Free Immortal Muse by Stephen Leigh

only the first signs. Since then, the dauphin has ignored the initiatives given him by the Estates General; he has tried to force upon us his Edict of Reform; he has devalued the very coins with which we buy bread and supplies. We here tonight—those whose sweat and energy are our city’s greatest wealth, and who know best how to govern ourselves—are paying the price for the dauphin’s incompetence.”
    With that, a murmur arose, with several of the men rising to their feet in protest. “Treason!” Perenelle heard one of them shout. “The dauphin—” but the Provost raised his hands and shouted louder.
    â€œHear me out!” he called. “It is time for us to choose a better ruler while we can.” He clapped his hands, and four servants came in carefully handling a massive gingerbread-and-marzipan replica of the gates and towers of the Porte St. Michel. They set it down before the Provost. “King Charles of Navarre will be outside these gates tomorrow,” he said. “I propose that we, the true leaders of the city, unlock the porte and welcome him in. I say, give me the keys and I will be the first to greet them.”
    The murmuring became an uproar, the uproar chaos. Everyone was shouting at once, gesticulating with fists and waving arms. A fight broke out mid-table, with a portly merchant pushed into the remains of a swan. Women shouted in alarm and moved back from the table. Perenelle rose with them, wondering which way she could flee. She looked at Nicolas.
    And stopped. He was still seated, his head bowed over the oak staff, which he now clutched in both hands. His graying beard was moving, as if he was speaking, but she couldn’t hear his words against the noise of the room. As she watched, curiously, she saw the knob of the staff seem to writhe under his hand, and a dark glow emerged from it, as if night oozed from the grain of the oak. No one else seemed to have noticed, but she heard a cry from the head of the table where Marcel had been standing, trying to shout down the crowd. The wail, high and shrill, turned everyone’s head to the Provost. He was still standing, but now he clutched at his throat, his mouth working but no words emerging from his throat, only that unearthly, horrible keening. A terrible agony was written on the Provost’s face: in the corded muscles of his neck; in the bulging, wide eyes; in the tongue that lolled from that open mouth, black as a lump of coal, black as the head of Nicolas’ staff; in the heaving, desperate breaths he was trying to take; in the bloodless color of his face. Marguerite was shrieking alongside him, calling for someone,
anyone
to help as she grasped his arm.
    The Provost’s wail stopped suddenly, as if severed with a knife, and the silence was more horrifying than the sound. He seemed unable to take in a breath. He swayed in his wife’s embrace. Perenelle glanced from the Provost to Nicolas; he was staring at the Provost’s agony, no longer muttering, and there was an eager intensity to his gaze and a curve to his lips under the rampart of his beard. He was evidently taking great pleasure in the Provost’s suffering, and that frightened Perenelle—she’d seen the ghost of this same expression in his face when he punished Verdette or one of the house staff.
    In his hands, the knob of the oaken staff swelled and burst, a split running suddenly down the length of the wood, the staff shattering to splinters above his hand. At the same moment, the Provost collapsed, falling onto the marzipan replica of the gates and crushing it underneath him.
    Nicolas’ face had split into a grin. He released the broken staff, letting the pieces of it clatter to the floor. Perenelle saw Picot nod to Nicolas and clap him on the back. At the head of the table, Marguerite broke into sobs. “. . . Dead,” someone proclaimed loudly. “The Provost is dead.”
    There were