Chapter V #2
A snake, Orden thought with distaste. But best to keep a snake within sight.
It was dangers unseen that posed the greatest threat.
“I think that it won’t be Gileta of Song Royale or Afon of Caervallion or Corrin’s Arbiter and Arbitress who keep my son safe.
His life won’t rest in their hands each and every day.
It will rest in the hands of his guard. They are the most important alliance he can possibly make. ”
“Did they keep your father safe?” Lucian asked in his soft voice. “Or your sisters or your brothers? No one is truly secure on this mountain, Majesty, and we would all do well to remember it.”
Not for the first time, Orden imagined throttling the spymaster with his bare hands. He could do it from the very throne on an audience day and no one would object. But Lucian, unfortunately, had manifold uses, and made certain that he was always needed by his sovereign.
Orden’s wine was brought out and the barrel tapped, the guard loudly toasting their king, their queen, and their new prince’s health. Into the clamor, a runner appeared, bringing news for Gaius.
“Gileta’s nearly here,” Gaius informed the king. “The Arbiter and Arbitress have joined her retinue, but there’s no sign of Afon yet. Shall I have the guard fall back in?”
Orden surveyed them indulgently. “No. Leave them as they are. Let Song Royale and Corrin see what a kingdom secure in its line of succession looks like. And let Gileta remember that there’s more to Honoria and the Invers than warfare, though she’s so incensed that we plan to engage Caervallion again. ”
“Very well, Majesty.”
Gaius bowed, and Orden watched him go.
“Do you see that?” Orden asked Lucian. “Gaius thinks I’m wrong. He wants the guard in formation to show them off best, but he’d never question my judgment. Why is it that you question my judgment, Lucian?”
A cup of wine had materialized in the spymaster’s hand, though Orden had not seen him fetch one or summon it from a servant. Smiling, Lucian took a sip.
“A very good vintage indeed, Majesty. Only fitting, as the year of your birth was good for all Honoria. Do you know, I remember seeing you as a babe in arms and thinking yes, this one will be king.”
And then I made you so.
The implication hung unspoken between them, and Orden shifted his weight before walking away without so much as a parting word.
He did not owe Lucian courtesy. All he owed the man was a high rank and survival.
Lucian ought to consider himself lucky to have the king’s protection—power and safety were infrequent bedfellows at Inver court, as the spymaster had just reminded Orden.
At the head of the courtyard, the gates to the lower city opened. Silver bugles sounded a cool, melodic fanfare, and Gileta’s retinue swept in.
They were on foot. The royal party from Song Royale was always on foot, since the battle summer in Corrin during the third year of Orden’s reign.
It was Gileta’s way of protesting what Orden and Afon had done—the finest hoofstock on the Hand had been bred and raised on Corrinian pastureland, and without the white mares Corrin had formerly provided to her, Gileta chose to walk.
If an empress walked, her people must walk too.
The Imperatrice swept over to Orden and held out a hand for him to bow over. In the past, she had always offered him a kiss of greeting—the formal gesture was an immediate signal of her displeasure over Orden’s new war.
“Imperatrice,” he said, with an attempt at warmth. “Welcome back to Inverlyn.”
She had already stepped away, her retinue fanning out behind her.
Gileta was a tall woman with midnight-dark skin and hair gone gray, and she moved soundlessly across the courtyard cobbles.
Her attendants were women to a one, dressed in night blues and charcoal grays and dark aubergines, their garments simple, floating things of silk.
The Imperatrice’s followers stood in silence and moved in tandem, and Orden knew there was some complicated system of rank indicated by the knots in the gold or silver or copper cords they wore at the waist. He’d never bothered to learn it, but Ariana knew.
She knew the name of every last Song attendant, and their proper mode of address.
Ari greeted everyone from Song Royale or Caervallion or a visiting pan-oceanic nation with flawless courtesy, choosing only to snub Corrin’s summer delegates.
“You’re being very foolish, Orden,” Gileta said without preamble.
“Let’s be clear on that straightaway. I would not have come to this summer’s council if your queen had not begged me to, as I believe there’s little to be done here besides sever our alliance, unless you’ve thought better of your planned war. ”
Orden tamped down annoyance. Clearly Gileta intended to be as truculent as possible. The desire to lash back with some retort or threatened sanction gnawed at him. But if Ari was here, she’d placate the Imperatrice. It was what Honoria needed, so Orden swallowed back a sharp answer.
