Oathbreaker ch. 10.3 - Council (Patreon)

The next morning, I was at council.

We met on a grand terrace above the main court, its centerpiece a magnificent round table of white maple polished so expertly that it shone like good marble. The terrace provided a sweeping view of the dale, all the way from the glittering croplands to the north to the almost surreally clean Lake Iralia to the west. The Empress had insisted on potted flowers at every door and window, and rose vines crowned the entire length of the railing.

I took that as a good sign. Her mother, the old queen, had a great love of flowers, and Rosanna kept her family’s castle cold and empty for many years after her parents were murdered.

The Empress’s council consisted of lords and ladies from across the Dales, including a few expert advisors of less gentle birth. There were ten seated around the table, all dressed in southerner style in colorful kaftans, robes, and long tunics threaded with dazzling designs in every color. The Empress, the Amaranta of the southern realms, sat in a high-backed chair that may as well have been a throne, fashioned of the same ghostly wood as the table with its arms and top gilded in silver. She wore a black dress with green sashes and gold worked into the cuffs and collar, and the sapphires in her black hair were auratically charged so they burned under the early morning sun.

I noted with relief that Ser Kaia stood at attention by the royal seat. She seemed less like a ghost than in recent months. Tzanith did not have a seat at the table, a not-so-subtle snub by the Empress that the elf had accepted stolidly. She hovered near the table instead, not quite standing with the array of servants and messengers awaiting orders. She gave me a slight smile as I took my seat.

“The situation in Osheim is worsening,” Lord Moonbrand was saying. “We just had reports of another wave of refugees crossing the border.”

The old knight, recently elevated to the upper nobility through marriage with one of the Empress’s handmaidens, was an old veteran of the Karlesian civil war, a tall man with a fringe of gray hair that made him look like an angry wolverine. His right eye, the source of his name, shone with a blue glow.

Lady Myrice — she was lady and not ser then, as a representative of her House — let out a dramatic sigh. “The situation is always worsening in Osheim. It’s been almost an entire year. Don’t we have any novel news?”

The Gorgon received dark looks, but that was about as routine as reports of refugees from the north were and she remained aloof to them.

Moonbrand merely arched an eyebrow and continued. “More than a score of the newest refugees have been separated and quarantined under suspicion of plague. The river warden is recommending that you stop allowing them into the city, Amaranta.”

Rosanna raised a bejeweled hand. The auratic glow of her signet ring made the hand seem to blur in the air. “The alternative is that they die when winter comes, or turn to banditry. I am not just Queen of the Karledale, but Empress. The people in Osheim are as much my responsibility.”

This clearly bothered many of the Karlesians present, but the ambassadors from Graill and Duranike nodded appreciatively. Nasher Loss, who was the cousin of the Sovereign Countess of Losdale, waved his hand in a gesture that seemed to say it will be as it will be.

The Empress inclined her head. “But I do understand our friend at the river’s concern. Suggestions?”

Myrice’s shoulders lifted in a slow shrug and her lips, painted deep black, pursed. She wore a long kaftan of deep green silk, embroidered with golden serpents and long enough to be a dress. Whether she meant to declare her loyalties with the gold or to be inflammatory wasn’t clear.

“Conscript them?” She suggested.

Lord Moonbrand scowled. “That would be against Aureia’s Law. We aren’t going to pressgang hungry refugees into soldiers.”

“It would only account for a portion of them anyway,” Lord Arlock drawled. His Cragdaler accent was rough compared to the more lilting intonations common in Karlesian nobility, which made him sound oddly similar to a dockside bruiser. His tone suggested that breaking God’s edicts wasn’t his prime concern. “I think our friend at the river is more concerned about disease. Whatever this new thing is out of Osheim, our emoters are struggling with it.”

Emoter was the popular new term for an adept skilled at healing. More auratically potent healers were being recruited for the war effort, not all of them ordained by the clergy, so traditional terminology was quickly falling out of fashion. The Empress’s chief clericon frowned, but did not comment.

