Chapter XVI #3
Fia shifted her weight and squinted, as if she doubted the wisdom in speaking.
“I can’t be sure if it’s by accident or design.
But he is killing her. Every evening I manage to staunch her flow of blood and restore her a little, and every morning he undoes whatever progress I’ve made.
It could be incompetence, but if that were so, I believe Ariana would have gained ground by now, rather than continuing to fade.
I’ve tried watching, but he’s sly. I can’t be sure if he injures her in some way when he examines her insides, or if he applies some manner of unguent to draw out the blood.
And Ariana doesn’t know—she goes beyond herself when he puts his hands on her, to a place where she cannot feel and he cannot reach.
She says she does so because he reminds her too much of her losses, and I think he may have caused those too.
I’m not certain, mind you, but it doesn’t sit right with me.
And I haven’t much in life, but what I do have is a sense for danger. I wouldn’t be here without that.”
Orden understood her better than he’d ever admit.
The sense she spoke of was the same thing that had sparked within him whenever his elder brother Carian or his father Darias was near.
He’d seen his eventual death in both their eyes, and chosen to live.
Day after day he chose to live, but he did not want life without Ariana.
She was everything good and fine and pure to him—the higher cause he worked for.
To hear she’d been coming to harm and he’d neither known nor protected her was like an arrow to his chest.
Red began to limn his vision, as his pulse picked up and what felt like a choking hand closed around his throat.
Orden’s father and older brother had called such fits the hand of Mortis, god of death and judgment, and abandoned themselves to their influence entirely.
Orden himself believed only that he had inherited a powerful and vicious temper, and that a ruler who would conquer anything outside himself must first conquer what lay within.
He won some battles on that front, and lost others.
Only time would reveal the winner of the war.
“Do you see the river through the trees?” Orden asked Fia, pointing to a silvery gleam of water. “Go fetch the physician. Bring him to me there.”
There was a rushing in his ears, and his hands were beginning to tremble with pent-up energy. He wanted to give way to it—to destroy something. No. To destroy someone.
Letting out a steadying breath, Orden thought of Ariana. Of the way she looked, standing on the narrow balcony between their chambers, aglow with half-reflected starlight. The storm rising within him settled, but only a little.
Fia did as she was ordered without question or remark.
While he waited for her, Orden walked to the river.
It was a little slip of gray-green water, cutting its way between mossy banks.
Beside it, Orden removed his ornate embroidered doublet and carefully rolled up the sleeves of his fine linen shirt.
He unbuckled the sheath and pugio from around his forearm, setting them aside.
Then he found himself a handful of pebbles and tested their weight.
When Fia returned with Crispus, Honoria’s king had worked a smile onto his face as he loosely skipped one stone at a time. Crispus bowed and cleared his throat.
“My king. You require a physician?”
“I do.” Orden nodded. He beckoned to Crispus and held out a half dozen pebbles. “I’m in need of a little advice.”
Crispus puffed up with importance, his round, florid face growing beatific. “Then it is my honor to lend you what expertise I have, Majesty.”
Orden glanced down the river, to a serene patch of calm water.
He let a stone fly, and it skipped across the glassy surface, once, twice, three times.
The exercise calmed him and kept him from lashing out.
He would be kingly. He would be circumspect.
He would be self-controlled. “I’d like to know what might cause a woman to slip two babes before her time and bleed near to death after birthing others. ”
“Ah.” Crispus looked sympathetic. If he was anxious at all, it did not show.
Orden glanced at him sidelong but could see no nervousness in him beyond the sweat beading his forehead and staining his doublet, which could as easily be due to the oppressive heat.
“Majesty, childbirth is a perilous undertaking. Many women die during their trial, and the queen is small in frame, while you yourself are regal in your build as well as your demeanor. Rather than asking why Her Majesty has suffered in her quest to procure you heirs, you might rather wonder that she’s survived this long.
” Crispus said the last with a practiced, self-satisfied air, clearly intended to direct credit to himself, but his face was redder than ever.
