A party of Royal Guardsmen were standing just beyond the grounds of the temple, muskets shouldered and straight swords—the same pattern that the Marines favored—sheathed at their sides. Once they saw their charge emerging from the gateway, the colonel gave a short command, and they quickly surrounded Thaos, smoothly moving to envelope him without blocking his way.
Thaos strode confidently, trying to bury the weight of his dream with every footfall, hardly seeing the Guardsmen as they walked around him. He halfway expected to hear one or more of them grumbling about not being let into the temple, but no one raised their voices at all—they understood the rules of the priests . . . that, or they weren’t going to complain about it in front of the Heir of the City.
A carriage was waiting across the street, and the Guardsmen pushed their way through the tangle of humanity which flowed down the cobblestones like a noisy, rank stream. There were sailors, hawkers, businessmen, and even an occasional honest woman with her hair wrapped in a kaly. Horses, held by a few Guardsmen—who were eyeing the crowd carefully, to be sure that no thief quick with his hands wandered off with their mounts—were standing nearby, waiting for the rest of the riders.
As Thaos approached the door of the carriage, most of his escort broke off, making their way to their mounts, while a handful remained at his side.
The driver opened the door, bowing toward Thaos, and the heir raised his eyebrows as he saw the other occupant already waiting inside. She raised her eyebrows as well, her green eyes laughing a little at his expression, though her face was composed as any prince’s daughter should be.
“Didn’t expect me, Brother?” she questioned politely, her tone too perfect to be anything but a facade for humor.
“I rather expected no one,” Thaos responded, climbing in beside her. He hadn’t noticed a wheeled chair, but he supposed she’d made the driver put it up on top so that he wouldn’t notice it. He smiled at her, for once not having to force the expression into place.
She smiled back, the composure expected of a princess disappearing for a moment. “How did it go? Did they help you?”
My father will panic. He’ll think I’ve been touched by the ausafotos, he’d said just a half an hour before.
You have been, the priest had answered.
“They did,” Thaos said, ignoring the sadness that appeared in her eyes, as she recognized the lie for what it was. “They did,” he repeated himself, trying to smile reassuringly.
She didn’t challenge his lie, and he had to raise an eyebrow once more at that, the expression causing a small chuckle to emerge from her lips. Usually, she wheedled the truth out of him with a combination of appeals to his love and threats that only a younger sister could accomplish.
The driver closed the door, just the top of his head visible through the window. “The Apella, Your Majesty?”
Understanding that he wasn’t the one being spoken to, Thaos remained silent, and Lya responded, “Quite. Thank you.”
The driver nodded, sketching a half-bow before turning and clambering up the steps to the seat up on top. A Guardsman, his musket loaded with buck and ball, climbed up beside him, while the remaining Guardsmen mounted up.
“The Apella?” Thaos questioned his sister, lurching slightly as the carriage began rolling. “More of this Zoirys business?”
“Yes,” she said, her smile fading. “But there’s more,” she added. “Yesterday . . . while you were with the priests . . . a Raven rider came from Clan Prain.” She hesitated for a moment. “Four clans have agreed to call a council of ravenlords, and we and the other Rosers have been invited to sit with them.”
Thaos started, brutally torn away from the memories of dreams. The words, death, and carnage of men and monsters from his nightmares fading as incredulous surprise firmly settled itself in their place. “My God, what for?”
His sister fixed him with a gaze that seemed to say, You’re being stupid again, and he blinked, before shaking his head slowly.
“The Zoirys?” he guessed, speaking slowly. When Lya nodded, he said, “They can’t be that frightened of the People! The last time a council of Ravens was called, half of the Ravenlands marched south of the Change, and then didn’t return for six years! This Zoirys business is hardly the same as a Pental invasion.”
