Page 23 of Valdemar

As Kordas expected, the news of the coming coronation had spread across Haven quickly, and morale had shot up. What followed were weeks of reviews and allocations of resources that could be spared for the event, but that was not all. Wisely, Kordas was advised by Hakkon-the-elder that this event presented high value for espionage, sabotage, and crime. There was no bigger preoccupation for Valdemarans, and that meant it’d be easier to slip trickery by while they were distracted. His few dedicated domestic spies went to work ferreting out potential trouble and neutralizing it. Even within the Palace, infiltrators might risk exposure from poisoning attempts, trapsetting, or similar power moves ordered by their distant superiors. The ones we know about, that is. But there are always summonings and conscripted devils to deal with, self-appointed foes, and the monsters of the Pelagirs. Maybe not all native to this world, either. I’m no future-teller, but I’ve heard rumors that some Valdemarans are, and I’ll trust in that and expert fieldwork.

Soon enough, they would all know what all the local entities had to say about it.

Stevin, one of his long-established valets, helped him into clothing that had been in storage for almost ten years. It was also the first time in ten years that he’d needed to be helped into clothing; like everyone else, he’d adopted fairly simple garb as soon as it could be made, while they were all still living under Tayledras auspices—and hertasi care. Tayledras clothing was supremely comfortable and durable, even clothing as simple as workwear, and they had shared their textile secrets with the settlers gladly once they were offered the Doll-derived canvas treatment in exchange. Kordas had forgotten that the embroidered, brocaded, beaded, embellished, and elaborately contrived stuff was a lot less comfortable than the clothing he’d been happily wearing for the last ten years, and a lot heavier. He concentrated on that to avoid thinking about anything else—mostly avoiding the mental refrain that he really did not want the title of “King,” which in his mind had far more negative connotations than advantages. It made his stomach knot up. This could be far worse, Kordas reminded himself.

At least I don’t have to worry about it being out of date and unfashionable—despite the Tayledras, we haven’t really embraced fashion. Probably to Stevin’s chagrin.For a decade, no one highborn had been wearing anything other than the sturdiest of their old clothing or the simpler, harder-wearing garb that he and his family had adopted. Or at least they did so once they realized how poorly suited their existing clothing was to living rather rough and working alongside their underlings. Even the highest-born had realized that no one had the time that it took to keep fine garments in repair and clean—not when every available set of hands was involved in keeping them all fed, housed, and protected. There was probably a whole barge’s worth of formal and court outfits pulled out of long-term storage in hertasi tunnels in less than a month.

This could have been much worse. I could have brought my High Court clothing with me. Ugh. He didn’t miss those. The “in the highest style” garments that the Dolls had had made for him when he’d been at the Capital seemed to have been deliberately designed to be stifling. The Dolls had done their best to make it feel less like he was being strapped into a series of corsets, but it had not ever been clothing that was intended to put the wearer at ease; the Emperor had apparently found it amusing to contort and squeeze those in the Palace. This old finery, which Kordas had worn at home for official functions, hadn’t been as bad as that—but it wasn’t as good as the loose-fitting trews, shirts, and leather or knitted tunics, which he looked forward to getting into again more with each minute that passed. The more worn in and loose, the better.

Thank the gods that this coronation was timed for the cool of the morning, or he and Isla would have been melting inside their finery.

Did I ever actually like these high collars?he asked himself, as he inserted a finger between his neck and the collar in a vain attempt to loosen it. The delicate handmade lace edging the collar and cuffs of his shirt brushed his fingers like the wings of annoying gnats.

Stevin, a stern look on his saturnine face, slapped his hand away. “Your Highness will please to not destroy his neckline,” the valet scolded, with a toss of his black hair.

At least Stevin is showing an appropriate amount of . . . sass. I don’t know what I’d do if he went all obsequious on me.

He sighed, and acquiesced. At least he had the room to sigh in his clothing. He hadn’t exactly been out of shape when last he’d worn this exquisitely laundered linen shirt with its frilled collar, the closely fitted weskit, and the jacket with brocade lapels that was so perfectly tailored that it needed Stevin’s help to get him into it, but he was definitely leaner and tougher than he’d been ten years ago. The combination of limited food and hard work had honed him down rather than beefing him up. And the breeches instead of trews—he’d forgotten how tight they were, and it was a good thing they were made of flexible and stretchy lambskin, because otherwise he would not have been able to move. All of this nonsense was in colors of blue and white, with touches of silver, just like the Valdemar crest. The coat and trews were blue, the weskit was a darker blue, the shirt a white that seemed unnatural these days.

“I look like an idiot,” he muttered, not at all used to the image in the heavily polished steel mirror. Mostly because the only reason he ever looked in the mirror was to make sure he wasn’t about to embarrass himself.

“You look magnificent,” countered Stevin.

“I can’t move,” he complained.

“Odd, you used to say this was your most comfortable outfit,” Stevin replied serenely, lifting the silver-gilt and blue-tooled leather baldric with its Valdemar badge over his head, and settling it into place with the badge properly centered at breastbone, before hanging the dress sword he had not carried in years on it. No spitter, thank the gods. I don’t want to see another spitter, ever. Well, that wasn’t quite true, but a spitter was the last thing he wanted to see on a day in which he was being made into something he—mostly—didn’t want to be. I might be tempted to use it on myself! Well, that wasn’t true, but . . . at this moment, he very much wished that there was someone else being made King.

I know what my annoyance is all about, too. I got accustomed to riding against danger, spell-slinging and being heroic, the hands-on leader. Gods help me, I liked it. But this—doing this means I can’t be that anymore, can I? I feel like Court let me out on a long leash and now it is dragging me back.

