The King Is a Decoy

How it begins

Martin found his face on a statue that had been dead for three hundred years.

The nose was better.

Otherwise, the resemblance was exact.

He stood in the palace's sealed sculpture room wearing the king's dressing gown and his own expression of increasing alarm. He had come looking for a quiet place to eat an apple. Royal doubles were fed generously, but rarely left alone.

A woman emerged from behind the statue carrying a chisel.

"You're early."

"For what?"

"Understanding."

She was perhaps forty, with stone dust in the creases of her hands and a scar crossing one eyebrow. Martin recognized her as the sculptor who had spent the previous month pretending not to notice him at state dinners.

"I've been told this wing is unsafe."

"It is."

She set down the chisel.

"Mostly for the official history."

Martin approached the plinth. King Edric the Unyielding. Reigned in the Year of Ash.

He had played Edric's current descendant for six months. The real king suffered from a private illness. Martin attended ceremonies, waved from balconies and spoke only when provided with a script.

That had been the arrangement.

He turned toward the next statue.

His face again.

Older. Bearded. Still unmistakably his.

"How many?"

The sculptor did not answer.

She opened another door.

Beyond it, faces receded into darkness. Women, men, young, old. Some resembled people Martin had seen in the servant passages. One resembled the queen.

At the far end stood an empty plinth.

A brass plate had already been attached.

He did not approach it.

"My name is Sella," the sculptor said. "Before you ask, no, the king isn't ill."

A bell rang somewhere above them.

Martin knew that bell. It summoned him to replace His Majesty.

Sella took the apple from his hand and put it on the empty plinth.

"He's getting hungry for his years back."

The bell rang again.