Tales of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  He felt confident about the treaty, though he wasn’t sure Tremontane wasn’t getting the better end of the deal. That would depend on how excited people back home would be at the prospect of breeding Kirkellan warhorses with their smaller ones. And George Donaldson was going to have kittens when he found out Jeffrey had just doubled the number of soldiers he was responsible for, back home, and that the new ones didn’t even speak Tremontanese. Well, George would just have to live with it. Mairen had been awfully accommodating about sending them. Did she think they’d be protection for the ambassador?

  A Kirkellan ambassador in Tremontane. Where would they put him, or her? No, her, the matrian had said her. Could they set her up in a house in the city, like the Veribold and Eskandel ambassadors? That might be too much culture shock for a woman raised as a nomad who’d never lived in anything but a tent before. The palace? Same problem, really. He groaned. Why hadn’t he thought of all this before he agreed to an exchange of ambassadors?

  He sat up and ran his fingers through his hair, then tried to finger-comb it back down. The ambassador could wait until tomorrow. Right now he had to meet with the commanders of the army to discuss the occupation of the territory. No. Right now he had to eat.

  They were still discussing the occupation of the territory the next morning, a discussion which only ended because the king’s tent started coming down around them as the camp was dismantled. Jeffrey led everyone out of the collapsing tent and said, “Marcus, I’m going to leave the rest of it to you. All I insist on is that you not push the occupied territory any farther north than it is. We’re not so in need of land that we have to snatch as much as we can from Hrovald. I’m satisfied with the line we’ve drawn, so no excuses, understood?”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” Marcus rumbled, glancing sharply at Colonel Stubbs beside him, who’d been the one most vocal about taking more territory. Stubbs made an exasperated face, but said, “I understand, your Majesty.”

  “Your Majesty, I—” began Colonel Williams, but Jeffrey silenced him with a gesture.

  “Sorry to cut you off like that,” he said in a low voice, “but I know what you were going to complain about and they’re almost here. Some of them might even speak Tremontanese.” The ambassador and her retinue were approaching. Jeffrey raised his hand to salute the rider at the head of the long column of Kirkellan, then grinned broadly.

  “Imogen!” he said. “Are you the ambassador, then? Mairen said…but this really is wonderful. I know Elspeth will be thrilled to see you. Oh—you’re injured.”

  Imogen sat her horse like a statue, a bandage wrapped around her head. As Jeffrey spoke, she unbent barely enough to give him a half-smile. She didn’t seem very happy to be there. Looks like Mairen put pressure on her again. I’ll have to make sure she feels comfortable in Aurilien. “It is nothing,” she said, putting her hand to her head. “It is—they bleed much. But it is almost healed.”

  “I’m glad to hear this. So, I remember your tiermatha, and this is the company Mairen promised to send with you. Are you their, um, captain?”

  Imogen shook her head, turned and gestured to a couple of women behind her. “These are Rhion and Fionna,” she said. “They are…leaders of part of the company that was mine in the battle. It is to say, the company is in two parts, and Rhion leads one and Fionna leads the other. I have only my tiermatha now.” She smiled, a real smile, not forced or cold. “Ambassador is much work, I think.”

  “Depends on how you do it,” Jeffrey joked. When she looked blank, he added, “I am pleased to meet Rhion and Fionna both. This is Colonel Fred Williams, commander of the Home Guard. He’ll be your superior officer,” he added, addressing the two women by reflex even though their blank expressions told him they spoke not one word of Tremontanese.

  Imogen was frowning again. “You say he is better than them?”

  “No, I didn’t—oh, no, ‘superior officer’ doesn’t mean superior like better, it means he’s in command. Like you were in command of Rhion and Fionna during the battle.”

  Imogen’s face cleared. “I understand,” she said, and turned in her seat to say something to Rhion and Fionna. Both women grew steadily more concerned the longer Imogen talked. Then Rhion burst out angrily and at length. Williams said, “I told you I thought this was a bad idea, your Majesty.”

