There was a silence, and Aldrich was preparing to stand up, feeling the meeting concluded, when Garrick leaned across the table, eyes wide with indignation."You talk of lose threads, but you are willing to unravel the longest thread in this whole scheme and hang all of our hopes on it!"Spittle flew from his mouth in his eagerness to speak.
For the first time, Aldrich lost some of his confidence.
“Explain yourself, Garrick,” he said, stopping himself short from asking him to leave the thinking to the rest of them.
“Crowning the boy!It’s madness, no matter how you dress it up,” he declared, the torchlight casting his scarred face in stark relief as he glared at Aldrich.“He’s got Thorgrin’s blood—MacGil blood, too.You think we can leash a lion’s cub with whispers and potions?He’ll break free, and we’ll be the ones bleeding.”
Holt nodded, his rings glinting as he jabbed a finger.“Garrick’s right.I’ve sunk fortunes into this, bribed half the Legion, but that boy’s no puppet.His father’s shadow looms too large, and the people chant his name already.Control him?Hah!He’ll rally the faithful before your alchemists mix their draughts.”
Aldrich bristled, clearly unhappy at the turn of events.“Varis, what say you?”
Varis sucked the end of his quill.“My lord, we need to deal in certainties.No matter how I look at it, I don’t see the prince as a certainty.It is a risk.”
“It is all a risk dammit,” Aldrich spat back.“You think it wasn’t a risk killing the king?”He looked round the table, Draven and Varis avoided his eyes, but the others returned his gaze.
“Elowen, tell me you are convinced my way is the way we should tread.”
Elowen pursed her lips."It is a risk.There is no getting around that.With the princeling out of the way, there is no doubt our path will be smoother."
“Even if the kingdom descends into chaos?”Aldrich fired back.
“Come, come, Aldrich,” Holt said, smiling despite the tension in the room.“Surely you aren’t going to try and tell us now that chaos is a bad thing?It is what we have craved, what we have worked for.”
“But it’s different when our hand is at the tiller,” Aldrich said, but his voice was that of someone who knows his argument has been defeated.He knew they saw him as the leader, but not in a way that would allow him to dictate their actions, especially in something so pivotal.He sighed.“Very well,” he said, voice low, reluctant.“We vote.”One by one, hands rose—Garrick’s scarred fist, Holt’s bejeweled fingers, Varis’s ink-stained palm, Elowen’s blood-red nails.Draven abstained.
“Then it’s decided,” Aldrich said, injecting his voice with some of its former authority.“Guwayne dies.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The days following the grim tidings of Thorgrin's death blurred into a haze of rituals and hollow ceremonies for Gwendolyn.King's Court, once a beacon of unyielding light, now draped itself in mourning veils of black silk and silver-threaded banners, that fluttered in the chill autumn winds that swept down from the northern peaks.
There had been calls for a funeral, with plans for a grand affair on the cliffs overlooking the Western Sea, where his cloak, in lieu of his body, would be burnt on a huge pyre.But Gwendolyn, with the urging of Guwayne had resisted it.
Instead, she had arranged for a memorial service, quiet and private, for the King, along with a memorial of thanks and remembrance for each of the other members of that fateful expedition.
Gwendolyn had stood there, unyielding as the stone towers that rose behind her, her blue silk gown now exchanged for a widow's gray.She had not wept then, nor in the nights that followed, when the castle's halls echoed with the footsteps of grieving nobles and the muffled sobs of servants.Grief, she knew, was a luxury for the living; survival demanded steel.
Yet beneath her regal façade, a storm raged.The breaches in the Shield were still occurring.Few and far between, and quickly dealt with by the increased patrols, but often enough and deadly enough to ensure they were never far from people’s minds.
Gwendolyn was only too aware that the reason for Thor’s mission to the north had not been fulfilled.Questions remained to be answered.And every day more questions were forthcoming.She knew it wouldn’t be long before they would be directed at her and her ability to restore confidence in the Shield.
Gwendolyn moved through the court like a ghost in her own kingdom, issuing decrees with a voice whose steadiness belied the doubt and uncertainties that raged within.She convened minor councils, doled out rations to the outlying holds, and penned ravens to distant allies.All the time Guwayne was adamant that his father was still alive.She tried to discourage such talk, fearing that he was merely putting off the grieving process.Perhaps, she thought, this denial was his way of dealing with it.But despite herself, his insistence that Thor lived was having an unsettling effect upon her.
With nobody, she found it hard to fully close the chapter on her husband's death.While a sliver of doubt remained, that let an equal amount of hope in.And hope, in this instance, was a terrible thing.How could she move on while that remained inside her, even if she could not talk of it to anyone?Even Guwayne.
She had found herself trusting fewer and fewer people, and now sought council only in Sir Kellan.But even with Kellan, she suspected that he was conducting operations without her knowledge.
And yet, despite everything, the Kingdom had to be run, and she tried extremely hard to maintain a façade that everything was running smoothly.
It was on the eve of the Harvest Moon, seven days after the memorial service, that the fragile veil of normalcy was torn asunder.She was sitting in her private sanctum high in the White Tower when a soft rap echoed at the door.
"Enter," she called, setting aside the parchment she had been working on.
The door creaked open on silent hinges, admitting a figure cloaked in servant's gray: Lirael, her handmaiden for the first fifteen years of her life before she had been granted leave to nurse her sick parents.Gwen, and indeed her father, had offered to find a comfortable dwelling in King's Court for the elderly couple, but they had politely refused, wishing to see out their days in the southern village they had spent their entire life.
She was a wisp of a woman with mouse-brown hair pinned beneath a cap.Her eyes and face were soft, matronly, but Gwen knew from first hand experience that there was a steely toughness beneath the surface.
“Lirael!”Gwen said, feeling the first rush of joy since waving Thor off on his mission north.“How are you?How are your parents?What brings you to King’s Court?”
