In the old days, Semvee ruled Naridium and the lands around it, and he had many slaves that were giant men. Semvee was the mightiest of all the kings of Naridium, but he was as a low servant to the Emperor of the Dawn. When one day the Emperor came to Naridium to review his subjects, Semvee became infatuated with one of the Emperor’s favorite wives, and seduced her. But they were found out, and the Emperor had Semvee thrown in prison, and made it known that he would be mutilated and killed in the morning. Semvee was cunning, and so before he was captured [sic] he snuck into the great in Naridium and entered the sanctum of the metal god. There he entreated the metal god with the most terrible offering. When dawn came, Semvee was the Emperor of the South, and the old Emperor was Semvee. The Emperor had himself mutilated and killed, and went back to the South with his favorite wife. Before he left, he ordered his slaves to destroy the in Naridium. Thereafter the only remaining homes of the god were in Krotsium and Vicarium.
???
“What is ?” inquired Hobb of Pearsy. “And where are the rest of these places? The only name I recognize is ‘Naridium,’ and only from the palace.” Hobb rested the newly-copied Balthan translation on his knees and peered over his wire-rimmed spectacles at his traveling companions.
The wild-haired Chancellor Pearsy of the New Academy jiggled uncomfortably, crammed into the carriage bench across from Hobb. Boris sat next to him, his face plastered with the inevitable bland, slightly mysterious smile. The carriage, and its three uncomfortable occupants, were rattling along the frozen, bumpy road to Hoel.
“Abergren was the old Brassen name for what we today call the Green River,” answered Pearsy, shifting awkwardly in the cramped quarters. “Penshaw is an Old Uellish name, not Old Brassen; it was likely some insignificant settlement on the north bank of the river. Though,” he added thoughtfully, “there is a village of ‘Unshoe’ north of Hoel. Thirteen-hundred years of language drift, and a bit of feeble local humor, might have turned ‘Penshaw’ into ‘Unshoe.’ ‘Naridium’ was the name of the kingdom that predated the Second Interregnum. The written record suggests it collapsed at the same time as the First Empire of the Dusk; about fifteen hundred years ago. The name of our palace is a linguistic remnant of that kingdom.”
Hobb frowned.
“I suppose ‘Vicarium’ could refer to Talen Vicarus, in the Holy Empire,” he deduced. “What about ‘Krotsium’ and ‘Kaples Wethan Mekoth’?”
Pearsy shrugged. “I don’t know of any settlements that sound like either of those, but the name could simply have been lost over time, or it could be too insignificant today to appear in major geographies. Kaples Wethan Mekoth, at least, is used by Balthan more as a of place rather than a specific location; more like our word for ‘temple.’”
Hobb scanned once again the passage he’d been reading.
“This in Naridium would have been quite near to where we are now,” he remarked, looking at the gray road and the bulk of the river to the south.
Pearsy shrugged lightly. “If you were to treat ancient folklore as a factual enterprise, then yes. But serious scholarship properly credits this sort of material as evidence of culture and society, rather than a description of reality. It isn’t fruitful, as a matter of social science, to go about searching for metal gods that change people from one thing into another. Therein lies madness and fantasy.”
Hobb stared out the window silently for the rest of the ride to Hoel, pondering madness and fantasy.
The road traffic was light. Few merchant caravans approached Uellodon now, even under direct orders from the National Assembly. The Republican Guard did, however, follow orders. Consequently, the main traffic on the road now was comprised of squadrons of red-clad, hard-faced troopers from the nearby town and regional departments. They were men of whose loyalty Hobb felt certain, and they were marching into Uellodon.
At Hoel, the party shook off the heavy, damp snowflakes that had flocked eagerly to their shoulders in the space between the carriage and the keep’s entry hall. They kept their coats with them as they descended into the dungeons. The air was chill and damp, and the sound of wheezing and coughing prisoners filled the sullen, pressing darkness beyond their lamplight. The leaking aqueduct had been repaired, at least, and the floor was mostly dry.
In the inhabited wing of the sub-basement, they found Wallingford Spoon, formerly of the Royal Academy of Uelland.
One of his eyes was swollen shut, and there was a nasty cut across his face. Bloodstains marred his clothing, and his breathing was shallow. But his one visible eye was bright as he looked at Hobb in the dim light of the guards’ torches. He still wore the sad remains of a tweed coat.
Hobb knelt over the fallen professor, shining a light to inspect the physical damage the man had suffered in his arrest. Pearsy and Boris waited outside the cell.
“You have already lost, you know,” said Hobb softly. “Utterly, completely. Your pamphlets have swayed no one, and your allies in the Old High Court will soon lie dead. Your collection of guerilla teachers in Carelon is nothing but an illegitimate rump. They are not the Royal Academy, and you are not a chancellor. Very soon, you will not be a man.”
