Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Viper’s Vengeance

Joren had been seething for so long that he could barely remember what it felt like not to be boiling with anger and righteous indignation. The fury had begun at a low simmer when word had started circulating around the pages’ wing that the Crown Prince–son of the two most radically progressive monarchs Tortall had ever seen who were doing everything they could to invite and incite a peasant revolt by giving the filthy rabble dangerous ideas above their stations, according to Father’s expert opinion–was trying to halt the hallowed tradition of hazing.

Not by anything so honorable as engaging in fistfights, either. No, His Royal Highness had taken it into his haughty head to compose some sort of ridiculous charter attempting to abolish hazing and institute penalties to senior pages who engaged in it in one fell swoop. It was a charter without teeth that seemed oddly conscious of its lack of bite because it limited its authority only to those who signed the document. Subjecting themselves to its power.

At first, the charter had been more of an amusing irritant than a genuine threat. After all, no senior page except Prince Roald himself had anything to gain by signing the document, and Joren could see no compelling reason for any boy above the first year to do so. And the first years should be too intimidated to put quill to parchment and sign Prince Roald’s constitution for the pages’ wing.

It should have been a small squall that blew over in a day or two. Something to snicker and sneer at with his friends at a later date.

Yet, somehow, the senior pages had started signing the document. The jokester Cleon who often sent first years on silly little errands. The eminently respectable Faleron of King’s Reach, who was from as notable and as ancient a line as any in Tortall’s Book of Gold. The standard by which Joren had been raised to judge who mattered and who could be icily ignored as irrelevant. Yancen and Balduin.

With them had predictably come the boys they sponsored. Merric of Hollyrose, whose cheeks turned as red as his hair when he was taunted. Seaver of Tasride, the half-blooded Bazhir whom Zahir had derived a special satisfaction from tormenting.

The prince’s document suddenly seemed less like a farce and more like a menace with consequences Joren could no longer predict. Prince Roald had perhaps been more clever and cunning–less naive—than Joren had anticipated. Apparently having written into his charter that no page could be punished for any offense committed to signing the document. An amnesty that made it possible for many waverers to sign without fear of reprisal or loss of face.

Joren had found himself increasingly isolated in the pages’ wing. Garvey, Vinson, and Zahir remained in his orbit. Revolving around him. Everyone else, however, seemed to be drifting away from him. Aligning themselves with the prince and with the Girl who Joren suspected was the true catalyst and cause of this disaster. The Girl who should never have been permitted to set foot in the pages’ wing. To darken its traditions with her ugly, unfeminine presence.

Then had come the worst betrayal of all. The stab in the back that he had never expected. Zahir ibn Alhaz abandoned him. Forsook him for the prince. Signed the prince’s accursed document though like all Bazhir he could barely write. Zahir’s years of painstaking study in the pages’ wing had produced a scrawl at the level of chicken scratch where one word was often difficult to distinguish and discern from the next.

The Bazhir were feeble-minded. Their brains inferior to those of true-blooded Tortallans like himself. That was what he reminded himself whenever his heart and pride stung with the bitter memory of Zahir’s vile treachery.

It would have been easy for the prince to use his magic to charm Zahir into supporting his anti-hazing cause. To muddle and cloud Zahir’s mind until Zahir was tricked into scrawling his almost illegible name onto a document he could not possibly have understood.

Joren would show him grace. Pity. Offer him a chance to redeem himself. To atone for his disgusting betrayal.

No such mercy would be extended to the prince, of course. He would look to destroy the prince and everything the arrogant boy believed he had accomplished with his piece of parchment that could so easily be burned to ash.

Not that he intended the parchment to be burned before it had served his purpose. The document should ruin its creator before it was reduced to ashes, and Joren wanted to give Zahir the opportunity to be involved in the prince’s destruction. To have his vengeance along with Zahir. A viper’s vengeance.

Joren’s blood still boiled when he recalled the prince’s cavalier response to Joren’s threat that he would never forget what the prince had done. How the prince had coolly replied that he wanted Joren to remember it forever as a lesson learned.

Joren was determined to utterly humiliate the prince. To be the one to teach him a lesson he would never forget. Like a rod slicing through flesh over and over. Leaving a trail of blood and broken skin wherever it landed. Welts and scars that could be traced afterward.

The way his father had taught him lessons. Still taught him lessons when he was home for the summer.

He was quite certain that the heir to the throne had never been beaten. Had never felt that pain and shame. The king and queen would be too soft to hit their heir. Their heads filled with the lamb’s fleece of their progressive ideas that didn’t involve discipline or hierarchies. And nobody who had any attachment to their necks would risk lifting a finger to the Crown Prince without his royal parents’ permission.

So Joren would find another way to see that the Crown Prince was punished. Received his just deserts.

He would visit Lord Wyldon and spin the tale of the document that Prince Roald had written. The document that Lord Wyldon would no doubt view as sedition. An attempt to undermine his authority in the pages’ wing. A conspiracy against him.

First, however, he would do the courtesy of dropping by Zahir’s room after supper. Discovering if the Bazhir who had betrayed him might be willing to turn on the prince just as swiftly. Might play the informant who could add further condemning evidence and credibility to Joren’s account when Joren sought out Lord Wyldon to make his report.

That was why after a dinner spent in tedious conversation with the slow-witted Garvey and Vinson, Joren parted from them to enact his plot. To knock on Zahir’s door.

“What do you want?” Zahir cracked his door just wide enough to glare at Joren with one hostile, hard eye.

“Is that any way to greet a friend?” Joren folded his arms across his chest, though he supposed some of the impact and weight of the gesture must have been diminished by the fact that Zahir could only narrowly observe him through the slight gap between door and wall.

“Are we friends?” Zahir’s tone suggested they were not.

“If we aren’t friends, it’s nothing of my doing that rendered us not so,” snapped Joren. “It’s your treachery that has endangered our friendship, not mine.”

“If I’m so treacherous–” Zahir’s voice had settled into a mocking purr like a cat playing with a mouse before devouring it– “you ought to leave and avoid conspiring with me lest I betray you again.”

“We could still be friends,” Joren tried again. Somehow reluctant to surrender. It was difficult to have only Garvey and Vinson to converse with in the pages’ wing when the two didn’t seem to have one brain between them. Zahir might have been a weak-minded Bazhir, but somehow he managed to be a wittier conversationalist than Garvey and Vinson combined. “If you take my offer.”

“And what is your offer?” Zahir sounded bored. Indolent. As if Joren were more of a fly to be ignored than a person to be listened to with care.

“I’ll not prattle about it in the hallway.” Joren gritted his teeth at the obstinate Bazhir smugness confronting him. “Let me in so we can speak properly. Face to face in a civilized fashion if you are capable of such enlightened discourse. I know your people struggle with it.”

“Enlighten me.” Zahir’s door swung open so suddenly and completely that Joren almost fell through it onto the wooden floor. The wooden floor where Zahir often sat because he had a savage’s aversion to elevated furniture. “What grand offer are you going to make me to induce me to remain friends with you?”

“I am going to tell Lord Wyldon about the prince’s little document.” Joren shut the door behind him and kept his voice low.

“You’re going to be a petty snitch?” Zahir snorted. Derision radiating from him. “That’s supposed to impress me enough that I become friends with you again?”

“Fool,” Joren spat. Fists clenching. Knuckles cracking. “Do you not understand that everyone whose name appears on the document is in danger of being punished along with the prince? Do you not see that I am giving you the opportunity to escape that punishment by accompanying me when I report what the prince has done to Lord Wyldon? Do you not realize that you have the chance to play informant and sing a pretty tune about how you only pretended to side with the prince so you could gain more inside knowledge of what trickery he was up to and more accurately report on it? That Lord Wyldon will believe you if you come with me now and say that, but that you’ll face his wrath along with everyone else who signed the stupid charter if you don’t? That I can’t protect you if you don’t join with me again?”

“I’m not afraid of Lord Wyldon’s wrath.” Zahir’s spine had gone rigid with the defiance that had gotten so many of his stubborn people slaughtered over the centuries of ineffectual resistance against superior Tortallan strength. “Don’t you understand I’m not under your thumb any longer? I’m my own person now.”

“You’d better not scurry off like a rat to warn the prince.” Joren’s eyes narrowed. “There’s nothing he can do to save himself even if you do.”

“I will not warn the prince because I am not his creature either.” Zahir’s smile was more like a leer. “I am my own person as I said. A rock standing alone. I will watch the dominoes fall where they may one by one and laugh inside at the sight of how you northerners destroy each other.”

Chapter Text

A Veritable Mountain of Rumors

Wyldon was sifting through the heaps of correspondence addressed to him–separating the good wheat from the chaff fit only for burning as a diligent castle steward might come harvest time–when his manservant Leofric announced that Joren of Stone Mountain had arrived seeking an audience with him.

Wyldon arched an eyebrow as he looked up from the letter he was skimming. Lads didn’t often show up at his office door seeking an audience with him. On most occasions, they were dragged here unwillingly by whatever guard or master had caught them brawling in the hallways or engaged in some boyish mischief that required discipline.

“Bring him in,” he ordered Leofric with a curt wave of his hand.

Leofric obeyed, and a moment later, Joren of Stone Mountain entered his office. As Leofric silently withdrew with a discreet bow, Wyldon studied his unexpected visitor.

Joren’s eyes–blue as the glacial lakes in the mountains from which he hailed–were unblackened by bruises. No cuts or scratches marked his face, and there was no evidence of broken bones.

The boy hadn’t been fighting then. That much was obvious in one sweeping glance. Besides, if the lad had been brawling, he would have been hauled to face Wyldon’s exacting justice with an assortment of other miscreants. The shamelessly guilty allies and adversaries in his petty skirmish.

Joren stood, spine straight, before Wyldon’s desk. Hands neatly clasped behind his back. Waiting deferentially for Wyldon to speak first. The proper posture and demeanor no doubt beaten into him by ample application of Lord Burchard’s sturdy rod over the years.

Lord Burchard having once made the grave miscalculation of remarking authoritatively to Wyldon that one of the reasons the world was currently descending into chaos with so many lacking a sufficient understanding of the concept of hierarchy was because not enough fathers thrashed their sons. Being too soft on their boys. Raising them to be weak like daughters.

Wyldon, affronted on behalf of his daughters, had coolly commented that he hadn’t raised his daughters to be soft or to be like sons. Bringing them up to be proper noblewomen. Strong in the roles appointed to them by their sex. Able to manage a noble household and its accounts. Skilled in music, dancing, and embroidery. Poised and fluent in polite conversation. Knowing how to ride. How to hawk and hunt. How to train and breed dogs and horses.

Wyldon was convinced that any truly strong man would not want a weak wife. A woman who would crumble in confusion when her husband left her in charge of his household and estate to go to war or court. Only a weak man would desire a weak woman for his wife. His helpmeet.

Vivenne, the tart-tongued scold and love of his life, certainly wasn’t weak. As to his daughters, he was sure they had brought him more joy than if they had been a quartet of quarrelsome sons (all sons being quarrelsome). His daughters were his pride. The delight of his days and perpetual assurance that despite any personal mistakes he might make that he was leaving the world a better place than he had found it merely because he had sired them. Sons, however, seemed sadly prone to being disappointments and disgraces to their fathers. All things considered, Wyldon was content not to have one. Happy with his four daughters.

“You weren’t fighting,” Wyldon observed. His scrutiny of Joren complete.

“I don’t fight, sir.” Joren was quick to trot out the old and weathered lie. The classic excuse of the page caught brawling. “I–”

“You fall down, yes,” Wyldon cut across him tersely. Folding his arms across his chest in stony disapproval. “You’ve fallen down more this year than any in the past. Become clumsy as a toddler learning to walk free of his nursemaid’s apron strings.”

Joren appeared disconcerted. As if this conversation wasn’t transpiring at all how he had predicted. Good. No page should be allowed to believe that he could induce Wyldon to cavort to his tune. “I haven’t fallen down recently, sir.”

It had indeed been some time since Joren or any other page had been hauled before Wyldon for brawling. Wyldon, not having gone deaf and dumb as a rock, had heard some rumors swirling in the pages’ wing about why that was the case. Rumors in which the Crown Prince had played a prominent role.

Wyldon made a noncommittal grunt in reply.

His noncommittal grunt seemed to constitute enough encouragement for Joren to continue, “I have a report for you, my lord. A report of treachery and sedition. Of an attempt to undermine your authority in the pages’ wing. Spearheaded by the Crown Prince.”

Joren now wore an eager expression reminiscent of a puppy awaiting effusive praise and a pat on the head after performing a clever trick at his master’s command.

“I have heard such rumors.” Wyldon kept his tone brusque. Dismissive. Allowing no hint of commendation or warmth to seep into it.

Joren looked comically startled at this revelation. Wyldon stifled a snort. It was an eternally flowing wellspring of dark, wry amusement for Wyldon how the pages’ perception of his knowledge could shift from moment to moment.

One heartbeat they would be speaking about him almost as if he were omniscient and omnipresent as Mithros. Communicating only in covert whispers and hushed undertones. Checking over their shoulders to ascertain if he was lurking like a scowling shadow over their shoulders.

The next instant they would be downright flippant in their conduct. Assured in their adolescent arrogance that as a woefully out-of-touch adult he was ignorant of their misbehaviors. The long list of their misdeeds and mischiefs. Confident that they had pulled the wool over his unsuspecting eyes.

“You have, sir?” Joren sounded flummoxed. “Then why haven’t you acted to punish the prince? To reign him in?”

“Because,” Wyldon snapped. Frustrated at how ignorant Burchard had raised the boy to be. The Crown Prince wouldn’t have been such a fool. So obtuse about the politics of court. “Rumor isn’t evidence, and it certainly isn’t proof. It’s hearsay. Mere prattle for idle, empty-headed gossips. If you are going to accuse a Crown Prince of misconduct, you need far more substantial evidence than page wing whispers to support you. So I hope for your sake that you have more solid proof of the prince’s guilt before leveling this serious accusation against him.”

“I level no accusation against anyone, my lord.” There was a sulky curl to Joren’s lip now. As if an extended gift had been summarily rejected rather than received with due appreciation. “I only offer my report.”

“A recitation of rumors is not a report.” Wyldon’s manner was clipped. His jaw tight. “It is gossip and speculation. I am interested in neither.”

“It’s not a mere rumor I have to report.” Joren was speaking with increased speed and fervor. Bordering on the desperate. “It’s a contract drawn up by the Crown Prince himself. One cunningly crafted to usurp your authority as training master, my lord. Zahir ibn Alhaz has seen it for himself. Read it for himself. Even signed it for himself.”

Wyldon humphed at that final sentence. “And why isn’t Zahir ibn Alhaz relaying this intelligence to me himself?”

“Because he lacks the courage.” Joren shrugged. A portrait of indifference. “You know how cowardly the sand scuts can be, sir.”

“At least he doesn’t ride his horse like a sack of flour.” Wyldon offered this pointed critique of Joren’s horsemanship while itching at the arm–savaged by a hurrock in his defense of the royal nursery–that was irritating him in the palace damp as winter approached in all its gray gloom.

He had been providing such waspish assessments of Joren’s horsemanship ever since the boy’s first year as a page in an attempt to goad and spur the lad into decent riding skills. Not that the seeds of his wisdom had landed on fertile ground as Joren remained resolutely lackluster in the saddle.

Joren ignored this criticism of his riding skills as he so often did, which perhaps explained why he hadn’t profited from them. Persisted, “If you search the prince’s room, my lord, I have no doubt that you’ll find the contract. I’d swear to that by Mithros.”

“I’ll take your words under advisement. You’ve given your report. Now go.” Wyldon kept his face blank, and his voice flat as he dismissed the boy. Resolved to reveal nothing of what he thought or felt. To conceal everything and betray no idea or emotion.

Joren should have bowed and departed.

Instead, he seemed to lack the wit to leave well enough alone. Had to poke the hornet’s nest and risk getting stung. “What will you do about the prince?”

“That–” Wyldon allowed frost to permeate his repressive tone– “is none of your affair.”

“He’s gotten arrogant, sir.” Bitterness radiated from Joren. “Too big for his breeches. He’s presumed too much on his rank. You should put him in his place.”

Arrogance. The most common complaint made against the Contes in the turbulent history of their family. Though Wyldon had to concede at least in the confines of his own mind that Prince Roald wasn’t particularly arrogant by Conte standards. Could even possibly be classified as quite humble. Often too modest to draw on the privileges of his royal birth. Still, one would be well-advised to remember he had been royally born and was heir to the Tortallan throne whatever disputes one might have with the politics of his progressive parents…

“Or maybe it’s you–” Wyldon fixed a frigid gaze on Joren. Hoping to freeze any rebellion or argument in the lad. His glares were very effective at doing that. Even to grown men who had served the realm for decades on the battlefield. Grizzled veterans would quail in their boots at the prospect of his wrath. “Who presumes too much on my acquaintance with your father. Perhaps that is why you dare to try to school me in my duty as training master.”

“I would never attempt to school you in your duty, my lord.” Finally, Joren had the sense to bow and indeed looked as if he longed to beat a hasty retreat from the dangers of Wyldon’s study now that he had stirred Wyldon’s ire.

“Then you may do as instructed and leave.” Wyldon maintained the flint in his tone and eyes as Joren fled from his office.

Once the boy had left, Wyldon pinched the bridge of his nose. Wondering if the evidence–however secondhand and spurious–that Joren had presented piled on top of the veritable mountain of rumors constituted sufficient justification for him to inspect Prince Roald’s page quarters for proof of wrongdoing.

At length, he decided that it did. That the training master did, after all, have the right to search the room of any page–royalty or not–suspected of foul conduct or harboring anything that could be considered contraband. That Prince Roald ultimately couldn’t argue with his impromptu inspection if the heir to the throne had nothing to hide and had done no wrong. If the prince took issue with his decision, it would only be another indication of guilt.

Wyldon determined, therefore, that he would inspect the prince’s room the next afternoon. When all the pages were attending their academic lessons.

