Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
The throne room went quiet after Carlton spoke.
Verna gazed at Borgine on the steps of the dais, at the soldiers along the walls who had groggily gotten to their feet, at the three officials, and at the nine house heads.
"Everyone here must sign a document promising not to disclose what happened in this room today.
Anyone not willing to sign, please raise your hand. "
No hands went into the air.
"Good." She gestured to a young man with ink-stained fingers, who watched with wide eyes. "You. What is your name?"
"Aldric, My Lady," he stuttered out.
"I need paper and ink, and I need the palace seal. Can you get those things, Aldric?"
"Yes, My Lady," he said, and hurried to the scribe’s table.
Verna turned to Carlton. "We need to talk about how we’ll handle this before anything else."
Carlton nodded. "We must have a feasible story to tell the people."
"We do," she agreed. "He was sixty-two, overweight, and under considerable strain. A heart attack is our best option."
"And Olag?" Hardy asked from the middle of the group.
"A hunting accident," Verna said. "He was known to ride hard."
He nodded. "It could have been on my estate. Olag often hunted wild boars in the hills. My soldiers could smuggle the body out of the city immediately, then make a fuss about bringing it back in tonight."
Carlton nodded. "We’ll announce the emperor’s death in an hour. There’ll be two days of mourning throughout the Empire, and in that time, we’ll establish an interim council."
"Right," Verna said. "We’ll make the proclamation in the next hour."
Aldric returned with paper and ink and the palace seal on its chain, holding it out to her with both hands as though it might bite.
She sat at the table that ran along the side of the throne room and she wrote the announcement herself. The emperor had died of natural causes, and she decreed a period of mourning for two days. A council had been formed as planned.
She signed it with her name, pressed the seal into the wax and handed it to Aldric. "Copy this and post it on every public board in the city before the afternoon bell," she said. "Can you do that?"
"Yes, My Lady," he replied, and this time there was something in his voice that was not just compliance. He left at a pace that was nearly running.
Verna watched him leave the room, then gestured to Thom. "Take Bain to somewhere quiet where we can talk." She turned to Carlton. "Could you be present as well, John?"
Bain glowered at her, but allowed himself to be led out of the throne room without a word of protest.
She followed Bain and Thom to a small room off the main corridor, with a table and four chairs and a window looking onto an interior courtyard. Bain took a seat at the table, not arrogant now, just looking like a tired man who had watched his brother and father die on a throne room floor.
As soon as the three of them settled into the chairs, he said sourly, "I am the emperor now, Verna. Be careful what you say."
Verna raised an eyebrow at the remark. "No, you’re not, Bain.
We will make sure of that. The council is prepared to recognise that your position in your father's reign was complicated.
You were born into it and had little say in his conduct.
However, we are also not prepared to ignore that you came to my estate and put your hands on me, and that you sat in that throne room today knowing what your father had arranged. "
"I didn't know about the soldiers."
"Didn't you?"
"I knew something was planned," he said surlily. "I didn't know the specifics. That's not a defence and I want to be clear I'm not offering it as one."
Verna studied him. He was not his father, and was just as much his father’s pawn as everyone else. But he was a cruel man and would make a vicious emperor. After Borgine, what the Empire needed was someone level-headed and fair.
"The council is offering you a choice," she said.
"You can remain in Castine and stand before a tribunal to answer for your role in your father's administration.
The tribunal will be fair. The outcome will depend on what the evidence establishes.
Or," she paused briefly for effect, "you can leave the city today with a reasonable provision for travel and settlement, and you don't return. "
Bain went quiet for a moment. "And if I go?"
"You build a life far away from the palace. The council asks only that you sign a paper stating you will make no future claim to the throne and that you don't return to Castine without our permission."
"A clean exile," he said.
"A clean start," she said. "If you choose to use it as one."
He looked out at the window at the fountain in the garden and said, "He killed your mother."
"Yes."
"I had no idea," he said. "I want you to know that."
