Blood Succession (Knight Protector Book 4), page 4
“Tell me, Crassus. I’m walking into this blind. I promise you, you will not offend me. But someone almost blasted my head off. I’ve a right to know why, don’t I?”
He considered, and then nodded. “Alright. Then I ask your pardon in advance if I overstep in what I’m about to say.
“But King Agalyn left this city to rot, Aria. He was too busy chasing down sorcerers to build an invincible army, too busy pursuing that damned queen of the North to build his empire. And much good it did him. Now he’s dead, and the empire is falling apart. There’s poverty, and homelessness, and crime. There’s desperation and fear everywhere.
“So that man – it wasn’t you he wanted to kill. It wasn’t you he hated. It was the monarchy, and Agalyn. It was the old way, that left him and so many others behind – the old way, that’s killing this nation.”
Chapter Four – Terese
The constabulary came and took the body away. The neighbors came and congratulated them both. They were heroes, Maria Aurelia declared. Crassus should be proud, and so should Priscilla, the Brutus patriarch said.
The police carried off those who didn’t belong – the street sweepers and the carpenters, the old woman in once-fine clothes and the merchants.
Then Priscilla herded them inside.
Terese kept her own counsel during it all, until they were back in their sitting room with the doors tightly shut, and the servants outside. Then, she rounded on her brother. “What in the gods’ names did you do, Augustus?”
Her brother flushed and blustered a little, snorting and demanding, “What do you think I did? You were there. I killed an assassin. I saved Queen Bumpkin’s life.”
“My ass you did. He was down, he was disarmed. He had no weapon, and a broken arm. He couldn’t do a damned thing.”
“Terese,” Priscilla hissed, “language!”
“And you, Mother: you were in on it too, weren’t you? You both were. The whole thing, it was planned. It was a setup, wasn’t it? That man – who was he? Does Father know, or was this your little scheme?”
They denied it for a few minutes, but she knew what she’d seen. It had all come together for her out in the street, while the wooden-legged man’s blood had been pooling at her feet.
Her brother and father’s nervous scanning of the crowd hadn’t been disinterest or a military man’s instincts; they’d been on the lookout for their plant. And her mother had moved her deliberately – not so that Aria would see Augustus first, but so that he would have a clear shot.
Which was a tell in its own right. Her brother never carried a weapon, not unless they were headed to the range. And then, only at their father’s insistence. She enjoyed the range far more than Augustus. He viewed it as a punishment rather than a pleasure.
But the most damning bit of all had been Augustus himself, after he’d pulled the trigger. She’d seen it in his eyes when she asked why he’d done it. He had no good answer. He had only shame and bluster, competing for dominance like they were now.
“Oh damn it all, Terese. Fine, we planned it. Are you happy now?”
She stared at him. “You killed a man, Augustus. You murdered him.”
“I didn’t murder him. He was dying already.”
“It was a mercy,” Priscilla interjected. “He was a soldier, Terese. He lost a toe in the southern marshes, and he picked up something there, some kind of infection that they couldn’t stop. After the toe, he lost his foot. And after the foot, his leg. The medics didn’t know what to do, so they discharged him so he could die at home. He can’t afford medicine here. So he was going to die anyway, and much more painfully than a bullet.”
She shook her head, uncomprehendingly. “How in hell does that justify murdering him?”
“It wasn’t murder. He knew what he was doing. It was a trade.”
“A trade? Mother, you had him shot.”
“And we’re supporting his family. So yes, a trade: he exchanged his life, so that his children will live well. We’ll make sure they are educated and marry well. They’ll want for nothing for the rest of their lives.”
Augustus shrugged. “So you see, Terese? Really, it was a bargain for him.”
Their mother seemed to miss the sarcasm in his tone, because she nodded. “Yes it was. They’ll live better because of his sacrifice than they ever would have had he lived a long and healthy life.”
