her neck. She felt the colour flame into her face as she pulled away.
“That put the roses into your cheeks!” he chortled. “By God Issy, you grew up well. That’s a fine figure you’ve got lurking under those skirts.”
“That’s enough, my lord. You’ll injure yourself. This is unbecoming.”
“I’m alive, Isolla. Alive. Let me forget Royal dignity for a while and taste the world.” His hand brushed her naked collarbone, drifted lower and caressed the swell of one breast where the stiff robe pushed it upwards. A jolt ran through her that dried up the words in her mouth. No-one had ever touched her in that way. She wanted it to stop. She wanted it to go on.
“Well sire, I see you are feeling better,” a deep, musical voice said.
They disentangled themselves at once and Isolla helped the King to his feet. Golophin stood by the door with his arms folded, a crooked smile on his face.
“Golophin, you old goat!” Abeleyn cried. “Your timing is as inept as ever.”
“My apologies, lad. Isolla, get him to the bed. You’ve excited him enough for one morning.”
Isolla had nothing to say. Abeleyn leaned heavily on her as she helped him back to the large four-poster. Only a two-poster now. The other two were grafted on to the King’s stumps.
“My people have to see me,” Abeleyn said earnestly. “I can’t sit around in here like an ageing spinster. Issy has given me the bare bones of it. Now you tell me, Golophin. It’s written all over your face. What’s been going on?”
On his own visage, as the humour faded, pain and exhaustion added an instant fifteen years to his age.
“You can probably guess.” Golophin poured all three of them wine from the decanter by the King’s bed and drained half his own glass in a single swallow.
“It’s been only a few weeks, but your mistress Jemilla—”
“Ex-mistress,” Abeleyn said quickly, glancing at Isolla. A warmth crept about her heart. She found herself taking the King’s hand in her own. It was dry and hot but it returned her pressure.
“Ex-mistress,” Golophin corrected himself. “She’s proven herself quite the little intriguer. As we speak Hebrion’s nobles gather in the old Inceptine abbey and squabble over the regency of the kingdom.”
Abeleyn said nothing for a moment. He was staring at his wooden legs. Finally he looked up. “Urbino, I’m thinking. The dry old fart. She’ll find it easy to manage him, and he’ll wield the most clout.”
“Bravo, sire. He’s the leading candidate.”
“I knew Jemilla was ambitious, but I underrated her.”
“A formidable woman,” Golophin agreed.
“When is the vote?”
“This afternoon, at the sixth hour.”
“Then it would seem I do not have much time. Golophin, call for a valet. I must have decent clothes. And a bath.”
The old wizard approached his King and set a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Are you sure you are up to this, lad? Even if Urbino is voted the regency today, all you have to do is make an appearance at any time and he’ll have to give it up. It might be better if you rested a while.”
“No. Thousands of my people died to put me back on the throne. I’ll not let one scheming bitch and her dried-up puppet take it from me. Get some servants in here, Golophin. And I want to speak to Rovero and Mercado. We shall have a little military daemonstration this afternoon, I think. Time to put these bastard conspirators in their place.”
Golophin bowed deeply. “At once, sire. Let me locate a couple of the more discreet palace servants. If we can keep your recovery quiet until this afternoon, then the impact will be all the greater.” He left noiselessly.
Abeleyn sagged. “Give me a hand here, Isolla. Damn things weigh a ton.”
She helped him arrange the wooden legs on the bed. He seemed to find it hard to keep his eyes off them.
“I never felt it,” he said quietly. “Not a thing. Strange, that. A man has half his body ripped away and it does not even register. I can feel them now, though. They itch and smart like flesh and blood. Lord God, Isolla, what are you marrying?”
She hugged him close. It seemed amazingly natural to do so. “I am marrying a King, my lord. A very great King.”
He gripped her hand until the blood fled from it, his head bent into her shoulder. When he spoke again his voice was thick and harsh, too loud.
“Where are those damn valets? The service has gone to hell in this place.”
A BRUSIO had once been home to a quarter of a million people. A fifth of the population had died in the storming of the city, and tens of thousands more had packed up their belongings and left the capital for good. In addition, the trade which was the lifeblood of the port had been reduced to a tithe of its former volume, and men were still working by the thousand to clear the battered wharves, repair bombarded warehouses and demolish those structures too broken to be restored. A wide swathe of the Lower City had been reduced to a charred wasteland, and in this desolation thousands more were encamped like squatters under makeshift shelters.
But in the Upper City the damage was less, and here, where the nobility of Hebrion had their town houses and the Guilds of the city their halls, the only evidence of the recent fighting lay in the cannonballs which still pocked some structures like black carbuncles, and the shallow craters in the cobbled streets which had been filled with gravel.
And here, on the summit of one of the twin hills which topped Abrusio, the old Inceptine monastery and abbey glowered down on the port-city. Within the huge refectory of the Inceptine Order, the surviving aristocracy of Hebrion were assembled in all their finery to vote upon the very future of the kingdom.
T HERE had been a scurry of last-minute deals and agreements, of course, men shuffling and intriguing frantically to be part of the new order that was approaching. But by and large it had gone precisely as Jemilla had planned. Today Duke Urbino of Imerdon would be appointed regent of Hebrion, and the lady Jemilla would be publicly proclaimed as the mother of the crippled King’s heir. She would be queen in everything but name. What would Richard Hawkwood have made of that? she wondered, as the nobles convened before her in their maddening, leisurely fashion, and Urbino’s face, for once wreathed in smiles, shone down the great table at his fellow blue-bloods.
A crowd had gathered outside the abbey to await the outcome of the council. Jemilla’s steward had bribed several hundred of the city dregs to stand there and cheer when the news was announced, and they had, in the manner of things, been joined by a motley throng of some several thousand who sensed the excitement in the air. Jemilla had also thoughtfully arranged for fifty tuns of wine to be set up at various places about the city so that the regent’s health might be drunk when the criers went forth to spread the tidings about the change of government. The wine ought to assuage any pangs of uneasiness or lingering royalist feeling left in the capital. Nothing had been left to chance. This thing was here, now, in her hand. What would she do first? Ah, that Astaran bitch Isolla. She’d be sent packing, for a start.
As the hubbub within the abbey died down and the nobles took their places it was possible to hear the clamour of the crowds outside. It had risen sharply. They sounded as though they were cheering. Mindless fools, Jemilla thought. Their country is in ruins about their ears but splash them a measure of cheap wine and they’ll make a holiday.
The nobles were finally assembled, and seated according to all the rivallries and nuances of rank. Duke Urbino rose in his space at the right hand of the King’s empty chair. He looked as though he was trying not to grin, a phenomenon which sat oddly on his long, mournful face. The horsetrading which had occupied them day and night for the last several days was over. The outcome of the vote was already known to all, but the legal niceties had to be observed. In a few minutes he would be the
“My dear cousins,” Urbino began—and stopped.
The din of the crowds had risen to a roaring pitch of jubilation, but now they in turn were being drowned out by the booming thunder of artillery firing in sequence.