“They are calling a council, Thaos;” Lya said simply, “they are afraid.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, before adding rhetorically, “What was the last thing to frighten so many ravenlords?” Before he could think of a response, she went on, “Even your imprisonment did not provoke such a response from our northern kindred. . . . But there are . . . other events, it seems. Other incidents, in the Ravenlands. Villages being raided out of season, sails on the horizon . . . strange men seen along the coast, with strange accents. . . .”
Thaos pursed his lips in silence and glanced out the window of the carriage as they passed through a cordon formed by Guardsmen and City Watch. The plaza in front of the Apella building was empty, as was proper when the trados and konos lords were in session, but just beyond the cordon, quite a few interested onlookers watched the comings and goings.
“No words?” Lya asked, a small smile appearing as she attempted to goad him into a witty comeback.
He was still staring out the window. “A council of Ravens,” he murmured to himself, prompting his sister to frown again.
The carriage slowed, the driver calling to the team, and they came to rest just before the carved steps of the majestic building. There was a step for every one of the founding trados lords, and a dozen pillars stood at the entryway. One for every prince’s reign, though there was still room enough for Thaos and all his descendants.
He took a breath, but just as he reached for the door of the carriage, Lya placed her hand on his arm. He paused, glancing down at the hand gripping his wrist, and she smiled sheepishly, softening her grip without releasing him. “Are you truly well enough to be here?” she asked gently, leaving off the discussion of Ravens and the People, and coming back to the one she was most concerned about.
He hesitated, and she spoke again before he could: “Do not dare lie to me again, Thaos.”
The driver opened the door to the carriage, just as Lya spoke, and he glanced between the two of them uncertainly. Lya kept her gaze on her brother, but Thaos turned to the driver. “Have you no respect?” he demanded. “Wait outside.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” The driver seemed glad to escape.
“Thaos?” Lya’s soft voice caught his attention again.
He closed his eyes. “No,” he answered truthfully, “but I am our father’s son.” She looked as though she wanted to say something, but he climbed out of the carriage, making her release him lest she be drug behind like a little girl’s doll.
The driver bowed, putting more distance between him and the heir, having set the wheeled chair that had ridden on the top of the carriage down on the ground. Lya propelled herself to the side of the carriage interior with her hands, until she was at the door. Thaos picked her up carefully, and she wrapped her arms around his neck for more support.
“It’ll be fine; just stay back for today. Do not let the lords see you as weak—in any way,” she whispered, so that only he could hear. He didn’t answer, but instead deposited her in the padded seat of the chair. She reached down and smoothed her dress over her legs. When she looked up at him, her face was composed once more, and he nodded a little, before beckoning for a Guardsman to push her.
* * *
The Apella was a cacophony of voices, as a hundred and four trados and konos lords battled to be heard. The Lord of the Moment looked harried, as he fought to control them, and shouted angrily at where two konos lords were encroaching on his dais.
Lya and Thaos filtered onto the Prince’s Dais, unnoticed for the moment, and the Guardsman pushing the Prince’s daughter along glanced at the squabbling lords, his contempt nearly audible.
Prince Einos Rhosborn sat on his throne, watching the chaos like a patient prophet who knew that all things were simply a test from God. . . . Though, every so often, Thaos could see the disappointment and worry flicker across his features, before it was carefully hidden.
He glanced at the arrival of his children, and waited for both of them to bow before gesturing for them to rise (or, in Lya’s case, simply raise her head).
“Father,” Lya said, being wheeled to a place beside her father, while Thaos stood on the opposite side.
“Father,” Thaos said, echoing his sister.
“The priests saw you?” Einos questioned quietly. A ring of Guardsmen kept the trados and konos lords away, and none would hear. Nor was there any need to ask which of his children he was talking to.
Cutting a slight glance at Lya, as if questioning if she would answer on his behalf, Thaos answered, “Yes.”
“And?”
“Stress.” The one word, lie though it was, seemed to calm Einos. He’d never been as good at spotting a lie as his daughter.