  “Just give them time to get used to it.” He hoped he was right about that.

  Imogen turned back and said, “It is all right. She is concerned about the language.”

  “See?” Jeffrey said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Imogen was speaking to the two women again. Eventually, they looked at one another, and Fionna said something that made all three women laugh. “She says it will be an adventure,” Imogen explained.

  Williams didn’t look happy. He turned to look at Jeffrey, who raised an eyebrow at him, daring him to complain further. “All right,” he said, “I’ll keep an open mind. But I hope they learn to speak our language.”

  “Maybe it is you who will speak ours,” Imogen said tartly, and Jeffrey felt a twinge of unease. Despite his words, he was starting to worry again about the wisdom of this plan. He’d accepted a hundred warriors who couldn’t communicate with anyone except each other and an ambassador who kept getting angry and didn’t seem to want to be there. She hadn’t even dismounted, and he was getting a crick in his neck having to look up at her all the time. It looked as if he was the one who would have to be the diplomat.

  “Imogen, this is General Marcus Anselm, Colonel Stubbs, Colonel Williams you’ve met, and Diana Ashmore, Baroness of Daxtry. She’s been responsible for our defenses along the old Ruskalder border. Colonel Stubbs is Marcus’s second in command. They’ll stay here and Colonel Williams will return with us to Aurilien. Marcus, I’ll have those other telecoders to you by the end of next week. Diana, we’ll see you in Aurilien in a week or so, yes? Keep me apprised of any developments. I want to know if the Ruskalder even waggle their furry buttocks in our direction.”

  He looked around for his horse and saw a page leading it toward him. I hope I don’t look like an idiot mounting this thing, not in front of all those Kirkellan who probably could ride before they could walk. He mounted without assistance and without looking too foolish. His father would have given them a real show. “Let’s move out,” he said, prodding the black gelding in the ribs, and led their little procession across the fields in the direction of Aurilien.

  It took them most of three days—three long, unpleasant days and two even less pleasant nights—to reach Aurilien. The Kirkellan, naturally, kept to themselves, pitching their own low-roofed tents and cooking for themselves. Jeffrey, with his spacious three-room tent, his pages, his personal guard, and even a cook felt awkward and soft beside them. Imogen remained distant and irritable. He tried to invite her to dine with him and Fred, on the grounds that she was the ambassador, but she refused every time.

  After supper every evening, he lay on his cot, fully clothed, and listened to her talk and laugh with her tiermatha, and felt alone and jealous of their camaraderie. Maybe he’d been wrong about her. It wasn’t as if they’d had all that much contact, but he had thought she might be a friend. He couldn’t wait to get back to Aurilien.

  He now wished Owen had resisted his bride’s big brown puppy eyes and come back to the camp. Fred was a good man, but too class-conscious to be a comfortable companion. He thought about trying to join the tiermatha around their fire, but knew it would be a mistake; he couldn’t fit in and would just feel more awkward and alone than ever.

  They left the plains behind after the first day and traveled south through forests, birch and maple giving way to ash and oak, all of them budding pale green and filling the air with the scent of new growth. Jeffrey breathed in the fresh air and felt himself relax despite his forbidding, silent companion. He didn’t know why Imogen continued to ride by his side when she could ride with her damn tiermatha and share in the jokes he couldn’t understand. Maybe she had some sense of her
duties as an ambassador even if she didn’t want to perform them, though why she’d think riding next to him was one of those duties was beyond his comprehension. She never said anything, and after the first day, when all his efforts to draw her out were rebuffed, he didn’t say anything either.

  On the afternoon of the third day, they came out of the forest to see Aurilien some miles off, and Imogen gave a low gasp. Jeffrey couldn’t blame her; the city’s beauty amazed him every time he came home. It sprawled across the lowland plain like a lazy, sleeping cat, its golden wall failing to restrain the low-roofed buildings that spilled over into the green wooded landscape surrounding it. There was the palace, at the top of a rise where centuries past forts and castles had stood. Jeffrey’s father had once shown him a place where the foundation of one of those castles was still visible, deep in a basement that dripped with condensation. Jeffrey had dug out a piece of the mortar and kept it in his pocket for weeks until he’d forgotten it, left it to dissolve in the laundry. That the golden city should be built on such a fragile foundation now struck him as absurd.

