The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [79]
It was as he might have expected.
Horror.
The smell of piss.
And then abject groveling. The lord chamberlain actually got onto his knees and wept.
Richon turned himself back into a man. And waited for the lord chamberlain to run out of words.
It took a surprisingly long time.
“You thought to keep me from my magic by keeping me ignorant and afraid, and selfish,” said Richon. Though truly he could only blame the lord chamberlain for part of this. The rest of the blame belonged to himself.
“No, no. I did not care about your magic,” the lord chamberlain insisted. “I knew that once your parents had been killed you would be easily—” He stopped abruptly, his face gone pale.
“Once my parents were killed?” echoed Richon. He had not suspected it at the time, and yet it did not surprise him. Nothing the lord chamberlain had done in his quest for power surprised him now. And the royal steward had been just as ruthless.
“It was the royal steward who hired the men. I could not stop him!” said the lord chamberlain.
Richon played along. “Of course, you tried. You alerted the captain of my father’s guard.”
“I…well…I…The royal steward would have had me killed.” He licked his lips and stared at Richon, as if hoping for mercy.
Richon sighed. He did not know if there was any truth in what the lord chamberlain said. He only knew he did not wish to hear any more of it.
What should be the punishment for such treason? Richon tried to imagine his father in this situation, but of course his father had never inspired men to commit treason.
Still, there had been one man King Seltar had found worthy of a truly terrible punishment. He had been a nobleman who had defiled two young servant girls. The first had not dared to come forward until the second had, and then they came together to corroborate their stories to the king, to ask him for some small sum of money to make recompense for the fact that they would never find a man to marry them because of what the nobleman had done.
The king had listened to them and had given them the sum they asked for times ten. And then he had taken that same amount from the nobleman’s wealth and called him to hear why it was done. The nobleman had expected to be given the chance to excuse himself, to beg forgiveness. It was what King Seltar had always done, in Richon’s memory.
But instead King Seltar sentenced him to death.
And still the nobleman had not understood. He had blinked and turned toward the dungeons, expecting to be sent there, that he would have time before he had to face his death. But King Seltar had taken a sword and run the nobleman through. Without another word. When the nobleman had tumbled from the sword, the king had let it fall with him. He had turned away and walked back into the palace, leaving the servants to take care of the body.
And Richon had gaped at his kind father and wondered if another soul had possessed him at that moment.
He had never seen anything like the anger on his father’s face that day, and he had thought perhaps he had imagined it.
But now he knew he had not, for he felt the same anger himself. There was no remedy for this, no forgiveness possible. This offense was a personal one, and no public trial was necessary.
Richon lifted his sword and ran the lord chamberlain through. It only took strength, not skill, for this.
The traitor gave one bubble of complaint, then lay dead among the others.
Richon left the sword where it was, as his father had, and walked back to his own men, who celebrated the end of the war, shouting congratulations to each other, slapping backs and falling down in tears and laughter and rejoicing. Those who had been dead spoke of the animals healing their wounds, then remaining for the duration of the battle to make the humans stronger, fiercer, and wilier. But afterward the animal spirits had departed, leaving the humans whole but no longer magically enhanced.
The story made Richon smile and weep at once. There was no promise that the revived men would live out the remainder of their lives. There might yet be a price to be paid for