It was too late anyway; the king had recovered, and he spoke before Josen could. “Rudol, Mulley, leave us. I would speak with my son alone.” Even as hoarse and weak from coughing as it was, his voice did not allow for argument.
Rudol looked from Josen to their father, closing and opening his big fists as though fighting the urge to choke one of them. But he never disobeyed the king. After a long silence, he bowed and stalked out of the room, with Chastor Ren close behind.
Gerod watched them leave, then turned his eyes back to Josen. “I know you think that I am… a cold man. A king cannot let his emotions interfere with his judgement. That does not mean I do not have them.” His fingers tapped against his leg again now, a bit faster and harder than before. “I tire of these arguments, Josen. I tire of trying to make you act as the heir to the throne should.”
“Then stop trying.”
“You have far too much of your mother in you.” The pace of the tapping increased more still, and Gerod muffled a cough with his other hand. “You will do this. I am not giving you a choice.”
“Don’t you dare talk about my mother. She was what you made her—and I would rather be too much like her than anything like you!” The room felt smaller than ever—a trap closing around him. Josen burrowed his fingers into his hair and looked toward the window, but the outside world was hidden behind closed shutters. “And if I am like her, then you know I won’t do what you want. If you send me to Greenwall, I’ll only run away, as far and as often as I can. Explain that to the people.”
“You will do this!” Gerod slapped his hand down on the bed with surprising force, and Josen jumped back, startled. He hadn’t expected to get any kind of reaction—he rarely did—but there was anger in his father’s eyes now, old and deep and hard. “You will do this, and you will do it with grace! You will attend the Falloways, as is proper. You will be a dutiful student. You will show nothing but support for the knights. You will not be caught in bed with one of your women while you are there. You will do this, because if you do not, I will see that you never leave this keep again.”
The force of the words set him coughing once more, but not for long this time. He composed himself with a long, ragged breath. When he spoke again, his voice was calm and cold, and every word brought the walls closer. “I will put you under guard at all hours. I will devote every man in the Royal Swords to it if I must. If you do not do as I say, you will never again know the freedom you hold so dear until I am dead and burned. Do you understand me?”
Stone loomed in on Josen from all sides; he could barely breathe. His legs urged him to turn and run, but there was nowhere to go. The Keep had him, and it would only surrender if he did. So, with his throat fighting every syllable, he said the only thing he could say:
“Yes, Father.”
5. Broken Walls
Shona
The wall was a disaster.
Shona Falloway let out her breath in a frustrated sigh. “How much longer will it take?”
The Greenwall had originally been named for the fields it protected, but five hundred years had made the name true in another way—moss grew thick over all but the newest stones. Carpeted in rich green, the wall stood sixty feet high and thirty thick all around the low farmlands of the duchy that shared its name, built centuries ago to keep the Deeplings out. And it had served that purpose during the recent attack, Shona supposed.
But only just.
Here at the edge of the southern fields, the wall had collapsed entirely at three different sites, and was barely holding itself upright at a number of others. Shona absently rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead and peered through one of the gaps, a hole some six feet high carved through solid stone. Severed rods of iron jutted from the sides, heavily scored by claws and teeth. Deeplings couldn’t break metal as easily as stone—the steel reinforcement had slowed them enough for the Storm Knights to fight them off, but the damage was still severe. I wouldn’t even have to duck my head to walk right through.
It had to be fixed, and soon—the Deeplings hadn’t attacked in such strength for decades, but they could very well do it again. Dozens of knights had been slain already; without the wall, another attack would claim hundreds. And though the site teemed with workers, to her eyes the damage looked the same now as it had the turn before, and the turn before that. In the two full turns since the attack, Shona had made time nearly every day—accompanied sometimes by her mother, as she was today—to walk the length of the damaged wall, and it always looked the same.
