Circle of Reign

by Jacob Cooper

  The pain, it’s too great for him.

  “My Lady?” entreated a young common servant. Moira looked up from her morning meal of simple acorn bread-cake and water to see Shayla standing before her. “A man has come asking for work. He awaits you in the courtyard.” The blonde woman servant was a little giddy. She stood there fidgeting with her hands and awaited her Lady’s response.

  Now this is something new, Moira thought. She almost did not believe what Shayla had said and had to shake herself from brief confusion.

  “Are you sure?” Moira asked.

  “Quite, my Lady.”

  A man of middle age did indeed await Moira in the courtyard of the hold. The walls that engulfed the vast inner courtyard were two men high and made of gray stone interwoven with trees of all create. Battlements stood taller than the walls at each of the four corners of the hold, with branches and ivy adorning them. Elevated pathways started at ground level and rose gradually to lofty heights, weaving among the trees and branches immediately outside and above the hold before returning again to a different landing within the hold’s walls. The leaves of the ivy should have been more vibrant this far into the Rising Season, but they remained mostly brown, auburn, and orange. Dead leaves from the Dimming and Low seasons had collected into piles in the corners of the hold, adding to the disheveled appearance and overall feeling of decline within the walls. From the outside, there was less and less visual difference between the hold and the forest as branches and other verdure reached unchecked over the walls. Where Moira now stood had begun to resemble more of a clearing or meadow after a storm rather than a royal courtyard.

  Though inwardly damaged, Moira Kerr knew she was stunning in her appearance. Her long ebony hair and quaint features offered a dazzling contrast to the worsening condition of her home, as if a beacon in a raging tempest. This belief was not born of pride or arrogance, but from trust. Her lost beloved Thannuel had never lied or used words to mollify her, not even when it would have been kind to do so. He never wasted words on anything he did not mean and he was the most trustworthy and upright person Moira had ever met in her life. It was he who had always told her how magnificent she looked, a reflection of near-perfect beauty. Though naturally shy of this type of compliment, Moira realized that if she did not accept it, it would be as if she were calling Thannuel dishonest. Her confidence, then, sprang from absolute trust in her husband and nothing more.

  The man who patiently waited to greet her was a bit castoff looking, but otherwise appeared able. She considered him for a moment and then spoke.

  “What brings you to my hold?” Moira asked politely. Hedron came to her side. He had always been a little shy around strangers, especially men. This behavior had changed drastically as he now asserted himself as the man of the hold. The boy had never shown signs of his innate shyness towards girls, however. But few of his former friends, boys or girls, came calling anymore. He had even asked about young Kathryn Hoyt, to whom he had been promised, a few days ago. This surprised Moira, as the two had seemed like fire and ice initially. Lord Hoyt, however, did not dare to visit. She did not blame him.

  “I seek employment, my Lady. I have heard you have no herald servant, and I have experience as such. Many houses of Calyn have dismissed their heralds, so finding work has been difficult.”

  “I’m sorry, I cannot hire you. You no doubt have heard of our misfortune. In truth, I find it curious that anyone would call on us. Our current status is no secret in the province, not even in the Realm.” Moira’s words were not harsh to this man. His posture bespoke his sincerity, even desperation.

  “My Lady,” the man said, stepping forward and raising a hand toward her. It shook slightly and wore the calluses of many years. “I do not ask for pay, just shelter. I shall be responsible for my own food as well, not wishing to burden your resources. In fact, I may be able to add to your stores. I’m a skilled hunter and fisher in addition to being able to run a house. A casual glance toward the walls of your hold speak for themselves as to their need for repair and upkeep, if you don’t mind my boldness.” He looked down slightly, diverting his eyes. “Please my Lady, I can assist here. It would give meaning to me again.”

  Moira considered. If what he said was true of his abilities, he was more fitting as a hold master than a herald servant. With Aiden having left to serve Lord Therrium as the master of the hold guard, there was little leadership beside herself still in the hold. And while she did not mind regulating the affairs of the hold, her ability to continue without more help was limited. The hold was in a state of slow entropy, as was the whole city of Calyn. She glanced down at Hedron, her remaining child, and recognized his need for his mother again. She had lost her husband and daughter, but he had also lost his father and twin sister. All they had was each other now.

  Do I dare bring him into our hold? No one else has come seeking work, but he seems so desperate. Moira realized that they were, too.

  “What references do you bring?” Moira asked.

  At this, the man looked down and a defeated look came over him.

  “None, my Lady. I swear to you what I say of my capabilities is true. I had hoped time would prove my worth if I was granted a chance. Thank you for seeing me.”

  The man turned and started to walk away, shoulders slumped.

  “Very well,” Moira said in clipped words. The few remaining common servants of the hold looked startled, then relieved. “There is no pay that can be given, but shelter we have plenty. You shall not be herald servant, but hold master. I will remain in my self-appointed role as herald. I trust you know the duties of a hold master and can discharge them effectively?”

  The man was visibly shaken. His jaw quivered before he clenched it and set it. “Aye, my Lady. Thank you. Thank the Ancient Heavens.”

