The King Slayer Part 27

John jams the wad of leaves into the wound, holding them in place with the flat of his palm. Malcolm lets out a stream of curses, twisting in pain under John's hand.

"It'll hurt only a minute," John says. After a moment he pulls his hand away. It's b.l.o.o.d.y and sticky with green, but just as he said, the bleeding has slowed. John takes the knife, quickly slices his own discarded shirt into a bandage, and wraps it tight against Malcolm's chest.

"We'll need to get you out of here." John glances around. The field is littered with bodies, soldiers still darting around, weapons held high. "We can try to cut through the woods back to Rochester, though we don't know what could be lurking inside-oh, only you."

I look up to see Schuyler step from the trees into view. He's got a sword in one hand, a bundle of gray fabric clutched in the other. He pauses a moment, takes us in.

"It's a good look." Schuyler eyes John's half-naked body. "Bit like a republic gladiator, strutting about the arena. Shall I bring you a loincloth? A pair of sandals? A lion, perhaps?"

John flips him an obscene gesture, and then, to my surprise, he laughs.

Schuyler tosses him the gray bundle-a shirt. "Found this lying around. Thought it might come in handy." John takes it with a word of thanks, then yanks it over his head. "He going to die?" Schuyler jerks his head at Malcolm.

I shoot Schuyler a look.

"No, he's not," John says. "It's a nasty cut to be sure, but it's not fatal. Jagged, though-it'll be h.e.l.l to st.i.tch up." A look of mild distress crosses his face; at once I know why. John may not recall how to st.i.tch him up, not anymore. He looks back to Malcolm. "What was it? A serrated knife?"

Malcolm shakes his head. "It wasn't a weapon. It was talons." He points overhead. "One of those b.l.o.o.d.y winged things picked me up and flew me a hundred feet straight up before someone shot it down. I was still fifty feet in the air when it dropped me."

"You're lucky you didn't break something." John pauses, considers. "Unless you did. Can you move your arms and legs?"

"I can move everything but my left leg," Malcolm says. "I can't bend it. I already tried."

John looks up at Schuyler. "You'll have to carry him."

Schuyler reaches down, scoops Malcolm into his arms. He pauses, then nods. "I'll warrant you didn't," he says, and I can guess what Malcolm's thinking: that he never imagined himself to be injured in a battlefield, fighting against his family, tended to by a Reformist, helped by a revenant. "And you're welcome," Schuyler adds.

FIFER AND PETER GREET US at Rochester Hall. Fifer rushes up to Schuyler like she doesn't even see anyone else. She looks at him as if she wants to laugh and cry at the same time. Then she turns to John, throws herself in his arms.

"Nicholas." It's all she says; it's all she needs to say. John shakes his head, and Fifer ducks her head into his shoulder again. He whispers to her, his voice drowned out by her sobs.

"Put me down," Malcolm says to Schuyler, cracking open an eye. His voice is barely a whisper. "I can walk-hop, rather-and you should go to her...." He wriggles in Schuyler's grasp, breaks off with a gasp of pain.

"No talking," John tells him. "And no more moving." He glances at Schuyler. "I need to get him to the infirmary. Do you mind taking him? I'll come along. You can drop him off but I'll stay." John turns to me as if to explain, but he doesn't need to. He's going to stay with Malcolm to make sure he's taken care of, because although one enemy is gone, there are still many others who would see him gone, too.

Schuyler starts off across the field, Malcolm still in his arms, Fifer beside him. John tells me he'll be back for me soon, and then he's gone.

It's just me and Peter alone now, alone save for the thousands of men running around us, shouting and screaming, cursing and laughing. I watch them as they pa.s.s, some in chaos and in pain, some in triumph and in relief. Perhaps they never expected to win but now we have, and it's a strange, heady sensation to rejoice when so many others have died, to feel that we've won when we've still lost so much.

Before I can say anything, before I can begin to say or even think what it might mean for us, for them, for everything, Peter s.n.a.t.c.hes me in an embrace, patting my back as if I were a child, murmuring words of comfort I didn't know I needed. I let myself sag in his embrace and cry until I'm weak with release and his shirt is wet with my tears.

