Knowledge Is Power: The Last Reader
Chapter 23: His Majesty’s Idea of Justice

Chapter 23: His Majesty’s Idea of Justice

The throne room was cold in a way that had nothing to do with the season, and every single courtier lining its walls was sweating like the temperature disagreed with them anyway.

The King did not appear to be sweating at all.

He sat sideways across his own throne, one leg draped over the armrest, chin propped on a fist, looking for all the world like a man who had wandered into the wrong meeting and decided to stay purely because the seating was comfortable. He was, Milo understood immediately, the single most relaxed person in the entire room, and every guard, herald, and unlucky bystander pressed against the walls understood exactly why that relaxation was the most frightening thing currently in the building.

"Loof," the King said, warm, delighted, the way you’d greet an old friend arriving fashionably late to a party. "Come in, come in. I’ve been hearing the funniest stories about you tonight."

Milo bowed, because Loof’s memory insisted, quietly and urgently, that everyone bowed, and that the depth of the bow had gotten at least one man executed for being insufficiently theatrical about it three years ago.

"Your Majesty."

"Sit up, sit up, none of that." The King waved a hand, lazy, and two guards near the door flinched at the gesture like it might have been aimed at them instead. "I want to see your face for this next part. Faces are so much more honest than bows."

"Tell me," the King said, once Milo had straightened, "what you make of the rumor going around the lower quarter tonight. Apparently a cheating man is finally facing consequences. The commoners are thrilled. Real justice, they’re calling it. Can you imagine."

He said the word justice the way a man says a word he finds personally, deeply funny.

"I’ve heard the same rumor, Your Majesty," Milo said, carefully, the way you speak around something you already know is going to explode.

"It’s absurd, is what it is." The King sat up properly for the first time, and the sudden shift in posture was somehow worse than the sprawl had been. "I have already decided what justice looks like for a man who strays. A week in a cell. Simple. Merciful, even, considering the alternative I could have chosen instead. Men are built for wandering, Loof. It’s practically doctrine. If a man cheats, that’s between him and his own poor judgment, and a week teaches him plenty." He leaned forward. "So imagine my confusion when I hear that a certain knight — your knight, if the paperwork’s to be believed — has simply vanished, reassigned somewhere considerably more permanent than a week’s discomfort. That’s not justice, Loof. That’s someone deciding they know better than I do what justice should cost."

The room went very, very quiet.

"I had no illusions about where he was going, Your Majesty," Milo said, which was, at least, technically true. "The garrison needed volunteers."

"Volunteers." The King tasted the word like it might be spoiled. "How very civic of him."

He didn’t press further right away, which frightened Milo considerably more than pressing would have. Instead he turned, almost lazily, toward the side door, and gestured, and two guards brought Corenne in with her wrists bound in front of her, dressed in the same gown from the night before, still faintly smelling of the candle wax from her own chamber.

"Now her," the King said, delighted all over again, "is a considerably more interesting problem. A woman, straying. That’s not doctrine, Loof. That’s an offense against the entire natural order of things. A man may wander, because a man is permitted to want. A woman who wanders is a woman deciding her husband’s claim on her didn’t matter as much as her own wanting did." He looked at Corenne the way a man looks at a puzzle he’s already solved and is only examining further out of professional pride. "And you understand, of course, that this goes double — triple — for any woman who happens to be mine. I have several. I intend to keep every single one of them exactly as loyal as the day I claimed her."

Corenne didn’t look up. Milo watched her shoulders shake, once, and understood that she’d already heard whatever sentence was coming before either of them had.

"Ten years," the King said, still cheerful, still entirely unbothered, "in a convent far enough from court that nobody will have to be reminded of tonight’s embarrassment. Generous, I think, given the alternative. And the book charge—" his eyes flicked to Milo, bright, curious, entirely too interested in watching his face while he said it, "—the one where she apparently handed a street child something dangerous to imagine with. That one adds five more."

Milo did not let his face do anything at all. It cost him more than almost anything he’d done tonight, including the shirt.

"You’re very quiet, Loof," the King said, once Corenne had been led out, sobbing now, finally, too late for it to change anything. "I’d have expected a man in your position to have opinions."

"I’m processing a great deal tonight, Your Majesty."

"Mm." The King stood, unhurried, and descended the dais steps with the specific loose-limbed ease of a predator that has never once needed to rush toward anything. "Do you know why nobody in this room has told me to sit down properly, or stop smiling, or generally behave the way a King is supposed to behave in front of his court?"

"No, Your Majesty."

"Because I could end any single one of them the moment I decided it was worth the paperwork, and every person standing against these walls understands that fact more completely than they understand their own names." He said it without menace, which was somehow the most menacing way anyone had ever said anything in Milo’s hearing. "Watch."

He turned, almost idly, toward the nearest guard — a young man, barely older than Aria, spear held at a rigid, terrified attention — and simply looked at him.

[SOVEREIGN’S CLAIM — DEMONSTRATION]

Milo felt it more than saw it, a pressure in the air like the moment before a held breath breaks, and the guard’s whole body went rigid in a way that had nothing to do with military discipline. His spear lowered itself. His knees bent. He knelt on the throne room floor, silent, weeping, entirely without having chosen to do either.

"There," the King said, pleasant, already turning away, already bored of the demonstration the instant it had served its purpose. "That’s not a spell, Loof. That’s not a skill I learned from a book somebody smuggled me. That’s a Talent, given to my bloodline at birth, and it means every soldier I’ve ever claimed obeys me the same way that boy’s knees just obeyed me — completely, permanently, without a single moment of choice left inside it. My eldest will inherit it when I die. His eldest after that. An army that never needs paying, never needs convincing, never once needs to be told twice." He smiled, warm as ever, at Milo specifically. "It’s a wonderful thing, being born correctly."

Milo understood, with total, sinking clarity, exactly why thirty-one tally marks had never once included a cell this dangerous.

"Now." The King circled him slowly, still smiling, and Milo felt every instinct Loof’s borrowed body owned screaming at him to simply agree with whatever came next. "Back to your knight. I find myself curious, Loof, and I do so hate staying curious for very long. Where, precisely, did you send him, and did you know, when you sent him, exactly what that posting was going to cost him?"

This was, Milo understood, the exact shape of the question that got men killed for the wrong answer.

He felt his own mouth start moving before his mind had finished deciding what it was going to say, the same smooth, borrowed ease he’d hated in himself in Corenne’s chamber the night before — and some part of him, quiet and furious and entirely his own, screamed that this was exactly the reflex he’d promised to remove, and here it was again, arriving exactly when he needed it most and wanted it least.

"I knew the posting was demanding, Your Majesty," he heard himself say, level, sincere, utterly convincing. "I did not know it carried the mortality it apparently carries. I assigned him there because the garrison requested volunteers with his particular skill set, and I believed — genuinely believed — that a hard posting would do more to correct his character than a week of confinement ever could."

It was not entirely true. It was not entirely false either, which was, he was beginning to understand, exactly how Loof’s oldest habit had always managed to survive scrutiny for so long — not by lying broadly, but by lying in the one narrow, plausible gap between two true things.

Milo hated how well it worked. He hated, more, how little effort it had taken.

The King studied him for a long moment, head tilted, smile never once wavering, and Milo understood that his life currently depended entirely on whether that smile meant I believe you or I am enjoying watching you try.

"How very thoughtful of you," the King said finally, and reached out one hand, almost fondly, toward Milo’s shoulder. "Let’s find out how thoughtful, shall we? I do so love a loyalty that’s been properly confirmed."

[SOVEREIGN’S CLAIM — TARGET: LOOF D. OXA]