The Truth, Read Aloud

Tobias Everard had been King of Aethel for eighteen years in name and seven hours in fact, and had so far enjoyed none of them.

He sat on the edge of a very large bed in a very large bedroom, in his shirt-sleeves and a pair of borrowed boots, and glared at the crown on the dresser. It sat on its velvet cushion with its nine white stones gleaming in the morning light, looking exactly like a harmless piece of jewelry. A servant had polished it. That was the maddening thing. Somebody had taken a soft cloth and a little vinegar and polished the Crown of Dawn, and set it out on his dresser between the hairbrush and the shaving mug, as though it might be wanted for breakfast.

"Take it away," he said.

"Sire?"

"The hat. Put it in a box. Put the box in another box. Put them both in the deepest cellar in the Palace and set a dozen of Duchess Elowen's men on the door."

"It is the Crown of Dawn, Majesty," said the valet, in a faint voice.

"It is a lens," said Tobias. "It is a very pretty lens, and if anyone ever puts it on again in front of a window, I shall personally have them hanged."

The valet fled with it. Tobias watched him go, and some of the tension went out of his shoulders. He fell back across the bed and stared at the canopy, where a hundred gilded suns marched in rows across a field of blue.

Seven hours.

He had signed nine decrees. He had dissolved the Regency Council. He had suspended the Holy Tribunal. He had ordered the Archive vaults on every level thrown open to any citizen over the age of fifteen who could produce a candle and a reason, and had been told by his Hand, very gently, that it was a splendid idea and would require about four hundred clerks. He had read, for the first time in six years, every page he put his name to. He had discovered, to his considerable surprise, that he liked it.

He had not slept. He did not seem to need to.

They will want me to speak, he thought. This afternoon. In the Square.

His stomach turned over.

…

The Square of the Sun was full by noon.

He saw it from the balcony of the Palace of Justice, a long white building on the north side with a flight of broad steps that ran down to the cobbles. He had thought he was ready. He had practiced the speech in the cellar, then in the bath, then on the Duke of Marrowmere, who had said "adequate" in the tone of a man complimenting a hanging. But as he came out of the tall doors into the cold clear light, and the roar of the crowd struck him like a wave, all the words went clean out of his head.

There were more people than he had known lived in Aethel.

They packed the Square from the Palace steps to the Cathedral gate, a vast, shifting, many-colored sea of heads and hats and kerchiefs. They hung from windows. They sat on rooftops. They stood on carts and barrels and the shoulders of friends. Banners of every guild fluttered in the breeze: the masons, the weavers, the smiths of the South Bank, the market women of the Cloud, the Foundry hands in their scorched leather aprons. Somebody had hung a great black sheet from the front of the Cathedral with the sunburst cut out of it. Somebody else had hung a smaller one beside it, white, with a single gray bird.

He did not know what it meant. He thought, perhaps, that it was a heron.

"Breathe," said Cassian, at his elbow.

"I am breathing."

"Not noticeably. Your lips have gone blue." The Duke of Marrowmere, in a new black coat with a plain silver chain of office, regarded him with an expression of amiable concern. He had slept even less than Tobias, which Tobias would not have thought possible. There were shadows under his green eyes like thumbprints. "I have a flask of brandy."

"I'm eighteen."

"I'm aware. It's a very small flask."

"No."

"Excellent. I shall have it myself." He took a pull, and put it away. "They'll listen. They've been standing here since dawn. They want to be told what happened."

"I don't know how to say it."

"Then don't say it," said a new voice behind them. "Read it."

…

Wren Tamsin had put on her best dress for the occasion.

It was a plain brown wool with a white collar, mended at the elbows, and she wore it with an air of terrified pride. She had ink on her thumb. She had a roll of papers under one arm and a brass-bound chest at her feet, and in her free hand, held out before her as one holds a sleeping bird, a spiral of pale glass.

"I thought I could do the documents," she said in a rush. "The ledger. The payroll. The seals. And the Cardinal's, ah, his words. I could read the lot. If you'd like. I've been practicing. I do a very good Ostrander."

"You do?"

"He sort of whistles on the S's."

Tobias looked at her. At the small freckled face, and the stubborn chin, and the eyes red-rimmed from nights without sleep. A nineteen-year-old Symbol-Breaker from the lowest rank of the Archive, who had been stolen, bound, locked up in a hole, and crawled through a duct, and recorded the confession of the most powerful man in the realm in a toy she'd got from a friend.

A better Hand than the Duke, he thought.

"Wren," he said.

"Sire?"

"I've decided to have you ennobled."

She went white. "I'm very sorry, sire, I think there's been a mistake, I'm a, I was a, I keep bees, I mean I used to keep bees, I don't really..."

"Wren Tamsin, Keeper of the Open Archive." He raised his voice. The crowd below had quieted, as a hall quiets before a bell. "I shall make it official this afternoon. It comes with a house and a salary and a very ugly hat. You may refuse the hat. Come."

He held out his hand.

She took it.

They walked out to the balustrade together.

…

He had imagined it a hundred times in the cellar. He would speak in a clear ringing voice, like a king in a ballad. He would be stern and noble and kind. He would say all the right things.

What he actually said was, "Hello."

The crowd roared with laughter. It rolled over him in a huge warm wave, and the knot in his chest let go.

"I'm Tobias," he said. "Some of you know me. Most of you have seen me on a coin, and I'm told it's not a good likeness." More laughter. "I've been your King for eighteen years, and for seven hours I've meant it. I'm told I'm very bad at it. I've decided that I shall keep trying, and in the meantime I should like to tell you a story. It's rather a long one. A friend of mine will read it."