The battlefield continues to clear off; men continue to stagger back to camp at Rochester, coming in steady streams through the gatehouse. After seeing Malcolm safely installed and heavily guarded in an infirmary tent-with the promise that he would return to check on him soon-John finds me again, Schuyler and Fifer in tow. There were a panic-filled few hours when we couldn't find George, but finally Schuyler finds him huddled around a tent with two dozen Gallic soldiers, all of them drunk as choirboys. We're angry for all of one minute, until one of the soldiers tosses John a bottle of wine. John takes a drink before pa.s.sing it to me, grinning. The four of us sit down beside them, and we spend most of the night drinking and laughing and feeling something I've not felt in a long time: Relief.

Much later, Gareth is found. Back in Harrow, hiding in the cathedral of his own home, huddled beside the pulpit where he denounced me and ordered me to kill the very man he renounced his own side for, a sword in his hand, dead.

Peter reasoned that at some point during the battle he'd had a change of heart, a traitor turning traitor once more. Perhaps he was injured before; perhaps he took a hit on the way back. It wasn't a deep wound, something a healer could have fixed had he returned to Rochester. Instead, he bled to death; he hadn't even bandaged it to try to stop the blood. But perhaps he didn't know how injured he was, not until it was too late.

In the days that follow, Nicholas is laid to rest in a plot beside his home, a home that now belongs to Fifer. Shortly afterward she disappeared from camp alongside Schuyler, keeping to herself and working through her grief in private.

With Blackwell's death, Anglia falls into crisis: We are a country without a king. Upon their surrender, Blackwell's councilmen-once Malcolm's-meet with Harrow's council, led by Fitzroy, the newly appointed Regent of Anglia. And for days they table the unprecedented question: Who is to take the crown? By right, it should revert back to Malcolm. Only, he won't take it.

"I can't do it," Malcolm says. We're inside Rochester Hall, in one of the hundreds of plush bedrooms, most of them filled now with recovering soldiers. I sit in a chair beside his bed, John on the other side, checking him over. It's been seven days since the battle ended; six since Malcolm was installed in a fine room, far different from the room he was imprisoned in. He could have had any one of a dozen healers attend to him, but to my surprise, he only wanted John.

"I couldn't do it the first time. You saw what happened. It led to... all this." He waves his hand vaguely out the window. In the distance, soldiers still mill about the camp. "I thought about what I'd do, if we won. I was going to hand the crown to Margaret, but that was before..." He trails off, turning his gaze to the floor. John and I exchange a glance.

Malcolm was not a good husband, not at all. But when he learned of the death of his wife he took it hard, more than I imagined he would. Her death was not a repercussion of war, but one of neglect: Three days ago she was found abandoned in a cell at Fleet, left to a pitiful death by starvation and cold.

"Someone's going to have to do it, and soon," I say. "Fitzroy can't continue ruling; his claim isn't strong enough. Great-grandson to Edward the First, three times removed-"

"Four times," Malcolm and John say at the same time.

"Fine. Four times removed. He can hold it now, but once someone starts digging-and you know they will-they'll find someone with better lineage. If it's someone the council doesn't like, and whoever it is doesn't give up his claim, there could be another war. We can't have that."

"Were I to claim the throne, there would be a war anyway," Malcolm says. "I'm still the enemy to some. To many. Don't make me do the math again." He hisses in pain as John presses down on his broken leg.

"Sorry," John says. "Your leg looks good, though. You should have full use of it within six months. Your days of jousting and hunting and dancing might be limited for the next year, but that's not too bad, all things considered."

"I was thinking of taking up painting," Malcolm says, his face still a grimace. "Or maybe lute playing."

I don't say anything for a moment. The sight of John and Malcolm talking as if they don't hate each other, as if they aren't enemies, holds me to silence.

There's a knock at the door, then it swings open.

We get to our feet, John and I, nodding our heads in deference. Fitzroy nods at us, then glances at Malcolm.

"Forgive me for not standing, Lord Regent." Malcolm smiles at him, and there's no malice in his voice at the deference. "I seem to be at a disadvantage at the moment."