She stared first at her stepmother, and then at her brother. Priscilla, she expected to be that cold-blooded. But Augustus? “Why? How could you do that? Does Father know?”
He laughed. “My dear sister, it was his idea.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well you should,” Priscilla said. “We lost a fortune in Agalyn’s war. This country will never be able to repay it, not in five lifetimes. If House Crassus is going to continue to mean something in this country, we need to make sure we don’t replace one vain fool with another. We need to make sure there’s a steady hand at the helm. A hand that won’t just run through our money and run the nation into the ground.
“Unlike you with Agalyn, your brother is doing what it takes to ensure that. He knows his place in this family, Terese. He’s willing to sacrifice for it. It’s about time you learned to do the same.”
She got the full story from the pair of them – Priscilla speaking matter-of-factly, and Augustus supplying details here and there, in acerbic tones.
Crassus wanted to ensure that Aria agreed to the marriage, so he’d cooked up the scheme to playact an assassination and heroic rescue for all the city to witness.
“This marriage cannot fail,” Priscilla said. “You know half the city will be trying to sabotage it. They’ll all have their own sons and grandsons and brothers they’ll want her to attach herself to. And even if she understands the scope of them, the pecuniary considerations might not be enough. We needed an advantage, before anyone else.”
“Murder? Murder was your advantage, Mother?”
“It’s not murder. Flavius agreed to it. He practically begged your father for the opportunity, when Crassus was hesitant because of the leg. He wasn’t sure he’d be agile enough to get it done. The man was in tears, pleading to be the one.
“If that’s murder, well, I’m the queen.”
“It’s murder,” Terese said. “He had no choice. His kids would have starved.”
But Priscilla waved this away as sentimental nonsense, and Augustus reminded her, “He was dying already, Terese. Rotting away. He was in pain all the time. If not for those kids, he would have put a hole through his head a lot sooner.”
“So that justifies it, Augustus? So that makes it alright to kill him?”
He shrugged. “He seemed to think so. He thanked me.”
“Is this what you want? A marriage borne of lies and murder?”
“It’s not murder.”
“Death, then. Call it what you will. Is that really what you want, Brother?”
He didn’t answer her. He scowled instead, a black moroseness settling on his features, and their mother chided her for being such a stubborn, sentimental, selfish fool.
And then their father got home, and he reprimanded her anew. “You almost ruined everything, dammit, Terese. If they’d taken him alive, they might have got the story out of him. Those inquisitors would have. It would be just a matter of time.”
Her defense, that she hadn’t known the scheme herself, that she’d only been trying to stop an assassination, did her no favors. “I thought you gave up playing the hero when you flunked out of the academy? Godsdammit, girl, how many times do you have to disgrace this family? Can you not for once act like a lady, like a daughter of Crassus, and not –?”
He broke off there, and Terese’s eyes flashed. She’d heard the line so many times, or some variant of it, that she knew what to expect. “Not what, Father? Not like my mother?”
He fixed her with a hard gaze, his light eyes seeming cold as steel. “You’re not responsible for your mother, Terese. That was my mistake, and not yours. But you are responsible for your own actions.”
“And what action was so wrong, Father? I saw someone about to shoot the queen, and I intervened.”
“There were soldiers everywhere. It’s their job, not yours. You’re supposed to act like a lady, not a godsdamned wild woman from the fenlands.”
“You didn’t have a problem with wild women from the fenlands when you were taking advantage of my mother,” she reminded him, “and cheating on your wife.”
Which earned her a slap, first from her father, and then her stepmother. He said, “I didn’t take advantage of anyone. Your mother was a harlot, and I was a fool. And I’ve spent the last twenty-three years paying for it, haven’t I?”
Then he left, and Priscilla smacked her. “Your father has done nothing but try to do right by you, Terese. He took you home, when he could have left you in that hellhole. He took you from a war-ravaged backwater and made you richer than a princess.”
Terese laughed, a cold, mirthless laugh. “War-ravaged, by men like my father.”
