The Seer: Chapter Seven

    Again Innel stood in the small toilet room at the back of the Frosted Rose. Against the patter of a light spring rain came a familiar series of knocks from the roof by the ceiling vent. Innel responded.

    “Captain,” came a familiar voice.

    “Well?”

    “I found them.”

    “Finally. Where are they?”

    “Gone. When I arrived at Botaros, they had just left the village in some haste. I tracked them to the Sennant river, where they escaped me on a raft.”

    “They escaped you?”

    “Yes. And here is the interesting part, Captain: they were warned that I was coming.”

    “Warned? What makes you think that?”

    “They left a warm room and belongings to face a rough mountain road deep in snow with a babe in arms. At the riverbank they escaped me by mere heartbeats. What would you conclude, Captain?”

    “That makes no sense. Who would even know to warn them?”

    “An excellent question, Captain, since I told no one.”

    After a moment it occurred to Innel what the man was implying. He snorted. “I have no reason to send you after them and warn them as well. Not with what I’m paying you.”

    “No, you don’t,” the other responded mildly. “Perhaps it was coincidence that they left abruptly just before I arrived, and coincidence that they did not seem entirely surprised to see me at the river. What do you think, Captain?”

    Innel thought that the girl had foreseen Tayre coming, as she had foreseen Innel’s duel with his brother. But he would not say so.

    He had underestimated the girl. She was more dangerous than he had thought.

    Worse, anyone who found her would be similarly dangerous. He had to get to her first.

    “I think we will know better when you have brought them to me. A woman, a child, and a baby. How hard can they be to apprehend? Did you follow them?”

    “Yes. They are somewhere off the Sennant, which describes rather a lot of territory.”

    “They’re poor. I don’t think they will have gone far.”

    “Perhaps. But there are clearly forces here beyond the obvious, and thus many things become possible. Fortunes can change quickly.”

    Innel remembered placing bright coins atop a rough wooden table. Who else was overpaying the girl for her answers?

    He exhaled. It came out a growl.

    Before he could respond, Tayre spoke again. “What aren’t you telling me, Captain?”

    Innel hesitated. Careful, he warned himself. “I’ve told you what I know.”

    “My reason and your tone says otherwise. Keep your secrets, and I’ll keep looking, but every day whatever it is that you won’t tell me now might delay my finding her. My expenses rise. I will pass them on to you.”

    Innel exhaled, this time more softly. This was not going well.

    “Captain, how badly do you want this girl?”

    “Badly enough to hire you.”

    “That is my point. If this is that important to you, I suggest you tell me everything. Then I have a better chance of completing your business quickly.”

    Innel considered the man’s words, aware that his silence was an admission. But perhaps the man was right. “You have a reputation for confidences.”

    “I do.”

    Annoying as it was, he was starting to appreciate that Tayre did not use a lot of words to reassure him. But how far to trust?

    A balance of risks.

    “The girl is a Seer,” Innel said at last. “She predicts the future.”

    “She has done this for you?”

    Should he admit that much?

    “She has.”

    “I have been told by those who should know that there are no true Seers.”

    “So have I. Nonetheless, she is one.”

    A thoughtful noise from the vent, and a moment’s pause. “I have had occasion to cross paths with many who can accurately predict outcomes, Captain, but what is cause, and what is consequence, can be cleverly reversed. I can arrange a demonstration if you wish.”

    A reply just short of condescending.

    “No need. I know what a swindler can do.”

    “What has this girl told you, to make you believe this?”

    That was more than he was prepared to reveal. “You’ll have to take my word for it.”

    “As you say. Shall I resume the search?”

    “Yes. And when you find her, I don’t want her getting away again.”

    “I have no intention of letting her get away.”

    “My meaning is this: if you have to wound her to keep her from escaping, do so.”

    “I understand. How whole do you want her?”

    “Alive. Able to speak, at least. Do whatever else you need to.”

    “And the woman and baby?”

    “I no longer care about them. Do whatever you must, but get me the girl.”

