Chapter Six The Only God of Men Is Coin #2
“You know, it is impolite to treat me like the child when I am ever explaining to you how things work, Six. I’d like a little credit—I’ve been thinking long and hard about what needed to happen after Aisling fell.
And now the cathedral has crumbled—you saw how folk took it at the wedding, gasping and wailing and whining.
They need to be sated, and ever, they need something to believe in.
So I give them a tourney, I give them stone objects, the last Diviner—and I give them a common enemy. ”
“You cannot blame sprites for things we have done.”
“Why not? I can’t see who it hurts.”
“It hurts sprites, you unimaginable prick.”
He waved a hand in my face like I was a nagging mosquito.
“I haven’t forgotten how readily the knighthood stoned a heretic like my grandfather.
It was just as easy for you and Maude and Rory to kill the Omens.
Do not be so naive as to think that hatred isn’t as potent a flame as faith, and make no mistake: Everyone hates sprites.
It may be the only thing the hamlets have in common. ”
The king’s gaze went out of focus. “Would that Maude were here. The might behind her name, her axe, her great legacy…”
“Maude would never do what you’ve done.”
“Wouldn’t she?” Benji’s cheeks went red.
“I could commit violence every day for the rest of my life and it would be nothing to the mountain of carnage the Bauer women have perpetrated. You realize it was Maude’s ancestors who started this conflict with the sprites in the first place, don’t you?
They hunted down Der ewige Mond. Killed it.
The sprites of Traum retaliated, and there has been bloodshed in the hamlets ever since.
It was the Bauers who crafted a common enemy for us all.
The Bauers who committed the strife the abbess sought to amend by creating the Omens, Diviners, the cathedral.
” Blue eyes boring into me, voice hot and righteous, he said, “There is no such thing as an unmarred paragon, Six. All of us do the wrong thing for the right reason. Even you. Or have you already absolved yourself from the multiple attempts on my life?”
Torrid breaths raked in and out of my lungs, stoking an inferno.
Benji’s brow unfurled, his own indignation slipping away.
“No matter. I do not need Maude to rally folk behind me any longer. I’ve made my own assurances.
I’m only sorry we never finished the ceremony.
But you can’t count on witless creatures like sprites to be punctual. ”
It was the only thing he’d said so far that did not make me ill. “We’re not officially wed, then.”
“The illusion is enough for now.” He picked my crown, my veil, off the floor.
“Now, come along. Regius Ormsby, that gossipmonger, has called a meeting. The fool is trying to cancel my event in Coulson Faire on account of your unfortunate incident.” His eyes fell once more to my abdomen.
“I’d like you to show him you are alive and well, that we might move on with the extensive arrangements. ”
When all I did was stare, Benji rolled his eyes, as if I’d affronted him with my lack of worldly knowledge. “I suppose the abbess didn’t let you out to attend any tourneys, did she?”
No. But I’d heard clamors on the wind from Coulson Faire every summer.
After, champions would often stumble to the tor, toss their winnings at a gargoyle, and demand a Divination.
What was a tournament to me? All I ever took from one was but another hand, pressing me down into water until I drowned.
“They take planning. Wares are sold, bets are made, ale is drunk, whores are paid—” He waved his hand in my face.
“Not to mention a delightful show of violence. Only these events are different. I told you—I aim to give the people something to believe in with those damn stone objects. And with Dedrick with the inkwell, Hamelin with the oar, Samuel with the chime, and Tory with the loom stone, and me with the coin—” He grinned. “I will.”
My gaze jerked to his face. “All of you will be competing?”
“Of course. We’ll be the champions of our hamlets.” The king raised his brows. “Now, will you come with me willingly, or will I have to call Hamelin to—”
I struggled to my feet. Snatched my veil, my crown, from his hand and put them on.
Benji stepped back, mouth open.
“I want to hear more about the tournament.”
He was looking at me like he had earlier, like he didn’t understand my aim—like it was me trying to put a shroud over his eyes—but his hunger for compliance outbid his hesitation.
Benji reached into his doublet pocket and withdrew the Artful Brigand’s coin.
“Best if we don’t elaborate on your wound or the stone in your body,” he said.
“While we’re at it, let’s not mention the tor or the spring water or, well, any of it.
We don’t want people thinking there’s an easy way back from death.
It might… you know. Lessen your impact.”
