Queenmaker 30
Chapter Thirty
“You can’t stay,” Helen said, flatly.
I said nothing. In truth, I was too numb to feel much of anything. The warlords and most of their vassals were gone – the conscripts were on their way back home – and yet it had done nothing to bring Fallon back. How could it? She was dead and our unborn child was dead too and no magic, from what I’d been told, could raise the dead. I didn’t even have a body to bury.
Helen’s messenger had met us as we made our slow way back to the city, ordering me to hand command of the army over to my staff and meet her in a tent just outside the city. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking, if she thought I would rebel if someone else took over the army or if she thought she couldn’t take the risk of acting weak where her aristocrats could see her. Did they think I’d gone rogue? Or did they think she’d given me secret orders? I couldn’t decide which would be worse, from their point of view. Helen couldn’t allow herself to be seen as my helpless captive, at the mercy of someone who was supposed to be under her orders, but she couldn’t afford to condone what I’d done either. Aristocrats were not supposed to be executed on the spot, not without a proper trial. It might give the commoners ideas.
They already have ideas, I thought. The broadsheets had rushed out special editions as soon as word reached the city, praising me for executing the warlords and putting an end to the threat once and for all. The aristos might be horrified – and they were – but the commoners were dancing in the streets. The world will never be the same.
I had to admire her nerve as she faced me. It would have been hellishly dangerous, if she’d faced almost anyone else … anyone local, at least. The army was supposed to be loyal to the kingdom, but … in reality, she had to fear it might be more loyal to me than to its monarch. It might be easy for me to take the city, put the rest of the aristocracy to fire and sword, and then reshape the kingdom to suit myself. There weren’t many locals who wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to play Napoleon, even if they knew how the legendary emperor had met his end. The risks were immense, and legitimacy incredibly difficult to secure, but the prize was worth pretty much everything.
But I didn’t want it. I was just … numb.
“I’m going to honour the deal with Cuthbert and send him into exile,” Helen said, a hint of disgust in her voice. As far as she was concerned, Cuthbert had been the worst of the warlords … and, ironically, he was the only one who’d survived. I wondered, idly, why she hadn’t had his throat cut. “You will escort him to the border, then go into exile yourself.”
Her voice was nothing, but cold steel. I knew what she was doing. There would be no pretence. I would either do as I was told, and go into exile, or rebel against her and become another usurper warlord. Helen wasn’t going to pretend to be my sweet little wife, or tell the world she’d married me because we’d fallen in love, or anything else that would hide the brutal truth. She was drawing a line and testing me, daring me to cross it. I felt a twinge of respect for her bravery, as well as her intelligence. If she’d been born in a kingdom that didn’t look down on her because she was a women, she’d have gone far.
A vision washed through my mind. I could take the helm. The aristocracy had been gravely weakened. There was no need to coddle the remaining aristos. I could become a dictator, long enough to lay the foundations of democracy and freedom, and then put down the crown … I could! It might be better for the kingdom if I did, if I ensured merit – rather than birth – led to promotion and innovation and everything the kingdom needed to develop into a modern state. The reactionaries could be simply brushed aside. I could carry out a program of land reform and industrialisation on a national scale, tying the kingdom together with railways and highways and everything else …
… But I didn’t want to try.
I looked back at her, evenly. “I have conditions,” I said. “If you agree, I’ll go into exile without a murmur.”
Helen’s face was a blank mask. I suspected she was relieved. An aristo going into exile would have a reasonable chance of being allowed back, once the hue and cry had died down. The monarch might quietly ignore his return, as long as he didn’t make it impossible to pretend it hadn’t happened. Commoners, of course, were rarely sent into exile and never returned when they were, but me …? I had vast estates … had had, I supposed. It wasn’t as if I had any family who could keep them in trust until I returned, or inherit them …
Her voice was cold. “Name them.”
“The people I promoted get to keep their posts,” I said. I couldn’t ask Horst, Fallows and everyone else to go into exile with me, and I didn’t want to leave them in the streets. “The industrial development programs I started … you keep them going. The land reforms I made, on my estates … you leave them alone. Leave the farmers with their lands.”
Helen’s lips twitched. “The local gentry will howl.”
“Let them,” I said. They’d had to copy my land reform program, if only to keep the serfs from walking off the land … or taking it by force. “They can’t turn back the clock.”
“Apparently not,” Helen agreed. “Is that all?”
I shrugged. There was little else she could give me. I had caches of money in various places – an old habit I’d taken into my new home – and I’d had no trouble accessing one or two before I left the kingdom. I doubted she could keep me from sneaking back to collect the others, if I had no other choice. The border was little more than a line on the map. There were no border guards, no one checking passports or otherwise harassing travellers who wanted to cross the line. Anything else … it wasn’t as if I could take the mansion, or the estates, with me. I’d never really considered them mine.
“More or less,” I said.
