The Kingless Crown

Chapter 3

3

The Dead-Given Rites

“The sea lives within us. We live within the sea. On land, as on sea, we persist in dualities. Salt. Flesh. Blood. Foam. Stone. Bones.” Minister Allen drowned in the heavy crimson robes of the Reliquary. He was neither boy nor man, from what Khallum could see. If he had hair on his balls, it had come mercifully early. He wasn’t ready for the magnitude of a day like this, or for any great task of adulthood, but yet here the man-child was, delivering the dead-given rites, for what was undoubtedly the first time in his fledgling career in the clergy.

That the Grand Minister hadn’t attended this requiem was yet another slight against the Warwicks and the Southerlands, and he’d no doubt of the source. Sending this little pube in his place was a direct hit with a morning star, meant not only to wound, but to cripple. Under orders from The Pretender or no, he would pay a price for this choice. Khallum would see to the task himself.

“That poor kitten never seen blood, t’wasn’t his own,” Hamish Strong muttered to Lem Garrick. The men stood at Khallum’s side, as all the men of the great houses of the Southerlands were compelled to do by the ineffability of tradition. Gwyn was elsewhere in the crowd, with the other children, the ones who’d lived. He found himself searching for her in the sea of robes and gowns, but they were all where they were meant to be, and even his authority held little sway against tradition.

More so, his eyes were drawn to the milky cliffs of the Golden Coast. The tidal surge brought the seafoam of the White Sea up and over the jagged edges, though by most accounts it was a good day. The sun shined overhead, and there was naught but a light midwinter chill, the kind people would say reminded them more of springtide.

Esmerelda, Khallum thought, and as if on cue, Minister Allen said the same name aloud to the assembled mourners.

“Although we cannot consecrate Lady Esmerelda’s terrestrial remains to hallowed ground, or to the blessing of the flame, we beseech you, Guardian of the Unpromised Future, ye who have weighed the life of Esmerelda Warwick and deemed its promise ended, to protect her from your kin, the Guardian of Trial and Tribulation. Surely, the soul of the young and spirited Esmerelda has earned her peace eternal.”

Khallum spotted Gwyn across the rocky span. Her red hair caught the wind like a flag, blowing sideways over the heads of their three sons. Even Ransom, though grown, could not match the height of his Northerland mother. She didn’t see Khallum. She wasn’t looking in the direction of the requiem, but elsewhere, toward the sea. Esmerelda’s broken vessel belonged to the waves now. Was she thinking of how it was her child the sea chose not to return? Hers, when so many others found their way back, rolling lifeless to the shore?

Minister Allen fumbled with the Great Codex of the Reliquary. If he hadn’t had the words written upon a page, there would’ve been no end to the disgrace of this bairn barely removed from his swaddling, struggling through the dead-given rites for Khallum’s only daughter.

If he fails at her name even once, Khallum forewarned, in the Hall of Warring, just before Strong rolled the mourning cloak over his shoulders. The thing was hefty, a mess of black ermine, woad-dyed wulf’s pelt, and raven’s feathers sent down from Gwyn’s people in Wulfsgate. Too much for the milder winters of the Southerlands, but it looked fit for a king, and if The Pretender had his spies about today, all the better. Eoghan’s men had stolen as he pleased, plundered and r***d as he pleased, but today, Khallum Warwick looked as kingly as a Rhiagain, and ten times more formidable.

Garrick responded by reaching one hand over his back, to caress the battle-axe, his most especial promise of fidelity. He’d do it, too. Slice the little pube’s head clean off, or perhaps not so clean. Khallum loved him for it and would use his childhood friend’s unquenchable bloodlust for as long as it suited him.

Save it for the Grand Minister, Strong growled. Tha’ craven bastard.

Aye. I have another thing planned for that lowborn grasper. Leave him for me. Khallum would deal with the matter of Grand Minister Maegar another day.

Today, he was releasing his only daughter to the uncertain afterlife of the Unpromised Future.