“We nearly got the foundations shored up, Lady Shona—them creatures that wasn’t tearing down the wall above was diggin’ out below. Carris built it right down to the bedrock, back when, and I’m right glad he did, but it took most of what we had to fix the bits you can’t see.” Thorm Ollet was the mason she had placed in charge of the work, a broad-shouldered man with thick brown hair and a messy beard. From the apologetic tone of his voice, Shona could tell she wouldn’t like his answer well before he finished speaking. “Be another cycle maybe to fix the wall proper if we could start now, but we ain’t got the stone left to do it.”
Duchess Vera Falloway gestured toward the heaps of rubble that lay all about the foot of the wall. “We are surrounded in stone. Can you not use this?”
“Them beetlebacks, they cut through rock like they’re choppin’ wood. Better than nothin’, but it’s the iron that slows them most.” Ollet beckoned for them to follow and strode to the nearest pile, prodding a chunk of stone bigger than Shona’s head with his boot. The piece tumbled over, revealing a gouge so deep it nearly came through the other side. “Look here. Lot of ‘em are cut up like this. Got men digging what’s usable out of the mess like you told me, Lady Shona, but it ain’t gonna be all of it, or even most of it.”
“You’ll have the stone you need,” Shona said. I just wish I knew how to get it.
The stone would have to come from the quarries in Goldstone, which meant being moved by caravan through the Swamp, which meant expense. Too much expense. What wealth Greenwall made from its fields went right back into them with little to spare. She could appeal to the king—Greenwall’s crops fed more of the Nine Peaks than even the Plateaus’, so Gerod could hardly refuse her. But a loan meant allowing Yance Corvin—the royal treasurer—to investigate more closely than she liked. She couldn’t chance King Gerod learning of her father’s condition.
Not while he still holds a grudge. Gerod would love an excuse to marry me to some loyal count of his, and have Greenwall back under his thumb. Titles could pass to daughters as easily as sons, and often had to, due to a shortage of heirs—conception had been difficult and childbirth often dangerous in the Peaks since the time of the Rising—but that was of little use to Shona. After the King’s War it had become custom for a husband to wield his wife’s power even if the inheritance was hers.
No, she couldn’t lose control over her duchy. Whatever husband Gerod Aryllia chose for her would be beholden to the throne, not the people of Greenwall. And if the king couldn’t be involved, the only option she had left was the one she’d most wanted to avoid. Castar. Damn it.
“There’s something else, Lady Shona.” Ollet’s voice was a welcome distraction; she didn’t want to think about what Duke Castar might ask for in return for his help.
“What is it?”
“It’s… well, we found one of them… them things.” Ollet scratched at his beard. “Men were movin’ some stone from one of the piles, and one of them Deeplings was underneath. Must’ve been buried when the wall collapsed.”
Shona’s mother covered her mouth with one gloved hand and gave a demure gasp. “Oh my! Was it alive?”
Shona suppressed a smile at the display. That was Vera Falloway: a font of feminine gestures and delicate sensibilities, at least outwardly. If one didn’t already know, it would be difficult to guess that the two of them were related. Shona was narrow-faced and brown-haired like her father, all bones and sharp edges and tall as a man, dressed
in a plain blouse and trousers; her mother was a lovely woman even at near fifty years old, petite and raven-haired, wearing an elegant lavender dress. And just then, she looked fully prepared to faint if necessary.
Ollet shook his head. “No, m’Lady, I wouldn’t be breathin’ if it was—I was right there when they found it. But the men, they won’t go near the thing, and it needs movin’.”
Shona’s curiosity was piqued. “It’s still there, then?” She had only ever seen Deeplings from afar. Of course, she had seen them, which was more than most people could say—that was just part of life in Greenwall. The duchy sat barely above the mist, closest to the Swamp of any place in the Nine Peaks, and that made it a tempting target, wall or no. But only the Knights of the Storm dared go near the creatures. She knew it was a little bit morbid, but the Deeplings defined much of her life—it seemed wrong that she had never been close to one. “Can you show us?”
“It’s a ways down there.” Ollet pointed east along the wall. “Last place they broke through. You seen the spot the other day, before we found the thing. Bit of a walk, but I’ll take you if it’s what you want.”
