ENTRY TWO
The King and the PawnThe king was dead. Church-bells announced his passing with minimal aplomb, while below, on the cobbled streets, people went about their business with hardly a second thought. The king had not been a beloved figure, though he had hardly been a tyrant by any stretch of the imagination. The truth of it was that he was simply unremarkable. King Richard LXVII had not ruled long enough to leave any sort of lasting impression at all. Of course, it was hardly his fault, only the most charged, prepared, and charismatic men could issue reform in a seventy-two hour long reign. Men like King Richard XLI, who had waged and won a flash-war by the end of his second day, and King Frederick XIX, who, in the fourth hour of his rule, had had half a dozen of his own ministers executed on charges of corruption. But most were like poor, dead Richard. Utterly unambitious men, uprooted from their homes and handed the crown, without a clue of what to do with it.
The king was dead and he would not be remembered. I would not let the same thing happen to me. When they placed the crown upon my head and my three-day reign began, I vowed to never be forgotten.
A thin, wooden panel slid across the door, revealing a pair of squinting blue eyes beyond.
“Evening, McArthur.”
The panel snapped shut as the door’s metal lock clinked and clanged and creaked opened. I nodded to the old man and his lips puffed into a small gesture of acknowledgment.
The Backroom was packed tonight. I tried to wade through the tide of bodies, brushing shoulders and bumping hips and muttering apologies under the static rumble of a hundred voices. I could remember the first time I’d seen this room: bare and dark, a few candles and a few faces, like a sparse valley echoing the passion in our voices as we’d sit and talk into the early hours of the morning.
Just a few short years later and it had become something beyond any of our control. To many of them, it was a movement, a grass-roots, heartfelt attempt at reclaiming what they believed to be good and true. To the police, undoubtedly, it would be seen as a rebellion, revolutionary, fanatical. Something to be quashed and used as a jumping point for sanctions and abuse. Indeed, the police had nearly found the place once, a few months back. Since the Law of Numbered Days had passed, the police force had become increasingly more chaotic. The Minister of Justice had only to answer to any given king for a mere three days and so had, predictably, at least to the lot of us in the Backroom, begun to take a rather laissez-faire approach to his work. Likewise, the district chiefs below him were immediately relieved of the pressures of their work. Free from inspection or oversight, they took to becoming more akin to feudal lords than public servants. But none were quite so despicable as the common police officer, a job which now appealed only to the most unsavory of characters who wished for a weapon on their belt and for a few impoverished drunks to beat bloody.
Should they have made their way into the Backroom, I can’t imagine any of us would have survived beyond that night. And this all may have been for nothing. Indeed, for so many years, we all thought that it would be for nothing anyway. What, after all, could just a few working-class men do to a system so large, so daunting, so entrenched?
“Settle down, settle down! Everybody, if you would please!” In the middle of the room, towering and with a voice like a thunderclap, stood dear Robert. He waved his hands and slowly the voices settled until only a few lingering conversations remained muttering in corners of the room. “I want to thank you all for coming tonight, comrades. I want to thank you for your support and for your discretion.”
A little applause and a few whistles came in return.
“But, tonight, most of all, I want to congratulate you. Because tonight, for the first time in all these years… we have a reason to have hope. Real, true hope for real, true change.” Robert pivoted and glanced around the room. “Where is he, then? Where’s… ah!” His eyes locked with mine through the swarm of people. “George, come up here, won’t you?”
I shimmied my way through the wall of bodies, warm and a little odorous, and escaped to the center of the room, a tiny open pocket in the masses. A few claps and smiles and a lot of confused and uncertain expressions.
“You all may not know George – he is much more of a writer than a speaker, I have to say – but George has been with us from the very beginning. George has been here since it was just four or five of us in this room, talking about… well, what was it we talked about, George? What didn’t we talk about? How the generals have become warlords. How the army have become mercenaries. How the police have become criminals, how ugly and brutal men are the only ones to rise to power and often do so on little more than their family names and a pocketful of gold. How thievery has destroyed the marketplaces and driven farmers into poverty. We talked about how we could remember our childhoods… playing in the woods by the rapids… when things weren’t like this. Before the Law of Numbered Days.