Khallum shed the mourning cloak without slowing pace. It hit the stone floor with a heavy, gratifying thud. He’d worn it, as he promised Gwyn he would when her fair-haired moralist brother had it sent with haste on one of his antiquated whaling ships. His duty to the matter of the oddly trussed cloak was ended.

Someone, probably Erran Rutland, stopped and swooped the monstrous thing from a future of dust and obscurity as they all followed Khallum back to the Hall of Warring.

His men, to the last. And the last might not be so far ahead now.

“Khallum.” Samuel Law. The only one of them with the courage and strong head to know business was the order of the noonday. Even today. Especially today.

“You never quit, do ya? Not even t’day?” Hamish Strong, his soft but effective freebooter of Sandycove. Hamish’s loyalty pulsed in his heart, not his head, and there was no one, not even Khallum himself, so devoted to the Southerlands and her prosperity.

“Tomorrow doesnae slow down when today gives pause,” Law rejoined.

“Be still, Hamish,” Khallum said as he sank into the deep chair at the head of the darkish table he and his father built with their own hands from the teakwood growing along the black sand shore at Port Worthing. Salt had corroded the exterior, and it now bore a milder, milkier patina than the original design, but it reminded Khallum that everything he possessed came from the land that belonged to him and his forebears. A land that had, only recently, fleetingly, belonged to someone less worthy.

Hamish squared his hard features at Law, but was still, as his lord asked.

Khallum ran his hands over the rough surface of the table. They’d shaped it into the resemblance of their finest sea vessel. The corners were roughly hewn, a stark reminder never to lean in too far when you paid counsel to the Lord of the Southerlands.

His ten men took their own seats once he was settled. Five steorbord, five larboard, with him, the eleventh, at the helm.

“Speak, then,” Khallum said, and it came out nearly a groan, but more truly a sigh. “Taxes, I presume.”

“We’re two seasons behind,” Law replied. He rested both hands atop the table, but carefully. Barne Holton had, just that past autumnwhile, sliced so deep into his palm during a passionate discourse that the blood loss rendered him light on his feet. Later, the black fingers spread up into his wrist, and the doctor promised he could save him, but not his hand.

“Tha’ all? Wait till they see the rotting fish sent their way!” Strong cried, and several of the other men grunted in pleasured agreement. Proud of their freebooting they were, though until someone could figure out what was really out there to be had, in the World Beyond the Sea, there’d always be a limit to great achievement.

“Two seasons, and King Eoghan sent our messenger’s ear back when we asked for a reprieve.”

“An ear,” Khallum fumed, far too exhausted to disguise his wrath. His eye convulsed in tandem with the veins throbbing in his neck. “I’ll take more than an ear, should the craven ratsbane find the mettle to show himself in the Southerlands.”

Garrick twitched, but resisted the urge to give his battle-axe another loving stroke.

“He’d never,” Rutland answered. “The king isnae the man his grandfather was.”

“Aye, and is that not the point? His grandfather restored to us these lands. Eoghan would see them taken away.”

“He wants a more agreeable lord is all,” Law said. “One who would do as he was told.”

Waves crashed against the cliffs beyond the stone castle. Khallum could taste the salt; it burned through his nostrils. He wasn’t like these other men. He wasn’t even really a Southerlander, not in the way they were. He’d built his fortress in Warwicktown to harden himself against the elements, but his skin never leathered and his lungs struggled against the gritty sea air. If his men knew it, they never let on, but they missed very little.

Khallum ran his tongue across his perpetually cracked lips. “You’re on his side now, Sam? The man whose father was behind the deaths of my parents, my grandparents? Who drove my own daughter to the sea like a troubled fishwife?”

Law recoiled. “Never, my lord. But you’ve always asked me to think like the enemy. I’m thinking like him now. His patience is thin, and even a craven ratsbane will act upon slighted pride. He’ll send in others to avoid dirtying his hands, but he won’t tolerate another season of rebuke.” Law glanced cautiously at his peers, as if they’d all convened ahead of the council session, and he’d pulled the unlucky short draw of wheat. “And then there’s the matter of Esmerelda’s absence.”

