Chapter 46 To the Horizon
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To the Horizon
There was nothing Harrow loved more than to heckle the bard at the Twelve Jackals, but tonight, he wasn’t in the mood.
Instead, he sank into a booth near the back corner of the tavern, making his way through the Summerhills honeywine list, playing a single-person variation of polderdash with varying degrees of competency.
His day had been excruciatingly long.
Over the last couple of weeks, Vallin’s diplomatic relations with its neighboring countries had soured somewhat, and the king was in an atrocious mood.
First, Bellandry threatened to revoke their open border pact, since the recent scarlet-silver showdown in the Havenwood had made its southern citizens nervous.
Queen Vune sent a stern missive insinuating that King Quintan was too busy fortifying the wards around the capital to purge the evil inside the walls, and now the Bloodmoons were spreading, metastasizing.
She would ensure the scourge remained contained inside Vallish borders by any means necessary.
Then the Palace received a delegation of ambassadors from Eqora, sent with the intention of smoothing over the fracas by the Mountains of Promise, the missing Silvercloak, the simmering skirmishes.
House Arollan had expected the southern emissaries to be apologetic—they were undeniably the aggravators of the border provocations, and it was clear they had something to do with Sebran Aduran’s disappearance—but to the king’s immense ire, the delegation was actively antagonistic.
The Eqorans spent the afternoon needling King Quintan about the rising gang warfare in his capital city—they’d passed a dismembered Whitewing on Arollan Mile, the brutalized body impaled on the obelisk of a war memorial.
The delegation’s jesting quips fast became barbed ridicule, and tensions between the parties ratcheted.
When the Vallish regent insisted he would not be belittled in this way, the Eqorans threatened to rescind the trade agreement in which Eqora provided Vallin with achullah.
Without the earthy spiced tobacco, Atherin would certainly riot.
Word of the Bloodmoons was spreading across the continent, invoking not just fear but mockery. And if there was anything King Quintan could not abide, it was mockery.
So he’d summoned the corrupt Grand Arbiter to the Palace, suddenly and feverishly determined that it was not enough for the scarlets to simply bleed. They must be obliterated.
“The death penalty?” the Grand Arbiter whispered, grip tightening on her quill.
Her already pale face blanched to the color of fresh parchment, starkening the hue of her violet lipstick.
Though her gray hair was pulled neatly into a low bun and her purple highcloak was perfectly pressed, there was still something haggard about her, something weary and afraid.
“Only for convicted traitors, of course.” King Quintan sat at the opposite end of the long ascenite table in the Grand Chamber. The windows were cranked open, as usual, and the royal banners shivered in the breeze.
Harrow had gone so far past cold that he was simply numb.
The Grand Arbiter chewed the inside of her cheek, deepening her many wrinkles. “But Your Grace, according to your own impassioned manifestos…the death penalty is unethical. Barbaric. Not the purview of a civilized modern society. I understand that tensions are—”
“I’m not here to debate this, Dematus.” King Quintan did not raise his voice, but his tone had all the cutting finality of a guillotine. “I’m here to issue orders.”
Dematus squared her shoulders, drawing on forty years of pride in her work to bolster her convictions. “Your Grace, the Grand Arbitership has always been a seat designed to function separately from the Crown. I do not take orders.”
“It’s not just the death penalty,” the king went on, waving a beefy palm as though she had not spoken.
“We will also require official prophecies to be admissible as evidence in a court of law. Not just from any old street Foreseer, you understand. But from pedigreed prophets, like Highcloak Claver here.”
Harrow continued to stare out the window. A storm was gathering over the city, and a feeling of impending doom was gathering behind Harrow’s ribs.
“You see, Highcloak Claver recently foretold that the Bloodmoons would stage a coup.” King Quintan drilled a meaningful look through the Grand Arbiter. “Storm the Palace, take the throne by force. Treason, pure and simple.”
A fervent head shake loosened a strand of pale gray hair from Dematus’s bun.
“Even if royal prophecy did become admissible—and that’s a rather large if, because prophecies are, of course, impossible to replay or verify externally—the death penalty seems unnecessary. Duncarzus is ample punishment for—”
“All scarlet aiders and abettors will be executed.”
This final decree was loaded with subtext, a layered threat, a subtle assertion of the regent’s knowing. But whether or not Dematus picked up on the implications, she did not allow herself to meeken.
“I’m sorry, Your Grace. I will not support the return of capital punishment.”
A long, terrible silence, almost apocalyptic in its barrenness. Then King Quintan spoke quietly, dangerously—more regally than Harrow had ever witnessed from the boozy ruler.
“For decades, the ruling house has so rarely intervened on matters of law and order. You and your predecessors have always held my full trust—even when unsavory rumors have spread about your loyalties.” A lethal smile.
“Amend the constitution, Dematus. Or I’ll order an official investigation into your conduct. ”
Harrow swilled the nectar-colored honeywine in his goblet, mulling over the implications of a death penalty for Bloodmoons—and their myriad aiders and abettors, of which he was arguably one. The whole thing was far from ideal.
He’d been avoiding Levan ever since he’d entered the Whitewing drophouse to discover that the kingpin’s former betrothed was still alive.
Three years ago, Harrow had seen firsthand what Alucia’s double-crossing had done to Levan.
He’d never forget finding his casual lover in a pool of his own urine, frothing at the mouth, muscles seizing violently, and eyes hanging empty after an overdose of loxlure.
Alucia’s unexpected survival might unravel the kingpin once more.
