The Seer: Chapter Twelve

    The first thing Innel did when he returned to the palace from Arteni was find a bath. Caked in dirt, blood, and the ever-present dust of Arteni’s grain mills, he stripped off his clothes and kicked them away from the tub, lowered his aching body into the hot and salted soaking water.

    “Burn them,” he told Srel.

    Srel made a sound intended to convey acquiescence but which Innel knew really wasn’t. Coming from deep poverty, Srel was incapable of disposing of anything that could possibly be reclaimed or repaired. But Innel wouldn’t see the clothes again, and that was enough.

    As for Cern and her father, well, this time they could both wait. He would be clean and fed before he faced either of them.

    “Is she still marrying me?” he asked Srel bluntly.

    Another sound, this time thoughtful. “The wedding plans were put on hold when you left, ser.”

    Disappointing but not unexpected. The campaign had taken the three months he’d anticipated and then some, but if the slog of dirt and blood, the tedious meetings and hurried executions had earned him a promotion, it would be worth it.

    Colonel, most likely, he thought. General would be far better, of course, but it would be a stretch. Still, if the king wanted it for him and pushed, it was possible. He wondered what the other generals, decades his senior, born to the Houses or royals, would think of the king promoting him that far, that fast.

    “She has shown no favor toward anyone else, ser.”

    The other men of the Cohort were his only competition now. That she was seeing none of them was good news.

    “And my reports to the king?” From the field, sent by Cahlen’s birds.

    “I am told he read them very closely.”

    Carefully written to achieve that very end. When the Cohort had been taught by minstrels and versifiers how best to fashion a story, Innel and his brother had paid keen attention. Thus Innel’s reports were more than factual; each started with a triumph, however minor, and ended with an uncertainty, the pattern intended to make the king eager to read the next dispatch describing how Innel sev Restarn was taking Arteni in the king’s name.

    The people of Arteni had been astounded at the force that had been called down on them for attempting to sell grain outside their contract. They had at first presented some optimistic resistance that Innel crushed with heavily armored cavalry that crashed through the rusted iron gates. The line of millers and farmers, holding pitchforks and scythes, had broken fast. Those who had not run had died quickly.

    Those who had run had also died, but more slowly.

    After that it had been a matter of rounding up the troublemakers and giving them the choice between providing names and being hung with the next morning’s executions.

    Innel made sure bread was passed out to the watching crowds to help them understand that they now ate by the king’s mercy.

    What had taken the most time had been restructuring the town’s governance. The old council had stood firm in their insistence that this should be a negotiation rather than a surrender, finally retreating with their families into the mayor’s house, where Innel explained that they were wrong by burning it to the ground. The ashes didn’t argue.

    His nights had been spent crafting these missives to flatter and intrigue the king, working in repetition to cover for the one or two in ten messenger birds that weather or predation would prevent returning home to the palace.

    Cahlen had assured him that all these birds would return. Every last one of them. She had come to his rooms early the morning he had left, a cowed-looking assistant in tow carrying cages of noisy and annoyed birds.

    “My best,” Cahlen had told Innel. “No hawks or bad weather will stop these.” Her eyes were bright and too wide. “Don’t put your hands on them. They bite.” Innel glanced at the assistant handler’s heavy leather gloves.

    “They bite?” Before Cahlen, messenger birds were not known for their temper.

    “Make sure you feed them,” she had said, her tone cross, as though he had already forgotten.

    He took the soap Srel offered him, and began to scrub.

    “What was the bird count?” he asked, dunking his head, feeling months of tension and dirt come off in the hot water.

    “Eleven.”

    He made a surprised sound. Cahlen had been right: every bird had returned. He must remember to tell her so. With luck, she would take it as a compliment.

    When he toweled off, taking clean clothes from Srel, he asked: “Who should I see first?”

    The smaller man dug into a pocket and held out something to Innel.

    An earring. A magenta sapphire.

    Cern it was, then.

 

---

 

    “Took you long enough.” Her first words were softened a little by her hand on his face. She gathered his fingers in her own and drew him into her room. He hid his relief that she was glad to see him.

    When, much later, she called for a plate of food and drink, the food came arrayed like a miniature garden, cheese and olives cleverly cut into the shape of flowers, and surrounded by hedges of herbed breads.

    This, he realized, was wealth. Great wealth. Not the mere substance of the food, which was by itself rare and extraordinary, as befitted a princess, but the presentation itself. For a moment he simply stared at the miniature landscape so painstakingly prepared, laid across a lace-cut red ceramic platter that sat atop a table polished to a deep mahogany sheen. Around the edge of the table, inlaid in ebony and cherrywood, was the star, moon, pickax, and sword of the Anandynar sigil.

    “The earring is a nice touch,” she said to him with a wry half-smile.

    The irony of this struck him; the sapphire in his ear was worth a tiny fraction of what was arrayed before him, but it was his gesture that mattered to her.

    I thought of you every moment I was away.

    No, she wouldn’t like that. Something more pragmatic.

    He smiled. “Let no one wonder where my loyalty lies.”

    To his surprise, rather than be pleased, as he had expected, her gaze swept away across the room, her half-smile gone. A spike of anxiety went through him.

    “What excitement have I missed?” he asked lightly, pretending not to have noticed her ill ease.

    Her lengthening silence did nothing to reassure him. She was, he realized, trying to figure out how to tell him something.

    That by itself was impressive: the heir-apparent to the Arunkel throne was struggling with how to say something to him, the mutt. Flattering, to be sure, but it could not mean good news. He watched closely as she put on a grimace that meant she felt she had no choice.

    And that meant it was about her father.

    Dread slowly trickled down his spine. She could certainly take him to bed for entertainment and marry someone else if she chose. Had he been cast aside, after all? What had happened while he had been away?

    She glanced at him, and he gave her yet another easy smile, the work of years of practice, hoping to calm her. Or himself.

    At last she cleared her throat and gave a forced laugh. “How would you like to be the lord commander?”

    Lord commander? The highest rank in the military?

    “Of the Host of Arunkel?” he asked, incredulous, his careful presentation of equanimity swept away.

    “Yes,” she said, tone suddenly dry, “that would be the one.”

    Could the king have decided to elevate him that far, that fast? Surely it was not possible.

    But then, perhaps it was.

    He could not suppress a smile of elation. “How would I like it?” He asked. “It…”

    This was as far from bad news as possible, to be made the commander of the empire’s armies. It made sense, now that he thought about it; coming as he did from outside the palace and far below the Houses, Innel could well imagine Restarn deciding such a rank would appropriately elevate him to marry his daughter.

 

---

 

    Innel would need to get the generals on his side, and quickly. Lismar, the king’s sister, first and foremost. Make a point of showing great humility. Have it known he was only complying with the king’s direct command.