  He realized he’d stopped his horse and forced everyone to pile up behind him, then realized further that he’d stopped because Imogen had. “Do you like it?” he said quietly, not sure if she’d respond. “I so rarely leave the city that I forget what it looks like from out here. From inside, you only see pieces of it, and it’s not so…so…it’s had hundreds of years to become what it is, and it never fails to amaze me. I hope you’ll like it. I know it’s different from what you’re used to.”

  She turned to look at him, and finally she was the Imogen he remembered. “It is beautiful. And powerful,” she said. She turned away, blinking hard, and Jeffrey realized all in a rush that she wasn’t angry, she was homesick. His heart went out to her. He hoped they, he and Elspeth and Owen, could help her feel welcome.

  The road wound back into the forest, still a little chilly in the early spring air even though it was afternoon and sunlight bathed everything in its warmth. Here there were birds courting and challenging one another, and small animals darting between roots or up tree trunks, and occasionally a small deer would flit across the road. Imogen’s head turned constantly to follow the birds, which in turn followed them from tree to tree. A squirrel scampered onto a low-hanging branch, almost at Imogen’s eye level, and she laughed and reached out to touch it, almost stroking its fur before it danced away.

  When they emerged from the trees, the city wall loomed beyond a small settlement of those low-roofed houses. It was less overwhelming than the sight of the whole city had been. The road, which until then had been packed earth, was now covered with broad stones that had been traveled so often they were pressed deep into the ground, their faintly curving tops all that was visible of them. Jeffrey glanced down at his own horse’s shod hooves, and Victory’s unprotected ones, and wondered how hard Tremontanan paved streets would be on Kirkellan hooves. Would they accept horseshoes? Jeffrey decided to leave the worrying about that to the experts.

  Men and women and children came out of the houses to stare at them, then to cheer as they realized who was passing. Jeffrey waved at them, forcing himself to smile. They deserved to see a happy, confident king, one who’d been victorious over the Ruskalder even though that was all down to his experienced generals. What had Marcus said? He represented what they’d fought for? Well, he would do his damnedest to be what they needed, even though he felt like a fraud.

  Beside him, Imogen sat stiffly, not acknowledging the cheers. Jeffrey found himself growing angry with her. Why had she agreed to be the ambassador if she wasn’t going to act like one? She might as well have stayed with her people. Homesickness or no, if he could bear the cheering, she could.

  The crowds grew as they neared the gate, drawn to the king’s banner that went before their extraordinary procession of over one hundred giant horses. Jeffrey felt his smile grow strained. His father had never said what this was like, being the focus of so much adulation. But then Anthony North had been confident. He’d known who he was and what he was capable of. His son wasn’t nearly so certain.

  “You are not well,” Imogen said in a voice that was just barely audible over the shouting. Jeffrey jumped a little. He wasn’t used to hearing her voice.

  “I’m fine,” he said, continuing to wave. “Three years and I haven’t gotten used to this. I feel—” He shook his head just a little as if to negate his words. “I’m not good with crowds, is all.”

  He turned to smile at the people on Imogen’s side of the road. She looked at him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she smiled, startling him almost to the point of forgetting to wave, turned away and began waving at the crowds, who cheered her. She looked back at Jeffrey and said, “We can be not good with crowds together, I think,” and went on smiling and waving as if she was genuinely happy to see each person there.

  Jeffrey followed her example, completely surprised. Had she misunderstood what he’d said—or had she understood him perfectly? At any rate, he hoped this meant she’d given up on being angry, or homesick, or whatever it was, because he wanted her for a friend.

  Jeffrey: Chapter Six

  The gate guards in green and brown saluted them as they passed. Imogen leaned over to Jeffrey and said, “Why is it some wear those colors and some wear the other? The blue and the silver?”