 

---

 

    These last few days’ drenching spring rains meant that Innel was more than a little damp when he came in from leading his ever-present guard at a hard sprint around the circumference of the garrison field, where he then beat on a rain-soaked straw-filled sack while his guard looked on, because no one would take up a practice weapon against him.

    “This is absurd,” he had said to Nalas.

    “Captain,” Nalas had said, with amused forbearance. “If I won’t, they won’t. And I won’t.”

    “Why not? I assure you the king would not object to any of you hitting me. With force.”

    “No,” Nalas said, nodding, “but His Royal Majesty might be less than perfectly pleased if we actually damaged you. We like our positions, ser.”

    So Innel beat on stuffed sacks that didn’t hit back, while his guard and everyone else watched. A pretend opponent with all the wit and tactics he might expect.

    When he was done, his guards trailing him into the palace, he stripped off his wet jacket and handed it to Nalas. Someone handed him a towel and he began to dry his head while he considered which of the many plans he was cultivating required his attention most.

    Cern, of course. Nothing else would advance without her.

    She had not so much as permitted him a touch since he returned from Botaros, now pushing a half year. From what his informants were telling him, she wasn’t having any of the other boys to her room, either, and that was something, but he could hardly expect her to marry him until that door was open again.

    The bitch makes the match.

    No one would say that within Cern’s hearing, of course, but the king had said it often enough to the Cohort that it stuck in all of their minds. From early on, the king would bring them to see his dogs and horses mate.

    Bloodlines mattered, the king told them repeatedly, in any breeding match — he’d point out the preferred traits of his dichu dogs and coal-black horses — but if the female wasn’t interested in the male, the offspring would always be flawed. So when the Cohort came of age, they were all sent to the anknapa for training, the boys especially.

    The king liked his lessons vivid and bloody, so the point was driven home by his requiring every member of the Cohort to cull the weakest of those born to the kennels and stables. Slaughtering pups and foals that didn’t meet the king’s standards went a long way to inspiring the Cohort’s focus on learning to make Cern happy.

    Innel was certain that it had occurred to many to wonder just how pleased Cern’s mother was with the king’s attentions a quarter century back, but no one who valued their future would wonder that aloud.

    From his lifelong study of the princess, Innel knew that his strategy back into her bed was simple: a gentle but relentless persistence. He had to seem confident, but not overly so. Just enough to be charming.

    Well, he’d done it before; he could do it again.

    He wiped the sweat from his face and neck as he walked the halls to her suites for what was turning into a daily rejection. Srel quick-stepped to catch up with him.

    “Two of the Lesser Houses are meeting shortly,” Srel said at a low volume. “Glass and Chandler. The lamp contracts. Elupene and Murice are sitting in to approve. They want amendments.”

    “Because the last ten amendments weren’t enough?”

    Srel made a sound that said he didn’t disagree. “In any case, ser, the king’s Seneschal requires your presence.”

    “Of course he does. Well, I doubt this will take long.”

 

---

 

    Outside Cern’s suite, Innel’s guards arrayed themselves alongside her royal guards with now-familiar ease. This time he was allowed inside the antechamber, where his Cohort sister sat on a plush settee, a pleated, black long-jacket across her lap.

    “What did you bring me?” Sachare asked, not looking up.

    She was passing the long seams through her extended fingers as if looking for something, which she probably was, and rolling and biting the buttons as if they might be poorly counterfeited coins.

    “This,” he said, tired of being polite, throwing the wadded-up sweat cloth at her face. Without looking up, she batted it aside. “What shall I bring you next time, Sacha?”

    “Trillium wine, boy.”

    He snorted. Of course she would demand something impossibly rare and commensurately expensive.

    “Something in season, girl. At least give me a chance –”

    The inner door opened. Sachare stood quickly, jacket in hand. They both dipped their heads.

    Cern gave them each a sharp glare, following it with a long, sour look at Innel.

    The room was quiet for a long moment.

    “Inside,” she said to him.

