Queenmaker CH2
Chapter Two
The envoy goggled. The court laughed.
I didn’t blame them. I hadn’t seen a man gape like that outside a bad cartoon. The envoy looked as if he’d been punched in the face and yet, couldn’t quite wrap his head around what had happened. I supposed he had a point. If you were prancing around, being all Mouth of Sauron, you’d be surprised if someone flipped the script on you too.
“You jest,” he managed finally. “My master …”
“Has sent you here with a message, we presume,” Helen said. Her tone was calculated to get on the envoy’s nerve. The reminder he was just an envoy probably didn’t help. “Let us hear you out, before we throw you out.”
The envoy spluttered. I hid my amusement with an effort. It was very far from diplomatic, and I’d tried to argue in favour of more diplomacy when Helen and I had discussed our plans for the envoy’s arrival, but she’d insisted. I understood her thinking. There was nothing we could reasonably offer the warlords, certainly nothing they’d accept. They were little better than gangsters, taking everything they could and then demanding more. And if the monarchy had stood up to them, decades ago, the kingdom would be in a far better state.
It is always easy to try to appease the unappeasable, I thought. How many times had that lesson been learned and forgotten, only to be learned again? But once you pay the Danegeld you never get rid of the Dane.
“My master is greatly concerned with your preparations for war,” the envoy said. His voice dripped honey and battery acid. I felt my fist clench with a burning desire to punch the envoy in the face. “He and his peers see them as a direct threat, and a stark renunciation of agreements signed by your father and grandfather. They demand you meet their terms at once or face war.”
Helen affected a bored look. “And what are their terms?”
The envoy steadied himself. “First, you are to immediately disband your forces and dismiss your troops,” he said. “Second, you are to banish all foreign mercenaries” – he gave me a nasty look – “from the kingdom. Third, you are to permit the exiles, unjustly banished from their homes, to reclaim their lands and titles. Fourth, and most importantly, you are to submit the question of your marriage to a commission who will consider the interests of the kingdom and determine who you will marry.”
I sensed, more than saw, Helen’s flash of anger. But her voice was studiously calm. “Is that all?”
“My master and his allies will dispatch troops to enforce the agreement, once you accept it,” the envoy said. “They will be accompanied by the exiled noblemen and distinguished judges who will consider each case on its merits and determine what level of recompense should be paid to the dispossessed. You yourself will be taken into protective custody and …”
“And raped.” Helen’s voice was suddenly icy cold. “That’s what your master has in mind, isn’t it?”
The envoy looked shocked. “My master has nothing, but the greatest respect for you …”
Helen cut him off. “Your master attempted to kidnap me, then backed treacherous nobles in a bid to murder my father and unseat me,” she snarled. “If that is respect …”
She calmed herself with an effort. “What does he do to people he doesn’t respect?”
My lips twisted. Warlord Cuthbert was right at the top of Helen’s shit list – and who could blame her? He really had tried to kidnap her, and then force her into marriage. I felt a flicker of sympathy for his wife and children, who would be put aside in favour of a woman who could legitimise his bid for the throne. It made me wonder what sort of agreements the warlords had made, between themselves. The only reason they hadn’t forced Helen into marriage long ago, long before my arrival, was that they hadn’t been able to agree on how to share power amongst themselves. If they’d come to an agreement …
We can probably play on their fears, even if they have, I reflected. They’re not the most trusting of people. They’ll be watching their allies for betrayal even as they pretend to cooperate with them.
“Your Majesty …” The envoy took a breath and started again. “Your Majesty, I am charged with carrying your reply back to my master.”
“Quite.”
Helen rose to her feet, looking every inch the warrior queen. She’d had more training, in magic as well as mundane fighting skills, than the average princess, although it was all too likely her enemies would think her defenceless. My spies told me too many of her lower-ranking noblemen had received messages from the warlords – some offering wealth and power, some so bizarrely focused on male bonding it was hard to believe anyone could take them seriously – and while I thought none of those offers had been accepted it was impossible to be sure. Too many high-ranking men had doubts about serving under a woman. Idiots. Helen was already shaping up to be a more effective monarch than her father.
“Your master’s terms are rejected,” Helen said. “There will be no more discussion. You will go back to your master and inform him he has one week to disband his troops and come to this city – alone and unarmed – to pay homage to me, or he will be crushed and his family driven from the kingdom. Do you understand me?”
I winced, inwardly. One week … it was barely enough time for the envoy to get to his master and make his report, let alone for the warlord to mount a horse and ride back to the city. And demanding the warlord came alone, without even a handful of escorts …? It was the kind of demand one made after beating the enemy army, not before; the kind of demand that would only be accepted, by prideful and stubborn men, when resistance was no longer anything but kicking and biting on the way to the gallows. Warlord Cuthbert was more likely to order his troops to march south immediately, than disband his soldiers and bend the knee to the queen.