Spoon croaked something unintelligible in reply. Hobb, sensing his difficulty, handed him a water skin, from which he drank gratefully with one chained hand. When the skin was handed back, Spoon’s head drooped.
“No defiant riposte?” sneered Hobb. “No hollow warning of future moral condemnation from the pens of the writers of history?”
“There will be no more writers of history, if I have already lost,” answered Spoon faintly. “They will be replaced, in your future, by revisers, until the very memory of truth or fact will be lost. Promising the condemnation of such tools would be, as you say… hollow.”
Hobb withdrew Pearsy’s copy of the Balthan translation from his pocket and flipped to a particular page. Then he held his lantern over the book so that Spoon could see it.
“What is ?” he asked.
Spoon squinted his one good eye at the page that Hobb proffered.
“Why should I help you? Get your ape Pearsy to translate it.”
“You should help me,” replied Hobb calmly, “because if you do not I shall have your companions tortured extensively to death, and then you will follow them. Whereas if you do, I shall end your life and theirs by the most marvelously swift and painless means that science has yet produced.”
“A fair bargain,” agreed Spoon, peering at the page for a long moment. Hobb lent him his spectacles, which he accepted gratefully and perched on his nose.
“I recall this phrase from Professor Stoat’s translations of the original,” he said at last. “It appears in a number of passages. From the surrounding context, Stoat inferred that it meant something like ‘large area of transformation.’ He sent me a copy of his translations, but I confess I skimmed parts of it. Maybe if you ask nicely, Stoat will send you a copy as well. Whoever translated your version appears to have skipped some of the contextual analysis.”
Hobb stared at him, and then looked down at the page. “Could it have meant, ‘great place of change’?” he asked softly.
Spoon’s tall frame gave a weary shrug. “I suppose so. Translating the real meaning of an archaic language into modern idiom is always fraught. But it could have meant that.”
Hobb stood up, his mind suddenly racing far away, making connections, drawing inferences.
“Do you believe in fairy tales, Mr. Spoon?” he asked, his tone abstracted.
“Only the ones I can see and touch,” answered his prisoner. “So—very few.”
“And yet you cling to the greatest fairy tale of all,” said Hobb. “Though you will not live to see it, we enter an age that will finally abolish the dark illusion that you and your class have woven for all the millennia of man’s sordid history. It is the myth of the individual, Mr. Spoon; the seductive lie that rests in the heart of all other injustices. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go and set about with the abolishing.”
He left the cell, not quite looking back.
“Have Mr. Spoon and his clique executed at sundown,” instructed Hobb to Pearsy, lifting his lantern and turning to the abandoned wing of the sub-basement. “I promised no torture, but a few hours to contemplate the magnitude of his failure will stand in well enough. Boris, go and see to the carriage. I don’t mean to be long.”
“Where are you going?” asked Pearsy, behind him.
“There is a stair in a cell at the back of this level,” answered Hobb softly. He paused for a moment, staring into the darkness. “If I’m not back by dusk,” he added, “immediately fill it in with the heaviest stone you can find and seal it with concrete. And then open up the aqueduct and flood the basement.”
???
In the dark of the great pit, lit faintly by the circular towers of tiny lights, Giant-men moved in regular, purposeful patterns. They filtered through the darkness at the base of the towers, carrying on their backs and shoulders heavy packs of leather that bulged with unknown contents. The mass of the packs must have been extraordinary; Hobb could see that the Giant-men labored and strained beneath their burdens, despite their massive frames and bulging muscles. He peered closely at one that passed nearby, but could make out nothing of the contents of the pack.
The Herald emerged from the shadows, the featureless glint of his face reflecting the green and blue of the lights above and around them.
“You return to us, First Minister,” he observed. “And in good time, as our task here is nearly complete, and I would not have waited for you.”
“You’ll be departing, then?” asked Hobb, feeling a surge of relief. “I’ll make arrangements for your way to be clear.”
“Soon,” confirmed the Herald. “Your assistance is unnecessary. We will not be hindered.”
Hobb swallowed, sensing the ambiguous threat in his words. The Herald drew close to Hobb, looming over him, as if to erase the ambiguity.
“You have come to discuss the terms of our access to the valley in the north,” announced the voice from behind the metal face. Hobb could hear Sir Richard Enderly’s deep, rich tone—but it was overlaid with a dry, grating film that made his bones feel cold.
“Let us speak apart from your servants,” said Hobb. “Out of this pit.”