    A tricky prospect, politically. It would take a not insignificant amount of effort to arrange. But it could be done.

    Cern was watching him, waiting for an answer.

    “It would be my great honor to serve the crown,” he finished.

    “Yes,” she agreed, shortly, but she did not sound happy.

    “What is it, my lady?” he asked, unable to contain his tension at this unexpected reaction. “Do you think it is a bad decision?”

    It wasn’t. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that it was a good outcome. A far better one than to promote him to colonel or even general. He was, after all, marrying the heir to the throne.

    She stood, her hands waving about aimlessly, a motion that signified frustration. She turned away, took a bite of a smoked cheese flower and chewed slowly.

    That she was not looking at him was not a good sign. With effort he said nothing, knowing better than to press.

    “I’m to offer it to you,” she said at last.

    “You? Forgive me, my lady, but you are no –”

    A sharp gesture cut him off. “I know, Innel. I’m quite aware I’m not queen. I’m not an idiot.”

    “Of course not, my lady.”

    “Of course not, my lady,” she echoed, mockingly. “Because he told me to, is why,” she spat.

    The king.

    “But –”

    “Shut up, Innel. I know perfectly well what you’re going to say. But here it is: you can have the lord commandership from my hand, or you can petition him for a colonelship.”

    Petition? That’s what his hard, bloody work these last months had gained him? He would be allowed to petition?

    Tempted as he was to reply, he had already opened his mouth once without thinking, and with Cern in this mood, that was a misstep. He clamped his mouth shut and considered.

    He could not take the Lord Commandership from Cern. It would put him in a weak position and spark controversy, but to refuse it from her hand would be an insult to her, which he could afford even less.

    A typical Restarn move, to force him into an impossible situation with no good choices.

    He also could not push the decision back on her, tempting as that was; her faith in him was based in large part on his ability to navigate challenges like this one.

    She watched him as he thought.

    He desperately wanted to ask her to relate the conversation she had had with her father that had led to this outcome, to gain clues as to what was in the monarch’s mind, but that would underscore her weak position with her father, doing little to reassure in this difficult time. Cern’s confidence was already a thin thread.

    It would be best to get through the wedding and coronation. Then any decisions she had made, like promoting Innel to the highest military position in the empire, would be far harder to question.

    But here and now, what to do?

    Well, he was wearing her colors. He had laid everything he had at her feet. Really, he could not refuse.

    “It would be my great honor to serve you in this capacity, my lady.”

 

---

 

    After a time he convinced Cern to wait to name him as lord commander until at least after the wedding. It would seem a more obvious move then, he explained.

    And she would be one step closer to the throne, all her pronouncements carrying considerably more weight.

    “Whatever you think best, Innel,” was all she had said. She was relying on him to make sense of the tangled political forces at play, a challenge she seemed to care little for. A challenge he had been studying his whole life.

    She had been tinkering with one of her collapsible in-air creations, a set of wooden rods with twine and chain between them, some pulled tight, others balanced delicately on top of each other. In the years since she had shown him these works, he’d seen her use stiffened fabric, small lengths of metal and wood, and even straw.

    This particular set was suspended from the ceiling, in an equilibrium of many parts. As she touched it on one end, the pieces of wood at the other clinked against each other, making an almost musical sound.

    Collapsible so that they could be taken down and hidden quickly when her father came into her rooms without warning, as he used to do often.

    From their conversations, Innel knew her father had not confided in her his embarrassment at her marrying a captain, as he had to Innel.

    So be it. Innel would petition no one. Let Restarn decide how much embarrassment he could stomach.

    Regardless, once they were wed, Innel would no longer be the mutt who had somehow survived the Cohort. He would be princess-consort.

    The thought sent a chill through him. For a split second, he found himself thinking he must find his brother and tell him.

 

---

 

    “I’m busy,” Innel responded to Mulack, putting a snap into the words, even though it was a good idea; it had been too long since he’d felt out his support in the Cohort.

    He was truly busy; the king had called him back into service, and he now faced interminable council meetings that required summary reports, ongoing House contract negotiations with high-stakes outcomes, and again the near-daily work of sitting in the steam-filled royal bath to hear the king complain.

    In a way it was reassuring that the king had not forgotten him, but it rankled that he had not yet made good on his promise to promote him, either.

    Nor had he petitioned. Still a captain.

    But, as the saying went, not all captains had the same rank.

    “Taba is in port,” Mulack insisted. “A good sign.”

    “It’s no sign at all. She was scheduled to be here.”

    Mulack waved this away. “We must celebrate your victorious return.” He managed to keep his mocking tone to a bare hint of derision. “You’re a hero, after all.” He clapped him on the shoulder.

    Innel looked down at the shorter, thicker man he had, for excellent reasons, not liked since early childhood. “I have a report to prepare for the king.”

    “Oh, come on, Innel. Give us a chance to spend too much money on you.”

    Too much money? Was this Mulack’s way of saying he knew about Tok’s investment and might be offering similar backing? He couldn’t tell, which was how Mulack liked it.

    “How can I refuse, when you phrase it so seductively?” Innel said dryly, acting as if lack of coin meant nothing to him, as he and his brother had always tried to do.

    Mulack probably knew better; he had a nose for money. Despite everything — the promotion to captain, Innel’s proximity to Cern, the assumption of wedlock to come, and even Tok’s support — with all the gifts Innel was giving to everyone from guards to maids to stablehands to keep rumors flowing toward himself instead of away, Innel continued barely short of poor.

    A strange state in which to live, in-palace.

    He hid it as well as possible, of course; only Srel knew how bad his finances really were.

    Mulack, on the other hand, was House Murice’s eparch-heir and swimming in the coin of the House of Dye. With Murice’s multitudinous contracts for textiles and amardide, anyone who wore sanctioned clothes had paid to swell Murice’s holdings.

    Innel took a look at what his cohort brother was wearing. Boots and gauntlets tastefully trimmed in red and black — a nod to the crown — but the rest entirely Murice’s purple and white. A bit of a cacophony of color, but clear enough, as far as loyalties went. Mulack was clearly done looking for his future at the palace.

    Mulack’s father, as sardonic as his annoying son, was vibrant with health. Mulack would have a long wait to become eparch. In the meantime, though, he had plenty of money.

    “Tonight we celebrate,” Mulack said decisively. “I’ll tell the others.”

    “So be it,” Innel said, feeling it best to make a show of reluctance to impress on Mulack how busy he was with the king’s business. “Where?”

 

---

 

    “Pigs’ ass,” Mulack said loudly, grinning. In another context this insult was one Mulack was likely to use, but now he referred to the back end room at the Boar and Bull, an innocuous mid-city tavern that the Cohort sometimes used when they wanted to be away from palace eyes and ears.