“And now… our George here has been chosen by the Royal Draw.” Gasps drew across the room and my cheeks flushed with heat. I bounced on my heels and looked down at the floor below. I could feel Robert’s eyes on me. I glanced up to find him almost in tears, a repressed smile on his lips. “The very system we came here to dismantle and critique is now a true and honest hope for us. For all of us. For everyone, even those people who aren’t here, even those farmers in their fields and the babes in their wives’ bellies who will never know of us or what we did here. They have hope now – through George. George, would you like to say a few words?”
And now a thunderous and bellowing applause. A stray arm came flying from the crowd and shook my shoulder and another patted my back and I ran my face through my hands and drew a deep, long breath that felt all too shallow. I cleared my throat.
“Good evening, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends.” I glanced around the room and caught the eye of a few familiar faces and far more unfamiliar ones. The moment had come at last. “We have seen nearly thirteen-hundred kings over the past decade. Thirteen-hundred men have taken the throne and thirteen-hundred men have been pulled from it and slaughtered in cold blood. I remember the very first king after the Law of Numbered Days… Richard I… I remember the cheers and the applause and the festivities when his head came rolling down the steps. Finally, we all thought, we had ended years of corrupt kings, of lesser sons of greater men, of a kingdom run on the gamble of whether whichever man had lucked into being born in the palace was fit to run it. And so very often they weren’t.” The silence of the room weighed my voice like an anchor. I swallowed hard and forced the words.
“Their reigns were long and terrible. And though the new kings may have been terrible, perhaps, we thought, they would have far less incentive to be. And surely, we all knew, that little damage could be done in but a few days. We had protected ourselves. We had secured ourselves from corruption. We had prevented any great wars. We had prevented any great evil – for any sinister plot, we imagined, would take too long for any one king to brew.” Mutters and mumbles from the crowd.
“And we were right for a while. No one king was so terrible – not even Frederick XIX or William V were as bad as some of the kings of history. And yet look at where we are now. It took no bad king to drive our kingdom into despair. It took no corruption, no war, no treachery. It took but the lack of a king at all. For every evil deed that takes a week’s time or more, there’s a good deed that takes just as long. For all the corruption we’ve prevented, we’ve raised incompetence in its place. What our nation needs is not over a hundred three-day kings a year, but one good king, one truly, radically good king, for a hundred years.”
Robert smiled and roared and stomped his foot and applauded and when the crowds joined in behind him, the whole building shook beneath my feet and ran a chill up my spine and down my arms and a smile came breaking through my nerves.
“I do not presume myself to be special,” I shouted through the applause, it dying down in response. “I do not think myself to be any more deserving of this position than any of you. Our system runs on fortune – and I have been favored by it. It is no more than mere chance. But it is work that must be done. I know that and you all know that the same. And no work can be done without the power to do it. I have a chance to claim that power, and I intend to take it. Not for myself. Not with greed or malice in my heart. But with an obligation, a duty, to do that which has needed doing for so many years.”
Another burst of applause began to build before it was cut short by another, unexpected voice.
“No man rules alone.”
The crowd shifted to a man standing in the far corner, cloaked in a purple hood which he slowly dropped to his neck. An older man with a wide, grey mustache and a long, silvery ponytail. Piccolo. He had been a sporadic attender of our meetings for years, now, but often preferred to come and go in relative secrecy, only ever making his presence known to Robert, myself, and a few others. And we didn’t blame him for it. After all, should the High Advisor to the king be found attending a meeting such as ours, surely his head would roll before the next king’s.
“The power of a king,” Piccolo went on, now having captured the attention of the room, “is not to act, but to compel others to act for him. And to compel others to act for him, a king requires the cooperation and the loyalty of his advisors, his ministers, his secretaries, his lawmakers and his generals. Without them at his command, even the most thoughtful king is but a philosopher with a throne.”
The Law of Numbered Days applied, of course, exclusively to the monarchs. His countless high-ranking assistants and advisors had permanent positions much as they always had. Indeed, since the implementation of the law, it was widely thought that they held more power in the kingdom than any one king ever could. The kings came and went but the councilmen remained. Kings each had different ideas for the country, different plans and policies, different philosophies on governance. Some came just to waste their final days on whores and wine. Others came with grand ambitions and required the whole council to work day and night without sleep from the moment their reign began to the moment their life ended. Only the whore-and-wine kings managed to accomplish what they set out to do.