    He followed with alacrity. He did not waste the chance, navigating every caress she allowed him, steering by the set of her shoulders, the cords in her neck, the sound of her breath, the scent at her nape. He missed the hours-long House meeting entirely.

    She was, of course, tight and angry for quite some time. Only partly at him, he knew, but it didn’t matter — this was the opportunity he had been waiting for, and he applied himself entirely to it.

    By the time they were done, she was a little more relaxed, and a touch less furious.

    A good start.

    The next morning, he came by again, and the following as well. She let him inside. He made a habit of showing up so she could get in the habit of saying yes, but left well before it might occur to her to wish him gone.

    And he was missing important meetings.

    So be it.

    The looks he was now getting across the palace told him that word was getting around that he was back in Cern’s good graces.

    The ladder goes up one rung at a time, Pohut would have said.

    It was no time to get overconfident, though, so his every caress was planned, measured, carefully applied. Every look and laugh likewise, no matter how casual it might seem. He had to show Cern that he was strong in the ways she was secretly afraid she was weak, while at the same time avoiding any echo of her father’s mannerisms. Unless they were the ones she even more secretly admired.

    A delicate game. A meticulous seduction.

    In another tenday, she nodded a welcome to him at dinner.

    Another rung up.

    When at last Innel judged he would be likely to succeed, he politely asked if he might be allowed to sit next to her at dinner.

    She shrugged.

    Her father looked on.

    Another rung.

    One night, sitting by her side at the end of a particularly long and well-attended meal that saw nearly all the remaining Cohort in attendance, the king casually opined that autumn was a good time for a wedding.

    The room went dead silent.

    Cern gazed down at her plate, eyes narrowed, lips thin, and said nothing.

    Which was, it seemed, good enough for the king. The next morning, some twenty royal retainers poured into Innel’s apartment, took his measurements, made notes, and began planning what promised to be an astonishingly complicated and impressively expensive event.

    But he would be wed.

    To the princess.

    A lifetime’s goal.

    In even better news, Innel was allotted an allowance to assemble a staff. As tempted as he was to instead put the funds toward finding the girl in Botaros, he now had far too many eyes watching him, so he did as instructed; he took Nalas as his second, and after he made him steward put Srel in charge of settling all the rest.

    At least now, Nalas would do as he was told and hit back.

 

---

 

    “Are you satisfied with the help I obtained for you, Captain?”

    The days had lengthened and warmed, so now Bolah prepared the bitter Arunkel tea that the season’s fashion demanded. She set a silver cylinder on the table between them along with two small matching goblets.

    “Not yet, I’m not.”

    Bolah froze, the etched cylinder clutched in her spotted hands.

    “What has happened?”

    “Nothing has happened,” Innel snapped, letting his annoyance show. “He searches but does not find. A glimpse; then the prey is loose again in the brush.”

    “Ah,” she said, slowly completing her movement to fill his cup and then her own, setting the tea cylinder on the table. “Such things can take time.”

    “I am out of time.” He took a sip, enjoying the tea, if not the conversation.

    Bolah eased herself into the seat across from him and folded her hands together on the table. “Captain, if this man cannot obtain what you seek, it may be that the item cannot be acquired. Few, I assure you, are his equal.”

    “So you have said.” Innel would venture a few inquires of his own, to see what others thought of Tayre’s work.

    Bolah seemed ill at ease.

    Good. Innel was on the path to become royal consort. She should want him happy.

    “Could it be that the item you seek is occluded by some… unknown aspect? Thus… distant and difficult to see?”

    So many words to describe magic, all to avoid being direct. Even here in the privacy of her own home.

    But she might be right.

    “Perhaps.”

    “Then perhaps someone with exceptionally good vision could help speed the search.”

    Good vision. The euphemism for mages. Innel felt a little safer for sleeping in Cern’s bed, but until he was wed to her, even that could be swept away in any number of unforeseeable ways. It paid to be careful.

    “Are any of them in-city?” he asked.

    “My sources say one, perhaps two.”