The Herald nodded agreeably, and headed for the long stairs up to the rim. A Giant-man in a long, white robe followed after them. Hobb recognized him as the same who had served them dinner in the ruin of Ghorpol Ossa. This one was shorter than his comrades, at perhaps only nine feet in height, and his frame was thinner. Hobb wondered in amusement if this creature served the Herald as a secretary, like his own Boris. The white-robed Giant-man hoisted a large wooden table and two chairs in one hand with little apparent effort, following Hobb and his host up to the surface.
They seated themselves at the edge of the pit, and the white-robed Giant-man withdrew. Hobb faced the direction in which lay the stair up to the sub-basement, and the Herald sat opposite him.
“We will arrive in force in the late spring,” stated the Herald, “and occupy the valley with—”
“No,” interrupted Hobb.
The silence seemed to stretch for hours, but in narrowly objective reality, it was perhaps a few seconds.
“No, to what?” asked the Herald. His voice was deathly quiet.
“No, you will not occupy the sovereign territory of Uelland,” said Hobb. His heart was racing, and he was prepared for his life to be summarily ended at any moment. “Or, you shall not do so without first wading through her armies.”
“My servants will not be resisted,” replied the cold, dry voice that was once Richard Enderly. “You have seen them.”
“You are mistaken,” said Hobb. “Your servants be resisted. Perhaps not with success, and perhaps not even for very long, but we will fight. Our men at arms will fight, and our riders, and our spies, and our artillery. Our allies will fight, and our enemies will join us as well, when they perceive what you are. We will fight you on the hills and across the rivers and in the tunnels. You will bleed for every blade of grass that you conquer. Your dragon will breath himself hoarse, and we will still fight.”
In his heart, Hobb knew the falsity of his words. He wondered if the Herald knew as well.
While he was talking, the shapes of Giant-men had drawn up from the darkness beyond. It was the one in the white robe, and three others. The solid metal sheets of their battle armor reflected the light of his feeble lamp. Their movements were fluid and graceful, unhurried but potent. They stood now, around the table.
Hobb rose to his feet, picking up his lantern.
“The answer is no,” he concluded. “If you want our land, come and take it.”
He turned and pushed between two of the armored behemoths that surrounded the table, waiting to be crushed like a grape.
“Wait,” said the voice of the Herald. Hobb had walked a few paces. He stopped, but did not turn.
“Yes?” he asked, still facing away, toward the tunnel back to the surface.
“What do you want?” asked the dry voice from beneath the metal face.
Hobb did turn then, and came back, though he did not sit. The Herald had risen to his feet, and the armored Giant-men drew back. The two men stood facing each other across the plain wooden table.
“,” said Hobb clearly.
The Giant-men, still visible nearby, started, and their postures shifted almost instantly from towering imposition to slack uncertainty. It was as if Hobb had removed their souls. Even the man with the metal face took a step backward.
The Herald started to speak again. “How do you—”
“It is this place,” interrupted Hobb. “The Great Place of Change that lay in Naridium; one of three, and the one that the Emperor of the South destroyed after Semvee became him. And you are a herald of the Metal God that once lived here.” He listened to his own words, hardly believing them. But the Herald shifted in response, straightening and leaning backward as if a strong wind were blowing against him.
“You occupy the body of Sir Richard of Enderly, a Crown Knight who I sent into exile in the north,” continued Hobb calmly. “It follows that somewhere in his travels, somewhere in the white space on the map that reads ‘,’ he found you, and became you.”
“What do you want?” repeated the thing that was once Sir Richard. And it was no longer dry and disinterested; rather, it was colored with hot, passionate anger.
Hobb blinked. He hadn’t expected to get this far. In his own calculations, he was dead by now.
“The
changed a grandmother from the village of Lokhain into someone else. It changed Vicagrios from the son of a poor farmer into a wealthy man, and taught him the secrets of making. It changed King Semvee into the Emperor of the South—after Semvee had already been imprisoned by the Emperor of the South.”
“All these things are true,” said the Herald, nodding slightly.
“Give me the ,” said Hobb, “and the valley in the north is yours to take.”
It was impossible to say if the Herald was thinking, or communing, or simply pausing for dramatic effect, but he was motionless for many minutes. The Giant-men nearby melted into the darkness, leaving Hobb and the Herald alone.
“This place no longer functions,” the Herald said at last. The hot anger had faded from his voice, but could still be heard lurking in its lowest registers. “It has been cut off from us for too long. We have gathered from it what could be salvaged, but it will not bend to your will or to mine. I cannot give you what you ask.”
Hobb shrugged. “Then kill me, and take from us by force what you can.”
“Let me finish,” said the Herald. “This place does not function, but the valley in the north holds knowledge that will unlock what you seek. There is a library, made by my servants in ancient times when they bent the world to their will and made their own gods. Do not oppose us, and meet me there. I will give it to you.”
“Why should I trust you?” asked Hobb.