“It is quite possibly a weapon devised by the enemy,” the clericon said. Ioannes was a sagely old man who kept his platinum white hair in a cue tight enough to pull at the skin of his face. He wore white robes with thread-of-gold designs, marking him as a master adept of the Aureate Orders. “We are still studying it. One of my order-sisters in Isengotta had some theories before our correspondence stalled.”

There seemed a great amount of weight in those last words. The Baern Cities were doing little better than Osheim, and the stasis in Osheim had made communication between northern and southern members of the Accord difficult. Messengers were being lost on the road, and messenger chimera sometimes arrived with clear signs of tampering. They were not trusted.

Leo Herder lifted his hand and grimaced at the same time. He was a lanky, unathletic man prone to grimaces and hesitancy. “I’m against letting sick Osfolk into the city. A plague just before winter sounds… just awful.”

Ioannes lifted a white eyebrow at the middle-aged man. “Do you have a suggestion, my lord?”

His tone was paternal despite the honorific. The Herder hesitated and shrugged. “Build camps outside the city? Proper shelters that can see them through winter. There’s a certain technique used by the nomads in my country, and I think I might have one on my staff…”

The Empress nodded. “Good. Consult this nomad. It is at least something. Thank you, my lord.”

Leo gave a weary nod, looking none to certain of himself. He caught my gaze across the table and flinched. I hadn’t been glaring, or at least I hadn’t meant to, so the reaction surprised me.

Arlock leaned forward to the Herder’s left, so the shadow of his broad frame caught the sunlight and put a shadow over the white table. “These are stopgap measures. What we need to be doing is planning how we’re going to take the fight to the enemy. He’s shown himself in both the Baerns and in the Os, and we know where the monsters are coming from.” He narrowed his eyes. “We should be discussing plans of attack.”

“Spoken like a Drachen.” Myrice flashed a grin at the man, who sat almost directly across the table from her.

Arlock returned the smile, and for a moment they were both all teeth. “And you’re telling me a Gorgon doesn’t think it’s good tactics to go for the throat? Where are your fangs, Lady?”

Myrice inspected her black nails. “We prefer to let the enemy put themselves in our gaze before we rush blindly forward. It is our eyes that are deadly, my lord.”

“Remember that minutes are being kept,” the seneschal intoned archly without looking up from his notes. His quill hadn’t stopped moving since the meeting began.

The Empress lifted a hand for silence, then turned to her chief-of-staff. “I will want full reports on our current provisions. The train I arrived with last spring contained a stockpile of alchemical lamps and other sundries — have these distributed in the camps outside the city. I will not risk overcrowding, but we can take efforts to make the coming season more comfortable for the Osheimers.”

The seneschal sketched a bow. A good bow, for a man who hadn’t been born in the nobility. “I will have it on your desk within the hour, Amaranta.”

I had a thought. I didn’t realize I’d muttered aloud until Rosanna looked at me.

“Did you have something to say, Lord Alken?”

I glanced up from the intricate carvings in the table to find all the council’s attention on me. Myrice looked amused, while most of the others either shuffled in discomfort or acted aloof. Arlock Drachen gave me a look of cool appraisal, like we stood on either side of a dueling ring. Sasan of House Cymorin was openly hostile, and Desmond Wake leaned forward with interest. Leo avoided meeting my gaze. Nasher frowned past me, as though lost in his own thought. The representative from Farredale, whose name I couldn’t remember, tilted her head at me like a curious bird. Farredalers were always… strange.

Shrugging, I said, “I agree with Brother Ioannes. When I was at Tol, the demon — that is, the Gorelion — used some kind of technique to infest people with… something.”

Nightmare images played behind my eyes. A man scrambling to get his breastplate off as the stretched face of a wild boar burst out of him. The cacophonous squealing of newborn beasts intermingled with screams of horror and pain.

The demon laughing, and laughing…

I remembered the thing that’d started growing in me before Delphine Roch cut it out, and unconsciously found myself pressing a hand to my chest.