“And gods know, I’ve tried to be a mother to you, a proper example. I’ve never held your mother against you. I’ve never held your father’s indiscretions against you, even though you are living proof of them. That was between him and her, and him and me. And I’ve forgiven him.
“I tried – you know how hard I tried – to arrange a marriage between you and the king, to make you the most powerful woman in the South.
“I don’t expect much, Terese. I don’t expect you to love me like a mother. We both know that’s never going to happen.
“A little gratitude here and there for all we do for you would go a long way. But that’s too much for you.
“Well, so be it. But hear me now: you will not sabotage my son. You gave up your opportunity. We didn’t force the issue. But my son knows his duty, even if you do not. And I will not allow you to ruin him.
“And if you make it a contest of him or you? I will destroy you.”
Then, Priscilla drew herself up tall, and straightened the front of her dress. She breathed in and breathed out, and walked after her husband. She called over her shoulder as she reached the door, “You will be ready in time for the coronation.”
Augustus loosed a breath after she’d gone. He’d been there, silent and watching. Terese felt her cheeks flame at the reminder. Bad enough to be humiliated, but worse in front of an audience. “They don’t mean it,” he said in a minute.
“Yes they do.”
“They’re just worried. If we have another war like the last one, we’re ruined, Terese.”
“I don’t care. None of it justifies murder.” She shot her brother a withering glance. “And you? You went along with it. You’re no better than them.”
He blinked at the vehemence in her tone, then nodded. “Maybe. I don’t know if it makes a difference, but I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t met the guy first.”
“The guy?” she repeated. “Do you even know his name?”
He shook his head. “No. No, they didn’t want me to. So I wouldn’t slip up later on.”
“Easier on the conscience, I guess. Easier to pull the trigger when you don’t even know your victim’s name.”
“He was dying, Tee. He was in a lot of pain. I didn’t even talk to him for long, and I could see it. The infection was eating him away.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have, if he had real treatment.”
Augustus nodded. “Maybe. But who was going to pay for it? You? Me? With what?”
She knew the point he was making. They were the children of the richest man in the South, but they had nothing of their own. She came from peasant warriors on the southeastern border. She’d been the product of an affair between a young fenland woman and her father, during his time in service. That was all she knew. She had no memories of her mother. She didn’t know the other woman’s name. She hadn’t even come to the capital with the name her mother had given her. Priscilla had picked the new one, when she was an infant, and that’s what Crassus had entered into the public rolls. So she didn’t know what her own mother had called her, or who her family on the border might be. She had no ties in that direction, and certainly no independent wealth.
And as for her brother, Priscilla came from reasonable wealth, but her interests and Crassus’s lay together. She would not circumvent his wishes, even for her son. Not on something like this.
Still, she said doggedly, “Father could have afforded it.”
“Of course he could have. But would he have?”
“It doesn’t make it right, Augustus.”
He nodded. “I didn’t say it did. But it makes it less wrong, right? And if I end up king, well, maybe I can make sure there’s treatment for guys like that when they come home.”
She snorted. “How benevolent.”
“I didn’t say I was. But some good can still come of it.”
“It doesn’t make it right.”
He considered her words for a long moment, then nodded. It was a forlorn gesture, followed up by a shrug. “That’s the way the world works, isn’t it? I’ll see you later, Tee.”
Chapter Five – Aria
Crassus left her in the hands of an army of priests. They were unlike the priest at her village temple in almost every respect. He dressed simply, in clothes as humble as the poorest parishioners. These men dressed in rich silks, and wore headdresses embroidered in silvers and golds, and inlaid with gems. Her priest too had been old and stooped with years, with the evidence of a hard life etched into deep chasms in his weathered skin. These men were all young with unmarked skin, or men who tried very hard to appear so. It took her a moment to realize that some of the youthful hair tones around her came from apothecaries’ bottles, and some of the thick, full heads of hair were actually wigs. Then, she noticed the lines around eyes where color or skin powder had creased, or the smears where the colors had worn off, and realized that the unblemished skin was an illusion too.