He stepped aside.

Wren stood alone at the rail with the glass shell in both hands. Her knuckles were white. She looked down at a hundred thousand faces, and swallowed.

"This is the voice of Cardinal Malakor," she said, in a small clear voice. "Recorded in the vestry of the Cathedral, at a quarter to four in the morning. It is a true record. I have been told that you won't believe it. You are welcome to listen anyway."

She tipped the shell to the wind.

And in the silence of the great Square, out of the pale mouth of the glass, soft and gentle and unhurried, rose the voice of an old man.

"I was twenty-six. A deacon, freshly ordained..."

…

Tobias would remember it for the rest of his life.

Not the words. He had heard the words, the night before, in the cellar, with Cassian beside him and a candle between them, and had been sick into a bucket. What he remembered was the faces.

He saw a woman in a baker's apron put her hand slowly over her mouth. He saw an old man in a pilgrim's cloak, with a rosary wound round his fingers, bow his head and begin to shake. He saw two girls, perhaps twelve, clutching one another. He saw a priest in the front row, a plump pink bald man in a white alb, standing quite motionless with tears running down his cheeks and his lips moving, over and over, in a silent no. He saw a soldier in the livery of the Sun Guard, with a ring on his smallest finger, slowly take it off and drop it in the gutter.

The voice went on. It spoke of the glass book, and the Pontiff, and the long years. It spoke of Clement, and the staff. It spoke of the tea.

It spoke of a keep in the north, on a winter's night, with sixty men.

When it reached the girl in the well, a sound ran through the Square. It was not a cry, or a groan. It was lower, and more terrible: the single sound of a hundred thousand people drawing breath.

And then, at the end, quite clearly, in the same mild, tired, patient voice:

"I'm so tired, Kaelen."

The shell fell silent.

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The bells, which had been ringing in the towers for two days, stopped as one, like a sentence cut off.

…

It took Wren forty minutes to read the rest.

She stood at the rail, small and straight, and read it all in her clear, unsteady, absolutely truthful voice. The ledger of payments. The names of the twelve players. The invoice for the lead seals. The register of the Ancient Lore Council, and the list of the dead, and the last page in the hand of Aldous of the Lantern. The testament of Clement, with its torn page. The report of the Foundry master on the Sun-crystal stones.

She read the name of the Inquisitor-General, who had paid for it all.

Where is he? thought Tobias, searching the crowd. Where's the man? But Ostrander had been found at first light, hanging by a bell-rope from the tower of the Tribunal, with a note in his pocket that said nothing at all. Cassian had cut him down himself.

At the end Wren folded the papers, and bowed her head, and stood there for a moment, trembling.

"That's all I have," she said. "I'm sorry. I wish it were better."

And the Square broke.

It broke the way a dam breaks, all at once, in one terrible roar. People were weeping. People were shouting. A man at the front had fallen to his knees and was beating his chest. A woman in black was singing a hymn, in a cracked and shaking voice, and others took it up, and the Hymn of the Dawn rolled out across the packed Square like a river. Men turned their faces to the Cathedral. Some shook their fists. Some knelt. Some stood stunned and silent, with the look of people who have just been told that their house was always built on a grave.

Tobias gripped the rail.

What have I done?

"You've told them the truth," said Cassian quietly, at his shoulder. "It's rather a shock. It always is."

"They're going to tear the Cathedral down."

"Some of them will want to."

"What do I say?"

"Say nothing." The Duke's gaze was on the crowd, grave and clear and for once free of irony. "You've said it. Now you have to be here. That's the entire art of kingship. Be where they can see you, and don't run."

Tobias swallowed. He nodded.

He stood at the rail, a thin pale boy in a borrowed coat, and did not run.

…

Elowen Varn found him an hour later in the long gallery, sitting on the floor with his back against a pillar and his head on his knees.

He did not look up. He heard her boots on the marble: measured, unhurried, a soldier's tread. She stopped. For a time she said nothing. Then there was a rustle of cloth, and a creak of knee-joints, and the Iron Duchess of the North sat down beside him on the cold floor in her gray riding coat, with her back to the same pillar, and stretched out her legs.

"My riders have the Square," she said. "No violence. Some thrown fruit. A fight at the Tribunal gates, which the Duke's men broke up." She paused. "Three hundred Sun Guards have laid down their swords on the Cathedral steps. They're sitting there with their hands on their knees. Nobody knows what to do with them."

"I don't either."

"I know."

"I don't know what to do with any of it."

"No one does, child." She said it quite gently. "That's why they need a King who admits it."

He laughed, a short shaky breath, and lifted his head. His eyes were red. "Is it always this awful?"

"Yes."

"Do you get used to it?"

"No," said Elowen. "But you get better at carrying it."

They sat in silence for a time. Sunlight lay in long bars across the gallery floor. Somewhere beyond the windows, thin and far, the hymn was still rising.

"There is something else," said the Duchess.

"There always is."

"The Cardinals have met."

Tobias went still.

"In conclave. In the Chapter House, at noon. The eleven who are left." Her mouth twisted. "They have been arguing for six hours. There is no Pontiff. There is no Council. There is a Church with a hole where its head should be, and a city that wants it burned. They are terrified. They want someone the people trust."

"Who?"

"They are not quite agreed." She drew a breath. "But they've sent a delegation. It's waiting in the anteroom. They would like to speak with the Captain."

"With Kaelen?"

"They wish to offer him the Ring of the Fisherman."

Tobias stared at her.

"The papacy," said Elowen Varn, softly. "They want my son to be Pontiff."