The Consort, Chapter 28
Cain got up from his desk and walked over to DG’s, looking for a briefing that had somehow found its way from his Inbox to her cluttered desktop. He spotted the bright yellow cover poking out from underneath some sheets of paper covered with DG’s doodles. He smiled to himself at her idle pencil drawings of flowers, dogs, waterfalls and mountains. He’d often watched them flow from her hand while she talked on the phone or listened to briefings, barely aware she was doing it, her fingers forming the images by themselves.
He pulled out the briefing report he needed and turned back, then drew up short, his breath catching in his throat.
There was a hooded stranger sitting at his desk, legs crossed in a casual pose that clashed absurdly with the mysterious cloaked face. “Hello, Cain,” A woman’s voice issued from the darkness under the hood, a voice he didn’t recognize. Which isn’t to say that he didn’t know who she was, or rather, who she represented.
Cain sighed. “The Queen’s not in.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here.” Her hand lifted and she gave him the signal. Cain just stood there, arms crossed over his chest.
“I’m not returning that damn signal. I know who you are, you sure as hell know who I am, who are we kidding?”
She sighed. “I’m not sure I’d be so belligerent if I were in your position.”
“You mean the position of somebody who lost his wife and eight years of his life inside a tin suit that you all put him in? That position?”
That seemed to give the woman pause. “We’re aware of your sacrifice, Cain,” she said, and damn if he didn’t hear a note of regret there.
“That’s nice. You’re aware. Ask me how aware I am of it every single minute of my life.” He dropped the briefing report on his desktop and turned away. His mysterious visitor rose and went to the window, her back to him, her hands clasped behind her.
“You told her about us.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I don’t keep things from my wife. My deep apologies if I’ve given offense,” he said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm.
“No. We meant for her to know. Maybe not just now, but eventually. We did go to a lot of trouble to make sure she became Queen, you know. And to make sure that the House of Gale regained its strength.”
Cain stared across at the portrait that hung over DG’s desk. It was of her ancestor Dorothy, the founder of the House of Gale. He’d looked but he’d never seen any family resemblance. “Mynus is still one of you, isn’t he?”
The hooded woman chuckled. “Mynus fancies himself a great revolutionary. He threw off membership in the Order years ago and made a grand dramatic exit that we decided to let him make. We allow him to believe that he isn’t an agent of the Order, but he hears our whispers without knowing it. He does our bidding whether he means to or not.”
“You had me kidnapped, this palace attacked, just to strengthen the House?”
“It’s stronger now than it has been in centuries, Cain. The people see in the Queen a warrior, a sorceress, a force to be reckoned with. A woman they can trust and who they’d fight for. They see in her sister redemption, and a triumph over the forces of darkness. They see in you and the Queen rulers they can believe in, a love to stir their hearts and light fire under their hopes for a better destiny for all. Your story inspires their better natures and cements their loyalty. You can’t buy that kind of confidence, you have to earn it.”
“But you did buy it,” Cain snapped. “You bought it with the lives of those soldiers who died when I was taken. They didn’t need to be sacrificed.”
“We all make sacrifices. A few dozen soldiers is a small price to pay for security. The Zone was vulnerable. An untested Queen, uncertain subjects ready to follow any forceful voice. The threat was not from Mynus but from greater and more distant enemies, as I don’t need to tell you, but Mynus’s invasion would have looked real enough to outsiders. A fake invasion for real unity. Much better than having to suffer through a serious invasion attempt or years of border skirmishes, wouldn’t you say?”
Cain couldn’t argue from a military point of view. The Order was ruthless and pragmatic, but the results were hard to deny.
“I can’t trust you, any of you,” he said. “After what you did to me all those years ago, after you did nothing to help defeat the Witch.”
“We did nothing you’re aware of, you mean. Never mind. That’s in the past. Shouldn’t we all be looking to the future?” The woman moved toward the door, swishing past him.
“Is she safe from you?” Cain blurted as she passed. The woman paused and turned her cloaked face toward him. “Rulers often aren’t.”
“After all the trouble we’ve gone to for the security of her throne, it’d be rather a waste of time to remove her.”
“That’s not an answer.”
She hesitated. “She’s safe. For now.”
“For now?”
“You know how this works, Cain. We watch. We listen. We will be her most faithful, silent and unseen friends, unless she should demonstrate herself undeserving of that friendship.”
“And then what?”
“Like others before her, she would…find herself unable to continue to rule.”
“She’d be killed, you mean.”
“Not necessarily. We try to avoid such draconian measures.”
“Is that what you told the Earl of Umbrey’s father before you had him killed?”
“Who says we did?”