The Herald walked around the table and stood close to Hobb. He could see his own reflection in the smooth surface of the non-face.
“Because,” said the Herald, “the time you said no, I killed you. And yet—here we are.”
???
Hobb wasted no time after concluding his conversation with the Herald, ascending from the pit and the dungeons and hastening to his coach. Pearsy and Robe were nowhere to be found, having gone off someplace to see about the executions. They would have to find their own way back to the city; Hobb was in no mood to wait for stragglers.
“The Republic shall need a new army in the spring,” he said to Boris as the coach rattled beneath the stone gatehouse of the gloomy fortress. The trade road back to Uellodon was now frozen solid, and heavily scored with ruts and furrows.
“What’s wrong with the one we have?” inquired his secretary.
“I cannot rely on its loyalty to the National Assembly,” answered Hobb. “Hyden and Watt have their own agenda—and anyway, they’re tied up with the Brassens and Carolese here in the south. I’ve no doubts about Logwall, but the Crown Knights are too few for what I have in mind. Where we are going, we will need both numbers and absolute loyalty.”
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“The Guard, then?” suggested Boris.
“They have numbers and loyalty, but not leadership. Bisking is the least incompetent of the officer corps, and he can barely coordinate a donut and coffee.”
“General Sir Logwall could lead the Guard,” suggested Boris.
Hobb snorted. “You’ve never met the man. He’s the very definition of noble pretention. He’d be a disaster leading the Guard. I need someone who has the common touch to lead rank and file soldiers in the field, but isn’t overly beholden to the Heavy Arms.”
Boris scribbled notes on his writing tablet, his brow drawn in apparent concentration. After a very precise number of moments, he opened his mouth to speak again.
“How’s such a man to be—” he began; but just then the coach rolled over a particularly deep rut into the frozen road, and a bone-jolting crunch threw both occupants into the air. Hobb struck his head on the ceiling, and on his return trip he landed hard on his tailbone. He groaned and rubbed at his bottom, wincing.
Muttering imprecations at the coach driver, Hobb gradually regained his composure, focused on the matter at hand, and considered what Boris had just said.
“Howe’s such a man?” he mused. “Thomas Howe? I hadn’t considered it.”
“I didn’t mean—” began Boris, but Hobb had taken hold of the idea, and waved him silent.
“Howe is certainly competent, but hardly friendly to the Republic. Still…” he trailed off, thinking. “Still, he’s not a career officer, is he. The scout cavalry is a dead end for a military man. He was only made a knight-general at Baldwick because Leeland thought he was going to die of his wounds. It was a bit of an embarrassment when he didn’t, and the Heavy Arms has shut him out of command ever since. And he is exceptionally, stupefyingly loyal to the King.”
“That settles it,” he concluded confidently. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Boris. Take down a letter to General Sir Thomas Howe. We shall need him here at once.”
???
Hobb’s improved mood was squashed later that night, when a timid and crestfallen Maxime Robe brought news that Wallingford Spoon and his cohort had somehow disappeared from the dungeons of Hoel. A rogue officer was suspected, but the man who had presented his credentials at Hoel was later discovered to have died the previous day in the fighting at the courthouse. The author of the escape—and the escapees—were nowhere to be found.
“I blame myself,” he remarked clinically to his terrified lieutenant. “It is quite plainly my fault for allowing them a few extra hours to go on breathing. I should have learned from Cyrus Stoat the consequences of delayed justice. Next time I see Mr. Spoon, I shall immediately cut off his head myself, with the dullest knife that I can find. In fact, I shall start carrying one about with me. Find me a dull knife, Mr. Robe.”
“You could always use a spoon,” offered Robe.
Hobb regarded him blankly.
“Because of his name, you see,” Robe tried to explain.
Hobb said nothing.
“There’s a poetic symmetry to it,” Robe added. “Would make for good copy in the pamphlets.”
Hobb, imitating a spoon, dug his eyes into Mr. Robe’s face, who took that opportunity to escape the office, and his own premature decapitation.
???
Two days later, Mrs. Hunter came to inform Hobb of her departure.
“I will conclude my visit, First Minister,” she said, “and return to Queen Anne. I am sorry that I wasn’t able to resolve the situation at the Old High Court to your satisfaction.”
He nodded slowly, looking at her for a long moment. Mrs. Hunter’s hair was brushed and done up, and a layer of makeup had been carefully applied—but her eyes were hollow, and her expression was drawn and weary. Here is a woman, he thought, who teeters on the edge of making the right decision.
“As you wish,” he said. “You are here with the privileges of a diplomat, and you may depart with those privileges. As for the matter at the courthouse—it will be resolved soon enough. The people in the square won’t remain there for long when their food begins to run out and the sanitation becomes questionable. The Crown Prince cannot leave the city without being detected by the Security Bureau. And I’m afraid the traitors who presently occupy the courthouse will soon enough realize the legal consequences that are due to all traitors.
