“Come, come,” the prince said. “You must try the instrument. Please, I insist.”
“Your Highness—”
“I insist,” Robert said firmly.
Painfully Leoff swung his legs down to the floor, feeling one or two of the blisters on his feet burst as he put weight on them. That was such a minor pain, he didn’t even really wince.
The prince—no, he had made himself king now, hadn’t he? The usurper was alone. Queen Muriele was dead; everyone he cared about was dead.
He was worse than dead.
He stepped toward Robert, feeling his knee jar oddly. He would never run again, would he? Never trot across the grass on a spring day, never play with his children—likely never have children, come to that.
He took another step. He was almost close enough now.
“Please,” Robert said wearily, rising from the stool and gripping Leoff’s shoulders with cold, hard fingers. “What do you suppose you will do? Throttle me? With these?” He grabbed Leoff’s fingers, and such a shock of pain exploded through Leoff that it tore a gasp from his aching lungs.
Once it would have been enough to make him scream. Now tears started in his eyes as he looked down to where the king’s hand gripped his.
He still didn’t recognize them, his hands. Once the fingers had been gently tapered, lean and supple, perfect for fingering the croth or tripping on keys. Now they were swollen and twisted in terribly unnatural ways; the praifec’s men had broken them methodically between all the joints.
They hadn’t stopped there, though; they had crushed the bones of each hand as well, and shattered the wrists that supported them. If they had cut his hands completely off, it would have been kinder. But they hadn’t. They had left them to hang there, a reminder of other things he would never, ever do again.
He looked again at the hammarharp, at its lovely red-and-black keys, and his shoulders began to tremble. The trickle of tears turned to a flood.
“There,” Robert said. “That’s right. Let it out. Let it out.”
“I-I did not think you could hurt me more,” Leoff managed, gritting his teeth, ashamed but almost, finally, beyond shame.
The king stroked the composer’s hair as if he were a child. “Listen, my friend,” he said. “I am at fault for this, but my crime was that of neglect. I did not supervise the praifec closely enough. I had no idea of the cruelty he was visiting upon you.”
Leoff almost laughed. “You will forgive me if I am skeptical,” he said.
The usurper’s fingers pinched his ear and twisted a bit. “And you will address me as ‘Your Majesty’” Robert said softly.
Leoff snorted. “What will you do if I don’t? Kill me? You have already taken all I have.”
“You think so?” Robert murmured. He released Leoff’s ear and withdrew. “I have not taken everything, I promise you. But let that pass. I regret what has happened to you. My personal physician will attend you from here on out.”
“No physician can heal this,” Leoff said, holding up his maimed hands.
“Perhaps not,” Robert conceded. “Perhaps you will never again play yourself. But as I understand it, the music you create—compose—is done within your head.”
“It cannot come out of my head without my fingers, however,” Leoff snarled.
“Or the fingers of another,” Robert said.
“What—”
But at that moment, the king gestured and the door opened, and there, in the lamplight, stood a soldier in dark armor. His hand rested on the shoulder of a little girl whose eyes were covered by a cloth.
“Mery?” he gasped.
“Cavaor Leoff ?” she squealed. She tried to start forward, but the soldier pulled her back, and the door closed.
“Mery,” Leoff repeated, lumbering toward the door, but Robert caught him by the shoulder again.
“You see?” Robert said softly.
“They told me she was dead!” Leoff gasped. “Executed!”
“The praifec was trying to break your heretic soul,” Robert said. “Much of what his men told you is untrue.”
“But—”
“Hush,” Robert said. “I have been charitable. I can be more so. But you must agree to help me.”
“Help you how?”
Robert smiled a ghastly little smile. “Shall we discuss it over a meal? You look half-starved.”
For what seemed an eternity, Leoff’s meals had consisted of either nothing or some nameless mush that under the best of circumstances was more or less without taste and under the worst reeked of putrefying offal.
Now he found himself staring at a trencher of black bread that had been heaped with roast pork, leeks braised in must, redbutter cheese, boiled eggs sliced and sprinkled with green sauce, and cream fritters. Each scent was a lovely melody, wafting together into a rhapsodic whole. His goblet was filled with a red wine so sharp and fruity, he could smell it without bending toward it.
He looked at his useless hands, then back at the meal. Did the king expect him to lower his face into the food like a hog?
Probably. And he knew that in a few more moments he would.
Instead, a girl in black-and-gray livery entered, knelt by his side, and began offering him morsels of the repast. He tried to take it with some measure of grace, but after the first explosion of flavor in his mouth, he gulped unashamedly.
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.”