Chapter Text

Inspection and Exemplary Penmanship

Wyldon gave a sharp rap on Prince Roald’s door. He could have gotten the key from Salma, who was entrusted with the keys to every pages’ room, but he suspected that the prince’s manservant would be within, filling the afternoon hours with whatever duties manservants busied themselves with while their young masters were at lessons.

Thus allowing Wyldon to save himself a stop at Salma’s and some time. Time being something he always cherished and sought to conserve as much as possible. When he passed beyond the Mortal Realms, he did not intend for his soul to have to give a strict accounting to Mithros of all the time he had frittered away on folly and frivolities. He was not a frivolous or a foolish person, after all. Or so he liked to believe.

The door, predictably, opened. The prince’s manservant stood in the threshold. Bowed at the waist when he realized the visitor was the training master.

“His Highness is at his lessons, my lord.” The manservant’s tone was polite. Offering no hint of whether he thought Wyldon calling on his master at this hour was strange. Royal servants expected to be discreet above all else. “I could leave a message for him if you wish or…”

“That won’t be necessary,” Wyldon brusquely interrupted whatever other option the manservant was about to propose. Not wanting to squander time on niceties either. “It’s not His Highness I wish to see. It’s his room I wish to inspect.”

The manservant stepped back slowly. Reluctantly allowing Wyldon access to the prince’s room. All the servants in the pages’ wing knowing that Wyldon had the right to inspect any room at any time. Unable to interfere with that prerogative.

As he entered the room, Wyldon swept a cursory glance over it. The prince not being a disorderly person, it was neat. Everything in its proper place. Which meant, Wyldon decided, that there only could be one spot where the prince would be keeping his seditious charter if it existed (and Wyldon was becoming quite convinced that it did even if he did not like to act on slippery rumors rather than solid reports).

The desk. Wyldon crossed over to it. His footsteps sounding loud and harsh in a room where the only other occupant wasn’t moving. Didn’t even seem to be breathing.

The top of the desk held an inkwell, quills, and blank rolls of parchment that would no doubt soon be filled with writing for lessons. He opened the first drawer. Combed through it. Found it contained nothing but notes on various classes Prince Roald had attended over his years as a page. All filed by subject and date. The prince apparently being a meticulous notetaker.

As Wyldon’s dissatisfying search of this top drawer came to a close, the manservant suddenly seemed to find his tongue. “His Highness keeps nothing but his class notes there, my lord.”

“I noticed,” snapped Wyldon. Shutting the drawer with a thud. Sensing that the manservant meant more to deter and put him off than to help him. A sign that the manservant was loyal to his master. Not that the manservant’s devotion shocked Wyldon. He had never seen Prince Roald be discourteous or impatient with any servant. No doubt the boy was a calm, considerate master. The sort who endeared himself to his servants with his even-tempered and kind demeanor. It was to be expected. Personalities being what they were.

He yanked open the second drawer. Rifled through it. Discovered only dated notes Prince Roald had taken at the council meetings he attended with his father in the evenings. The prince apparently being as diligent a recordkeeper at council meetings as in his lessons.

“Those are confidential.” There was a distinctly miffed quality to the manservant’s voice now. As if he did not appreciate witnessing his master’s property rummaged through in such an abrupt and unceremonious fashion. “Records from council meetings. Can I help you find anything in particular, sir?”

Wyldon had the impression that if he told the manservant what he was searching for, he would be summarily told it didn’t exist.

“I can find it myself,” Wyldon ground out through clenched teeth. Thwarted thus far, he slammed the second drawer shut and jerked open the third.

The third that proved to be filled with an assortment of personal artifacts and knickknacks as well as something that instantly caught Wyldon’s keen eyes. A scroll carefully folded and tied.

With quick fingers, Wyldon snatched it out of the drawer (as if it might disappear if he didn’t grab it in the same heartbeat he saw it) and untied it. Unfurling it to see paragraphs that appeared to be written in the language of charters and other dry legal discourse followed by the signatures of many pages. Prince Roald’s foremost among them. Written elegantly at the top. Above all the others. A defiant statement in itself.

The blood pounded like a war drum in Wyldon’s ears. He rose. Clutching the document in his fist. Not caring how he crinkled the parchment. Wishing he could burn it for the sedition it was, but it was evidence. Evidence that could not be burned until the prince was forced to account for his crime. His plotting and treachery. His attempt to usurp the authority that was rightly Wyldon’s.

His vision tinged an angry red at the edges, he proclaimed in icy triumph, “I have found what I am looking for. I am confiscating this.”

“It’s a private document.” The manservant finally dared to voice an open objection. “The prince’s personal property.”

“There are no private documents and personal property in the pages’ wing.” Wyldon spoke coldly. Striding toward the door with his evidence in hand. “Anything can be inspected by the training master at any time and confiscated if it is deemed to be contraband in any way.”

He took his leave. Shutting the door firmly in his wake. Marching down the corridor to his office. Sliding into his seat. Reading by the almost wintry afternoon light filtering through the window that overlooked the palace gardens that were dying at this time of year the document he had uncovered in the prince’s desk.

It was indeed written in dense legal language. Language so bland and lifeless that it threatened to disguise how revolutionary it was. How much it uprooted the traditional structure and hierarchy of the pages’ wing. Sought to establish a written rule that was contrary to all the unwritten codes and dictums that had governed the pages’ wing since time immemorial. All the customs and traditions that should have been sacrosanct, but seemed to be another target of wild Conte reforms in this era.

It prohibited its signatories from engaging in any hazing behavior. Forbade senior pages from compelling junior pages to run errands or otherwise earn their way in the pages’ wing. Outlined the penalties signatories could face if they were found guilty by their peers of perpetuating the hazing custom or bullying a younger page.

The whole document was as ridiculous as it was inflammatory, Wyldon thought as he reached the conclusion of it. Such errant nonsense that probably even the prince–who Wyldon recalled had sent younger pages on errands as recently as a few months ago–wouldn’t have signed it if the contract hadn’t contained a clever clause. A grandfather clause that stated no signatory was liable for any acts of hazing or bullying committed prior to signing the document.

It was nonsense, but it was well-written, subtly-crafted nonsense. Which of course rendered it all the more dangerous.

After dinner, he summoned Sir Myles and the Mithran monk charged with the thankless task of instructing the pages in reading and writing to his office to consult with them on how to proceed. To gain their counsel.

“I found this in the prince’s room this afternoon.” He pushed the document across his desk as soon as they had claimed chairs. Didn’t elaborate beyond that. Not wishing to color their perceptions with his own.

The Mithran monk read in silence. His face serious and sour as ever. Sir Myles had a merry gleam in his eyes as they glided over the parchment. As he read, he would nod and hum in apparent approval of a well-turned phrase or aptly articulated point.

“Your thoughts?” he inquired tartly as the men finished reading the contract.

“His Highness has exemplary penmanship,” the monk commented as if that were the most relevant detail under the circumstances. Instead of a triviality. “His hand is much finer than his father’s was at a comparable age. The king’s writing when he was a boy was prone to galloping like a wild horse over the page when his passions were excited by some idea or other.”

“Is that all you have to say?” Wyldon blinked. Astonished. “You have no other opinion.”

“I am the writing master.” The monk shot him a severe glance. As if Wyldon were an impertinent student disrupting a lesson. “It is my job to evaluate penmanship and the overall cohesion of words written on parchment presented to me. The prince’s penmanship is elegant and his words are not incoherent. That is my verdict and remark on the matter.”

“I should think that sedition is all the more dangerous if it is cloaked in good penmanship.” Wyldon bristled. “If it is well and coherently written, more people will be able to read it. To have their minds infected by its seeping poison.”

“I wouldn’t be qualified to pass judgment on the matter.” The monk pressed his lips together primly. “I am not someone who has made a study of the vile ways of sedition. Its subversive tactics. I do not dirty my mind by concerning myself with such things.”

Wyldon pinched the bridge of his nose. Pleading inwardly with Mithros to save him from the god’s own monks even if that might have been blasphemy. Mithran monks, he was convinced, could try the patience of a god. They had to be simultaneously the most well-educated and obtuse beings in the realm. Making them a true trial to talk to under even the best of circumstances. Nonetheless when his temper was already frayed by royal presumption.

“The document is definitely written in the prince’s hand?” Wyldon was determined to salvage what he could from the ruins of a conversation that wasn’t going at all how he had planned or hoped. More evidence of hopes only existing to be dashed. “It’s not a forgery then?”

He hadn’t suspected it was a forgery, but it was always good to confirm. Especially if that was the only use the cursed monk could be.

“If it is a forgery, it’s a cunning one.” The monk shrugged. Then seemed to feel compelled to continue with the disclaimer common to Mithran monks whenever they ventured outside the narrow confines of their expertise, “Not that I am trained in the magic of distinguishing true signatures from forgeries. You’d want a court mage for that. I’m sure His Majesty would be happy to place one at your disposal if you suspected someone of going around forging documents in his son’s name. That would be a serious business. A very serious business indeed.”

“I don’t suspect someone of forging Prince Roald’s signature.” Wyldon closed his eyes, briefly, before he surrendered to the temptation to roll them. That would be rude and probably irreverent if directed to a monk however tiresome.

“Oh.” The monk sounded truly confused. “Why ask then?”

“Merely to clarify and confirm my own thoughts.” Wyldon turned to Sir Myles. “And what are your thoughts, sir? I notice you haven’t shared any yet.”

“His Highness has been doing his research.” Sir Myles beamed. As if delighted by the aptitude of a precocious pupil. “He seems to be borrowing greatly from the influence of the Tyran city-states with his trial by a jury of peers system.”

“The Tyran city-states are governed by greedy merchants rather than by chivalrous nobility.” Wyldon’s jaw tightened. “They are ruled by avarice and often make war among themselves. I would not have the pages’ wing descend into chaos emulating such ungentlemanly modes of government.”

“The Tyrans call it a democratic mode of government, I believe.” Sir Myles was exasperatingly unfazed by Wyldon’s curtness.

Before Wyldon could snarl that he didn’t give a sugared fig what the Tyrans referred to their backwards system of government as, Sir Myles went on, “As if for chaos and fighting, the pages’ wing has been filled with both for as long as I can remember. And I have made the pages’ wing my home for decades.”

“Yes, you are a fixture around here.” Wyldon scowled. Thinking that Sir Myles was as much a fixture as the ringing bells and the history classes he taught. “I will keep your words in mind when I speak to His Majesty about this.”

“You intend to speak to the king?” Sir Myles arched his eyebrows.

“Of course.” Wyldon scratched at his arm. “I can’t have his son brewing sedition under my nose.”

“His Majesty might not see it as sedition.” Sir Myles was a royal adviser. Not someone’s whose opinion on the matter could be discarded.

Wyldon sighed. Swallowed the urge to retort that the king would see it as sedition if he weren’t blind. Settled instead on a clipped, “I must have my authority respected in the pages’ wing. Nobody must be allowed to usurp it.”

“His Majesty–” Sir Myles gave a crooked grin– “always liked to rule the roost when he was a page, I remember.”

Wyldon didn’t deign to reply to this. Decided that was the safest and sanest course.

Instead pulled out a quill and a piece of parchment. Began writing a formal request to the king to speak with him tomorrow evening regarding his son, the Prince Roald. Dispatched Leofric with it. Tossing a stone into the pond like a lad on an idle spring day to see how far it would fly and how many ripples it would create when it smacked into the water.

Chapter Text

Unpleasant News

Roald returned from his afternoon lessons to find his manservant Bennet looking unusually flustered. Almost discombobulated. Perhaps even feverish.

“Bennet.” He eyed his manservant with some concern even though he didn’t have that much time to drop off his books and papers before supper. “Are you feeling ill? Do you need to visit the healers?”

“I am in the very pink of health, thank Your Highness.” Bennet’s cheeks did indeed look very pink. Though whether the particular shade of pink was a healthy one was a matter of individual interpretation as far as Roald was concerned.

“Oh.” Roald cocked his head. Wondering what could be troubling his manservant if not some strange ailment. “Is everyone in your family well?”

“As far as I know, Your Highness.” Bennet bowed and didn’t elaborate beyond that.

Feeling as if they were playing a game of riddles, Roald asked, “Is anything else wrong?”

Bennet shuffled from foot to foot. Almost evasively. Alarum bells clanged in Roald even before Bennet answered, “Now that Your Highness mentions it, I do have unpleasant news.”

“Unpleasant news?” Roald pressed when Bennet again lapsed into silence.

“Yes, Your Highness.” Bennet nodded rapidly. His tone quickening as if he were eager to spill out the entire woeful tale in one breath now that he had started it, “My lord Wyldon stopped by this afternoon. Said he had to perform an inspection. Insisted on rummaging through your desk. Rifling through all your drawers though I told him you keep your private papers and personal property there.”

“Did he take anything?” Roald tried to sound calm. As if he weren’t panicking inside. As if his stomach wasn’t dancing queasily when he glanced at his desk. The desk where he had stored the contract signed by him and so many other pages. The contract certain to incite Lord Wyldon’s wrath if he heard about it. If Joren had squealed to the training master like Zahir had hinted he might.

Of course, Roald had made an effort to shore up his defenses in the event that Lord Wyldon did hear about the document. Strengthened his bulwarks. Alerted nearby troops to the potential need to provide reinforcements. If that was what warning his parents about the charter he had created could be considered.

His parents had promised to support him if Lord Wyldon did discover the contract’s existence. Felt outraged and threatened by it. Not that their assurances of support prevented him from feeling sick when he stared at his desk. He hated conflict. Despised drama.

Would have wondered why he had risked causing so much of it with his charter if he didn’t realize, deep in his bones, that he loathed injustice even more. Arrogant, unearned privilege. Hazing. Bullying. Customs that were all about shaming and not at all about helping.

“He did.” Bennet ducked his head as if anticipating a reprimand. “He took one of your papers. I don’t know which one it was. I’m sorry, Your Highness.”

“There is no need for you to apologize.” Roald forced a smile through his anxiety. Patted Bennet on the shoulder even though the man was taller than him by a head. He had seen Papa patting people’s shoulders like that. Reassuring them. “You couldn’t have challenged Lord Wyldon, and I wouldn’t have wanted you to get into trouble on my behalf.”

“Your Highness is too kind.” Bennet bowed. “I did try to restore your desk to some semblance of order after Lord Wyldon left.”

“Thank you.” Roald managed to step forward. Dump his books and papers onto his desk. Open his drawers and confirm with a heart-sinking feeling that his charter had indeed vanished. A casualty of Lord Wyldon’s afternoon inspection. “For organizing my belongings and for warning me.”

“It is an honor to serve.” Bennet bowed again. “Young master.”

Young master. In Bennet’s years of serving him, Roald had come to understand that was the closest the manservant allowed himself to a term of affection. An informality. A breaking down of the barrier the differences in their ranks and births built between them.

Roald felt a tightening in his throat as he turned toward the door. Strode down the hallway to Kel’s room so they could walk down to dinner together.

Over the hubbub of rowdy conversation echoing off the stone walls around them, Roald whispered in her ear, “I’m sorry. Lord Wyldon knows about the contract. He stole it from my desk this afternoon.”

“You have only tried to help me.” Kel’s voice was hushed and calm. Calm as only a voice trained at the Yamani court could be. “You do not owe me an apology for that.”

“Lord Wyldon might blame you for the contract.” Roald bit his lip. Wishing this notion had occurred to him some time before now.

“You wrote it and I signed it to stop the hazing. The bullying.” Kel was briskly practical. Matter-of-fact. “And it’s worked. The hazing and the bullying have stopped. My papa taught me not to put my signature to any document I wouldn’t stand behind. I’ll stand behind this one. Whatever the consequences.”

“I’ll do my best to ensure the consequences fall on me alone.” Roald squeezed her shoulder. Hoping he wasn’t promising her some other castle in the clouds. “Not on you or anyone else who signed the document. Become the perfect target for him to channel all his rage into.”

“I would’ve kept fighting against the bullying and the hazing with my fists if you hadn’t written your contract.” Kel shrugged as they entered the mess hall and joined the line for food. “Lord Wyldon hated me for brawling with Joren and his crowd. So I would have drawn his ire anyway.”

“I don’t want you in trouble on my account,” Roald insisted as the line moved forward and they grabbed their dinner trays heavily laden with bowls of steaming lamb stew studded with carrots and celery, buttered rolls kneaded with herbs and spices, and a lemon custard for dessert. “I’m your sponsor. I’m supposed to lead you out of trouble, not push you into it.”

“You’ve been trying to help me ever since I entered the pages’ wing.” Kel’s words could only be a limited balm to Roald’s guilty conscience as they slid into empty seats at the long tables because he couldn’t stifle the traitor inside him that hissed his efforts to aid her had ended more in failure than in success. “I appreciate everything you’ve done on my behalf, Your Highness.”

Your Highness. Sometimes he wished she wouldn’t call him that though it was his proper title, and he didn’t have the courage to tell her that she should call him Roald. Then he might have to invite all the pages to address him by his first name alone. Otherwise, it could smack of favoritism. Which he detested.

Cleon, when Roald alerted him to the possibility that Lord Wyldon might be aware of the contract seeking to outlaw bullying and hazing in the pages’ wing seemed disposed to treat the whole affair as a joke. A court jester’s trick performed for his benefit and amusement. Chuckled and quipped good-naturedly, “Well, Your Highness, I’ve accumulated so many hours of punishment work to my name that I won’t be able to keep track if they are caused by my boyish prank or your foolish document, so I can’t bear too much of a grudge against you. Royal fathead though you may be.”

Royal fathead being Cleon’s favored term of abuse for Roald when he determined that Roald had acted an idiot in one way or another.

There being no malice behind Cleon’s words, however, Roald decided to save his strength for arguing with more genuinely spiteful foes. He had to pick his battles as much as his tactics, after all.

Faleron and Balduin displayed less equanimity when Roald caught up with them after dinner to warn them that they along with Merric and Seaver might be at risk for signing the contract.