    “I’ll see if I can clear my evening plans,” Innel said, turning away, already knowing he would. Srel would let Sachare know so that she could handle Cern should the subject of Innel’s whereabouts arise.

    Cern, the entire reason for the Cohort’s existence.

    Technically she was a member as well, but Innel was sure Mulack would not be inviting the princess to the pig’s ass.

 

---

 

    “Too many times,” Taba was saying, laughing loudly. She was a broad-shouldered woman and had been so even in her teens. Her eyes were a light green, the color of the seas she had made her home, and matching the shirt she wore. A red and black surcoat marked her as belonging to the king’s navy, but under that she wore Helata’s colors, green and blue. A long tradition, that, the navy showing House colors so openly. No one in the army would dare.

    Mulack was grinning as Sutarnan poured more of the strong black wine into his cup. Dil leaned back in his chair. Tok nodded slowly at Taba’s story.

    It had been some time since the Cohort had gathered, even this small a number.

    The last time, all the other times, his brother had been there.

    Keep a watch, Innel, Pohut might have said. Stay sober.

    He intended to.

    Around the table was a scattering of plates of food and mugs and glass goblets. A ceramic tumbler meant it was harder to track what had been drunk and what still remained. A clear goblet gave the appearance of not hiding anything.

    Everyone was drinking. Everyone had multiple cups in front of them.

    It was an old game, one they had played through the years to see who could be made to slip up while tempted by various intoxicants. Across the years they had tried every substance the wealthy boys and girls of the Cohort could get their hands on.

    “Incompetence in a harbormaster is inexcusable,” Mulack said from across the table, now on his third glass.

    Sutarnan, who was still sipping from his first tumbler, made a disparaging sound. “Harbormasters are set for life, you know that. Supposed to keep them honest, that appointment.”

    “They’re perfectly honest if you bribe them,” said Tok with a straight face, at which Sutarnan snorted.

    “Truss them and toss them off the pier! Problem solved!” Mulack said loudly, downing the rest of his glass and holding it out to Sutarnan for more. Mulack was slurring slightly, but that was one of his tricks, to pretend that he was drunker than he really was, to see what he could get away with. Sometimes he walked the line too closely.

    A long, loud sigh from Taba. “If only.”

    “Taba, surely your eparch will listen to you.” This from Dil, many steps removed from the eparchy of House Kincel but who made no secret of being perfectly happy behind the scenes, making sure his House of Stone had every connection to the palace it needed. Dressed mostly in reds and blacks, Dil was clearly planning to stay at the palace. Innel suspected he was lobbying to be Kincel’s liaison.

    “If only,” Taba said again, laughing again.

    “No one listens to us,” Sutarnan complained. “You’d think they would, what with all the royal education our heads are fat with, but no.”

    “No one listens to you, you mean, and that’s because you won’t decide which house you belong to. Or have you finally made up your mind?” This from Tok.

    Two Houses claimed Sutarnan. He was the son of a brief union between Sartor’s and Elupene’s eparchs, an unusual liaison, which — more unusually yet — the king approved. Restarn might have been distracted at the time by the second battle of Uled, some handful of years after Innel’s father had died in the first, but whatever the reasons, Sutarnan’s parents had stayed together long enough to produce him and then, after an impressive two-year-long fight during which time no armor was made in the city, managed to get a royal divorce.

    “I have no plans to select one over the other. Two is better than one.” He smiled widely, then his eyes settled on Innel and the smile vanished. Innel, who had no House at all.

    Which would not matter, Innel reminded himself, as soon as he married Cern.

    “You really should taste this, Innel,” Dil said quickly, before the awkward moment had a chance to lengthen, pushing a small crystal bottle around the large table toward him. Taba passed it along to Tok, who, with a lopsided grin, handed it to Innel.

    The room fell silent, everyone watching him expectantly.

    A strange moment, this. It wasn’t long ago that none of them would much care what he thought of the wine. Or anything else.

    It was hard to forget years of Cohort hostilities, schemes, broken bones, and broken agreements. Harder yet to forgive. He had one friend in all those years, one person to trust at his back. That trust, too, had been foolishly placed.

    But now, fed and wined, it was evident even these last holdouts of the Cohort realized how things had changed. No one at this table would benefit from bad will with the princess consort. They needed Innel.

    Of course, he needed them, too.

    It was time to rewrite history.

    “We are all brothers and sisters here,” he said, hands wide, smiling at them, putting as much joviality and warmth into his expression as he could stomach. He let his gaze come to rest on Mulack, arguably the most dangerous of the lot, and gave him the warmest smile of all, to which Mulack snorted in amusement.

    With a nod of appreciation to Dil, Innel took a swig from the delicate bottle he’d been handed, not bothering with a cup. A deep, smokey concoction met his tongue and fairly danced down his throat. It was superb, and no doubt older than he was. Indeed, he would bet that every sip cost more than his boots.

    He took another.

    “You have the princess now,” Dil said, stating the obvious, with what appeared to be a genuine smile. Dil was good with the charm. Almost as good as Pohut had been.

    “To your pending marriage,” Tok said, raising his tumbler to Innel.

    Everyone did likewise, Taba making a thoughtful sound as she reached behind to the side table and selected another bottle, filling the cups of those who held theirs to her, putting some splashes in the rest, making the math more difficult. Not an accident.

    “And how did he manage that?” Mulack asked no one in particular. “We all had the same damned anknapa. Why isn’t Cern in my bed?”

    “Because you’re clumsy,” Taba said, who no doubt had first-hand knowledge. The Cohort had done a lot of practicing.

    “There was some actual study involved,” Tok added. “Not something you really cared for, as I recall, Mulack.”

    “I studied plenty!” he said, sputtering drunkenly. “The anknapa, she had a — ” He made a flopping gesture with one hand that caused everyone to laugh.

    Study Cern, Innel thought, but didn’t say.

    “A toast,” said Tok, motioning to Innel. “To the hero of Arteni. To whom we owe the very bread in our mouths.”

    “Huzzah!” said Taba. They all drank.

    “I hear the king was pleased with your efforts in Arteni, Innel,” said Tok.

    Innel gave an affirming nod, despite that there had been no discussion with the king about the campaign at all. Which, he supposed, could well be taken as royal approval. The wedding was going ahead, and that was all the approval he really needed.

    “To our beloved princess,” said Tok, raising his glass.

    Soon to be queen, Innel thought. But no one would say that. Not quite yet. It was too close to questioning the king’s will.

    “To the heir!” said Sutarnan with enough enthusiasm that he sloshed red wine across the table. A trick to help empty his glass? A distraction? An honest, drunken slip?

    Did any of them make honest slips anymore?

    “Oh, we’re not out of drink now, are we?” asked Mulack with a pout as he looked deep into his empty clear goblet.