“Nonetheless, Mrs. Hunter, I am grateful that you have come. I wish we could be friends, you and I. You are already among the most consequential of citizens, and I truly believe that one day you will see that our way is right. When that day comes, I will be the first to welcome you back to the Republic.”
She wore a particular expression of polite neutrality on her face, which Hobb recognized from long experience as the mask of the diplomat who must suggest a thing is possible when it is not.
“Do you still desire a settlement with Queen Anne against a common enemy?” she asked.
Hobb leaned forward across the table eagerly.
“I do, Mrs. Hunter. Please tell her. The threat we face is one we absolutely must face together—or it will consume us. If she will meet us in a neutral venue—Roosterfoot, perhaps, or even on the river itself—then I am sure we can come to an agreement.”
Merrily rose to her feet.
“I will give her your message,” she said. “Will you excuse me, First Minister?”
He nodded, and rose to see her out. As he opened the door for her, he suddenly stared hard into her eyes.
“Where were you on the eighteenth?” he asked. “The day after the fighting at the Old High Court. The men I assigned to your protection reported that you vanished from their watch after you entered the courthouse.”
She smiled slightly.
“There was a great deal of chaos outside, that day,” she said. “I’m sure they just missed me. Be well, First Minister.”
He knew she was lying. But he could not bring himself to say the words, or to order the consequences of the lie to be visited on her.
“Be well, Merrily Hunter,” Hobb said softly. “Be joyful, if you can. And do great things.”
She left, and with her went a branch of possibility. Hobb saw it, watched it go regretfully, and then turned away.
???
Hobb sat on a bench that swayed back and forth in the way of a small boat. Someone rowed for many minutes. He could hear the oars slurping through the water close at hand. Then the sack was pulled off his head and the gag removed.
“Hello, Hobb,” said Archdeacon Ratwaddler.
The dead churchman rested for a moment at the oars of the small dinghy. His round face and plump body showed no evidence of exertion; indeed, he was smiling as breathing deeply in the cool, dark air of the night.
The Archdeacon tipped a small flask of water onto Hobb’s lips. Hobb drank gratefully, spilling drops all over his starched white shirt and dark gray coat.
“Something isn’t right,” he noted.
“Isn’t it?” asked his companion. The voice was opaque.
“Must we go on reliving these moments?” asked Hobb plaintively. “I keep hearing the same words, over and over, like I’m trapped in a play every night, performing an identical scene for an identical audience. There must come an end to every punishment, Archdeacon. I’m sure it’s time we both moved on.”
“I have moved on,” said Ratwaddler softly. “It’s you that linger, my friend.”
“We were never friends,” said Hobb, but he could hear the lie in his own voice. Ratwaddler smiled.
“We were friends, Hobb,” he reproached. “We always wanted the same thing, you and I. We saw beneath the costumes that men wear to hide themselves from each other; we saw what they are. They are animals, Hobb. Beneath the elegant words and art and music and laws, they are animals. They want nothing more than to tear each other’s throats out, to rut, to gorge, to dominate, to kill, and avoid being killed. They clothe themselves in reason and choice to hide, in their shame, what they are: machines of desire. Choice is a disease, and we both possessed the cure. But you wanted the medicine given in a red bottle, and I wanted it in a blue bottle. That was all! That was the difference between us, Hobb; the color of a bottle.”
Hobb shifted uncomfortably in his bonds. He could move neither his legs nor his hands.
“I’ve missed our talks, Uliver,” he said.
The lights of Uellodon were distant behind them, and the lights of Ville Porpo on the on the south bank were equally distant. They were in the middle of the Green River.
Archdeacon Ratwaddler smiled. “When you change the world, Hobb,” he said, “we will speak together again.”
“Do what comes next,” said Hobb, resignedly.
The churchman rose to his feet in the boat, unsteadily, and planted a firm kick in the chest of Hobb the Wise, First Minister of Uelland. Ratwaddler fell backward into the bottom of the little boat, but Hobb tumbled over the transom, and plunged headfirst into the cold water of the Green River. As he drifted slowly downward into the darkness, the moon above rippled through the distortion of the water, like shadows on the wall of a cave.
He opened his mouth to breath in.
???
Hobb’s eyes snapped open in the dark, and he clutched the blankets around his neck. He didn’t dare to move for many minutes, until he could finally reorient himself to the real world. Finally, he turned left and right, seeing the faint shadows of his familiar belongings. The shadows recalled the rippling of the moon through the water… but he threw the recollection aside and sat up.
