Page 137 of Play of Shadows
She scowled at him, but he smiled in return, placing his hand on her shoulder tenderly. I had never seen him touch her before.
‘My pitiful reign has known only one consolation,’ Monsegino said, so quietly I felt like an intruder eavesdropping on an intensely private moment. ‘Your counsel, your loyalty and above all else, your friendship. Now your service to me ends, most gracious Lady, and I would see you live a long and happy life elsewhere. I am your liege no longer.’
Shariza’s dark eyes never left the viscountess. ‘Then you’re in no position to be giving me orders, your Grace. My service to you will end whenIchoose. You have little say in the matter.’
Out in the courtyard, a stillness had fallen over the crowds. The Iron Orchids, perhaps only now discovering that they were mere bit players in someone else’s production, shuffled anxiously as they watched not the stage, but the weapons of the armed soldiers surrounding them.
‘Oh, Firan,’ Viscountess Kareija said, looking amused by his exchange with Shariza, ‘if only you aroused such loyalty in your own subjects.’
‘Or at least in his family,’ Ornella said, taking up position next to Shariza. The two women gave each other an almost imperceptible nod, a silent pact made between them.
‘Fuck the nobility and their armoured thugs,’ Beretto whispered to me. ‘What this city really needs is an army of Ornellas.’
Kareija, however, stepped between the two women andextended her bejewelled hand to Monsegino. ‘Your admirers question my loyalties, Firan.’
The duke bent down to kiss the proffered hand. ‘They do not know you as I do, Aunt.’
The viscountess turned to me. ‘I didn’t lie when I told you I never aspired to the throne, Damelas. When my father brought Firan to our city and displaced me to name him heir, I made no move against him even though I knew he was doomed from the start. The Iron Orchids were bound to grow in power and influence. I needed to bring them to my nephew’s side.’
‘So you stole your father’s diamond pass to remove the second Sigurdis Macha volume from the Grand Library,’ I said, unable to keep the fury from my voice. ‘You thought the edicts described within would be the key to securing the Orchids’ support.’
Whatever righteous indignation she saw in my eyes, she returned tenfold. ‘I was prepared to give upeverything! I encouraged others to bend the knee to my nephew, even punishing my most ardent supporters when they tried to mint currency in my image.’ She shook her head, the confusion and sorrow in her voice sounding entirely genuine. ‘Yet still Firan engaged in reckless and futile reforms, ignoring my counsel and turning his own noblesandthe Iron Orchids against us.’
Monsegino kissed her hand a second time, as if accustoming himself to inevitable subservience. ‘You were most generous in your restraint, Aunt.’
As he rose, she slapped him across the face with the hand he’d kissed, as if he were a child who’d made one too many flippant remarks. Shariza would have killed her then and there, had not the duke clamped a hand on her arm.
‘Look where you’ve brought us, Firan!’ Kareija cried, gesturing to the frantic crowds awaiting the next cataclysm that would surely befall them. ‘You have turned this city against itself– and you have undermined the traditional rights owed to the greatHouses!’
Some trace of the man that Monsegino had been– or perhaps he had hoped to become– reasserted itself. ‘Of which “rights” do you speak, Kareija? The right to keep the populace drugged and insensate? The right to embezzle funds meant for the maintenance of sewers and streets until the entire city is crumbling underfoot?’
He paused a moment, as if suddenly embarrassed to realise they were airing family grievances in front of thousands of commoners, then chuckled at the irony.
‘Kareija, you never asked why your father chose me, a foreigner– the “Violet Duke”– to take his throne. Perhaps it was because he knew that having lived your entire life benefiting from such corruption, you could never conceive of foregoing its privileges.’
She weathered her nephew’s defiance without malice, apparently unaware that the twelve nobles who’d accompanied her to the stage were looking on in amused patience as she played at the role of monarch. One of them, a heavyset man in an expensive burgundy silk coat, approached to whisper in her ear.
Kareija nodded, and when she turned back to face her nephew, her posture and bearing had changed, making her more regal and less human.
‘Firan Monsegino,’ she began, her commanding tone that of the heroine princess at the end of the play whose spell will compel the vile dragon to submit to justice, ‘for treason against the Duchy of Pertine, you are by unanimous decree of the noble Houses of Pertine deposed from the throne. I have been named duchess in your stead. For the love I bear you, the sentence demanded for your crimes will be commuted to banishment. By morning you will be gone from this city, by week’s end from the duchy, never to return on pain of death. Submit to this sentence willingly, binding those supporters you have to peace, and wecan put an end to any further bloodshed.’ Without so much as taking a breath, she added, ‘Do you accept these terms?’
Beneath the stern, almost placid mask he tried to keep in place was a tortured soul at war with itself. He had dreamed of being the hero in this tale. Now, like Corbier, he would be for ever consigned to the role of the villain.
‘Promise me one thing, Aunt,’ Monsegino said at last.
‘I’ve already offered you more—’ She stopped and sighed. ‘Ask what you will, Nephew.’
‘Promise me you’ll investigate those who secretly command the Iron Orchids. Your new duchy has enemies, and they have a name.’ His fists clenched with a barely restrained outrage that was now familiar to me. ‘You must unmask the Court of Flowers before it is too late.’
‘Oh, Firan.’ She placed her hands over her mouth for a moment, as if witnessing a loved one succumbing to madness. ‘As you will,’ she said at last. ‘On my oath as Duchess of Pertine, I will poke my nose into every nook and cranny of this duchy in search of these phantoms that so trouble your fevered imaginings.’
Without another word, Duke Firan Monsegino knelt before his aunt and bowed his head. ‘I hereby confess my guilt and accept my sentence. With my last act as duke, do I urge those few in this city who love me to keep the peace and to serve Duchess Kareija as your true and lawful monarch, in any way she requires. Long may she reign.’
A cheer rose up, first from the paltry assemblage of nobles on the stage who’d helped orchestrate the coup, then a louder one from their troops. Even the Iron Orchids shouted their approval. I experienced my first moment of patriotic pride when the rest of the folk in the courtyard – the merchants and craftspeople, the artisans and alley-rats – remained silent as ghosts.
They long to fight for their city, I thought suddenly.They lackonly the means.
Monsegino rose and held out his wrists, awaiting the shackles.
