She stood defiantly stone-faced, holding up the brush like a weapon before her-a tiny maiden warding off a giant bear. “Of course! How else could I live with such a hairy brute?” He held her still, his eyes searching hers, pleading. She melted. “How could any woman not love you?”
Amrath raised an eyebrow. “Because I’m king?”
“Well, there is that.” She grinned and wrapped her arms as far around his waist as she could. “But I meant because there is nothing so attractive, so romantic, so wonderful as a man who is so clearly in love with me.”
“Hold on,” Amrath said. “I never admitted to anything here. You’re the one who-”
She tilted her head so that her chin rested on his chest as she gazed up at his face, her arms squeezing.
“A man could get lost in those eyes, you know.”
“Really? But I thought you didn’t love me.”
“Well … maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you’re ready to go down to the party yet. You remember the party, right? We have this new chancellor that I appointed to the job because you insisted I give Clare’s husband a position.”
“That’s not why you did it.”
“It was one of them.”
“For being such a bear, you’re awfully soft.” She rubbed his belly.
“Winter is coming. I’m putting on fat for the cold season.”
Ann smirked, then set the brush on the dresser. “Come along, Arista, Daddy wants to show us off to his friends.”
“I like making them jealous,” the king said. “Where’s Alric?”
“He went down already with Mauvin and Fanen. I’ve never seen him so anxious to get to a party before. Maybe he’s seen someone, or maybe he’s taken a fancy to Lenare.”
“Eww.” Arista made a face as she stood up.
“Lenare is becoming a lovely young lady,” Ann said. “Very respectable. You would do well to emulate her.”
Arista rolled her eyes.
“Arista!” The moment Amrath barked at her, he recognized his own father’s voice-the ruling voice-and winced inside.
“Sorry,” she said.
The apology sounded sincere, but not weak, not hurt. There was fiber there. She might bend, but there was no breaking his daughter. She was tough, that one; took after him in that way. Smart too-she took after Ann in that fashion. A shame she was a girl.
As usual, the musicians played “Falcon’s Flight” as Amrath and Ann descended the stairs. All heads turned and lifted to see the royal family’s entrance. No one said a word, and not even the old sat while they came down. Like a pipe and drum corps on a battlefield, the musicians played while standing. Amrath was dying for a drink. Bad enough that he had to wait until the last guest arrived, but he also had to take his time creeping down the steps with all the speed of a change in seasons. He had to time his footfalls so that the anthem concluded with the end of their procession. The whole thing was theatrics, but expected. This was part of his job, part of being king, and he reminded himself it was one of the easier tasks.
Only Wintertide was more festive than the autumn gala, but the king always thought there was a kind of coercion in the celebration of Wintertide-a party to divert the attention of people facing the longest, often coldest, night of the year. The harvest gala was different and truly festive as long as there was a good harvest. There was nothing worse than trying to make merry after an early frost or torrential rains that wiped out the coming winter’s food. Luckily, he didn’t have to be concerned with either since the harvest had been plentiful. They would have a surplus, and aside from the unpleasant death of Ann’s sister and Chancellor Wainwright, the future looked worthy of a fine celebration.
The party planners had outdone themselves this year. He had never seen so many pumpkin lanterns. They must have bought every candle in the city. The Artisan Quarter would be dark but happy that night. At least the candlemakers would be smiling, not to mention the pumpkin farmers. He chuckled and shook his head at all the bales of hay and straw. Only the privileged would dream of making a castle appear like a barn. Already several bales had broken, the floor scattered with brittle straw and dry clover. They would be cleaning up for weeks.
Kegs of beer and trays of sweetmeats graced every room, accompanied by casks of cider. Barrels had ladles hanging off the sides and slices of apples floating-fruit that would be prized by the end of the night, having absorbed the fermented cider. Streamers that mimicked the color of falling leaves spilled down from the rafters and looped the banisters. A number of the real ones lay scattered across the floor, escapees from the large pile of leaves mounded in the center of the reception hall that the younger attendees had been diving into.