  “What is your name?”

  “My Lady, if it please you, I am Shane.”

  “Very well. I name you hold master of House Kerr. Shayla, please show Master Shane to his quarters in the south-west chambers.”

  “My Lady,” Shayla responded and motioned for Shane to follow her.

  Shane hesitated and risked one more entreaty from Lady Kerr. “I beg your pardon for one brief moment longer, my Lady, but I am aware of others who are also in need of work. They ask the same as me, only a place to lay their head at night. With your permission, I could bulk up the ranks and have the hold restored more quickly.”

  Moira did not immediately respond.

  “Only if it please you, my Lady,” Shane added.

  With her trip approaching, Moira knew the extra help might well be needed. “I will think on it, I promise you,” she said. “For now, let Shayla get you settled in. After that, we have enough to spare to provide you a hot meal, but thereafter you will indeed be expected to provide for yourself and supply a surplus of game if possible. Is this clear?”

  “Yes, my Lady, quite clear. I give you my thanks and my loyalty.”

  “Please, sir, I only need three skins. And a pouch of assorted fruit seedlings, if you have them,” Hedron pleaded with some exasperation.

  “Sorry, I’m fresh out, as I told you. Now get!” the scrawny hook-nosed trader snapped. He did not even make eye contact with the young Kerr lad. Hedron could see nearly a score of bear pelts piled high behind the merchant on his wagon that folded out into a flat table to display the wares when the market opened. The streets were sprawling with anxious buyers and traders as the morning turned to midday.

  “Liar!” Hedron shot back. “I see what you have behind you. Now, sell them to me or I’ll tell the constable you’re not—”

  “Listen, you little bastard!” the man sneered as he grabbed Hedron by his tunic and knelt down to his level. “I don’t have any pelts for you! Your being here is bad for business, see?” The man’s rancid breath bounced off Hedron’s cheeks and caused him to wrinkle his nose in distaste. “Look around, misbegotten filth. Every other merchant within sight has customers to deal with and wares to sell. How many cust
omers do you see at my table? Well? How many, boy?”

  Hedron looked around. It was true. Dozens of other people were conducting their business all around him with every other trader and solicitor he could see, but no one here at the hook-nosed man’s table.

  “I guess that says something about the quality of your product,” Hedron said with a thinly veiled smirk. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll spend my money elsewhere.”

  The fur merchant shoved him backward, making him stumble, but he easily caught himself. “No, bastard, you won’t. No one will take your krenshell here. Your money is worthless. There’ll be a boycott on anyone that sells to a Kerr, or didn’t you know? We don’t deal with traitors, or their bastard children. Now get, and go running back to that tramp mother of yours before I call for a constable and you learn what happens to public menaces!”

  “I’m not a bastard and my father was not a traitor,” Hedron declared firmly but louder than he wanted. “And my mother is not—”

  “Yes, bastard, you are a bastard. Traitors are not recognized in the Realm, and their children are therefore illegitimate. Do you know what that means, bastard?”

  Hedron was dumbstruck, but only for a moment. “Thanks for the education. Always nice to learn from someone who has first-hand experience in a subject.”

  Before the belligerent merchant could respond, Hedron started to head toward another merchant’s table and saw the customers present begin to migrate away. Most lowered their heads as if ashamed, and refused to make eye contact. A few others made a show of their withdrawal.

  “Traitor!” was heard from somewhere in the crowded market.

  “Lo! The bastard cometh!” came another scornful mock. More followed. At first Hedron attempted to determine who the culprits were, but the jeering and mocking soon became indecipherable.

  “Make way for the bastard!”

  “Treacherous spawn!”

  “Miscreant! Beguiler!”

  “Be gone with you, bastard!”

  He was determined to ignore the throngs of vocal assaults. His mother had warned him that his task might not be easy. He continued to the next vendor. The merchant looked woefully at Hedron and slowly but firmly shook his head.

  “Kearon!” a short prim lady shrilled. “Lower, even.”

  This last verbal volley silenced the crowd and stopped Hedron dead in his tracks. He had only managed to secure a few of the provisions his mother had sent him into Calyn to retrieve, but he had gained something unexpected. Perspective. He had purchased this perspective, but not with money. The change in his family’s status had not been real to him, not having to consider it before. He considered it now as he left the market humiliated and dejected. Kearon, they called me. No one defended my family or me, not even when they called me Kearon! Things inside Hedron Kerr began to change.

  Moira and her small party had arrived the night before in Iskele after traveling for three days. Built on the edge of a cliff, the ancient city was majestic in an intimidating sort of way. The imposing walls with their battlements aplenty loomed high over its inhabitants, looking perhaps more threatening than comforting to those within its walls, Moira thought. Nothing seemed inviting about this place to her, not like Calyn. Blue falcons circled several of the higher towers, occasionally diving into the chasm that opened itself below Iskele—probably hunting some scurrying prey—and rising again with the powerful upward thrusting gales that erupted from the chasm’s belly, the falcons unfurled wings filled with the blasts.

  Calm, she noted. They are so calm in the midst of such power.