“We trusted you.” Balduin folded his arms across his chest. “That seems to have been a mistake.”

“Merric and Seaver were having difficulty with bullies.” Faleron frowned. “Now they’ll have Lord Wyldon angry with them instead. That’s rather like leaping from the cooking pot directly into the flames, isn’t it?”

“I’ll be the one leaping into the flames.” Roald was a Conte, after all. Born for leaping into flames. “Everyone else can stay safely in the cooking pot.”

“I’ll protect Merric as best I can.” Faleron sounded stiff. As if he didn’t believe that Roald could protect his cousin. Could protect anyone in the pages’ wing.

“And I’ll look after Seaver.” Balduin mirrored the pledge. “I am his sponsor, after all.”

It felt terrible, Roald thought, watching them disappear into their separate rooms, to have the faith and respect of your peers drain from you like dirty bath water that had once been clean. Pure before you soiled it.

Zahir, he noticed, was leaning on the doorframe to his own bedroom. Studying the scene with a smirk. The smirk of a cat whose swiping claws had set a flurry of mice scurrying into their holes.

“I don’t need to warn you that you might be in danger for signing the contract, do I?” Roald felt his temper flare. His cheeks flush.

“Joren told me he was going to report you to Lord Wyldon before he did.” Zahir’s confident smirk didn’t waver. Only grew more pronounced in fact.

“And you didn’t feel the need to alert me of this?” Roald snapped. Fists clenching as he lost the battle for control. For courtesy.

“I already warned you when you tweaked Joren’s tail.” Zahir’s gaze was cool. “If you didn’t heed me, my alerting you a second time wouldn’t do you any good, would it?”

“I did heed you.” Roald glared at someone whom he had thought was an ally. Who was proving far more prickly than that. Far more prone to plotting and betrayal. “I made contingency plans in the event Lord Wyldon was informed, but you didn’t know that. As far as you were aware, a second warning might have been useful to me.”

“I never warn people twice.” Zahir gave an indifferent shrug. “If they heed me the first time, they do not need a second warning, and if they are too arrogant to listen the first time, I will not waste my breath on them a second time.”

Roald stalked away. Seething inwardly that someone as smug as Zahir ibn Alhaz would dare to imply that he was arrogant. He was nowhere near as arrogant as some Bazhir he could name.

He heard Zahir shut his door. Probably savoring his victory. Relishing Roald’s ear-burning shame.

Never mind Zahir or Joren, Roald tried to soothe himself as he retreated into the sanctuary of his room. The sanctuary that had been broken by Lord Wyldon’s inspection. He had made his contingency plans. He could rely on his parents to support him.

Except no teenage boy could truly rely on his parents. Parents were notoriously untrustworthy and unpredictable people. One didn’t have to be a child very long to realize that. Especially if one’s parents were royal parents. Subject more than anyone to the fickle winds of politics and diplomacy.

Roald was quite certain his parents wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice him for political expediency. Make a bloody offering of him on the altar of diplomacy. What else was a prince–an heir to the throne–for if not that? What other purpose did he have except to be an extension of his parents’ ambition? An obedient agent of their wills?

He sighed. Pinched the bridge of his nose. Attempted to finish a mathematics assignment. Failed miserably at it. Found that his vision blurred, and none of the squiggling numbers added up to any sums that made sense. He scrawled down his answers that he knew were wrong. Not caring how lousy a grade he earned.

Chapter Text

A Whetstone for a Sharp Tongue

Thayet had been busy reviewing her schedule with her social secretary, the Lady Cythera, at a small writing desk by the fire while the rest of her attending ladies bent over their embroidery or strummed their lutes when Jon stormed into the solar. Slamming the door dramatically behind him.

“You wouldn’t believe the effrontery of Lord Wyldon!” Jon scowled as he shook a letter that was presumably from the training master.

“We’ll take our leave now, Your Majesties.” Lady Cythera interspersed herself smoothly. Standing and sweeping a curtsy. “Grant you privacy to discuss this.”

Having gotten a single look at Jon’s thunderous expression, the other ladies were only too eager to abandon their needlework and music. Hastily laying aside the instruments of each craft to bob their own curtsies before following the Lady Cythera out of the solar as if they were a flock of well-dressed ducklings, and she their graceful, poised mother.

As the last lady retreated, closing the door in her wake, Thayet gestured for her agitated husband to claim the cushioned chair Lady Cythera had just vacated. “Sit, Jon. Before you wear a hole in the floor.”

“The stones of this floor have lasted for centuries and will weather a few more no matter how hard I tread upon them.” Jon’s glower remained stubbornly in place though he lowered himself into the indicated furniture without further argument on that score.

“How has Lord Wyldon offended now?” Thayet asked. She had a strong, shrewd suspicion but would have it confirmed before she allowed herself to feel any fury. Any passion.

“He requested that I come to his study tomorrow night,” snapped Jon. Blue eyes blazing. “Though it reads more like a summons issued to a misbehaving rascal of an underling than a polite invitation made to a king. As if he would call me to the carpet for a thorough dressing-down. As if I were an errant page to be taken to task in his office instead of a king in my own right. King of this realm!”

“Did he mention a reason for requesting your presence?” Thayet kept her tone cool. Calm.

“He did, and you know why.” Jon glared at her. Sour as curdled milk. “It’s Roald he wants to talk about. I think we can safely assume that the Stone Mountain boy snitched about the anti-hazing charter Roald drew up.”

“You can’t be angry at Roald for writing that contract.” Thayet felt the need to establish as much because Jon’s bitterness didn’t seem to be confined to Lord Wyldon. Seemed to have a wider radius than that. “It was the right thing to do.”

“No, I can’t be angry at him for writing that contract of his.” Jon’s resentment plainly hadn’t abated. “But his decision to tweak the Stone Mountain boy’s tail for no reason? I can be frustrated by that, and I am.”

“You said yourself that you would’ve done more than tweak Joren of Stone Mountain’s tail if you had to suffer his presence in page training with you,” Thayet reminded him. In case he had forgotten the words that had emerged from his own mouth when a flush-faced Roald had confessed how he had baited Joren.

“Roald is supposed to be better than me. Less hot-headed. More diplomatic and measured in his approach.” Jon was tugging broodingly at his beard. “I would be the lousiest of fathers indeed if I didn’t expect my son to be better than me. Didn’t try to raise him to be better than me.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if he was trying to imitate you.” Thayet shook her head. Amused by how much Jon sometimes struggled to interpret the actions of their eldest son. “Or at least how you would have acted in the spectacular tales of your misadventures as a page that Gary has filled his head with over the years.”

“Remind me to have Gary’s tongue removed one day for profaning my heir’s mind with such sordid stories that defame my character.” Jon’s tone was wry. A sign his temper was cooling, Thayet knew from long experience with his blackest moods. “And, despite Gary dragging my name through the gutter in my son’s ears, I don’t see why Roald would want to emulate me and especially the version of me that was a scapegrace of a page. I assure you that when I was his age, the last person I wanted to be like was my father. I would go to great pains to avoid imitating him or agreeing with him on any matter, however slight. Indeed, if he thought that I should act in a certain manner, for me that was an excellent recommendation to do the exact opposite.”

“You can be blind as the three proverbial mice.” Thayet clucked her tongue and reached out to pat her husband’s knee. Trapped somewhere between affection and exasperation at how oblivious he could be. “Surely you must have noticed how he tries so earnestly to emulate you when he is seeking to project himself as a leader. How he will try to copy your voice and posture.”

“Perhaps I’ve tried not to notice.” Jon’s smile was crooked. “Nobody likes to have a mirror of their worst traits held up to their nose for examination. I prefer it when he acts like you or himself, my dear.”

“I’m certain Roald doesn’t mean to call attention to your flaws.” Thayet squeezed her husband’s knee. “No doubt he intends it as a gesture of respect. A way of honoring your example.”

“You could almost talk me out of my frustration.” Jon massaged his temples. “Until I recall how Lord Wyldon will probably give me a migraine threatening to resign unless I respond forcefully enough to what he will stridently insist is Roald’s effort to undermine his authority in the pages’ wing.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, the option of telling him to cool his temper by jumping into the Olorun remains very much on the table,” said Thayet. Cool as the Olorun that was freezing in its banks below the palace as winter neared.

“Don’t tempt me with a good time.” Jon chuckled softly. Then went on more soberly, “But if we tell him that, he will only become more offended and determined to resign. Besides, he didn’t invite you to his office for a lecture. Just me.”

“I’m the queen.” Thayet adopted her most imperious manner. “I can invite myself anywhere I wish. I certainly wish to be in Lord Wyldon’s study tomorrow, defending my son and his contract from a conservative training master who seeks to flip back the hourglass on every significant reform that we make.”

“You don’t trust me to defend our son and the contract he wrote to Lord Wyldon?” Jon frowned. His forehead furrowing. Apparently, he hadn’t been warned as a young boy, as she had been admonished as a little girl, to avoid frowning and scowling like the Sweating Sickness. Cautioned that it would ruin good looks with wrinkles early. He would have been valued for more than his good looks. Seen for more than his good looks. Of course, he had managed to remain handsome despite any scowling and frowning. He had a very majestic face. She had always thought that. Even before she fell in love with him. He sounded wounded by her distrust now, and that could have broken her heart if she didn’t have to remain practical. Stone-hearted as the K’miri Highlands. “You think I would betray him and the document that means so much to him?”

“I don’t trust you not to appease Lord Wyldon again.” Thayet retracted her hand from his knee. Shot him an arch glance. “The way you did when you agreed to Keladry of Mindelan’s probation. A probation to be judged by Lord Wyldon himself, might I add. Betraying a proclamation you had made granting girls the right to train as knights without any reference to a probationary period. Betraying the years of hard work of one of your closest friends by undermining the status of female warriors in the realm.”

“I supported Alanna for years.” Jon sounded stung. Proof that Thayet’s barb had hit its target. “She chose to forget that in a fit of pique when she stormed out of Corus.”

“Your prior support didn’t give you the right to erase her years of hard work,” Thayet retorted. Mystified at how he could still fail to grasp this simple point that was so crystal clear to her and Alanna. “That’s why she’s still not talking to you and won’t until you apologize to her.”

“She’s still talking to you, though.” Jon folded his arms across his chest. This was still a sore point between them. A cause of tension in their marriage. “A good deal evidently. Employing you as her messenger girl.”

“Would you rather–” Thayet infused her question with ice– “that your Champion didn’t communicate with the Crown at all?”

“I would rather that my Champion didn’t snatch up her toys and run out of the nursery like a toddler when she didn’t get her way,” Jon snarled. “Since you ask what I would rather, that is my answer.”

“You let her do that.” Thayet lifted an eyebrow. “Why not let Wyldon do the same?”

“You know I can’t do that.” Jon buried his face in his hands. “It will be harder to pass some of our other important reforms if he resigns in a tiff. He’s a conservative voice at court we can negotiate with, and there aren’t enough of those. Most of them aren’t willing to even entertain the idea of compromise. He will even though he has to think it is on his terms.”

“You might be right.” A sly glint came to Thayet’s eyes. “But you shouldn’t allow him to know that. To continue to harbor the impression that the threat of his resignation is one that he can hold over your head indefinitely. Start to let him think that you are willing to see the back of him if he makes too much of a nuisance of himself.”

“That strategy might be worth testing.” Jon stroked his beard meditatively. Gave her a grin that held a trace of ruefulness. “I do look forward to hearing you wield your sharp tongue against Lord Wyldon tomorrow evening, my dear. Assuming that it still has some sharpness left after lashing me.”

“Don’t worry.” Thayet leaned forward. Kissed him on the lips. “You were only the whetstone for sharpening my tongue. It will be plenty sharp for confronting Lord Wyldon tomorrow, I assure you.”

Chapter Text

A Confrontation in the Training Master’s Study

“I wasn’t aware Her Majesty would be attending this meeting with us.” Lord Wyldon directed this remark to Jon as if Thayet were a chair that could be commented upon but not conversed with in any intelligent manner.

“I insisted on attending,” Thayet answered before Jon could speak on her behalf. She wanted to shape the landscape of this conversation before the training master could. She fixed him with a smile that held all the warmth of a January blizzard. Deriving a strange sort of pleasure from deploying the rhetoric of the conservatives against one of its most rigid champions at court.“Concerning myself with the welfare of my children is one of my most sacred womanly duties.”

“His Highness is in high health.” Lord Wyldon attempted a tight smile of his own. As he was obviously unaccustomed to the expression, it twisted up his face as if he were being held in a bondage. “Such high health that he has the energy to stir up trouble and undermine my authority in the pages’ wing.”

“None of his nursemaids or tutors ever had trouble with him or found him difficult to discipline.” Thayet shot him a withering look. Hoping he would wilt like a plant too long denied water. “You must not maintain your authority over your charges very effectively if he poses a problem to you, Lord Wyldon.”

“Little boys become more troublesome as they age into young men, and it is my responsibility to hone those troublesome young men into knights who can serve the realm.” Lord Wyldon’s tone took on a dismissive quality. As if he viewed her and all other mothers as obstacles to achieving that objective.

Before Thayet could fire out another response, Lord Wyldon’s manservant stepped into the office. Bowed deeply. Informed the training master, “Pardon the intrusion, my lord, but you did ask to be told when His Highness arrived, and he is here now.”

“See him in,” Lord Wyldon commanded his servant with a terse nod.

A moment later, Roald entered through the door the manservant immediately closed behind him. Her son bowed to the training master to a much lesser degree than the manservant had and inquired with what Thayet suspected was a veneer of politeness, “You requested my presence in your study at this hour, my lord?”

He caught sight of her and Jon sitting in hard wooden chairs across from the training master’s desk. Lord Wyldon evidently not caring about providing his guests with furnishings that did not make their bottoms ache after prolonged use.

Roald bowed to her and Jon. More deeply than he had to the training master. Spoke very formally and properly. “Your Majesties.”

“I did.” Wyldon responded crisply to Roald’s first words. “Have a seat.”

Resolved not to lose control of the conversation, Thayet patted the uncushioned chair beside her. “There’s one here.”

Her son obediently slipped into it.

Wyldon dug into a drawer. Fished out a document that bore an uncanny resemblance to the the charter Roald had shown to her and Jon. The one he had written to bring hazing in the pages’ wing to heel.

“Does Your Highness–” Wyldon unfurled the scroll– “recognize this writing?”

Thayet wasn’t certain what tactic her son would take. Whether he would confirm, deny, or seek to obfuscate and evade as only he could.

He seemed to settle on confirming for he replied, quiet and precise, “Of course I do. It’s written in my hand, my lord.”

“Thank you for clarifying that, Your Highness.” Lord Wyldon’s voice was apple crisp. The fleeting glance he flicked toward Thayet triumphant. He pointed at the signature at the top of the list of pages who had signed their names. Agreeing to abide by the terms and conditions outlined in the document. Granting it authority over them. Binding themselves to it with an inky quill. “And could you identify that signature for us?”

“That is no hardship.” Roald barely looked at his name on the paper. Defiant pride radiated off him, and Thayet wished she could catch his eye. Caution him not to blunder into the trap the training master had set for him. There was such a thing as being too honest. Roald should have known that by now. Being raised at court among its vicious politics. “It is my signature, my lord.”

“It’s not a forgery then?” Lord Wyldon seemed very eager to check this point.

“It’s not, sir.” Roald’s chin lifted. Ever more defiant pride emanating from him as he made no effort to amplify his reply beyond that.

“Then perhaps–” The training master’s suggestion had a grim air of satisfaction about it as his snare shut around Roald– “you could enlighten us all on why you have chosen to write and put your signature on sedition.”

“That document meets no definition of sedition.” Roald’s jaw clenched. An expression Thayet recognized after seeing it a thousand times on his father. “There’s no magistrate in the country who would convict me of sedition based on that document, my lord.”

No court of law in the kingdom would find the Crown Prince guilty of sedition. Thayet knew that. Lord Wyldon likely did as well. Unless his prickled pride had completely overcome his wits.

“It undermines my authority in the pages’ wing,” snapped Lord Wyldon. Losing the tightly-held reins on his temper. “It seeks to usurp the legitimate government of the pages’ wing. If that is not sedition, I don’t know what is.”

Thayet was beginning to believe that the training master did indeed have no idea what sedition was. To underline this point, she leaned forward in her chair. Tilted the contract toward her. Studied it as if she had never read it before. Asked with deceptive mildness, “And how does this document undermine you or seek to usurp you, my lord? It aims to eliminate hazing in the pages’ wing. You have always complained about fighting among the pages and punished it harshly when pages were caught brawling. This document only supports your stance against fighting.”

“It establishes an alternate source of authority in the pages’ wing. An authority outside of myself.” Lord Wyldon’s teeth gritted together so loudly Thayet could hear them across the desk. “Besides, His Highness wasn’t worried about ending hazing or stopping fighting until Keladry of Mindelan showed up in the pages’ wing. His timing is very convenient in that regard. So convenient as to be suspicious, in fact. As if he only cares about supporting the cause of lady knights and not at all about eliminating hazing or fighting in the pages’ wing.”

“I don’t see what relevance timing has to this matter.” Thayet gave no ground.

“You might not, Your Majesty.” Lord Wyldon’s manner assumed a martyred air that suggested he was the lone bastion of honor and virtue left in Tortall. “But I believe timing reveals a person’s true motives and character.”

“You’re a fine one to talk about true motives and character,” Roald scoffed. Rather astonishing Thayet with his nerve. For his part, Lord Wyldon stared at her eldest son as if a meek mouse had suddenly emitted a fearsome bark. “How did you obtain that document from my desk drawer?”

He had omitted any sort of respectful title for the training master. Any trace of deference was gone from him now. Nobody present could fail to miss that, Thayet noted inwardly.

“I am the training master.” Lord Wyldon drew himself up stiffly. His spine taut as a bowstring on the cusp of loosing an arrow. His cheeks splotched crimson like stains of red Tyran wine in a white tablecloth.“It is my right to inspect the quarters and property of any page suspected of sedition or any other crime.”

