“This is essentially making my son regent,” he remarked.
“It is making your son counsellor. It is paving the way to make your heir, flesh of your flesh, equipped with the experience to be king. You did not wish him to be regent and you do not wish to rule. You get both. You get what you want. All you want. But this time, with a strong realm that has strong leadership. How can you protest that?”
“And you have investigated Carrington without my consent?” he demanded. “That is not your place, Mercy. With that, you have stepped over the line to such an extent, it, too, could be considered treason.”
She sat immobile, such was her affront.
“It is the king who decides his counsel,” he spat. “And it is the king who sits in that chair.” He rapped his knuckles on his desk and commanded, “Arise.”
She stared at him and did not move.
He leaned toward her. “Arise.”
“You have two choices,” she said softly. “We can walk out that door and direct Sir Bram to find Carrington and arrest him. Or I will walk out that door and direct Sir Bram to share that the king has signed the vouchers for the man who pilfered his treasury, and as such, he relinquishes his rule but as figurehead. And the Crown Prince, True, of Wodell, has become regent. It’s your choice. Make it now.”
His expression was the definition of thunderstruck.
“Blackmail?”
“It is your choice, Wilmer, make it now.”
His incredulity melted, he glared at her and snapped, “This will be the finish of us, wife.”
She felt her heart stutter, but she did not take her gaze from his.
“It is your choice, my king, make it now.”
“And have this hanging over my head so my wife and son can use it at will and play me like a puppet?”
“At least your new puppet masters will have the good of the people of Wodell in mind, not, at best, greed, and at worse, involvement in insurrection.”
He drew back in insult.
“You speak these words to me?” he asked.
“You yourself said this will be the finish of us, husband,” she reminded him. “I no longer have the wifely duty of managing your delicate sensibilities.”
Wilmer’s temper visibly snapped.
“Arise from my chair and get out,” he demanded hotly.
“Is that your answer?”
“Tell the people what you want,” he decreed, throwing his hands up. “I made a mistake. I have many responsibilities. I am king, but I am also a man. Mistakes are made. They will understand.”
“Will they? Will they, Wilmer?” she asked. “With Carrington’s counsel you have repeatedly led them to war against a superior force which not only ended in defeat, but to the deaths of our native sons. You have foolishly signed away their hard-earned monies. You have taken the counsel of a man who might be colluding with enemies of the state and you’ve done it for years. Every…single…thing Carrington has advised you to do has been with the goal of making you appear weak, dithering and greedy. His intent is not hard to read, just hard to prove. He wishes to destabilize your throne and you let him. So tell me, Wilmer, will they truly understand?”
His eyes narrowed, and his lips whispered, “I think I hate you.”
Her heart sank.
She gave no indication of that.
“What is your choice, my king?” she pressed.
He looked to the side, teeth clenched.
He looked back to her, nothing but cold in his eyes.
“Have him arrested,” he ordered.
“Do you wish to see the evidence?” she offered.
“I don’t care anymore.”
Mercy was not surprised at this.
For he never did.
“As you wish, my king,” she murmured, pushing up from her hands on the desk and rising from his chair.
“Right,” he mumbled sullenly.
She moved to the door.
She also stopped at it and turned.
Quietly, she said, “I hope sometime in the future, be it far, or near, that you understand I did this because I love you.”
“Really?” he asked, not having moved from his position in front of his desk, but he no longer appeared sullen or cold.
He looked upon her with distaste.
And somehow, that wounded her most of all.
“Really,” she whispered.
She then turned, stepped out of his study, closed the door and looked to Bram.
She then gave the king’s order.
75
The Welcome
King Noctorno
The Maiden’s Breast Inn and Public House, Dunlyn, North Coast
AIREN
“Oy, oy,” the man behind the reception bench called the moment they walked over the threshold. “Wenches to the back.”
Tor looked to Lahn who was studying the man curiously.
Though “curious” for Lahn appeared threatening.
The man was either blind, or stupid, because he aimed his next directly to Lahn.
“And you, we don’t want any instigators. You don’t keep yourself to yourself and toe the line, you can go back to Firenze, but before that, you can get your arse out of here.”