Helen’s face softened, slightly. “I’m sorry about Fallon,” she said.”She deserved better.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I didn’t want to talk about it, not to her. She’d been the one to suggest Fallon joined the delegation. I didn’t blame her for assuming the warlords wouldn’t break parlay, not so openly, but it still hurt. “She deserved much more than …”
My voice trailed off. I was going to have to visit her parents, to tell them what had happened to their daughter …
Helen stood. “Cuthbert will be ready to leave in an hour,” she said. “You’ll accompany him up north, then across the border.”
“Very efficient,” I said. “Can I offer you a word of advice?”
“Of course,” Helen said.
I met her eyes. “The world has changed,” I said. “The old certainties are no longer certain. The commoners have felt their strength, and started to question why they need to follow the old rules. They resented and hated it because they thought they had no choice, but now … now they think there is a choice. Right now, you are the most popular monarch the country has ever seen, but that will change in a heartbeat if you start trying to …”
Helen grimaced. “Turn back the clock?”
“Yes.” I’d said the same myself. “Intelligent and ambitious men have always resented being held back, or forced to bend the knee to people who have the right bloodlines but little else to justify their supremacy. Once it becomes clear the system is brutally unfair, and it is, they start scheming to overthrow it. And then you have trouble.”
“I see,” Helen said. I doubted she did, in any real sense. The idea she didn’t have an inherent right to rule was alien to her. “I’ll take your words under consideration.”
I smiled. “Think about it,” I said. “You have been the Ruling Queen, with very real power, for the last year. Would you give it up, now you know what it is like?”
Helen didn’t try to answer, but I knew what she would say. She’d had a taste of power … and there was no way in hell she’d give it up, not willingly. The new industrialists and merchants and everyone else who’d risen through merit, through hard work and intelligence and a hefty dose of sheer luck, wouldn’t give it up either. Helen and her peers would have to learn to ride the winds, to adapt to a whole new world, or be destroyed by them. I silently wished her luck. She’d need it.
“We thank you for your service,” Helen said, her tone becoming more regal. “And We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours.”
She stepped out of the tent, closing the flap behind her. I leaned back in my chair and waited, unsure if it would be an escort or an assassin. Helen would have to be insane to have me killed, when pretty much the entire population saw me as a hero, but there were quite a few aristos stupid enough to think they could kill me and take advantage of the chaos to rise to power. They were deluded idiots – the warlords were gone, and none of the remaining private armies were anything like powerful enough to impose order – yet … human history was littered with deluded idiots. Hell, for all I knew, one of the newly-empowered commoners intended to make a bid for power …
Someone else’s problem, I told myself. If Fallon had survived, I would have been happy to remain in the kingdom, but now … I wanted to be somewhere else. Helen and everyone else can stand and fall on their own.
The flap opened. Violet stepped into the tent.
I blinked. “Violet?”
“She’s sending you into exile,” Violet said. “I’m coming with you.”
I stared at her for a long moment. “You should stay here.”
“I owe you my life,” Violet said. “And what sort of future do I have here?”
I grimaced. Violet had grown up on the streets. She’d been isolated even after I’d taken her into my household and arranged for her to get some proper education … another reminder, I supposed, of just how much human potential was being wasted. If Violet had grown up in a merchant household, she would have gone far. Just like Helen. Instead … Fallon and I had been the only ones who’d been kind to her. I couldn’t help feeling a degree of kinship. If I hadn’t joined the army, back in my teens, I might have been trapped on the streets too. I’d been lucky to escape. Countless others like me hadn’t made it out.
“Helen won’t take anything from you,” I said.” You’ll have a place here.”
In truth, I wasn’t sure that was entirely true. Violet’s position was more precarious than most. She didn’t really have a job, or possessions of her own … gathering intelligence for me, and keeping her finger on the pulse of public opinion, wasn’t something she could put on her resume. Helen might employ her, in the same role, but … my lips twitched. The people who’d made snide remarks about Fallon and I associating with a street kid would have heart attacks if Helen did the same …
… And I was uncomfortably aware that, no matter what Helen did, the kingdom was in for some rough times.
“I can’t promise anything,” I told her. I had saved her life. She’d repaid me time and time again. “We could find ourselves in very real trouble … dead, or worse. If you don’t want to come, I will understand.”
“You don’t abandon your friends,” Violet said, firmly. “Who else can you trust?”
I nodded, curtly. “Very well,” I said. “Let’s see what the future holds.”
It was hard not to feel a little thrill, despite the bitter numbness, as the guards escorted us to the convoy. This was a whole new world. Part of me wanted to explore, to see how many of the tall tales I’d heard were actually true; part of me wanted to join the Diddakoi and just travel from place to place; part of me wanted to track down the mysterious Emily and discover the truth behind the myths … part of me just wanted to put the past behind me and carry on, to build a new life for myself. I took one last look at the city as the convoy rumbled into motion, heading north, and quietly said my goodbyes.
Who knew what the future would hold?
End of Book III