Vera swallowed nervously. “Oh, I don’t know, dear. Perhaps we shouldn’t…”
“It’s dead, Mother,” said Shona. “What could it do to us? We’ve been all along this wall these last few turns; just think of it as another part of our walk.”
“But… the king’s sons will be arriving soon, and we should be there to greet them.”
God Above, Mother, did you have to bring that up? I was trying to forget. “The basket-keeper will send for us as soon as their basket comes into sight. There will be plenty of time to get back.”
Really, though, Shona wouldn’t have minded if the princes arrived while she was away. It had been a long time since she had seen Josen, and longer still since she had been forced to speak cordially with him. She wasn’t entirely certain she had it in her.
“Oh, very well then.” Vera smiled slightly, though she was still a bit pale. “You are stubborn when you make up your mind, dear.”
“Father’s influence.” Shona returned the smile. She’d known from the start that her mother would agree with her eventually; she always did. Shona had been governing Greenwall in all but name for most of the last three years—someone had needed to take on her father’s duties when they had become difficult for him to perform himself. Still, though, she preferred to ask rather than demand. Being well-liked made things much easier—something, it seemed to her, that too few in power realized. “Thank you, Mother. It won’t take long. Master Ollet, lead the way.”
Ollet led them east along the wall. A guide wasn’t strictly necessary—Shona knew where she was going, and even if she hadn’t, the wall would have led them there—but letting him walk ahead gave her and her mother a bit of privacy. They had no other escort; Shona wasn’t fond of taking bodyguards with her. If she needed protection, there were knights all along the wall, some on patrol and some manning the great wagon-sized wingbows called thunderbolts mounted on the battlements every fifty yards.
Walking the road that ran along the inside of the wall, Shona always felt a great pride for her duchy. To her left, farmers and laborers were hard at work among Greenwall’s windmills and fields, tending the maize and grains and livestock that fed more than half of the Nine Peaks. Shona had loved those fields since she was a child, first to run and play in, and later to work with her own hands when her father allowed it. She rarely had time for that anymore, but she still kept her own garden at home. To her right, opposite the fields, stood the great mossy stones of the Greenwall, raised by the Windwalker Carris himself some five hundred years before. Her distant ancestor, though the link was too weak for anyone to call the Falloways Eagles—a marriage to a distant cousin of the main line some time long before the King’s War.
The fields and the wall. Greenwall’s greatest assets, on either side. Symbols of everything her people had accomplished.
And of everything they had to lose.
Carris had named the mountain the Raised Plains, and it was an apt description. It was more of a giant hill than a true mountain—a shallow slope topped with a vast expanse of flat, fertile land. Nowhere else in the Nine Peaks had as much viable farmland, as much livestock, as many windmills for grinding grain and irrigating fields—and nowhere else was as vulnerable to the Deeplings. Little wonder, then, that the wall had been built, or that the Knights of the Storm made their home there. Without Greenwall, much of the Peaks would starve. That thought kept Shona awake some nights—the responsibility did not always rest easy on her shoulders.
“Are you well, Shona?” Her mother peered at her with concern in her eyes, and Shona realized that she had been silent for some time. “You’re very quiet.”
“I’m fine, Mother.” I only have to entertain two princes without letting them see the actual duke, and get this wall fixed before the Deeplings kill us all. Nothing out of the ordinary. “Just… thinking.” Two princes, but it was Josen’s face that kept sneaking into her thoughts. She shook her head to clear it. She had other things to worry about. More important things.
“Thinking about Prince Josen?”
Shona couldn’t help but laugh. “How do you do that?” Her mother liked to act the proper lady, delicate and oblivious, but she was a keener observer than most gave her credit for. Her ability to always tell what was bothering her daughter was uncanny.
Vera smiled knowingly. “A mother’s instinct. But it was not hard to guess. He was very nearly your husband.” She squeezed Shona’s hand. “Do you think you are ready to see him again?”