 

---

 

    “No, no,” said Tok helpfully, pouring a liberal amount of ale into Mulack’s goblet.

    Glass number five. Ale, not wine.

    “To our brother, Innel,” said Taba, raising her glass to Innel with a sideways look at Mulack. “May he continue to bring honor to our beloved empire.”

    “And may the stench of his astonishingly good fortune permeate all our lives in like fashion,” said Sutarnan with uncommon passion.

    Innel remembered something Pohut used to say: Poverty and power both require arrogance. Moving between them, though, often requires the appearance of humility. He gave Sutarnan what he hoped was a modest smile.

    “Good fortune!” cried Mulack with a large grin, the gesture overly wide, glass raised so quickly there was wine dribbling over his fingers. “To the heir’s new and virile stud-to-be. May he succeed where all others have failed.”

    It was close enough to what should never be said aloud, about the king’s lack of heirs, that the laughter at the table died suddenly.

    For some reason everyone looked at Innel.

    “Do explain your meaning, Mulack,” Innel said pleasantly.

    “Why — marrying the princess, of course.” He gestured around the table with his wet hand still clutched around his goblet. “A feat at which every one of us has marvelously failed.” As if he were a lamp suddenly snuffed out, Mulack’s drunken expression and smile vanished. “Where you, Innel, have succeeded so splendidly.”

    Looking over the rim of his goblet at Innel, Mulack emptied his glass.

 

---

 

    The wedding, initially postponed because of Innel’s campaign, was postponed again. First a tenday. Then two.

    There was always a good reason, and of course it was always the king’s decision.

    Innel was sorely tempted to push, to point out that he’d done everything the king had commanded. Had butchered Arteni townspeople to prove his loyalty to the crown, to demonstrate his leadership ability.

    Had gotten Cern to say yes.

    He already knew what his brother would say; he had said it often: Don’t push until you must. Then go in with all you have.

    It was not time to push, so he must be patient. He had Cern’s good will in his pocket now, and prudence dictated holding steady, seeming to be confident in the outcome. He put his focus on keeping both Cern and the king happy, as he gathered what support he could.

    An odd position, this one in which he found himself: as long as he was on track to marry Cern, and she on track to become queen, his influence grew, but his coin did not.

    With one notable, recent exception. “Make your hire,” Tok had told him softly. “I have funds in hand.” Meaning the mage.

    He would have Srel send word to a down-city broker he knew, rather than go through Bolah. Best not to always use the same path to a destination.

    No, on second thought, he would tell Bolah as well and see which pathway succeeded first.

    Best to have them search outside the city. Any mage in Yarpin was likely already aligned with the old king. Innel needed someone new, someone who did not already know the Anandynars.

    Then, one evening, alone with Srel, frustrated, he asked, “Is this damned thing going to happen or not?”

    Outside swirls of snow flew sideways past the window. In the gardens below a dusting of white collected.

    Srel followed his look, then poured hot spiced wine from a flagon with one hand while he dribbled cream from a small cylinder with the other.

    “Coin has been committed to the feast, and a fair bit of it. That would seem a strong indicator of yes.”

    “Then why is the king still delaying?”

    “Oh, that. Well, ser…” A small smile.

    “He has mixed feelings?”

    “Very much so, I think.”

    “The mutts,” Innel said, using the title no one would now dare speak.

    Srel made a sound indicating disagreement. “I think he likes being king, ser.”

    After all the times Restarn had pushed Cern to choose a mate and promised her the throne if she did, a wed Cern was one less excuse. He wanted his daughter to continue his bloodline, but was loathe to give up the crown.

    There was, Innel suspected, another reason. He thought Cern weak.

    It was no secret he had long hoped Cern would blossom into a replica of the Grandmother Queen Nials esse Arunkel, a powerful ruler who kept the empire strong and expanding.

    Innel had watched the king as he scrutinized his dogs in the fighting pits to determine which would be given the chance to sire the next bitch’s litter. Innel had seen the intensity of his attention. Restarn cared about one thing: winning. As long as you managed that, some rules could be bent along the way.

    Suddenly Innel understood that bringing back his brother’s body had not made the king doubt Innel at all, but rather the opposite; it was what had convinced him that Innel was a suitable mate for Cern. The king thought he had sacrificed his brother to win her.

    At this thought Innel felt sickened, closely followed by the fear that if he looked deep into himself, he would find it was true.

    He pushed it all away. It didn’t matter; it was the past. There was one direction open to him now, one path, and he’d staked everything he had on it. Unlike the rest of the Cohort with their Houses and wealth, he had no second-best option.

 

---

 

    “After that, the Lesser Houses will enter here and here, march around the columns here, stand staggered thus and so behind the Great Houses.” The king’s seneschal looked up sourly from his diagrams at Innel as if doubting he understood.

    One wedding date had replaced another so many times that Innel had stopped paying them much attention, so he was more than a little surprised to be standing in the seneschal’s office surrounded by a handful of assistants, the wedding still scheduled for the morning after next.

    Might it actually happen?

    Most of those who directly served the king, like the seneschal, had offices lining the side of the palace that looked over the walls of the palace grounds onto Execution Square. Innel was looking out just such a window, wondering when they were going to take down the two ice-covered torsos hanging on the square’s display wall.

    “And so the Great Houses are in front, represented by a count of — Innel, what is the count from each of the Houses?”

    “Twenty-five per House,” he answered, without looking away from the frozen bodies. “The Lessers each have ten.” It was like being drilled, back in Cohort days; a part of his mind was always ready with a correct answer, trained by pain and hunger to never be without.

    “Everything must be done exactly as specified. Any mistake will reflect poorly on the king.”

    How many times had he heard that admonition?

    “Yes,” he said.

    “You must nod your head exactly the same amount for each gift from each of the Greater Houses. And likewise, but in lesser measure, for each of the Lesser Houses. Did you practice with a mirror?”

    In his peripheral vision, Innel could see the gaunt man look at Srel for an answer.

    “Yes,” Innel replied, trying not to sound as irritated as he felt.

    “Now we will review the vows –”

    “I know them.”

    “We will go over them again. There must be no deviation. Not a word. You see where this mark is between the words? That means you inhale at that time. Do you understand?”

    “Yes.”

    Innel wondered if the Grandmother Queen had been as creative in her executions as was her grandson. He should ask his Cohort brother Putar, who had made a particularly detailed study of those histories.

    “Srel, be sure he has them memorized.” A rustling sound told him that the seneschal had handed Srel yet another set of papers. “Now — the roster of attendees.”

    A paper was being held up in front of Innel’s face, blocking his view.

    “I know them,” Innel said.

    “Be sure you do, ser. This list is as if chiseled in stone, and yet it may change at the last minute. So memorize also this secondary roster — “Another piece of paper with hundreds of names on it,” — of those who have requested to attend should something happen to those who have been directly invited.”

