Episode 14 · One More Year

— II —

The King watched his crown strike the stone and roll down the steps of the throne. It stopped beside a guard’s boot. Warmth spread beneath his clothes, and he lowered his eyes to the blade in his abdomen.

A round stud stood out near the guard. The hand holding the hilt belonged to a man he had trusted for twenty-two years.

— You…

The man behind him held him upright with his other arm. He had carried the royal seal when the King was ill. Once, he had been entrusted with the King’s son.

Beyond him, the captains remained at their posts. The councilors watched. Beside the eastern columns, the priests had lowered their heads.

The King waited for a sword to leave its sheath.

He tried to turn, and the blade slid free.

The guard stepped back with it. His sword still hung at his hip, close enough to touch.

I don’t want to die.

The thought came from somewhere older than the crown, and it moved his hand before he had decided anything. He caught the hilt at the guard’s hip and pulled.

The steel came a hand’s width and stopped. The guard’s palm had closed over his, pressing the pommel down, not hard, the way a man steadies a frightened horse. The King pulled again with his whole arm. Something tore inside him where the blade had been. The sword did not move.

He knew that grip. He had chosen it himself, twenty-two years ago, for its patience.

— Let go, the guard said quietly. Majesty.

The King let go of the hilt and drove the heel of his hand at the man’s throat. It was a blow a sword master had praised once, in a courtyard, when he was a boy. The guard turned his head. It landed on his jaw without weight.

Behind the guard, steel whispered.

The youngest of the captains had his sword half out of its sheath. His face was white. He was looking at the King as if waiting to be told what he had already decided.

The Chancellor looked at him. Nothing more.

The captain’s hand went still. Then, slowly, as though it belonged to someone else, it pushed the blade home.

The King heard the hilt meet the mouth of the sheath. A small sound. He had waited for it all his life and never once imagined it going in that direction.

His knees bent. He caught the black arm of the throne, gripping the wood while his own men allowed him to fall.

— Which of you?

He searched their faces. Even now he expected someone to look surprised.

— All of you, then.

The Chancellor came forward, narrow shoulders bent beneath his robes.

— Your Majesty—

— Don’t call me that.

The old man stopped. That much still worked.

Blood ran over the King’s hand and dripped from the carved arm. He pressed his palm against the wound. If he could stay upright, they would have to speak to him rather than begin talking over his body.

— Why?

He hated himself for asking. He knew the speeches they would give: the taxes, the executions, the northern war. Men who had approved each levy would explain how much the people had suffered.

— The kingdom cannot go on like this, the Chancellor said.

— The kingdom exists because it has gone on like this.

A murmur passed through the hall.

— When my father died, the dukes were two days from the capital. Some of you had already hidden your families.

He found the marshal among them. The man kept his eyes lowered.

The King had been nineteen. In those first weeks he had hanged a general and sent his own cousins to their deaths. Then he had ordered the western fields burned before the rebels could gather the harvest.

Letters came from the villages afterward. He remembered opening them, looking for news of the enemy. He had read some to the end.

— You were glad enough to be saved.

One of the generals raised his head.

— You saved the kingdom.

— But?

— You saved it so many times that you started to believe it belonged to you.

He had answers for every man in this room. Their names, debts, sons spared punishment, estates left untouched. He could have made the general bow his head again.

His mouth opened. He could not find the words.

He had meant to build roads once the borders were secure. Schools in the poorer provinces. Fewer boys taken from the fields each spring.

There had always been something to settle first. A northern campaign, a rebellious house, a priest gathering followers. Each time he needed another year before he could begin the things he had promised.

Seventeen years without famine. Twenty-nine without a foreign soldier crossing the border.

He held to those numbers. The men before him would leave them out.

The throne arm slipped beneath his bloody hand. He caught it with the other and dragged himself against the seat.

— Who?

The Chancellor leaned closer.

— Your Majesty?

— Who will wear it?

He nodded toward the crown.

The general turned toward the high priest. An adviser had moved nearer the steps; beyond him, two nobles stood watching each other. The King knew those small adjustments. He had spent years making men choose where to stand.

— You haven’t decided.

He tried to laugh. The effort became a cough, and blood wet his fingers.

— You’ll divide the kingdom before I’ve gone cold.

— We will decide, the Chancellor said.

The King looked down at the crown. He had watched men kneel to it for nearly thirty years. From here it looked light enough to kick aside. For once, he felt no wish to put it on again.

He tried to stand. His right leg failed, bringing him to one knee. Several men started forward and stopped.

He recognized the movement. They had helped him rise at the end of councils and long audiences, always ready when he needed a hand. Their hands knew the duty before they remembered what they had agreed to do.

He wanted to ask for his son.

For an instant, the boy was twenty-three again, standing ready to leave for the south. His first command. The King had insisted that an heir must be seen by his people.

They sent him back in a closed coffin.

His wife kept asking why it had been necessary. He gave the same answer until she stopped coming to him with the question.

Necessary.

He had used it so often that it had begun to end arguments for him.

— Was it worth it?

The Chancellor took another step.

— What was?

He could not explain which thing he meant. His son, the crown, the villages whose letters he had put aside. The question had escaped before he knew whom he was asking.

His arm folded. Stone pressed against his cheek.

He had imagined meeting death on his feet. Now he hooked his fingers over the edge of the step, frightened by how quickly he was losing the strength to hold it.

I don’t want to die.

He wanted another minute with the stone under his palm. There must be someone in the hall who could give him that much.

The crown blurred.

He was looking down at the steps.

His body lay beside the throne, the cloak dark where blood had gathered beneath it. He watched for a breath. His chest stayed still.

The King reached for the step again.

He could no longer feel his hand.

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