She studied his face, not entirely sure she believed it, though not sure she didn't. "It doesn't change what happened."
"No," he agreed. "It doesn't." He went quiet, and when he spoke again it was with flat simplicity. "I'm sorry for everything. I did things I wouldn’t choose to do again."
"That's worth something," Verna said.
He nodded once. "I'll go immediately after my father and brother’s funerals. I'd rather build something than defend an accusation I'm not sure I can win."
She nodded. "I'll arrange what you need before then."
He stood and nodded. "Lady Verna."
"Lord Bain."
He left without another word.
Thom watched him go, then said thoughtfully, "Do you trust him, Verna?"
"Not in the least. A leopard doesn’t change his spots overnight. He knows we hold all the cards and if we investigate those documents more thoroughly, we’ll find he’s as guilty as hell."
"So why let the bastard go?"
"Because it’s cleaner this way. Don’t forget we’re covering up Borgine’s and Olag’s deaths. And Bain has that card to play if he wants to get dirty."
"We should have killed him too," Carlton muttered.
"I know," said Verna wearily. "But he did nothing to warrant that. It would have been cold-blooded murder."
"I just hope it doesn’t come back to bite us," murmured Thom.
By evening the city had heard the news.
There were no demonstrations of either grief or celebration. The market quarter continued at a subdued pace and the taverns were full but not unruly. The imperial banners were lowered to half height and people looked at them as they passed, then moved on.
It was as if the city held its breath.
The house guards had been released from the antechamber and were now stationed at intervals around the palace. The palace's soldiers had been ordered to return to their barracks. They had obeyed with the relief of men who had been handed a way out of a situation they hadn't signed up for.
Kalen's arm had been seen to by one of the palace healers, and had been left with stitches and a firm dressing.
She was now in the corner of the room, listening to the house heads begin the council's first business.
Thom was at the table with Carlton and the others, working through the preliminary structure of the council with focused energy.
He had a bruise coming up along his jaw from where Bain had caught him with an elbow during the struggle.
Verna watched all of it from the window, feeling lighter now it was over.
The announcement of Lord Bain's departure from the city to grieve privately in the outer provinces went out on the second day of mourning.
His departure was received with jubilation. Bain had never been popular with the people.
The council of ten was announced after the mourning period ended.
It was described as an interim governing body, its purpose to stabilise the empire and establish a lawful process for determining future governance.
The news did not touch the events in the throne room two days earlier, which was the part the city seemed, on the whole, prepared to accept without examining too closely.
Verna picked up her pen, inviting the Empress Lysandra and Lady Fatima to lunch in the Palace drawing room the next day. They had been present at the funeral and now it was time for Verna to keep her side of the bargain.
Lysandra wrote back immediately accepting the invitation.
The next morning, Verna made her way to the drawing room, where a fire was burning in the hearth and someone had put fresh flowers on the table.
She arrived before them and stood at the window looking out over the palace gardens, the bare stone and dormant hedges in winter, and thought about home. She had been away from it for nearly a week now and was missing everyone.
Then the door opened and Lysandra came in first.
She was dressed, not in imperial purple but in a plain grey gown. She moved differently too, without the careful composure of every formal occasion Verna had observed her at over the years. More easily, as though she’d been freed of a heavy weight.
"Lady Verna," she said, holding out her hand.
Verna clasped it warmly. "My Lady."
Then Fatima came in behind her mother and closed the door.
To Verna, she had always been a figure in the background, overshadowed by the men in her family.
Seen now, in a room with good light and no subservience required, she had blossomed into a stunning woman.
She was around thirty, tall, with her mother's excellent bone structure and stately figure and a self-possessed quality missing from her mother.
She was dressed in deep gold that suited her colouring and held herself with confidence.
A servant brought tea and a plate of small pastries and then withdrew as silently as she’d come in. "I want to thank you," Lysandra said quietly. "For arranging a safe passage for us and for keeping your word."