Khallum pressed both palms into the rough tabletop. Yes, Esmerelda. Eoghan would’ve taken her, too, if she hadn’t taken her own life. But her unavailability to serve at the king’s pleasure didn’t mean the Warwicks wouldn’t be held to account.

“There is no matter of Esmerelda. Not anymore. There is only the matter of Gwyn, as I have no other daughters, and these are the rules in the season of pretenders.”

Most of the men gaped at him in confused horror, even Nye, who never reacted to anything except when a cold snap took them unawares. But it was Strong who had the courage to ask, “Ye donnae really mean to hand over your wife to tha’ fiend?”

“Of fecking course not,” Khallum replied with a look that turned the room to stone. “But that’ll be the ratsbane’s expectation. My daughter is with the Guardians now. I have no others. Gwyn nearly died bringing little Garrick along, and she willnae be bringing another.”

“In any case, the ceremony of the Right of Choosing is in less than a fortnight,” Law reminded them. “Hardly time to usher in a replacement.”

Khallum blinked the heaviness from his eyes, aiming a stony gaze at his sophistic friend. “Do ye not hear me? There willnae be a replacement. There willnae be an offering to the king at the Right of Choosing from the Southerlands.”

“What about the other three houses? Will they deliver?”

Khallum grunted. “That bootlicker Aiden will ensure the Easterlands complies, and he’ll do it with s**t in his smile. My brother says Asherley would smite the crown, but she isnae prepared to let Eoghan turn an eye to the Westerlands, for fear he’ll seek the richness of her resources.”

“And Gwyn’s brother?”

“Holden,” Khallum echoed. “Aye, the Northerlands will deliver. He shouldn’t, but he will.” He curled his upper lip. “To protect those enchantresses in the north.”

“What then? Do we go? Do we stay?” Rutland asked.

“We’ll be the only Reach without an offering,” Law said, and you would’ve thought someone suggested he run through his neighbor’s handfast ceremony in the nude. “For the very first Right of Choosing! Like it or not—”

Garrick rolled forward, looking down the table at the man he’d never gotten along with unless his lord commanded. “Do ye not hear Lord Warwick? Anything he says? Ever? He doesnae agree with the Right of Choosing. None of us do. He loathes it. It’s an affront to each of the kingdoms, and an affront to what the crown once was. And ye remember the last time a king summoned them to Termonglen, do ye not? All four Reaches still mourn their mas and pas.” Garrick launched something yellow from the back of his throat across the room. It slid down the wall, next to the streaky white trails of sea salt. “And on the day he submits his sweet wee lass to the Guardians, you lay this guilt at his feet.”

“Steady,” Khallum warned, but he loved Garrick, in a way he could never love a man like Law. But he needed Law, in a way he’d never need Garrick. “We go. We spit in the face of the ratsbane, and tell him no Southerlander will be sucking his c**k, today or ever.” He spat on the stones at his feet. A prophetic demonstration.

Cheers from his men. The table rocked as their pounding enthusiasm mingled with the crash of the flow tide building outside.

“Then there will be war,” Law said.

“War.” Khallum snorted. “The little pissant doesnae know the word beyond the pages of books written within a kingdom he knows nothing of.”

“The most promising soldiers in the kingdom join the Rhiagain Guard,” Law countered. “There is no greater honor in our realm than to be elevated to a Knight of Duncarrow.”

“The Rhiagain Guard grows fat upon inaction. The Knights of Duncarrow are naught more tha’ pretty costumes. All bluster, no blow.”

“I would not underestimate their numbers. They’re thrice ours, and that estimate is conservative.”

“Aye, and the Easterlands will fight for him,” Strong said. “They’re sworn to him.”

“Since when?” Khallum demanded.

Strong glanced at a handful of others. So, this wasn’t news. Not to them. “In the springtide, my lord. Aiden laid Rowanwen, their ancestral sword, at Eoghan’s feet, swearing especial fealty. ‘Twas no empty promise.”

“Nay. No empty promise,” Khallum mused, and with a wave of his hand, dismissed them.

