Chapter 155 Rings Within Rings

By evening the word came back in ones and twos from Gareth, Roland, and Felix.

What they wanted to know, they had not got. What they had not looked for, they had.

Out of Windsor Fortune's sow's snout had come a pearl: the hidden hand at the bow was one Hugh Kestrel — a retainer of the Windsor house.

Windsor Bohun — having bought Valentin Voss with lavish bribes, and the sovereigns of two reigns into the bargain — had twice climbed to the chancellorship. Coming back up to the capital from the Southmarch this last time, he had learned the lesson of the days his rivals squeezed him out of the city: he recruited retainers far and wide, to strike at his foes and hold his own interest safe.

The name of chancellor drew a certain kind of wandering swordsman to him — men living by the blade, who needed a roof and took the Windsor house for one.

Hugh Kestrel was an archer among them. Windsor Yves had marked him, carried him back to Lohenheim for a bodyguard of his own; more than once the man had carried out killings on Windsor Yves's orders, and never once missed.

This time, for his iron-plate grill, he had sent Hugh Kestrel along to attend Rowena Ashby — and so, all unmeant, brought the great calamity down on every head.

Bohun kept his retainers; Windsor Yves had copied the recipe in Lohenheim and raised it a degree, keeping under cover a whole pack of young thugs who killed and burned for the Windsors.

The pack wore two marks:

Shaved heads, and tattoos.

In the Empire, tattoos were nothing rare: some men wore green pines and cypresses on their skin, some flowers, birds, fish and insects; and some had Byron White's poems inked from neck to ankle.

But a bald head, short of a monk's, was a rare thing. A man's body was held God's own gift, whole and unshorn — so the shaved crown declared them men cut loose from father and sovereign alike, outside the law's pale, a banner all their own.

"The Windsors supply the money and the leads; the pack sees to the planning and the striking. Peasants who stand against the seizing of their fields... trading caravans passing through Lohenheim... rob them first, then kill the mouths silent — and no one goes to the officials..."

Windsor Yves being dead, Windsor Fortune held nothing back. He watched the clerk write the confession out, set his own thumbprint to it, and smiled at Felix, all wheedle and fawn:

"Lord Sheriff — everything I know is out. It was the masters doing the evil; we servants could only take orders. Truly it's no affair of mine."

"Now that Windsor Yves is dead — who in the family takes over what he ran?" Felix didn't take the bait, but went on asking.

"That... among the old Minister's collateral nephews there's one, Windsor Terence. He has had the Southmarch and the eastern lake country under him. Now the young lord's dead, he'll likely be pulled back to run the two capitals."

"Vermin, every one!"

Jonan Carey, standing by, could not hold it in. The Windsors had sons and nephews of the younger generation sitting as local officials in the Southmarch, Westreach, and Eastreach — and so their hands reached deep into all that country.

Windsor Fortune was let go, and Felix carried the clerk's sheets, black with writing, back to the Grand Princess's mansion.

At Yewholm, Leon's things stood packed and ready, waiting only for Felix to come home and be seen off.

"In such a hurry to move out? My mother isn't even back yet..."

Leon's Baron-of-Charnwood mansion stood but one ward off from Goodspring Quarter — no great distance, to hear it told, but never so handy as living under one roof.

"I came in on the excuse of my mansion wanting repairs. The repairs have been done this long while — stay on any further, and even my aunt would tire of me. Besides... I mean to see you up in the capital, and soon."

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Felix blinked — then laughed: "Let's both write out the one name, and see if it's the same."

The two of them put out their left hands, palms open, and each wrote in the other's palm the same one name — Windsor.

"I had the evidence in my hand — but why did you write that same name?" The material, fresh-squeezed out of Windsor Fortune, was still on Felix's person, not yet shown to Leon. How had he known?

"Because it's the quickest one to write."

What? Wasn't that the tyrant's answer that was Lora's and Lora's alone? The two of them went off into roars of laughter.

Leon did not know what Windsor Fortune had confessed. But he did know that once the great ministers proposed naming the first royal son, Prince Ewan, as Crown Prince, Prince Ambrose would come out to trip up the little nephew — a boy not yet past his milk teeth.

