Page 104 of Turncloak

To the Horizon

There was nothing Harrow loved more than to heckle the bard at the Twelve Jackals, but tonight, he wasn’t in the mood. Instead, he sank into a booth near the back corner of the tavern, making his way through the Summerhills honeywine list, playing a single-person variation of polderdash with varying degrees of competency.

His day had been excruciatingly long.

Over the last couple of weeks, Vallin’s diplomatic relations with its neighboring countries had soured somewhat, and the king was in an atrocious mood.

First, Bellandry threatened to revoke their open border pact, since the recent scarlet-silver showdown in the Havenwood had made its southern citizens nervous. Queen Vune sent a stern missive insinuating that King Quintan was too busy fortifying the wards around the capital to purge the evil inside the walls, and now the Bloodmoons were spreading, metastasizing. She would ensure the scourge remained contained inside Vallish borders by any means necessary.

Then the Palace received a delegation of ambassadors from Eqora, sent with the intention of smoothing over the fracas by the Mountains of Promise, the missing Silvercloak, the simmering skirmishes. House Arollan had expected the southern emissaries to be apologetic—they were undeniably the aggravators of the border provocations, and it was clear they had something to do with Sebran Aduran’s disappearance—but to the king’s immense ire, the delegation was actively antagonistic.

The Eqorans spent the afternoon needling King Quintan about the rising gang warfare in his capital city—they’d passed a dismembered Whitewing on Arollan Mile, the brutalized body impaled on the obelisk of a war memorial. The delegation’s jesting quips fast became barbed ridicule, and tensions between the parties ratcheted. When the Vallish regent insisted he would not be belittled in this way, the Eqorans threatened to rescind the trade agreement in which Eqora provided Vallin with achullah. Without the earthy spiced tobacco, Atherin would certainly riot.

Word of the Bloodmoons was spreading across the continent, invoking not just fear but mockery. And if there was anything King Quintan could not abide, it was mockery.

So he’d summoned the corrupt Grand Arbiter to the Palace, suddenly and feverishly determined that it was not enough for the scarlets to simply bleed. They must be obliterated.

“The death penalty?” the Grand Arbiter whispered, grip tightening on her quill. Her already pale face blanched to the color of fresh parchment, starkening the hue of her violet lipstick. Though her gray hair was pulled neatly into a low bun and her purple highcloak was perfectly pressed, there was still something haggard about her, something weary and afraid.

“Only for convicted traitors, of course.” King Quintan sat at the opposite end of the long ascenite table in the Grand Chamber. The windows were cranked open, as usual, and the royal banners shivered in the breeze.

Harrow had gone so far past cold that he was simply numb.

The Grand Arbiter chewed the inside of her cheek, deepening her many wrinkles. “But Your Grace, according to your own impassioned manifestos…the death penalty is unethical. Barbaric. Not the purview of a civilized modern society. I understand that tensions are—”

“I’m not here to debate this, Dematus.” King Quintan did not raise his voice, but his tone had all the cutting finality of a guillotine. “I’m here to issue orders.”

Dematus squared her shoulders, drawing on forty years of pride in her work to bolster her convictions. “Your Grace, the Grand Arbitership has always been a seat designed to function separately from the Crown. I do not take orders.”

“It’s not just the death penalty,” the king went on, waving a beefy palm as though she had not spoken. “We will also require official prophecies to be admissible as evidence in a court of law. Not just from any old street Foreseer, you understand. But from pedigreed prophets, like Highcloak Claver here.”

Harrow continued to stare out the window. A storm was gathering over the city, and a feeling of impending doom was gathering behind Harrow’s ribs.

“You see, Highcloak Claver recently foretold that the Bloodmoons would stage a coup.” King Quintan drilled a meaningful look through the Grand Arbiter. “Storm the Palace, take the throne by force. Treason, pure and simple.”

A fervent head shake loosened a strand of pale gray hair from Dematus’s bun. “Even if royal prophecy did become admissible—and that’s a rather large if, because prophecies are, of course, impossible to replay or verify externally—the death penalty seems unnecessary. Duncarzus is ample punishment for—”

“All scarlet aiders and abettors will be executed.”

This final decree was loaded with subtext, a layered threat, a subtle assertion of the regent’s knowing. But whether or not Dematus picked up on the implications, she did not allow herself to meeken.

“I’m sorry, Your Grace. I will not support the return of capital punishment.”

A long, terrible silence, almost apocalyptic in its barrenness. Then King Quintan spoke quietly, dangerously—more regally than Harrow had ever witnessed from the boozy ruler.

“For decades, the ruling house has so rarely intervened on matters of law and order. You and your predecessors have always held my full trust—even when unsavory rumors have spread about your loyalties.” A lethal smile. “Amend the constitution, Dematus. Or I’ll order an official investigation into your conduct.”

Harrow swilled the nectar-colored honeywine in his goblet, mulling over the implications of a death penalty for Bloodmoons—and their myriad aiders and abettors, of which he was arguably one. The whole thing was far from ideal.

He’d been avoiding Levan ever since he’d entered the Whitewing drophouse to discover that the kingpin’s former betrothed was still alive. Three years ago, Harrow had seen firsthand what Alucia’s double-crossing had done to Levan. He’d never forget finding his casual lover in a pool of his own urine, frothing at the mouth, muscles seizing violently, and eyes hanging empty after an overdose of loxlure. Alucia’s unexpected survival might unravel the kingpin once more.

Uncertain how to navigate this snarl of a situation, and spooked by the reintroduction of the death penalty, Harrow thought it best to avoid the scarlets entirely. So when none other than Levan Celadon entered the tavern, the King’s Prophet felt unsure of how to behave.

“He lives.” Levan slid into the booth carrying an honest-to-Saints glass of elderberry cordial.

A grown man. Cordial.

Harrow lifted his own glass to his lips before realizing it was empty. “Evening.”