Page 49 of The King's Man 2

“Every time I see him, he’s bruised. He always refuses treatment. What’s the use in being king if you can’t even—”

“Watch your mouth.”

I turn my clenched teeth to the ground.

“If he got treated every time, they’d torture him more. He leaves the bruises so they back off a few days.”

I sink onto my haunches, the weight of his words pressing down like a physical blow.

“Kneel until dawn.”

My legs already ache, but this? This feels deserved. Not only should my body be exhausted, guilt should gnaw at me from the inside. This is the price for being foolish. A small price compared to what others have suffered because of me. I can’t undo the harm I’ve done, but I’ll do everything I can to heal things.

Quin turns, and pauses before he heads back inside. “I don’t care how much joy you bring him. Risk my brother’s safety again, and I’ll cast you out.”

* * *

Makarios and Mikros find my hobbling baffling. They wonder why I don’t heal myself, and I tell them sometimes pain has its place.

They shrug and take an arm each, and each of their tugs has me wincing. Has me thinking of bruised Nicostratus and glaring Quin in turns. It takes an effort to focus on the details they want about the Crucible case. “Husband and wife may have done and eaten the same things, but the key point was the river water on their clothes.”

They finally stop pulling and huddle in.

“They ate fish from the river and cooked soup with its water, but heat killed the pestis. The water that soaked into their cuffs when they caught their fish and filled their cookpot was cold. When the husband burned his tongue, he dabbed the open wound against his sleeve, allowing the infection into his bloodstream. That’s why only he got sick.”

Makarios and Mikros are bursting with questions but they’re cut off by Chiron rapping his knuckles on the teacher’s desk. Class has begun: the miracles of transplantation spells.

All parts of the body can be transplanted into another’s—skin, liver, kidneys, heart... Even a person’s one and only lovelight.

I gasp, horrified.

Chiron hums. “The technique is the same, but using the spell for this purpose is rare. The lovelight is connected to the soul—we have nothing that can numb the soul, so removing a lovelight this way is an agonising process. It’s also used as a form of torture.”

Barely five minutes deeper into the foundational lesson, our heads snap up as redcloaks stride into the classroom. Chiron casts them an uneasy glance; across from me, Florentius visibly stiffens.

We’re herded into boats and ferried towards the luminarium. Its massive dome gleams in the sunlight, an incredible sight, but the beauty quickly turns ugly as the heavy bronze doors slam shut behind us.

We’re led down a short dark corridor, past a dozen stone-faced redcloaks to another arched door. Where are the luminists and their glowing cloaks? The sound of spiritual bells? The scent of incense?

I swallow and the next doors open into a vast, open nave.

Massive columns of white marble supporting the dome. Wall murals depicting the story of the Arcane Sovereign. Niches with statues of past kings.

The floor under our feet is polished and reflects the luminarium’s centrepiece: a massive violet oak, rooted deeply into the earth, bathing in light from the long windows surrounding it.

This oak is different from the one the prince and I sheltered in as children. This one glows. This one receives and stores the magic of all the linea who pay homage here.

At first, it’s a glorious sight.

And then I look down from the spindling, glowing tree, to what’s before it.

The high duke is seated on a lavishly cushioned chair, stroking his beard. He’s dressed in gold with boots up to his knees. All this gold and glare. Chiron orders us to line up, eighteen mages altogether, from green sash to gold. Three rows of six.

We all stare nervously ahead.

The high duke commands his redcloaks to pull out the mages who attended his visitors, and our rows are reduced by half. Then reduced again when those sent out on his orders are identified. Finally, Makarios and Mikros, Scamperios and Dreamios are pointed out by a hook-nosed aklo. And then it’s down to me and Florentius and our shadows on the shiny floor, our fellow mages arrayed down the nave on either side.

The high duke’s fingers dance in the air, six iron nails hovering at his palm like sinister puppets. Their sharp tips glint in the light, glowing faintly red as he heats them with a casual flick of his wrist. “They say you saved a half-dozen children, Florentius,” he murmurs, his smile curling like smoke. “Tell me, how does it feel to be a hero?”

---