Chapter 1: Crown and Letter
"An emergency levy of one sack in five," Councillor Maris Vey said. "Until the cavalry has replacement horses and the southern watchtowers are repaired."
"No," Theodore said.
Rain ticked against the high windows of the hall. The curtains had been drawn against the winter draft, but a white seam of cold showed beneath each of them. Five councillors stood in a crescent below the dais, and most of them had decided the old king was wrong before Maris finished speaking.
Forty years had taught Theodore to recognize that particular posture. He had inherited a border full of graves, three empty granaries, and a court accustomed to deciding its sovereign was wrong before he had finished speaking. The roads were safe now, the grain stores sound, and his people believed that was how the world naturally arranged itself.
He had never minded being taken for granted. He minded being treated as a chair someone intended to sit in before he had risen from it.
"The farmers have already spent tomorrow's grain," said Dame Elianor Vale, the eldest of the five. Her hair was silver beneath her dark coif. "The rains failed twice. Take seed from them now and there will be no harvest at all next year."
"A failed harvest can be repaired," Maris said. She was scarcely thirty, handsome in a hard, polished way. "An undefended border cannot."
"Then we borrow," said Aldren Saye, leaning against the carved rail. He was the youngest of them, with the bright, impatient look of a man who believed a quick answer must be a clever one. "Merchants will lend us the money against next year's crown revenues. Commerce solves what the treasury cannot."
"Merchants lend against everything," Theodore said. "That is why they are merchants."
A few older lords smiled. Maris did not.
"With respect, Your Majesty," she said, "the army does not feed itself on wit."
"No. It feeds itself on taxes raised from people who must remain alive long enough to pay them." Theodore rested both hands on the arms of his chair. His knuckles ached in the damp. "The levy is refused. Release half the grain held at Southmere, and send surveyors west. I want every field damaged by flood or blight accounted for before the first thaw."
Aldren made a show of consulting his tablet. "The treasury will not welcome that decision."
"The treasury will survive the release," Theodore said. "The western farms may not."
His brother gave a small cough from the chair beside the dais. Lord Bastian Finley had arrived late, as he did for every duty that could not be mistaken for a banquet, and had spent the morning studying the rain on the window glass. His son, Rafe, had been studying the rings on his own fingers. They were both dressed in enough velvet to clothe a parish.
Bastian leaned close enough that Theodore could smell sugared wine on his breath. "Perhaps, brother, a compromise would be gracious. The young councillors are not wholly without a point."
"Then they may keep it," Theodore said.
Rafe's mouth tightened. He was twenty-six and offended by every room that did not immediately recognize him as its most important feature. "The court will say you favor the farmers because they cheer when you visit their villages."
"The court may say what it likes."
Theodore stood. He was aware of what they saw: a man past sixty, stiff in one knee, with no son to follow him, a daughter who refused every offered match, and an heir who by the ordinary paths of blood was a brother too indolent to rule a laundry and a nephew who would happily inherit a kingdom if it came with no papers to read.
He looked down the length of the hall at the faces waiting to learn whether the old man would bend.
"The council is dismissed until tomorrow," he said. "Dame Elianor, you will remain."
Maris opened her mouth. Theodore lifted a finger, and she stopped.
When the hall had emptied, he descended from the dais more slowly than he would have liked. Elianor waited beside the brazier, warming her hands.
"They scent weakness," she said.
"They scent succession."
"Is there a difference?"
"To a hungry wolf, perhaps not."
Elianor's gaze moved toward the doors through which Bastian and Rafe had gone. "Your brother believes the crown should pass through him. His son believes it should arrive before he has earned the right to wear a clean shirt."
"Rafe wore a clean shirt this morning."
"That is more alarming than I realized."
Despite himself, Theodore smiled. It faded quickly. "Maris and Aldren would prefer a pliable ruler. Bastian prefers a pliable court. He calls it family."
"And Zena?"
At his daughter's name, he turned from the fire.