Ioannes spoke darkly. “The Lionheart.” When everyone gave the old cleric a curious look, he laced his long fingers together. The Empress nodded for him to continue. “There are mentions of it in old Clericastia records. Understand, this is very old lore, some of it dating from before the Sack of Heaven…”

Myrice scoffed. “Mythology? I didn’t join this council for sermons.”

“Your Recusant is showing,” Arlock told her amicably. The Gorgon scowled at him.

Ioannes continued as though there’d been no interruption. “This is not the first time we’ve faced this enemy. It appeared extensively during the final century of the Oroion Empire, as an ally and mentor to the King of Antriss. The Gorelion — who my order refers to as the Gatebreaker — was once the archangel called Asteroth. He betrayed the God that was before Aureia, blessed be Her name, and became a power within the Abyss. But when Asteroth was Onsolain, he was known as a great patron of heroes, a spirit who breathed courage into the fearful and honor into the hearts of wavering men. Old transcripts — very old transcripts — refer to this power as the Lionheart.”

“Some kind of Art?” I asked. Myrice was stifling a yawn to my left, which drew an angry glare from Moonbrand and several other councilors.

Ioannes shrugged. “Possibly. There is very little practical difference between the arcane powers that Sidhe and Onsolain, or any of the sapient races, and we humans use. My guess, Ser Alken, and it is an educated one, is that the transformations you witnessed in Osheim are a corruption of the angel’s power; a technique meant to put the strength and courage of great beasts into its target, made into something altogether uglier.”

“And more literal,” I said in agreement. The old priest’s scholarly tone took me aback. It was easy to forget that the Church was also a grand collective of scholars.

“We have been experimenting with countermeasures since receiving your original reports.” Ioannes shrugged. “There is still much we don’t know.”

“I think we should assume the worst,” I said and exchanged nods with the man. Then, as another unsettling thought hit me I asked, “What about Tol? Is Ser Cyril still in command there?”

King Kale’s nephew had been alive after the attack on Osheim, last I knew.

“We’ve had no reports of his death,” the seneschal said and sifted through a stack of notes. Usually, the court clericon was also the chief scribe and lawyer, but the Amaranta’s chief-of-staff was a brutally competent organizer. “We know that he didn’t take his uncle’s throne. So far, no one seems to know the identity of this new duke, and both Tol and Baille Os have closed their gates…”

“So it could be Cyril Stour?” Lord Sasan said. “Hypothetically?”

“Our last report of Ser Cyril places him in Tol,” the seneschal replied. “Besides, he has many cousins who stand before him in the line of succession. It’s safer to assume one of them took command. We don’t even have confirmation of King Kale’s death.”

I pressed my hand flat against the Maple Table. “We do. I saw it with my own eyes. The Gorelion was riding his corpse.”

Most people tend to wither when I place my full attention on them. The seneschal merely glanced at me for a brief instant before returning his attention to his papers. He was a slender man in his sixties, neither muscular nor tall, and he tended towards less flashy clothing than the other council members.

“I read a copy of your report from Baille Os, Lord Alken. By your own words, the events beneath the Grand Basilica were chaotic and confused. You witnessed Kale Stour acting strangely. This hardly seems to confirm that—”

“It was the demon,” I said, enunciating my words for emphasis. “I know what I saw.”

We glared at one another. No one seemed willing to break the stalemate. Rosanna’s look held a touch of exasperation.

“I think we should trust the eyes of an Alder Knight in this, Lord Seneschal.” Desmond Wake spoke up for the first time since the council had met that morning. The old man — older than either the chief-of-staff or the royal clericon — spoke softly, but had a manner that caused every ear to bend towards him. He wore black like a man in mourning, his gray hair hung lank and unbound. He’d grown his beard long, like a hermit or a sage.

“In any case,” Sasan Cymorin drawled, “we know that this duke rules Baille Os, and that his power doesn’t extend far beyond its walls. The country is in anarchy. I agree with the Drachen. We should launch sorties and enforce order across the river. Then we can send these refugees home and end two troubles in one go.”