"No apology necessary." Fitzroy smiles in return. "Do you have a moment? I thought we could talk." He flicks his hand, and a handful of servants appear from behind him carrying trays laden with food and wine; pewter plates and crystal goblets; fine silverware. A feast for a king. He glances at John. "I know this isn't on the approved list of physics, but if you could allow it just for today..."

"It's fine," John says, then looks at Malcolm. "I think I can trust you not to overindulge?"

"I think my days of indulgence are over," Malcolm replies.

We leave Malcolm and Fitzroy alone and make our way down the long, light-filled hallway, out one of many doors and into one of the many courtyards. There's a ring of benches around a fountain, splashing and gurgling in the warm sun, the bushes and hedges around it beginning to show bloom. I sit down on the one closest to the water; John sits beside me.

"You and Malcolm," I say after a minute. "It's an odd thing to see you by his side. Helping him." I pause. "Why did you? Not just here, today, but before on the battlefield. Why did you do it?"

John smiles. "Well, I wouldn't be much of a healer if I left him to die, would I?"

"That's not what I meant," I say.

"I know," he says. "But I don't know if I've got a better answer. Part of caring for people is to try to see past what it is they're showing you. Malcolm was in a cell beside me at Hexham. He showed me a lot about himself there, most of it having to do with you."

I pull a face. I don't want to know the things he said.

"I'll spare you the details," he says. "But if I thought for a second Malcolm ever meant to harm you, that he acted out of malice instead of ignorance, I wouldn't have stood by him. I would have healed him, but I wouldn't have helped him.

"He's spoiled and he's flighty," John continues. "He's ignorant, too, but not about things. About people. He's lived so long with people telling him yes that he can't imagine a world where they say no." A pause. "You forgave him, didn't you?"

I nod. "He asked it of me, and I didn't think I could put it behind me if I didn't. It was right before we went into battle, and I didn't know if I'd ever see him again. At the time, it seemed pointless not to."

"And now?" he says. "How do you feel about the possibility of him being king again?"

"I think it will be different this time," I reply. "I think he's different. I think we all are."

John cups my face with his hand, skimming his thumb along my cheek. "Not that different," he says. And then he kisses me.

"The Gallic king offered his daughter in marriage to Malcolm," Peter says. We're loitering in yet another courtyard outside yet another hall where yet another council meeting is taking place: the fifth one in as many days. John, Schuyler, Fifer, George, and me.

"Not three weeks ago they wanted to ransom him to the Berbers," I say.

"Three weeks ago he was a prisoner," George replies. "Now he's the victor of a battle, the heir to the throne of Anglia. The heir who abdicated to a commoner."

"Fitzroy is hardly a commoner," I say George shrugs. "To Gaul he is. His line is impressive, to be sure. But it's too removed. Great-grandson to King Edward, three times removed-"

"Four," I correct. "Four times removed." George raises his eyebrows. "Sorry. Go on."

"Not much else to say," Peter continues. "The Gallic king offers his daughter, along with a sizable dowry, including a hundred thousand livres to help rebuild Anglia."

John lets out a low whistle.

Peter nods. "A marriage like that would strengthen our ties to them, unite us against attacks from Iberia, against the Low Countries, should they ever decide to move against us. As it stands, they see us both as weak. One country without a king, the other with only a daughter to be queen."

"He doesn't want to do it," I say. "He told us."

"Doesn't matter." George shrugs. "Kings don't get much of a say in how they were born, do they?"

Peter shakes his head. "They don't. It's coming to a vote tonight. Fitzroy is prepared to step aside, if he has no one to contest him. If the majority say yes, it's down to Malcolm to refuse. And I don't think he'll refuse. Do you?"

I don't imagine everyone's eyes on me, as if I could guess what Malcolm might do. But I do anyway. And I shake my head.

In the end, I was right.

