Chapter Twenty-Six The Unknighting of Benedict Castor the Third #2
Sybil faced them instead, looking common folk and nobles alike in the eye.
“Disasters have befallen each of your hamlets, and disaster is not a spectacle—it has nothing to prove. It would not be honest to turn your loss into a tale of my own foresight, and it would be false besides. There is stone in my body, and my eyes are touched by magic—but I saw none of this coming. I do not know what will happen next.”
She drew in a breath and waited. Folk leaned closer, as desperate to listen to the words coming out of Sybil’s mouth as they’d been to look into her eyes or watch her drown.
Slowly, her voice grew louder. “But I’ve heard it said: History may be hewn of stone, but the future grows in its cracks.
If this tournament has taught me anything, it’s that the Stonewater Kingdom can change—will change—if we are brave enough to see it clearly.
So I bid you: Look. Look for signs among yourselves, your crafts, the folk around you.
Look to those large or small or otherwise forgotten, pious or impious”—she smiled at me—“knight or knave. Look into all of Traum’s cracks, and maybe you will find the sign even my stone eyes long to see. ”
Sybil’s gaze was not cast out to the Sighing Sea, but back at the land of Traum and all its broken pieces, gazing upon it with a kind of wonderment. “That things can be better than they’ve been.”
I smiled, heart bursting for love.
“Bravo, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle called. “Bravo indeed.”
Maude nodded, searching the faces of the nobles. “That is exactly why we’ve all come, isn’t it?”
One by one, the nobles nodded.
One by one, they turned from Sybil and faced the king of Traum.
“Benedict Castor the Third.” The lines of Brenna Bassett’s face did not shift. Steadfast, she told the king, “We of the noble families have come together in accordance, and have decided we no longer wish for you to be our sovereign.”
There was nothing at first—no movement or sound, save the gargoyle’s mirthful giggle and the constant hush of the waves upon the shore.
Benji, who held the Artful Brigand’s coin so tightly his knuckles cracked, was as unmoving as a statue.
Then, blue eyes darting from face to face, he let out a fractured laugh. “You can’t be serious.”
“But we are,” said Edora Eichel. “Your tournament has cost us all a great deal, and though it is not your fault that an earthquake has plagued the kingdom, leading to death and displacement”—she shook her head—“it is a very bad sign.”
“Don’t be a superstitious crow,” Benji spat. He looked to Sybil and the gargoyle—to me and Maude. “Listen—it’s the sprites. They destroyed the cathedral, attacked Castle Luricht! They are responsible for the terrible things that have occurred, they who have caused the earthquake—”
“Sprites did not kill my son,” Avice Fischer said.
“Nor, I suspect,” Otto Lange added, eyeing Benji, “did they kill my nephew.”
“Sprites did not lose the abbess’s stone objects or risk our wealth in self-aggrandizing tournaments,” Regius said, “and they did not burn down the homes of so many in the Wood. Fortunately, King Castor, your champions do not share your recklessness with coin. They have returned our investments to us with interest.”
Benji’s mouth fell open. “What are you talking about?”
Regius glanced at Maude. “She gifted me her winnings.”
Otto turned to me. “The knave returned his winnings an hour after the earthquake.”
Avice had a hard time looking at the gargoyle. Perhaps because he’d gotten sand in his nose and was making a horrifying face, trying to hold in a sneeze. “The feats of strength winnings were delivered back as well,” she muttered.
“Petula Hall has been offered as shelter, not just to my family,” Edora said, “but to any who lost their homes in the fire.”
Benji’s mouth was still open, but he didn’t speak. For fury or fear, the king could not grapple with what lay before him. Suddenly, like his body did not know what to do, he laughed. “Then all is well, you imbeciles. All that was spent was returned, with interest.”
“Can you return our children?” Avice said, her voice so cold it put a chill in the air. “His nephew, her grandson? I know you are a man of Coulson Faire, but there are more important things in this world than coin, Benedict.”
The knights stirred behind their king. They’d sworn vows to him, but I knew as well as everyone on that beach what noble vows were worth in the Stonewater Kingdom.
They were as the tournament—nothing but a spectacle.
One by one, the king’s knights withdrew from him until there was nothing and no one guarding Benji’s back save the unforgiving waves of the Sighing Sea.
I watched my former friend’s cheeks go pale, my own aflame with righteousness and my stomach sick with pity.
Maude came up first. She held out her hand. Pressed it on Benji’s shoulder so hard he flinched. Beneath her iron strength, the king fell to his knees. Then Maude caught his wrist and, like a scolding mother removing something unsafe from a child’s hand, ripped the Artful Brigand’s coin away.
Benji let out a choked sound. But the nobles were there, and he’d held so tightly to the notion of his own magnanimity that he did not fight Maude. He went still, and the nobles stood like adjudicators, ready to seal his fate.
“Have you been a witness, pupil, and visitor to the kingdom’s peoples and kept peace within the hamlets?” Avice asked.
“Have you rejected pecuniary reward and all mercenary endeavors?” said Otto.
Brenna’s voice was firm. “Have you acted only upon charity and what best suits the kingdom?”
Benji’s face was like the flames of the pyre: bright red. “Have any of you? Of course not. No one in the Stonewater Kingdom sees the importance, the virtue, of noble vows.”
“Perhaps that is a sign they should no longer be said,” the gargoyle pondered, scratching limestone dust from his chin. Sybil stilled his hand, then held it tenderly.
“The title of king no longer fits you, Benedict Castor the Third,” Brenna said with slow, biting clarity. “You need no longer wear it.”
Benji’s eyes were bloodshot, his mouth a severe line. “And so you would oust me, just as the world falls apart? Who will replace me?”
The nobles turned to Maude. I could tell just by the way they stood that the disloyalty they’d flung at the king was spent—when they looked upon her, there was hope in their eyes. “Maude Bauer,” Brenna Bassett said simply, “shall be our new king.”
Sybil gripped my arm, a smile unraveling over her face, and the gargoyle let out a triumphant cheer. Maude looked over her shoulders at us, at the nobles and folk of the hamlets—and she was just as she’d been that night I’d woken on the tor. Severe and fearsome and braver than all the world.
“But first.” Otto reached down. Snatched the crown from Benji’s head. “We must depose the last.”