The Radiant War

Chapter 23a

     There were crowds gathered outside Greyspike Palace as the carriage carrying Soonia Darniss, Captain Silva and Princess Ardria approached. They were jeering and throwing things, some of which bounced noisily from the sides and roof, but Ardria, wearing a new gown given to her by the sister of the Mayor of Tarchem, the town where they'd stopped the train, sat bolt upright and stared straight ahead, ignoring the protest. Shielding herself with dignity.

     There were guardsmen holding the crowd back, as well as soldiers guarding the gates of the palace grounds, and she half suspected that the crowd was only making a fuss for their benefit, wanting to be thought loyal by the King, whom she could see watching the approaching procession from the balcony overlooking the courtyard. Their very poor aim was one of the things that made her think this. More of the lumps of horse dung and rotten fruit was hitting their military escort, riding on horses ahead of and behind them, than was hitting the carriage.

     “Charnox at last,” said Darniss, also dressed in a gown donated by Lady Henly of Tarchem, although not as fine or splendid as that worn by the Princess, something that she had never commented on but which made her scowl nonetheless and which made the Princess smile with amusement. “I had forgotten how beautiful the city was.”

     Ardria looked about at the buildings of bare brick; blocky and simple in their construction. They were big, there was that to say about them. Big enough to crush the spirits of the people who walked between them in the streets where their sheer weight could be felt pressing down on them, impressing them with their insignificance. The road they had come in on was the only really wide street in the whole city, it seemed. Wide enough for armies to parade along it with crowds lined on either side, as they were now. Even this great avenue was made to seem small and cramped by the towering government buildings, though, and the Princess found herself breathing a sigh of relief as they emerged from it and entered the Grand Concourse; the wide open area in front of the palace grounds.

     There were Radiants floating overhead. The three occupants of the carriage watched them warily as the carriage clattered and bounced their way across the Concourse towards the tall, spiked railing that surrounded the palace grounds. “Will they hold off, do you think?” asked the Princess.

     “The telegraph operator said he’d passed on my warning to the King,” said Silva. “Now that we’re here, in sight of the King himself, I think we’re safe enough. Anything the Radiants do to you now will only confirm what you're trying to tell him. It'll tell him that they're afraid of what you have to say. Their best chance now, I think, is to simply deny everything. Say that you’re simply trying to drive a wedge between Carrow and the Radiants. That'll be what the King thinks anyway. They only have to confirm it.”

     “But how do they explain what happened on the train? With you, Darniss and the other two men to tell what happened?”

     “We can simply disappear. We're no-one.”

     “Speak for yourself, young man,” said Darniss angrily. “I am a Duchess of the Kingdom. Related by blood to the King himself.”

     “Begging your pardon, Madam, but that counts for very little here,” replied Silva. “The other aristocrats have been seen about society. They have reputations, contacts...”

     “You don’t think that the King himself is the best possible contact? If one of the King's traitorous advisors makes me disappear, Nilon might start thinking that there's some truth in what Ardria's trying to tell him.”

     “With respect, Your Grace, the Princess is the prize. If you were to disappear, the traitorous advisors would probably only have to tell him that you'd quietly gone to Lord Krell’s mansion, being anxious to see your daughter again, and he'd probably be satisfied with that.”