Varalen wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to bang his head against the table, but he wisely decided against both. “If not men, my lord, then what? Women? Babes? Feral dogs?”
“Magic,” Elgar spat passionately, a reverence and a curse at once.
“Magic,” Varalen repeated, pinching the bridge of his nose. The word sounded flat and plain when he said it. “My lord, Arianrod Margraine can no more use magic than I can. And I assure you I am quite without any gifts in that regard.” As is everyone who breathes, he didn’t add.
“I hear rumors that say differently,” Elgar insisted.
Varalen tried not to smile. “Of course you do. And where do you think they come from? Her ladyship knows as well as I do that the most important question is not whether she possesses magic but whether she can get her enemies to believe she does. Do not do her that favor, my lord.”
Elgar drew one long finger down the tabletop, tracing patterns in the wood. “Leave that for now.” He looked over at Wyles, who was licking his fingers and trying not to seem like he was smirking at Varalen. “Nathaniel, fetch Quentin and meet me in my study. I want to discuss changes in the guard rotations.” That wouldn’t go over well, Varalen knew. Quentin Gardener was the captain of the Citadel guard—a less prestigious position than Wyles’s, but one that put him closer to Elgar. And since he was a generally decent person, all things considered, he and Wyles disagreed about nearly everything.
None of this showed in Wyles’s expression; he merely nodded, bowed, and, with a muttered “Your Eminence,” showed himself out, thankfully taking the sad remains of his chicken leg with him.
But before Varalen had so much as a chance to feel relief, Elgar asked, “What progress have you made on the matter of Hornoak?”
He wanted to simply drop the issue of what to do with his army so they could discuss empty superstitions and impossible demands? Varalen wanted to drive the heels of his hands into his eyes, but instead he merely folded his arms. “It is … a difficult task you have set me, my lord.”
“I know it’s difficult. That’s why I gave it to you, not whichever guardsman was closest to hand. What have you decided?”
Varalen swallowed. “My lord, you are a ruler, and I a mere servant. If you cannot find yourself a man who is incorruptible, what success can I hope to have?”
“I do not need a man who is incorruptible,” Elgar said, waving a hand at him impatiently. “I need a man whose obedience to me cannot be undone by any temptation, and who is strong and capable enough to make the journey and return.”
What’s the difference? Varalen thought. Out loud, he said, “I cannot claim ever to have met a man, weak or strong, who could not be undone by temptation.”
Elgar surprised him by smiling, but there was no warmth in it, no mirth, and it did not reassure him in the slightest. “This is the sum of your advice for me. I cannot do as I wish, and … I cannot do as I wish. What I want is simply impossible, and so I should sigh, throw up my hands, and give up.”
“That’s not what I—”
Elgar sat back in his chair, pressing his fingertips together. “Remind me again why I have not killed your son.”
He felt his spine stiffen, but he kept his hands under the table so Elgar could not see them twist. “Because I have been right before,” he said, once he could trust his voice, “and I will be again.”
“Let us hope so,” Elgar replied, turning his gaze back to his maps.
CHAPTER FOUR
In his dreams, he flew far above Second Hearth, both the castle and the city at its foot. He skirted the city’s edges, the uneven sprawl, without proper walls or fortifications, that he’d traced on his father’s maps so many times but had never been able to walk for himself. He raced up the walls of Second Hearth’s highest tower—not very high, as towers went, or so he had been told, but in his dreams it always touched the clouds. In his dreams there was no dirt or dust, no beggars in the streets, no air of hopelessness drifting down to weigh on the shoulders of the people. There was only open space and fresh air and the feeling of possibility.
Kel woke to his sister’s hand on his shoulder, her voice so soft, it drifted into his dreams. “Kel. Kel, His Grace has asked for you. You must go to him.”
Kel mumbled something even he wasn’t sure of, gripping her hand to pull himself up. “Mm … Father? What time is—”
“The sun’s been up an hour,” Alessa said. “The king wishes for you and Eirnwin to attend him in his chambers. Eirnwin’s come to help you get dressed.”
