The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [22]
Robert sat across the table from him and watched him without apparent amusement.
“That was clever,” he said after a time, “your lustspell, your singing play. The praifec greatly underestimated you and the power you wield through your music. I can’t tell you how angry I felt, sitting helplessly as the thing unfolded, unable to stand, speak, or bring it to a halt. You put a gag in the mouth of a king, Cavaor, and you tied his hands behind his back. I don’t suppose you expected to escape without some punishment.”
Leoff laughed bitterly. “I hardly think that now,” he said, then lifted his head defiantly. “But I do not accept you as king.”
Robert smiled. “Yes, I quite gathered that by the content of the play. I am not entirely a buffoon, you see.”
“I never took you for one,” Leoff replied. Vicious and murderous, yes, stupid, no, he finished silently.
The usurper nodded as if he had heard the unvoiced thought. Then he waved his hand. “Well, it is done, isn’t it? And I will be candid; your composition was not without effect. Your choice of subject matter, your casting of a landwaerden girl in the major role—well, it certainly won over the landwaerden, and not to me, as I had hoped.” He leaned forward. “You see, there are those who think of me as you do, as an usurper. I had hoped to unite my kingdom to stand against the evil that bears on us from all sides, and to do that I really needed the landwaerden and their militias. Your actions have rendered their allegiance more ambiguous than ever. You’ve even managed somehow to create sympathy for a queen no one liked.”
“It was my honor to do so.” Then he understood. “Queen Muriele is not dead, is she?”
Robert nodded affirmation, then pointed a finger at Leoff. “You still don’t understand,” he said. “You talk like a dead man, speaking with the bravery of the condemned. But you can live and compose. You can have your friends back. Wouldn’t you like to see little Mery grow up, oversee the progress of your protégé?
“And what about the lovely Areana? Surely she has a bright future ahead, perhaps even at your side…”
Leoff listed to his feet. “You dare not threaten them!”
“No? What would prevent me?”
“Areana is the daughter of a landwaerden. If you are trying to win their allegiance—”
“If I give up hope of doing so, if I cannot unite by conciliation, I will have to do so through force and fear,” Robert snapped. “Besides, I am sometimes prone to, shall we say, black humors. My humors were particularly black after the performance of your little farce.”
“What are you saying?”
“Areana was taken into custody soon after you were. I quickly realized the error in that, but as king I must be careful about admitting my mistakes, you see. I must work at things from where I am.”
Leoff’s head swirled.
At one point in his torture he had been told that the entire cast that had performed his singing play had been arrested and publicly hanged and that Mery had been quietly poisoned in the night. That was when he had broken and “confessed” that he had practiced “heretical shinecraft” most foul.
Now he found that they were alive, which brought joy beyond measure. But the threat to their lives was renewed.
“You’re most clever yourself,” he told the king. “You know I will not risk losing them again.”
“Why should you? Your allegiance to Muriele is senseless. She has no mandate to rule, and certainly not the talents. Despite my faults, I am the best the Dare family has to offer. Hansa will declare war on us any day unless I can appease them. Monsters threaten all of our borders and appear in the midst of our towns. Whatever you think of me, Crotheny is better united behind one leader, and that will be me or no one, because there is no one else.”
“What would you have me do?”
“Undo what you have done, of course. Write another lustspell to win them over for me. I have provided you with hammarharp