This new position meant that Liuprand was at her right. He stood for a long moment, holding to the back of his chair and facing away from her. Agnes tried to catch his eye and felt bereft when she could not. Hadshedone something to offend him? Yet when at last he dropped into his seat, she understood. On his left cheek, stretching from ear to chin, was a large and throbbing bruise. He had been careful with how he angled his head in order to hide it, but now they were so close that he could not.
The bruise was a garish mottling of red and violet. Agnes, familiar with the ripening process of wounds, guessed it at two days old. When finally,finally,she caught the prince’s eye, she raised a hand and, very hesitantly, touched her own cheek. She knew the gesture made her question clear.
Instantly, almost unconsciously, Liuprand mirrored her and touched his bruise. He gave the tiniest wince as his fingertips grazed the tender skin.
“It’s nothing,” he murmured.
She merely frowned at him.
And then in response, Liuprand looked down at her hands. She had picked at them so recently that there was fresh blood welling in the beds of her nails, and the mangled skin appeared particularly gruesome, as if parasites had come to feast upon her fingers.
“Speak the truth of your wounds, Lady Agnes,” he said, “and I will speak the truth of mine.”
She wore the ring still, as she had since the day Waltrude had dropped it into her palm. The prince saw that, too, yet offered nothingto sate her wondering. There were so many truths Agnes wished she could release from him. Liuprand laid his own hand on the table, so close to hers that their fingers nearly brushed. Nearly.
It was not as if there were a wall between them, but rather that they were each creatures trapped in ice, and their own husks of cold kept them always at the slenderest distance from each other. She did not know what it would take to crack through. She did not know if she was even brave enough to try.
The back of her neck prickled with heat. She turned and then was dreadfully aware that Nicephorus was watching her. Had he been this whole time? The king’s eyes were like the ends of two blades, freshly lifted from the forge and still ablaze.
Then abruptly he clapped his hands together with enough force to make her flinch.
“Come then,” the king said. “Let us all feast according to our virtue. I have laid out a meal that agrees with your principles and complements your fine qualities! Stale bread for your stale honor. Watered wine for your weak faith. Eat now. Eat of your own deficiencies. Glut yourself on your lapses and offenses.”
The great hall was silent. Not a single knife was lifted, nor a single goblet touched.
Nicephorus’s face glowed as if lit from within by an incandescent candle of pleasure. “And I,” he said, raising his cup, “will feast according to mine.”
The doors to the great hall broke open and two servants entered. They carried between them an enormous silver platter, upon it the carcass of a boar. Steam still rose from its crackling brown skin. Around it were not the ordinary garnishes of green vegetables but rather a ring of those gaudy silver fish. Where heat had split apart their scaly bellies, the flesh underneath showed through—that lecherous red-pink flesh that tempted Agnes as much as it revolted her.
Fear scalded her throat. She knew what would happen, and yet when it did, the foreknowledge did nothing to lessen her horror. The platter was placed ceremoniously before the king. The vapors of steammixed with the natural oils of his face and gave his countenance a grisly, iridescent sheen, like rot on a slab of meat. Still illuminated from within by that self-made pleasure, Nicephorus picked up his knife and speared one of the fish through its belly. He lifted it whole, as flaky chunks plummeted from it like rocks in an avalanche, and in one gluttonous bite, he tore off its head and swallowed it.
The silence of the room was now ripped through with the sound of retching. One of the leeches had doubled over, hand across his belly. Agnes could not deny that she felt the strong urge to do the same.
It was not the king’s ravenous appetite that sickened her, nor even the scent of his perspiring flesh, so close she could almost feel its aura infecting her, too—it was this unrestrainedly grotesque show of power. If ever he did care for his own legacy, his own honor, how his name would be recorded in the annals of history, these could not be salvaged now. He had given himself over entirely to his Sluggardry. It was eternal, as intrinsic to him as his hand or his mouth. And all for the sake of—what? Instilling terror in those who would never have the strength to challenge him anyway? They were insects. He was a ruler of men. Their existences were incomprehensible to each other.
As the king indulged hatefully, masticating with his mouth open to let the spittle leak down his chin, crunching the bones of the fish in his teeth, there was a sound. A voice, somber and singular. It reverberated like a harp’s plucked string.
The retching leech had raised his head again. His eyes were misty, and his skin had a gruesome shimmer of green. But when he spoke, it was without reserve or contrition.
“No true king gluts himself while his people starve,” he said.
It was as if he had shattered the window glass and let in a blast of cold. Every muscle and limb in the room froze. Some hearts even momentarily stopped—Agnes’s among them. Faces seized mid-scowl, mid-frown, mid-whisper, suspended in grimaces of shock.
The king lowered his knife. “What did you say?”
His tone was hideously mild. The leech swallowed, his throat bobbing.
“No true king gluts himself while his people are left hungry,” he repeated. His voice trembled faintly now. “And we have done nothing to deserve this indignity. Your quarrel is with the Master of Blood. We are all obedient men here; we have fulfilled our duty. Do not punish us in his stead.”
With eerie decorum, King Nicephorus set his knife down upon the table. He dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his sleeve. The cast of ice across the room did not thaw or recede. Each drag of Agnes’s heart was painful, a twitching rabbit within a snake’s tightening vise.
Nicephorus laid a hand over his chest. “This entreaty has moved me, Your Scrupulousness. Indeed, it was not your actions that provoked my ire. It was the Master of Blood who vexed me. You were correct in that accounting.” His pause was gravid with sincerity. “Yet that was before you spoke.”
“Your Majesty—” the leech started. His face, now naked in its fear, was as bald as a boiled egg.
“You say I am no true king,” Nicephorus cut in, “for no true king feasts while his subjects are bereft. You must be a philosopher, then, as well as a sucking insect. But let me ask your fellow leeches if they are in accordance with your beliefs. Are they philosophers, too? Do their minds toil at night on the true nature of a king?”
With one swift motion, he brandished his knife again. Agnes flinched, ducking her head. But the king merely used it as an instrument to point and gesture. Indicating the nearest table of leeches, he said, “You. Tell me, do you believe I am a true king?”
