The Eyes of a King (4 page)

The castle rock was plastered with snow, even on the flat surface. The cannons watched us like a band of hungry vultures. Soldiers were constantly marching up and down the rock face on the zigzag road. Especially in these past months. King Lucien wanted more troops than ever to guard the city.

I would have liked to live in a castle like that. It used to look like an ancient temple, carved from the red rock of the very peak of the volcano itself. I could remember when it glowed like an orange coal in the morning—the first part of the city that the sun reached—and every window was a spark too bright to look at. Lucien had reinforced it with new guard towers and walls so that it no longer looked like it was part of the old island city.

But they said that from the highest balcony you could see the whole of Kalitzstad—the church, the square, the Royal Gardens—everything laid out like a map; and the river, winding round both sides of the city as it ran from north to south. To the west you could see as far as Port Hopeful and even the shadow of Holy Island on clear days; the other way, as far as the Eastern Mountains. Or that was what I’d heard. It was just a rumor. Everything seemed to be just a rumor these days.

“Is it a good thing, then?” said Stirling.

He was thinking aloud. “What?” I said.

“A revolution.”

“Well, when Lucien took over, that was a revolution. I think. And that was a bad thing.” I looked around when I said that. Luckily, no soldiers were in sight. That comment would probably have constituted high treason.

“Does it always turn out the same, a revolution? Does it always turn out bad?”

“I don’t know. I only know about Malonia.”

“Is it always by fighting?”

“I don’t see any other way that you could take over a country.”

“There must be other ways.”

“Sometimes the only way to do something is by armed conflict.”

“Sorry, but I disagree,” he said firmly.

I laughed. “Listen to you—eight years old and talking like a lawyer.” I was the one who had taught him the word “disagree.” Before that, he used to say “I don’t agree.” And it used to irritate me, because he said it a lot. “Maybe you will be a lawyer,” I said. “You like arguing, for sure.”

“I don’t think I’ll be a lawyer,” he said.

“All right, so what do you want to be?”

“A priest maybe. Like Father Dunstan. Don’t roll your eyes. What’s wrong with being a priest?”

I shrugged. “A priest doesn’t earn much money” was all that I could come up with.

The streets were darkening as the clouds got thicker. A
ragged paper fluttered down the street, like a bat, and landed flat on the wall. It was a Wanted poster. I plucked it off as we passed it, and examined it carelessly before throwing it aside. “What was that?” Stirling asked.

“Just another dangerous criminal,” I said. “Some kind old grandfather who apparently plotted to kill King Lucien.”

He laughed.

We were rounding the corner of our street now—Citadel Street. It led to the castle eventually, though it was not the only street that did, and the apartments were cheap because of the constant thoroughfare of soldiers day and night. “What’s wrong with being a priest?” Stirling said again. “If you don’t want me to be a priest, Leo, I won’t be a priest.”

“Why are you so impressionable?”

“What’s that?”

“Easily swayed by what other people say. I mean, if it’s what God’s told you to do, it is what you have to do. Who’s more important, God or me?”

“But like Jesus said, if I hurt you, I hurt him. Like it says, ‘Whatever you do to one of the least of these my brothers—’”

I laughed. “Stirling, shut your mouth and be a priest if you want to. I can’t think of you being anything else.”

“Unless I have to be a soldier too.” He frowned. “Maybe there’ll be another revolution by then. A good one. Maybe the prince will return.”

“Shh, Stirling. Do you want to go to prison?”

“Sorry, Leo.”

He began to hum, and we walked the rest of the way without speaking. It was not far.

T
he next morning I was disappointed to find that there was no more writing in the strange book. I had hoped that there would be. I had expected, even, that there would be. I went on checking the book when I remembered, but after a week with still nothing, I began to forget it.

One evening I came home late and alone. The snow was still frozen in hard gray slivers at the edges of the streets, where the sun never reached. It was the beginning of June now, but it might as well have been winter. I hurried. I did not like to approach people suddenly in the shadowed alleys when I did not know who they might be. But that day the streets were almost deserted. The air was so still that I could just hear the gunfire and explosions from the northeast border, where Malonia meets Alcyria. It was a long way away, but on days like this it could be heard.

I trudged down the alleyway beside the house and let myself in at the side door, shaking the hard ice off my boots. That day the sky was dark with clouds, and dusk was falling in the stairwell. My footsteps echoed coldly on the stone as I hurried up the stairs. I passed the two lower doors—reinforced steel, identical to ours—then reached the third one, second from the top. The top apartment had stood empty for years, and dust lay thick on the handrail and the steps beyond our door.

“I’m home, Grandmother!” I called, shutting the door behind me. My grandmother marched in. “Leo, where have you been? Where is Stirling?” I sat down on the sofa, dumped my coat beside me, and put my keys back into my pocket. “Leo, where is Stirling?” she asked again.

“He got kept in late,” I told her. I spoke slowly, because I knew she wanted me to speak fast.

“Again?” She stopped in front of the sofa and regarded me, frowning. “What did he do this time?”

“He wouldn’t do drill. It was target practice, and you know he never does that.”

“Why wouldn’t he today?”

“I didn’t ask him.”

My grandmother sat down in the chair beside the window, throwing up her hands in a gesture of despair. “Honestly, Leo!”

“What? What did I do? It’s not my fault that Stirling is a pacifist, or whatever the hell he is.”

“Leo, he is not a pacifist,” she told me, standing up again restlessly. I looked at her but didn’t say anything. “He doesn’t even know what a pacifist is. He’s only eight! You are a bad example to him, Leo, for one thing, and for another—he’s lazy.”

