Chapter Twenty-One #2
As if to prove that last point, a blast of bitter cold billowed into the room, seizing his spine and guttering the stove’s flame.
His eye went immediately to the outer door and found it closed.
These days it was nearly as cold within the palace as without—so when he heard that greasy laugh behind him, and turned to find Benan in the doorway, he was not surprised.
The big oaf had stuffed himself into the frame, one armoured wrist braced on the jamb as he leaned halfway into the room.
His eyes darted around, looking for Marie, no doubt, before he delivered whatever witty remark had his beady little eyes lighting up like that.
“You a baker now, Leman?” He flashed a cracked and broken smile. “Where’s your pretty little apron?”
Ger fought the urge to roll his eyes.
“I’ll be with you in a few,” he said, much more evenly than he felt. He could sense Jack still standing behind him, and it knitted tension up his spine for some reason, made it hard to stand still. “Just need to grab a bite first.”
“Nah, we’re wanted,” Benan said, sounding bored. He leaned farther past the doorway, peering this way and that. “Find your armour and let’s go.”
Jack scoffed. “As though I didn’t watch you inhale four bowls of stew earlier? You can give him five minutes to eat.”
Ger’s eyelids slid shut of their own accord, heart sinking. When he blinked them open, Benan’s horrible face was split wide, eyes sliding over Jack with unnerving interest.
“Oh ho,” he said, with a grimy chuckle. “Found yourself a new sweetheart, did’ya, Pup?”
Ger ignored him, turning his head to mutter a quick It’s fine over his shoulder. But Benan wasn’t done.
“Bit of a step down, don’t you think? Settling for a little kitchen mouse, when I know you used to fuck that princess—”
Ger’s head snapped around so fast he swore he heard the crack.
“Watch it,” he warned.
Benan released the doorjamb and held both hands up by his hulking, plated shoulders.
“Oh, you’ll hear no judgment from me. She did have those big tits, but I see why a side of kitchen mouse could be a change of pace.” He sneered at them both. “Her Highness was a feisty one, and I’d know better than most.”
“Oh, of course,” Jack chimed in. He gave a merry snap of his fingers like it had all suddenly clicked into place. “Because she handed your own ass to you in front of an audience of hundreds, right?”
Benan’s face dropped like an avalanche, thin lips sagging over his chipped teeth for a moment before they pulled back in a snarl and he took a menacing step into the room.
“Listen here, you mousey little shit—”
“Enough.” Stepping into Benan’s path, Ger tried his best to sound bored even if his heart was hammering somewhere around his larynx. “Come on, Benan, you want to be fed gruel for the next month? You know Marie doesn’t like you starting shit in her kitchens.”
“Her kitchens?” Benan snarled.
“Yes, her kitchens,” Jack crowed back at him over Ger’s shoulder. “Who do you think’s been feeding you, the stew fairy?”
For fuck’s sake, what was it about this overgrown wart that had all the pretty, brown-eyed, loud-mouths squaring up to him at every turn? Uncanny. Benan tilted forward again, and Ger stopped him with a hand to his shoulder.
“If we’re wanted, we’re wanted,” he said firmly. “And I’m not explaining to Her Majesty that we’re late because you got in a scrap with a kitchen mouse.”
“No offence taken,” Jack muttered, and Ger sent him a pleading half-glance.
Though he did back up a step, Benan made an aggressively nasal sound; just a big, snorting bull of a man. “Certainly do have a type, don’t you, Pup? Insufferable.”
Jack gave a delighted gasp. “Now there’s a big word!”
Benan outright growled, but Ger still had a hand on his breastplate, and he pressed back as the oaf leaned in.
“We’re wanted,” he reminded him. “I’ll catch up.”
With a final, bullish snort and a simmering glare thrown in Jack’s direction, Benan turned and squeezed himself out the door. Ger whirled on the spot, heart in his throat, to throw Jack the most incredulous fucking look he could muster, but the porter just smirked back at him.
“So, do you then?”
“What?” Ger frowned, heart still hammering and muscles locked in that distinct fight or flight tension that seemed to claim his entire blood supply; not a single drop spared for his brain, nothing left to form thought.
“Do you have a type?”
He blinked. Jack blinked back at him—then tilted his head, a challenge in his smile. Nice smile, said the most base part of Ger’s brain. Nice lips. He pinched his brow like he could pinch some sense back into his own head.
“Daughters,” he hissed, but the curse slipped into a laugh on the tail end of his breath. “Yes, apparently my type is bloody troublemakers.”
Jack grinned. “Noted. See you later then, Pup.”