Stevin fussed with his hair until it lay the way the valet wanted it to. There would be a crown, of course. Can’t have a coronation without a crown. But the one thing he had put his foot down about was that he was not, absolutely was not, going to wear the Wolf Crown. “It’s a magical artifact,” he had reminded them all. “From the head of the worst person we’ve ever known. We have no idea of everything it can do. It would be irresponsible to parade it around in public, or stick it on my head. What if the spirits of all of the previous Emperors are somehow tied to it and take me over? No, that thing stays in storage until we have the time and the safe place for the Old Men to study it properly! Remember, the Hawkbrothers wouldn’t touch that damned thing with a barge pole!”

Not that he actually thought that being possessed by ancient spirits would happen, but . . . when he’d worn the damned thing before, it had made him feel things he really did not want to feel ever again. The crown made him want to vomit every time he looked at it, and it even gave some of the Old Men twinges of unease when they so much as looked at it. So he’d immediately gotten them to lock it up in an unused portion of the hertasi tunnels, where it would hopefully be forgotten. And for this coronation, he’d had a new pair of far less ostentatious circlets made, one for him, one for Isla, out of white-gold Imperial eagles melted down. The jeweler he had entrusted this task to had practically wet himself with the excitement that he was going to be making the first royal crowns of the Kingdom of Valdemar.

They were handsome things, those crowns. Simple white-gold circles about as wide as a thumb, with engraved horses chasing each other around them. Relatively light—they were still gold, after all, which by its very nature was heavy—but they weren’t going to give the wearer a headache if they had to keep one on all day.

The boys, who would not actually have a coronation themselves, all had similar, simpler circlets to go with their new titles of “Prince.” They all seemed thankfully indifferent to the fact that they had crowns and titles, and more thrilled by the fact they were now Princes like the protagonists of books and stories. And their beloved father—a King, like the biggest of fabled heroes. He supposed the boys’ thoughts aligned with his own attitude about the position—most of being royalty would be just the same as they’d already lived, only with better hats.

Most of all, the boys were excited because there was going to be a feast using recipes from more prosperous days in the Old Land—especially baked and fried sweets.

The boys have their priorities straight.

Kordas wasn’t genuinely out of sorts about being dressed, especially now. One of the functions of his valet was to inspect the noble’s clothing before it went on, and he’d prefer not to be jabbed by any poisoned needles today, thank you very much. “Give over, Stevin, you aren’t going to make me any closer to perfection,” he said, finally, trying not to sound cross. “I am what I am, and a title isn’t going to change that.”

“It is not your job to determine how good you should look today,” Stevin replied sternly, and with a hint of acidity. “It is my job. I don’t tell you how to run a Council meeting. Don’t tell me how to dress you for a coronation.”

I believe I have just been put in my place!

Stevin nailed it home by finishing, “I know from past praise that you have complete faith in my expertise.”

Just in time to save him from further fussing, Isla glided into the room in full sail, in a matching court gown she had probably worn three times in her life. And she took his breath away. She was completely stunning, as slim as a girl, and twice as beautiful as she had been when he married her. Her dazzling white linen chemise sported a high standing collar made of stiffened lace that rose halfway up the back of her head. The blue brocade gown had a belt that matched his baldric, complete with a Valdemar crest badge as a buckle in the front. The chemise was puffed out along slits in the narrow brocade sleeves and ended in cuffs ornamented with more lace on the chemise and on the cuffed brocade over it, and her hair had been arranged into an elaborate coil of braids on the top of her head. “He looks magnificent, Stevin, and any further primping you do to him will not be visible to anyone but me and Father Jorj. Time to go.”

She took Stevin’s arm before he could object, and led him to the door, but Stevin paused long enough to say, “You look the part.” Kordas threw him a light salute, and both of them shared the crook of a smile.

“I’ll try not to embarrass you,” Kordas replied as they departed.

That left Kordas alone with his emotions, staring at the mirror to sum himself up. A momentous occasion such as this would be irresistible for those who would do him harm by spell or sword, and he would not let himself be less than supremely prepared. Shields upon shields, and for more than defense—engaging his shields was a calming ritual for him. His breathing steadied to a practiced rhythm and he grounded himself. He visualized much of it, mentally viewing his work from the inside and also from a viewpoint outside his physical body. His disciplined mental defenses locked into place, layering above, below, and around what he pictured as “him.” Kordas’s memory was too good for the last fifteen years to be a blur, but hundreds of individual events flashed by to form a shining chain around his mind. Bright like silver, draped but not heavy, the silver chain shone and glinted as it multiplied its length and breadth. It surrounded him. It defined him. It was borne up by the smiles, the saves, and each struggle he had triumphed over. All of the advice he’d taken, the tests of character, and the love he’d been shown were alloyed into its links. He armored himself with that chain, fusing it into the shiniest of reflective silver, and sealed his defenses with it. Then, outside of that, he called the Hawkbrothers’ “three radials” technique into being. With the sphere of his core self as their centerpoint, three circles of defense, each at right angles to each other, drew themselves as expanding fields of energy. They formed not only a strong initial defense, but also a sensor: when attacked, they would not only resist, but also give a reading on the potency of the attack and its direction of origin. He murmured a prayer of thanks, too, while turning to leave the chamber—one of deep appreciation for those who had believed in him, and stayed true in the hardest of times.

The walk down the hallway was silent, save for the click and shuffle of his bootheels. He felt as if he strode through his own history, and without pause he pushed the doors open to step out between the waiting guards and join the distinguished company he would walk the rest of the way with.