If he comes alone, he knows he’ll be imprisoned at the queen’s pleasure, I thought. And if his son leads troops to free him, the queen might order him executed out of petty spite.
I sighed inwardly. Johor was a snake pit, a snake pit that made Game of Thrones look positively civilised. There was no real law and order, certainly no government capable and willing to enforce the law without fear or favour … it was quite possible, I reflected, that the warlord’s sons would go on the offensive in hopes their father would be executed, allowing them to lay claim to their inheritance. They’d never say it out loud – sons were supposed to be loyal to their fathers, even though everyone knew their loyalty could be very self-serving indeed – but it was true.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the envoy said. His face was pale. I’d heard Warlord Cuthbert had a nasty habit of blaming the messenger. I didn’t think he could make the message any more palatable either. No amount of delicate wording could disguise the fact Helen had demanded the warlord’s unconditional surrender. I wondered, idly, if the messenger would try to lie to his master. It would cost him his head. Helen would make sure he took a written copy of the message back too. “I understand.”
Helen snapped her fingers. Two black-clad men emerged from the curtains behind the throne, grabbed hold of the envoy and half-carried, half-dragged him out of the chamber. A rustle ran through the room, the crowd struggling to come to terms with the latest development. It was vanishingly rare for anyone to mistreat a messenger, no matter what he’d come to say. It was a declaration of total war.
I frowned inwardly. Helen’s private guardsmen – the Black Roses – had expanded rapidly, after she took the throne, but … I wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with them. They reported directly to her, through their commander … I understood, I really did, that Helen didn’t want to become dependent on anyone but it still bothered me. The Black Roses were more than just her guard. They were expanding into intelligence and counterintelligence and making their presence felt on the streets. I feared they’d wind up causing a disaster at the worst possible time.
And they look too much like a secret police force, I reflected. They’re already very unpopular outside the palace.
Helen addressed the crowd. “For generations, the warlords – my father and grandfather’s overmighty subjects – have terrorised the kingdom, threatening to send us all to rack and ruin. No more. There will be no more concessions. There will be no more submissions. They will be stopped. They will be destroyed.”
Her words hung in the air. “If any of you are afraid to fight, go back to your homes and abandon all hope of a place in the new world. Or run to the warlords and be destroyed with them. But if you are ready to fight for the throne, for a kingdom free of overmighty subjects, remain with us now. Make your choices quickly and well. There will be no second chances.”
I smiled, inwardly. Too many of the old aristocracy had a nasty habit of playing both sides of the field. They sent one of the sons to fight for the king and the other, as the saying went, to fight for the rebels, in hopes of ensuring they’d have someone who could speak for them no matter who won the war. Helen had done everything she could to make it impossible for someone to sit on the fence, from executing or exiling most of the old nobility to ennobling merchants and craftsmen who could be relied upon to support her. I scanned the crowd, carefully noting reactions. The new noblemen were excited and afraid. They wouldn’t keep their titles, if the warlords won the war. They’d be lucky to keep their lives.
I shuddered, inwardly. I’d started a wave of land reform, first in my estates and then in estates belonging to executed or exiled aristocracy, that was reshaping the kingdom. If the peasants were allowed to own their own land … the warlords would crush the poor bastards, if they won the war. Land reform was a direct threat to their wealth and power and they knew it. So too were guns and everything else that levelled the playing field, allowing the commoners a chance to stand up to their betters. Helen’s supporters knew they were playing for keeps. If the warlords won, they’d do everything in their power to turn back the clock.
It won’t work, I told myself. It’ll just lead to newer and bloodier rebellions against the status quo.
My lips twisted. No one, not even my closest supporters, knew precisely how far I was prepared to go. I’d practically surrendered my estates to the tillers. I’d allowed some of our most sensitive technological secrets to be leaked. I’d ensured the spread of reading and writing and everything else … whatever happened, the kingdom would never be the same again. The warlords were just a remnant of a dim a distant past, soon to be forgotten completely. I wouldn’t be another Andrew Johnston. I wouldn’t betray the people who trusted me and fought for me and expected me to honour my promises …
“I cannot promise an easy victory,” Helen said. “There will be much bloodshed before the warlords are done. But we will win. Never doubt we will win. Dismissed.”
The courtiers bowed or curtseyed, then hurried out of the chamber. I wondered how many of the old hands were convinced, given that the meeting with the envoy had been little better than a masterful – and pre-planned – performance. Helen had to do a surprising amount of her business in public, if only to keep rumour-mongering to a dull roar, but there’d still be suspicions she’d made time to have a private chat with the envoy earlier. There’d be people watching to make sure he really was thrown out of the city, rather than kept in the guardhouse until Helen could meet with him again,
At least Helen keeps a tight grip on these sessions, I thought. Her father had held audiences where everyone, or at least everyone who thought they were anyone, had insisted on having their say. It was astonishing how many people could say the exact same thing time and time again, rarely even bothering to vary the words, just so they could tell the world they’d had their say. And she listens when people bring their concerns to her in private.
