Chapter 82: Henrique of Baynard
There was an embalmed eagle on the wall, its glass eyes fixed somewhere behind Hinkg Henrique of Baynard. Sitting on his high backed, plush chair, magnificent with his yellow maine, his huge, muscular body, was the lightless sun. The embalmed eagle seemed to despise him.
‘Was it I?’ asked the King of Baynard. ‘Did I kill you?’
Olivier came in without knocking.
‘Fulbert invaded Baynard.’
‘I know,’ said Henrique.
‘We have to leave Debur,’ Olivier said and stopped. ‘You know?’ But the messenger had just arrived.’
Henrique turned slowly away from the eagle’s glassy eyes to Olivier. He held a dead orchid in his hands.
‘Can’t you hear, Olivier?’
‘Can’t I hear what?’
‘I thought you could.’
Olivier came closer to the king, so much bigger than him, so extinguished, and noticed the pupils in his eyes. Grey, like Erla’s.
‘The War,’ Olivier said. ‘You speak with the War.’
‘It is the War that speaks to me. I have no voice.’
I have no fangs.
‘We must go to Tuen,’ said Olivier.
‘My orchids are dead.’
‘Henrique!’
‘If you can’t hear it, then you must hate me. Your wife. You must think I sent her.’
It was him! It was Henrique who began the death draws, the luck games that decided who would be sent to die in Fabec. It was him. Don’t you dare say it was something else, a voice, War: it was Henrique.
‘That was why you took them away from me,’ said Henrique. ‘My captains, my Nevilles. Father and son.’ For a moment his pupils became black and his features, as well as his wrinlkes, became clearer. ‘You can’t hear it, you son’t know. There is no choice, Olivier. There never was. Once you understand War’s magnitude, all you can do is bow and raise orchids. That’s what it gave me in exchange for obedience: the orchids. I made that deal: that only a number of soldiers were to die in the Mouth of War. I came up with the draws because I didn’t have it in me to choose who should be sacrified.
Henrique put the dead orchid on the table.
‘War doesn’t protect me anymore. It’s grunting like a common man trying to lift a rock that’s too big for him. It thinks I haven’t noticed, but I saw it, Olivier: I saw War trembling.’
Olivier pressed his hand against his forehead. He was tired, sleepy; he had killed a horse, lost Thaila and Tuen. For someone who had no voice, Henrique sure talked a lot.
‘Our worse nightmare,’ said the King, ‘is afraid.’
Someone knocked at the door, but they came in without waiting for a reply. It was a soldier with paper thin ears. He was covered in ashes, each step he took was like a stab to the Emerald’s.
‘Olivier of Tuen, where is Thaila Eslarian-daughter?’
‘Who do you think you are?’ Olivier was angry, but he took a step back to escape the darkness surrounding the soldier.
From behind the soldier another person stepped forward and Olivier was more horrified than if the War had vomited all its darkness at his feet. The black woman walked to Olivier, who retreated until he hit a wall.
‘Maëlle,’ he whipered.
‘Answer Vincent’s question,’ she said. ‘Where is Thaila?’