Abeleyn sagged. “Give me a hand here, Isolla. Damn things weigh a ton.”

She helped him arrange the wooden legs on the bed. He seemed to find it hard to keep his eyes off them.

“I never felt it,” he said quietly. “Not a thing. Strange, that. A man has half his body ripped away and it does not even register. I can feel them now, though. They itch and smart like flesh and blood. Lord God, Isolla, what are you marrying?”

She hugged him close. It seemed amazingly natural to do so. “I am marrying a King, my lord. A very great King.”

He gripped her hand until the blood fled from it, his head bent into her shoulder. When he spoke again his voice was thick and harsh, too loud.

“Where are those damn valets? The service has gone to hell in this place.”

A BRUSIO had once been home to a quarter of a million people. A fifth of the population had died in the storming of the city, and tens of thousands more had packed up their belongings and left the capital for good. In addition, the trade which was the lifeblood of the port had been reduced to a tithe of its former volume, and men were still working by the thousand to clear the battered wharves, repair bombarded warehouses and demolish those structures too broken to be restored. A wide swathe of the Lower City had been reduced to a charred wasteland, and in this desolation thousands more were encamped like squatters under makeshift shelters.

But in the Upper City the damage was less, and here, where the nobility of Hebrion had their town houses and the Guilds of the city their halls, the only evidence of the recent fighting lay in the cannonballs which still pocked some structures like black carbuncles, and the shallow craters in the cobbled streets which had been filled with gravel.

And here, on the summit of one of the twin hills which topped Abrusio, the old Inceptine monastery and abbey glowered down on the port-city. Within the huge refectory of the Inceptine Order, the surviving aristocracy of Hebrion were assembled in all their finery to vote upon the very future of the kingdom.

T HERE had been a scurry of last-minute deals and agreements, of course, men shuffling and intriguing frantically to be part of the new order that was approaching. But by and large it had gone precisely as Jemilla had planned. Today Duke Urbino of Imerdon would be appointed regent of Hebrion, and the lady Jemilla would be publicly proclaimed as the mother of the crippled King’s heir. She would be queen in everything but name. What would Richard Hawkwood have made of that? she wondered, as the nobles convened before her in their maddening, leisurely fashion, and Urbino’s face, for once wreathed in smiles, shone down the great table at his fellow blue-bloods.

A crowd had gathered outside the abbey to await the outcome of the council. Jemilla’s steward had bribed several hundred of the city dregs to stand there and cheer when the news was announced, and they had, in the manner of things, been joined by a motley throng of some several thousand who sensed the excitement in the air. Jemilla had also thoughtfully arranged for fifty tuns of wine to be set up at various places about the city so that the regent’s health might be drunk when the criers went forth to spread the tidings about the change of government. The wine ought to assuage any pangs of uneasiness or lingering royalist feeling left in the capital. Nothing had been left to chance. This thing was here, now, in her hand. What would she do first? Ah, that Astaran bitch Isolla. She’d be sent packing, for a start.

As the hubbub within the abbey died down and the nobles took their places it was possible to hear the clamour of the crowds outside. It had risen sharply. They sounded as though they were cheering. Mindless fools, Jemilla thought. Their country is in ruins about their ears but splash them a measure of cheap wine and they’ll make a holiday.

The nobles were finally assembled, and seated according to all the rivallries and nuances of rank. Duke Urbino rose in his space at the right hand of the King’s empty chair. He looked as though he was trying not to grin, a phenomenon which sat oddly on his long, mournful face. The horsetrading which had occupied them day and night for the last several days was over. The outcome of the vote was already known to all, but the legal niceties had to be observed. In a few minutes he would be the de facto ruler of Hebrion, one of the great princes of the world.

“My dear cousins,” Urbino began—and stopped.

The din of the crowds had risen to a roaring pitch of jubilation, but now they in turn were being drowned out by the booming thunder of artillery firing in sequence.

“What in the world?” Urbino demanded. He looked questioningly at Jemilla, but she could only frown and shake her head. No doing of hers.

The assembly listened in absolute silence. It sounded like a regular bombardment.

“My God, it’s the Knights Militant—they’ve come back,” some idiot gushed.

“Shut up!” another snapped.

They listened on. Urbino stood as still as a statue, his head cocked to the sound of the guns. They were very close by—they must have been firing from the battlements of the palace. But why? And then Jemilla realised, with a sickening plunge of spirit. It was a salute.

“Count the guns!” she cried, heedless of the shrill crack in her voice.

“That’s nineteen now,” one of the older nobles asserted. Hardio of Pontifidad, she remembered. A royalist. His face was torn between hope and dismay.

The echoing rumble of the explosions at last died away, but the crowds were still cheering manically. Twenty-eight guns. The salute for a reigning king. What in the world was going on?

“Maybe it’s for the new regent,” someone said, but Hardio shook his head.

“That’d be twenty-two guns.”

“Perhaps he’s dead,” one of the dullards suggested. “They always fire a salute on the death of a king.”

“God forbid,” Hardio rasped, but most of the men present looked relieved. It was Jemilla who spoke, her voice a lash of scorn.

“Don’t be a fool. You hear the crowds? You think they’d be cheering the death of the King?” It was slipping away—she could feel it. Somehow Golophin and Isolla had stymied her. But how?

The question was soon answered. There was a deafening blare of horns outside and the clatter of many horses. A Royal fanfare was blown over and over. Beyond the great double doors of the refectory they could hear the tramp of feet marching in step. Then a sonorous boom as someone struck the doors from the outside.

“Open in the name of the King!”

A group of timorous retainers belonging to Urbino’s household stood there, unsure. They looked to their lord for orders but he seemed lost in shock. It was Jemilla who rapped out, “Open the damn doors then!”

They did so. Those inside the hall stood up as one, scraping back their chairs on the old stone. Beyond the doors were two long files of Hebrian arquebusiers dressed in the rich blue of Royal livery. Banner-bearers stood with the Hibrusid gonfalons a silk shimmer above their heads. And at the head of them all, a tall figure in black half-armour, his face hidden by a closed helm upon which the Hebrian crown gleamed in a spangle of gems and gold.

Wordlessly, the files of arquebusiers entered the room and lined the walls. Their match was lit and soon filled the chamber with the acrid reek of gunpowder. The solitary figure in the closed helm entered last, the banner-bearers closing the doors behind him. The assembled nobles stood as though turned to stone, until a hard voice snapped, “Kneel before your King.”

And the figure in black unhelmed.

The aristocracy of Hebrion stared, gaped, and then did as they were bidden. The figure in the black armour was without a doubt Abeleyn IV, King of Hebrion and Imerdon.