It was a quarter to four in the morning on the third of January. Hobb rose, washed his face, brushed the faint fringe of hair that continued its long rearguard around his bald pate, and absently donned a fresh shirt and pants. He selected one from among his abundant collection of silk cravats, each a slightly different shade of gray. Today’s selection was the color of the ashes of oakwood, thoroughly consumed.
He worked in his study until the sun rose, and then took a short breakfast of two hard boiled eggs and an apple. The day was dim and overcast, with a thin sheet of fresh snow in the palace courtyard below his apartment. Fat flakes of the stuff were drifting down from the sky above, indolent in their progress toward the ground.
As Hobb was finishing his breakfast, there came a knock at the door. He opened it to find Mr. Robe waiting there. His lieutenant was dressed in a starched white shirt and a dapper suit of fine, dark wool. His hair was wet from the snow outside, and his spectacles dripped with water. Clutched in one hand was a thin leather tube.
“A post rider came in the night,” he said, offering the tube to Hobb. “Looked like he’d travelled hard—his horse was nearly dead. He had this for you.”
“This couldn’t wait for the daily mail?” asked Hobb in annoyance, taking the tube.
“Look at the case,” suggested Mr. Robe.
Hobb looked at the case. On the cap, sealed by a deep red wax, was the imprint of three fish surmounted by a crown.
“The Pretender,” commented Hobb, breaking the wax and opening the cap. “Anne the Pretender has sent us a letter, Mr. Robe.”
He withdrew from the case a single sheet of paper and read.
Hobb looked up from the paper at Mr. Robe and smiled. “Get that post rider a warm bed,” he said grandly, “and have the King’s own groom see to the horse. I shall need him to make a return journey to Green Bridge as soon as he is recovered.”
In the afternoon, Hobb gave a speech to the National Assembly on the need for unity in the face of foreign aggression, and on the virtue of reconciliation with enemies. The delegates, arranged in long rows of benches in the old Grand Ballroom, listened attentively and applauded at all the right places. Though he had forbidden Mr. Robe from holding up a large sign with the word “Applause” drawn on it, he suspected that his fixer was still giving hand signals. It didn’t matter. They voted through a routine bill to extend the civil emergency in the capital for another two weeks, and then adjourned.
After his speech, Hobb received a less encouraging message, by way of Attorney Killbride.
“They’ve denied our appeal on the motion to dismiss the Foregrub and Quimble case,” announced the lawyer peremptorily as he entered Hobb’s office, shaking snow off his overcoat and shivering.
Hobb blinked.
“File another appeal,” he said after a moment’s thought.
“We can’t,” replied Killbride. “The Justices ordered the trial to go on immediately, and the trial court scheduled it for next week. Pre-trial motions are due in three days, and we can probably manage to exclude some of the—”
“There will be no trial, Mr. Killbride,” interrupted Hobb. “A trial would be illegal, as the matter is without the jurisdiction of the courts.”
Killbride shuffled nervously and looked at the papers he had withdrawn from his briefcase.
“I’m afraid the High Court has ruled definitively on the matter of jurisdiction,” he said quietly. “And they have ruled that, well… they have it.”
Hobb rose to his feet.
“Wait here,” he said.
Hobb the Wise took the signed order from Mr. Killbride and walked calmly out of the room. When he returned, fifteen minutes later, he handed the paper back to King’s Counsel. At the bottom of the order, over the signature of Leeland III, King of Uelland and Chief Executive of the Republic, was one single sentence:
“Make a copy of this, and then take it back to the clerk of the Court,” he instructed. “Serve a copy on that degenerate Snort, if you care to. And then, Mr. Killbride, you and the other King’s Counsel are not to set foot in that courthouse again, for any reason.”
Mr. Killbride’s face was an unhealthy shade of pale gray as he left the room.
Hobb sent for Major Bisking and gave him certain detailed instructions regarding the disposition of the Republican Guard, their ranks in Uellodon now swollen with reinforcements of loyal men from the districts.
The First Minister then withdrew to his study, spent the rest of the afternoon in writing and contemplation, and went to be early. He slept the undisturbed sleep of the weary and righteous.
???
The following morning, at first light, Hobb had escorted into his presence one Michael Rider, post-rider of the Republican Postal Service. (That’s what it was called, now, though the staff remained essentially unchanged from its old days as the Merchants’ Post. Hobb was not a man to discard a competent body of civil servants over something so petty as a name.)
Rider was tall, with a blocky face that was just this side of handsome, and lank, brown hair. He wore the stained leather coat and hose of his profession, and a small blue cap with a short bill. There was a brass emblem at the center of the cap, showing a man riding a horse with a satchel. Slung over Rider’s own shoulder was a nearly identical satchel.
“You risked much to bring a message across the front,” Hobb observed.
Rider shrugged, but did so politely, his eyes cast down.