And the burden of governance, instead, laid on the councilmen.
“Many members of the high council are just as happy to let the country fall into ruin for their own benefit, I’m sad to say,” continued Piccolo, “and will have as much interest supporting your cause as will our reengage generals and policemen. But… there are those on the high council who have been as frustrated as you all have been. Some who are tired of being barely-paid and overworked. Who are tired of living their whole lives following disjointed, pointless orders, waiting for some madcap king to slaughter them in their sleep. Many on the high council live lives that would be pitiable by even the lowest commoner. And each of them dreams of one, good king. A king who will promise them security, who will pay them handsomely, who will afford them a life of meaning. A king… like you, George.”
I cannot say that it had not weighed heavily on me, the thought of what might happen if, even on the throne, the council simply disobeyed my intentions, simply refused to listen to reason. Piccolo’s words were heavy and serious, words of the weight and difficulty of the work ahead, but so too did they lift my spirits, taking a weight from my shoulders. “There are those on the council,” I asked, my voice more timid than I intended, “who would support our cause? You know this for certain?”
“I do,” said Piccolo firmly. “And they, not the throne, will be your power. Offer them what they have so long desired, offer them what that vile law has forbade them for so long, and they will stand by you. And if the generals, the lawmakers, the royal guard, the advisors stand with you… what can some scroll of parchment do to stop them?”
The crowd turned to me. My eyes drifted to their feet. The burden of the throne began to settle down onto me. I had known it would be my duty, my obligation, for a few days now. But only in that moment, standing there, the eyes of my comrades on me, Piccolo’s words heavy in my heart, did the weight truly begin to sink in.
“I will need your help,” I said.
“The work is already underway, my king.”
I reached up to touch the crown that sat upon my head. It was a surreal feeling, the cold and heavy metal, encrusted with gems and ornate decoration. It rested unsteadily, always wanting to tilt off to one side or another.
A finely-groomed and well-dressed man laid a plate before me with a low bow. Every manner of food imaginable way spread out on the long table: roast chickens and ducks, huge, silver bowls of fruits, cakes and pastries, platters of vegetables, bowls of sauces and gravies, pitchers full of amber brandy and dark wine. I reached out for the chromed goblet at my side and pushed back my chair along the immaculate rug that filled the room.
I stood and cleared my throat. It had already been a few hours since my ordination. There was little time to waste. Now, with all the highest-ranking members of the council gathered together, I would explain to them my intentions, praying that they understood.
But not a moment after I stood, Piccolo, at the opposite length of the table, rose to meet me, his cup already hoisted high in the air. “To our new king!” he called out, “May his reign be long-remembered!”
“Here here!” the councilmen called out, raising their glasses and clinking them with those nearest them. Piccolo made a subtle gesture with his free hand for me to sit and, caught off my guard, I glanced around at the contented and distracted councilmen and fell back into my seat.
When the wine had all been drunk, the bones picked dry, the platters cleaned, and the councilmen had gone their separate ways, I went immediately to find Piccolo in his chambers. I wandered helplessly through labyrinthine corridors until, at least, I heard the ruckus of a dozen voices coming from a room at the far wing of the palace.
Piccolo stood gathered around with at least half of the high council, drinks in hand, talking and laughing. One by one, they noticed my presence in the doorway and quieted down until the uproar had settled into an uncomfortable silence. Piccolo smiled. “I present, my king, your most faithful attendants. The room bowed and nodded at once. “I apologize, too, for the interruption at dinner. You must understand, my king, that not all of those in attendance were sympathetic to your cause.”
“That’s precisely why I wanted to speak to them. To win their favor.”
Several of the councilmen smirked at this. I felt sheepish and red.
“Believe me, my king, their favors will not be won by a rousing speech. These are men whose whole lives have been propped up by the brokenness of our system. Whose riches and comforts have been won through the very Law which you oppose. It’s best that we don’t move too quickly, you understand. Should the word of your intentions get out before all of our plans are in order… well, let’s just avoid that, yes?”
