Episodul 16 · Necessary

— II —

At nineteen, Decimus sat in his dead father’s chair while the council argued about the armies west of the capital.

He wanted a plan they could carry out before the dukes reached the gates. Each proposal ended with someone asking for more time.

There were empty places along the council table. One belonged to the general he had hanged two weeks earlier. The chair remained where it had been, and the men beside it kept their elbows clear.

Decimus pressed his palm into the hollow worn in the chair’s black arm. His father’s hand had rested there for years. The wood was warm.

The marshal stood over the map.

— The western harvest will feed them through a siege. They can stay in the field longer than we can stay behind the walls.

It had not rained for a month. The grain stood dry and ripe, and the reapers had fled.

— Then we attack before they gather it, a general said.

The marshal looked at him.

— With what?

Their army was outnumbered, and some of its commanders had yet to declare whom they served.

Decimus had heard the same arguments before. When a speaker finished, the others turned toward his chair.

— There is another possibility, the marshal said.

He drew a finger across the grain fields and stopped. The treasurer lowered his eyes to the papers before him.

— Say it.

— We burn everything we cannot harvest. Their supplies will last a week. Without the grain, they leave or starve on the road.

— And the villages?

— They’ll burn them after they strip them.

— Not all of them.

The marshal left his finger on the map.

The councilors began talking over one another. Some of the men sent to light the fires might refuse.

Someone mentioned the empty chair.

Decimus tightened his hand against the wood.

— One at a time.

The voices stopped. A stone slipped from the corner of the map; the marshal caught it before it reached the table’s edge.

Decimus watched him put it back.

That’s how he did it.

He could not remember his father moving his hand. He remembered the silence that followed.

— How long? he asked.

— Three days, if the wind holds.

— If we wait for the negotiations?

— We burn closer to the capital. And later.

The fields were drawn in small gold strokes. Between them were names he could have read, villages whose people would need that grain too.

He kept his eyes on the marshal.

— No one here wants to give the order.

— It must come from you, Your Majesty.

— Because you’ll have advised me, and I’ll have done it.

The marshal folded his arms.

— Yes.

The answer left him with the map and the men waiting for his words.

— Then I’ll give it.

The clerk began writing. Decimus dictated what was to be burned and signed the sheet when it was turned toward him.

The phrases were familiar from reports about other provinces. He knew which words the clerk needed. They made the order short enough to fit on a single sheet.

His hand stayed steady. He had expected it to shake.

The councilors rose. Some hurried out; others paused at the heavy door to his left. It creaked each time someone opened it.

The priest was last. He touched the medallion at his neck and turned toward the corridor.

— Stay.

The man stepped back into the room.

Decimus had no question ready. He wanted someone to remain beside the table while the others carried his order away.

The priest waited, hands folded.

— Bless them, Decimus said. The people in the west.

— Which of them, Your Majesty?

— All of them.

The priest inclined his head. He left, and the door creaked shut.

His betrothed found him in the library that evening. He had pulled out reports of another rebellion in his grandfather’s reign. There had been fires then too.

— You haven’t eaten.

— I have.

— The tray came back untouched. The servant asked whether I was angry with the cook.

He closed the report.

She sat beside the window, her hands in her lap. They were to marry in spring. In the dark glass, he could see her reflected beside a young man wearing his father’s coat, altered at the shoulders.

— I heard about the order, she said.

— The whole court heard.

— The clerk was talking outside your door.

He waited for her to tell him what she thought.

— Why?

They had been betrothed for three years. Usually she asked because she wanted to understand before deciding what she thought. He had liked that about her.

She asked quietly. He began putting the explanation together: the dukes’ supplies, the army he could not trust, the grain they would eat while his city starved.

He could tell her all of it. She might ask what happened to the people in the villages afterward. He had asked about them too.

— Because it was necessary.

The word came easily. He waited for another question.

She watched him, then stood.

— All right.

Her hand rested briefly on his shoulder before she left. He would have preferred an argument; he had answers ready for one.

The report stayed closed. He did not sleep.

Toward morning he climbed the western wall and stood between two soldiers, looking past the roofs and the river to the plain.

Red light lay along the horizon.

Dawn was behind him.

The younger soldier kept watching the west. He was no older than Decimus, with a farm boy’s wrists, and his lips were moving. Decimus thought at first that he was praying. Then he caught the same two syllables, again and again, and understood that it was the name of a place.

He did not know which village. He knew which direction.

The soldier turned his head and looked at him.

Afterward, Decimus would remember that there had been time. The spear came around slowly, almost carefully, as if the boy were learning the movement while he made it. Decimus watched it come and did nothing, because nothing in him knew what to do.

Then the point was at his chest, and his hands had found the shaft.

He had never fought. He had fenced with a master who apologized whenever he touched him. This was nothing like that. The soldier leaned in with his whole body, and Decimus went back until the parapet struck him below the ribs, then farther, his heels lifting from the walkway, the stone grinding into his spine. Over his shoulder there was nothing. Air, and far below, the gray roofs of the lower town.

If I let go, it goes in. If I hold, I go over.

He held. The shaft was wet under his palms. The blade shivered a finger’s width from his coat, moving with every breath the soldier took.

The boy was weeping. Not loudly. His face was close enough for Decimus to see that he had not slept either.

— They were in the fields, the soldier said. They’d gone back for the harvest.

Decimus had no answer. The order lay somewhere in the clerk’s box, short enough to fit on a single sheet.

The pressure stopped growing.

It did not ease. It simply stopped, the point resting where it was, and the soldier’s arms trembled with whatever he was refusing to do. Decimus felt that pause as a weight that had not yet fallen. He did nothing with it.

The older soldier struck the boy from behind.

They went down together onto the walkway. The spear clattered along the stones. Decimus slid off the parapet and caught himself with one hand flat on top of it, his legs shaking so badly that he could not let go.

The older soldier knelt on the boy’s back and looked up at him.

He was waiting for an order. Decimus knew what the words would be. He had learned them from the reports that day.

He said nothing.

The older soldier held his eyes a moment longer. Then he hauled the boy up by the collar and took him toward the stairs. At the top step he looked back once, west, not at Decimus.

The silence stayed behind on the wall. Decimus understood that it had been enough. That was how his father had done it.

He stayed until daylight spread across the fields and the glow was gone. The place beside him was empty.

When Decimus turned to leave, he had to lift his palm from the stone. He had been pressing it flat against the parapet, his fingers curved as though it were the arm of his chair.

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