“You had no right to search my property and violate my privacy,” Roald hissed with a venom and vehemence that stunned Thayet.

“Roald!” Thayet couldn’t remember the last time that Jon had spoken to Roald so sharply. Certainly not in front of anyone outside their family. “Hold your peace!”

Roald looked as if he had been slapped across the face, a sight that tore at Thayet’s heart. She longed to cup his cheek as his mouth closed with a click but knew he would not want to be coddled in front of Lord Wyldon. That would just register as another humiliation for him.

“Lord Wyldon is right that it is the purview of the training master to inspect the rooms and belongings of any page suspected of misconduct,” Jon continued, and Thayet could have screamed at him for betraying Roald and the document that, with time, could have helped end hazing in the pages’ wing. Time that document would never have now.

It required an act of willpower not to punch Lord Wyldon square in his smug face.

A smug face that abruptly fell into disappointment as Jon finished, “But our son is not guilty of sedition, no matter how insolent he might have been now, and we will happily sign the charter into law this instant if his signature alone is not sufficient for you to accept it as legitimate, my lord.”

“I might resign if you do that, Your Majesty.” Lord Wyldon was swift to retreat behind the barricade of his standard response to such impositions or perceived insults to his honor.

“Then resign.” Thayet decided to call his bluff. To prove that he had more to lose than the Crown did. “You are not as irreplaceable as you flatter yourself to be, Lord Wyldon. Should you resign your post, we will bring in a progressive who wholeheartedly embraces our reforms. Just think of that. A dedicated progressive molding the minds of those young men who would become knights that you talked about earlier.”

“I do not wish to resign.” Lord Wyldon spoke grudgingly after a long moment of silence. “Unless the Crown is displeased with my work. Then, I shall, of course, resign my post.”

“The Crown is not displeased with your work,” Jon stepped in firmly. “As long as you accept the legitimacy of this charter.”

“I accept its legitimacy.” Lord Wyldon sounded as if the words were poison on his tongue. “If it is your will, sire.”

“It is our will.” Jon was in his element and at his most regal. “And our command. To be disobeyed at peril.”

Chapter Text

Chosen Battles and Muzzled Opinions

Roald stood in the corridor outside Lord Wyldon’s office. His knees shaking after the confrontation with the training master was over. Had run its course. Swelling and overflowing its bounds like a river in flood. Leaving wreckage in its wake along its winding banks.

His parents stood beside him, and he found himself hoping that they couldn’t see how his legs trembled like twigs in a gale.

His father, he thought, was the primary reason he was quaking in his boots. Papa, it turned out, was a harder man to defy than Lord Wyldon. Not just because he was king and father.

Not that he had meant to defy Papa exactly, Roald’s musings continued, submerging themselves in an increasingly self-pitying, petulant tone as sulkiness swamped him. He had told his parents about the contract he had drawn up before Lord Wyldon had. Had even obtained their blessing and approval for it.

Only to have that confidence betrayed. To have any certainty or faith he might have had in his parents ripped out from under him like a rug yanked out from underfoot. To have it hammered into his head that he couldn’t trust or rely on his parents. That he had to depend on himself to protect and defend his friends. To be their champions. To speak up for them when nobody else was around to do so. To be a lightning rod for blame if he had to be. The sacrificial lamb awaiting the cold kiss of death that was the knife’s blade.

He could still hear, echoing in his ears, his father’s sharp, repressive words ordering him to hold his peace. Words that had hit him like a slap across the face. Silencing him. Shaming him. Putting him in his place. Telling him that he didn’t matter. Nor did his thoughts, feelings, and opinions, which all were to be muzzled as if he were a rabid dog.

Prior to tonight, he thought he could have counted on one hand the amount of times Papa had snapped such a stinging rebuke at him, and those reproaches had at least been delivered in private. Not in front of Lord Wyldon. Who had the dubious distinction of topping Roald’s current list of beings before whom he least wanted to be embarrassed.

Yes, he would be smarting from the blow Papa had dealt his dignity for a long time. Licking his wounds and probably baring his teeth at anyone who dared to approach to offer comfort. Teenage boys having much in common with canines.

In Lord Wyldon’s office, he had been too busy drowning in the ocean of his own humiliation to notice anything else that was said after Papa chided him into quiet. The words washing over his dulled nerves like sand on a battered coast. Though he had a vague impression of Mama being impressive. She hadn’t let Lord Wyldon intimidate her, that was for certain.

Mama–he remembered, determined to be fair to her even when he was stewing in his own hurt and shame–had supported him. She hadn’t sought to subdue him as Papa had. She had been his ally. Standing staunch and firm with him against the training master.

She gathered him into a hug now. Pulled him into a tight embrace against her chest. Murmured into the shell of his ear, “Your papa and I love you very much, you know.”

Roald’s ears flared sunset pink. He didn’t want to be coddled and cozened with whispered assurances of love like a crying toddler. Nor did he wish to be hugged by anyone in his extremely prickly state. Not even by his mother. Perhaps especially not by her in a hallway where any one of his fellow pages might happen to walk by to bear unfortunate witness to her embrace.

His parents, it seemed, were resolved to humiliate him until the Olorun ran dry. Might have very different tactics and techniques in doing so, but still had somehow managed to embarrass him even more this evening than Lord Wyldon. The enemy he had expected to fight tonight.

Battles were unpredictable, however. Chaotic. Always in flux and turmoil. His godmother Buri and Lord Raoul had taught him that. As had his mother and Lord Wyldon. Four very different perspectives all uniting in one bleak view on this issue. A reason, however cynical, that Roald preferred to avoid battles. Their clamor and treachery. Their inevitable confusion about where the battle lines had been drawn and who was on which side. Their cruelly indifferent fickleness about who won and who lost. Who lived and who died.

It was better by far, he had concluded even as a young lad, to rely on politics and politeness rather than brute strength. More prudent to be the deft diplomat. Safer beyond measure to be the shrewd negotiator. Watching his tongue. Listening to what others said and what they didn’t.

Yet, he had chosen to go to battle with the training master over the anti-hazing treaty. Had gotten scarred in the process. Had stuck out his neck in his fight against bullies and had almost had it chopped off by his father.

He jerked out of his mother’s grip. Spine rigid. Mumbled as he straightened the tunic her hug had rumpled, “Not here, Mama. Anyone might see.”

A truly horrifying notion that only became the more mortifying when Papa mercilessly intervened.

“Roald!” Papa had a manner of pronouncing Roald’s name so it sounded as cutting as an executioner’s sword. A manner he deployed now. “Don’t disrespect your mother. Give her a proper hug and apology now.”

Roald glared up at his father. The strange soup of hurt, anger, shame, and resentment that only Papa was able to stir in him simmering in his heart and veins. Saw in the stony sternness of his father’s features a clear and indisputable sign that Papa was unlikely to relent any time this century or the next.

Caved in his defiance. Settled for the path of least resistance. Of moderate appeasement. Obeying his father but not apologizing to him because, after all, he hadn’t been commanded to do so.

Wrapped his arms around his mother, praying to Mithros that no fellow page would choose this inopportune moment to emerge from behind a shut door and spot this latest scene of Roald’s humiliation. Said with all the grace he could muster, “I’m sorry for pulling away from your hug, Mama. It was discourteous.”

She chuckled softly. The breeze of it disturbing his coal-black hair before she cupped his cheek. Answered with a gravity that belied her earlier chuckle, “You are growing up, and I will try not to offend your pride in the future by hugging you in public where anyone might see.”

She, at least, seemed to respect his boundaries however awkwardly and curtly articulated. Unlike Papa.

When she released him, he decided that it would be wise to make himself scarce before further embarrassments could be heaped upon him by his parents.

“If I have your leave to go–” Roald took refuge in formality, bowing stiffly– “I bid Your Majesties good night.”

“Good night, Roald.” Mama combed fingers through his hair and kissed his head, and Roald figured dismally that it wasn’t worth the battle of informing her those gestures were as unwelcome in the pages’ wing as warm maternal embraces.

“Sleep well, son.” Papa reached out. Squeezed Roald’s shoulders briefly, and Roald, still petulant, quashed the urge to twist away. Knowing that doing so would likely only provoke another reprimand for rudeness. “You may go.”

“Sleep well too, Papa,” Roald repeated the pleasantry instinctively even though he suspected as he hurried down the corridor to the bedchamber that was the closest thing he had to a sanctuary in the pages’ wing–although it had recently been violated by Lord Wyldon’s nosiness–that it was more likely he would spend the night tossing and turning ceaselessly beneath his blankets than that he would sleep well. All the mountains in Mama’s fractious homeland of Sarain would probably crumble to dust before he slept well again.

Was he being too sensitive and melodramatic again, he wondered as he arrived at his door. Withdrew his key from the pocket of his breeches. Opened it. Slipped inside and shut it firmly behind him again. Seeking to barricade himself from the outside world that had attacked him so much tonight.

He probably was being oversensitive and melodramatic was his verdict on entering his room. But he couldn’t help being oversensitive and melodramatic. That was one of the prerogatives of adolescence. Besides, that seemed to be how his Conte passion was most likely to manifest itself rather than in fits of temper and stubbornness. Though he could indulge in those occasionally as well. Just ask his parents. Especially his father.

He must have looked more pale and shaky–more careworn–than he had realized for his faithful manservant Bennet eyed him with concern. “Are you all right, Your Highness?”

Something in the solicitude of Bennet’s inquiry–in the waiting kindness of his gaze–caused Roald’s composure to crack. A tear to trickle down his cheek.

“Do you have a son, Bennet?” he asked. Wondering why he hadn’t done so before. Why he had taken so little interest in the life of the man who attended him through the most intimate and tumultuous moments of his own.

“Two, Your Highness.” Bennet’s faint aura of bewilderment at being posed such a question was overshadowed by the obvious joy he derived from the opportunity to discuss his offspring. “One your age. The other three years older.”

“And you are proud of them?” Roald felt the question was superfluous even as he asked it. Bennet’s pride in his sons and love for them had been audible in his tone. So much so that Roald found his chest aching as he contemplated whether his father ever spoke of him to others with such a radiant, golden love and pride suffusing his face and voice. Such ebullience. Probably not since Roald was a baby. A healthy, newborn heir to Tortall. He had probably been a disappointment in varying ways and degrees ever since.

“Of course, Your Highness.” Bennet nodded his head eagerly. Apparently relishing the chance to wax poetic to royalty about the merits and virtues of his children. “They’re both hard-working, clever lads. Each in service to great lords. They’ve done well for themselves, and I’ve no doubt they’ll continue to do so once my soul has departed these Mortal Realms.”

“Would you ever–” Roald’s throat tightened as they approached this tenderest, sorest of points and deepest of curiosities– “tell either of them to hold their peace?”

“Well, I suppose I might have to if certain circumstances arose.” Bennet stroked his chin as he mulled over the matter. “If they were speaking impertinently before a superior, I would have to still their wagging tongues before they ruined their futures. But it wouldn’t mean I didn’t love them. It’d be a mark of my love, in fact. Like smacking a young boy’s hand away from an open flame when he goes to investigate it. The swat might sting and the little lad might weep and pout over it, but it’s much better than having the child’s palm burned off.”

Roald decided that the details of this monologue were irrelevant to the drama of his convoluted relationship with his father. Commoners lived harsh lives as was reflected in the reply Bennet had given him. So harsh that royalty couldn’t fathom them.

“My father is a king.” Roald shook his head. Frustrated that Bennet could provide no significant insight. No worthwhile comfort or guidance. “Nobody outranks him, just as no one outranks me but my parents.”

A technicality he was peevish enough to care about right now, but the truth nevertheless.

“Of course, young master.” Bennet assumed a placating tone. “Begging your pardon, but I was speaking of myself, not His Majesty. I wouldn’t presume to know His Majesty’s mind.”

“Forgive me, Bennet.” Roald pinched the bridge of his nose. Ashamed of himself for being so terse with a faithful servant. Able to picture all too vividly how his mother would scold him if she overhead him addressing a servant with such discourtesy. “I had no cause to get curt with you.”

“Is Your Highness well?” The fact that Bennet remained concerned about his welfare even after Roald had rebuffed him was proof of just how loyal a manservant he was. “Can I fetch anyone to help you?”

Roald felt very alone in that moment. As if there was no one in the entire kingdom who could sympathize with him. Who could understand just how deeply it cut him when his father ordered him to hold his peace before Lord Wyldon. To feel his father had betrayed him. That he had disappointed and angered his father.

He was about to express the dire, dark sentiment that nobody could help him when he remembered the woman who had kissed more of his skinned knees than his own mother since she was away so often with her Riders. The voice who had told him a thousand bedtime stories and sung him a million lullabies. Who had played games with him. Who had taught him rhymes and riddles that had tangled his tongue. His beloved nursemaid, Anwen.

Another servant would be able to fetch Anwen less obtrusively than Roald could. The steps of servants went unobserved and unremarked upon by nobles, while those of the Crown Prince were perpetually subject to rampant speculation and scrutiny. Roald’s rank often hampered his maneuverability. Made him feel as if he were living in a transparent orb for everyone to goggle at. A level of attention he did not enjoy but had come to expect as the price of being royalty.

“Could you fetch Anwen for me please?” He bit his lip. Aware that Anwen didn’t have to come when he called anymore. That she had entered another court family’s service once he had left the nursery and was no longer in her care. That his parents’ strong recommendation had been enough to secure her any nursemaid position in the country she wished. “Tell her I need her? Want to talk with her?”

“Certainly, Your Highness.” Bennet bowed. Spun toward the door. “I’ll return with her soon as may be.”

Chapter Text

A Nursemaid’s Wisdom

As soon as Bennet left in search of Anwen, Roald walked listlessly over to his desk. Rifled through the various texts and papers piled upon it. Harboring the vague and unenthusiastic notion that he ought to try to get some meager amount of studying done before bed.

He pulled out the history volume Sir Myles had assigned. Flipped to the chapter they were supposed to read for tomorrow’s lesson.

It was about the long history–more often written in blood than ink–of the conflict with Tusaine. In the days of Jasson the Conqueror’s father, Tusaine had been ruled over by one they still called the Sun King in Tusaine, who had presided over an era rich in prosperity and expansion. A glorious golden age radiant as his name. A time when Tusaine had been master of both sides of the Drell. Cultivating its shores with irrigated vineyards to produce famous red and white wines. Plying brisk, profitable trade along its waters.

Jasson the Conqueror had burned those vineyards. Claimed both of those banks for Tortall. Slaughtering thousands as he reshaped borders to be more pleasing to him. Rewrote the maps of the Eastern Lands.

Jasson’s son hadn’t been a warrior. So much so that he would rather surrender than defend his father’s conquests along the Drell. Could there be, Roald wondered, a starker repudiation of a father’s legacy than that?

Except perhaps for Papa’s own decision, while still a Crown Prince, to cross the Drell during the last war with Tusaine when explicitly ordered not to do so by his father. His king.

Roald massaged his temples. Thinking that the wars waged between fathers and sons could be every bit as bitter and brutal as the ones between countries. That the grudges and misunderstandings could be as deeply rooted.

A knock sounded on his door. Interrupting his bleak musings.

“Come in,” he called.

Bennet entered. Bowed. “I was able to find Anwen, Your Highness.”

A somewhat unnecessary update given that Anwen had followed him into the room. Nevertheless, Roald inclined his head gratefully. Courteously. “I see that. Thank you.”

Bennet bowed again. Murmured something about performing some errand or chore that Roald suspected was a conveniently-timed excuse to give him privacy with Anwen. He appreciated the gesture. The thoughtfulness.

Anwen didn’t curtsy. She never had curtsied to him. Studied him with concerned, cloudy gray eyes from underneath the curly, wild dark curls common to natives of Tortall’s rugged hill country. Spoke in the distinctive accent that carried the musical cadence of that region. A voice that filled Roald with nostalgia and warm memories of childhood. “Bennet says you wished to speak with me, Your Highness.”

Roald felt tears brimming in his eyes at the gentleness of her tone. Snot rising in his nostrils as if he were once again a little boy running to her with his skinned knees and bruised elbows. So that she could tut over his injuries. Ruffle fingers through his hair. Blow his nose into a handkerchief.

“Papa.” Roald was certain his sniffle made him sound as if he were five-years-old. “He told me to hold my peace in front of Lord Wyldon of all people.”

Roald shuddered with the remembered humiliation of that. He didn’t think he could bear to face Lord Wyldon again after that mortifying moment, but, of course, he would have to deal with the sternly exacting training master tomorrow morning in the practice courts.

“Hmm.” Anwen clucked her tongue. Reached out to cup Roald’s cheek. “And was there a particular reason he was saying that to you, my dear little prince?”

My dear little prince. Her special name for him since childhood.

“I might–” Roald flushed. Shifting his feet. Sensing that the answer might paint his situation in a less sympathetic light. “Have cast aspersions against the training master’s character and honor. Not unfounded ones, but…”

“You mean, you disrespected one of the premier nobles of the realm.” Anwen shook her head in what he recognized as fond exasperation at his boyish folly. “In front of your father.”

“I didn’t think of it that way at the time.” Roald bit his lip. He had only been thinking of defending his friends. Ensuring all of Lord Wyldon’s ire was directed against him. Hadn’t considered how that might draw his father’s wrath and disapproval.

“Your father,” Anwen continued her admonishment in the same fondly exasperated manner as her previous words. “Wouldn’t let you be discourteous to me in his sight, would he?”

“No.” Roald shook his head miserably. If there was one thing his parents were adamant about, it was being gracious to servants. “Of course not.”

“Then how could he possibly allow you to disrespect Lord Wyldon in his presence?” Anwen arched an eyebrow. Reaching the crux of her argument.

“I don’t want to be discourteous to you.” Roald felt tears stinging like vinegar at his eyes again. “But I don’t care about being discourteous to Lord Wyldon. He has forfeited my respect.”

A truth he had not fully realized until he had articulated it to Anwen in that instant.