“No one. He was a collaborator, that’s no secret, and his son was a key part of Mynus’s plans, which you’ve admitted were your plans, and they required that Gerald Umbrey be the Earl.”
“Are you always this suspicious?”
“Not always. Sometimes I’m sleeping.”
“An Earl is one thing. A reigning Queen is another.”
Cain’s heart felt like a heavy lump of granite in his chest. He couldn’t afford to lose his temper with this woman. He had to be like her. Dispassionate, and rational…as impossible as that felt. “I’ve done a great service to the Order, wouldn’t you agree?”
She hesitated, perhaps taken aback by the abrupt subject change. “Yes, we agree.”
“I deserve some consideration from you, don’t I?”
“That depends.”
“I only want one thing, and it’s nothing you’ll miss or that’ll even be a hardship. I don’t want money or power or whatever else you can dispense to your members. I don’t even want to be a member.”
“What do you want, then?”
“If the Order should decide to take any action against DG, at any time in the future, come to me first.”
“Come to you?”
He nodded. “Yes. I’ll take her away. To the other side, if necessary. You’ll never hear from either of us again.”
“You think she’d agree to that?”
“I’ll remove her against her will if I have to.”
“Why, General Cain. You’re talking about forcibly de-throning the Queen. That’s treason, you know.”
“I don’t care. If the alternative is risking whatever you might do to her, I’ll do what I have to do.”
“After all you’ve done to safeguard her throne?”
“I don’t care about her throne,” Cain hissed, his jaw clamped shut over the words. “I care about my wife.”
The hooded woman just stood there for a moment, but Cain had a vague feeling that she was smiling. “That’s good to hear,” she said. “She has enough people worrying about her crown. She needed someone to worry about her.” She sighed. “Your wife is in no danger from us, General Cain. I don’t anticipate that we’d need to step in unless she goes seriously senile when she’s eighty-two.” She tugged on her gloves. “As for you, your membership in the Order stands. But you may consider yourself on indefinite hiatus, if it makes you feel any better.” She headed for the door.
“One more question,” he said.
She turned back. “What?”
“What happened to the other three?”
A long pause. “What do you mean?”
“After the Eclipse, all the tin suits in the Zone were rounded up and destroyed. All were found to be empty. Most had been opened very recently. The assumption has always been that when the Witch died, all the enchantments she created died as well, including those on the suits, releasing their occupants. Three of those suits contained the other guardians the Order imprisoned to protect DG.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to them?”
“Ask me the question you want to ask, General.”
“Who were they?” Cain asked.
The hodded figure folded her hands before her. “I’m afraid I’m not privy to that information.”
Cain nodded. Which really meant you don’t get to know. “I hope I never see any of you ever again.”
The hooded woman hesitated, her hand on the doorknob. “Be good, and you won’t.” She opened the door and left. Cain knew that if he went to the door himself and looked out, he wouldn’t see her.
A flood of relief crashed through him, relief he’d pushed down while he spoke to her. DG.
He ran out into the hall. “Where’s the Queen?” he asked the guard.
“Sir, I believe Her Majesty is in the west conference room.”
“Right, the Charity League board thing…right,” he said, taking off at a run for the conference room. He careened around the corner, knowing people were probably staring at him but he didn’t care. After months of worrying in the back of his head that the Order was going to decide DG wasn’t fit to rule and do something to her, he felt fifty pounds lighter.
The presence of her guards outside the west conference room told him she was still in there. He busted in without knocking, the guards’ surprised exclamations following him in.
DG was presiding over a group of about fifty people, seated around the long conference table and around the room’s perimeter. Mostly women, some older retired-looking men. Every head swiveled to stare at him. “Cain!” DG exclaimed. “What’s wrong?” She jumped up and came around the side of the table.
He didn’t answer, just bounded across the distance between them and seized her up in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides. He felt her squawk a bit in surprise and go stiff at this sudden attack in front of people, but after a moment she relaxed a little. “Miss me this much after half an hour?” she said in his ear. He laughed and released her, keeping hold of her shoulders. “Honey, what’s going on?” she said, smiling while her eyes showed confusion.
“Uh…nothing. Just…it’s nothing. I just got some good news, that’s all. I’ll tell you about it later.”
She gave him the okay, crazy man eyebrow. “Well…okay, then. I ought to get back to this meeting.”
He nodded. “Right, of course. Sorry to disturb.”
DG turned to the group, who were all murmuring and whispering and smiling at them. “Please excuse my husband, he’s a little…excitable.” Polite laughter.
Feeling like a bit of an ass now, Cain headed for the door. When he got there he turned back to see DG watching him from her chair at the head of the table. He dropped her a wink and she smiled at him.
He left the conference room and returned to his office. Ironic that a visit from the Order could leave him feeling so cheered about the world in general.