When at last he reached the main floor, the music stopped and everyone took a knee.
“Welcome, my friends, to my humble home,” he said with a loud voice that boomed and bounced. “Please rise.”
The room rumbled with movement. “Tonight we celebrate the bounty that Maribor and Novron granted us this year, and they were generous indeed. All of our provinces report a surplus, and not just in the fields, for the year was good to the forests as well, and game is plentiful. The coming winter will indeed be a merry and safe one. But our joy is doubled as we also celebrate the appointment of our new chancellor. The son of the Earl of Swanwick, who married my wife’s recently passed sister, making him Duke of Quarters, the same man who just three years previously had distinguished himself by winning the Silver Shield and Golden Laurel, not to mention taking the Grand Circuit Tournament of Swords Master title at the Highcourt Games. A man whom my own wife has declared possesses the Valin tongue, the Pickering physique, and the bold determination of the Exeters!”
This brought a round of laughter.
He called for a glass of wine and looked over the crowd. “Where is my brother-in-law anyway?” Heads turned, looking around.
“Here, Your Majesty.”
Amrath spotted the new chancellor’s hand rising out of the sea of heads, and those who hadn’t realized turned to face him. Amrath lifted his glass. Those who had drink followed suit. “To the new Lord High Chancellor, His Excellency, Percy Braga.”
“To Percy Braga,” the room echoed back. They clinked, drank, and applauded.
The musicians in the gallery began playing once more and he and Ann waded through the room. Always like fording a river, the king thought. Everyone was seeking his attention for a word, which always started with flattery and was followed by a request. Luckily the gala was a local affair. To his knowledge only Melengarian nobles were in attendance. Little solace, as they were just as annoying, but at least he wouldn’t have to weather Imperialist rhetoric. If he had to sit through one more debate over the need of a central authority or how kingdoms like Melengar were an abomination in the eyes of Novron, he’d likely strangle someone. That was one of the benefits of these events-no swords. In a room of unarmed men, he wasn’t just the king; he was the Bear.
Amrath and Ann joined Leo near the hearth. Pickering sat on a table, legs stretched out and his boots resting on a nearby cider barrel. Between his teeth he puffed from a long-stemmed clay pipe.
“Just make yourself at home,” Amrath growled playfully, swatting at his boots.
“Already have, Bear.”
“Where is Belinda? I thought she would be here.”
Leo got to his feet to speak to the queen. “She and Lenare are visiting her mother in Glouston. She’s not well.” His expression suggested it was more than a simple cold.
Voices erupted behind them.
“The shield belonged to Cornick,” Conrad the Red told Heft Jerl. His voice was loud and getting louder.
Not again, thought the king.
The two neighbors, the Earl of West March and the Earl of Longbow, faced each other over a cider barrel. Both were in their forties, grizzled old roosters cleaned up for the day. They each wore fancy double
ts, and their combed hair didn’t suit either. These were men at home sitting on dirt with their bare feet resting on the backs of hunting dogs. He imagined their wives had had a say in how they arrived at court.
“It belonged to Hinge,” Heft Jerl, the Earl of Longbow, replied. He was matching volume with Conrad and sloshing the cider in his cup, as he was another of those men who couldn’t speak without moving his hands.
“It has a mountain on it,” Conrad insisted as he ladled a cup of cider, struggling to scoop up an apple slice.
“No one knows what it has on it.”
“Open the tomb and you’ll see.” Conrad caught the apple and grinned.
“No one is digging up the sacred grave of my ancestor!”
“Sacred? It’s just old bones … and a shield-a shield with a mountain crest-Cornick the Red’s shield!”
“Just because you keep saying that doesn’t make it true. Besides, the mountain wasn’t even your family crest until …?” Heft looked to Amrath.
“You two aren’t seriously debating that again, are you?” the king asked.
“They’re on their eighth cup,” Leo said. “What did you expect?”