Removing a handkerchief from one pocket, the physician mopped at his brow.
“I do wonder that she’s survived this long,” Orden said, still quiet.
The Chief Physician swam in a sea of crimson now, and the rushing in Orden’s ears was rising to a roar.
“I cannot quite work out what your aim has been. You haven’t killed Ari outright.
You haven’t prevented her from getting me an heir.
Most of the court views her as weak already.
What possible purpose could it serve, making her bleed? ”
Crispus sputtered, and his effrontery, in Orden’s opinion, was overdone. “I do not make women bleed, Majesty. You might as soon say that I turn the tides, or cause that which is dropped to fall. The gods bring women’s blood, and I can only work within their will.”
Orden seized on that, fixing Crispus with an unwavering gaze.
“Very well, then. Let us work within the will of the gods. I’ve been told you are the cause of my queen’s weakening.
You claim you are not. Whoever can shy the most stones into the rotted-out stump across from us has the truth of the matter, and the gods on his side. ”
There. If he was to be a tool for Mortis, he’d ensure he did so fairly, rather than seeking to justify his own unchecked temper.
Crispus’s sputtering grew frantic. “Majesty, you can’t be serious. A game, to decide the merits of such a grave accusation? I assure you, my word can be trusted.”
“Play the game, Crispus,” Orden said softly. “It is your only chance to walk away from this riverbank alive.”
This time the physician blanched, as Orden had never seen him do before.
A potent blend of dread and anticipation unfurled within the king’s chest. It would not be rage, if the gods favored him.
It would be well-considered justice. He’d do what he’d done unnumbered times before and protect himself and his dynasty.
Crispus threw first, and his aim went wide.
Orden went next, taunting the physician with a rock that bounced off the rotting stump.
He and Carian had played at shies a great deal, close in age as they were.
Carian had been fond of betting on the outcome and enacting various cruelties on Orden when the younger boy inevitably lost. So Orden had taken to practicing obsessively until his aim was true as a huntsman’s arrow.
It hadn’t stopped Carian from tormenting him, but it had at least forced his brother to choose some other method of doing so.
By the end, Crispus’s hands were shaking, and his shots fell woefully short. The last of his stones fell into the river and left small ripples. The physician watched the place where it sank with a fixed, desperate expression on his face.
Orden tossed his last stone with no apparent effort. It arced gracefully over the river and into the rotted-out stump, like a homing pigeon returning to its roost.
“Well,” he said, brushing off his hands. “It seems the gods have spoken. I’m going to drown you in this river now, Crispus.”
The physician dropped to his knees, gibbering and pleading.
Orden hated when they did that—he much preferred a stoic mark.
With a practiced grip, he grasped the odious man by the collar and dragged him to the water.
Crispus did not even put up a proper fight, used as he was to fine living and deference from those around him.
Oh, he struggled and thrashed as Orden shoved him down into the moss, but a knee in the small of the back and a hand at the scruff of his neck was enough to overpower him.
Water boiled around Crispus’s head and his frantic efforts to raise his face enough to take a breath.
Orden allowed it, then shoved him back under.
No need for this to be overly swift. Not if the gods were with him.
He saw it all through a haze of crimson and could hardly hear the tumultuous stirring of the waters.
Pleasure rose in Orden, sharp and vicious, and one he forbade himself except on the rarest of occasions.
He would be a wise and temperate ruler, rather than another Inver sadist or warmonger.
He would master himself first, and someday, his offspring would master an empire.
But for now, the gods were with him. Another long submersion, and Orden drew Crispus back up, gagging and retching river water.
“I don’t even care how or why you damaged my queen,” Orden growled. “But you will never touch her again, and I will see that your name is made a curse.”
“I care,” a frigid voice rang out. “I care very much how or why he damaged the queen. Let him up now, before he takes that answer to his grave.”
Orden turned in disbelief, livid at having the king’s justice interrupted. But Fia stood motionless, a rock for his anger to break on.
“You know there’s wisdom in that,” she said. “Heed it and bring him to me.”