Chapter 7
The next week was spent on preparations for the Summer Ball.
Lord Steward Byrom worked at all hours, arranging lodgings, overseeing the hall’s decorations, even holding auditions for the realm’s finest musicians.
Richard had left it in the steward’s hands, finding some reassurance from the stacks of notes Byrom carried around with him, though the man had a habit of dropping them and querying minor details needlessly.
The matter of the dryads had occupied a whole morning.
“They cannot stay in guest chambers,” Richard had said for what felt like the tenth time. “They are woodland beings.”
“Yes, Your Majesty, but woodland beings are still guests,” Byrom had protested, flicking through papers. “And guests prefer walls and roofs. We would not seek to offend them.”
“Lord Byrom, I have read countless books on dryads. They prefer soil and roofs of leaves. I promise you, they will take no offence.”
So the back garden had been inspected—once with the groundskeeper, then with the chief gardener, who objected violently to the idea of foreigners trampling his tulip beds until Richard pointed out that the dryads would likely be more offended by trampled flowers than any gardener could be.
In the end, Byrom, too, agreed that the back garden, with its clustered trees, winding paths, ivy-choked benches, flower thickets, and little streams, would prove a comfortable abode.
The fauns would also reside in the back garden during their stay. Richard gave orders for a pavilion to be erected—open-sided, roofed, and draped with gauze to keep insects from the couches and tables.
Lady Kestrel had winced as Richard signed off three bills for carpenters, building materials and lantern-globes enchanted against sparks.
Like Lord Byrom, she had taken to carrying her ledgers around with her in a satchel and whimpered when Richard commissioned a hedge witch to maintain the garden in bloom.
The next day, when Lord Gregory sheepishly informed Richard he’d ordered a shipment of beef without realising Naradeshis considered cows sacred, Richard had to restrain Lady Kestrel from clawing at the man’s face.
Malgrin had been no easier. The old man had sought Richard in the library and hissed after shooing away a librarian.
“Creatures, Your Majesty? You mean to seat beasts at our table before lords and ladies of royal blood?”
“Dryads and fauns are neither beasts nor guests beneath my crown,” Richard answered, glancing up from a book on fauns. “They are allies, if we are fortunate.”
Malgrin’s nostrils flared. “Fortunate? You invite hoofed revellers and root-bound spirits into our home. What next? Pixies and goblins?”
Richard shrugged. “If they would deign to talk to us. War looms, Lord Chancellor. We cannot be finicky in whom we stand with.”
“The nobility will not like it.”
“Then, pray, tell them for me,” Richard said. “If they wish a more pressing matter to dislike, they may take issue with the looming Rot that will tear our realm apart.”
Malgrin had stalked away at that, stiff-backed and muttering under his breath.
Yet none of it—the lists, Malgrin’s fuming, the stream of practical issues—gnawed at Richard half so much as Briony’s silence.
At breakfast and dinner, she refused to speak, pretending to read her book or tucking herself close to Elara or Corwin so as to avoid Richard’s searching gaze. Twice, she ran from him in the corridors, and at night, her bedroom door stayed locked even when Richard knocked.
Corwin was oblivious to the growing tension, distracted by what he’d wear to the ball, but Elara, of course, had noticed. As Richard watched the squires train from the first-floor gallery, she hugged him from behind.
“She only needs time, Brother.”
Richard leaned into her hug. “Would you have had me do different that day?”
“No.” Elara snorted. “I would have you kill them exactly as you did.” She shifted to hug his arm.
“But Briony is used to her big brother being warm and a bore, instead of a terror who pummels a man’s face into mash.
” Below them, Kaelen yelled at a squire who’d managed to wallop himself with his own shield, and Elara giggled. “Briony will come around.”
“She is hiding something.” Richard was sure of it. He had wondered at first who her tired, bleak eyes reminded him of, and found his answer on looking in the mirror.
“Wait for her to tell us then,” Elara said. “There is little use pestering a child of her age to spill secrets. Have patience.”
Patience had never sat easily on Richard when his siblings were hurting. Nevertheless, he tried. He stopped seeking Briony out. He ceased attending the family dinners, hoping his absence might brighten the table.
On the afternoon of the seventh day, Chief Morland, their head interrogator, met Richard in the throne room, accompanied by Dain and Kaelen. The Chief’s blank, snake-like eyes were ever unblinking, and her hoop earrings gleamed. Goosebumps prickled Richard’s skin as the woman bowed low.
“We have employed the full range of approved methods, Your Majesty.” Morland’s voice was no more than a whisper. “The poker, the whips. We have broken fingers and carved into flesh. Yet save for his insistence that he did not mean the princess to come to harm, the sorcerer refuses to speak.”
Richard noticed Kaelen’s grimace. “A week of this?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. He heals quickly—some remnant of his sorcery, perhaps, that the rune-cuffs cannot suppress.”
Dain barked a laugh. “Or perhaps your touch has grown soft in your dotage.”
Morland’s lips curved into a grim smile. “You would be proven otherwise, Lord Commander, if it were you who sat in my chair. I know well the limits of my charges and how to extract information. This sorcerer believes in something, and it is strong enough to hold his tongue.”
Richard sighed. He had long doubted the efficacy of torture. Men and women in agony, he found, confessed to anything if only to make the pain cease.
His father had disagreed. “Pain has its place, son,” Haldric had said. “And this is a truth our enemies know all too well.”
Richard had been twenty-one when Haldric told him of their family’s ancient tradition. Upon coming of age, the crown prince or princess was kidnapped, dragged to the interrogation room blindfolded, and tortured by people they believed to be enemies, while their monarch parent watched.
“It is a test,” Haldric had said, accompanying Richard on a ride through the eastern forest. “To assess the future king or queen’s mettle.
See if they will spill state secrets under duress.
Your grandfather watched me scream and curse for three days, then embraced me once it was over. I’d never seen him so proud.”
Richard had stared, his mouth going dry. “You may test me the same, Father, if you wish.”
“No.” Haldric’s eyes had softened. “I find myself a weaker man than my father. For I could not bear to watch you hurt so.”
A rare tenderness had underlain his words—rare, for though Haldric smiled, counselled, and squeezed Richard’s nape often, there’d always been a distance.
It had been clearest when Richard saw his father with the younger ones.
Haldric had roared at Elara and Corwin aplenty—sometimes throwing things, and at one point, almost ordering Corwin to be flogged—but so too had Haldric laughed and joked and wrestled them into hugs with a lightness that always dimmed around Richard.
Now, with the crown encircling his head, Richard could understand why.
He rose from the throne. “I will speak to the sorcerer myself.”
Dain spluttered. “You cannot enter the interrogation chamber! You are the king—”
“We have gone a week, Dain.” Richard descended the dais. “A week without answers while my sister flinches at my shadow. Clearly, torture does not work on this sorcerer.” He nodded at Morland. “Lead the way, Chief. I will gain the answers through other means.”