“Eight already?”
“They arrived early.”
Amrath sighed, not because two of his earls were well down the happy cider path but because waiting on his wife had left him seriously behind in the cup race. “You two need to find something else to bicker about, if for no other reason than to provide a little variety for the rest of us forced to listen. What about the Ribbon River?”
Heft looked at him, wiping dribble from the front of his doublet with the sort of concern that came from having been warned not to muss his clothes. What have we become? Amrath felt the old depression coming on. We used to be men. Now we’re dress-up dolls for women.
“What about it?” Heft asked.
“It’s changed course over the centuries. One of you has gained land while the other has lost some. That sounds far more sensible than this old argument.”
“That’s just land,” Conrad said. “This is the honor of my fathers. It wasn’t Cornick the Red who failed to hold the flank. It was Hinge Jerl.”
“Every story tells of the red mountain shield being driven from the battle,” Heft declared.
“Go to Drondil Fields,” Conrad said. “Look at the painting next to the charter. It’s Hinge Jerl holding Cornick’s shield! Cornick lent it when Hinge’s broke. If you’d just stop being so damn stubborn, admit your whole family have been cowards for centuries, and open your bloody tomb, my forefathers could be vindicated.”
“You’re drunk,” Heft said, which made Amrath smile given Heft’s own wobbling stance.
“Hinge’s arms were the hammer.” Conrad clapped his hand on the hammer symbol embroidered on the front of Jerl’s now hopelessly stained doublet. He struck harder than necessary to make the point. Eight cups of hard cider had that effect on him.
Jerl shoved Conrad back and didn’t see what everyone else-who hadn’t had eight cups-saw, which was that Jerl was too tipsy to judge distances fairly and that he didn’t mean anything by it. Jerl’s shove was badly timed, catching Conrad off balance. He staggered back, caught the barrel with his heel, and fell on his backside, spilling a full cup of cider and losing his coveted apple slice in the process. This brought laughter from everyone in the hall, except Conrad.
Conrad the Red had always been hot-tempered-all Reds were-and he never needed to be drunk to take offense at being made a fool. When he came up from the floor, he had his dagger in hand. While swords were not allowed, daggers were considered ornamental. Conrad thought differently. His glassy eyes were focused as best they could be on Heft Jerl.
Amrath heard Ann gasp. That did it. The king stepped between the two.
Amrath was like a mountain-Conrad could not get to Heft; he could not even see him. The king’s massive hand took hold of Conrad’s wrist. “It’s a party, Conrad.” Amrath spoke softly but deeply-a warning growl.
Conrad glanced at his immobilized hand, then up at the bearded face. There was a moment of hesitancy. Then he nodded with a murky expression as if he had just woken up.
“Keep an eye on these two,” the king whispered to Leo as they watched Conrad struggle to return his dagger to its sheath.
“I’ll watch, but my growl is not as effective as yours. And I don’t have my sword.”
Amrath felt a small hand slip into his, and Ann gave a pleasant squeeze that said, Thank you.
The king surveyed the crowd. Being a head above helped. The throng had spread out since the toast, spilling into the dining hall, the ballroom, even the throne room. White-gloved stewards navigated the mob with silver trays over their heads. Percy Braga was in a corner speaking to Lord Valin and Sir Ecton.
“I think Percy is working at his own party,” Amrath told Ann.
“That’s good, isn’t it? Shows he’s dedicated.”
“Or ambitious.”
“Sounds like Simon,” Ann said.
“Simon’s an ass, but he’s smart. Smarter than I am.”
“Percy is smart too.”
“I know … that’s what worries me. I’m surrounded by geniuses.”
“Does that include me?”
“Especially you.” He eyed her with feigned suspicion and gave her hand a squeeze. “You’re more dangerous than the lot of them.”
Looking around the room, he couldn’t spot his son Alric, but Arista was seated near the fireplace, alone, reading.
She’s going to be another Clare if I don’t do something.
