Page 10

Eskil settles his gaze on Garrik. He sits behind his desk with his hands folded and the longsword leaning against the wall within arm's reach, and there is nothing casual about any of it. The silence stretches long enough to fill every corner of the room.

"It speaks volumes," Eskil says, "that you came alone to the gates of Valen. Wounded. Without weapons or escort."

Garrik holds his gaze. "I came because I need you to hear what I have to say, and I could not say it from inside Wolfe territory."

"Then speak."

Garrik draws a breath that costs him, the kind of breath that has to navigate around damaged tissue and bruised ribs, and he begins.

"I did not know the betrothal and the alliance were a plot to overthrow you." The words are direct and unadorned and he delivers them without the preamble a diplomat would use, which is either a mark of honesty or a sign that he has learned kings prefer their information undressed. "Ivan kept his true ambitions to himself and shared them with Dade and the Jakadi. Not with me. Not with the warriors. My role was supposed to be military support for a combined force. Integration of Wolfe units with Rengaran ones. That is what I was briefed on. That is what I prepared for."

He pauses. The pain flickers across his face and he breathes through it.

"I knew we had been dealing with the Jakadi. I did not know the shape of it until Ivan was dead on his own floor and his steward had the warriors, and by then there was nothing left to learn that hadn't already been made irrelevant."

Eskil has not moved. Neither has Bohdi, though in his case it is practice rather than calm. He is very good at keeping his face still while his mind works, and his mind is working hard. He is running Garrik's words against what they already know. Against what the Jakadi prisoner told Eskil in the cells before the escape. Against what Bohdi's own reconnaissance turned up on the border.

The pieces align more than they don't. That does not make them true, but it makes them worth the time Eskil is spending.

Garrik continues. "I propose that uniting the Wolfe under a new chieftain would give Rengara the alliance it was promised. Without the betrothal contract. Without the political manipulation. A straight partnership between two powers who benefit from cooperation rather than conquest."

Something in Bohdi's chest lurches hard enough that he has to work to keep it off his face. No betrothal means Morgan is not being bartered away again. No treaty marriage to a stranger twice his age, no diplomatic sacrifice dressed up as duty, no prince sent south with a bow around his neck. Bohdi keeps his eyes on the wall behind Eskil's head and does not look at Morgan and does not let a single muscle move.

Morgan is already leaning forward in his chair. "So you're not asking for anything in return?"

"I'm asking for Rengara's help in positioning a new chieftain," Garrik says. "That is the trade. Without it, the clan will split. Too many will follow Dade into a war they can't win and the rest will scatter without leadership. A fractured Wolfe clan means lawless territory between us and Rengara with nothing to slow raiding parties down." He looks at Eskil. "That benefits no one. Not your kingdom. Not my people. Not anyone living between here and the eastern border."

Morgan is thinking. Bohdi can see it, the way Morgan's eyes go slightly unfocused when he is turning a problem over, restructuring it, looking for the seams. It is the look he gets over a ledger that will not balance, and Bohdi finds it unreasonably attractive and resents himself for noticing it right now.

"You say a new chieftain," Bohdi says from the doorway, and his voice is even and unhurried because that is how he conducts business even when his insides are knotted. "Do you not mean yourself? You were Ivan's ward. Did he not intend for you to inherit his role?"

Garrik turns in his chair to look at him. The movement costs him, a hiss of breath through his teeth, but he does it anyway. "That was the plan. Ivan was grooming me as his successor. But nothing was ever formalized. Ivan died without anything set in stone, and Dade stepped into the gap before the body was cold." He shakes his head. "I don't have the clan's loyalty. The warriors who remember me remember Ivan's ward, not a chieftain. And the warriors who follow Dade would sooner kill me than kneel to me. I'm not the answer."

"Then who is?" Eskil asks.

Garrik straightens slightly. "The obvious solution is to find Ivan's estranged son. Fenris. He's chieftain by right of blood. His claim supersedes Dade's and mine and anyone else who might try for the seat. If he's alive and can be found and is willing to take his father's place, the portion of the clan that wants peace will rally behind him because he represents legitimacy. And the ones who follow Dade will have to contend with the fact that their new leader is sitting in a dead chieftain's chair with no blood claim to it."

Morgan shakes his head. "That seems a dubious solution. Ivan himself said the child was a bastard from another father. If the blood claim is questionable, it doesn't carry the weight you're suggesting."

Garrik's jaw tightens. "Fenris is not a bastard. He was sired by Ivan. He was Ivan's son in every way that matters to the succession. Ivan called him defective and killed his wife for giving him a son he considered unworthy of his bloodline." He pauses, and the contempt in his voice when he says defective is thick enough to cut. "The story Ivan told the clan was that his wife died in childbirth and the child was not his. Both were lies. The child was taken by a servant before Ivan could kill him too."

The room goes quiet. Bohdi watches the information land on each face. Morgan sharpens all over, hungry, because he has been hunting that exact piece for weeks. Eskil's expression does not change, but his fingers tighten on each other, barely, and Bohdi knows his king well enough to read that as interest.

"We've been trying to locate him," Morgan says. "The intelligence we had was sparse. Ivan mentioned a farming family east of the stronghold, but the detail was offhand and we weren't certain of the coordinates."

"I can tell you the exact village," Garrik says. "I know where they took him. I've known since he was an infant."

Bohdi frowns. "You knew where Fenris was his entire life and you never told Ivan?"

Garrik meets his eyes. "Of course I didn't tell Ivan. I know what Ivan would have done with the knowledge. The boy was born different and Ivan considered him an abomination. He killed the boy's mother for producing him. If he'd found out Fenris was alive and findable, he would not have let him stay that way." Something hardens in his face, old and settled, the resolve of a choice made a long time ago and never once regretted. "The boy didn't deserve that. Whatever else Ivan was to me, whatever he built, whatever he taught me, I was not going to hand him a child to destroy."

Eskil unlaces his hands and leans back in his chair, and the shift in posture is subtle but Bohdi reads it immediately. The assessment is over. Eskil has decided that Garrik's testimony is worth acting on, which does not mean he trusts the man and does not mean he believes every word. It means the strategic value of what Garrik is offering outweighs the risk of entertaining it, and Eskil has always bet on value.

"If we know where Fenris is," Eskil says, turning to Bohdi, "then we need to act on it now rather than later. Even if we march on the Wolfe clan in the spring, it would be to our advantage to have Fenris in hand as soon as possible."

Bohdi nods. The tactical calculation is straightforward. A legitimate heir to the Wolfe chieftainship is a weapon that appreciates in value the longer you hold it. Every day Dade consolidates power without a challenger is a day the peaceful half of the clan has less to rally behind. If Fenris can be found and brought to Valen and convinced to take his father's seat, the south reshapes itself around him, and Rengara gets to be the hand that does the shaping.

Eskil looks at Garrik. "Are you willing to speak with Fenris once he's been escorted to Valen?"