“I believe this is a conversation best reserved for the council table,” he said easily. “For the time being, perhaps I can convince you to set politics aside, and avail yourself of Honoria’s hospitality.”
“In that case, your hospitality thus far has been sorely lacking,” Gileta said relentlessly. “We found the roads here poorly maintained. My retinue was waylaid by bandits, and relieved of many valuables. Soria Sylene lost an opal bracelet which has been in her family for eight generations.”
“I’ll redouble my guard along the roads between Inverlyn and Song Royale,” Orden promised. “But you mustn’t hold it against us for too long, Gileta; every country has its bandits. I believe Caervallion is uniquely plagued by them.”
He meant the last as both a jest and a jibe—Gileta was infamous for the length and severity of her grudges, and Caervallion was known to sanction the raiding of Corrinian villages by renegades.
Rather than softening, Gileta shot him a stern look.
“Not all nations are plagued by impeccably organized outlaws, who waylay their chosen targets with Vesperin tactics and wear the emblem of the drowned flame etched into their skin. They seemed especially irate, now that you’ve increased your impressment efforts in order to fuel fighting here on the Hand. ”
Orden bit back a curse. Deserters, headed up by a Vesperin agent sent to be a pebble in the royal shoe. They’d even taken an emblem for themselves. The Inver flame, being snuffed out by an oncoming wave.
Tyrus take them all, Orden thought, and his mood grew markedly darker.
Between Afon’s impending arrival, difficult friendships like Gileta’s, the insidious presence of Lucian, a two-hundred-year war inherited from his forefathers, and the pernicious influence of the deserters, it was a wonder Honoria didn’t crumble, or its king run mad.
He wanted Ariana at his side. Wanted her badly, but this time, just thinking about her cheered him.
“Bandits are nothing to me today,” Orden said to Gileta, his grin returning. “Whatever other troubles Honoria labors under, one is at an end—the queen has just delivered my son and heir.”
Gileta raised an eyebrow. “So you’ve finally secured the line of succession to your liking? I offer you congratulations on behalf of all Song Royale.”
Even that was half a barb. A succession to your liking.
Gileta meant to cast the moon child up to Orden.
He’d kept the girl safe and allowed her to live.
What more did anyone want from him? His predecessors would have killed a goddess-marked child like Celina.
They’d have cast her over the mountainside so that she was dashed to pieces on the rocks below.
He had been far more merciful than most Invers.
“Did your apostate wife survive her childbirth?” a quiet voice asked curiously.
Behind Corrin’s retinue stood two figures who clearly did not belong to it.
A man and a woman, dressed in drab Corrinian homespun.
They were not nobles, nor even sworn to the goddess of stars.
Corrin chose its civil representatives by lot from among the common people, referring to them as Arbiter and Arbitress.
They mediated disputes and spoke for their beleaguered country as they saw fit.
Every two years, the Arbiter and Arbitress were chosen anew.
This pair, Orden had met at last summer’s council.
He had not been favorably impressed by them, or by their attitude toward his queen.
“You mean, did the gods spare your queen, the mistress of all Honoria?” Orden growled, beginning to feel very much like a hapless bear who’d fallen prey to an unforeseen baiting.
“Yes, they did, much as it will disappoint you. I made a blood sacrifice before dawn this morning to secure Her Majesty’s safety, and only a handful of hours later she delivered our child.
She cannot reclaim her place at my side soon enough. ”
A glint of defiance kindled in the eyes of Corrin’s Arbitress, and the Arbiter’s lip curled.
In the past, Corrin’s representatives had been more like the daughters of stars—temperate, peaceable, meek.
Over the years, those who spoke for Corrin had grown angrier, and less biddable.
Oh, they did not dare to truly outrage either of the wolves that bordered them to the north and south, and which could rend them anew, but they made no secret of their hatred of Orden and Afon and all they stood for.
The feeling, Orden thought grimly, was mutual.
“Has Afon arrived yet?” Gileta asked, smoothly resuming control of the conversation. The Arbiter and Arbitress fell silent, ceding to her as their lone ally and source of official support on the Hand.
“No,” Orden said. “He’s whoring, down in the city. Doubtless someone will die of it. What a charming representative for your shared goddess he makes. Perhaps if Silith chose a Matria once more, Afon could be reined in by the moon’s true voice and hands.”