After the innkeeper delivered that, Lahn slowly turned his head to Tor and lifted his brows.
“I said, wenches to the back!” the man shouted, as Cora and Circe moved to their men’s sides.
Tor’s gaze shifted back to the keep to see, within seconds, he’d shot from unfriendly to dangerously hostile.
Tor further felt his wife’s bemusement, her mood matching his.
He also sensed attention coming their way from their right, opposite where the inn’s reception was.
This being where the tables and bar of the pub were.
Tor looked that way.
Yes.
They had the attention of the entirety of the pub.
All of the patrons being men.
“You can send them to the back or you can get your lunch elsewhere,” the man warned.
Tor looked again at the innkeeper. “Send who to the back?”
“What’s the matter with you?” the man queried in return.
“Not a thing,” Tor answered.
The keep gave him a look up and down and demanded, “You Airenzian?”
“I’m Valerian,” Tor shared, deciding not to share he was the Valerian, that being that country’s king.
The man reared back, making an “oof” of surprise.
“Long way away for you,” he stated something Tor did not need reminding of as this was the first time his boots had hit solid ground since they left Korwahk weeks ago.
“Yes,” he agreed unnecessarily.
“How’d you make it through those bloody Mar-el pirates?” he asked.
Tor had no wish to enter into a discussion with him, so he simply said, “Luck.”
“Best know our ways, Valerian,” the man instructed. “Your women, if they travel with you, they enter at the back. They go straight to their rooms. And they stay there.”
“No.”
Oh shite.
That came from Lahn.
The innkeeper’s face went hard.
“Lahn, let’s go somewhere else,” Tor suggested.
“Won’t matter where you go, ’less you find one of them agitator’s places that’ll let you in,” the innkeeper advised. “Got our women locked down. We feel the cold winds blowin’. Not gon’ let some Nadirii put ideas in their heads.”
As they all processed this information, most of which none of them understood, some of it they didn’t want to understand, the innkeeper, and it would seem some patrons, became impatient.
There was shifting.
Tor went alert.
Lahn didn’t twitch.
“Best go, Valerian, and get your women outta here or they’ll be removed and so will you,” the keep warned.
“A man touches my queen, I’ll tear his arms from his body,” Lahn declared
.
Fuck.
The feel of the room worsened.
Significantly.
“Lahn,” Tor said.
“Let’s just go, baby,” Circe urged quietly.
Unfortunately, one of the patrons was positioning either to better watch the byplay, or to do something about it.
And his positioning took him closer to Circe, something she noted.
“I’d back off if I were you,” Circe advised him.
“I’d keep my fuckin’ trap shut if I were you,” the man sneered, and, after sweeping her up and down with his gaze, very stupidly finished, “whore.”
A moment later, his face was slammed into the wall, and after that, he was flying across the room.
Not careening.
Flying.
Bloody hell.
Lahn.
When the onslaught came, that being the rest of the patrons (and the innkeeper) on attack, Tor did not draw his sword.
He kept his wife close behind him and fought with his fists.
He was capable with fists.
Lahn was a monster.
The twenty-odd patrons (and innkeeper) were littering the floor, some moaning, all bleeding, most unconscious within ten minutes.
Fortunately, there were no arms torn from bodies.
Tor could not say there were no fractured limbs.
Tor and Cora, Lahn and Circe stood amongst the carnage.
Cora was looking at Circe.
“Well…hell,” she said.
“Mm-hmm,” Circe agreed.
Tor was looking at Lahn.
“That wasn’t much of a welcome,” Lahn noted.
“Agreed,” Tor replied.
“Maybe we should go back to the ship,” Cora suggested.
Tor thought there was no maybe about it.
They exited the inn and moved down the paved street, all four of them agreeing without words to abandon their idea to escape the ship and spend a night or two on land before continuing on to meet Frey and Apollo in Notting Thicket.
Tor was surprised.
He’d never been to Airen, and although the eastern shores were a wonder of black sand beaches that were breathtaking, the northern coast was made of stark, craggy black cliffs that were as welcoming as that innkeeper.
Nevertheless, the port city was a veritable marvel. He’d wished to study the tidy pavings of the streets, because he’d never seen anything so smooth. And the architecture was austere, but undeniably impressive.