    “Are they…” He thought of how to put it. “Already on the gameboard?” Under contract to the king, he meant.

    It was a dangerous conversation.

    “One is, perhaps. But…” She considered her answer. “This is another level of expense entirely, Captain. Your credit will not stretch so far.”

    “I have funds.”

    Not long ago, his cohort brother Tok had run with him during his morning’s exercise and whispered to him that his mother, Etallan’s eparch, wanted to be sure that the king was not the only one who had someone with good vision close at hand.

    Some thought House Etallan, with its fingers on mines across the empire, had too much influence. Etallan had done well at the last Charter Court. But Innel knew Tok, and trusted him as much as anyone. If House Etallan was backing him, that was good for him and it was good for Cern.

    As for the actual mage, Innel had mixed feelings. He’d met a few, quietly, and found them not much different than some of the touchy Anandynar royals, expecting to be treated with great deference. With mages, respect first. It paid to handle them like blown glass.

    But if Etallan was paying, then —

    “Tell me when you find one.”

    In spite of vivid tales intended to terrify Arunkel children, negotiating with mages was mostly a matter of tactful diplomacy. Offering them what they wanted, whatever it was. Even mages must eat.

    “My honor to serve,” Bolah said, spreading her hands.

 

---

 

    “Your sister,” Nalas said with a brief smile.

    Innel made a face. “Yes, yes.”

    Srel slowed his work at Innel’s elbow a moment, shot him a warning look.

    “I know. It should only take a moment.”

    Innel was almost late to attend the king in his bath. Srel had been intently sewing an elbow rip in Innel’s amardide and leather jacket, and while the jacket would come off immediately in the damp royal bath, Srel insisted it was essential that he look correct as he walked in.

    “Brother.”

    Cahlen’s clothes, by contrast, were as far from acceptable as was possible to be without her being tossed out of the palace as a beggar. He sniffed a little. How often did she change them?

    “Sister.”

    “The east tower dovecote,” she said.

    “It’s been addressed. The Minister of Palace says –”

    “He says many words. I’ve heard them all. Nothing changes. Nothing is fixed.”

    She reached under her loose jacket and brought out a bundle.

    “I will look into it when I can, Cahlen. But right now I’m a bit busy –”

    She put the item on his side table and unwrapped it. One of her messenger birds, gray and white, blood across its feathers and head, beak splayed, long neck limp. Dead.

 

---

 

    “The males fight when they’re too crowded,” she said. “This was the best of my stud-cocks. Yesterday.”

    “I am late to attend the king,” Innel said. “Do you know about my betrothal to the princess, Cahlen? Do you know what has been happening?”

    “You killed my brother. Now you kill my birds.”

    He exhaled frustration. “Cahlen, you don’t understand –”

    But she had said what she came to say and turned away, walking to the door, brushing close by Nalas as she went. He quickly stepped back. She left.

    Srel focused on the needle he held, tying off a knot, then motioning Nalas close to provide him a knife to cut the thread.

    “We will need to do something about her, ser,” Srel said, stepping back.

    “Start by making sure she looks like she belongs in the palace. If you can figure out the dovecot problem, do that, too.”

    Innel pulled on his boots — again, despite the fact that they would come off as quickly as the jacket once he was in the royal bath.

    Appearances.

    And an honor, he reminded himself. A point of status, anyway; not everyone had even seen the king’s bath, let alone the king inside it.

    Srel was kneeling at his feet, tying the straps of his boot around horn-cut buttons. He stood, reaching up to adjust Innel’s collar and cuffs and run a comb through his hair and beard.

    “Something in magenta?” Innel asked, thinking of Cern.

    As well as Innel knew the palace language of clothes and color, Srel knew it even better. “Not yet, ser.”

    Innel nodded and left.

 

---

 

    The royal bath was a large room, walls tiled in white stone, ceiling and sunken tub inlaid with black and red quartz. From the wide window, cut glass caught the light, casting shaped reflections on the walls that changed with the time of day. In the mornings, one could see birds and butterflies on the far wall and floor. Now, sunset, it was ships, moving slightly, as if on a sea.