Kel tried his best to rub the sleep from his eyes. The room was just as it always was: cold and spare, without any unnecessary furnishings. He didn’t want anything in it that he could not personally use, so the mirror was built into and above his writing desk—that way he could stay to fix his hair without having to stand. The washbasin was by his bed for the same reason, and the bed itself was built low, so he never had to feel like he was climbing into or out of it. The armchair, upholstered in faded blue silk, was the one exception: it was so saggy that he couldn’t sit in it without pain, but Lessa liked to cocoon herself there to read, so it stayed. “You won’t be there?” he asked her.
His sister hesitated, then shook her head. “His Grace gave orders only for his advisor and his heir.”
He’d come to some decision, then. When his father was mulling an issue, he spoke only to Eirnwin; he honored Kel by calling him into his presence, according to the rules of court, but it only ever meant he was informing Kel of something, not asking for his opinion.
As if sensing his thoughts, Alessa patted his hand, smiling at him reassuringly. Or perhaps she did it only because she couldn’t seem to help smiling at him, no more than Kel could help smiling back. “Are you ready?” she asked. “Shall I call Eirnwin in?”
He nodded, and she withdrew, holding the door open so Eirnwin could walk past her. Bald and beardless, all he had for hair was the gray stubble that passed for eyebrows. But his voice and hands were strong and steady, and he was still able to carry Kel about the castle without much effort, even though he was nearly twelve. That was not to say it was often required—Kel had stopped needing to be carried years ago.
Eirnwin’s bow was solemn enough, but he couldn’t stop his eyes from crinkling at the corners. “Good morning, my lord. What shall I fetch for you today?”
Kel could wear shirts and tunics that would fit any boy roughly his stature, but his pants were all specially made, much wider than the usual fashion. This was to avoid chafing, to accommodate swelling, and, he suspected, to obscure the abnormal shape of his legs. “Give me the blacks,” he told Eirnwin, “and my new tunic, and a cloak. It’s cold today.”
While Eirnwin got the clothes out, Kel used his arms to help move his legs over the side of the bed—bending and turning were what they were worst at. They felt better when he got them into position—like this, the soles of his feet just resting against the floor, they scarcely felt deficient. They felt like they could carry him.
His legs weren’t weak, he liked to say, just stupid—they didn’t understand what they were supposed to do. They hadn’t understood the way they were supposed to grow, either, so they were crooked and stiff, perpetually swollen at the joints and prone to random spurts of pain when he put his weight on them the wrong way. That was why he had the crutches. Eirnwin had made him the first set when he was very small, then kept enlarging and refining them as he grew, so that he must have gone through more than a half dozen sets by now. At first Eirnwin had tried to make them beautiful, getting woodworkers to carve them with all sorts of fantastic shapes, but Kel had refused that, even when he was little. They were what they were; he preferred to be as little aware of them as possible, to acknowledge them no more than he had to.
While Kel pulled his tunic on, Eirnwin knelt on the floor, guiding his legs into the trousers. He had to have special shoes, too, to accommodate the gnarls and high arches of his feet, and Eirnwin slipped those on for him as well, to spare him the pai
n of drawing his knees up. Then he passed Kel his crutches, and they left for his father’s study.
Everything about Second Hearth testified to the faded glory of the Rayls: the curtains were moth-eaten, the rugs stained and threadbare, the halls drafty and the mortar crumbling. Kel was fairly certain that if it weren’t for Lessa’s lungs, no one would even bother to dust. He was always searching for it, squinting into shafts of sunlight to see if the servants had missed a spot. He didn’t mind any of the rest—who else in the kingdom even had faded silk, anyway?—though he knew it caused his father pain. But Lessa’s health couldn’t be trifled with, no matter what other corners they had to cut.