Arlock frowned. “I meant that we should attack Seydis…”

Sasan ignored him, his attention on the Amaranta. Rosanna shook her head and said, “I will not order an invasion of Osheim unless its current sovereign calls for aid. It is a member of the Accorded Realms. People will say I only seek to expand Karles’s borders.”

The Cymorin, who was young and handsome and arrogant with both, shrugged. “And? If annexing a broken country brings order to the Accord, then…”

“It is not an option at this present time,” the Empress said. She didn’t speak with ice or anger, but Sasan fell silent. Rosanna paused a moment before speaking again. “What is the Eardequeen’s intention?”

It took everyone a moment to realize that the Empress was addressing the Seydii ambassador. Tzanith merely bowed gracefully, so her brilliant wings flashed in the sunlight. Her hair, black as Rosanna’s but somehow less natural in its color, was hung with many small bells that morning and they tinkled softly. “At this present time, Silver Queen, my lady is monarch only of the Seydii elves and some tribes among the Wyldefae who have harkened to her. Her intention is to parlay with the Prince of Trolls and the Parliament of Spiders, who have yet to recognize her inheritance of Great Tuvon’s responsibilities. My queen is presently in Trollwood, and may be engaged for some time.”

There were some mutterings at that. Rosanna, who knew maps as well as I did, knew that Trollwood lay not far from Osheim’s western border. “Will she provide military aid if asked?”

Tzanith inclined her head, the gesture not quite an acknowledgement. “I would ask the council to remember that this conflict is not merely a matter of armies and hungry winters. The traitor, Alicia Wake, and her ally Reynard undid a lock that separates your world from a much greater and more hostile one. It is our belief, supported by your priests and the Magi, that there is an open breach still in Elfhome. It is very likely that the enemy has brought more of its own kind through.”

"It's there," said Snoë Farram, the Princess of Graill. "I've seen it from afar. A door that burns, and bleeds."

I nodded. "I've seen it too."

Tuvon's ghost had been keeping it contained all this time. He might still be.

Snoë cast me a brief glance and gave a slight nod, though her manner was reserved. I'd gathered from past council meetings that she did not like or trust me, though she never said it aloud.

"I agree with Lord Arlock," the Graillic ambassador told the table. "My people are fighting this war every day, but the corruption in Seydis is always worsening. The demon lord rules there like a king. He holds tournaments and feasts, and sends ambassadors to invite us to participate..."

Some bleak memory passed behind her face, but she took a deep breath and steadied herself. Snoë was young, but she had the hard lines of a much older woman, and her white hair made her look older still. Her eyes were startlingly blue in the chestnut brown of her face.

Tzanith spoke gravely. “My queen holds a deep respect to the men and women of Graill, who have been our shield all these years. Make no mistake, humans; we have become a battleground in Heavenswar, and there are theaters beyond the places your mortal eyes can see. Even now, my people fight in the Wend and in… other places.”

She met my eye and we exchanged nods. Rosanna didn’t miss it, and a frown touched her mouth.

“It is also a matter of armies and starving people,” the Empress insisted. “Will Maerlys Tuvonsdotter provide aid if asked, as a member of the Accorded Realms?”

There was much that passed between the elf and the mortal monarch in that moment. The reminder that the Elf Queen had perpetrated a grave transgression against her Accorded ally, both politically and personally. That more than a few had died during that event. The fact that Rosanna had not yet called her peer to account for it, even though many of the Karlesians who’d been there that night wanted vengeance.

But to do so would destroy the Accord utterly. A war between House Silvering and Maerlys Tuvonsdotter would be apocalyptic. Perhaps literally.

All of this passed in seven beats of a calm heart. Tzanith bowed. “My queen is committed to this Accord. She has offered me to your service, Amaranta. She will send warriors if asked.”

The Empress nodded sharply, the gesture almost violent. “Good. Then let us move on. Desmond?”