    Innel bowed as he entered, waiting for permission. Best to be careful; he’d found that when soaking in hot water, the Anandynar royals could be especially touchy.

    “Yes, yes,” Restarn said impatiently from the huge rectangular tub, waving him in. Steam rose to partially obscure the overhead mosaic, a circle of the sigils of the Eight Houses. Innel made sure that his glance up did not stop at any one sigil; it was the sort of thing he would have looked for, had he been the king.

    A few servants were scattered about the room, bringing scented herbs and soaps, or sponging the king’s royal back.

    Innel’s gaze stopped on the large male slave who suddenly stood before him, blue eyes downcast, blond hair falling in locks down his muscled shoulders. He felt his heart start to race. Only years of careful practice allowed him to keep his gaze moving past the man as if he barely saw him.

    What was it about this particular slave that caught his eye?

    The way he held himself, was what. So much like memory.

    As the slave helped Innel off with his jacket, tension made Innel wanted to swallow, but the king’s line of sight was direct. Instead he walked to the bench, forcing his movements to be calm and unhurried. Sitting slowly, he reached for the ties of his boot.

    Another royal gesture, and a female slave knelt at Innel’s feet, her golden hair cascading over her face as she bent over his boot. The man joined her. One on each foot, each unwrapping leather straps, removing boots and socks.

    “She’s new,” Restarn said. “What do you think of her?”

    Innel forced his gaze to the woman. She turned her face upward for inspection, looking beyond him.

    Sky-colored eyes below long, golden lashes. A slender chin. Full lips. Beyond beautiful.

    “Breathtaking, Sire,” he said, hoping the king would mistake the oddness in his tone for awe.

    The king chuckled.

    Look at something else. Think of something else.

    Through the far window the sun was setting in vibrant shades of orange and vermilion. From the Great Houses to the bay’s shimmering sea, the city seemed gilded in gold. A marvel of glass-craft, this window, well beyond the present-day ability of House Glass. Mage-made, most likely.

    Though again, not something to say aloud. Only the king could break both custom and laws with impunity.

    Innel tried to remember which of the Anandynar royals had built this bath. The Grandmother Queen, he was pretty sure. A pragmatic ruler, Nials esse Arunkel, quietly rumored to have kept mages more openly than her descendants. Why Restarn, who revered her enough to have coins minted in her likeness, did not do likewise, he did not know.

    When Cern came to power, well. Perhaps then.

    “I’m thinking of breeding her, Innel. Her hair is soft as silk. Go on, feel it.”

    Willing his breath to slow, Innel put a hand on the woman’s head.

    Just like one of the king’s puppies, he told himself.

    “And the other. Go on, see how soft his hair is, too.”

    Gold inside as well.

    Innel’s stomach lurched.

    It occurred to him that the king might be doing all this to unsettle him, but surely the incident had happened too long ago for him to think Innel would still be affected. He wanted to look at the king, judge his expression, but he didn’t dare. Not until he had made a good show of doing as he was told.

    He drew the woman’s tresses through his hand. Then, affecting as much ease as he could, put a hand on the man’s head as well.

    How old had he been? No more than seven, surely.

    Innel remembered standing in the hallway that day, head bowed as the king and his entourage strode past. Then he had made the mistake of looking up. At a gesture from the king, one of his guards grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along.

    Later, Innel would come to recognize the expression on the king’s face at that moment, an assessing scrutiny edged with amusement, and know that it presaged something unpleasant. Then, though, all he felt was pride that he had been selected while his cohort siblings were left behind.

    As he walked behind the king with guards and retainers, a man strode at his side, naked to the waist, blond hair falling to his mid-back. One of the king’s fabled slaves, Innel knew, though he had only seen one at a distance before, at a musical performance in the Great Hall. A lithe woman, it was, kneeling at the king’s side, his hand on her shimmering head as the music began. Innel had stared wide-eyed at the exotic creature until Pohut, standing next to him, hit him sharply in the ribs to make him stop.

