“Use your judgment.”
“Fuel eighty six hundred. Throttle on eighty, inlet temperature three.”
“Quiet as the grave. Hey, some traffic on
shortwave
. Twenty megahertz band, low power. Voice traffic . . . not English.”
“Waypoint yankee three coming up, turning on zero nine zero. Climb to flight level five zero.”
“Okay, that’s enough. We’re in class E airspace on the other side, so let’s get out of here. ARMBAND?”
“Ready to roll whenever you call, captain.”
“Okay, we’re going home. Prepare to translate on my mark—”
END TRANSCRIPT
(Cockpit voice recorder)
Deceptive Practices
A week had passed since the bizarre coronation ritual, and it had been a busy period. Miriam found herself at the center of a tornado of activity, with every hour accounted for. There were banquets with lord this and baron that, introductions until her cheeks ached from smiling and her right hand was red from scrubbing: Their kisses left her feeling unclean, compromised. The dressmakers had moved in, altering garments borrowed from some remnants of the royal wardrobe and fitting her for gowns and dresses suitable for a dowager queen-widow and a mother-to-be. Brill had found time, for a couple of hours every day, to bring a bottle of wine and sit with her while she explained the finer points of political and personal alliances; and Gerta engaged her in conversational hochsprache, nervous and halting at first, to polish her speech. (Which, with total immersion in a sea of servants, few of whom spoke English, was beginning to improve.)
Being Helge was becoming easier, she found. Practice had diminished the role to a set of manners and a half-understood language that she could summon up at need, rather than a claustrophobia-inducing caul. Perhaps she was getting used to it, or perhaps her mother’s private crusade and promise of mutual support had given her the impulse she needed to make it work. Whatever the cause, the outcome was that whenever she paused to think about her position Miriam was startled by how smoothly her new life had locked in around her, and with how little friction. Perhaps all she’d needed all along was a key to the gilded cage, and the reassurance that people she could trust were minding the door.
It had not been Miriam’s idea to put on the gilded robes of state today, to sit on an unpadded chair in a drafty hall and read aloud a variety of prearranged—bloodcurdling and inevitably fatal—sentences on assorted members of the nobility who had been unlucky enough to back the wrong horse. But it had shown up on her timetable for the week—and Brill, Riordan, and her mother had visited en masse to assure her that it was necessary. They’d even hauled in Julius, to provide a façade of Clannish unity. “You need to sit in on the court and pronounce judgment, without us whispering in your ear all the time,” Brill explained, “otherwise people will say you’re a figurehead.”
“But I am a figurehead!” Miriam protested. “Aren’t I? I get the message, this is the council’s doing. It’s just, I don’t approve of the death penalty. And this, executing people just because they did what Egon told them to, out of fear—”
“If they think you’re a figurehead, they won’t fear you,” Iris explained, with visibly fraying patience. “And that’ll breed trouble. People hereabouts aren’t used to enlightened government. You need to stick some heads on spikes, Helge, to make the others keep a low profile. If you won’t do it yourself, the council will have to do it for you. And everybody will whisper that it’s because you’re a weak woman who is just a figurehead.”
“There are a number of earls and barons who we definitely cannot trust,” Riordan added. “Not to mention a duke or two. They’re mortal enemies—they didn’t act solely out of fear of Egon’s displeasure—and we can’t have a duke sitting in judgment over another duke. If you refuse to read their execution order we’ll just have to poison them. It gets messy.”
“But if I start out by organizing a massacre, isn’t that going to raise the stakes later? I thought we were agreed that reinforcing the rule of law was essential. . . .”
“It’s not a massacre if they get a fair trial first. So give them a fair trial and fill a gibbet or two with the worst cases, to make an example,” Iris suggested. “Then offer clemency to the rest, on onerous terms. It worked for dad.”
“Really?” Miriam gave her mother a very old-fashioned look. “Tell me more. . . .”
Which had been the start of a slippery-slope argument. Miriam had fought a rearguard action, but Helge had ultimately conceded the necessity of applying these medieval standards of justice under the circumstances. Which was why she was sitting stiff as a board on a solid wooden throne, listening to advocates argue over a variety of unfortunate nobles, and trying not to fall asleep.
For a man with every reason to believe his fate was to be subjected to peine fort et dure, the Duke of Niejwein was in remarkably high spirits. Or perhaps the reddening of his cheeks and the twinkle in his eye were signs of agitation and contempt. The resemblance he bore to the Iraqi dictator Ali Hassan, who’d been on all the news channels a few weeks ago when the Marines finally got their hands on him, was striking. Whatever the case, when he raised his fettered hands and spat something fast at Miriam she had no problem interpreting his intent.
“He says he thanks you for your hospitality but it is most unnecessary,” murmured Gerta.
“Tell him he’s welcome, all the same.” Miriam waited while her assistant translated. “And I view his position with sympathy.”
“Milady!” Gerta sounded confused. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Miriam glared at her. I am your queen, damn it. Even if I’m fronting for a committee. “Do it.”
“Yes, milady.” Gerta addressed the duke; he seemed confused.
“Have another sweet,” Miriam offered the Duke of Niejwein by way of her translator.
It was, Olga had explained, the polite way to do business with noble prisoners: Offer them candied peel and a silk rope to sweeten the walk to the scaffold where, if his crimes were deemed minor, he could expect the relative mercy of a swift hanging. But Niejwein, for some reason, seemed not to have much of an appetite today. And after having sentenced two earls to death earlier in this session—in both cases they had massacred some of her distant relatives with more enthusiasm than was called for, and Riordan had been most insistent on the urgent need to hang them—she could see why. The earls and their retainers were hired thugs; but Niejwein, as head bean counter, had expedited Egon’s reign of terror in a far deadlier way.
“We wanted to speak with you in private,” Miriam added, trying to ignore the small crowd of eavesdroppers. “To discuss your future.”
Niejwein’s short bark of laughter turned heads; more than one guard’s hand hovered close by a weapon. “I have no future,” Gerta translated.
“Not necessarily. You have no future without the grace and pardon of the crown, but you should not jump to conclusions about your ultimate fate.”
For the first time the Duke of Niejwein looked frightened. And for the first time Miriam, watching him, began to get an edgy feeling that she understood him.
Niejwein was outwardly average: middle-aged, of middling stature, heavy-faced, and tired-looking. He sat on a stone bench before her, arms and legs clanking with wrought iron whenever he moved, wearing a nobleman’s household robes, somewhat the worse for wear, ingrained with the grime of whatever cellar they’d warehoused him in for the run-up to her coronation. He’d been there a week ago, Miriam remembered, staring at her with hollowed eyes, among the other prisoners in the guarded block on the floor of the great hall.