Strong and Rutland hung back when the others departed. His dearest boyhood mates, now his most trusted advisors. Khallum moved to the balustrades lining the Hall of Warring. The weather was agreeable enough that he rarely regretted building a room so open to the elements, but there were other foul things traveling across the air that day.

“My lord,” Rutland ventured. “Khallum.”

“Aye, I meant it.” Khallum dug his palms into the stone counter, stained white from the perpetual stream of seabirds swarming overhead. “Eoghan and his father have forgotten their forebears.”

“So it has been, from time to time, throughout history,” Rutland replied. “Are we prepared for war? Much as it aggrieves me to say, Law was right. Not that you were wrong. Eoghan isnae the man his grandfather was. He’s worse than his father, Khain, in some ways. And his reign is only just begun. Only the Guardians know what other horrors lay ahead when he finally finds his sea legs.”

Khallum rolled his head forward. Below, miners covered in black filth bustled like ants, dredging gold, ore, silver, and now something else, something new that glittered in the noonday sun. The glory of the Southerlands. “Fynne would look you in the eye as he drove the sword into your belly. Khain and Eoghan are cowards, who sent their men slinking into the Reaches to pluck the life from our ancestors until it was only us left. Cowards are dangerous. Unpredictable.”

“We could extract my son from the Wastelands. My Ryan,” Strong said, voice low and cautious. A light tremor passed through his words.

“Nay. Ryan’s been in there nary a fortnight, Hamish. He willnae have finished his task. Not yet.” Khallum turned halfway and cast a look at his old friend over his shoulder. The work Hamish’s son did now was important work, but there was a reason it was a Strong, and not some lowborn, chosen for it. It wasn’t Hamish’s fault his son Ryan reached beyond his means, letting his heart lead him to Esmerelda. And now, the matter of his crime was stricken from the great record of life. Yet, it was true that the work he’d do in the prison was the work of a hero. Perhaps Ryan Strong could redeem himself with Khallum in the end. “We willnae abandon him. On my word.”

“We were promised shipments of grain from the Easterlands a calendar cycle ago. Our men have eaten nothing with roots or stems in ages,” Rutland interjected. “Our people are starving. A foul illness sweeps through them. One we’ve seen only in our darkest times.”

“If the lowborns want to take up broken promises with someone, I suggest they sail for Duncarrow and ask the king himself.”

“If we only paid the taxes—”

Khallum’s voice thundered across the rocky walls. “I will not send even more money to a crown that delivers nothing in return! Every season, Khain and his demonling have asked for more of us. Every season, we’ve delivered, trusting that they would deliver on their own promises of supplies. The King’s Decree is meant to work both ways, not one. They never intended to live up to their end, Rutland, so we should bend over now and deliver even more? Give them free rein of our lands, our riches? When they’ve already taken a quarter of our men, swaddling them with false charges and throwing them in labor camps? Eoghan Rhiagain would destroy everything his forebears built, and I willnae help him along on this craven fool’s errand. I willnae allow him to take without giving, even another day!”

“There willnae be riches if our men are too ill to take to the mines.”

“Khallum is right,” Strong said. He sounded shaky and unsure, probably still thinking of his youngest son in the crown labor camp. “We’re Southerlanders. We donnae bend. We donnae break. We donnae do anything if ‘tis not a benefit to us or our people.”

Rutland ignored him and turned to Khallum. “I know Quinlanden is l*****g Eoghan’s boots, but do you truly believe the others won’t stand with us? Asherley Blackwood? Holden Dereham?”

Khallum returned his gaze to the sea. “Asherley is a riddle, even to my brother. I’ve already sent word to Holden.”

“When?”

“When I found Esmerelda’s letter.” Khallum swallowed. The emotion ebbed back down, where it belonged. “He is Gwyn’s brother. He cannae sit back and let the boy king take her. His own daughter, Lisbet, only turned fourteen. He cannae really mean to send her to Duncarrow.”

“And if he willnae stand with us? If the Southerlanders are the only ones at Termonglen without a bride for the king?”

Khallum filled his lungs with the coarse air of the sea. “Garrick has been keeping the blacksmiths sharp and practiced.”