 

---

 

    That would make for some very interesting social events the next two evenings. Innel could imagine fights breaking out among Houses at taverns and pre-wedding celebrations, reflecting quiet arrangements made in the shadows about who should infuriate whom and how much, and what they would get in return for such efforts. The Houses could be impressively cooperative when they wanted something badly enough.

    Innel had been granted only two invitations, one each for his mother and sister. He would have been insulted if there had been anyone else to invite, not already on the list. There wasn’t.

    His mother had been profoundly relieved when he handed her the threefold envelope, expression as near pleasure as he had seen. For a moment it almost seemed she would look at him.

    Cahlen, of course, didn’t care. He must remember to have someone dress her, in case she decided at the last minute to come anyway.

    “I was in the Cohort,” he said to the seneschal. “You may have heard. I spent my life studying the damned Houses.”

    The seneschal handed more papers to Srel, who exuded his usual calm. Innel again made a mental note to buy something extravagant for Srel as soon as he had the means.

    “Do not swear. Not about the Houses, not about anything. Not until your wedding night, and then only if it pleases Her Grace the Princess that you do so. Do you understand me?”

    Innel clamped down on the many replies that leapt to mind.

    Don’t push until you must.

    “Yes.”

    “Now — attend to this map. It shows the locations of all the Houses in the Great Hall –”

    “Because I won’t be able to tell who they are by their colors?” He could feel himself losing his patience. He looked at Srel, who was smiling faintly, as if everything were right with the world.

    “Because, ser Royal Consort-to-be, I have worked very hard to achieve an equal count and arrangement among both Greater and Lesser Houses. Who stands next to whom is no accident. The ordering of the presentation of gifts was harder to arrange than the Charter Court’s opening day feast — no trivial matter that, and I have arranged three of them in my life — and you will learn the locations of the Houses so that you know what to expect and when.”

    Innel clenched his teeth against what he wanted to say.

    The seneschal seemed, for a moment, to be out of breath. He inhaled, then handed the last sheet to Srel with a pointed look, as if he would hold Srel personally responsible for any mistakes.

    Then, to Innel: “The tailors will be in shortly to measure you.”

    “Again? Do you jest?”

    “Never. Innel, do attend carefully to my next words: she can divorce you far more easily than she marries you. Watch where you put your feet.”

    He felt himself warm at this condescension and wondered what the man would think when Innel was made Lord Commander.

    When Cern was queen there would, Innel resolved, be a new seneschal. And perhaps a new kitchen scullery boy as well.

    For now, though, he would comply.

    “I will step only where and when I am told to, seneschal.”

 

---

 

    On the day of the his wedding Srel woke him at the fourth bell, in full dark, a lamp in his hand, and presented Innel with a message sealed with the king’s mark.

    A shot of apprehension went through Innel. He ripped it open, his mind dancing across various possibilities, read it once, read it again, and handed it to Srel.

    A strange, bitter feeling settled over him.

    “Congratulations, ser Colonel.” Srel looked at him. “You are disappointed?”

    The smallest possible promotion. In time to prevent his daughter marrying a captain. Barely.

    Having had the lord commandership dangled in front of him made this seem a meager achievement, where it should have felt a victory. Innel wondered if that had been the king’s real intention, to keep Innel wanting more than he could have, with no plan of ever passing the throne to his daughter, or letting her make Innel lord commander.

    But how long could the man keep ruling? His famous grandmother Nials esse Arunkel had stayed on the throne until she found someone she wanted to succeed her: her grandson Restarn. She had passed over her own children and their generation, dismissing them as unsuitable, then passed over Restarn’s older siblings as well. She stayed tight by her grandson’s side while he secured his throne, alive and active in palace politics until she was well over a hundred.

    A long time.

    And while it seemed unlikely, Restarn could still name someone other than Cern to succeed him.

    Srel moved around the room with the ease of a silverfish, selecting underclothes for Innel, setting out various jewelry for the ceremony.

    As he looked out the window at the late winter snow, he asked Srel: “Do you think it’s too late for him to cancel it again?”

    “Entirely too late, ser.” Srel smiled, a rare expression on the small man.

    It occurred to Innel only now that his steward had been waiting for this day nearly as long as he had.

 

---

 

    In short order Innel’s room began to fill with people. Houses Sartor and Murice had both sent so many people to dress him that they could not all reach him at once. The Houses clearly wanted to make their mark on his outfit and began sniping at each other about matters of buttons and tucks.

    Finally Innel growled, “I can rip it all off and let you sew it back on.”

    After that they were more polite. Another hour went by with needles and other sharp objects moving around him, making Innel even more testy. All this in order to adjust an outfit that looked much the same to him as it had an hour ago.

    When at last they left he was rushed to one of the Great Hall’s antechambers to wait.

    Like a working animal, he thought, not liking it much. He stepped out into the hallway and found a door that opened to the Great Hall, prying open a crack to look through. For a moment all other thought fled his mind.

    In the hall stood a thousand murmuring aristos, packed tight in knots of House colors, each jacket and glove, cravat and earring bright in appropriate hues, long hair swept into elaborate towers draped with chains and sparkling gemstones. In stance and expression he could read the strains and linkages between the Houses.

    In the galleries above, royals sat up front, the Lesser Houses standing behind. From the banisters draped chains of the various metals from which Arunkel derived wealth, red and black flowers woven through.

    It came to him then that this whole event was going to cost the king a very great deal. It was an immensely satisfying thought.

    The mutt was worth something.

    Then the ceremony began. First a speech by the king about the necessary patriotism of every Arunkin, then a list of the accomplishments of the Anandynar line and a summary of the history of the empire. For a time it seemed he intended to discuss every one of the nine-hundred eighty-three years.

    Next, loud, brassy music from the corners of the room, followed by a long and quite tedious gift ceremony for which Innel was ready with his practiced nods.

    Next, the vows, which were impressively one-sided, with Innel promising his loyalty to the king, the royal line, the empire, the Houses, and finally to Cern, while the princess offered in return the vague possibility that Innel would be allowed to come near her from time to time.

    The important part, though, was when the king said the final words.

    “It is done.”

    And then, like that, Innel was married into the Anandynar line. Children, if Cern and he ever had any, would be legal heirs with a chance at the throne. He himself was now an almost-royal.

    One more rung up the ladder.

    For a moment, before he and Cern were swept out of the hall and into the now-crowded antechamber, he thought he saw his brother in the back shadows of the halls. The ache he felt within took a bite from the victory.

 

---

 

    But no — had Pohut been here, he would have been fiercely proud. At least the man his brother had been before Botaros.

    Innel had not forgotten the seer’s predictions about the king’s abdication to Cern.