"You earned it," Verna said. "You were the most important person in the operation and you took a great risk. That deserves more than thanks."
Lysandra smiled. "Nobody has thanked me in a very long time."
"Then you have been treated very badly in your own home."
"My husband wasn’t one to give praise."
"He should have," Verna said sternly.
Fatima was watching her from across the table, with a level gaze. "You are not what I expected, Lady Verna."
Verna turned to look at her. "Oh? What did you expect?"
"Someone more political," Fatima said. "More careful with every word. The same as the powerful people I’ve spent my life watching. You don’t mince words which is refreshing."
"I've been told my frankness is sometimes a failing."
"Believe me, it isn't. I’ve been listening to people pandering to my father all my life."
Lysandra poured the tea herself, then began to discuss the palace and the years she had patiently collected information because that had been the only real power available to her.
She talked about the early years of their marriage when the emperor once listened to her suggestions.
Then how he had gradually changed, became arrogant, nastier, until she was simply a wife sitting in a palace that had forgotten she was there.
"It nearly broke me," she said, simply. "More than once."
"But it didn't," Verna said.
"No," Lysandra said, looking at Fatima with an expression of love. "Because of her. I had to keep going for her, even as I watched my sons become as cruel as their father."
Verna smiled at Fatima. "She taught you?"
"Everything she knew," Fatima replied. "From the time I was old enough to understand.
Mother taught me how the palace worked, how power moved through rooms, and that decisions that appeared to be made in throne rooms had actually been made in corridors two days earlier.
How the people who appeared powerless were frequently the ones who understood the most." She gazed at Verna steadily. "She was right about all of it."
"She was," Verna agreed.
They talked for a long time. The tea was replaced with wine and the fire burned lower as the winter light outside moved toward afternoon.
Verna asked questions and listened to the answers with her full attention.
What she heard was two women who had navigated thirty years of a household built on fear and control, and had done it with a particular quiet intelligence that had kept them whole when many other people would not have survived.
At some point she realised she was not thinking of them as Empress and Lady any more. They were just Lysandra and Fatima, which was a different thing entirely.
"The palace is yours," she said at last. "Both of you. For as long as you want it. I made that arrangement for you to go as you requested, but you can stay here if you want. There’s no one to bully you now."
Lysandra looked at her. "You mean that."
"Completely."
Lysandra was quiet for a moment. "I wish to leave.
I have wanted for twenty-five years to go to a house in the northern hills that belonged to my mother's family. I have been thinking about it every day for longer than I can remember. I’ll plant a garden, sit on the porch and hear nothing louder than birds. "
"Then you shall," Verna said. "With my personal guarantee of your safety and provision for the rest of your life. I'll arrange it before the week is out."
Lysandra stared down at her hands and fell silent. Verna understood this was not ingratitude but the opposite. "Thank you," Lysandra whispered at last.
Verna turned to Fatima. "And you?"
Fatima shook her head. "I am not in any hurry to leave."
"Good," Verna said. "Stay as long as you like. This place needs people in it who know it properly."
Fatima looked at her with those level eyes. "You have something else you want to say to me. I can see it."
"I want to think about it first," Verna said carefully. "And some people I need to talk to before I say it. But yes, there is something I want to say."
When Fatima held her gaze for a long steady moment, Verna had the clear impression that she had already worked out what it was.
"I'll be here," Fatima said.
They finished the wine. Lysandra talked about the northern house, about a garden with fruit trees she remembered from childhood visits, and her voice had a quality in it that Verna recognised. She was quietly happy.
When they rose to go, Verna took Lysandra's hand briefly. "I’ve had a lovely day."
Lysandra smiled. "So have I, Lady Verna. You were always my favourite of the nobility."
Fatima followed her to the door, then paused with her hand on the knob. "Verna."
"Yes, Fatima."
The corner of her mouth moved into that almost-smile. "I look forward to whatever it is you want to say."
As Verna walked down the corridor, she thought about the council.
Tomorrow she would talk to them.