General Takise had iron hair and an iron bearing. He put his fist over his heart. “For the young king,” he said gruffly.
“Then we are agreed,” said Kania. She reached into the cradle and lifted her son. “We three shall serve as regents, until my son reaches his majority. And now…” For the first time, her voice filled with emotion, with sorrow so finely feigned that Marra marveled at it. “Now I must mourn my husband and make arrangements for his funeral. And his murderer. I beg you, my fellow regents, to bring me proposals for my son’s safety. It seems that we are at war with someone, and we must learn who. And quickly.”
And she swept out of the room, her head held high, carrying her son, while the courtiers erupted into amazement behind her.
* * *
“That was astoundingly well done,” said Marra’s mother, less than an hour later. “You got the two biggest rivals to the throne backing you.”
“They had to back me, or risk the other one gaining ascendancy. Takise is a good sort, anyway. Marlin you can’t trust any farther than you can throw him, but he is at least predictably power hungry.” Kania held her son to her breast, gazing at him with a kind of baffled astonishment. “Mother … what the hell do I do now?”
“Exactly what you’ve been doing. You seized control at the moment when it was all up in the air. If one of the others had acted like they were in charge first, you would have lost everything, but you moved first and that matters.”
Marra shook her head. She was beyond exhausted and she could hardly think. “Fenris…” she began.
Kania looked around. She had dismissed the servants and they were all in the tiny chapel again, ostensibly praying for the soul of Vorling. “I’ll do what I can,” she said, half in a whisper. “But I don’t know if I can spare his life. He murdered the king in front of everyone. I don’t know.”
Marra’s stomach clenched. She rested her forehead on the rail that separated mourners from coffins. There was no coffin yet. Would there be a coffin for Fenris?
I thought we had a better plan. I thought it was going to make more sense. I thought that Agnes would give the curse and then magic would make Vorling trip on the stairs or choke on a fish bone or something. I didn’t realized Fenris would just … just …
But of course he had. He was a man who got things done. He had been willing to die and he had seen a way to end the matter. Agnes had gotten away. Kania was free. A tyrant was dead. Fenris would have thought it was a fair trade, his life for Vorling’s death, but all Marra could think was that it was not fair, it was one more cruelty, as if Vorling had reached out from the grave and struck a final blow.
“We’ll figure something out,” Kania said. Marra lifted her head.
Her mother looked unconvinced. “Sometimes there are sacrifices that have to be made,” she said. “It may not be possible without risking everything you have gained. Your position is not secure, not yet. It is only the lack of clear rules of succession that let you step into the regency as you have.”
“Bless the paranoia of these Northern kings,” muttered Kania. “None of them allow anyone with power to oppose him to flourish.” She rubbed her forearm, and Marra wondered what bruises lay concealed beneath the sleeve.
“True. Nevertheless, if you are seen as soft on your husband’s killer…”
Kania stared down at her son. It occurred to Marra that she did not even know the child’s name. They had arrived too late to the christening for such niceties.
“I hated him so much,” she said softly. “So much, and for so long. I thought if he died, it would feel like a great weight off my shoulders, and yet I am just as weighed down as I was. Is he really dead? Is this truly happening?”
“It is,” said her mother.
Kania gave a single dry sob, startling the infant king, who began to cry.
“You did so good,” said Marra. “You did. All that with the lords and the generals and you even convinced people I wasn’t part of it. I couldn’t believe it.”
The sob had a laugh at the bottom this time. “Oh yes,” Kania said. “Oh yes, that part I knew. I’ve been running it through in my head for years, what I’d do if he miraculously died. I had every possible scenario memorized. It’s only now that I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do it sooner,” said Marra helplessly. “I’m sorry. Everything took so long to do and … and…”
She tried to explain. She got as far as Bonedog and began to cry and Kania also began to cry and their mother put an arm around each of them and held her daughters as if they were all much younger.
“I’ll help you,” her mother said. “I’ll help as much as I can. I can’t stay for terribly long, but grandmothers are allowed some time to dote on their grandchildren, and we’ll go through all the details while I’m here. There may be angles that you can find to keep the rest of the courtiers from seizing power.”
Kania wiped her eyes. “I wish Damia were here,” she said. “I wish she could have known that it got fixed. That there was justice.”
Marra gulped. Her eyes and nose were streaming and she wiped them on her sleeve. Justice seemed so little, so late. Kania had suffered for long years and the godmother for long centuries. The Northern kings had left scars on time. Even the thief-wheel still roaming the halls, even the furious ghost daughter …
I was buried alive to hide their shame.
She looked up. An idea had come to her, as terrible in its way as the very first idea had been, the one that had set her on the road to kill a prince and curse a kingdom.
“I know how to save Fenris.”
Chapter 22
The funeral of King Vorling was small by the Northern Kingdom’s standards. He had reigned for less than half a year and barely any preparations had been made on his tomb. His wife, the new queen regent, said that her husband would have preferred the wealth be spent on strengthening the kingdom’s defenses, as they were clearly targets of an enemy who might strike again, whatever ridiculous tale the Hardishman assassin had spun about a dust-wife and a goblin market and a geas. Diplomats had been dispatched to Hardack to demand answers, but no one was optimistic. There was sorcery afoot.
Perhaps the nobles might have been worried, with a foreign woman on the throne, but Queen Kania had already proven herself as ruthless as the kings of old. For at the foot of Vorling’s sarcophagus, under a screaming death mask, the assassin had been interred alive, to die of thirst in the halls of the dead. The queen had stood at the head of the procession and watched the lid come down. “For what you did to my husband,” she said, “for what you did to me.” And then darkness had covered the face of the Hardishman and the procession had left the tomb behind, deep in the dark and the dust.
It was fourteen hours later that Marra and the dust-wife flung themselves at the stone lid, scrabbling with all their strength. For a horrible moment, she thought that it would not be enough, that they would have to come back with levers, but it began, inch by agonizing inch, to slide. They got it perhaps six inches and had to stop, panting.
Fingers slid out of the gap and caught the edge. Marra nearly wept with relief. Fenris shoved the lid aside and sat up, gasping for air.
“You’re really here,” he said, bending over so that his forehead touched his drawn-up knees. “I kept imagining voices, but you’re really here this time.”
“We’re here,” said Marra, the words this time jabbing her like pins.
He took a half dozen sobbing breaths. “It is very close in there,” he said, “even with the holes.” His face was slick, with sweat or tears, Marra did not know. “Close and cold.”
“I’m sorry,” said Marra. “I’m sorry. It was the only way I could think of.” She pulled him out of the coffin, or he climbed out and she helped, and he wrapped his arms around her and they stood together, shaking.
“It worked,” he said. “I would not want to do it again. How many days has it been?”
“A little over half a day,” said the dust-wife.