The Wake leaned forward. “I have been in contact with Lady Summers and Lady Winters. They maintain a military presence in Haefest and Kastra Eatun, and we may have an ally in the Vale of Kelpies.” He cleared his throat. “However, with the forces that were scattered last winter in Osheim…”

Myrice rolled her eyes. “We should just conquer the damn place. This is getting ridiculous!”

The Emperor had intended a three-pronged attack on Seydis. The first crusade in centuries, and something that’d been planned for many years. The intention was to attack from the north through Graill, from Kingsmeet to the east of Osheim, and through Verdanhigh from the south, the old realm of High House Wake before its total loss during the Great Urnic War. Half the reason Rosanna was back in her ancestral home was to organize her side of the invasion.

But then Osheim had been attacked by the Gorelion the past winter and its king was lost, and a vampire had taken the throne of the Bannerlands, and there was widespread rebellion in the Baern Cities. The Accord was crumbling bits and pieces at a time, and the Houses had called their knights and levies back to their own fiefdoms rather than spend them on crusade.

“He’s broken us into two halves,” I said from behind my hand. “The north and the south, cut off at Osheim and bleeding from a dozen different wounds.”

Nasher Loss, a quiet and thoughtful man who rarely spoke, nodded at me. “We have also struggled to procure more than token aid from the clans of the Westvales. Their silence is… troubling.”

I’d been warned that Ager Roth was a great general. Now, I was seeing the evidence in action.

“It’s not unlike how Hasur did things back in the last war,” Moonbrand noted. “If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think we were fighting him.”

No one liked that thought. Talsyn was supposed to be subdued. Its king had formally surrendered to the Emperor the past year.

After he took the Emperor’s sons hostage and murdered a great many people, I thought. And you spared his life and let him go.

I still wasn’t sure if that was the right decision. At the time, I’d mostly been operating on impulse and momentum, and Calerus had seemed more like a victim to me than a monster. His father had been a very evil man, evil enough that he’d tormented his own children with demons, and they’d killed him for it. I’d thought perhaps that meant they could be turned, absolved and made allies.

Maybe I’m a fool. No, scratch the maybe.

Talsyn had been very quiet, but that didn’t mean anyone had forgotten the past. By the sidelong looks I received just then, I knew they were all thinking the same thing.

“Our scouts should return from the Os any day now,” the Empress said. “We will discuss this further when we hear their report.”

In a very awkward attempt to diffuse the tension, Leo Herder clapped his hands and sketched a watery grin. “Let’s talk about the banquet, shall we?”

The conversation became dull and circular then. After the council adjourned, I approached the Empress. She remained in her chair while Desmond Wake spoke with her privately. The old man turned to me and gave a polite bow of his head.

“Lord Headsman,” he said. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you for your part in discouraging our attackers on the road south.”

The old lord had been with the Empress’s train during her journey from Garihelm, but we’d missed each other. It was strange talking to him. I could see his aunt in his face, though in truth they looked almost nothing alike. Alicia had been puissant, made young and powerful by the Alder’s blessings despite being a century or more old. Desmond, who was younger than her, was in his seventies and looked every day of it.

Urnic nobles tended to have long lives. Rosanna, who was past thirty-five, was still in her prime and would be for another decade or two. But the Wakes were disgraced and exiled, their great kingdom lost to the devastation of the Fall, and all that old magic had bled out of the man and left him merely human, and very tired.

“I’m just glad I was there at the right time.” I shrugged. “Coincidence.”

Behind Desmond, a messenger stepped onto the terrace and approached the Empress.

Desmond smiled. “The will of God.”

“God isn’t here,” I reminded him. “She’s in Heaven, apparently.”

“She is among us,” the Wake insisted. He didn’t speak like a zealot, but there was something in his eyes…

“You mean the old blessings?”