“It doesn’t matter what you personally want or don’t want, my dear little prince.” At the palace, even nursemaids could discourse incisively about politics. Especially those who had once been nursemaids to royalty, evidently. “An offended nursemaid is of small consequence to the kingdom. One of the keystone leaders of the conservative faction at court can do far more damage when insulted.”

“He didn’t have to chide me in front of Lord Wyldon. He shamed me! Made me feel as if he didn’t love me!” Roald’s temper flared. He became aware that he had still been clutching his history book only when he launched it across the room with all the force and fury he could muster.

It bounced off the wall. Flopped to the floor. Landed with its pages splayed.

“Pick that up.” Anwen’s chin jerked toward the tome he had thrown. Her voice the firm one she had used to reign in all his childish tantrums. Bring to heel all his youthful stubbornness. “Then put it where it belongs. Now.”

Anwen wasn’t his nursemaid any longer. He was too old to have a nursemaid. Yet, Roald still felt compelled to obey her.

He crossed the room. Scooped up the book. Placed it carefully on his desk. Turned, shame-facedly, to look at Anwen. Awaiting his next command.

“Come here.” Her manner had softened. Her arms opened wide in an invitation to an embrace.

Roald didn’t refuse the embrace. Let himself be enfolded in her arms as she asked, “Do you know why I was appointed to be your nursemaid when you are born? I, a country girl with the unschooled accent of the hill country, when there were many more experienced nursemaids vying for the position?”

“No.” Roald had never thought to wonder why Anwen had been appointed to her post as his nursemaid. Hand only known that she had been his nursemaid since his days in the cradle. Since his first memories. Had never questioned beyond that. “I don’t.”

“Because–” Anwen rocked him– “of all the hundreds of nursemaids your mother interviewed for the role, I was the only one who expressed, unprompted, the idea that children shouldn’t be beaten. That there were other, better ways to discipline and teach them. She felt she had found a kindred spirit. Someone who shared her progressive beliefs about education and child-rearing.”

“That was my mother. Not my father. My father wouldn’t have cared if I was beaten.” Even as the petulant remark emerged from his mouth, Roald knew it was unfair. His tutors had been under strict orders from both his parents not to resort to the rod. The single spanking his father had given him more pats than painful blows. Too mild to meet anyone’s criteria of a beating.

“Your father attended all the interviews.” Anwen tapped his nose reproachfully. “Most noblemen do not attend the interviews of their children’s potential nursemaids. Leave it all to their wives to handle.”

“But he left the final decision to my mother, didn’t he?” Roald was reluctant to concede the point.

“It is the tradition for the queen to select the royal nursemaids.” Anwen’s fingers combed through his hair. “But your father was present and had opinions. Opinions that mostly aligned with your mother’s, I might add. He left the final decision to her only because he loved and trusted her.”

“He loved and trusted her,” Roald mumbled. “Doesn’t mean he loved me.”

“I remember–” Anwen’s frame shook with laughter– “your father wrestling with you and the Princess Kalasin. Chasing you both around the nursery while you squealed with delight. Strange behavior indeed if he didn’t love you.”

“I do too.” Roald recalled those tossling sessions. Those gleeful romps around the nursery. A domain many fathers didn’t visit. Consigning entirely to rambunctious children, their mothers, and the nursemaids charged with looking after them. Suddenly found himself fervently wishing that he could travel back in time to those simple, blissfully carefree nursery days when he had been allowed so much freedom and license. When so little had been expected of him even though much had been given to him. “It was easier to earn his love in those days. To keep it. To not disappoint him.”

“You can’t move backward, my prince.” Anwen seemed to read what was in his mind. In his heart. “Only forward.”

Roald was silent for a moment. Mulling this over. Then asked, “Why didn’t you remain in the royal household after I outgrew the need for a nursemaid?”

He knew that Mama and Papa had offered Anwen a position taking care of his younger siblings. That she had declined. Choosing to serve another family instead.

“Looking after one Conte is enough for a lifetime.” Anwen gave his ear a teasing tug. “And your parents wrote me such a generous letter of recommendation that it was easy for me to find a post agreeable to me.”

“I’m glad.” Roald gazed at her earnestly. “But you will tell me when you wish to retire, and I will ensure you do so in comfort.”

“I appreciate that.” Anwen smiled at him. “But it’ll be many years before I want a quiet chair by the fire.”

“I shall give you far more than a quiet chair by the fire,” Roald promised her. “You deserve far more than that for your service to me.”

Chapter Text

The Answer to Everything

Jon watched his son disappear down the hallway. Remembered when his eldest had been an amenable little boy. Eager to please. To obey his parents and those his parents, in their wisdom, placed in charge of him. Easy to discipline. Responding to even the mildest correction–a stern word or glance–with genuine remorse. With a quick, quiet apology.

That agreeable lad seemed to have vanished forever like a mountain mist. Existing only in memory. Replaced by a far more tetchy, sullen creature. A stubborn, sulky youth who became stiff and rigid with resentment at even the most well-deserved rebuke. The most protective reigning in of his impulsive impertinence.

Thayet’s mind seemed to be on Roald as well for she murmured, “You did not have to make him apologize and hug me, Jon.”

“I did, my dear.” Jon shook his head. Thinking that he could have overlooked Roald being insolent to him–remembering how fraught and tense his relationship with his father had been–but couldn’t do the same when the boy was rude to Thayet. The bond between a mother and son was supposed to be more tender, after all. “You’re my wife. I can’t let anyone disrespect you. Not even my own son. Especially not my own son.”

“He has a right not to submit to any hugs and kisses he does not want,” Thayet demurred. “We must allow him his autonomy. Especially because he has always been the most reserved and self-contained of our children.”

“He was just being difficult.” Jon scowled. Unimpressed with the caliber of excuses his wife was generating for their son. A fount of feeble, unconvincing justifications. “Standing too much on his dignity.”

“You wounded his pride when you told him to hold his peace before Lord Wyldon.” Thayet had a way of making him hear the harshness of his own words and deeds. However necessary they were in a king. A father. “Then I rubbed salt in his festering wound when I tried to comfort him in a corridor where anyone, principally his page peers, could see my coddling. He is not a little boy and no longer wants to be treated as one. A fact I can’t forget.”

“He acted more like a spoiled little boy than a man when he pulled away from your embrace.” Jon’s jaw clenched. Recalling as if it were the bitterest medicine all the times he had twisted away from his own sweet mother’s hugs and kisses. Especially in those final months when she had been so frail a strong gust of wind could have blown her to oblivion. When he had been so temperamental and surly. Returning, brooding, from the desert after Alanna had rejected him. When he had tried to fall in love with Princess Josiane because that was the match his dying mother wanted to arrange for him, but he could only marvel at Josiane’s cruel vapidity. Miss Alanna’s sharp-cutting tongue. Wonder if Alanna had heard salacious rumors of their courtship. Was boiling with jealousy. “If he were a man in truth, he would have let you hug and kiss him without complaint. Wouldn’t worry about that making him less of a man.”

“He is not a man yet,” Thayet answered with remarkable placidity. “Only in the turbulent process of becoming one, and we must not let that disturb us unduly, husband.”

“I often–” Jon swallowed the frog that had suddenly leapt from his stomach into his throat– “would pull away from my mother when I was a boy on the cusp of manhood. A callow, selfish youth who fancied myself a man. When her health was fading fast. When she was on the verge of passing from these Mortal Realms. I should have apologized to her, but I didn’t. Didn’t think to do so before she died. You can only imagine how many times I have apologized to her on my knees before her grave in the crypts. Wondering if her soul can hear me in the Realms of the Dead.”

“You didn’t need to apologize to her just as Roald did not need to apologize to me.” Thayet’s tone was gentle. Her hazel eyes soft. With compassion. With an absolution even she couldn’t grant him because she was not the cause of his guilt. “You were her son. She loved you and know how much you loved her. Mothers can always read the love written in the hearts of their sons no matter how much their blustering sons try to hide it.”

“I should have apologized,” Jon insisted. Unable to forgive himself. Which was perhaps why he found it so hard to relent with his own son. His oldest. “My father should have been firmer with me. Brought me to heel. Made me apologize. I won’t have Roald reach manhood with the same regrets I have, Thayet. Blaming me for not disciplining him. Not correcting him when he went astray.”

“I doubt you are at risk of that happening.” A wry edge entered Thayet’s tone. “You might be in danger of him thinking you are too strict with him, however. Too swift to scold him for every tiny wrongdoing. Overly critical. Unfair.”

“Do you truly believe that is how he perceives me?” Jon flinched from the portrait her words painted of him. A portrait that cast his flaws in unflattering light and relief.

“I know he loves you.” Thayet must have sensed how her words had hurt him for they took on a milder cadence. “And that he knows you love him.”

“That is your only answer to my question?” Jon was frustrated by her vagueness. Her evasiveness.

“Love is the answer to everything.” Thayet’s eyes twinkled at him. Making a good-natured mockery of him.

“Only bad poets and fools swept up in the throes of their own passions believe that.” A scoffing, cynical rejoinder seemed the wittiest reply. The most artful riposte. “And the overlap between the two categories is striking.”

“And did desire for me–” Thayet arched an eyebrow at him in a way that had never failed to quicken his blood. Stir his loins. Ignite and kindle his flesh. “Never sweep you up in a passion? Inspire you to write endless verses of tediously terrible poetry?”

“I have often been swept up in the storms of my passion for you and composed many an awful verse in your honor, my moon and stars.” Jon cracked a crooked smile. He had referred to her as his moon and stars in a misconceived sally at poetic flair once in a sonnet he had composed in homage to her when they were courting.

He had attempted with more determination than wordsmith skill to write it in the Tyran style but had not been entirely able to make the verses rhyme when they should even with the slanting Gary decried as cheating. He had waxed lyrical about how he would sing the moon and stars down from the sky for her if she requested it. Swore with the fervor of artistic license that it would be for him as if those same stars and moon had dropped from the heavens if she left him.

The imagery had not come together in any manner that made sense, but the passion had been there. Threaded throughout. He had sent it to her by page boy. She had kept it all these years in a concealed compartment of her lap desk. Primarily, it appeared to him, to tease him with quoted passages from it whenever the embarrassing memory of writing it seemed to be slipping from his mind like rain down a window on a gray day. Whenever she decided he could benefit from a humbling recitation of his own inane verses.

“I am the most notorious offender of those criminals of which I speak,” he finished in a final flourish of ironic self-deprecation. “I condemn them for my own vices.”

“Your moon and stars,” Thayet echoed. As if tasting the words in her mouth. On her tongue. “You called me that in a poem once. When we were falling in love.”

“I had already fallen hopelessly in love with you, my dear.” Jon took her hand. Lifted her fingers to his lips. Kissed them long and lingering. “I fell in love with you the first time I saw you and wanted to marry you.”

“You tried to kiss my fingers just like this then.” Thayet was tart as she had been on the occasion she mentioned, but she did not pull away from his lips, which he interpreted as heartening proof of just how far their relationship had progressed in the intervening years.

“And you rebuffed me,” Jon drawled. Pleased that she had not done so this time.

“We hadn’t even been introduced, you overeager stallion,” Thayet retorted. “It was most improper. Simply scandalous.”

“Now we have been introduced.” Jon concluded the matter neatly. Succinctly. Linking his arm through her elbow. Gallantly guiding her toward their royal wing. “And know each other quite well.”

They returned to their quarters. Retired to their bedchamber. He helped her undress as if he were her maidservant or lady-in-waiting. Watched her brush out her long, luxuriant locks of jet black hair.

“He looked as if you had slapped him across the face when you told him to hold his peace.” Thayet’s voice trembled, and her brush seemed to shake as it rippled through her hair. Tearing through the day’s accumulated knots and tangles. The stress and strain of life on beauty. “Roald did.”

She had, he knew–having been haltingly told as much by her early in their marriage, been struck across the face by her own father. Beaten black and blue. Derided as an ugly, unworthy daughter who could never be the heir her father wanted. Who could never be cleansed in her father’s eyes of the tainted K’miri blood she carried. A pain Jon could not fully fathom though he tried.

“Thayet.” He slid the brush from between her fingers. Began to run it through her hair. His strokes soft and soothing as a mother’s, he hoped. “You know I wouldn’t hit him or any of our children across the face.”

“I know, but, Jon–” She bit her lip. A nervous gesture that reminded him of Roald. Roald had probably inherited it from her. “What hurt the most about being slapped across the face by my father wasn’t the pain. It was the shame and the shock of it. Being made to feel as if I was worthless. As if I didn’t matter.”

“I offered to sign his contract into law right there in Lord Wyldon’s office if Lord Wyldon refused to accept his signature alone as sufficient.” Jon tried to be calm. To be reasonable. “I could not have backed his charter more strongly than I did by declaring it our royal will and command to be disobeyed at peril.”

It was, he thought, truly rank ingratitude for his son to be so petulant after such a staunch display of support in the training master’s office. Especially when the staunch display of support had come after a serious burst of insolence from Roald. A severe breach of etiquette that would have made Master Oakbridge faint.

“You have to explain that to him.” Thayet grasped his knee. Entreating. “So that he knows how much you love and support him. How much you value him.”

“He has a deft political mind.” Jon frowned. “A natural gift for diplomacy. He shouldn’t need the obvious explained to him. It only rewards his sulkiness.”

“His gift for diplomacy comes from his sensitivity. Causes him to be too sensitive sometimes.” Thayet squeezed his knee even tighter. “He’s not yet thirteen, my love. Be patient and tender with him as you are with me.”

She was kissing his forehead with her rose petal lips now. A very cunning, distracting tactic that rendered it almost impossible to argue with her. To focus on marshaling his points and counterpoints.

“I will talk to him,” he promised as he had once pledged to sing down the moon and stars for her if she wished it. Vows rolled off the tongue when one was in love. Suspended in the throes of passion. “Be very patient and affectionate until he understands everything.”

“Thank you.” Thayet unbuttoned his breeches. Dipped her fingers inside. Played with his manhood. Arousing it.

“I remember,” Jon panted. Kissing the nape of her neck. Fondling her breasts. “The first time you touched me there. Several months into our marriage.”

That had been the first time she had initiated anything sexual between them. Having allowed him to take the lead–to guide her through the heights of pleasure–before that.

She had been shy then. Wasn’t now. Was downright assertive, in fact.

“I wanted to please you.” The pad of her finger swirled over his upright tip. “Because you were so patient and gentle with me when I was inexperienced.”

“You always please me.” Jon breathed in the scent of her. Hovering on the brink of blissful explosion. Of sated desire.

Chapter Text

Mules and Mixed Metaphors

Jon was in the information and advice gathering stage of deciding how to approach his eldest. As was often the case when he needed information and advice, it was his sole surviving cousin he sought out. The only cousin who had not betrayed him.

“Has he been to see you recently?” Jon sat in one of Gary’s study chairs. A chair he had sat in a hundred times. A chair his oldest son might have occupied not too long ago. “Roald? I know he sometimes comes to you when he thinks he can’t talk to me because I am too stern or too unreasonable.”

He had, years ago, chosen not to be perturbed by that fact. To instead regard it as positive proof that he had been wise indeed to name Gary as Roald’s godsfather when Roald was a mere babe in arms.

“Why should he have come to me this time?” Gary’s eyes were sharp and fixed on Jon in the flickering golden candlelight that unevenly illuminated the shadows of his bookshelf-lined study. “Why should he believe that you are so stern and unreasonable?”

Jon paused. Collecting and arranging his thoughts into a semblance of order. Took a fortifying sip of the reddish drink Gary had offered and poured for him. It tasted of cranberries and spices from the damp jungles of the Copper Isles. Places where he had never set foot. Once his mouth was moistened and his mind suitably ordered, he related the full story of what had transpired in Lord Wyldon’s office. Complete with the background details of the contract Roald had written and persuaded many of his fellow pages to sign.

When Jon had finished his tale, Gary’s verdict was a single word, tartly spoken. A compound word, but still a single word. Disappointing in its paucity. “Mule-headed.”

“Mule-headed?” Jon pressed when Gary frustratingly failed to elaborate on this pronouncement. “Who is mule-headed? Lord Wyldon? My son? Me?”

“All three of you.” Gary spread his hands as if the answer were obvious. Self-evident. “Though primarily the first two in this particular incident. Lord Wyldon is–to borrow a phrase Alanna has uttered on more than one occasion–so stiff that if a design were painted on him, he could be used as a very effective shield. And your son was mule-headed as well, although, again, it can’t be too surprising when the princely apple does not fall far from the kingly tree.”

“You are mixing your metaphors,” Jon pointed out with the triumph that could only come from catching his cleverer cousin in a logical or academic error. The situation occurred so rarely that he felt he should commission portraits of them when they arose. Have them framed and hung in the royal gallery for future generations of Contes to admire and awe over. “First my son is a mule in your estimation. Then an apple. Apples are not mules. Mules eat apples.”

Realizing that he was not an expert on the dietary habits of mules, Jon went on with slightly less confidence since he knew that Gary would be quick to pounce on any factual mistake he did make, “At least I think they do. Horses do, at any rate.”

“Mules do eat apples.” Gary sounded as if it physically pained him that someone could be as ignorant as Jon. “And what would you know about mixing metaphors? I distinctly remember you snoring your way through our reading and writing classes as a page.”

“It’s not my fault our reading and writing master was dull enough to lull an insomniac to sleep,” Jon retorted. An argument he had once tried, unsuccessfully, to make to Gary’s father when he was a page. An argument that had not, alas, been able to save him from punishment work. “And, for the record, I didn’t snore. I never do anything so undignified as snoring.”

“Your son–” Gary seemed determined to cut through the nonsense to provide his usual dose of sharp-tongued clarity– “is wandering through the forest in search of the trees, and you can’t accuse me of any mixed metaphors there. If you are lost in the trees looking for the forest on the other end of the woods, how will the two of you ever meet?”

“I do want to meet Roald.” Jon scrubbed at his face with his palms. “I am just not sure how. No matter what I say or do, he sees me as too hard on him. Too strict and stern.”