I did not feel very kingly. In fact, I was beginning to feel as though I had no authority at all. “What are our plans? When… when will they be in order?”
Piccolo smiled and nodded to a large, burly man next to him and motioned with his hand toward me.
The man spoke, “I am General Tumberin, my king,” with a slight bow. “Late tonight, word will be sent out to the highest-ranking members of our army and guard to be on the highest alert possible. Those deemed most likely to, er, present complications, will be put immediately under house arrest.”
“House arrest?”
Piccolo interrupted, “To avoid any unwanted outcry, my king.”
I pinched my brow and shook my head. “My reign is to begin with putting innocent men under house arrest?”
“Innocent,” Piccolo said, “Is a strange word, isn’t it? How many innocent men do you think are responsible for the state this country is in? Men who have never disobeyed a superior, never outright broken any law, but who have nevertheless perpetuated our broken, awful system? The men we will be putting under house arrest are men who are loyal to the chaos our Law has allowed. Men who can never and will never be loyal to you.”
“I don’t ask for their unchecked loyalty…”
“But you do, my king. You ask precisely for that. When word goes out that the Law has been abolished, you will not be the only one fighting for this throne. You will not be the only one trying to secure that crown you wear. There will be others – others who will see this move as an ultimatum. These are ambitious men, wealthy men, with many friends in the palace and in its branches. They must not be allowed access to them, you understand. These are men who seek the throne for personal power, George, not for the good of the kingdom.”
“It is a minor sacrifice to make,” said General Tumberin.
“Your hesitation speaks to your moral character, my king,” said another, “but they are right. It is what must be done.”
“My king… my king…”
I had not gotten any sleep until late into the night. Morning light was barely beginning to peak through the window.
Piccolo sat at my bedside looking quite solemn.
“We carried out our plans last night, as intended.”
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and tried to get my bearings in the unfamiliar room.
“Perhaps the most prominent and powerful rival to your throne… was alerted at some point. I don’t know how or by whom. But he escaped our grasp. The guards could not find him and, with him, several of the high council departed the palace under cover of darkness.”
I slid upright and sat, hunched, struggling to take in Piccolo’s words.
“So, uhm. What’s… what is the plan for… does that… what does that mean?”
Piccolo stood and sighed. “George, you are ultimately not unlike every other nobody who has sat on the throne this past decade. You have no real connections. You have no real influence. All you have is a throne, and even that for but a few days. The people out there who are, at this very moment, plotting against you, have enough influence to call to their command several members of the high council. Perhaps they bought them outright, I can’t say. But I do know is that loyalty is the highest commodity. Loyalty, and loyalty alone, determines the king.”
“If you had just let me speak to them…”
“I’ve appointed a food-tester in the kitchen and I’ve stationed two guards outside your door. They’ll be going with you everywhere and anywhere you go, including within the palace. I need to go work with General Tumberin to ensure that we’re going to find all of those who left last night.”
Piccolo began to turn the doorknob and I called out to him.
“Piccolo. Please. I.” I drew a long breath and sighed, turning off of the bed and standing to the window beside it. From the view here, one could see the whole capital, its sprawling streets, its markets and districts, the towers and gates, the fields and hills beyond. “Nothing since I’ve come here has happened the way I imagined it would. I just want to have the chance to make things better for the people. For everyone.” I turned to Piccolo, his face solemn. “You have to help me make it happen. Tell me what I need to do.”
Piccolo let go of the doorknob and turned to me. “Do you remember what I explained back at the tavern, George? A king is nothing without his advisors. The loyalty of his advisors. And while you don’t have the reputation or the prestige to win that loyalty… you do have, today and for the next two days, quite a lot of money.”
“The treasury?”
“Few things buy loyalty so firmly as gold. Though the coffers are hardly overflowing, you may be able to… redirect some funds. Ensure the loyalty of those remaining advisors. It is absolutely crucial that we can trust those who remain here to work with us.”
“Redirect funds? From where?”