    The spring after next, or the summer following. Mere months from now.

    In the anteroom, a swirl of aides separating them, Sachare hovering protectively, Innel caught Cern’s eye and smiled. She returned a glare that he knew was not meant for him. The seneschal was too busy lecturing someone else to give them any last minute instructions about the feast to follow, so Innel waded through the sea of people to reach her side. He took her hand, a gesture uninvited, one that he felt he could now risk.

    “I hate this, Innel,” she whispered to him.

    “One step closer, my lady,” he whispered back. To the throne.

    At that she grimaced a bit, a brittle smile, but he saw through it to something like desire. He wondered what expression her face would take on when a crown was put on her head.

 

---

 

    Within a month the king had changed his mind again. To wed was easy, he said, but best for Cern to make an heir first. Better yet, two or more. Don’t make my mistake, he said. A few more years of seasoning. Make her better suited to rule the empire.

    Innel was unsurprised, but as the days passed Cern became more and more livid. She wandered the palace in a tight fury, clenching her fists and saying things that should not be said about one’s monarch, certainly not an Anandynar, as fond as they were of elaborate executions. Innel did not think Cern was in real danger, given how much faith the king put in his own bloodline, but it would not be wise to test that certainty.

    It was now, finally, the spring of the seer’s prediction.

    Innel mused on the plans that he had spent so many years assembling. Should he wait?

    The spring after next, or the summer following.

    He looked out his small office window to Execution Square to see how things were progressing. The twitching man was on day two of his dying efforts, suspended four feet off the ground, some thirty hooks embedded deeply in his flesh, from fingers to toes. Innel had found that a long look at one of the king’s executions helped him order his priorities.

    Act now, or wait? He considered the question for a day, and then another.

    If he had the girl, he could simply ask her.

    At last, while Cern’s storming temper swayed him, it was the seer’s words that decided him: it was time.

    On the fifth day, when the man in Execution Square had stopped moving, Innel began. He sent Srel with herbs to calm Cern. She quieted, sitting for long hours in the glassed-in gardens, staring at her birds. Innel saw to it that she was carefully watched by his guards as well as her own.

    As a result of meticulous planning and sand-clock timing, Innel was nowhere near Restarn when the old king stumbled, was caught by his guards, and carried to his bed, hot with fever.

    The slave who was sent to tend to him knew to kiss him as he slept, but only after applying the lip rouge Innel had given her. She didn’t know why, only that if she did as she was told, her sister would not be sent from the palace into House Helata’s navy, to serve sailors at sea.

    The apothecary knew a little more: to mix with the many ingredients for the tincture for the king’s fever a new ingredient, by itself a perfectly benign herbal extract, in exchange for Innel making sure that no one would care about his drunken rant in the kitchens a few months ago in which he described the various compounds he had assembled for members of the royal family to treat various maladies, some of which were rather embarrassing.

    The final ingredient was the doctor herself. He had chosen her with care; she was neither brilliant nor clumsy, and had few enemies. For her, Innel had brokered a quiet agreement with his Cohort sister Malrin of House Eschelatine to take the doctor’s newborn grandson, a baby from a match not crown-approved, and have the boy tucked into the lesser House, to seem to have been born to an approved match that wanted a baby. In exchange, the doctor would put a bit of a certain powder on her fingertips before she inspected His Royal Majesty’s mouth, to be sure his gums weren’t bleeding.

    They weren’t.

    The king’s condition worsened over days, and then weeks. Bedridden and still feverish, Restarn was approached by his closest advisers, many of whom Innel had spoken to, to be sure they knew which way the wind was blowing. They asked the king, might it not be time to consider abdicating to Cern?

    That is, unless he had another heir in mind?

    Innel had been told that even as ill as he was, Restarn had been adamant in his reply. At his command the strongbox had been brought out from under the bed. He unlocked it, thrusting the succession letter at them.

    Cern was at the top of the list. The rest of the names should have stayed quietly behind the eyes of those in that room, but of course that was not the way the palace worked. Now everyone knew the entire list.

    Innel gave Cern no more herbs, needing her alert. But even sober she seemed uninterested in the process by which she might become queen, despite her anger at being denied it before. She only grudgingly participated in the council sessions that the king from his bed also grudgingly allowed. The planning sessions that might, if all went well, lead to her coronation.

    With the affairs of state floating between an ailing Restarn and a sullen Cern, trade and House negotiations stumbled, contracts frayed and needed focused grooming to survive. As Innel struggled to keep Cern somewhere between too tense and too withdrawn, taking on as many administrative tasks as he could, he also made sure those who supported the king most closely knew there might be a place for them under the new queen. When she was crowned.

    It was like juggling oiled knives in a dark room: any slip could cut. Or kill.

 

---

 

    In front of Innel was a barely touched plate of food. He rubbed his head, trying to ease the ache and strain of a day already too full.

    And now this.

    “Be ready,” read the simple message, written in the down-city broker’s hand. He crumpled it and tossed it in the fire along with his sense of having been given an order.

    This was how it worked; money was not enough to hire a mage. Even the appalling amount with which Tok had supplied him. They must be persuaded. Seduced.

    He considered who he might send to do this. Sachare, Tok, Sutarnan, Dil, and even Mulack were all quite capable of convincing people to do things they didn’t want to do. Pohut had been the best of the lot, of course. Had he been here, he would be the one to send.

    No, there was no one else he could trust to do this. He would have to go himself.

    Somehow. There did not seem to be an hour of the day in which he was not acting in some way essential to support Cern’s cause or to undermine one of the others’ on the succession list. Now that there was no secret who would take the throne if something happened to Cern, there were too many people eyeing the throne with interest and eyeing Cern speculatively.

    He doubled her guards, taking the time to interview each one. Sachare and he had long talks about security.

    He brought Cern with more rods and flats and hooks for her various and delicately balanced in-air creations, hoping to keep her entertained in her own rooms.

    The other royals on the succession list — two of the king’s cousins, a great nephew now married into one of the Houses, and a toddler niece — were subject to more attention as well, which had the advantage of keeping them busy with new and fawning friends, but it also put the thought in people’s heads that there might be options to Cern becoming queen.

 

---

 

    Restarn had to name her, formalize the transition. Soon. How to get him there?

    Innel could not, he now realized too clearly, let Cern name him lord commander. When the king was healthy and active it would have been clear that Cern had made the appointment with Restarn’s tacit consent, but if she did so now, everyone would think she was trying to grab the throne out from under him while he lay ill, which would open the door to challenges they could not yet face.

    She might be the heir-apparent, but he was still the mutt.

    He must get Cern to the throne.

 

---

 

    At Innel’s direction, the doctor began to intercept the king’s advisers, explaining to them that he needed rest with no disturbances and hinting that there was a chance the disease was contagious. The king’s visitors quickly dwindled down to none.