Uncertain how to navigate this snarl of a situation, and spooked by the reintroduction of the death penalty, Harrow thought it best to avoid the scarlets entirely. So when none other than Levan Celadon entered the tavern, the King’s Prophet felt unsure of how to behave.
“He lives.” Levan slid into the booth carrying an honest-to-Saints glass of elderberry cordial.
A grown man. Cordial.
Harrow lifted his own glass to his lips before realizing it was empty. “Evening.”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I’ve been busy,” Harrow replied vaguely.
“That’s never stopped you from fucking me before.
” Levan’s hair was pulled back with a piece of tan leather string, and he seemed to be carrying himself gingerly, though there were no obvious injuries.
Harrow recognized this posture from the deepest days of Levan’s addiction—the sense that if he brushed up against anything too solid, it would hurt him, and if he hurt, then he would want loxlure too badly to deny himself.
Harrow shrugged. “My libido isn’t what it once was.”
“A spectacular lie. My source at the pleasurehouse on Saintsvale tells me you’ve frequented them daily.”
“Is nothing in this city sacred?”
Levan took a tentative sip of his fucking cordial, grimacing as though it were the hardest bivkar Nyr?th had to offer. “Ever since our trip to Sorvel…you foretold a prophecy, and then, for all intents and purposes, fled.”
The bard plucked up a new tune, and the alcohol in Harrow’s system caused all the twangy notes to thrum together with his own pulse. He was rather too inebriated to remember why he ought to not tell the truth.
“Fine. It was a similar prophecy to the last I shared with you—a bloody uprising, the head of King Quintan on the Palace steps, et cetera.”
“Alright.”
“Only this time, it was real.”
Levan stilled. “You lied before?”
Harrow chuckled and spread his hands wide, in a what-a-rascal-I-am sort of way. “I tell people what they want to hear. It cements my value. And when you’re valuable, they keep you alive. A mere survival tactic.”
At this revelation Levan visibly struggled to control his anger—this was not a mage who liked to be lied to, played.
Not after everything that had happened with Alucia and Saffron.
But for whatever reason, he was going to great lengths to keep his wrath tempered, which usually meant he needed Harrow for something.
Interesting—and dangerous.
“When you say it was real this time…”
Harrow waved to the barkeep to bring another bottle of wine. “I didn’t see the king’s head rolling, but I did see the Bloodmoons storming the Palace. So many dead, so much blood and fear. And truthfully, it made me afraid of you.”
Levan’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you weren’t loyal to the Crown.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to see House Arollan slaughtered.”
“You’ve always known my goal.” The kingpin’s thigh jostled and jerked beneath the table, nervous energy overspilling.
“I suppose I never thought you’d actually manage it.”
“Yet this prophecy implies that I will?”
The barkeep arrived at the table with a fresh bottle of honeywine, not bothering with the rigmarole of showing Harrow the label or pouring out a sample. All the barkeeps at the Twelve Jackals knew that by the third bottle, they could serve him Ludder piss and he wouldn’t notice.
Levan leaned forward, resting his forearms on the wine-sticky table. His golden hand glowed unnaturally in the low light of the tavern. “I’m going on a trip to Bellandry. Near Flarence, near the Forest of Lost Souls. I’d like you to come with me.”
“How quaint. But I’m needed in the Palace.”
“We have a location for the Fifth Prophecy, and reason to believe that Saffron Killoran is the only one who can reach it.”
The music in the bar seemed to quiet, time itself slowing like treacle.
“The Fifth Prophecy.” Harrow shook his head vehemently. “Impossible.”
“Killoran’s dying father left clear instructions on where to find it. Don’t you want to be privy to its contents?”
The quickened thrum of Harrow’s heartbeat answered for him. “I’m not an Augurest. I don’t hold much stock in the Divine—”
“This is not just religion. It’s history in the making. Whatever we find in that cave will shape the world for centuries to come.”
Harrow’s inebriated mind whirred. “Why do you want me there?”
“It seems prudent to have a Foreseer present. If the relic wand requires a prophetic hand…you’re the only one I know and trust.”
“I’ve told you many times that you should not trust me.”
Levan leaned back once more, studying Harrow so closely it made the King’s Prophet itch. “Back in Sorvel, you told me you once had your own sights set on a throne. Do you still? Is that why I shouldn’t—”
“No, darling.” Harrow snorted. “Who has the energy for a coup?”
The truth, for once. He’d given up such childish ambitions long ago.
In reality, he hadn’t the disposition nor the inclination to rule.
All that talk of debt and interest and trade agreements, the ceaseless concerns of regional politicians, the pandering to foreign dignitaries, the never-ending conflict of clashing theological belief systems. It was both needlessly complex and dreadfully dull.
“So what makes you untrustworthy?”
Harrow ran a thumb around the narrow glass rim of the honeywine bottle. “The king sends me on official business. Official business that often threatens your goals.”
“You don’t need to tell me of your official business, Harrow. You just have to help us retrieve the Fifth Prophecy. For history’s sake.”
The King’s Prophet let his foggy mind sift through the idea.
House Arollan was likely days away from passing the death penalty.
Harrow trusted in his own ability to weasel out of such a thing, to claim that he’d been acting according to the king’s orders all along, that he was doing whatever it took to rid the land of the scarlet rot…
but still, there was risk involved. A lot of risk.
Yet as complex as this web of deception was becoming, Harrow knew he couldn’t resist this quest. He lifted a glass, gesturing for Levan to do the same.
And when they toasted, it was an old travelers’ tribute.
To the horizon.