“You’re asking your advisors, your councilmen, to take a risk on you, George, a risk that may put their lives and their families’ lives in jeopardy. If we overturn that Law, those who wish to claim the thrones for themselves will stir the seeds of revolt. They’ll paint you as a tyrant. And then the real tyrants will storm the palace. We cannot let that happen.”
“Redirect from where, Piccolo?”
He sighed. “You’re not going to like to hear this, George. But gold poured into roads, universities, markets… gold given to the common man, gold spent repairing infrastructure… that’s gold which could be spent securing the loyalty of your advisors.”
For the first time, I found myself questioning Piccolo’s character. “You’re asking me to take funds from the common people and give them to politicians? Do you realize what you’re saying?”
“Of course, George, my king, we want what is best for the common man. Of course we do. But it is impossible for us to even begin that work if they have no true king. Your ascension must be secured. It is an absolute prerequisite tom doing anything of virtue or value here. You may one day be a benevolent king who gives to the poor and who deprives the greedy and the corrupt. But first you must be a king at all.”
I nodded because I understood. And I wondered what Robert would have to say.
My second day in the palace, and it had already become apparent to me why so many kings of old had been despised. They were hated for their perceived vanity, for their favoritism, for their taking from the poor and giving to the rich. And I, already, was doing the same.
It’s temporary, I reminded myself. It’s a means to an end.
But what if it wasn’t? What if, even on the fourth day of my reign, even when tradition and Law had been broken, my place was not secured? The loyalty of my advisors was ever at risk. What reason did I have to think it would cease to be when I truly took the throne?
Perhaps, I thought, I would be able to strike a balance. Distributing enough funds to my advisors but not forgetting to be a good king to the people, either. But my dealings with the Minister of the Treasury made that seem like an impossible task. Like trying to feed two grown men with a small bowl of food – someone would have to go hungry. And I would be destined to either become a bad king… or be no king at all. My only means of providing for my advisors and the people was through the treasury, and its walls and floor were becoming barer by the day. The kings of old would raise taxes on the poor and the merchants. But I refused to allow myself to stoop so low.
And yet, what other options did I have?
The Minister of the Treasury explained that what little gold I was able to pay him – and he, an old and patriotic soul whom I needn’t fear the allegiance of – was hardly all his to keep, either. He, too, like all of my advisors and ministers and councilmen, had rivals the same as I did. Other noblemen, other sons with high names, vying for positons in the palace. Those employed by them, too, were always at risk, and needed to be kept loyal with adequate pay. The gold distributed to the Minister of Treasury largely went to his three assistants, and their gold went to their hands and laborers. Should even one of them be bought out by some malevolent rival, the whole treasury could be compromised.
The palace was home to three-hundred men, each of whom was an opportunity for infiltration and corruption, each of whom would need to be sated and their loyalties gained. But it was all too much. I had not the means without stealing the means from those who had less than myself. The mighty palace of gold and pearl stood on a wide and fragile foundation. I, alone, at the top, could see it all before me, like a pyramid build of porcelain teacups, stacked precariously atop one another. Stray but a little… and it would all fall.
The system was designed with these inherent flaws. The whole palace had been built on the corruption of previous kings. It was a fortress which locked the king in, which forced his hand, which necessitated that he descend into villainy. There were simply too many people to afford at once while caring for the interests of the common man.
But what if there were fewer?
“If we imprison them, I sentence them to lives of agony and suffering, lives below their station. And they could potentially escape. If I banish them, they’ll conspire with our rivals immediately. Their deaths… sends a message. It secures loyalty without gold. It’s the only way.”
On the third morning, General Tumberin had ninety of the advisors shot in the gardens behind the palace. The funds directed toward them were rerouted to the remaining advisors and the funds cut from the common people were restored.
I sat upon my throne as High Advisor Piccolo gave the orders to the lawmakers that the Law of Numbered Days was to be abolished. They feared to meet my gaze and obeyed. The crown weighed heavy on my neck. I looked down to my feet, at the ornate decorations of the rug below. Piccolo’s voice came beside me, “You have made difficult decisions, my king. You have blood on your hands, it is true. But better on yours than on mine.”
I fell into a deep, suffocating blackness. I chased my mind, but could not find myself. Pain rang everywhere, like church bells clattering in my chest, until a great, cold wave of numbness fell over me.