In the life before, Lillian had already gone up into the palace and found favor; she had caught the King's displeasure on her own shoulders for Prince Ambrose, and out of that the two of them had built a bond that was never quite clean nor clear.

This life — surely it would run otherwise?

The Windsors and the Dunbars were sisters' husbands to each other, and they spared no sweat drawing Voss over to Prince Ambrose. Very well: they would play the first of the month, and Leon was ready to play the fifteenth.

"With all this, the threads are enough. Send men to dig the details, one case to one file. The Windsors swallowing the local tax-revenue — that is laying hands on the King's own money. Get ready, and wait ready, in the post of Baron of the Royal Exchequer."

"Baron of the Exchequer? You mean for me to take the Windsor case and climb one grade on it?"

Leon shook his head, laughing: "You — needing merit to climb a grade? Isn't my aunt not yet back? For her to go to my brother the King is the work of one sentence.

I tell you to wait because there is a chance coming for you to take over the post of Lord Treasurer — and the Exchequer vice-presidency makes you the right man standing in the right place."

The whole shape of it broke open over Felix:

The Lord Treasurer held the minting of money and the apportioning of the marcher domains' resources — independent of the Exchequer, and all but thrusting the Exchequer's own fiscal function out of its seat. The present commissioner was none other than Windsor Kendrick, of the Windsor house of Thane Plains.

At the court's key posts, every radish sits in its own hole.

Leon meant to pull Windsor Kendrick up out of that hole, and set Felix down into it.

"Good! I'll get word to my mother this instant. I'll see to the vice-presidency — and you see to... the chance."

Felix had taken third honors in the university, and he was the King's own cousin besides; he had already served two years as sheriff of a great shire. Asking no more than an Exchequer vice-presidency — the King would never refuse his aunt that face.

"I don't want to move out either... But when you play chess, it is not only the pieces that move — the hand moves too. Having Dr. Osler come is for my brother the King to know I am seeking treatment for my legs.

Let them go forever untreated and he will grow suspicious; seek a physician in broad daylight, and it will look natural to him.

The three of us were always together in Augustburg. Now you two leave me and fly on your own — my brother will read it as the outcome of the treatment, and that is the very thing that makes him the gladder to see you set up."

When Leon had said it all, there was a sadness in him past the naming of it: in a royal house there is no such thing as father and son — let alone brothers.

In the life before he had used no arts of scheming, and died all the same in the struggle for the crown. Providence had called him back reborn — he would not fail the foreknowledge that life had left him.

There were hours when he truly longed to take Lora somewhere beyond all reach of throne-games. But the blood of the royal house ran in him — and in all the wide Aurelian realm, was there any such place for a man like him?

Leon's baggage was already gone over, but Felix had a small feast laid all the same, meaning the brothers to sup together once more at Yewholm. Roland came in with a face full of gloom:

"The ranch has been gone through — it cannot be our people. Second brother went after Windsor Yves's enemies as well. A man hard of heart and hot of hand, that one: any true enemy, he'd have found men to kill him long since."

"And I can tell you something more: Rowena Ashby did not drug herself to death either."

Felix laid those sheets of confession down before Roland.

"A signed confession? Then why not go impeach the Windsors out loud?" Roland's face lightened greatly.

Leon gave a light laugh: "If a minister's petition could come easily before the King's eyes, Voss would hold the headship of the Northern Office for nothing. Let the Windsors kick up their din. In a thing without evidence, the King will do the Odenheims no harm.

At Harvest Home you will be escorting your father up to the capital. The King goes to the Serene Palace for the feast, to take the moon with the Queen Mother and the old princes — and there you will have your chance to come to the royal rescue."

"The royal rescue? Somebody means to assassinate the King?"

Roland and Felix were both struck dumb. In prophecy, this Leon was scarcely a whit behind Lora's dreams.

Leon burst out laughing:

"The Windsors won't kill the King. The man they mean to kill is the General at the King's side — doesn't it all fall into place then? Norton's wound will not have been taken for nothing: we hold the arrowhead and the shaft both. And the High Court is certain to fasten on the Windsor retainers — because..."

"Because I treated that very wound."

And before the words had settled, Dr. Osler came drifting in, right on cue.