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Chapter Thirty-Two

Vanni

This meeting with the queen’s commander is reminiscent of the one I had with Aldwine. Same inn, same table. Stokerton gives off the same air of confidence, even, and is approximately the same age.

But the similarities stop there.

Whereas Aldwine is reticent and suspicious by nature, Stokerton is anything but. Every time we’ve come in contact before, I’ve been left with the impression that, were we not enemies, the commander and I could be friends.

Good-natured, often smiling or jesting, he is well-liked by most, including the queen. The rumors of Queen Cettina and Lord Stokerton rival even the most scandalous stories about the Merian court. Some say they’d be married already if she were not a queen.

Thomas and I stand to greet the commander and one of his men.

My mind should be firmly on this meeting and what I hope to gain from it, and yet I find my thoughts straying to Aedre. I deliberately did not seek her out last eve, knowing she was wroth with me. But I went to her house this morning, expecting to find her, only for her father to tell me she’d spent the night at Nord Manor.

It was as if her father had punched me in the gut. An unmarried woman, staying overnight as a guest of an unmarried man?

As Aedre herself would tell me, the rules are different here, or rather there aren’t any. And I’ve observed myself that she and Kipp act like brother and sister. Which might comfort me more if the two were related in any way.

A jab in the arm from Thomas pulls me back to the present.

“Lord d’Abella. Sir Thomas. What a fine meeting place you’ve chosen,” Stokerton says. He nods to his companion. “Sir Alex McGreghere.”

I shake the older man’s hand. As is typical for a Highlander, his grey hair is worn long and loose. But I know better than to discount him because of his age—behind his bushy beard are intelligent green eyes, striking in their color.

“We met once before,” the knight says, “many years ago at Castle d’Almerita. I believe it was the very year Galfrid welcomed you there. There was quite a bit of talk about the young boy whose sword skill would someday be unmatched.

Despite myself, I like the man already. He deftly avoided saying the year your parents died, and though it amounts to much the same, I appreciate his tact.

“I am sorry to have forgotten it, McGreghere.”

We sit then, the two men across from us, a tankard of ale and four mugs already gracing the table.

“You were a boy. And this”—he pulls on his beard—“was more brown than grey then.”

“And this,” I say as Thomas pours ale into our mugs, “is Sir Thomas Hawthorne.”

“The best amongst us,” Stokerton says, “for he pours the ale.”

My attention shifts to the commander.

As in Meria, the members of the queen’s Curia retain their titles for life unless otherwise decreed by the monarch. Which means he will remain as the second commander until the first commander dies. The duties are similar, as evidenced by the fact that we are both here, in Murwood, to do our liege’s bidding.

The purpose of this meeting is for me to learn what, exactly, their liege has bid them to do.

“We were surprised to learn of your presence,” Stokerton says, getting straight to the heart of the matter.

“As were we,” I admit. “You first?”

His laugh makes it impossible not to smile.

“D’Abella is not one for niceties,” he explains to McGreghere. “But the rumors are true. He is quite deadly with a sword.”

Since there is no hint of malice, I thank him for the compliment. “Unfortunately, it seems I will be forced to use it before I would wish.”

Stokerton does not flinch.

“Perhaps if you’d not sent a ship full of your best men against us, such things could have been avoided.”