The Still by David Feintuch

found me. He trotted down the corridor, Elryc in tow. “Now what?”
    “We visit Willem.” I loped down the great stairs, Elryc clutching my hand with unfamiliar intimacy. Below, servants and hirelings had gathered, muttering among themselves and staring toward the Queen’s chambers.
    I clapped sharply. “Have you no business? Is dinner ready, are the week’s chores done? Get about your work!”
    Sullen murmurs. Grudgingly they made way, but they did not disperse. By the time we three had circled the stairs to the Chamberlain’s entry, they’d resumed their uneasy places at the staircase.
    Rustin raised an eyebrow. “You’ll just walk in and ask? ‘Willem, may I have Mother’s key?’”
    “Well, I ... um.” I hadn’t thought that far. “We’ll follow the quarry where it runs.”
    At the Chamberlain’s door, I debated whether to walk in as if I were master of the place, decided I’d best knock.
    A clerk opened. “Yes? Oh, Rodrigo. I’ll tell him you’re here.” He disappeared into an inner chamber, leaving me frowning through a side doorway at a room full of clerks on high stools, bent over their papers and accounts.
    I paced the anteroom, fists knotted, feeling the boy who’d so often come to collect his stipend, preparing to endure the admonitions and censure that were part of its dispense.
    Elryc, also accustomed to the place, took a chair meekly, hands folded in his lap.
    Rustin studied the wall hangings. “We have a tapestry much like that at home. Do you recall?”
    I nodded, having not the slightest idea what he was talking about. “I want you with me, when we confront him.”
    “As you wish.” He took a book from a shelf, examined the gold-leafed adornment in the leaves. “Love Poems of Milibar?” A sly grin flitted across his features. “Ever read them? They’d make a gelding rise—”
    “Rodrigo.” The stocky Chamberlain was framed in the doorway. In his velvet-trimmed robes he looked prepared for a meeting of state. “A terrible day. Come in.”
    I passed through the doorway, Rustin at my heels. We settled ourselves in the stiff high-backed chairs set around Willem’s ornate desk.
    He studied Rust. “I recognize you. You’re ... the envoy’s son, from Eiber?”
    Rustin flushed. “No, Sir Willem. My father is Llewelyn.”
    The man’s eyes rose. “Time races. Forgive me; the last time we spoke, you were so high.” He patted the desk, and dismissed Rustin from his mind. “I’m sorry, Rodrigo. She was a wonderful soul, and I’ll miss her more than you can know.” His eyes teared. Perhaps he even meant it. I waited, while his commiseration played out. “So, Prince Rodrigo, how may I be of service?”
    I licked my lips, risked a glance to Rustin. He sat straight, eyes on the Chamberlain. “I want to enter the vault.”
    His jaw dropped, then a chuckle. “So do many folk. Whatever for?”
    I took the bit between my teeth. “To see if the Vessels are in their place.”
    “Do you think she kept them there?”
    “Did she not?”
    “That’s not mine to disclose, Prince Rodrigo. If the Queen wanted you to know, surely she’d have told you.”
    “They’ll be mine to wield!”
    He nodded. “When you are King, yes. Soon, I hope.”
    “I’m King now.” I wished I didn’t sound petulant. “Mother didn’t renounce me, and now she’s dead. I am King, crowned or not. I want to open our vault.”
    “But why come to me?”
    Rustin intervened. “How else would one gain entry, Sir Willem?”
    The Chamberlain looked astonished. “You think the Queen let clerks such as myself wander freely among her treasures? I have no access.”
    “You don’t?” Could Hester have made up the whole story, to divert me? Did she gloat over the Vessels, even now?
    “No one entered the vault, save in your mother’s presence. She herself carried a key.”
    I said, “And you—”
    “Oh, Lord of Nature and his minions!” Rustin jumped to his feet. “The fitting! Roddy, we’re late.