“I think you underestimate him sometimes,” I ventured. “He’s very clever. Anyone can see he’s very clever and if—”

“Don’t tell me,” she interrupted. “However intelligent he is, he won’t get anywhere with it. Intelligence is worthless unless it’s applied to something. What use is a scholar in the family? No one needs professors or lawyers. We need soldiers and farmers and factory workers. Books and lectures do not put food on the table.”

“It’s easy for you to say that! My father did none the worse for being clever. How do you put food on the table, then? With the money from his books, that’s how. You do not work.”

“Would you have me work, Leo?”

“No. All I’m saying is that you don’t.”

“I don’t have time, with looking after you and Stirling.”

“You don’t need to, because you have all the money from my father.”

“Aye, and we are extremely fortunate that no one has found out. And look what Harold’s cleverness cost him. My only son, fleeing in the night like a criminal, and now—” She stopped and began again. “Your great-uncle—so famous and powerful—his cleverness got him nowhere either. Dead. Is that where you want to end up?”

“Yes,” I told her. I should have just let it go, but I was tired of her constant lecturing.

“Yes?” she repeated, her voice rising. “
Yes?
Well, that’s where you are going to end up if you don’t start working. I’m sick of you always complaining about school. Don’t you know how lucky you are?”

“Lucky?”

“Don’t you know what some boys would give to have the education you are getting? Don’t you know how fortunate you are to be able to become a soldier? And you are so ungrateful as to say—”

“What’s ungrateful?” I shouted. “What is there to be grateful for? All I said is, I’d rather end up dead. I mean it. I’d rather be dead if it means I don’t have to end up as some bastard soldier. They think they’re so bloody smart—”

“Leo!” I had not heard her shout so loudly in a long time. “Do not dare to talk to me like that!” I was always in trouble for swearing. “You are the one who thinks he’s smart,” she yelled. “Well, you’ve got a lot to learn! Including some respect.”

She turned away, breathing heavily. Her face in the glass trembled, yellow with fury, and for a moment I thought I was frightened of her. I suppose I was remembering how I used to
be scared when she shouted, when I was very young. I watched her for a moment. I felt suddenly like laughing at the response I had got so easily. I don’t know why.

It got darker and darker in the room while I sat there. My grandmother made no move to light the oil lamp on the table. She stood as if she was carved of stone. The only sign that she was not a statue was a circle of mist on the window, getting larger and smaller, and then larger again, as she breathed onto the glass. The room was cold and I wanted to put my overcoat back on, but I was caught in the silence and I could not break it.

I wished then that I had not shouted at her. She was, after all, quite old, and I should have known better. I was not a little child. I should have made an effort. I vowed to myself that I would try to understand her better. I would try to control my temper. I wondered idly if she would ever move.

Eventually she turned back to me. The clouds were so dense outside now, and the light so dim, that I could not make out her expression. “Leo, why did you not wait for your brother?” she asked. She was carrying on the conversation, though her voice was shaky. She was still angry, I judged.

“I tried to wait,” I said, “but Markey caught me.”

“
Sergeant
Markey,” she said, her voice tighter. “I want you to go back and meet Stirling.”

“What? I stood there more than an hour before I came home—more like two hours. I’m still cold. It’s below freezing out there.” And it was a long way back to school. But I knew I was going to go.

“You heard me. It’s not safe for him to walk by himself at six o’clock with the weather dark like this.”

“All right,” I said. That was it. I was going to try to control my temper. I crossed to the door.

“Leo.” I turned to her. “Don’t forget your overcoat.”

I could tell by her voice that her anger was gone. It sounded like an apology. Stupidly, I had to take advantage of it. I reached out at the coat, and with a snapping like a bat’s wing, it was in my hand. Another trick. It hurt my head to do that when I was tired.

My grandmother moved faster than I would have believed she could. She snatched the coat out of my hand and threw it back as if it burned her. Her eyes flashed with anger and something else. Fear. It was exhilarating. She was scared of me, I realized. She was actually scared of me. “What do I have to tell you about those stupid tricks?” Her voice was high. “Go back and pick it up properly.” But I turned and marched out without a word, slamming the door behind me.

When I reached the school gates, it was nearly six-thirty. I was shivering cold without my coat, and I half wished I had not marched out like that. I looked about for Stirling. A light was still burning in a classroom window. I had waited here earlier, but Sergeant Markey had caught me and sent me away.

As I stood watching the buildings, a door opened and a small figure appeared against the light. It was Stirling. He trekked across the yard and through the gates. The snow was frozen in gray troughs and peaks, where many heavy boots had kicked it to slush during the day. I hurried to meet him as he stumbled across it.

As he got closer I saw that he was shivering too, and there
was a blue tinge to his face that was not just the strange reflection of the snow. Two white points stood out on his cheeks, and I realized that they were beads of ice. Frozen teardrops. He stood still in front of me. “Look at you,” I said. “What have you been doing?”

He shivered. I put my hand to his shoulder, leading him away. I could feel him trembling. “He made me stand out in the cold until I did drill,” Stirling said in a shaky voice.

“Who? Sergeant Markey?” He nodded. “For how long?”

“Since the end of school.”

“But that’s three hours! It’s well below freezing point.” Stirling didn’t say anything.

“So you did drill in the end?” I asked.

“No.”

“Why did he let you go, then?”

“He was closing the school.”

I looked at him hard. “Stirling, have you been crying?” I did not mean to sound reproachful. But boys in our country don’t cry. They just don’t. It’s a sign of weakness. Then again, Stirling was very small. He didn’t answer. “Did he hit you?” I asked him. Stirling put out his hand. I held it in mine, toward the light of the streetlamp. On the white palm, three raw stripes stood out. The skin shone where it had been struck. His hand was cold, so cold—as if he was dead—and so small.