    No advisers, no servants.

    No beautiful blond slaves.

    Only the doctor, who Innel continued to watch for signs of disloyal behavior. He made sure she knew how well cared-for was her grandson in House Eschelatine, and that there was a position for her with the new monarch, but only if the old one did not die unexpectedly.

    Innel now stood outside the king’s door, having decided it was time to see him. The doctor ran a hand through her hair, cut traditionally short, pink scalp showing through dark strands to demonstrate how healthy she was. For the sake of the listening guards, she explained to Innel that the disease might be contagious.

    “My devotion to His Majesty will protect me,” Innel answered, loud enough to be heard. Then more softly: “You have all the herbs you need, yes?”

    “Yes, ser.”

    Inside, the room stank of illness.

    “I’m sorry, ser,” the doctor said at his expression. “Perhaps we should open some windows.”

    The windows were shut, heavy drapes across them, keeping it warm against the winter. But now it was spring.

    “The princess would not want to further risk his health with the cold air.”

    Cern, he suspected, would be happier yet if her father were bricked up in deep dungeon cell to rot. But they needed him alive, at least for now.

    The shape under the covers stirred, eyes coming half open in a wrinkled face. He stared intently at Innel.

    “You may go,” Innel told the doctor. The doctor bowed to the king and left, closing the door behind her.

    Restarn esse Arunkel. The man who across fifty-six years of rule had extended the empire from the Dalgo Rift to the ocean, united the warring provinces, and held the seas from Perripur to Chaemendi. Was it really possible he was now so frail?

    Innel bowed. “Your Majesty.”

    The eyes blinked, seemed to struggled to focus, found him. Innel felt himself tense.

    “How do you feel, Sire?”

    “You fool. How do you think I feel? Where’s Cern? She doesn’t visit. No one visits. This your doing, Innel?”

    “She is busy, Sire. Taking on the essential work of governing the empire while you recover. It is a trying time for us all.”

    “Yes, I’m sure it is,” Restarn said sourly.

    “I’m certain she will have more time after the coronation.”

    “Coronation?” Restarn frowned.

    Anxiety sparked in Innel. Had the illness taken the king’s memory? Had he changed his mind?

    “You directed the council to begin the process of crowning her, Sire –”

    “I know that,” he snapped. “I’m sick, not stupid.” A coughing fit took him. When he was done his head fell back on the pillow, breathing hard from the exertion. He turned his head sideways to look at Innel.

    “So you buried your brother and married my daughter.” He chuckled, then wheezed. “Not bad for the son of a down-city mapmaker and his wet-nurse wife. Aren’t you fortunate that I took your family in, all those years ago.”

    Dragged them from their home, their family business given away.

    “A mapmaker whom you made a general, sire,” Innel said quietly. “A hero, you told me.”

    “But not so good for your brother, eh?” Restarn said, ignoring Innel’s words. “I was betting on Pohut, you know. Not you.”

    Innel struggled to keep calm, forcing a smile to his face. “And yet, here I stand, Sire. Perhaps we could discuss some of your unwritten agreements with the Houses, so we could –”

    “I can just see it,” Restarn continued, starting to look pleased, “you and Pohut galloping across the empire to ask a snot-nosed commoner brat to tell your fortune. Did you ask her for the blessings of the wind and the mercy of sea as well, while you had the chance?”

    With effort, Innel kept his breathing steady, letting only a shadow of confusion show on his face.

    “Yes,” Restarn said slowly, watching Innel closely and ignoring — or perhaps seeing through — his show of bemusement. “I know where you went. I knew the first time you fucked my daughter. I know every boy and girl she takes to her bed. What she likes, what she hates. You thought you could keep something from me?” He laughed, then coughed again, curled in on himself while his body was wracked with another fit. Then he wiped spittle from his lips, looked at Innel. “I know everything that happens in my palace.”

    “Knew,” Innel said softly.

    Restarn’s smile faded.

    “I have taxed you enough, Your Majesty. I will leave you to rest.” He turned.

    “Innel, no. Stay. What’s happening on the borders? Tell me.” Wheezing, the king struggled to sit up. “The Gotar rebellion. Sinetel. The Houses. This foul illness has kept me flat. No one tells me anything. I don’t even have my slaves. Stay and talk to me.”

    Innel turned back. “There’s a rumor, majesty. About your mages.”

    “I never had mages.”

    “Rumor says otherwise.”

    “My enemies seek to dirty my good name.”

    “Then,” Innel said, backing a step to the door, then another, giving a small bow, “you’ll be pleased to know that there’s nothing happening in Sinetel and the Houses are still standing. Rest easy, Sire.”

    The king’s eyes narrowed as he inhaled sharply, no doubt to say something, but instead he started coughing again. The pain showed on his face. He turned a furious glare on Innel. “I will not have it said of me that I used mages.”

    “I have no desire to give voice to such filthy lies, Your Majesty.”

    “Horseshit,” Restarn said. “Give me your oath, Innel. Not that it’s much, coming from a man who would kill his own brother, but I’ll take it anyway.”

    At this Innel’s anger welled up hot from deep inside. He wrestled with it for a moment. Truly, the king deserved his admiration; even sick as he was, the man still knew the exact words that would infuriate Innel. “You have my oath,” Innel said evenly.

    “Gotar?”

    “They are rebelling in Gotar.”

    Restarn hissed. “I know that.”

    “The mages. Names. Details. Sire.”

    Innel wanted to be sure that any mage he hired had not previously worked for Restarn.

    The king glared at him a long moment. For decades this particular royal expression had often preceded extended executions. To see it thus was extraordinary. Like a rare view from a high, thin cliff ledge, sharp rocks and ocean churning below. Innel felt something like vertigo.

    Then go in with all you have.

    “Forgive my intrusion,” he said with a bow, backing to the door where he turned on his heel, took the handle, and pressed it until, in the silence of the room, there was an audible click.

    “Yes, yes, all right. I’ll tell you what you want to know. You may want paper. I doubt your memory is as good as mine, even now.”

    Innel turned back, his own anger transformed into hard resolve. “Test me.”

    At this Restarn smiled wide. While his sunken eyes and pallid skin would not have looked out of place in any down-city street beggar, no beggar’s eyes could hold such arrogance. “Sit down, Innel. I miss our talks. Tell me what’s happening in my kingdom.”

    Innel felt a cold trickle of uncertainty. Restarn was not yet out of the picture. He could still shake their plans if he had a mind to. “I had understood it was to be Cern’s kingdom, and soon, your majesty.”

 

---

 

    Restarn gestured, quite clearly, to the chair by his side. An order. The moment stretched. “It will be,” the king said, sounding surprisingly hale. “Come on, boy. I knew you’d take Cern. I knew it all along. Pohut was too soft-hearted. It made him slow and stupid. Now come here, sit, and we’ll talk.”