“A common complaint twelve-year-old boys have about their fathers.” Gary’s tone was bracing. “Nevertheless, you must go to him. Point out all the trees that are all around him in the forest. My father always did that for me when I was a lad, though I didn’t appreciate it every time.”

“When did you ever wander the forest in search of the trees?” Jon frowned at his cousin, because he always thought of Gary as the sort who never missed anything.

“All the time when I was a boy.” Gary chuckled reminiscently. “All those rainy afternoons I stared out the windows mulling over my deep thoughts? That was me wandering in the forest in search of the trees. How I enjoyed wandering through my mental forests in search of my trees. I loved it even more than reading, because I could turn over like hoed earth what I had read in my mind.”

“Your father–” Jon remarked– “was hard on you. Harder than I am on Roald.”

“I was a more difficult son than Roald.” A crooked grin split Gary’s face. “Much more mischievous and sarcastic. Sharp-tongued. Convinced of my own cleverness. Merrily oblivious to what a young fool I was.”

“But–” Jon keyed in on the point that fascinated him the most– “you never seemed to resent your father.”

“My father and I spoke the same language.” Gary’s explanation only increased the sinking feeling in the pit of Jon’s despairing stomach. Made him wonder if he would ever find a way to truly reach Roald. “That allowed us to understand each other. Gave us a common plane where we could meet and communicate despite any differences of opinion.”

“Roald and I do not speak the same language.” Jon sighed. Exhaling a bitter truth. “When I seek to protect him from his own impulsiveness, he takes that as a sign I do not love him. When I support his contract as staunchly as I can, he acts as if I have betrayed and abandoned him.”

“Find a way to translate your language into his to bridge the gap between you, then.” There was sympathy in Gary’s chestnut eyes even if his words were matter-of-factly uttered. “He likes words of affirmation. Praise and affection. Hearing that he has earned your approval. That he hasn’t disappointed you.”

“He enjoys having his ego stroked.” Jon smirked wryly. “Something he and I have in common then.”

“Not having his ego stroked.” Gary corrected. Shaking his head. “Having his heart touched. Feeling loved. Valued. Approved of. If you touch his heart, give him some much longed for words of affirmation, I guarantee you will see some of his stiffness fall away. That he will have some words of affection for you in turn.”

“I must let my heart touch his.” Jon stroked at his beard. Wondering how to apply his cousin’s advice that wasn’t, in the final analysis, so different from his wife’s. Both his wife and cousin seemed to understand his son better than him, he thought. A sad thought for a father to have.

“Yes.” Gary nodded. Clapped Jon on the shoulder with enough force to overturn a cart. Drawing a wince from Jon, who noted inwardly that Gary had never been particularly mindful of his own strength when administering such friendly buffets and blows. “Do something special with him. Something you will both enjoy. To remind him of how much you love him. How much you treasure your time with him.”

A memory unfurled like a banner across Jon’s mind at Gary’s words. Vibrant with color. Bursting with promise. Himself in a Corus Midwinter Market with a wide-eyed little Roald at his side. Holding Jon’s gloved fingers tightly with one hand while the other lifted a sticky sugar plum Jon had bought him at a stall presided over by an enterprising, apple-cheeked woman to his lips. Lips that kept up a constant, excited stream about the toys on display. About the jugglers and acrobats performing to a cheering crowd by the frozen fountain in the center of the cobbled square.

The resurrected memory caused a lance of decision to pierce through Jon.

“I shall take him to the Midwinter Market,” he pronounced. Standing. Determined to speak with his son before inspiration and resolve faded. Failed. “Buy him something sweet. We have not gone there together in awhile.”

Chapter Text

Balancing Equations

Roald sat at his desk. Frowning down at his mathematics assignment. Trying to get two intractable sides of an equation to balance out when neither seemed to show any inclination to do so.

It was easier, he thought, toying with his quill, to balance out opposing political factions. Diplomacy and navigating the intricacies of statecraft came naturally to him. Algebra, by contrast, was a baffling thicket he couldn’t penetrate. Far more complicated and impossible to understand.

At least in his opinion. Kel might disagree. She, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, seemed to enjoy the wretched subject. To take some inexplicable pleasure in the numbers and symbols he regarded as banes of his existence.

He really should ask her for help untangling the knot of this equation, but before this idea could solidify from vague notion into concrete action, there was an interrupting knock on his door.

His hope that it was Kel, somehow telepathically divining his dire need for algebraic assistance, was dashed when Bennet opened the door. Bowed deeply. “Your Majesty.”

“I’ve come to see my son. If he’s around.” That was Papa’s voice.

Roald stifled a groan. He had not seen his father since that night when Papa had told him sharply to hold his peace in Lord Wyldon’s office. A maddening, mortifying memory that still made him cringe and wish to melt into the floor with embarrassment. Bristle with anger and wounded pride. A confusing array of emotions only his father could provoke from him.

He reminded himself that a groan, strictly speaking, was not considered a proper greeting for a son to give a father. Especially not if the father happened to be a king.

Attempting to hide under his desk, however tempting a prospect under the circumstances, would also not be an appropriate response, he knew. Could practically hear the outraged tones of Master Oakbridge lecturing him on just how unbetting of royal dignity such a craven trick was.

“Sire.” He bowed. More formally than he would usually have done in a private moment such as this. Remembered words Anwen had spoken to him later that night Papa had admonished him to hold his peace. Words offered to him when he had summoned her for a former nursemaid’s comfort. “I apologize for angering you by disrespecting Lord Wyldon in front of you.”

Even to his own ears, he sounded more stiff than sincere. Not particularly penitent.

“I was not angry at you.” Papa closed the distance between him and Roald. Placed a hand on Roald’s shoulder.

“You sounded angry–” Roald couldn’t prevent a note of hurt accusation from seeping into his reply– “when you told me to hold my peace.”

“I didn’t enjoy doing so.” Papa’s hand squeezed on Roald’s shoulder. “But sometimes, duty demands unpleasant things from a king, and I must leave it to me and to you, as my heir, to bear that burden. To live the truth of that tired saying that heavy is the head that wears the crown.”

“I wasn’t wearing a crown in Lord Wyldon’s office.” Roald couldn’t resist the sulky objection even though he knew it carried no water. “I rarely wear a crown. Except on the most formal of occasions.”

His mother and father did not often wear their crowns either. Their bearings sufficiently commanding and regal that wearing their crowns became unnecessary and superfluous when it came to projecting their majestic auras. Which meant, in turn, that it would’ve been hopelessly gauche for Roald to wear his crown more frequently than his parents. Not that he lamented its weighty absence from his head.

“You are always wearing a crown.” Papa’s correction was soft, yet still made it clear how utterly unimpressed he was with Roald’s logic. “That is what it means to be Crown Prince.”

Not a statement with which Roald could quibble. Papa would be well aware of that.

Suitably chastened, Roald stared at the floor. Shuffled his feet. Mumbled, abashed, “Yes, Papa.”

As if he could read Roald’s thoughts about chastisement, Papa sighed. “I didn’t come here to scold you, Roald.”

“What did you come here for then?” Roald ventured a glance up at his father. Appraising his motivations and intentions.

“To issue an invitation.” Papa grinned. “Would you accompany me to the Midwinter Market tonight?”

“The Midwinter Market?” Roald echoed. Ears perking at the mention. “I haven’t been able to visit it all season.”

Lord Wyldon, being a stubborn stick-in-the-swap, had been too piqued at Roald volunteering to sponsor Keladry of Mindelan to grant Roald any free time. Much less in the city. He was not in the training master’s good books this year, and that was putting it mildly.

“Then we ought to change that now.” Papa’s grin broadened into a smile.

“Lord Wyldon would be displeased–” Roald felt a stone sinking in his heart– “if I left the palace without permission. Especially with curfew approaching.”

“You have permission.” Papa ruffled his hair. “Your king’s permission.”

“My class work.” Roald flicked a despondent gaze over his algebra assignment. “I should finish it before lights-out.”

“I will write a note excusing you,” Papa promised. All benevolence. “Explaining that, as Crown Prince, it is important you learn the economics of the realm you will once rule, and what better place is there to study the kingdom’s economy than the bustling Midwinter Market of Corus?”

“My masters will not be amused.” Roald felt the beginnings of a reluctant grin twitching at his lips.

“They might not be,” Papa agreed with a twinkle in his eyes. “But I might be.”

“I might be as well.” Roald allowed his face to crack into a full grin at last. Pleased to escape mathematics and the palace for one night.

“It’s settled then.” Papa clapped his back. “Change into an old shirt and breeches. Not a page’s uniform. Something that won’t attract any notice or reveal your rank.”

“Yes, Papa.” Roald nodded. Only realizing at that moment that his father was wearing a tunic and breeches in a nondescript brown. The fabric and cut of them was still fine, proclaiming a man with enough wealth and means to access a skilled tailor and well-stocked milliner, but did not scream kingliness. More ambitious and upwardly mobile merchant.

“Good.” Papa nodded briskly. “I’ll wait for you in the hall then. Allow you your privacy.”

Before Papa had stepped out of Roald’s bedroom into the corridor, Bennet had Roald’s wardrobe open. Was rifling through it until he found an old shirt and breeches Roald often wore to muck out stables or perform some other dirty chore. They were unstained for all the unglamorous role they usually served. Of a good cut and fabric.

Roald donned the old shirt and breeches, asking as a tasty memory surged inside him, “Do you think Papa would buy me a sugar plum in the market, Bennet?”

He had coins in the purse he had slipped into the pocket of his old breeches. Had eaten dinner and dessert a few hours ago. Could not have explained, therefore, why the childish question arose to his lips.

“If you behave and ask nicely, I don’t see why not,” Bennet answered. “Fathers like to buy presents for their sons. Especially when they can afford it and around Midwinter.”

Finished changing, Roald joined his father in the corridor.

“Excellent.” Papa cast an approving glance over Roald’s transformed attire. His disguise for the night in the market. “Now I could be a middle class merchant eager to rise in society, and you my son.”

“I am your son.” Roald felt a sudden need to assert that. To lay claim to that identity. “And a king must be clever and persuasive as any merchant to sell his wares to his subjects.”

“Often to less profit.” Papa chuckled. Pleased by this sally of wit. “My son.”

Chapter Text

Asking Anything

“It’s very gaudy, isn’t it?” Papa stared into one of the looking-glasses nailed to a hatseller’s stall who had set up shop across the cobbled square from a marble statue of their distant ancestor King Gareth.

A tribute to that most paranoid of Contes, prone to seeing conspiracies that must be exposed lurking behind every shrub. Who had been kidnapped by a treacherous uncle as a child and had come of age during the savage civil war sparked by his father’s abolition of slavery.

Who had been the one to institute the centralized system of page training at the Royal Palace. To have a supply of young noble hostages–often their father’s heirs–on hand to ensure their families’ continued loyalty to the Crown. Noble hostages that still must receive a fine education in the scholarly and military arts. As befitted their high birth and role as future knights of the realm. A shrewd custom that also produced its own headaches as Roald had learned recently.

He did not feel much warmth toward his cunning ancestor right now. His ancestor, carved from marble, likely didn’t care.

Papa continued to frown into the merchant’s mirror as he studied his reflection and the hat Roald had wedged onto his head. “A very ostentatious orange.”

“It’s the latest fashion from Maren.” Roald grinned. “Or so the placard above it proclaimed.”

He did not place much stock in the empty promises of merchants who must sell their wares to gullible customers in order to eat. The words of merchants praising their products held less water than a leaking pail, he believed.

“It can stay in Maren.” Papa smiled crookedly. Removed the hat. “I’ve always preferred the styles from Tusaine and Tyra anyway.”

So saying, he slid a hat in the dramatic Tyran fashion over Roald’s head. A blue hat studded with kingfisher feathers.

“I’m flashing more feathers than a peacock.” Roald snickered at his own image in the looking-glass.

Took off the hat. Returned it to the display.

He and his father stepped out of the hatseller’s stall. Into the crowd of the Midwinter Market. Amber candles shone warmly from windows. Sprigs of holly and ivy were festooned on shop walls and windows. Garlands of evergreen draped over stalls and along the eaves and beames of shop roofs.

Snugly bundled carolers sung festive tunes of the season at every corner and intersection. Receiving generous donations of clinking coins in their outstretched tin cups. Fire-breathers and acrobats performed their respective stunts to an appropriately awed and applauding audience.

The atmosphere was merry and bright. Ebullient. Buzzing like honey bees in a bust hive with anticipating as everybody bought indulgent gifts and fancy foods for family members and friends to enjoy during the approaching holiday.

It would have been impossible for Roald not to be happy with such radiant joy all around him.

His father, too, seemed to be in a generous, expansive mood. Telling Roald as they merged with the stream of shoppers flooding the street and square, “You know you can ask me anything you like, Roald.”

The tantalizing aroma of candied plum soaked in cinnamon and cloves from the Copper Isles drifted to Roald’s nostrils from a nearby cart. Giving Roald the courage to ask because Bennet had said that fathers liked to bestow presents on their sons, “May I please have a sugar plum?”

“Very well.” Papa ruffled Roald’s hair. “Since you asked so nicely.”

They joined the lengthy sugar plum vendor’s line filled with the many folk who had likewise been tempted by the confection’s sweet scent.

“I do have another question.” Roald shifted from foot to foot. Awkward. Anxious. Recalling how his father had sharply ordered him to hold his peace in Lord Wyldon’s office. “If it’s not speaking out of turn.”

“It’s not out of turn.” Papa’s tone was gentle. Encouraging. “If invited.”

“You said you weren’t angry at me for my words in Lord Wyldon’s office.” Not a question, but the hesitant beginning of one. The shaping and forging of one.

“That’s true.” Papa laid a light hand on Roald’s shoulder. “I wasn’t angry at you.”

“Then why–” Roald nibbled at his lip– “did you tell me to hold my peace in front of Lord Wyldon? If you weren’t angry at me?”

The line shuffled forward as Papa eyed Roald keenly. “In a teeming market like this, if you saw a young boy break free of his mother’s grasp. Dart into the street without looking for dangers. Almost get trampled by a horse and cart. Would you assume the mama was angry and didn’t love her little lad if she pulled him back firmly and gave him a swift swat on the bottom?”

“No,” Roald admitted. Feeling that he was probably betraying sons everywhere with this response. “I’d think she loved him very much. Was afraid of him being hurt or killed.”

“People,” Papa murmured, “are often willing to extend that merciful interpretation to mothers. Not fathers.”

“Telling me to hold my peace in Lord Wyldon’s office was meant to be a swift swat on the bottom then?” Roald’s cheeks flamed like unbanked coals. Mortified by the analogy that reduced him to a troublesome toddler. A phase had thought he had far outgrown.

“It wasn’t meant to be.” Papa patted his shoulder as the line advanced a few paces again. “It was only intended to be a firm hand yanking you back to safety, but you seem to have felt it as a hard smack, and for that, I apologize.”

“You apologize?” Roald blinked in astonishment. The combined forces of Bennet and Anwen had persuaded him that the need to apologize was all on his side. That he needed to understand his father’s perspective. Not the other way around.

It hadn’t occurred to him that his father might have put forth some effort to understand his viewpoint and sensitive, wounded feelings since that night in Lord Wyldon’s office.

“I do.” Papa nodded as they neared the front of the line. The reward after all their waiting. “I don’t want you feeling as if I hit you.”

The last customer between them and the sugar plum vendor disappeared, munching on a sugar plum, and they found themselves facing the dimple-cheeked woman.

“Two sugar plums, good mistress.” Papa dropped the coins into her palm. Sounding like an ambitious merchant determined to provide the best opportunities and experiences to his son. The heir on whom all his hopes for a golden, prosperous future rested. “For my son. Who should taste the sweeter things in life.”

“Aye, taste the sweeter things in life, but never be idle.” The woman waggled a finger at Roald before giving him the sugar plums. “Be diligent in your work and studies. Make your father proud.”

“I will, kind mistress.” Roald bowed to her. Offered her his most charming Conte smile. The one he had inherited from his father. “Thank you for the advice.”

“Humph.” The woman appraised him. Then commented to Papa, “He’ll go far in life. With a smile like that.”

As they left the sugar plum cart, Roald resumed the thread of their conversation before it had been cut short by their reaching the front of the line.

“I forgive you, of course, Papa.” Roald felt he couldn’t be stingy about accepting paternal apologies between bites of the sweet and spicy sugar plum his father had purchased for him. Still, he felt an adolescent need to assert himself. To stand his ground. Be seen and heard. “But I am twelve, not two. Old enough to see carts and horses when they are racing down the road toward me.”

“Old enough to fling yourself dramatically before them, too,” Papa observed. Dry as a bone after a ravenous dog had gnawed out all the marrow as they found a stone bench, cleared of snow, to sit upon. “Because your principles require such foolhardy self-destruction. Teenage idealism can be even more dangerous than a toddler’s impulsiveness.”

“I had to protect Kel and the others as much as I could.” Roald glanced up at his father. Wishing to be heard and understood. His father, he thought, would have done anything to protect his friends when he was a page. Hadn’t Papa kept Sir Alanna’s gender a secret for four long years, living a lie with her, to protect her? What Roald had done was nothing in comparison to that. “Make Lord Wyldon as furious as possible at me so that he wouldn’t channel his wrath toward Kel and the others instead. Because they only signed a document I wrote, Papa.”

“That tactic wasn’t going to work, son.” Papa sighed. Shook his head. “Lord Wyldon would blame Keladry for the document being written at all. For change and revolution coming to his pages’ wing. The more you stirred up his ire, the more his rage would be directed toward her. It’s like that classic triptych painting. The knight boxes the ears of his squire, who in turn clouts a passing page, who then kicks a dog wanting nothing more than to curl up by the hearth. People rarely hit up at a target who might strike them back. Instead they punch down toward those in no position to take a return swing at them.”

“It’s not fair.” Roald’s appetite was fading, and he was grateful that he had finished his sugar plums. The injustice of the world made his throat tighten. Rendered it impossible to think about swallowing so much bitterness along with the sweet.

