Investiture
CALENDAR SEASON: MAY 15TH, 1730: WANING SPRING, UNDER THE FLOWER MOON.
The chanting has died to a dull murmur, with only the people at the back of the crowd still saying anything at all. Most of them aren’t even speaking English, as if their heathen incantations can have any meaning for a good Christian man! To be sure, this is a pagan ritual at best, but he tries not to think about the contradiction, especially now that his future is committed.
It would be different if he had been coronated in England, where his roots still lie; he would understand every spoken word and every aspect of the spectacle around him. He would be so much better prepared. Well, prepared or not, he is still the winner, and this is still his crown. He always knew he’d be a king someday. Just not what kind.
Some of the people in the crowd are staring at him as he walks toward the dais prepared by the attendants. This is where the crowning will occur. The people stare because they don’t approve of his presence, he knows; they believe the seasons belong to them and with them, and not to upstart settlers like himself.
As if there weren’t seasons the world over. As if it’s so odd for a man of his station and breeding to have been inducted into the mysteries.
Well, these people will see, won’t they? God intended this country for the use of England and the English peoples, and the Empire is eternal, even on these distant shores. He is proud to represent Queen and Country in this new land, to tie it more tightly to Empire through this most familiar of rituals. There was no bean in his bread, but he has always known the rite of seasons and where it must inevitably lead. When he felt his blood turn to ice in his veins and the frost coming to his call, he knew what that meant, even before that Irish boy who had to be taught proper manners and comportment came to claim him and lead him through the trials. There were no surprises ahead of him.
If anything, the real surprise is that the people here, natives and colonists alike, seem to know the rite of seasons as well as they do. They began chanting the proper rituals as soon as he slew the last contender for his position, cutting the woman down with a viciousness that seemed to shock the onlookers as much as it shocked her. Their ascensions were apparently less violent in the past, with the losers going easy to their fates. He was the last potential scion of Winter to enter the labyrinth, and the woman would not refuse her crown; he did what had to be done.
Well, those who wish to be damned will always find a way to be damned. He refuses to accept that ending for himself. He is the Winter King, chosen and blooded and preordained. He will live forever, ascendant and resplendent and manifest, and all who challenge his dominion will fall, swept away like shadows on the snow.
They are bringing out the woman whose progress matched his through the final trials. She is pleasant enough to the eye, stout and clear of complexion, untouched by the pox. Her hair is dark and her skin too ruddy for true wealth, but she carries herself with majesty enough to serve as his queen. And if there is one shame to the fact that the rites are the same in this place as they were at home, it is that he has no say in the matter. When the challenge began, all in range who might carry the crown and wished to go without destruction rose to face it, and to the strongest go the spoils. At least his counterpart is a woman. He will not be trapped inside eternity with no opportunity for companionship.
Then he sees the look on her face as they lead her toward the dais. She looks at him as a woman may look at a snake, or a stain upon her hem; her lip is curled, her expression revolted.
“Welcome,” he says as she approaches, hoping she simply has one of those easily misunderstood faces. “How wonderful to see that my Summer Queen is to be beautiful as well.”
“We should not be here,” she spits. Her attendants help her onto the platform. He wonders what the natives called them before the settlers arrived to teach them the proper names of things.
“Of course we should. We won.”
“You won through savagery and violence.” She squares her shoulders, looks down her nose at him, and the flickering moonlight on her hair reminds him that her season is ascendant, while his is fading. If he had been allowed to choose his crown, he would have taken the summer’s sweetness for himself, would have left this … this … this witch to the barren winter where she so clearly belongs. But there is never a choice for the seasonal ones. They are like the weather, pulled and pushed where the wind wills them, until they rise and take the power to choose for their own. But never for themselves.
No. His choices will always be made by the Wheel of the year, but he will be able to choose for others. He will be able to make them pay for costing him everything they have.
“As did you,” he counters. “We have to fight to claim the crown.”
“No,” she says, sounding surprised for the first time. “The fight is not required. We are not so easily dethroned as all that. You fought, as these people do not, and so they were unprepared to stand before you. And when the contenders for the Summer saw what they would have to stand beside if they were chosen, they lay down their own potential and stepped out of my way. This is not our continent. This is not our country. These should not be our crowns.”
“They will be.”
“They will, because you have left no others to hold the Winter,” she snarls, and in that moment, she is a beast, and he realizes that the color of her skin doesn’t betray the content of her heart. He has not defeated the savages to take his rightful place. One of them stands beside him, to be yoked to him for all of time. “You will manifest, and I will manifest with you, because no one will stand by your side. They know the Summer must be held, but they will not hold it in concert with a killer.”
“But you will.”
“I will do what I must for Summer’s sake, and endure your company long as our fates demand.” She stands a little straighter, the malice not leaving her eyes. “Your reign will not be long.”
William thinks of the alchemist who came to him at the start of the crowning, the one who offered him victory and a measureless reign if only he would consider the needs of the newly formed American Alchemical Congress in his choices, in his guidance of the season that is his birthright. He turned the man down at the time, but the situation, it seems, has changed.
His reign will be eternal.
Copyright © 2022 by Seanan McGuire
