7
Kason
My father called the council within a day of our return, which told me before a single Voivode had spoken that the matter under discussion had already outgrown the patience of ordinary scheduling.
"The registration order needs revising," Halmar said, standing at the head of the lesser table with a report in hand thick enough that I felt my patience thinning before he'd read a single line of it.
"Three more disappearances confirmed along the eastern passes this week alone, all rogue-status wolves with no pack to report them missing.
The Unbound is clearly targeting the unaffiliated specifically, and I propose we stop waiting for them to be taken and bring every unregistered rogue within Vardain's borders under Council supervision instead.
Sorrowmarket first. It's the largest concentration outside the capital. "
"Supervision," Teodor said, from his position at my shoulder, in the specific flat tone he used when a word was doing noticeably more work than its speaker wanted acknowledged. "You mean relocation."
"I mean protection, Captain, dressed in whatever language makes it easiest for the Council to approve quickly. Rogues moved to guarded holdings until the Unbound threat is contained. It's for their own safety."
"It's for the Council's convenience," my father said, quiet enough that the room stilled to hear the rest of it. "Which isn't automatically the same thing as safety, whatever similarity the language suggests."
Halmar's jaw tightened, though he had the sense not to argue that point directly with the King.
"With respect, Your Majesty, three wolves are already missing.
I'd rather explain an uncomfortable relocation order to a rogue trader than explain to this Council why we let a fourth vanish because we were too concerned with comfort to act. "
Voivode Renner, still visibly carrying the weight of the survivor's report from weeks before, spoke up from further down the table.
"For what it's worth, the man we recovered told the healers his captors moved freely through a border settlement for weeks before he was taken.
No one questioned them. No one registered their movements, because no one was registering anyone's movements at all in a town that large.
Halmar's plan has a logic to it, whatever its faults. "
"Its logic assumes the Unbound can't simply follow a registered convoy of relocated rogues to wherever the Council decides to hold them," Teodor said.
"Concentrating vulnerable people in one guarded location isn't automatically safer than leaving them dispersed.
It depends entirely on how good that guard actually is, and I haven't seen evidence this Council has thought that far past the vote itself. "
"Then perhaps the Captain would like to draft the security plan himself, rather than simply criticizing the one currently on the table," Halmar said, sharp enough that a ripple of quiet amusement moved through the lesser Voivodes, and I felt the debate beginning to circle without resolving, the way council debates so often did when everyone in the room had already privately decided how they intended to vote.
The room murmured its general agreement, and I felt the shape of the vote already forming before it was called, the particular momentum of a council that had found a plan simple enough to feel like decisive action, regardless of what it actually cost the people it claimed to protect.
I thought of Ilinca's stall, six years of careful smallness, the fury I'd watched cross her face at the word accounted for pinned to a market post three days ago.
I thought of a magistrate who already had reason to look twice at her, and a Council about to hand every magistrate in the kingdom formal permission to look considerably harder.
"I have a wardsmith currently under royal commission, restoring the archive wing," I said, before Halmar could call the vote.
"A rogue, formerly of the Sorrowmarket. I claim her under my personal protection, effective immediately, exempting her from any relocation order this Council passes today or in future, so long as the commission stands. "
The room went very quiet in the specific way rooms went quiet when I'd said something they hadn't expected and weren't yet certain how to respond to.
"Your Highness." Halmar's voice had gone careful, measuring. "That's a significant exemption to grant one individual, over a matter this Council hasn't yet discussed with you directly."
"It's within my authority to grant." I kept my voice level, the same stillness I'd used to end the grazing dispute two weeks before, though this cost substantially more to hold steady than a strip of disputed pasture ever had.
"The commission is genuine. The archive wing has needed proper restoration for three years, and I'm not inclined to lose a wardsmith with the skill to actually complete it because this Council decided a blanket order was easier than individual judgment. "
"And if other rogues make similar claims? Every trader in the Sorrowmarket suddenly discovering a royal commission of their own?"
"Then this Council can evaluate those claims individually too, the same way it evaluates every other exemption request that crosses this table.
" I let that sit a moment, watching the room recalibrate around it.
"I'm not asking this Council to abandon the relocation order for anyone but the one person currently under my direct authority.
I am telling you that person is protected, and I'd like that recorded formally before the vote proceeds. "
My father said nothing, watching the exchange with the particular unreadable patience he brought to any moment that required the Council to reach its own conclusions without his thumb visibly on the scale.
Teodor, beside me, had gone carefully neutral in the specific way that told me he'd clocked exactly how much weight I'd just put behind a woman I'd known four days, and was choosing, for now, not to say so out loud in front of thirty Voivodes.
The exemption passed. Narrowly, and with considerably more discussion than I'd have preferred, but it passed, and by the time the session closed I understood, with a clarity that settled somewhere between relief and genuine unease, exactly what I'd just done.
Ilinca was protected now. She was also, as of that recorded vote, formally and permanently tied to my authority in a way that made her presence in Castle Ironmoor markedly harder to explain away as simple commission work, to anyone paying close enough attention to ask.
Lady Sorcha Denholt found me in the corridor outside the council chamber before I'd made it halfway to the archive wing, which told me the news had already traveled faster than I'd have liked.
"A wardsmith," she said, without preamble, falling into step beside me with the composed grace that had made her, by every account I'd ever heard, an excellent match for a throne that valued composure above almost everything else.
"Under your personal protection. My father's already had three letters about it before the ink on the Council's record was properly dry. "
"It's a commission, Lady Sorcha. Nothing more complicated than that."
"Is it." She stopped walking, and I stopped with her, because there was a distinct steel in her voice that hadn't been there a moment before, the kind that came from a woman who'd spent her entire life being underestimated by men who mistook her composure for compliance.
"I've known you three years, Kason. I've watched you refuse considerably smaller exemptions than the one you granted today, on the grounds that individual carve-outs weaken the Council's authority over time.
You didn't refuse this one. You didn't even hesitate. "
"The circumstances are different."
"The circumstances are that you claimed a rogue trader in front of thirty Voivodes with a personal exemption you've never once granted anyone else, four days before my father expects a formal wedding date from this throne.
" Her voice hadn't risen, hadn't sharpened past the particular controlled coolness she brought to every conversation I'd ever had with her, and somehow that made it land harder than shouting would have.
"I'm not a fool, Kason. I don't require you to insult my intelligence by pretending otherwise. "
I didn't have an answer that wasn't either a lie or a confession neither of us was currently prepared to have in a public corridor, so I gave her the only honest thing available to me.
"You're right that the circumstances are complicated.
I don't have anything further I can offer you today beyond that. "
"For what it's worth," she said, after a moment, some of the steel easing into something quieter, "I'm not asking because I'm heartbroken, Kason.
I've known since the arrangement was made that this was a treaty first and a marriage second, for both of us.
My father needs the northern alliance secured.
Yours needs the border held. That was always the whole of it, and I made my peace with that years ago. "
"Then what are you asking?"
"I'm asking whether the alliance is still safe, whatever happens to the rest of the arrangement.
" For the first time since she'd stopped me in the corridor, something almost vulnerable moved across her composed features.
"I've spent three years preparing to be useful to this kingdom in a way.
If that usefulness is about to become unnecessary, I'd like some warning before my father hears it from someone else's letter instead of yours. "
That, more than anything else she'd said, cost me something to hear. "The alliance matters regardless of what happens with the wardsmith. I give you my word on that much, whatever else remains uncertain."