“No, it’s not,” Papa agreed. Grim. “But part of becoming a man is learning that life isn’t always fair. Figuring out how to navigate a world that is often unjust.”

“I want to change its injustices.” Roald pressed his lips together. Stubbornly. The expression of a fighter. Perhaps he had some of his great–grandfather Jasson in him after all. A steely inheritance that resolved him not to get mad but to get even. Because if there was anything the past months had taught him it was that he felt called to seek justice at the expense of everything else. Justice even over peace. Over diplomacy. Over the smoothing of ruffled feathers. “To make it fair.”

“I know you do.” Papa’s tone was fond but firm. “Yet you must trust me when I say that your outburst in Lord Wyldon’s office wasn’t going to make the world any fairer for your friends. That’s why I ordered you to hold your peace.”

“I do trust you.” Roald ducked his head. Staring at the cobblestones. Papa was better schooled in politics than him. Had been king longer than he had been alive, after all. Roald had to defer to his wisdom. His experience. Even if it chafed. “But I have to break free of you sometimes. Carve my own path. So I can become my own man. That’s part of being twelve and not two, isn’t it?”

“It is.” Papa lifted Roald’s chin with a finger. “That’s why I told Lord Wyldon I would sign your contract into law if he required it in order to see its authority as binding. Because I wanted to support you as you carved your own path.”

“Oh.” Embarrassment swept over Roald like a tidal wave as he realized he had been too busy sulking and licking his wounds to listen to that important detail in Lord Wyldon’s office. No wonder his father had thought him petulant and ungrateful afterward. After Papa had made such a bold declaration on his behalf. “I missed that. I was too focused on feeling sorry for myself to notice. I apologize for my obliviousness. My sulkiness.”

“I hurt you more than I meant to.” Papa clapped Roald’s knee briskly. Bracingly. “You had a right to your pain. Being sensitive isn’t a crime. Especially not when you’re a teenager with a body going through all sorts of hormonal havoc every day.”

“Thank you, Papa.” Roald floundered for a way to express the sudden, surging depths of his gratitude. Gratitude that had now replaced the sweeping tide of embarrassment. Washing it out to sea in receding waves. “For explaining and for telling Lord Wyldon you would sign my contract into law if necessary.”

There really couldn’t have been a stronger declaration of support his father could have given him under the circumstances, Roald thought. Appreciating it fully now. With the benefit of hindsight devoid of sulkiness.

“It was my pleasure and duty.” Papa gave Roald’s knee a quick squeeze. “As king and father.”

“I guess–” Roald couldn’t resist the chagrined comment. The rueful remark. “I still have a lot to learn about being a king and father.”

“You will not need to be king for a long time, and you have many years to go before you will be a father as well.” Papa regarded Roald with a sly twinkle in sapphire eyes. “Unless there is a secret paramour and love child you need to share with me.”

“Well.” Roald cultivated an exaggerated air of mystery even if he thought that twelve was much too young for secret paramours and love children. Surely even his father hadn’t been that precocious as a lad. “You know how I love my secrets, Papa.”

“Like a cat hoarding its precious cream.” Papa chuckled. Deep and warm in his chest.

Chapter Text

A Son’s Curiosities and a Father’s Answers

“Papa.” Roald paused as they passed a confectioner’s cart in the teeming Midwinter Market. “Do you think Bennet would like a gingered orange?”

Gingered oranges were a citrus and spicy delicacy savored at the Midwinter holiday by those with wallets extensive enough to fund the purchase of the luxuriously expensive imported fruit from Carthak and ginger from the Copper Isles.

“I’ve no doubt he’ll appreciate it.” Jon smiled. Pleased with the generosity his son displayed toward the manservant he had appointed to tend to Roald the lad entered page training. “It’s kind of you to buy it for him.”

“Not so kind.” Roald pulled out his purse. Paid the gingered orange purveyor with a clink of coins. Received in return a gingered orange wrapped carefully in parchment. Shot Jon a caught-with-breeches-down look that indicated he expected a reprimand. “As it is a bit of an apology. He offered me good counsel, and I must admit I was curt with him.”

Roald was channeling an inordinate amount of attention into tucking away his purse and securely stowing his gingered orange purchase. Most likely because both tasks gave him an excuse to avert his gaze from Jon’s.

“I am pleased–” Jon gently tilted his son’s chin up so their eyes met– “that you seek Bennet’s counsel. I chose him to be your manservant because I thought he could be discreet and provide good advice to you. He has boys of his own, you know.”

“I know. He mentioned.” Roald bit his lip. Nervous as a spooked stallion seeing a snake crossing a wooded path. “Is that all you have to say, Papa? You and Mama are always so strict about being courteous to servants.”

“I suppose we do beat that drum rather stridently.” Jon indulged the wry observation. Then inquired more seriously, “You did ask Bennet’s pardon for your curtness?”

“Of course, Papa.” Roald gave a quick, earnest nod.

“And you brought him a delicious gingered orange as restitution as well. You realize you did wrong and are taking steps to make it right.” Jon clapped his son’s cloaked shoulder. “Any words of rebuke I offered on the subject would seem superfluous in that context, and cause you to tune me out as an out-of-touch old bore.”

“It would be–” Roald appeared to suppress an amused twitch of his lips. Forcing his features into a sober mien. “Disrespectful of me to do so.”

“Disrespectful, perhaps.” Jon’s face cracked into a crooked grin. “Yet entirely understandable. Papas should try not to bore their children too much.”

“Not one of the commandments etched in stone Mithros gave to humanity,” Roald pointed out. Gravely.

The mandate to honor one’s father and mother was. As nursemaids and Mithran tutors alike were so fond of reminding their young charges whenever the need for discipline and correction arose.

“It should have been.” Jon’s eyes twinkled. “A divine oversight that it was not.”

They walked out of the marketplace. Heading back up the cobbled streets toward the Royal Palace by mutual, unspoken consent. Silence falling between them until Roald broke it with a question so quiet and hesitant Jon had to bend to hear him over the bustle of Corus citizens attending to their business all around them. “Papa, were you scared when I tried to touch the Dominion Jewel all those years ago?”

Jon blinked. Surprised that his son would pose such a question seemingly without cause. Then remembered his own earlier analogy of a mother in a crowded marketplace giving her rambunctious little lad a swift swat on the bottom for darting into the street and almost getting trampled. Part of his explanation for why he had told Roald to hold his peace back in Lord Wyldon’s office. For the pain he had caused his son with those repressive, reproving words.

“Was I scared–” Jon found himself responding more tartly than he had intended– “that my eldest son and heir was risking his own neck and the ruin of my entire realm doing something I had strictly forbidden?”

“I understand–” Roald swallowed visibly. Audibly. “That you were disappointed and angered by my disobedience.”

“Then you don’t understand as well as you think you do.” Jon sighed. Regretting his tartness. Cupped his son’s cheek. Recalled, clearly as if it were yesterday, stepping into his study to discover his oldest child trying to reach through the magic wards–powerful enough to inflict considerable damage on a curious youngster–that shielded the Dominion Jewel.

Almost fainting into a chair. Tipping Roald over his knee in a still-stupefied daze of terror. Lowering the boy’s breeches and undergarments more for the ritual symbolism of ultimate parental disapproval this baring conveyed–which he was certain a budding traditionalist like Roald would understand–than to increase the pain of the mild physical chastisement he was about to bestow. Measuring his force so he delivered no more than firm pats to the upturned backside he was punishing.

Roald, Jon remembered, had submitted to the discipline without argument. Without pleading. Stoic apart from some soft sniffles and stifled sobs.

Roald was now staring at him with the same naked confusion that had been etched into his expression all those years ago when Jon had finished spanking him. Had restored his breeches and undergarments to their proper positions. Gathered him into a tight hug.

At least on this present occasion, Jon thought, there were no tears trickling down his baffled son’s cheeks as there had been in his study long ago.

“I was not angry when I spanked you.” Jon allowed a note of tender affection to seep into his tone like herbs into tea. Into stew. “I would not have laid so much as a finger on you in anger for fear of inflicting more damage on your bottom than I had intended. Leaving a bruise or some other nasty mark of my wrath.”

“Oh.” Roald’s wide blue eyes might have reflected a dawning epiphany as he stared at Jon.

“You asked if I was scared when I caught you trying to touch the Dominion Jewel.” Jon squeezed his son’s shoulder. His voice breaking like a too-taxed heart. “The answer is that I was as scared as I have ever been in my life for you and for my kingdom. That I devoutly entreat all the gods that I might never face such fear again in all my days and nights.”

“Oh,” Roald repeated. Ducked his head. Abashed and chastened. As if he had interpreted Jon’s expression of love as a reproof. “I’m sorry to have scared you so, Papa. I never meant to frighten you at all. Just satisfy my own curiosity.”

“You do not have to apologize now.” Jon extended an arm. Draped it across his son’s broadening shoulders. “You were punished and forgiven for almost stopping my heart with fear long ago. Forgiven before you were even bent over my knee, in fact.”

Jon was pleased when Roald permitted the arm to remain about his shoulders for the whole climb up from Corus to the Royal Palace. As they made their way to the quiet, slumbering pages’ wing, Roald murmured, “Thank you for taking me to the Midwinter Market, Papa.”

“Thank you for coming.” Jon reached up. Ruffled his son’s hair. “It wouldn’t have been half so fun without you.”

They came to Roald’s door. Roald fumbled in his pocket. Pulling out the key. Once the door was unlocked, Jon followed him inside. Sitting at his son’s desk to compose the promised letters that indicated to Lord Wyldon and the other masters that Roald had gone into the city tonight with the king’s permission. Had been hereby excused from completing any assigned classwork because he had been intently studying the realm’s economy through the busting Corus Midwinter Market. Exempting him from any punishment Lord Wyldon or the other masters might have otherwise tried to impose.

Finished writing these letters and about to rise, Jon was stayed by Roald’s sudden, somber vow, “I won’t embarrass you again by speaking out of turn at another meeting, Papa. Won’t give you a reason to tell me to hold my peace.”

“You didn’t embarrass me.” Jon gazed at his son. Feeling pride well in his chest. “I know you spoke from a place of loyalty to your friends and allies. From a deep concern for justice. I could never be ashamed of your loyalty or your desire for justice.”

It was, he realized, the truth, now that he had spoken it so plainly. Perhaps what Thayet had been trying to cajole him into comprehending since that night of the showdown in Lord Wyldon’s office.

“Nevertheless–” Roald lifted his chin. Resolved. “I’ll never again give any conservative grounds to speculate that I wasn’t sufficiently schooled in etiquette. That my education in manners was woefully neglected.”

“Your courtesies–” Jon chuckled– “are generally so impeccable that I believe it would be impossible for even the most ardent conservative to credibly make such a speculation.”

“Then that would only increase their fury.” Roald’s lips quirked. “Because they would know my offense was deliberate.”

Jon’s chuckle grew into a laugh as he rose. Was surprised by the simple joy of being enfolded in one of his son’s rare embraces.

“Good night, Papa.” Roald’s words were muffled by the cloak Jon had worn as part of his impersonation of a moderately prosperous Corus merchant. “Will you give Mama a hug from me?”

An atonement, Jon suspected, for pulling out of the one she had tried to give him in the corridor outside Lord Wyldon’s office. Roald would be meticulous about balancing out the scales of what he perceived as justice.

“Of course, son.” Jon kissed Roald’s hair. Jet black as his own. As Thayet’s. Pulled the boy into a tighter embrace. “And here is a hug from her and from me. Now get some sleep before your lessons in the morning.”

Chapter Text

The Privilege of Justice

As Papa left, Roald noticed that Bennet, quiet and quick as ever, had filled a basin with water so warm it steamed for Roald to clean his face and teeth in before bed. Roald’s nightshirt had also been hung over a rack beside the fireplace so it would be cozy instead of cold when Roald donned it.

Bennet was a most attentive manservant indeed, Roald thought as he pulled out the carefully wrapped gingered orange. Proffered it to Bennet with a soft-spoken, “I bought you something at the Midwinter Market. I hope you enjoy it.”

“Thank you kindly for the gingered orange, Your Highness.” Bennet bowed to Roald. Gazed at the gingered orange in a manner that made it plain he had never had the opportunity to consume such a confection himself. Had only ever watched those wealthier and higher-ranked than him indulge in such a sweet. “I shall savor it, and share it with my wife and sons so they may all sample the exotic taste.”

The taste of Carthak and the Copper Isles. Lands far across the sea with climates so different from temperate Tortall.

“You’re a good father.” Roald smiled at the idea of Bennet sharing the gingered orange with his sons. Imagined the pleasure that would bring the boys as he crossed to the steaming wash basin. Picked up the towel that had been neatly folded beside the basin. A towel that was warm between his fingers. A towel that must have been draped by the fire as well. Awaiting his return. Giving Roald cause once again to note inwardly how truly excellent a manservant Bennet was.

Pricked by a sudden needle of curiosity, Roald asked as he dipped the towel in the water and began to scrub his face, “What was your father like, Bennet?”

“A drunken lout who spent more time at the Lower City alehouses than at work or at home with his family, Your Highness.” Bennet’s jaw clenched. “He gambled his money away faster than he could earn it, lazy layabout that he was, and what he didn’t gamble away, he wasted on dirty whores and drink. He left my ma with my sister a mere babe in arms when I was two. Leaving me to be the only man in the family. To protect and provide for my ma and my sister as best I could. He could’ve died alone in a gutter from drink and a pox given to him by some strange whore, and I wouldn’t care. Would think it no less than he deserved after abandoning us so.”

“What happened to your mother and sister?” Roald stopped scrubbing his face. Too appalled by the story of Bennet’s hardscrabble childhood to do anything else.

“Ma worked herself to the bone and beyond as a washerwoman.” Bennet’s eyes had gone dark and distant. As if he were trapped in the most painful moments of his past. “I helped her as much as I could, and so did my sister. Then she contracted the Sweating Sickness when I was nine and died after three days of misery and hallucinations. She was buried in one of the mass graves they dug outside the city. My sister and I couldn’t scrounge together the coppers to pay for a service to be sung or prayers said by the Black God’s priests. Could only offer our own pitiful prayers and hope the Black God would stoop to hear them amid so many others. The price for services and prayers on behalf of the dead was wildly inflated beyond the ability of two young Lower City urchins to pay in those days of the plague. For the number of the plague dead who needed services and prayers for their souls far exceeded the priests who could provide such prayers and services.”

“The Sweating Sickness was an act of magic, not nature.” Roald resumed scrubbing his face. So fiercely he might have made his skin bleed. Remembering what his papa had told him. “Sent by my father’s traitor cousin Roger who studied sorcery for nefarious purposes at the university in Carthak for many years. He planned for it to kill my father after all the healers had been drained treating other patients. All the other deaths only meant as a disguise to make my father’s death seem less suspicious.”

Proof, Roald thought, that Duke Roger if he had succeeded in his plot to usurp the throne would have been a cruel tyrant. Eager to exploit his people. Indifferent to their suffering. Pleased to watch them perish in the thousands as fuel for his ambitions.

A reason also, Roald realized, for his father to have invested so much capital into a university in Corus that might one day rival Carthak’s. A way to keep a royal eye on what Tortall’s mages were studying. What magics they were matching. What treasons they might be brewing and fermenting.

One did not, Roald supposed, survive such a magical attack on one’s life by one’s own cousin without developing a degree of paranoia. At least not if one were as shrewd and cunning as Papa.

“Sir Alanna slew Duke Roger in a duel that proved he was a traitor, but my grandfather was too fond of him to officially attaint him. To strip him of his lands and titles.” Roald recited what his father had taught him. Vindictiveness mounting in him. In his tone. “He should have been stripped of his lands and titles. His corpse quartered by the executioner on Traitor’s Hill instead of entombed in the Conte crypts. Each gruesome quarter sent to be displayed in gibbets outside the gates of every major city in the realm as a stout warning against treason until the crows pecked every ounce of flesh from his bones. Then there would have been nothing left of him to resurrect. That would have been justice for your mother. Justice for all those dead from the Sweating Sickness Duke Roger sent.”

King Jasson the Conqueror would’ve had the stomach for such bloody business. King Roald the Peacemaker had not. Roald ruminated on that. Chewing it over in his mind like a dog gnawing at gristle.

“Aye, that would’ve been justice, Your Highness.” Bennet sounded weary as old bones on a damp day. “But it wouldn’t have brought my ma back to life, would it? Nor would it have put bread and pottage on the table for my little sister to eat, would it?”

“Well, no.” Roald faltered. Floundered like a fish caught on a hook as his fundamental assumptions about the world and the people who inhabited it were challenged. “Are you saying the common people don’t desire to see justice done?”

Roald frowned. He had always taken it for granted that commoners longed to see justice done as much or more than nobles and royals did. After all, it was supposed to be one of the most solemn and sacred duties of kings and princes to provide justice to any of their subjects who appealed to them for it. That was why courts, laws, and magistrates existed.

“The common folk enjoy the spectacle of a good hanging, burning, or drawing and quartering as macabre entertainment, Your Highness.” Bennet’s words made Roald’s forehead knit. “But what they want far more than macabre entertainment is food in their bellies. In the bellies of their loved ones. For taxes to remain low. To not climb too much year upon year. For famine, flood, drought, and a score of other natural disasters not to strike. For pestilence and plague to spare those they love. They care first and foremost about not starving. About surviving. Justice is a privilege with which only the sufficiently exalted and affluent not to worry about survival can concern themselves. Usually in their great stone castles and palaces.”

“But sometimes peasants grab their pitchforks and revolt in the name of justice,” Roald pointed out. Finished with washing his face. Accepting the second warmed towel Bennet handed him to dry it.

There had been such a revolt two years ago in Maren, Roald recalled. Ignited when the king of Maren had raised taxes on the peasants to pay for the war against the invading Immortals and a famine had swept through the country at the same time. The peasants who had risen in rebellion had done so demanding justice. Lower and more equitable taxes. A stronger voice in their government. More of the kingdom’s grain and wheat when famine came.

