaries were taking their places for Lord Ricinus’s Honouring.
Rix’s heart missed three or four beats before restarting with a lurch. The chancellor sat centre stage, smiling. Had Lady Ricinus’s plot failed, or were her assassins waiting for the end? Or would the executioners be the chancellor’s? Rix faltered.
The high constable took his place on the chancellor’s right, the lady justiciar to his left. The chief magian was there too, and Abbess Hildy. All the mighty of Hightspall were in attendance. Had they come to witness the rise of House Ricinus, or to gloat in its fall?
He reached the edge of the stage unnoticed. Rix’s head was throbbing and he felt a dire urge to scream at his parents,
The preliminaries must be going well; even Lady Ricinus was smiling. How could that be? The chancellor had threatened House Ricinus with ruin if she did not hand Tali over. Did Lady Ricinus’s smile mean that she had taken Tali and was ready to deliver her? Or, after events at the Crag, did the chancellor no longer care?
Abbess Hildy, a plump, soft-faced woman of indeterminate age, lumbered to her feet. ‘Lord Chancellor, Lady Justiciar, High Constable, Chief Magian, Dignitaries, ladies and lords, welcome to this Honouring.’
She paused to catch her breath.
‘Much has been written about the House of Ricinus, and much has been said. That they were thieves and brigands who made their gold in dirty trades.’
Someone in the audience tittered, and Lady Ricinus looked uneasy. Was this a set-up to lull House Ricinus into false hope, then bring it crashing down? The chancellor’s ironic smile suggested he had such a plan in mind.
Hildy continued, in a sneering tone. ‘That they were upstarts who bribed their way to the top. Scoundrels unworthy to sit among the noble houses of Hightspall, or to occupy this, the most magnificent palace in Caulderon, which was first built by the greatest of the Five Herovians, Axil Grandys himself, not long before his mysterious disappearance.
‘I too looked down on the upstarts. I knew that, generous though they were to all manner of causes, House Ricinus was beneath contempt. And I told the chancellor so, that he might find a way to topple this unworthy house.’
The whole room was buzzing now. Lady Ricinus’s red fingernails were gouging varnish from the arms of her chair. Was this the chancellor’s revenge — the Honouring to be a public humiliation? From the gleeful faces of the nobility, they hoped so.
Hildy paused, looked around the gathering and, after a dramatic pause, said, ‘But I was wrong.’
Heads turned. People whispered among themselves. The chancellor rose halfway from his chair, his famous composure lost for a few seconds, before settling back, tight-lipped. What was going on? Had Lady Ricinus won after all? Rix prayed that she had not. Any such victory would be a travesty. And yet, for the sake of his house …
Hildy opened a flat leather case, withdrew a ragged, dirty piece of parchment, and held it up.
‘For two thousand years it has been held that our founding hero, Axil Grandys, died without issue, despite that he was renowned as a vigorous and lusty man.’
She paused for a full minute, until the whispers died away.
‘This document proves otherwise. This parchment shows that Axil Grandys fathered a daughter, Mythilda, and acknowledged her before his disappearance. And Mythilda’s line, it has been proven to my satisfaction, runs unbroken all the way to the present time. To the father of Lord Ricinus, and therefore to his son, Rixium Ricinus.’
‘Bastards sprung from bastards, back to the beginning of time,’ sneered a red-faced nobleman on Rix’s left.
Rix was not inclined to disagree.
‘House Ricinus,’ said Abbess Hildy, taking a sheaf of documents from the case, ‘has always been seen as the lowliest, its lord and lady as greedy upstarts. But no more. Should these papers pass the final test, Ricinus will take its place among those houses who can trace their line all the way back to the founding fathers.’
She bowed to Lord and Lady Ricinus.
‘I present the documents for authentication,’ said Abbess Hildy, handing the stunned chancellor the parchment and the other papers.
And Rix knew, from the smile on his mother’s face, that the critical document was a forgery. It would be a masterful one, doubtless written on two thousand-year-old parchment in ink equally ancient. And the monumental bribes she had been paying for the past three years, that had almost emptied their treasury, had been to smooth its passage to authentication and her house’s rise to the top.
The chancellor rubbed the parchment between his fingers, held it up to the glow from a brazier behind them, then raised it to his horn-like nose.
‘It
The chief magian probed the parchment with the heel of his staff, and then with the tip, and passed an object like an ivory-rimmed spectible over it.
‘This parchment is ancient,’ said the chief magian, a tubby, balding little fellow with tiny feet and hands, after some minutes of increasingly frustrated magery. ‘So ancient that it was not made in this land. It came, no doubt about it, on the First Fleet from our lost homeland of Thanneron, now crushed beneath the ice that draws ever closer to our own fair isle.’
‘Damn the parchment!’ snarled the chancellor. ‘It’s the writing that matters. When was it written?’
The chief magian studied the parchment again. A tap of his staff made the writing glow leaf green, then flesh pink and finally indigo.
Rix held his breath. Part of him yearned for it to be authentic, and for the legitimacy that would bring his house. Another part prayed that Lady Ricinus would not get away with so monstrous a lie.
‘This ink flowed from the nib two thousand years ago,’ said the chief magian.
‘My Lady Ricinus,’ said the chancellor with a vulture’s smile. ‘We cannot fault the critical document, therefore House Ricinus’s
He extended his hand, though from the look on his face the chancellor would sooner have cut it off than shake hers, or Lord Ricinus’s.
Rix had to admire his mother’s cunning. She had neutralised the chancellor’s threat to bring down their house unless they delivered him Tali, for not even he had the power to topple a house of the First Circle for so minor a reason. But why hadn’t he acted on the treason? Because Lady Ricinus was far more use to him alive than dead? Or was this just the first move in a deadly game between them?
‘Lady Ricinus,’ the chancellor continued, ‘before we began the Honouring, you mentioned two matters of moment. What is the other?’
For a second, Lady Ricinus’s poise failed her, and her triumphant smile revealed her lack of breeding. Then the sickening false humility was back.
‘My beloved Lord, Ricinus, is unwell.’ She extended a hand to him. Lord Ricinus lurched across the stage and flopped his pulpy hand into her bony one.
‘He was savagely struck down by the escaped Pale slave just days ago,’ said Lady Ricinus, ‘and our healer fears my lord’s remaining days are few. Lord Ricinus regrets that he is unable to discharge his duties, either as a husband,’ several nobles tittered, ‘or as the head of House Ricinus. Therefore he begs to be released as lord, that he may spend — ’
‘It is customary for the lord of a noble house to be released from his duties only by death,’ said the chancellor.
‘An earlier release is not unheard of,’ said Lady Ricinus. ‘I can cite the precedents.’
‘I’m sure your notaries have documented every instance.’ The chancellor turned to Rix’s father. ‘Lord Ricinus, do you solemnly declare that you are no longer fit to discharge your duties as lord of your house?’
‘I declare it,’ said Rix’s father. ‘Where’s my drink?’
The nobles muttered in outrage. Lady Ricinus ground her heel into Lord Ricinus’s instep.