King Kelken was pacing before the window when they entered, his goblet of wine barely touched. He was not truly bald, but the coat of chain he wore left only his high forehead and receded hairline visible, so that he seemed as hairless as Eirnwin. His nose was sharp, his eyebrows thick and severe, but his delicate chin allowed vulnerability to slip into his expression from time to time, as if through a crack in his defenses. “My son,” he said.
Kel could not truly bow, not with the crutches, but he bent his head. “Father,” he replied, wondering at the formality. “Did you … want to tell us something?”
His father gestured to a nearby chair, and Eirnwin helped Kel settle himself into it, arranging his legs so they bent with minimal pain. His father looked away while they moved, his gaze flitting out the window, and he did not glance back at them until Eirnwin had stepped away. “Kelken,” his father said, “I have never condescended to lie to you, and I will not start now. I have done all I could think to do, yet we are still too weak. If Hallarnon attacks us, Reglay will fall. And our only hope—that Elgar will choose not to attack—grows slimmer every day. Can you understand what this means?”
Kel suppressed a twitch of irritation—of course he knew what it meant. His father could hardly have spoken more plainly. “I understand that we’re all in danger,” he said instead. “I understand that just fighting won’t work.”
His father bowed his head. “Yes.” He looked out the window again, drawing the fingers of one hand over the knuckles of the other. “Our only hope is to secure strong allies,” he said at last. “I have considered the matter carefully, and have made a decision to that end.”
Why was his father drawing things out like this? Why was he avoiding Kel’s gaze? “What is it?” he asked.
His father’s weak chin trembled, his throat working as he swallowed. “Your sister,” he said slowly, “is of a decent age to be married, but I have not wanted to be hasty with her. I would have preferred to give her more time, but I can no longer delay. She will be married, if the gods do not spite me.”
Icy fingers worked their way into Kel’s gut. “She’ll be married to whom?”
“I had only one choice,” his father said. “Issamira is the only power on the continent that can possibly repel Hallarnon now, and we cannot send ships we do not possess out of a port we do not have to cross the sea and beg for help from foreigners who care nothing for our struggles.” He swiped his goblet off the desk, taking a sip he appeared not to taste. “Even before all this, it had been my hope to marry her to Prince Landon, but he has not been found, and at this late hour he likely never will be. So I must appeal to Prince Hephestion. If a marriage can be struck between them, as I believe it can, then Issamira will surely aid us.”
His father only sent for him when he had already made a decision—Kel knew that. That meant he was determined to take this course, however nervous he might seem. So to buy time as much as to hear the answer, Kel asked, “Why have you not called Lessa here? This concerns her much more than me.”
His father’s eyes flicked to the bottom of his goblet. “I have already informed her.”
“What did she say?”
That finally drew his father’s gaze to his. “Why, that the choice was mine to make, of course. And so it is, and I have made it.”
Kel’s arms were prickling, but he cleared his throat. “No.” Beside him, he felt Eirnwin flinch.
His father’s jaw clenched, stilling any last quivering of his chin, and his heavy brows drew together. “Alessa does not refuse, yet you seek to answer on her behalf?”
“You can’t marry her to Hephestion,” Kel insisted. “Don’t you know what they say about him?”
“Kelken, I do not base my decisions on rumors I hear from servants about a foreign prince they have never seen. I would have thought you had the judgment not to pay them any heed either.”
“They say women have been coming from all over the continent to try to marry him,” Kel said. “They say he likes a different one every day—and then he gets bored of them and casts them aside.”
“They also say he is handsome and gentle-humored and beloved by his people,” his father said. “If you insist on giving voice to rumors, you must admit those as well.”
Kel had heard that, it was true. But what did it matter whether the lordling treating Lessa as he pleased was handsome or not? “You don’t see, Father. You don’t want to see.”
“Don’t I?” his father said, his fingers clenched tight around his cup. “What don’t I see?”
Kel shook his head. “Lessa will never make it to Issamira anyway. She can’t cross the border; you know that. The air there is foul; even people who have never had trouble breathing go into coughing fits, or choke outright during dust storms. She’ll never make it. She’ll get sick.”