    Walking along side, the young Innel stole another glance at the blonde man, trying to understand what about him was impressive. Clad only in simple black trousers, hands shackled in iron bands, he somehow looked anything but a slave. What was it?

    The way he moved, Innel realized. How he held his head and shoulders. As if he were in command not only of this group of guards and retainers, but the king himself, even the entire palace. The king’s royal guard did not move as well as this man. Not even the king, he thought. The slave put him in mind of the king’s best stallions, who strutted and galloped as if the world existed to serve them.

    Innel found himself standing up straighter, changing the roll of his shoulders, the tilt of his chin, even his stride, as he tried to emulate the compelling blond man who walked beside him.

    The group descended one flight of stairs and then another, then through a corridor Innel had never seen before, to a room deep underground. They streamed in, door thudding shut behind. At a heavy wooden table, the slave was roughly shoved prone, held fast by a handful of guards.

    At a nod from the king, one of the servants drew a knife. In a single, fast motion he sliced the man’s throat open. Gasping, thrashing, blood pulsed from the blond man’s neck, splattered across his pale chest.

    The young Innel clenched his fists, mouth dropped open, eyes wide. With a horrified shock, he realized the king was watching him, his expression one of disappointment.

 

---

 

    “You may go if you wish,” the king had then said.

    Only two years in the Cohort then, but the young Innel knew perfectly well that these words were far from true. He tightened his stomach, clenched his jaw, and forced his gaze back to the man on the table, who was twitching and taking a very long time to die.

    “You think we’ll find gold inside, Innel?” the king had asked.

    What was the right answer? He desperately wished Pohut were here to give even so much as glance for guidance.

    He knew the story, of course: how the pale-headed northerners had gold inside them, like pearls in oysters, which accounted for their pale hair. But was it true?

    “I don’t know, Sire.”

    Steady, he told himself. This would be over soon.

    But it was not. The servants first cut the man’s golden hair at the scalp. The long locks were closely inspected, offered to the king, then laid aside. Next they cut into the dead man’s face and scalp, pulling skin away, digging out the eyeballs, handing each part to others who stood by to take it, making careful examination, often cutting it apart further on another table, before dropping the bits into buckets.

    The slave’s fingers were cut off, skin stripped away in small segments, ligaments pulled off bone, bones crushed with mallets against the stone floor. Each piece again meticulously reviewed, given to the king at a word to inspect. Blood dripped off the table, sluiced with water onto the sloped stone floor, oozing redly into a central drain beneath. They cut into the stomach and pulled out organs trailing intestines, dicing them into small bits on another side table. As one might prepare sausage for a stew. All the bits were then strained through a weave in a careful search, liquid dripping through.

    Innel felt sick.

    There was very little talk. The sounds of bones being ground. Bits of wet meat dropping into buckets. The room stank of blood, offal, and emptied bowels.

    It took hours. Innel held himself as still as a statue, not daring to even look away from the table, terrified he might find the king watching him.

    When at last the body had been completely taken apart, the table empty but for the tiniest bits, and soaked in blood, buckets of meat and pulverized bone lined the wall.

    Nothing that remained was recognizable as the man who had walked beside him in the corridor.

    Servants then hefted the buckets and left to take the remains to feed the royal pigs.

    The young Innel found himself wondering if the blond man had known this was coming as he walked here so proudly. If he had, surely he would have fought it, even knowing that it would do no good.

    Or perhaps he had indeed known, and knowing was what had given him the bearing that had so impressed Innel.

    “Now,” the king said. “We are finally and completely certain.” And then he had laughed, a sound that haunted Innel for many nights after.

    There was no gold inside. Not a single flake.

    With a bow to the king, a servant offered him the long strands of gold-colored hair. Long, long locks of shimmering hair.

    Much like the long, long locks that Innel now held in his hand as he sat in the royal bath room, under the king’s close scrutiny from the tub.

