In the Ruins

“Not at all. Sapientia was weak, and a fool. She’s better dead, if she’s dead. Henry named her as heir only after he thought you were dead. I don’t care if you’re a bastard, Cousin. Although certainly I know you are!” He laughed. “I care if you can win the war and hold the kingdom together. If you will, grant me the duchy of Saony. I’ll hold it honorably and support you.”



Liath realized that Sophie and Imma were sisters, as they got red in the face and burst into nasty, passionate speech.



“And pass over the elder—!”



“You snake! You are a viper to strike so at our heels!”



“I pray you, silence!” said Sanglant. “Let me think on it, Wichman. I must consult with my sister, Theophanu. She has served ably as regent in my absence. Your sisters, as well, have a legal claim. My aunt’s counsel must also be heard.”



“But you will still decide,” said Wichman with a sneer. “You have the army, and the strength, to do as you will.”



“So be it,” said Theophanu. “Spoken crudely, but with truth. I cannot stop you from becoming regnant, Sanglant, and I am not sure I wish to. I have struggled to maintain order in Saony and not lose our family’s ancestral lands. In this way I have remained loyal to our father.”



She paused, and Liath thought she meant to go on in this vein, to say something rash. But Theophanu did not possess a rash temperament.



“So you have,” agreed Sanglant. “You have done well.”



“I have done what I can. You will find that we are weak, and that the enemy’s minions are powerful. They have brought fear, famine, plague, strife, hunger, and heresy in their army. This is the battle you must fight now, Your Majesty.” A hint of emotion had crept into her voice. Liath thought her tone sarcastic, but it was difficult to tell because her expression did not change and her tone remained even, except for that edge that made each word sharp and cold. “You will not find it as easy a war to win.”



“No battle is easy, Theophanu,” he said wearily. “I have seen too many of my trusted companions die. Our father died in my arms. What we won came at a great cost. Not just men at arms. The devastation I saw in Aosta was …” He struggled for words, and finally shrugged. “Aosta lies in ruins. We saw entire forests set ablaze, or flattened by the tempest. We saw a town swamped by a great wave off the sea. I have among my army some few clerics who escaped the holy city of Darre. They say that a volcano erupted to the west. That cracks opened in the earth throughout the plain of Dar and that poisonous fumes, the breath of the Enemy, foul the air so that no one can live there. Wendar has been spared such horrors, at least.”



“Do you think so? We have suffered while you and our father abandoned us for other adventures, Sanglant. Do you not recall the Quman invasion? The endless bickering wars between Sabella and Henry? Plague in Avaria? The Eika assault on Gent? Drought and famine?”



“So you see,” he agreed. “If we do not have order, then we will all perish.”



“If you will.” Mother Scholastica lifted her staff, and they stopped talking. “If you will give Henry’s corpus to me, Sanglant, then those among my clerics who are trained in preparing the body for burial will do what is fitting. Let him be laid to rest now that he has returned to Wendar. After that, we will hold council in the church where Queen Mathilda is buried. Let us pray that the memory of his wisdom guides us to do what is right.”



“Very well,” said Sanglant. “There is much to tell that you will not have heard.”



“Much to tell.” Theophanu looked at their brother, Ekkehard, but he remained standing passively beside his wife, Gerberga, who was now the margrave of Austra and Olsatia because she was Judith’s eldest legitimate child.



No love lost between those two, she thought, for Ekkehard’s stand suggested a coolness between him and his older wife. Hugh’s silence suggested volumes, which Liath could not yet read.



How had Hugh come here? Where had he been? She had seen him briefly in the interstices of the great weaving, but he had vanished. Unlike the others, he had not died.



Of course not.



He shifted so slightly that no one who was not held by a taut thread to his presence would have noticed. She noticed. In the manner of a young woman who does not mean to inflame male desire by glancing up, just so, from under half-lowered lashes that suggest both desire and modesty, he looked up to meet her gaze.



It was all there to be seen, all that he wished for, everything he remembered. He had not changed.