Zena had the intelligence of a stateswoman and the will of a siege engine. She could read a treaty and find the trap in it before the man who had written it finished pouring wine. She could sit through three hours of petitions without once allowing a petitioner to feel dismissed.
But the lords would not accept her cleanly.
"The charter does not forbid a daughter," Elianor said.
"No. It merely requires twelve great houses to affirm her before the crown passes."
"And you can name seven that would refuse."
"Nine, if Bastian promises them offices." Theodore watched a log settle in the fire. "If I name her without the houses behind her, Bastian will call it unlawful before my body is cold. Half the army will wait to see which crown survives."
"So you seek a husband for her instead."
"A husband with the right name could carry the houses that would never affirm a woman alone."
"And if she will not marry?"
"She will not be ordered to marry."
"Is that a meaningful distinction?"
"To Zena? I should think it is the only distinction that matters."
Theodore took the narrow passage behind the dais to his private study. Elianor followed, though he had not invited her. She had known him too long to require invitation. The study was a plain room for a king: maps, shelves, an old campaign chest used as a desk, and a window overlooking the lower city.
Theodore opened the chest. Beneath rolled maps and ledgers lay a packet bound in black cord. He touched it once, then drew out a sheet of paper.
Elianor did not ask whom he meant to write. Her silence was more difficult to bear than questions.
"I wrote to him two weeks ago," Theodore said. "No answer."
"He may have been on the road."
"He has been on the road for most of his life." Theodore dipped the pen. "It did not prevent him from answering before."
The letter was short. Theodore had learned in war that long letters were for men who expected time. He wrote that the court had grown restless, that Zena had refused another suitor, that Bastian and Rafe were making fools of themselves in expensive ways. At the end, he wrote: The council will force the succession question before the week is out. I need the promise you made me kept. Come within five days, if you can.
His hand paused over the final line. Old friend was too soft for the man he had in mind. Brother was untrue. He settled for a name, then blotted the ink.
Elianor read nothing, but she saw enough. "You mean to place this kingdom in the hands of a man whose face half the realm has never seen?"
"I mean to find out whether the boy is his father's son in the ways that matter."
"You cannot test a ruler the way you test a recruit."
"No. But the man I wrote to may not know the difference."
A knock came at the door.
Zena stood in the opening, rain-blue skirts darkened at the hem and a book tucked under one arm. Her hair, black as wet ink, had been braided for court and was coming loose around her face. She looked first at Elianor, then at the paper on the desk.
Her face did not change. She set her book on the desk, aligning its edge with the grain of the wood.
"Another suitor," she said.
"It is a letter to an old friend."
"That is not an answer."
"No. It is the answer I have."
She pulled her hand back from the book. "Father, I have been civil to the men you brought here. I have listened while they explained government to me. The last one asked whether I would be permitted to sit beside him in council. Permitted."
"The last one was an idiot."
"And you selected him."
Theodore did not rise to it. "I selected a prince whose tutors assured me he had a mind."
"His tutors were overpaid."
Elianor turned aside, hiding a smile.
Zena's hands had curled at her sides. "If you summon another man in secret, the council will assume you trust him more than the daughter who has done the work in front of them. Every plan you make begins with putting a man between me and the throne."
"That is not what I am trying to do."
"It is what you are doing."
For a moment, Theodore had no reply. He could have told her about the old soldiers he had sat with, men who wept over a female commander who had saved their lives and then voted against letting their own daughters inherit a farm.
Instead, he said, "I will not force you to marry a man you cannot respect."
Zena gave a thin laugh. "That sounds very much like a promise with a hidden door."
She turned and left before he could offer another. The door closed softly behind her.
Elianor waited until Theodore's shoulders had lowered. "You are asking her to trust you without allowing her to know what you are doing."
"I know."
"And?"
"And I have never been good at asking for trust."
Theodore pressed his seal into the wax. A black fox on a field of gold stared up at him from the red circle. By nightfall, the letter would be riding east.
Five days. If the rider returned alone, Theodore would have to choose an heir without the one man who knew what that choice would cost.