“It will be… strange, but I am not some lovesick girl.” That was only half true, though. She had loved Josen Aryllia more than anything in the world, once; he had been her hero, her knight, the boy who had sheltered an awkward, too-tall girl from the taunts and cruelties of the other youths. The three of them—Rudol had never strayed far from his older brother, back then—had been inseparable, and at the time, she had felt like she would never need anyone else. It was not an easy feeling to put aside.
I was just a girl then, she told herself, and that girl grew up a long time ago. But she hadn’t had to truly talk to Josen since the day of their almost-wedding, and coming from him, a few words could be a very powerful thing.
“Seeing him isn’t the problem,” she said, and wished it sounded truer than it did. “What does concern me is that he is supposed to stay in Greenwall until Aryll’s Rest. Rudol is one thing—he keeps to himself when he is at the Stormhall, and he is there often enough that we aren’t expected to hold a banquet every time. But for the heir to the throne, we’ll have to do more than that. Father will be expected to host dinners, at the very least, and I don’t… It will be difficult to keep his condition hidden.”
“Telling them he is ill won’t suffice?” he mother asked. “It has worked until now. Even the king has his bouts of sickness; they are not young men.” That was an understatement. Both Shona’s father and King Gerod were over seventy, two of the few surviving men who had been in power during the Outer Duchy Rebellion. They had been close once, an old friendship strengthened by the death of Queen Shona—her father’s sister, the woman she was named for—during the rebellion, but that was over now. Josen had ended more than just a betrothal when he’d fled rather than wed her five years ago. Spirit of All, why can’t I put him out of my mind?
She tried to focus on the matter at hand. “It works for a meal or two, but he can’t be ‘ill’ every night. If we make excuses from now until Aryll’s Rest, it looks suspicious no matter how good the excuses are.” She didn’t really think either man would tell King Gerod if they discovered the truth—Josen hated his father, and Rudol… Rudol would have died rather than hurt her, once. But Josen was always hard to predict, and she doubted Rudol still felt the same—his wife would be with him. She couldn’t take the risk.
“Your father still has his good days. This may be the best time they could have come—he has
been very… clear-headed this last cycle.”
“Even on his good days he slips. If we are very lucky he might make it through one visit, but a second, or a third… eventually his mind will wander, and he wouldn’t want Gerod’s sons to see him like that.” Shona rubbed her forehead, trying to think. “Still, I don’t know what choice we have. I will… I will make it work. We’ll put it off until tomorrow, though—we need time to prepare, make sure Father is ready. It won’t raise any eyebrows if we give Josen and Rudol a day to get settled at the Stormhall. And I suppose I’ll have to invite Duke Castar, too.”
She sighed. If she’d had her choice, she would spend as little time with Lenoden Castar as possible. He had been hinting at the potential of a marriage between himself and Shona for years, and she strongly suspected that he cared less about her hand than about having Greenwall for his own. Her engagement to Josen had put him off for a time, but that hadn’t lasted any longer than the engagement itself.
“Do you really?” her mother asked. “It will be hard enough on you worrying about your father and dealing with Prince Josen. Duke Castar is not royalty; he needn’t be there.”
Shona shook her head. If only it were that simple. “I have no choice, Mother. As long as he’s in Greenwall, it would be an obvious slight to leave him out. We need his resources to repair the wall. Goldstone has the quarries, and he can afford it. But if we offend him, the price could be… more than I care to pay.” She didn’t like it, but until the wall was whole she needed to keep Castar appeased. At least his interest—whether it was in her or her duchy—would work to her advantage, there.
Her mother nodded slowly. “You know best, of course. I just worry about you, Shona. You’ve taken on so much these last years.”
“There is nothing to worry about, Mother. You wouldn’t worry that a duke was unequal to managing his duchy; you shouldn’t expect anything less of me.” Shona knew she meant well, but it was irksome that her mother thought her so fragile. Even at a relatively young twenty-two years, she was at least as able as most dukes she had met.
The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1) Page 6