“Your Majesty!”
Amrath turned to see Bishop Saldur rushing at him in his dress robes of black and red. He had not seen the cleric in several months, but the old man never changed. Amrath would swear he looked exactly the same as he had when the king was a boy, only shorter. The bishop grew old, then just stopped changing. The elderly were like that. Children matured quickly, then hovered briefly in that sweet period of perfectly ripe youth. Soon after, the scourge of age set in like a disease. Hair lines slipped, bald spots revealed themselves, dark hair turned gray, stomachs grew, and skin sagged, but at some point there was nothing else to erode.
“Sauly, how are you? How was your trip to Ervanon? Is the Patriarch still alive?”
“Thank you for asking. His holiness is fine and the carriage ride exhausting. I only returned two days ago, and rushed all the way. I didn’t want to disappoint our new chancellor. What was going on with…” Saldur tilted his head toward Conrad. Leo had taken him by the arm and was leading him away with promises of better sources of drink than cider.
“Nothing, just too much celebration and not enough to eat.”
Saldur looked over his shoulder. “The shield again?”
Amrath smiled. “It wouldn’t be a party without at least one brawl.”
“That’s the kind of brawl that sparks a civil war.”
“House Jerl and House Red have been sparking for five hundred years. I won’t lose any sleep.”
Saldur straightened the wrinkles on his sleeves. “Your Majesty, I need to speak with you privately.”
“Something wrong?”
The old bishop lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m afraid so, and it concerns you and your family.”
“My family? What about them?”
“Perhaps we should continue this conversation in the upstairs chapel where I will be able to speak freely.”
“You act like we are among enemies.”
The bishop leaned close and in a low voice said, “If I am right, we most certainly are, and they are bent on royal blood.”
Bishop Saldur had always made Amrath uncomfortable-most religious people did. Amrath’s mother and father had been devoted members of the Nyphron Church. Given his contentious relationship with his parents, it wasn’t hard to understand why Amrath entered Mares Cathedral only on high holy days, marriages, and funerals. He’d skip the holy days, too, if he wasn’t required to participate as head of s
tate. His rejection of the church was not entirely funded by his paternal feud; church people had a strange way about them. They smiled too much, were quick to compliment and support, but behind the stretched lips and soft words was a judgment. No one was ever good enough-at least not until they were dead. The dead were exemplary.
Saldur looked like he should be dead. How old is he? That was something else about members of the church-they grew old. Most men never lived long enough to have many gray hairs, but Saldur looked like a snowcapped mountain. Amrath didn’t think it was natural that all these bishops and priests lingered decade after decade. Amrath’s father and mother were gone, but Saldur was still calling him into the chapel for lessons. There was nowhere worse to speak to a bishop than in their church or in a castle chapel, especially a bishop who used to instruct him as a boy. They had spent long hours in the room exploring the mysteries of Novron. Mysteries that, for Amrath, were never made clear. As a boy, he had a list of issues with various church doctrines, but he couldn’t remember much of it anymore. He stopped worrying about the questions when he stopped suffering the lessons. If Maribor existed, how come no one ever saw him? Supposedly they used to-at least one woman saw an awful lot of him and gave birth to his son, Novron. And whatever happened to Novron? The teachings were always a bit sketchy. Did he die? And if he could die, why did people pray to him? Amrath never prayed to his own dead father. Of course, his father wouldn’t lift a corporeal finger to aid his son, much less an ethereal one. Amrath’s father felt it was more practical that his son learn how to cleave a man’s head off than to accurately recall the seven trials of Novron. To that day whenever he saw Sauly, Amrath felt like a boy who had skipped his chores.
Entering the chapel, Amrath wasn’t about to resume his childhood role. He was king now and was going to make damn sure the bishop respected that. The moment the chapel door closed, he demanded, “So what’s this all about?” His voice boomed. Intimidation was key to most meetings, and he couldn’t imagine how anyone could control a kingdom without it.
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