  Moira and her servants were granted the High Duke’s presence early this morning, though the hours since had not seen the day’s light get any brighter. The Northern Province always appeared to have a single omnipresent gray cloud masking its sky. Though the weather was said to be warming in the north with the Rising Season waning into the High Season, it was still colder than the middle of the Low Season in most of the Realm.

  She prayed that Shane would be able to direct the affairs of her hold after such a short term in her employ. After Hedron’s experience in Calyn at the markets, Shane was dispatched to procure the rest of the supplies they required, which he did so quickly and efficiently. Her son would not speak much of that day. He was increasingly reclusive thereafter. She had intended to bring Hedron with her to Iskele, but he insisted on staying behind. Perhaps it was good. Though only ten, he could still assist along with the other few servants that remained. Moira had given Shane leave to recruit whomever he could to help under the same terms to which he had agreed. Doubtful that any would answer, she was incredibly surprised when he had gathered six other men to assist in roughly half a span. They were not wood-dwellers, as Shane was, but Moira had no desire to discriminate in their present condition.

  Anyone who was willing to work in the hold for merely a place to sleep was more than welcome. The complement of common servants had grown to fifteen since Shane’s arrival, not including family members of several servants. All together, the hold had twenty-seven occupants, almost half of its capacity. The kitchens had game and produce again and the morale had spiked considerably.

  Now, after hours in Wellyn’s court pleading their case, their time was drawing to an end.

  “We will hear no more,” Duke Wellyn said with a note of finality after Moira blasted him yet again for not attending more diligently to the investigation of Thannuel’s murder and her daughter’s abduction. Reign’s body had never been found, though she was presumed dead after all these cycles. Moira would not accept that conclusion, though it became more difficult as the days and cycles passed. Those who comforted her in her grief after the longest night of her life roughly eight cycles ago—half a year—counted her refusal to accept Reign as likely having met a similar fate as Thannuel’s as a parent’s grief, mentally unable to cope. Moira, however, could not shake herself from hope, from the last strands that she clung to. Those strands were fraying. In her weaker moments, she was maddeningly driven to fitful sorrow, unable to be comforted until sleep, brought on by exhaustion, would finally take her. But, after moments of weakness such as these, she became more solid and firm in her determination to push forward in her cause. It was the guilt that drove her, revitalized her, but it also was internally consuming her.

  “It is obvious,” she retorted with more vehemence than was wise, “that impotence sits upon the Granite Throne. Truth this is, or what else can be the cause of such indifference shown to a lord’s murder and child’s disappearance? A child under the age of innocence! From whence comes a pococurante to sit upon the Granite Throne?” The High Duke raised an eyebrow trying to mouth the large word she had called him. “Who is the actual traitor, Wellyn?” She almost spat his name. The casual address, leaving out Wellyn’s honorific, drew visible gasps from attendants and other court notables witnessing the forum. Moira’s words had risen in volume as she turned her pleas for rescission of her family’s branding as traitors to lashing and biting insults.

  She continued: “No evidence has ever been presented to me or my hold master of treachery.”

  “You have no hold master,” a member of Wellyn’s court attempted to interrupt, but Moira continued without abeyance.

  “What scheme is this, that a Provincial Lord’s life is lost and his daughter missing, and the High Duke does nothing? Instead, he blinds himself and shields his inaction by naming his old friend a traitor to the Realm, leaving his family destitute and scorned. But not shamed, your Grace. We shall not be shamed by your unworthy and cowardly disposition to act without proper decorum in defense of such loyal service given to your house for centuries by House Kerr. We shall not—”

  “Enough!” Wellyn commanded, slamming his fist against the Granite Throne. Moira’s few escorts who stood with her flinched. She did not. Two Khans started to step forward, hands at the hilts of their swords. Wellyn put a hand out to stop their advance.

  “Lady Kerr,” Wellyn said in a low, menacing voice, vapors of his brea
th visible in the cold air, even indoors. “The Granite Throne has spoken on this matter and when the throne has spoken, it is absolute. I have tolerated your requests for formal forums for half a year, indulging in your ever-increasing lack of judgment. My Minister of Law has all the evidence I need of your husband’s treachery. I have reviewed the evidence. I was convinced of his plot to overrun this house and usurp the throne unto himself. He ceased being my friend when his heart turned to betrayal. No doubt the Ancient Heavens, for such deceit, decreed his death. Do not test my resolve in this matter. You will find the Granite Throne you kick against quite adamantine. You should likely be thanking me for not extending the acts of treason your husband carried out to you as well! Such things are easily arranged, my Lady!”

  “Your threats echo throughout this chamber, but find no place in me,” Moira spoke, more softly but undaunted without allowing any break in the vocal volley. “You mean to coerce me into submission and acceptance of your decrees by fear. Know this, High Duke, the Ancient Heavens know my husband was loyal and unwavering, even to a fault. Why have my requests to personally review the evidence in question been repeatedly ignored when such a simple action would answer all queries and certainly reinforce my husband’s innocence? Perhaps even shed light on my missing daughter?”