Malcolm agreed to the council's wishes and he's to be king of Anglia once more, but ruling Anglia in a way that's never been done. He will have a privy council, as before. But he will also have two additional regional councils-the Council of the North and the oddly named Council of the Marches-to oversee the northern and southern outlying counties of Anglia. The divine right of kings-the law that allowed kings to rule as G.o.ds-has been abolished. The Twelve Tablets, already abolished, would remain so, new laws drawn up and voted on.

It was all but done.

When the Gallic princess arrived with her courtiers, her amba.s.sadors, her advisors, her plate and her jewels and her livres, I wasn't there. When Ravenscourt opened back up, the gates and the courtyards scrubbed clean of all signs of war and death, hybrids and revenants, I wasn't there.

The week after Malcolm was reinstalled as king, the privy council was installed inside their apartments inside Ravenscourt, now being lavishly redecorated and refitted to erase all signs of ever being inhabited by Blackwell. Once again, I wasn't there.

I can't go back to court; I don't think I'll ever want to.

John helps his father load the last of his trunks onto the wagon that sits in front of their cottage, waiting to take him to Upminster. As a member of the Council of the Marches, his presence is required monthly at court, and although he doesn't need to be there more often than that, he's taken a house along Westcheap, a short walk from the palace.

We watch the wagon tip its way down the narrow lane, the wheels kicking up mud. There would be a wagon for me, for us, if we decided to go. Half the girls in Harrow have already left, eager to be ladies-in-waiting in the court of the soon-to-be-queen. I could do it, too, if I wanted. I could be part of it all, just as I was before.

But I know how close power comes to corruption, how fast good intentions turn bad. I know that despite promises and declarations and even laws, things have a way of turning on their own, of starting down a path, trespa.s.sing so far that redress becomes impossible.

I turn to John. He's watching me and I know he's waiting-in that way he does-for me to tell him what he already knows. That I can't be part of Malcolm's court, no matter how much I'm asked, no matter how much it's changed. Because there are some things that never would change, just as there are some things I don't want to remember.

"I can't do it," I say.

He closes his eyes for a moment and for a moment I think I've disappointed him, that I've read his looks and his words wrong, until he opens his eyes, a grin on his face.

"Thank G.o.d."

I blink back surprise. "You don't want to go, either?"

John shakes his head. "No. I never did. But I would have, if that was what you wanted. I just want to go where you go." He watches me carefully. "But I wanted you to make up your own mind. For once, I wanted you to do what you wanted, without anyone deciding for you."

"Are you sure?" I say. "You won't mind being alone?"

"I'm not alone," he says. "I'm with you."

I smile. "You know what I mean."

He grins. "We'll hardly be alone. Schuyler is staying. Keagan is staying, too; she and Fifer are starting a new branch of the Order here in Harrow. As for the rest, we can see the others anytime we want. Upminster isn't that far."

"It's far enough," I say.

John smiles. "It's far enough."

He takes my hand and tugs me toward the cottage, the bright blue door still open to the sunshine and the breeze, welcoming us in. It's a good place to start over.

And a good place to continue on.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Ah, the second book. It's a thrill, a challenge, a stressor, and a triumph: It is, much like all of publishing, all the things people tell you it will be but you don't believe until you reach the other side. This book is dedicated to everyone who helped me push through.

My agent, Kathleen Ortiz. I feel like I could thank you every day and it still wouldn't be enough. For your patience, for your perseverance, for always having my back, and for knowing me well enough to know when I need that phone call to say, "I think we should talk." (And for always starting those calls with "You aren't driving, are you?" followed by, "Don't freak out.") You are a BAMF, and I adore you.

My editor, Pam Gruber. We made it! I consider this book your accomplishment as much as mine: all those calls, all those emails, all those conversations ("Do you really think she would?" "Maybe, but I don't think she should.") and spreadsheets (yes, we plotted spells using spreadsheets). Thank you for your endless patience, guidance, intuition, for making me better at what I do, and for making this story something I am truly proud of. I feel like we are forever bonded in magic.

My agency, New Leaf Literary + Media. You are still the coolest kids on the block, and I'm so proud to be part of your ranks. Special thanks to Joanna Volpe, Danielle Barthel, Jaida Temperly, Dave Caccavo, Jackie Lindert, and Mia Roman.