the Cauldron, there was no one to hide anything.
And the impact of it?
None, Karl thought. The King was the King not because of any great abilities to lead, or any wonderful personal qualities, but simply because he held the Keys. Whatever he wanted to do, whatever whim he wanted to indulge, he could… and this might be the most titillating, but certainly not the first, example of that.
What kind of system is it that puts a wanton hedonist on the throne? Karl thought angrily. By what right does he rule?
Especially, by what right does he rule the Commoners? Commoners like me, he reminded himself. Why should they… we… be subject to a man like that, simply because we have no magic-and, for the most part, want nothing to do with it?
There must be a thousand men better suited to rule than King Kravon, Karl thought. Shouldn’t there be some way of finding one of those men to lead?
Seditious thoughts, but thoughts, he realized now, that had been slowly working their way to the surface for a long time, ever since he was old enough to realize what kind of a man his putative father was, ever since he was old enough to realize what kind of a man he could choose to be when the power of the Kingship came to him… ever since he had begun to realize just how different life was for the Commoners who lived outside-not just outside the Lesser Barrier, but outside the webs of power and privilege woven by the Mageborn, and especially the Twelve. On every visit to the Commons, even though he had been carefully sequestered from the nastier parts of the city, he had promised himself that he would build on the goodwill he was attempting to engender, that when he was King, things would be different.
Now he would never be King. But if Mother Northwind had told him the truth, he had far more power than he would have as King. He could actually unravel the Mageborn-spun web in which the Commoners were trapped like flies in a spider’s larder, rip it apart like a cobweb in a gale and scatter it forever, never to be woven again.
Just hours before, he still hadn’t been sure. But now, thinking of the dead Commoner boy in the King’s bed, all the boys and girls and men and women who had suffered and bled and died at the capricious whims of MageLords and Mageborn, he was sure.
If he really were the Magebane, if he really could bring down the magical Barriers that protected Palace and Kingdom, and the insubstantial but even greater barriers that separated Commoners and Mageborn, he would do it…
… and pray to the SkyMage, if He existed, that whatever came after would be better than what had come before.
Mother Northwind heard the news of the boy’s death from the servant who brought her breakfast-servants never had any qualms about gossiping with her, seeing her as just a harmless old lady from the countryside, a Healer, to be sure, which made her Mageborn, but so down to earth she might as well have been a Commoner.
When the servant had left, she sighed. That poor boy, she thought. But I couldn’t leave him alive to be punished by Falk. And at least I got word to the Cause about his family; they’re safely out of it and away from Falk’s clutches, as well.
Falk would have seen the deed through his magelink. He would even now be rushing back to the Palace with Brenna in tow. Everything had happened just as she’d told Brenna it would. The girl knew now that her only hope lay with Mother Northwind. Karl knew his part, as well, and Mother Northwind was confident he would play it.
Falk’s Plan had come crashing down around his ears, and though he no doubt had some scheme already forming to salvage it by arranging a new attack on the King, another trip to the Cauldron, he would never get the chance-because Mother Northwind’s Plan was still very much intact.
She smiled and helped herself to a second boiled egg from her breakfast tray. Two days, she thought. Two days, and Brenna will be back in the Palace…
… and the reign of the MageLords will end.
Davydd Verdsmitt, now permitted his own quarters, rather plainly furnished but far better than a cell, watched the attack on King Kravon as it transpired, through a magelink much like Lord Falk’s own
… except his did not depend on the life of the boy who killed himself. His was linked to an enchanted object, a gold ball that hung from the center of the canopy over the bed. Since a Common Cause sympathizer in the Royal household had placed that object there, he had spent far too many late nights watching what it showed him, watching the King entertain lovers, each panting, groaning encounter renewing his jealousy, renewing his rage at the man he had once loved who had denounced him.
Obviously my timing was bad, he had thought in the earlier hours of the King’s encounter with the boy who killed himself. Kravon reverted to his natural appetites once he did his duty and produced an heir. Maybe if I had waited, he would have returned to me…
But no. Kravon had burned that bridge early on, presenting himself publicly as a happily married man, renouncing Verdsmitt as a pitiable figure who thought he was in love with the King but whose love the King could not return. There could be no going back after that, no going back after Lord Athol had also denounced his son and apologized profusely and publicly for his “derangement.”
And, certainly, there had been no going back after Davydd had faked his death.
He had thought he was almost over it, six years later when Mother Northwind had come to his door, but when she had offered him the opportunity to do something about it, to strike back at the King and the MageLords, all his anger had flared up again… and it had never subsided since.
And so he watched, night after night, as the King took lovers, but never took lovers of his own. He had had two or three in the years immediately after the King’s rejection, but that, too, had ended with Mother Northwind’s visit.
The boy who had tried to slay the King at Falk’s behest, then had slain himself at Mother Northwind’s, had been the youngest boy Kravon had ever bedded, almost as young as Kravon himself had been when he and Davydd…
Verdsmitt shook his head. Those days were more than thirty years gone. And soon the King would be gone, too.
Verdsmitt was able to watch the servants dragging away the dead body and stripping the bed of its blood- soaked sheets and mattress. He was able to watch right up until they also pulled down the blood-spattered curtains… and his enchanted golden bauble with them.
He swore. Then he realized exactly what had just happened, and swore louder.
Mother Northwind is too rutting clever for her own good, he thought savagely. His plan for killing the King, just like Falk’s, had centered on the King’s bed, the one location you could be certain he could be found at a particular time. His killing enchantments, like the enchanted bauble that had shown him what transpired there, were literally woven into the canopy; golden threads that that same Cause-linked servant had inserted after another Commoner servant had “accidentally” ripped a seam by stumbling against the cloth. But with the canopy gone…
So, too, was his weapon.
Falk’s plan had failed, which meant Brenna would be returning to the Palace with Falk. Mother Northwind would be pulling strings, as she did so well, to get Brenna and Karl together. She would be counting on him to kill the King on cue… and he had just lost the ability to do so.
Verdsmitt’s room was dark, now that the blue glow of the magelink had vanished. The fire had long since burned down to a few dimly glowing embers in the hearth, and his curtains were drawn.
But in his mind, Verdsmitt still saw images. He saw the boy, in his last night of life, pleasuring Kravon with hands and lips and body. He remembered when he and Kravon had had the same enjoyment of each other. He felt the old rage, burning even hotter, and then, suddenly, everything became very clear.
Kravon had to die. Not for Mother Northwind’s plan, but for what he had done to Verdsmitt. Verdsmitt’s tools for killing him had just been stripped away. But the King still had to die.
And now Verdsmitt understood how it could be done… how it should have been done all along. The solution hung in his mind, perfect in every detail: especially the one detail that now, in retrospect, Verdsmitt realized had been the flaw in his original scheme.
He had been operating under the assumption that he would strike from a distance. He had been operating under the assumption that it was important that he survive.