And though Ger wanted to be annoyed at Benan’s stupid, patronising nickname, somehow it didn’t sound quite so annoying coming from Jack. He rolled his eyes anyway, the quirk of his lips betraying his lack of ire.
“I’ll see you later, Mouse.”
Jack’s grin was a burst of sunlight, and Ger carried that warmth with him all the way through the cold and barren hallways to the Council Room.
It turned out he would need it.
???
“Caldbon has declared me a usurper.”
Avette’s tone was light and amused, but the chill in the air became a stinging breeze.
The council—what was left of it—sat around the long table, silence ringing off the short but wicked stalactites that glittered above them.
Norris, with his bruised and vacant stare, was seated alone with Bertha’s empty chair between himself and Mareda.
Imogen sat on the princess’s other side, right by the head of the table.
Doran had been eyeing her sourly, but his gaze now snapped up at the queen’s words.
From where he stood, a few paces behind Avette, Ger thought he caught a flash of interest in the steel of the Captain’s eyes.
“A usurper, Your Majesty?” was all he said. Incredulous; outraged. Who could possibly think such a thing?
Benan stood behind their Captain, unable to suppress his jagged grin.
Avette hummed; Ger could see only the back of her head, with its slicked back waves and a crown that towered like icy battlements. From the way the blue light slipped and danced along the frozen walls, he knew she was holding her pendant in those long, white fingers.
“A temper tantrum,” she said mildly. The light flared, and every face around her was momentarily lit in blue.
“They were displeased, initially, over the slowing of trade from the Laune as we tightened our operations at the ports. They cared little for our concerns over my missing betrothed, apparently. Soulless beast, that Caldbonian King.”
Doran nodded eagerly, and Avette sighed as though the same threat that so delighted him was a mere inconvenience to her. An annoyance.
“And now, tensions have quite escalated. Caldbon feels that the legal vote of our esteemed Cold Council holds little weight. They have declared both of my cousins bastard born, which I suppose is fair, and decided that little Isabelle is the true Heir to both Caldbon and Eisalaan. Convenient, do you not agree?”
“Iseult,” said a small, toneless voice. The air in the room, forever cold and stirring like a gentle flurry, suddenly stilled. “My sister’s name is Iseult.”
Avette’s head turned slowly, catching Mareda in her sights for just a moment before she turned away, bored and dismissive. The moment her head was turned, Imogen’s hand curled briefly around Mareda’s wrist.
“Norris,” the queen called sharply, and the councillor flinched. “This is your area of expertise, is it not?”
“I don’t—birthrights, Your Majesty?”
Avette closed her eyes through a long inhale, and Norris’s already pale complexion drained.
“Foreign Affairs,” she said finally. “As the Councillor of Foreign Affairs, dear Norris, I am asking for your counsel.”
He nodded, eyes wide in their dark hollows.
“Well?” she demanded, and the poor man flinched again.
“W-well if—if the conflict began with trade, and, uh—”
Norris was visibly sweating despite the biting cold, dew beading in his sunken eye sockets and all along his thinning hairline. Avette’s head lolled to one side, her sigh light and airy beneath the sudden creaking of the stalactites overhead.
“—and we have frozen the—the ports—”
Norris stammered over the growing sound, blinking away the sweat that dripped into his eyes as he tried to shoot a cautious gaze at the slowly sinking ceiling.
Ger’s heart gave a timid stutter, almost inquisitive in tone.
A fun little game, really. He’d call it Will I let the panic swallow me as someone new is murdered before my eyes?
“Oh, fabulous,” Imogen chirped. The creaking stopped, the very walls pausing with interest, and Imogen smiled, pretty and polite. “We’ll extend the Frost beyond the ports, how clever of you, Norris.”
Norris struggled through another few stammering breaths before Avette flicked a silencing hand at him.
“Extend the Frost?” she said to Imogen.
“We’ll extend the bounds of Eisalaan into the seas,” said Imogen. “Caldbon’s army will never even make it past the ports, and if they try, we’ll meet them on the terrain that we know best.”
Doran, whose lip had been curling further with every word from Imogen’s mouth, finally loosed a hoarse scoff.
“I appreciate that this is your first Council meeting, my Lady,” said Doran, “but we tend to deal in strategy over pretty Wielding tricks.”
Imogen just smiled. It was her first meeting; she’d been assigned to the Council just that morning. Mostly out of necessity to meet the legal quorum following Bertha’s death, which had been ruled an accident by the trembling palace Healer who had attended the scene.
The first woman ever to drown in a cup of tea.
“Is our Silver Kingdom a pretty trick to you, Captain Doran?” Imogen asked sweetly. “That was the work of a Wielder, too.”