The Prince of Pothomar nodded, still wearing the mask of a monarch, though the concern of a father shone through. “Good,” he said simply. He hesitated, before he pointed at the chaos surrounding the Lord of the Moment’s witness stand, where a handful of officers from the Zoirys, and a lone Marine stood alongside the Secretary of the Navy. “We will give them tharos’, for what they have done, I’ve decided.”
Thaos opened his mouth, but, at a sharp glance from Lya, he closed it once more. “That’s proper,” he said, finally, trusting his sister’s political insight much more than his own. “Does the Lord of the Moment know?”
“Do you think he’d be letting the lords flog the poor men so hard if he didn’t?” Einos responded dryly.
“No, I suppose not,” Lya said, speaking up and giving her brother a quick glance. Stay back for today.
Thaos turned his attention to the witness stand, where the officers and Secretary were answering the furious, barbed questions with varying degrees of patience. The Secretary himself seemed to be about to burst from all the blood rushing to his face as he decried attack after attack on his service, while the lieutenants—only two, for the third lieutenant had been killed by the People of the Moon when a cannon had torn him in half—did their best to keep their mouths shut, though an occasional stinging insult made their tempers flare.
The Wild Raven captain of the fortunate—or unfortunate, depending upon who you asked—vessel stood a half a head above his comrades, and his expression rarely strayed from one of bearable annoyance. The solitary Marine stood awkwardly beside the three sailors, his long face drawn into a frown as he looked around. Whenever a question was directed toward him, he spoke with a heavy Ravenlander accent, using the slow, rolling way of speaking to escape answering any questions. The little brass image pinned to his shako made questions a dangerous avenue for interviewers, anyway.
“The papers are making them into heroes and villains both,” Lya commented. “There will be some unhappy people when you give them a tharos apiece, Father.”
“Perhaps so,” he said.
“My Prince!” the Lord of the Moment cried, slapping the flat of his hand against the podium, trying vainly to return some sense of order to the Apella. Einos looked at him, but simply raised an eyebrow. The Lord of the Moment cursed and grabbed a Guardsman, speaking into his ear. The soldier raised his eyebrows as well, but, after glancing at his monarch, nodded.
The Guardsman unslung his musket, cocked the hammer, and pointed it toward the high arched ceiling.
The throaty roar from the musket split through the sounds of argument and discord, and the little lead ball buried itself deep in the plaster of the ceiling. Trados and konos lords quieted for a brief instant, to turn and gape at the Guardsman, and the Lord of the Moment took the time to climb up on his podium. “Silence!” he roared. “Silence, damn you all, or I’ll have you shot!” His face was red, and he looked just as ready to burst as the Secretary of the Navy. “Lord Unon and a quorum of the Committee for Foreign Affairs have voted among themselves to petition the Prince.” He turned toward the Prince’s Dais, still standing on his podium and looking slightly unhinged from dealing with the lords.
“The Throne will hear the petition,” Einos said gravely, refusing to comment on the fact that his Lord of the Moment was standing on his podium like a child, or that he’d just ordered one of his Guardsmen to shoot into the ceiling of a building older than their nation.
Lord Unon, a short, thin man who looked as if a stout breeze would carry him away, nodded and slowly approached the Prince’s Dais. Despite his lack of frame or mass, he shouldered lords aside quite easily, on his way. Stopping just short of where the Guardsmen stood in defense of their monarch and his heir, he bowed.
“Rise and speak,” Einos said.
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” the trados lord replied. He had sat on the Committee for Foreign Affairs longer than Thaos had been alive, and he looked every inch the grizzled player of the game of diplomacy that he was. “I and my colleagues voted amidst the bedlam, so I doubt we were heard by any.”
He cleared his throat, fidgeting with the glasses perched on his thin nose. “The message from Clan Prain was read and debated by my colleagues, and we have voted to send . . .”
The words were growing terribly faint, and Thaos blinked, trying vainly to hear what the slightly-built man was saying.
You should ready yourself, brother, something said, drowning out the old trados lord’s words. And frozen hands seized him.
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