Life after death was a cruel fate—I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But it was like breathing in smoke, agreeing with Benji. My entire body rejected it.
I managed a curt nod.
“Lovely.” Benji reached out, took my elbow.
The coin flew.
A terrible rush caught me in the stomach, and the king and I catapulted through the Artful Brigand’s chamber, then its door.
He caught the coin in the dark corridor beyond, then tossed it again, this time downward, and we fell through the floors of Castle Luricht like I’d once fallen through dreams.
When Benji caught the coin for the last time, it was upon a flight of stairs. A landing, fixed before a tall mahogany door I recognized—the same place I’d been dressed for the wedding, where the painting Der ewige Mond resided.
A guard stood before the door. When my feet slammed onto woolen carpet, pain shot through my stomach. I bent over, barked out a nauseous cough.
And was sick on the landing.
“Oh.” Benji chuckled. “I should have seen that coming. Guard—fetch the Diviner a cup of ox-eye.” He tendered me an imploring glance. “Please don’t throw it at me this time.”
The guard, who was gaping down at my vomit and barely seemed to see me at all, left in a hurry.
Benji offered no handkerchief for the bile on my chin.
The king merely took a flask from his belt, swallowed what smelled like wine, then, with the affect of a naughty child, put his ear to the mahogany door.
Voices sounded in the room beyond. “An odd pairing, if you ask me,” someone said. “He, the grandson of a heretic, who incurred five bad portents in his Divination, suddenly earns favor from both the abbess and the last Diviner? Magical stone objects and a marriage contract?”
A man cleared his throat. Hamelin. “That’s not the issue at hand, Regius. We’re discussing the tournament.”
“Or if there should be one at all,” Regius bit back. “Now that she’s mortally wounded.”
“We don’t know that. There’s been no confirmation.”
“I was planning on hosting the joust. Though in a way, I already have.” There was a high, tea-kettle laugh. “She was struck with a lance, after all, was she not?”
“It was a spear, idiot,” said a woman—Tory.
Benji reached down for the latch. “Now’s a good time.”
He opened the door, revealing five figures around a table. Hamelin, Tory, Dedrick, Samuel—surrounding their stone objects—and Regius Ormsby, whose mouth had not yet caught up to his gaze. He was smiling, but his eyes were wide in unmitigated surprise.
Benji held out his hands in greeting. “Thank you for waiting, my friends. Shall we discuss the tournament?”
No matter his crown or his coin, he was young among them.
An adolescent, yearning to overcome those who childminded him.
But then I stepped into the room, and when I stood behind him, Benedict Castor was more than a boy.
I felt it in the air—the prominence I granted him.
He squared his shoulders, his chest wider as he watched his knights study me.
Hamelin and Dedrick made no attempt to hide that they were searching for my injury, their gazes predatory as they scanned my body. Tory and Samuel were less easy to read, equally gripped by the sight of me, but unwilling to look for longer than a few seconds.
Regius was still arrested by surprise. “Forgive me, Diviner. I understood you’d been horribly incapacitated.”
“In the joust, yes, I heard.” It pained me, but I stood straighter. “Do I look incapacitated to you?”
He blanched.
But then a jolt of agony cut into my abdomen and I faltered. Benji moved faster than I thought him capable to pull out a chair. He guided me into it. A moment later the guard was back, dropping a cup in front of me. I drained it in one bitter swallow, waiting for the ox-eye to dull the pain.
The king addressed the table once more.
“Now that we are all here, and you see with your own eyes that the Diviner is unharmed, I must impress upon you the importance of this tournament, and what I will require from each of you and your families in the hamlets.”
Benji spoke and barely seemed to draw breath, running his fingers over his coin, looking past everyone at the table as if he were peering into his own promising future.
Accommodations were named—feasts and fetes would be held, purple banners flown.
A three-copper fee would be imposed upon all attendees, and ten gold coins for anyone who deigned to participate.
Tournament winners would be given heralding sashes and named champions and granted an audience with me that they might peer into my eyes: a Divination.
After, they would be afforded the opportunity to follow from hamlet to hamlet as an honorary guest of the knighthood.
Five tourney events, five extravagant ceremonies in the king’s honor; it seemed Benji was meticulously rewriting the discomfiture he’d endured the last time he’d visited the hamlets.
It was going to cost a great deal of money.