So she found she didn’t know how old these men were, or what manner of lives they’d lived. Some clearly were older than others, and some no doubt had come from more hardscrabble backgrounds. But they’d made every effort to obscure those details and blemishes under a veneer of smooth, youthful, perfection.
Indeed, the effort was so universal among them that she could only conclude that youth was a thing highly prized among the clerical orders. Or perhaps it was a reflection of the city as a whole, and not the priesthood in particular. So far, she’d spoken only with Crassus for any extended period of time. He had not gone to any such lengths, but perhaps he was the outlier. How could she know, one way or the other? The citizens she’d passed on the road had been too far away to glean anything useful from their presentation.
She soon forgot the point, though, because the rituals began. Like most rituals in her experience, they started with prayer. They took her to an open-air temple in the center of a well-landscaped courtyard. A tall man wearing a nemes headdress bade her kneel on a velvet cushion. He, she gathered, was a high priest.
She did as he bade her, and then he lifted his hands and prayed for a very long time, in a language she didn’t understand. Other priests gathered around them, chanting low and then high, and sometimes falling silent in some kind of reverie.
Then the man in the headdress offered her his hand and told her to follow him. Again, she complied, and this time he led her to an artificial pool fed by a fountain. The fountain had been carved out of white marble, in the form of a goddess. In one hand, she held a pitcher from which water flowed, and in the other she carried a sword, a single, marble droplet running down the blade. The sculptor had been very good. He’d managed to capture the fluidity of liquid, the natural flow of fabrics over a voluptuous female form, and even the graceful waves of long hair, all in stone.
Aria didn’t know the goddess. She was one of a panoply that seemed to grow all the time, with each new conquest. The rulers of the South had long ago figured out that it was easier to claim a conquered people’s gods as their own than to try to eradicate worship of those deities. No one’s true gods could be a point of rebellion or a bitter wound to nurse over long years when they were all true gods.
This particular true goddess, she learned, was Athelia, one of the warrior deities of the fenland peoples. “With one hand Athelia pours the water of life,” the priest intoned, “and with the other she spills the blood of the unworthy.”
Which, as far as Aria could tell, made her more or less like most gods – forgiving and merciful and benevolent. Until she wasn’t.
Still, this particular passage was delivered in a language she could understand, so she listened as he explained the role of the sovereign as the gods ordained it. “Leader and follower, shepherd and wolf, destroyer and builder, healer and killer. A queen must be all of these things. Cruel and kind, ruthless and merciful, unrelenting but forgiving. She must know when to pick up the sword, and when to lay it down; when to build anew and when to repair; when to speak and when to listen. She must hear the voice of the gods, and speak with authority over men. She must be open to counsel, but firm in her stances; a peacemaker, and a bringer of violence.”
The list went on for a very long time. Then the priest said, “Now, take off your shoes.”
She hesitated for a moment, but then complied.
“Put your feet in the pool and let Athelia wash away the dust of your travels. And with dust, let fear, and doubt, and all the infirmities of fallibility wash away. You are no longer Aria, the daughter of man and woman. You are Aria, daughter of the gods, divine in your own right: Queen of the South. May your name be a blessing, and your rule a joy. May you be a light where light is needed. May you be stronger than steel, and as unrelentless as fire. May your light burn bright as a beacon for generations to come.”
It was the first of three baths, and the first of two footbaths. The second bath was in waters scented like a rose, that had been blessed and anointed. A priestess and a half dozen female attendants aided her here, washing her from head to toe. Then they dried her in scented towels, and the priestess anointed her with oils. Then, she donned a new dress: a pure white peplos tied at the waist with a golden belt and pinned at the shoulders with brooches of gold. The color symbolized purity, and the gold accents spoke to both purity and nobility. The garment itself was a traditional symbol of ancient times, supposedly evocative of the humble, serving nature of the monarch.