His father frowned, but the tension in his fingers eased, and he set the cup down. “If she stays here, she’ll be worse than sick when Elgar finds her. This journey is the only thing that can save us, Kelken.”
Somehow it was harder to argue with his father when he looked sad than when he stormed and scowled, though Kel had never been able to figure out why. “Please don’t send Lessa away.” It wasn’t what he’d been expecting to say, and he hated the way his voice trembled as he said it. “Please.”
“Kelken, she must marry eventually—she can’t simply stay here forever.” He sighed. “You must understand: I’m not punishing her—I want only what is best for her, no less than I want what is best for you. Though you are so young, you show a thoughtfulness and determination that would put grown men to shame; you have never preoccupied yourself with childish things, so it would be wrong to tell you that childishness prevents you from seeing the truth. But only experience can teach you how bitter a king’s choices must sometimes be. One day you will have that experience, and the wisdom that comes only with time. You will know then that a king cannot flinch from a decision, even one that pains him to his soul.” King Kelken turned away. “A choice was presented to me, and I have made it. Your sister has already accepted it, and so must you.”
* * *
“What did you say?” Kel asked Eirnwin as soon as they had gotten him settled back into a chair in his own chambers.
Eirnwin blinked at him. “Beg pardon, my lord? I rather thought you were about to chastise me for not speaking, not for speaking.”
Kel shook his head. “My father never listens to anything I say, but he’ll listen to you—that’s why he tells you everything first. He called for me today because he’d decided, but you were in his chambers for so long yesterday because it was difficult. That means you must have argued against him. So what did you say?”
Eirnwin sank heavily into a chair. “That holds no importance now, my lord. The king has decided.”
“Even so, I want to hear it.”
Eirnwin sighed. “I reminded him of truths he does not like to think on. That is why we spoke for so long a time.”
“You reminded him of what?”
Eirnwin’s hands twisted in his lap, as if they were trying to speak for him. Finally he said, “Alessa is a beautiful girl, my lord, and kind enough to delight anyone with even the slightest notion of what is good. She will make a fine wife, and one day, gods willing, she will be sister to a king. But her blood…” His mouth worked as if he would finish the
sentence, but ultimately he could not. “I need not say the rest.”
He didn’t have to, because Kel knew it all too well. Alessa’s blood would never be royal, because his father was not hers. “My father always honored her—”
“Yes, my lord, but that doesn’t mean that Prince Hephestion and his family will. The king sees this proposal as a mark of his regard—they may very well see it as a slight. What sort of man offers a bastard to a prince?” His hands chafed against each other. “If Prince Landon still lived, I would have counseled your father to proceed with the match. But as it stands…”
Kel had met Prince Landon only once, many years ago, when he came to Reglay on his father’s behalf. He had stayed inside while his soldiers hunted with Kel’s father’s, preferring to sit at the high table with Kel and spin tales of Issamiri heroes. He never averted his gaze from Kel’s legs, or wasted time saying how sorry he was. It was so strange to think of him as dead. “Are you sure?” he asked Eirnwin.
“Well, not entirely—there is no way of knowing how much Prince Landon would have been influenced by his family. But—”
“No, not about Lessa,” Kel said. “Are you sure Prince Landon is—that he really died?”
Eirnwin shrugged helplessly. “I cannot claim to know Prince Landon’s fate for certain, my lord, but his father is certainly dead, and his country certainly needs a ruler. I have read many a tale in my life, and I know that important personages who mysteriously disappear tend to reappear just as mysteriously. But Issamira has spared no resource searching for him. If he is lost, how have they not found him? If he is held captive somewhere, why have his jailers made no demands? If he does not return because he will not, what could he possibly be doing that is more important than ruling his country?” He spread his hands. “In the end, the reason for his absence makes little difference—the result is the same. Issamira must have a monarch, even if it is only until Prince Landon returns. But I doubt we will ever see him again.”
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