“It’s my job,” he said. “The Queen trusted me with a message and paid the price we agreed for delivery.”
“Very good,” said Hobb approvingly. “I wish more men in this land shared your sense of duty and loyalty, Mr. Rider. You know your role, and you play it to the end.” He paused thoughtfully, casting his eyes to the distance. “We should all be so fortunate,” he added in a softer voice, “to have such moral clarity.”
Then Hobb’s eyes focused on Rider again, who stood watching him stoically.
“I have a return message for Princess Anne,” he said. He picked up from the table his own tubular scroll case, sealed with purple wax and the King’s imprint. It contained Hobb’s response to Anne’s overture; an offer to meet, with equal guards and in plain view from all directions, on a barge in the Green River. He handed the scroll tube to the postman.
“My man outside will see to your fee,” Hobb continued. “Only promise me, Mr. Rider, that you will deliver this to her in person, and before the ice breaks up on the northern stretches of the Green River.”
Rider took the scroll case. “The journey north is difficult, First Minister,” he replied, “but there’s no cause for it to take until spring. If you pay, I’ll deliver, or die trying.”
Hobb smiled. “What clarity of purpose you have, Mr. Rider. Truly, I admire it. How did you come by such a useful character? I should have you teaching classes at the Academy.”
Rider tucked the scroll into his satchel and paused, turning for the door. He faced Hobb again.
“It’s what I’ve chosen for myself,” he answered shortly. And then he left.
It was later in the morning that Mr. Robe came to find Hobb in his study. Robe’s face was pale, and his hands trembled. His eyes were bloodshot, and he rubbed absently at the ugly scar across his face.
“They’re coming,” he said, with no preamble. “The judges. They’re out in the street already. There’s a whole crowd with them, and they’re coming here.”
Hobb looked up sharply.
“All of them?” he asked.
“Yes,” confirmed Robe. “The whole bench of the High Court. And all the lawyers, and their clerks, and a whole gang of their supporters.”
Hobb calmly laid down his pencil and straightened his papers.
“What are we going to do, First Minister?” his lieutenant asked.
“Come with me, Mr. Robe,” said Hobb. He walked purposefully to the window and opened it. Then he stuck his head outside.
“No!” cried Mr. Robe. “Don’t!”
“Hush now, Maxime,” replied Hobb calmly. He withdrew from one pocket a small signal flag and waved it in a particular pattern. A man on top of one of the towers on the other side of the courtyard—not a soldier, but a Bureau man—waved his arms in return, fluttering his own brightly-colored flag. Hobb nodded in satisfaction and withdrew back into the room.
“Come along, Mr. Robe,” he said.
“What are we going to do?” repeated Robe.
Hobb did not answer, but strobe purposefully through the halls of Palace Naridium. His long legs and tall, rail-thin frame glided majestically, gracefully through the old stone passages, like one of the old kings come back to do his duty once again. They passed through Begley Gallery, where Hobb’s eyes fell, for just a moment, on the now-restored portrait of Horace II, stretched over an unadorned frame but hanging in its former spot. Hobb blinked once in acknowledgment.
They passed through the Grand Ballroom, with its rows of benches for the Assembly. Hobb’s eyes brushed over the six great chandeliers—now unlit, in the gray light of morning. He looked down again, putting the past where it belonged.
Boris met them at the grand triple-doorway. He fell in behind, saying nothing, as they passed out into the courtyard. Hobb tightened his coat and put up an umbrella against the drifting snow, but otherwise did not slacken his pace. His companions hurried along after him.
In Sheepford Street outside the palace, under the shadow of the Rose Tower, a great mass of red-clad Republican Guard had already gathered. They stood in tight ranks, spears and crossbows gleaming even in the gray snowfall. Hobb had quartered them in the houses around the palace, expelling the occupants to make room. Now, on cue, they had emerged swiftly to take their places. Other squadrons were taking up position in the streets on either side, cutting off escape.
He found Major Bisking.
“Advance the Guard until you reach the insurgents,” he instructed. “And then draw up into a shield wall. Take no action until I command it. Let them form a mass in front of you, and do not permit them to escape from the sides or rear. Post archers in the buildings overlooking the column. I will be with you, Major Bisking, to give further instructions. Now go.”
Bisking, who had no need at all to think through these orders, happily turned and began to give instructions to his captains.
“What are we going to do?” asked Mr. Robe softly. His eyes were wide, but Hobb couldn’t tell if he saw fear or elation. Boris said nothing, and his face revealed nothing.
Hobb did not reply.
The mass of Guardsmen moved forward then, shuffling through the lazy snow at a slow trot. Hobb walked briskly behind them, breathing deep in the cold air. To either side of Sheepford Street, he could see faces peering out of windows, watching; but the streets were empty. The people knew what was coming.