    Restarn snapped a finger, motioned, and both slaves stood quickly, the woman’s long tresses flowing through Innel’s hands as she pulled away. The two of them left through a side door.

    Innel exhaled softly, finally daring a look at Restarn, finding his expression unfathomable.

    “You seem distracted, Innel. Not getting enough sleep?” The king grinned widely. Of course he knew that Innel was sleeping with Cern.

    “No, Sire, I am not.” Innel gave a small smile in return to show he shared the king’s amusement and met his gaze, but broke away first.

    Just like with the dogs: show strength, but not dominance, not until you’re absolutely sure you can win.

    That would come.

    “Innel, we must talk about the wedding.”

    “Yes, Your Majesty,” Innel responded, relieved to be discussing the future rather than remembering the past.

    “I need someone to go to Arteni.”

    “Arteni, Sire?” Innel frowned. A town along the Great Road, a central collection point for grain in the surrounding fertile lands. Contracted directly to the crown in the last Charter Court, as he recalled.

    “They’ve made the poor decision to sell some of their harvest to traders in Munasee. Maybe they thought they could get a better price there. Maybe they thought we wouldn’t notice.” He gave Innel an unpleasant smile. “An insult to me, personally, and an affront to our hungry citizens. I need someone to go and sort it out. Someone I can trust not to be soft about it.”

    Innel could see where this was going. “It would be a great honor, Your Majesty. But with the wedding –”

    “Exactly. I can’t marry my daughter to a captain. It would be embarrassing.” At this Innel felt a chill down his spine. “I could promote you, of course, but not without –” Restarn waved his hands as if searching for words, splashing a little water — “some demonstration of your capability to the generals. They think you’re unproven.”

    “Unproven? They’ve been testing me for years. The Lord Commander in particular.” He still had the scars.

    “Yes, yes, I know. But they’ll say pretend battles make for pretend soldiers.”

    It was one of the king’s favorite maxims. Of course they would say it.

    “I’ve been out on campaign repeatedly, Sire, and –”

    “Not in command,” said sharply. “I have to give them something if I’m going to give you a higher rank.”

    There — he’d said it twice. The prize of advancement now dangled irresistibly in Innel’s mind. Were it bestowed on him by the king, it would say a great deal about the monarch’s faith in him. Given his lack of bloodline and House, that could matter, once he was wed to Cern. Could matter a great deal.

    But Arteni was many days south. It would take him time to mobilize an armed force, even a small one. And how long would this sorting out take?

    Innel could easily be gone months. That would delay the wedding. Take him from the palace. Away from all his plans, which might unravel quickly if he were not here to oversee them.

    Away from Cern, whose interest might cool if he could not regularly remind her why she liked him.

    No; there must be another way.

    “You’ll need to install a new town council,” the king said. “Make sure they observe what you do to the old one — you understand. And the mayor, I don’t have to tell you how to handle him, do I?”

    “Sire, the wedding –”

    “We’ll put it off. Short delay, but for good cause. Midwinter, most likely.”

    Midwinter?

    Innel thought furiously, quickly turning over what he might prudently say next. Not a time for missteps.

    “Or,” said the king, drawing the word out, “I could send Sutarnan. He’s eager for the chance to prove himself. At times I think Cern might still hold some fondness for that boy, cheeky as he is. And Mulack — I still wonder if he might be a bit of a late-blooming rose.”

    Mulack was nothing like a late-blooming rose. He was eparch-heir to House Murice, and had no interest in getting his hands dirty.

    But the point was now more than clear. He was being played on the king’s board. To resist would mean being taken out of the game.

    He had no choice.

    “It will be my great honor to serve, Your Majesty.”

    “Yes, it will. Better get to it, then.” He motioned, and servants came running to give Innel back his boots and jacket.

    He’d been dismissed to what promised to be a sizable task. Standing, he bowed deeply, keeping his seething entirely on the inside.

    Again his mind went to the Botaros girl. If he had her in hand, all this would have been avoided. Even now, she could advise him how to achieve a fast victory south.

    Where in the many hells was Tayre?