The Wheel of Osheim

THIRTY-THREE

Garyus was buried as a king in the cathedral of Our Lady in Vermillion. The funeral procession wound from Victory Plaza in the palace out across the city, along the Corelli Line overlooking the river and down toward the Appan Gate. We had snow, the first snow to fall in Vermillion in eight years, as if the city had dressed for the occasion, covered up its scars and stains and dirt for just one day to see the old man laid to rest.

I carried the coffin with my cousins, and Captain Renprow filled in the sixth space. The Red Queen appointed him to the honour for carrying Garyus up into the Blue Lady’s tower through magics no other soldier had survived, and for the heroics he displayed in getting my great-uncle to Blujen in the first place a week earlier, against Renprow’s own strong advice, it must be said.

“For this, Marshal Renprow, we thank you. We thank you for carrying our brother.”

“He carried me, your majesty.” Renprow bowed. “And it was my honour.”

“He carried us all.” The Red Queen nodded and bowed her face. “For many years.”

We set his coffin in a sepulchre of white marble within the cathedral, bound by magics that would secure him from any necromancy. I said the words over him in his resting place. I think I spoke them clearly and with meaning.

“Be at peace, my brother.” Grandmother laid her hand upon the cold stone, and beside her, seen by no one else but me, the Silent Sister put her own pale hand where her twin’s name was graven, and from her dark eye a single tear fell, sparkling.

I came to see Snorri leave from the river docks. I had bought him a boat. A good one, I hoped. I called it The Martus. Darin left a child to carry his line and a wife who loved him. Martus needed something, and a boat to carry his name into the world was the best I could offer.

Snorri stood at the wall beside the stone steps we had once run down, escaping Maeres Allus’s thugs. The wound on his face was healing, and his broken arm was hidden beneath a thick bearskin cloak fastened with a heavy golden clasp-a gift from the queen.

“We have snow here! Why are you leaving?” I spread my arms to encompass the unreal whiteness of Vermillion. Dockhands shivered around us in their too-thin coats as they loaded the last of his stores.

“The North calls me, my friend. And this isn’t snow-this is a frosting. In the North we-”

“Dance naked on such days. I know! I’ve seen it.” I clapped a hand to his good arm. “I’ll allow it . . . but come back, you hear? As soon as you’ve had your fill of frostbite and bad food, come back and warm up again.”

“I will.” A grin, white teeth in the bristling blackness of his short beard.

“Seriously. I mean it. Life will be too dull without all your nonsense.” I had more to say but it left me, along with the air from my lungs, as Hennan shot up the steps and bundled into me. “Ouch! Careful! Wounded hero here!” I put an arm round him and ruffled his red hair in the way that used to annoy me so much when my father did it to me. “Kara! Rescue me!”

The völva came up from the boat at a more leisurely pace, casting an amused eye over the three of us. “The boat’s ready. The river too,” she said.

“Look after these idiots for me,” I said. “The only thing Snorri knows in Trond are the docks and the Three Axes. And Hennan has never had the chance to appreciate the true horror of a Norseheim town.”

“I’ll see they get there safe enough,” she said. “After that I have things to do.”

I shrugged and smiled. I didn’t know much about boats, but what I did know was that very often the people who stepped off them at the end of a long voyage were not the same people who had boarded them.

And that was that. Snorri crushed the breath out of me with a onearmed hug, and the Seleen took them away, running west toward the sea.

The weeks that followed saw the continuing rebuilding of the outer city, a labour that would keep the people of Red March busy for years to come. If we have years to come. But who knows how long they have? We stopped the engines driving us to destruction. All that turns the Wheel now is us. More slowly, yes, but the destination is the same. We purchased time and time is a wonderful thing. Me, I intend to waste it hand over fist until it’s time to panic again. And even then it will be someone else’s task to fix the problem. My adventuring days are over-a neat parcel of memories sealed with a bow and shoved into some dark corner of a cupboard to gather dust and never see the light of day again.

Weeks later when the maid arrived at my rooms to stow away my laundered clothing, she came with Dr. Taproot’s lens laid neatly on the top in its silver hoop.

“It’s lucky they found that, your highness,” she said, beaming beneath her curls. “A delicate thing like that could easily come to harm.”

I was tempted to grind it to dust beneath my heel there and then. Loose ends warrant stamping on if they’re the kind that connect with people like Dr. Taproot. In the end though I feared summoning trouble and settled for wrapping it up and finding a literal rather than metaphorical seldom-used cupboard with dark enough corners to hide the thing away. Then went off to the kitchens to demand a huge lunch with plenty of wine.

Grandmother shook up the palace. Hertet, who miraculously survived the night of horror at Milano House, she sent into exile as permanent ambassador to the eastern czardoms. To quell any future manoeuvring over succession she officially named an heir. She even summoned me to a private session of court to discuss the matter. I backed her selection. Cousin Serah had showed in the siege that Grandmother’s blood ran deep in her. When at last the Red Queen met her end our people would shout “The Red Queen is dead! Long live the Red Queen!”

Which just leaves me, here in the guest wing of the Inner Palace, watching from a high window as Barras Jon limps off to one or other of his duties. They found him alive on the morning when the Dead King broke his siege. He lay trapped amid a heap of broken corpses at the base of the city wall where we had fought together. His leg proved to be too badly shattered for a full recovery, but with the aid of a cane he gets about, overseeing his father’s affairs in Vermillion. Indeed, these days his business interests see him called hither and thither across the length and breadth of Red March. He says I saved him that day, and if I ever want anything from him I just have to ask. So really, my only crime is having forgotten to ask . . .

“Get into bed, Jal. I told you he wasn’t coming up.”

I turn back to my companion. She’s sitting up, wearing nothing but satin sheets and a smile. I echo the smile and unclasp my velvet robe. It drops into a purple heap behind me. I reach toward my head . . .

“Leave the hat on,” she says. “I like it . . . Cardinal Jalan.”

“Oh my child,” I say, pulling off my left boot. “You’re such a sinner.” I kick off the other boot and start unbuttoning. “Time for some genuflexion. Let’s get ecumenical.” I slide into bed beside her. I’ve been picking up the clerical language as the bishops desperately try to train me. I pull Lisa DeVeer to me. “Or even ecclesiastical.” Neither of us know the definition of the word-but we both know what it means.

And in the end neither the lies nor the truth matter.

Just what we feel.

I’m a liar and a cheat and a coward, but I will never, ever, rarely let a friend down.