“In part,” he agreed. “It’s funny. When I was young, I wasn’t especially devout… it feels strange admitting that. We Wakes are notorious for our faith.” He chuckled lightly and rested on his cane. “But I went off with a sword in hand, chasing after the shadow of my aunt. I was Glorysworn for many years. I’ve fought in Alheid, and in Edaea. I’ve been at sea. There’s really nothing like our homeland, my lord. Nothing like it. When I walk these hills, it’s like…”

He shook his head. “I’m rambling. But I wanted to thank you.”

He moved off to speak with Arlock Drachen, and then I was standing next to the Empress and her seneschal just as the messenger I’d seen come in bow and take her leave.

“I’ve just had a report,” Rosanna told me without preamble. “Your lance has crossed into the North Harvest as of this time yesterday.”

The North Harvest was local speak for the shield of fertile cropland that sprawled across much of the realm’s northern face. The news brought a flash of excitement, and dread.

“Were any of them…”

“I don’t have details yet.” Rosanna smiled. “But as far as I know, they were all accounted for.”

A great deal of tension I’d been holding for many days bled out. “Excellent.”

“They did meet trouble,” Rosanna said more seriously. “We just had a bird from the River Warden. Aven?”

The seneschal read from a scroll. He had his spectacles on, a pair of circular lenses attached to a long, thin chain that made him look owlish. “Ser Hendry gave a cursory report to the River Warden. He says that they fought Woed not five miles south of Tol.”

I frowned. “Tol? That’s pretty far north. I thought they were trying to make contact with the  new duke?”

The seneschal’s brown eyes flicked up to me for a brief second before dipping again. “You will need to ask them directly. This offers no explanations, only a sequence of events. They fought men as well as monsters. The Warden’s report says bandits.”

Which could mean everything from hungry deserters to professional soldiers with orders. I scratched at my chin, which was smooth. One didn’t sit on the Amaranta’s council with stubble.

“They should arrive sometime tomorrow afternoon,” the Empress said. “We’ll get the full story then.” She spat a curse. “I hate not having arcane messengers! Everything is happening too slowly.”

Normally, a clericon or knight could put some words into some witch-wind or a sparrow made of light and send it across great distances at speed. But all our attempts to send magical communication were suspect — the enemy seemed capable of intercepting the messages, even corrupting them. Chimeric messengers were also meeting trouble. After a bird from Mirres had shown up in a Gylden lord’s aviary and slaughtered almost a dozen people during the summer, animals were no longer trusted except over relatively short distances.

“I will have further reports for you within the hour,” Aven told the Empress. She nodded, and he bowed and took his leave without a backward glance. I watched him go, and Rosanna watched me.

“Have you two spoken once since you arrived?” She asked me.

I grunted. “We just did. We do every day.”

She waved a hand in annoyance. “I don’t mean at council. Have you talked?”

When I just shrugged, she sighed and let it go. “I wanted to speak with you about a personal matter.”

Everyone else had started to file out. Kaia and the other Silversteel Knights given the honor of guarding the Amaranta were about, but none in eavesdropping distance.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“We need more knights.” Rosanna settled back in her chair and accepted a cup of wine from a servant. “Really, we need more of everything. More messengers, more soldiers, more food, more cohesion, more time…”

“We can’t conscript without breaking Aureia’s Law,” I said, repeating Moonbrand’s comments from earlier.

The Houses did war, the craftsmen made things, and the commonfolk farmed and lived in peace. Or that’s how it was supposed to be. Every clan kept a tithe of belted knights and professional soldiers. Levies were volunteers, or they were supposed to be. Plenty of noble families had tactics to obey the letter of the law, if not the spirit.

“I’m not so sure we’ll have much of a choice soon.” Rosanna smiled tiredly. “The world is changing too fast… but that’s not my point, listen. I want to knight your squire.”

I felt a brief shock. “Emma? But she’s…”

I did some quick math. She was of age, if only barely.

“I won’t do it without your blessing.” Rosanna lifted a perfect black eyebrow. “Do you think she’s ready?”