    “I don’t have the time, Sire,” Innel said, feeling stubborn.

    “Oh, I think you do, Innel,” he said with an unpleasant smile. “You never know when I might die.”

 

---

 

    Now that he had something of a yes from Restarn, Innel pushed as hard as he could. But moving the coronation forward was a choreography of coordination, conciliation, and inducement beyond anything Innel had ever experienced.

    Too many people, from Houses to military, had an opinion, an agenda, or something else that Innel needed, that wouldn’t be offered without reciprocation. Sorting out the pieces was confounding.

    As events proceeded forward at an interminably slow rate, Innel discovered that the only thing worse than facing a seneschal who was annoying, opinionated, and stubbornly devoted to the crown was facing one who wasn’t. He remembered the wedding, how it had come together, and reassessed the man’s skill and necessity. Swallowing his pride, Innel went to talk with him, making clear that if he worked for the princess now, he would work for the queen later.

    Also, Innel told him, this event, unlike the wedding, would not dip so deeply into the royal coffers.

    “It’s a coronation, ser Princess Royal Consort,” the seneschal said, pronouncing each word with care, as if unsure of Innel’s hearing. “It reflects the honor of the Anandynars. All near a thousand years of it. You cannot pretend it is a simple winter festival ball.”

    “What you propose is an obscene expenditure that –”

    “That employs half the tradesmen of the Lesser Houses, and puts coin in the pockets of the Eight Greater Houses whose support the new queen might well need from the moment she takes the crown. Raised in the Cohort, you say?”

    “Careful where you step, seneschal.”

    The gaunt man’s lips pressed together, making his face look even longer than it already did. “Do you know, ser Royal Consort, what year it was I began to serve the king in my current capacity?”

    Innel could not remember any other seneschal. He shook his head in answer.

    “Just so. Before you were born. Many years before. You may find it beneficial to consider the empire’s challenges during that time.”

    Innel took a deep breath, let it out slowly. It was a compelling argument. “As you say, then,” he allowed. “But I want to approve all expenses.”

    “No, ser, you most certainly don’t.” Then, with a look that bordered on pity, he added, “You’ll have to rely on me sooner or later. Why not start sooner, when I can do you the most good?”

    “Midsummer, latest.” Two months hence.

    At this the seneschal laughed outright, annoyingly unconcerned about offending Innel. “Invitations alone will take that long. There are foreign dignitaries to be notified. House eparchs and aristos traveling far from home to be called back.”

    Innel made a sound that came out a growl. “Listen closely, seneschal: without a monarch on the throne, the empire and all her tangles of trade and production falter. Do you track the price of the metals that are key to Arunkel wealth?”

    “No. That is not my –”

    “No, it isn’t. But I do. You are going to have to rely on me, too, seneschal. Spend what the council will approve, but the coronation happens by mid-summer, even if no one shows for it. Send the notice. Now.”

    The seneschal exhaled, taking a very long time about it to make his displeasure unambiguous. His look told Innel that the man was wondering how sick the king really was and if he might be persuaded to come back to health and rule again.

    He appeared to come to a decision. His head inclined very slightly. “As you say, Royal Consort.”

    Innel smiled thinly.

    It was a good title, Innel reflected as he walked back to his small office, but there was another one that he wanted very much, and he meant to have it.

 

---

 

    “What do they say about me today, Srel?” he asked as the slight man poured a dark stream of bitter tea.

    “That the coronation is to be the grandest, most splendid affair since the Grandmother Queen was crowned one hundred and six years ago. That it will be a tiny affair sponsored by the Eight because the crown is bankrupt. That the king is not really sick, but only testing loyalties. That he is away on campaign, conquering the wild lands past the Rift. That the king is dead.”

    “That would seem to cover the range of possibilities,” Innel responded. “Seed a few more: the king is delighted to see his daughter ascending the throne. The royal consort is about to be promoted.”

    Srel raised an eyebrow, but did not ask. “Yes, ser.”

    Best would be to have the king seen happily supporting his daughter’s succession. Could the old man be persuaded to be at the coronation? To at least seem willing?

    If Innel put it to him right, perhaps.

    Time to ease the man’s isolation. A little.

 

---

 

    Innel’s two guards stepped into his small office, escorting a small blonde slave. Her golden hair fell to her waist, her wide blue eyes flickered around the room.

    “The slave Naulen.”

    She was a startling sight, small and slender, her white silk tunic hanging to her calves, a thin gold chain showing off her long neck. Dwarfed next to the tall guards, her slight build made her look even more delicate.

    With a nod, Innel dismissed the guards, watching her while she looked around.

    It was obvious why she was Restarn’s favorite. Her face was something a master painter might have considered a life’s work, from the pale, arched eyebrows to the wide, angled, sky-blue eyes. Even the way she rubbed her slender wrist, a simple move, was somehow exquisitely graceful. As she stepped forward slightly, Innel found himself distracted by how the heavy silk outlined her curves.

    “The king trusted you,” he said. “You slept in his room many nights.”

    “Yes, ser.”

    “Then I will trust you, too.”

    “Thank you, ser,” she said, voice a delicate, breathy tone, like a wooden flute. She looked at him with a soft, grateful look that made his breath catch.

    Yes, she would inspire the king to tell her things he would tell no one else. He could see why.

    “He misses you,” Innel said.

    “Thank you, ser.” Her look and tone were just the right mix of demure, uncertain, and eager to please.

    “He may not be king for much longer. You understand that, don’t you?”

    “I do, ser.”

    He could not quite tell from her expression if she did or not. The Perripin liked to claim that dark hair and skin meant a capacity for sustained and complex thought. This was why, they said, the blond northerners had been so easily conquered and enslaved. The implication that Perripin were smarter than their lighter-skinned Arunkin neighbors was the foundation of a great number of Perripin jokes that were rarely told this far north.

    “You work for me now. Do that work well and I will make sure you are not sent back to the slave’s quarters. Perhaps kept privately by someone who will treat you gently.”

    “I will do all you say, ser.” She stepped close to him, looking up with a flawless, eager smile. “Anything and everything.”

    He laughed lightly at the implied offer, sweeter for how unnecessary it was, and for a moment caressed her shoulder with his fingertips. He dragged his gaze from the large, mesmerizing blue eyes, with effort reclaiming his focus, and reluctantly drew his hand away.

    “You’ll visit him daily,” he said. “You’ll be brought to me afterwards to tell me what he has said. This conversation, though, you will not repeat to anyone.”

    She looked up at him, and her expression turned sober. “I understand you perfectly, ser.”

    This time he believed her.

    “And Naulen, don’t excite him too much.”