  “Those are the colors of Tremontane,” he explained. “Green and brown for the mountains. Blue and silver is for the house of North, my family. The ones who wear it are in service to my family, not to the kingdom.”

  “The blue and the silver is prettier,” Imogen said, and Jeffrey laughed.

  “Don’t tell anyone, but I agree,” he said. He went back to waving at the crowd, and Imogen joined him. If anything, the throng of people lining the street was larger than the one outside the city, their cries deafening. Jeffrey waved and smiled until his face hurt and his arm was sore.

  Within the wall, Aurilien was beautiful but less grand than when it was seen from a distance. Jeffrey always thought of it as a very cheerful city, the buildings standing straight instead of huddling together waiting for something to attack them as in other cities, such as the much older Kingsport. The roofs were gently sloped, the wooden walls whitewashed or painted neatly, the doors stained dark colors to contrast with the lighter walls. Signs painted with pictures declared what was available inside: a foaming mug for a tavern, a candle for an inn, a bar of soap for a bathing house. People leaned out of upper story windows to cheer their King. Jeffrey wondered idly what he’d do if one of them decided to throw something at him. Keep smiling, probably.

  The crowds thinned somewhat as they passed into a district where the buildings were made of stone rather than wood, and Imogen gaped at these tall, ornate houses with steps leading up to their wide doors and glass windows four or five feet across that lined their faces three or even four rows high. Plants grew in stone pots at the foot of these stairs, some of them flowering, some like tiny trees. Horses pulling carriages pulled to one side as the procession passed, and men and women looked out of them and cheered and waved handkerchiefs.

  Imogen leaned over to him and said, “I do not think those horses are happy.”

  “They’re treated very well,” Jeffrey said, hoping it was true.

  “They think there are better things they can do, like be ridden properly. Why do those people not ride instead of being pulled in carts?”

  “Um…not everyone in Tremontane can ride, Imogen. And I don’t think our horses are as smart as yours.” He wondered if he was slandering Tremontanan horses, but Imogen was actually talking to him instead of acting like a statue, and he didn’t want her to turn to stone again.

  They turned onto Queen’s Way Road, four times as wide as the other streets, and it seemed this was where the rest of the city had come to wait for them, and cheer, and wave. More carriages lined the road, people inside cheering, drivers sitting on top cheering, horses indifferent. Small children ran alongsid
e the procession, though not too close to the Kirkellan horses, whose hooves were as large as some of the children’s heads. Imogen waved down at them, and they beamed at her. Jeffrey wondered how much of what was happening those children understood. How many of these people knew why they were cheering? Were they happy about the successful defeat of the Ruskalder army, or were they cheering a king they thought had engineered that defeat? It was impossible to tell for certain.

  They passed through a fifteen-foot-tall ironwork gate, flung wide to welcome them, and started up a long curving road covered in flat, rectangular stones fitted neatly together in patterns that followed the curve of the road. The road ended at a circular area about one hundred feet across, also covered with the rectangular stones, at the edge of which stood stairs leading up to the palace. The building, if you could call something so immense by such an ordinary word, was pleasantly irregular, with wings added upon wings upon older wings, and Willow North’s tower near the center of the palace complex looked older than all of them. Soldiers in green and brown stood at the foot of the wide steps and at the door at the top of the steps, which was open.

  Colonel Williams saluted Jeffrey and shouted for the riders to continue on through the open area to where the road emerged and curved around the side of the palace. Rhion and Fionna looked uncertainly at Imogen, who waved them on. The tiermatha looked as confused as Rhion and Fionna. Imogen hesitated for a moment, then waved at them to join the line of riders following Williams. One or two of them looked as if they wanted to protest, but wheeled their horses around and led the tiermatha away. This time, Jeffrey saw Imogen blinking back tears. He tactfully looked away as he dismounted, then came around to offer her a hand. “Welcome to Aurilien,” he said.