“Elliot,” Helen said. She stood, brushing down her robes. She’d insisted on wearing her father’s outfits, rather than the dresses that looked as if they’d come out of a Disney princess movie, but I rather thought they suited her. “Walk with me.”
I nodded, following her as she led the way through the curtains and into a long – and private – corridor. There were people in the kingdom, even in the palace, who would have killed to have a private meeting with the queen … I felt a twinge of amusement at their probable reactions, if they’d known I didn’t share their awe. There was nothing special, to me, in spending time with an aristocrat. Besides, I knew Helen as a person. She was more than just a monarch to me.
“It should be safe to talk here,” Helen said. “My maids and guards are loyal.”
I nodded, feeling a twinge of pity. Helen had next to no privacy. She’d rarely been alone, from the moment she’d been born till the day she took the throne and became queen … even now, her ladies were never far away. We’d searched the aristocratic townhouses, after the coup, and discovered missives from her ladies-in-waiting and maids, reporting on everything from her reading patterns to her menstrual cycles. It was creepy. I’d had very little privacy in the army, but …
And a bunch of maids were executed, to remind the others to keep their mouths thoroughly closed, I thought. It should keep them quiet and loyal for a few months, although I doubted it would last forever. The maids might be scared into submission, but her ladies came from prominent families. They’d face immense pressure to give their impressions of their mistress to their masters. The poor girls will be caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
“There will be no peace now,” Helen added, after a moment. “Good.”
I nodded, curtly. I’d seen enough war – here and back home – to know war wasn’t particularly glorious. I knew men who’d gone to war and come home crippled, despite everything modern medical technology could do. Here, it was far worse. A man who lacked the money to pay for a healer would be lucky if he came home with amputated limbs. I’d done what I could to improve what passed for medical science, but … I shuddered. It would be kinder to send a man to be tortured.
“We couldn’t have come to terms with them anyway,” I said. The warlords were clearly spoiling for a fight. Helen could give them everything they wanted and they’d have found an excuse to go to war anyway. Not that she could, even if she wanted to. The changes had spread too far to be reversed. “Not after …”
I sighed. The kingdom had existed in an uneasy balance of power for decades, the king too weak to put down his overmighty subjects and the warlords reluctant to rock the boat by trying to unseat the king permanently. I’d changed that, partly by accident, when I’d defeated Warlord Aldred. The warlords had thought they could just play a waiting game to bring the kingdom to heel. I’d proven the kingdom could and would take the offensive and slay the warlord beasts in their lairs.
And now they’re ganging up on us, I thought. Cuthbert wasn’t the only warlord modernising and mobilising his forces. The remainder were preparing for war too. They had no illusions about how deeply Helen hated them, about what she’d do if she had them in her power. She’d sign their execution warrants with a smile. They have to hang together or be hanged separately.
Helen touched my arm. I tensed, despite myself. We might be alone, but … we weren’t really. The rules had changed since she took the throne – she’d effectively had herself declared a man, just to ensure she could attend council meetings – yet there were limits. If rumours got out …
“Elliot,” she said. “Can we win?”
I took a breath. “Yes,” I said. It wasn’t an idle boast. I’d spent the last few weeks planning the war. It was going to be tight – we had better weapons, the warlords had more experienced men and mercenaries – but we could do it. “It can be done.”
Helen smiled, humourlessly. “I believe you once told me nothing is certain in war.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “But we can stack the deck in our favour if we move fast.”
“Good.” Helen changed the subject with surprising rapidity. “And Fallon? Have you agreed on a date yet?”
I hesitated. The idea that my marriage was an issue of national security still felt absurd. Sure, I was one of the most powerful noblemen in the kingdom, but I still felt like a poor boy who’d joined the army to better himself and climbed all the way to the top. And yet, it was no longer true. My every word was law for hundreds of thousands of people who’d never even heard of me a year ago.
“We are making progress,” I said. Someone – I forgot who – had cautioned me against falling in love with local girls, while on deployment. It could lead to complications … not, I supposed, that it mattered here. I’d never be going home again. “Why do you ask?”
“The longer before you take her to wed, the harder it will be for her,” Helen said. Her face was blank. I couldn’t tell if she was advising me to marry now or forget the whole thing and just keep Fallon as a mistress. It was not a pleasant thought. “Make your mind up quickly.”
Her lips twitched. “And I’ll expect to see you both at the council meeting this afternoon.”
I nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
