The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

Seeing Hertet’s waving arm the archbishop down in the square began to read aloud from the huge bible held open for him by two choirboys.

“Damned nonsense all this pyre business.” Hertet continued to grumble behind me. “Got better things to do with my morning than sit and smell Reymond cook. Should put him in the crypt with the rest of the Kendeths.”

Since our family name passed down through the monarch we were all Kendeths despite Grandmother’s three sons having three different fathers. I’d always taken pride in the name before, though sharing it with Hertet soured that pride somewhat there on the tiers. I hoped his opinions on cremating the dead didn’t escape the palace. It was proving hard enough convincing Vermillion to exhume and burn her dead as it was, without Hertet Kendeth declaring it foolishness.

At length we were done with the Latin and the lies. Archbishop Larrin closed the huge bible with a thump that echoed around the Black Courtyard, and the finality of it sent a chill through me. Father’s seal hung around the man’s neck, catching the light. A minor cleric handed Larrin a burning brand and he duly tossed it into the kindling heaped at the pyre’s base. The flames took hold, grew, crackled, found their roar and started to devour the logs above them. Thankfully the breeze blew from the south and carried the smoke away from us, drifting in grey clouds across the Marsail keep, over the palace walls, and out across the city.

“Ballessa said an odd thing.” Darin kept his eyes on the flames and I could imagine he hadn’t spoken. “She said she passed by Father’s chambers the afternoon he died and heard him shouting something about the devil . . . and his daughter.”

“Father doesn’t have a daughter,” Martus said, with the kind of firmness that indicated if some bastard child were discovered she should be forgotten again pretty damn quick.

“Daughter?” I watched the flames too. Ballessa wasn’t given to flights of fancy. You would have to look far and wide to find a woman more firmly grounded than the major-domo of Roma Hall. “He was just drunk and shouting nonsense. He was in his cups when I saw him a few days back.” Darin looked at me with a frown. “Father hadn’t drunk for weeks, brother, not since he came back from Roma. The maids told me it was true. You can’t hide anything from the people who clean up after you.”

“I—” I didn’t have anything to say to that. Father had said it for me. He wished that he had done a better job of being a father. Now I wished that I had been a better son.

“Jula was with him at the end,” Darin said.

“He died alone! That’s what I was told!” I looked at my brother but he kept his eyes forward.

“A cardinal shouldn’t die alone with a cook, Jal.” Martus gave a snort. “She was there, even so,” Darin said. “She brought him his broth personally. She’s been his cook longer than any of us have been his sons.”

“And Jula said?”

“That he faded quietly and she thought he’d fallen asleep. Then, seeing how pale and still he was she thought him dead. But he surprised her. At the end he was violent, struggling to rise—mouthing words but making no sound.” Darin looked away from the burning pyre, up, past the smoke, into the blue heavens. “She said he seemed possessed. Like a different person. She said his eyes met hers and in that moment he reached for his seal beside the bed, and on touching it collapsed back to his pillows. Dead.”

Neither Martus nor I had an answer for that. We stood in silence, listening to the crackle of the flames. The breeze rippled through the smoke and for a moment I saw shapes there, one moving into the next, almost a grasping hand, almost a face, almost a skull . . . all of them disturbing.

It took half an hour before the coffin fell in with a dull crash, a scattering of blazing logs and a maelstrom of sparks lofted toward the heavens. The heat reached us even on the upper tiers, red upon our faces. The archbishop signalled and the palace flag was lowered to indicate the start of mourning and that we could leave.

“Well, it’s done.” And Hertet levered himself up then stomped off down to the courtyard. Others took their cue and followed. Some lingered. My cousin Serah turned to offer my brothers and me her condolences for Uncle Reymond, Rotus shook our hands. Micha DeVeer waited for her Darin at the margins of the courtyard in her black dress, a milk-nurse beside her with my niece, pink and pudgy in her mourning cloth. Barras and Lisa said their words, kind ones, but they rolled off me. And finally it was just three brothers, and the possibly empty box on the tier behind us.