Roald remembered reading these fervent arguments in the manifestos and pamphlets the better-lettered of the revolting peasants had managed to distribute throughout the trade routes of the Eastern Lands. Thinking that the peasants were not unjustified in their motives for rebellion.

The peasants in Maren had murdered many nobles, tax collectors, and unwise magistrates who tried to read them the riot act or charge them with treasonous insurrection on their march to the capital. There they had stormed the gates of the capital. Captured and killed some of the Maren king’s chief advisors and clergymen. Refused to disband and disperse from the field in which they had gathered in their thousands until the king himself met with them.

The king, acceding to their demands with seeming magnanimity, had ridden out to that fateful field with only a small contingent of personal guards. Had sat with the peasant man who had become the rebel leader. Put his signature and seal to a proclamation that appeared to satisfy many of the revolting peasants’ conditions. That promised to ease the weight of the taxes on the peasantry and grant elected representatives a more influential role in Maren’s government.

There had been much revelry among the peasants assembled in the field outside the capital that day and night. Much toasting with overflowing flagons of ale the name of the king they would have wanted to believe cared about them. A king they would have been eager to convince themselves had only been led astray by greedy advisors. A king they would have wanted to love.

It would have been such a heart-stopping, stomach-shrinking surprise for the peasants in that field that was soon to be soaked with blood when the king’s troops marched out of the dawn mist to brutally slaughter may of the rebels who had just been lulled into putting down their farm tools turned weapons. To draw and quarter their leader who had met with the king under a banner of truce yesterday. To hang from trees and hastily constructed gallows other men known to have slain tax collectors and magistrates en route to the capital.

The harrowed survivors of that field of blood would have fled back to their starving villages with their tails between their legs like thrashed dogs. To attempt to eke out what meager, miserable existence they could from soil blighted by famine.

The king of Maren had, predictably, repealed the proclamation he had made to lure the peasants into dropping their farm tool weapons. Had proceeded to raise the taxes once more on the peasantry as a punishment. As a ruthless deterrent to future rebellion because absolute power could never afford to waver. To show weakness.

“Peasants revolt with their pitchforks only when there is not enough wheat and grain to fill their pitchforks and barns, Your Highness,” Bennet explained grimly. “If there was enough grain and wheat for them to survive, they would not risk losing their lives in some petty rebellion for rights they never had and likely will never have.”

“What happened to you and your sister after your mother died in the Sweating Sickness?” Roald found himself wondering how Bennet had survived such sorrow and adversity to become a royal manservant.

“I became a noble’s manservant at nine, Your Highness,” Bennet answered. “Wearing my noble master’s livery. Eating what scraps he fed me. Agreeing that I would serve him faithfully for ten years if he trained me in how to be a manservant. He trained me with his cuffs and blows whenever I was too slow to fetch his wine or his water was too cold. I was desperate so I accepted even at the low wages he offered me. I gave every copper of those measly wages to my sister so she might have food in her belly and a roof over her head. Food she had to cook herself with no ma to look after her, and a roof she had to patch for herself but better than nothing. She grew into a bonny lass who married a glassmaker who can create beautiful baubles for her. She always did love her beautiful baubles.”

“A coin for you to buy a beautiful bauble for your sister.” His heart going butter-soft with Bennet’s tale, Roald reached into his purse yet again that evening. Withdrew two silver coins. “And another to have prayers said for your mother’s paul at a chapel in the city.”

“Your Highness–” Bennet bowed deeply as the coins disappeared into his pockets– “is most generous to your servants.”

Kings and princes, Roald decided as he considered the peasants’ revolt that had broken out in Maren and everything Bennet had told him tonight, should be generous with their servants.

Not to forestall rebellion or so that their servants might survive, but so their servants might do more than survive. Might know some measure of happiness. Enjoy some of luxuries and indulgences that shouldn’t just be reserved for the wealthy and the privileged.

Because, whatever Bennet might have claimed, rebellions couldn’t just be born from a desperation to survive. They had to arise from long ignored inequalities and inequities that eventually sparked violence when famine or taxation were added to the volatile mix. A prince, Roald concluded, had a duty to smooth over as many of those inequalities as he could in his lifetime. Address as many of those inequities.

His parents, he reflected with a son’s admiration and pride, were doing that during their reign with the laundry list of reforms that had drawn so much conservative ire. He would continue that legacy of smoothing over inequalities and addressing inequities when he came to the throne himself. Hopefully not for many more years if the Black God were merciful.

With these thoughts swirling like whipperwools in his head, Roald cleaned his teeth. Changed into his nightshirt. Knelt by his bedside to offer those silent prayers to Mithros and the Goddess that Anwen had taught him when he was a wee little lad.

Added an extra prayer for her wherever she was in the palace. Probably asleep after another long day as a nursemaid for noble children.

Slid beneath his own blankets when his prayers were done. Blowing out the candle on his nightstand.

Slipping into darkness and dreams. Pleased to discover that the ever-industrious and ingenious Bennet had tucked hot pans beneath his sheets so that his feet would not be cold on this long winter’s night.

Chapter Text

Yesterday’s Kings

After leaving his son’s room in the pages’ wing, Jon found his mind wandering to the past as his feet– without conscious direction from his absent mind– carried him down twisted stairwells and torchlit corridors.

He remembered, as if it were yesterday, sitting in Thayet’s solar on the night after Roald had tried to touch the Dominion Jewel. They had, perhaps, been discussing some matter of politics that had seemed important at the time, but that had now faded from his memory.

There had come a knock, tiny and tentative, at the door.

Thayet had called for Roald to enter. Her ears as able to recognize the distinct cadence of their eldest son’s knocking as Jon’s.

Roald had stood in the threshold. Dressed in his nightclothes. Black hair towelled dry after his evening bath with Anwen, who was framed behind him in the doorway.

“Bid Their Majesties good night.” Anwen had nudged Roald gently forward when he had remained rooted to the floor.

“Good night, Mama.” Roald had stepped into the solar. Bowed to Thayet. Climbed into her lap when she patted it. Allowed himself to be cradled and cuddled. Kissed her sweetly on the cheek.

“Sweet dreams, son.” Thayet had slid Roald from her lap. Returned his feet to the thick carpet. “Say good night to your papa now.”

Roald approached Jon slowly. As if Jon had been replaced by a none-too-friendly dragon with a penchant for burning down whole villages and gobbling fair maidens alive.

“Good night, sire.” Roald had spoken in a whisper. Addressing his words to the tips of his slippers rather than Jon’s face.

“Prince Roald.” Anwen had clucked her tongue reproachfully. “Look at your father when you speak to him. One would think you were raised by wolves!”

Tears had welled in Roald’s eyes at the rebuke, and he had begun gnawing at his lower lip.

Jon abandoned the soft cushion of his chair. Sitting on the floor instead, where he hoped he presented a less intimidating figure to his little boy. Tenderly tugging the lad against his chest.

“I’m sorry for my disobedience yesterday.” Roald’s heart was hammering. Jon had felt it jackrabbiting away when he stroked his son’s back with a soothing palm.

“Never let yesterday take up too much of today, son.” Jon had kissed Roald’s creased forehead. “You’re forgiven.”

“You aren’t–” Roald’s tone had trembled as he gazed up at Jon with lake blue eyes shaped just like Thayet’s. Anxious to confirm and clarify this point. “Displeased and disappointed in me?”

“You are my beloved child.” Jon had continued to rub Roald’s back in a calming fashion. Smiling when he felt the tension begin to ease. “I’m very proud and well-pleased in you.”

“I’ll be your good and obedient son from now on, Papa,” Roald vowed somberly. Then at last had relaxed into the warmth of Jon’s embrace. “Will you sing me a lullaby?”

Jon sang one his own nursemaid had taught him. A peaceful one about counting sheep in a dale. (She had grown up not far from the border with Tusaine where apparently sheep in dales were common.)

Jon was less than halfway through the lyrics when Roald began to sag against him, and by the time Jon was finished, Roald had drifted into sleep entirely. Somehow weighed fifty bricks more than he had before slumber overtook him.

Overriding Anwen’s apologies and offer to carry the sleeping Roald back to his bedchamber, Jon had been the one to bring his son down the hallway. To tuck him snugly beneath his blankets. To murmur a wish for sweet dreams in his ear.

Emerging from the thicket of memory, Jon realized that he was in the cold crypts beneath the palace. The cold crypts where he often went to think about the past. The crypts built by the Old Ones long before they had become the final resting place of a dynasty of Conte kings and consorts.

The crypts where he and Gary had once stolen off to when they were truant from their lessons. Had thrown off the oppressive educational yokes of their stern Mithran tutors. They would dart among the graves as if in a grim garden until their legs wearied. Until they sprawled on marble monuments catching their breaths.

In such moments, Gary would always have a morbid story about the king whose tomb they were lounging across with which to regale Jon. About how this king had been so obese at death that his body had burst when he was sealed in too tight a coffin. About how this other king had perished in the latrine taking a watery bowel movement after indulging in too many lampreys against the advice of his healers who had urged him to abstain from the lampreys or at least consume them with more moderation.

(Or had it been too many eels that had been fatal to that ill-fated monarch? Jon couldn’t recall. It was, after all, Gary who had been the one well-versed in history. The one whose mind was filled with the darkest royal trivia that could be recited with relish whenever the opportunity arose.)

He did remember laughing with his cousin until his ribs ached. Such sad stories had seemed humorous to him when he was a young lad with mischief in his heart. When he had believed that it would be impossible for death or failure to mar his life or the lives of any he loved. When death and failure had only been the properties of distant ancestors most interesting for their roles in Gary’s disgusting litany of tragic royal trivia.

As he descended deeper into the crypts, Jon conjured blue flames to light his way. He had decided to visit the graves of his parents.

He paused at the tomb of his great-grandfather, Baird the Boisterous. Glancing down at the girth of the stomach. The flab of fat that came from too much feasting. The florid cheeks that testified to a life of intemperance. An excessive enjoyment of wine that caused Tortall to lose too many leagues to Tusaine, Galla, and Barzun.

All callously depicted by the sculptor at the command of the monarch who had succeeded Baird the Boisterous, the king whose name had rebounded throughout the Eastern Lands as Jasson the Conqueror. It was the sons, after all, who reigned supreme here. Who dictated what the legacies and remembrances of their fathers would be after those fathers had passed onto the Realms of the Dead.

Jasson the Conqueror’s tomb was next in line. The king who had reclaimed those lost leagues with a hefty amount of interest from Tusaine and Galla. Who had absorbed Barzun entirely into the Tortallan fold through shrewd marriage to Daneline of Jesslaw and bloody battle. He was rendered with as little mercy and sympathy as he had shown his own father. His face hard and violent. No hint of kindness in his cruel mein.

Jon stopped before his father’s tomb. When ordering the creation of his father’s monument, Jon had tried to channel his grief and love for the man who had raised him into the design. Had specified that his father should be depicted with an expression of extreme tranquility on his placid features. The expression Jon remembered his father wearing in private moments of pleasure with him and his mother. A fitting tribute, he hoped, to a king who had taken pride in being dubbed Roald the Peacemaker.

His mother’s monument, ordered by his father, was a perfect testament to her delicate beauty and grace. Jon bent. Kissed her cheek as if it were warm skin rather than cool marble. Wished he could still smell the scent of fresh lavender and exotic vanilla from the Copper Isles she had so often worn. A perfume he would always associate with her.

Footsteps sounded behind him. Startled, he turned to see Thayet approaching him with a flaming orange torch in hand.

As she reached him and placed the torch in a nearby sconce, he commented with a huskiness in his voice, “Everyone thought my mother was weaker than my father. Pitied her for her sickliness especially after Roger’s vile magic ravaged her, but she was the stronger in her soul. If my father had died first, my mother would have clung to life for as long as she could for my sake. For Tortall’s sake. To guide and support me. To do her duty to Tortall. She wouldn’t have killed herself for grief. She was a Naxen. They’re a stable lot even if some of them have a rambunctious desire to engage in wild pranks in their youth.”

“You miss her.” Thayet’s voice was soft.

“Yes.” Jon nodded though no question had been asked. No question had needed to be asked when they understood each other’s grief all too keenly. “I was always closer to her than I was to my father. She understood me better. The way Roald is closer to you because you understand him better.”

“I do not understand Roald as well as you think. Not always, anyway, especially now that he is growing into his own man.” Thayet sighed. “He’s quiet. Keeps his own counsel when he can. Nurses his secrets as if they were precious babes.”

“So he does.” Jon’s lips quirked at this description of their reserved son. “I took him into the Midwinter Market tonight. To explain things to him and remind him how much I love him as you so wisely suggested.”

“And how–” Thayet arched an eyebrow– “did this trip to the Midwinter Market go?”

“Well.” Jon stared down at his father’s tomb. “We didn’t argue but said many things to each other. Things we should have said years ago.”

“Then why are you here brooding?” Thayet gestured at the crypts surrounding them.

“He thought.” Jon pinched the bridge of his nose. “That all those years ago when I spanked him for trying to touch the Dominion Jewel, it was because I was angry at him. Not because my heart had nearly stopped for fear.”

“Oh, Jon.” Thayet squeezed his fingers. “You can’t still be feeling guilty over a handful of light swats you delivered to his bottom years ago.”

“My father never laid a hand on me.” Jon swallowed a lump the size of a mountain that had formed in his throat. “Even though I was far more stubborn and disobedient than our Roald. I can’t help but think he would have been a better–a gentler–father to our Roald, and our Roald would’ve been an easier son to him. That they would’ve been closer to each other than I could to either of them. That they would’ve argued less. Misunderstood one another less.”

That he was, in short, King Jasson born again as the awed and feared whispers had maintained ever since he was a boy. That, like King Jasson before him, he would despise his father’s weakness, and, in turn, his own heir would perceive him as too harsh. Too severe.

“Roald is stronger because he is your son.” Thayet’s fingers tightened around his. “He’s more confident and passionate when he’s imitating you. Haven’t you noticed?”

“I have.” Jon’s mouth twitched. Wryly amused. “Usually he chooses to deploy such confidence and passion when challenging me.”

“You must not dwell too much on the past,” Thayet concluded decisively. “I remember you advising a young Roald once when he felt guilty about the episode with the Dominion Jewel to never let yesterday take up too much of today. Wise words if you would only have the wit to follow them now.”

“It’s tempting to brood over yesterdays when surrounded by yesterday’s kings.” Jon plucked at his beard. Rueful. “And as I get older, I have more yesterdays to eat up my todays.”

“Oh, stop with your excuses.” Thayet elbowed him. “None of us are getting any younger, but you needn’t be so woebegone about it.”

“Why–” Jon shot her a sidelong look– “are you trying so hard to pull me out of my guilt? When I spanked Roald, you were furious at me. Threatening to leave me if I ever did it to one of our children again.”

“And you didn’t.” Thayet leaned against him. Her body warm in the cold crypts. “I might have overreacted because of how my father used to beat me.”

“You did not overreact.” Jon assured her. Kissing her beautiful black hair. Remembering Thayet’s terror when the healer who had attended Roald’s birth had suggested the routine smack on the baby’s bottom to ensure the lungs were clear of fluid. That the little lad could give a healthy cry. “When he was born, you made me promise that I wouldn’t spank him. I broke that promise. Without even consulting with you first. You had every right to be furious at me.”

“Perhaps I was right to be furious.” Thayet tilted her head so it rested in the nook of his neck. “But I am glad I forgave you. That I didn’t leave you.”

“I wonder what my legacy will be,” Jon admitted. “What I’ll look like in my monument.”

“Such vanity, Jon.” Thayet’s scolding was good-natured. “I’m sure you’ll look very handsome indeed if that is your concern.”

“That’s not my concern.” Jon shook his head. “My concern is how Roald will choose to depict me. Conte sons are not always kind in their depictions of their fathers. Just glance over at the effigies of my grandfather and great-grandfather for proof.”

“Roald would never be so disrespectful or cruel to you.” Thayet’s tone was firm. “Not in so permanent and lasting a way. On consecrated ground too. None of that is in his character. He’ll be dutiful and reverent when constructing your tomb. I cannot imagine him being otherwise.”

“I know that.” Jon’s gaze fixed on his father’s marble monument. “But will there be love in it as I put into my father’s?”

“Love?” Thayet tugged teasingly at his beard. “For the papa who took him to the Midwinter Market tonight and unless I miss my target entirely bought him a treat?”

“He did ask for a sugar plum so nicely when I told him that he could ask me anything he liked.” Jon grinned. “It seemed the wrong moment to refuse him, especially when he was still smarting from my rebuke in Lord Wyldon’s office.”

“That settles it.” Thayet’s grin answered his. “He must love the papa who bought him a sugar plum at the Midwinter Market tonight.”

“That reminds me.” Jon drew Thayet into a hug. “Roald wanted me to give you a hug from him, my dear.”

“That,” Thayet murmured, “was very sweet of Roald.”

“And that–” Jon pulled Thayet into a longer, deeper hug. Kissing her on the lips. Feeling gloriously alive although surrounded by the dead kings of yesterday. “Is a hug from me.”

“You.” Thayet cupped his cheek. “Are very sweet as well.”

“Very sweet?” Jon kept up his relentless siege of kisses. “I was hoping to be called very romantic.”

“You have to work harder.” Thayet’s fingers trailed down his shirt. Igniting fires wherever she touched. Enflaming his desire and ardor. “To be called very romantic. Now, will you come up to our bed or remain in these cold crypts all night?”

“I’ll always come to bed when you ask.” Jon could think of nowhere he would rather be than in bed with his breathtaking, wonderfully arousing wife.

He was not at all concerned with yesterdays now. Consumed entirely by the pleasures of the present. The pleasures only Thayet could give when they were alone together. The pleasures that had created their children.

Their children. That would be his legacy. Not any marble effigy.

It was impossible to care about marble effigies entangled in his wife’s arms. Kissing her with all the passion pounding in his heart. In his living bloodstream.