It took a minute to answer. Not only because I hadn’t expected the question, but also because…

It was a change. Emma had been my shadow for two years. I’d gotten used to having her at my side, and…

“She’s ready.” I gave a sharp nod as I made the decision. “More than ready. Really, she’s already twice the knight I was at the same age.”

“I really doubt that.” Rosanna smiled. “But thank you. I also want you to speak with Lord Sasan.”

I grimaced. “The Cymorin? Do I have to?”

No one really liked Cymorins.

“Yes. He’s organizing the autumn banquet.”

My voice sounded somewhat peevish even to me. “We’re still doing that? Isn’t there a war and an impending apocalypse going on?”

Rosanna sighed and leaned on the Maple Table with her elbows, lacing her fingers together over her chin. “Alken, I’ve been away from my homeland for six years. I’ve had a regency council here longer than my own heir has been alive! The rulers of the southern realms need to see me, to see that I am still their queen and amaranta, and our Accorded allies need to see that I am not just a bauble to Markham Forger.”

“No one believes that—”

“Hush! I know you hate social events, but this isn’t just House frivolity. Many of the lords and ladies I will be meeting at the autumnal will be among the same voices who decide whether House Silvering rules anything except this dale five years from now, or five decades from now.”

My hands came up in surrender. “I get it. So why am I talking to the Cymorin?”

Rosanna’s hands covered her mouth, but her green eyes glittered with amusement. “He’s in charge of the lists. You need to inform him who your partner for the banquet will be.”

I folded my arms. It was my usual stance when I was tense, or annoyed, though it probably didn’t look as impressive out of my armor.

The Empress’s eyebrows lifted in unison. “Have you taken a liking to any of my suggestions? I know that Lady Timorae finds you handsome, and my handmaiden Dahlia is from House Aurek. They own the best mines in the Dales, and their smithwork is—”

“Rose,” I began.

Her eyes hardened. “It’s Amaranta here, or Your Grace.”

“Amaranta,” I said with forced patience. “I’m not really in a position to be courting anyone right now.”

“Nonsense.” She placed her hands flat against the white table. “Alken, you are at present the only member of your House, and you are a great lord of the Accorded Realms. You require a base of power, allies, and wealth that isn’t borrowed from me or my husband. Markham prepared his own list of marriage prospects for you, do you know that?”

I didn’t. The admission made me almost literally reel.

“I convinced him to give you time to settle into your new duties, but in truth…” Rosanna sighed. “I made you a knight here, in this very castle. I’d always believed — hoped — that we could repair things.” She turned her head without breaking eye contact. “Is that… not what you want?”

I didn’t really know what I wanted. Not for me, personally. My every waking thought was dedicated to how I’d keep my circle alive, save Rosanna’s son from an ancient curse, slay all the evil mages and demons and…

Marriage. What in all the hells was I supposed to do with that?

I wanted to make excuses. I was the Headsman of Seydis, and…

And that was getting to be a tired refrain. I’d basically quit, anyway, which left me merely a knight of the Accord. Perhaps also a knight of Karles again...

Was it time to get the life I’d once imagined living back on track?

“The Elf Queen wanted me to marry her handmaiden,” I admitted quietly.

Rosanna’s expression immediately darkened. “Ah. I’d wondered. That trollop has clung quite near you.”

I frowned. “Tzanith is our ally.”

“I don’t trust her. Neither should you. The elves do not have the Accord’s interests at heart. I learned that last spring.” Rosanna clasped her hands again and became her usual serene self. “What about Myrice Gorgon? She seems to respect you, and she’s quite beautiful. It would also be a great help if House Gorgon had a stronger leash, and it would boost your reputation.”

“Boost my infamy, maybe.” I shook my head. “I’ll… think about it.”

“I expect you to make a choice and take steps.” Rosanna gave me her most regal look. “You will have a partner for the banquet, Lord Alken, and you will marry. If you won’t make a choice, then I will. It is a command.”

We were being observed, so I carefully masked my anger and gave her a stiff bow. “As you wish, Amaranta.”

“Yes. You are dismissed.”