The red-clad backs ahead of them stopped, then, and skirmishers with crossbows broke off to take up positions in the windows and on the rooftops. Hobb ascended a nearby barrel and looked over the heads of the Republican Guard. Ahead of them was a huge mass of people. Most were dressed in the sober black suits and dull cravats of the lawyer class. A small parade of judges, held comically aloft in their seats by poles on the shoulders of lawyers and clerks, sat behind their elevated desks, also on poles. He recognized Woodbrow, and Willoughby, and all the rest of them. Willoughby was speaking, her strong, clear voice carrying out over the space between them.
The Republican Guard were silent; the lawyers and hangers-on were silent; the houses and the people and animals and snow were all silent. Only the voice of Justice Willoughby on her chair, separated from Hobb by the shoulders and arms of hundreds of his Republican Guard, could be heard. He looked carefully at the hateful mass of pedants and sophists and hypocrites positioned before him.
“Where is Killbride?” he asked of Mr. Robe after he could bear no more of the Justice’s harangue.
“He went back to the courthouse,” answered Mr. Robe. “After he brought word, he went back.”
“Pity,” said Hobb. “He was a useful idiot.”
Bisking came waddling up through the snow, looking confused.
“What now?” he asked. “It’s a stalemate, I think. The court is still in session, but we’ve blocked their access to the Palace and the King. They’ll have to turn around and go back. They can’t hold those judges up there forever in the street and the snow. I’ve got men at the courthouse now, locking things up and taking defensive—”
“Kill them,” said Hobb.
The silence returned, broken only by Justice Willoughby’s vigorous concurrence.
“Is that legal?” asked Bisking. His face was blank, and his tone genuinely curious.
Hobb turned to Bisking, his pulse quickening. But before he could speak, Mr. Robe strode up to the wavering officer and thrust his own, bespectacled face into Bisking’s.
“Kill them,” he said, his voice rising in excitement. “That, Major Bisking, is a lawful order of the National Assembly, which has granted emergency authority to its executive delegate, the First Minister. In the present state of civil emergency, the Security Bureau, under the direction of the First Minister, may use force as needed to protect the integrity of the government from insurgents and agents of political terror. It was voted on yesterday. So do your duty today to the Republic and the People, Major Bisking, and kill them all.”
Bisking blinked, opened his mouth, shut it again, and then turned to the signal flagger standing nearby.
“Kill them,” he said.
The first note to emerge was the single twang of a lone crossbow. The feathers of a bolt suddenly protruded from the neck of Justice Woodbrow, and the gray-haired jurist tumbled from his perch. More twanging voices followed, and they were soon joined by a rising cacophony of screams and shouts from the crowd to the front. The screams rose on top of the twangs of the crossbows, swelling into an atonal mass—a solid wall of heavy, insistent noise.
It did not, now, sound to Hobb like a hundred pigs all being slaughtered at once, nor like a hundred smiths hammering at a mad pace. Those were the impressions of a different battle, in a different time. This sound, now, was of an orchestra tuning up.
The ranks of the Republican Guard pushed forward into the unarmed civilians ahead, and more squadrons closed in from the sides and the rear. Mr. Robe disappeared into the street to Hobb’s right. Hobb supposed that he lacked the stomach for true political power. But Boris remained at Hobb’s side, in the street below the barrel, watching impassively as events unfolded before them.
It took the Guard nearly an hour to complete the slaughter, and Hobb remained dutifully at his post through it all, bearing witness. When it was over, he picked his way down Sheepford Street, through a slush of mud and snow and blood and viscera and bodies. Guardsmen wandered aimlessly among the fallen, stabbing here and there just to be sure, or rifling through the clothing of fallen men.
The smells and sights of death were overwhelming to Hobb’s senses, but he set senses aside for a time.
He found Mr. Robe, crouched over the body of some fallen lawyer. The face was bloodied and mangled beyond recognition; it appeared that much of it had been hacked away. Robe was holding in his hand a long, elegant dagger, and his own face and hands were covered in blood. Hobb could see marks on the neck and face of the dead body, where teeth had torn at it.
Mr. Robe looked up at Hobb, and his eyes were deep and feral. He panted and hissed, blood dribbling from his mouth and spattering on his starched white shirt and cravat. He jaws worked rhythmically as if he were chewing on something.
Hobb turned and walked away, back up Sheepford Street. He picked his way carefully through the bodies, and a mist arose from the warmth of blood in the snow around him. At his side walked the man Boris, his face pale and his eyes that strange color that was almost red, but not quite. His expression was grave, but the corners of his thin lips twitched. The snow did not settle on either of them, and the sun was dim, as if they walked in the faint shadow of terrible wings.