The city seemed modern and was clearly advanced.
Its people were not.
“I think it’d be best if I send a man to have a conversation or two and find out what the fuck is going on,” Tor said to Lahn as they moved back to the dock. “Apparently, you look Firenz and that seems only slightly better than being female.”
“This is a good plan,” Lahn muttered.
People stared at them as they moved through the streets and it wasn’t simply because Lahn was enormous and wearing the native hide clothing of Korwahk, except with a long-sleeved leather shirt with a long, amber-yellow wool mantle that went to his heels at the back (usually, he wore no shirt and definitely no mantle for it rarely got cold in Korwahk).
On their return journey to their galleon, Tor noted that there were far more men on the streets than women.
And the women scurried along, heads bowed, and if on their way they approached a man on the pavements, they got out of the man’s way, not the other way around.
His queen noticed this too. He knew it when she got nearer to the point she was practically walking sideways. She tucked herself so close to him, she no longer held him around his elbow, but he was forced to slide his arm protectively along her shoulders.
“I don’t like it here,” she murmured.
“I don’t either, love,” Tor replied.
They made their ship and made their way up the gangway.
Bain, Lahn’s man, was the first they saw.
“Refresh supplies quickly. We leave in the morning,” he ordered.
“I thought we were staying a few days,” Bain said.
“This is no place for us.”
Bain took in his king’s face, then looked to Tor’s split knuckles and finally at the expressions the women were wearing.
Then he quickly prowled away.
“I’m going to get you a cold cloth for your hand,” Cora announced, gave him a squeeze, got up on her toes and kissed his jaw, and then she made haste in doing that.
She was shaken.
Tor felt his jaw harden, because he wasn’t fond of his Cora feeling shaken.
“I’m just going to go below. I don’t even want to look at that city,” Circe declared, shot Lahn a glare, he returned it with a scowl, definitely a husband and wife of one mind, and she followed Cora.
Tor turned to the railing and stared at the city that seemed to have been built of the black stone that covered the coast.
The structures might be extraordinary, but the overall sense was gloomy.
Lahn came up on his left side.
“I do not have a good feeling, my friend,” Lahn stated.
“I don’t either,” Tor replied.
The two kings studied the unwelcoming city.
If this was their first taste of Triton, neither were looking forward to what was to come.
76
The Pet
The Priest
Ancient Ritual Ground, Lesser Thicket Forest
WODELL
Finally, they were back on track.
They had the men.
The new recruit had been trained.
They’d retaken their vows.
They had the sacrifice.
They had the moon in the sky.
And tonight, the Beast would be appeased.
Their sacrifice was staked to the ground, and his nemesis, who was also, regrettably, his brother in their undertaking was undoing his trousers in order to use her when the ground shook.
The priest smiled.
He’d been missed.
So much so, the Beast couldn’t even wait for the offering to share his gladness to have his master back.
His smile began to fade as the quake didn’t stop and it was not the same as the last ones. It did not seem to shake the trees beyond, meaning it could be felt from sea to sea.
It was just there.
At the Ritual Ground.
More to the point, right where they were standing.
The moist dirt seemed to be breaking apart all around them.
He braced to run but got not that first step in as he cried out, the men also emitting shouts and grunts of surprise, the sacrifice screaming (again), and they all started falling.
Not sinking.
Falling.
But through the dirt.
As he dropped, the soil was all around his body and face, thus, he could not pull in breath for fear of getting a lung full of loam.
He tried to fight it, scratching and clawing at the dirt above him to cease falling and start climbing, but it only proved to take energy he needed to keep holding his breath.
The priest did not know if it was fortunate, or other, when he stopped dropping through the earth and seemed to be tumbling through air.
He gulped in a huge breath right before he landed in a heap on a hard floor.
“Not that one, he can go,” he heard a woman say.
Lifting a hand to his face, the priest brushed away dirt.
And then froze.
For they were in an underground chamber that seemed to be made of stone lit well by an abundance of torches on the walls.
And there was a fair-haired, ludicrously attractive and ridiculously well-built man approaching his nemesis who had landed about six feet from the priest.
His brother in the cause, but also his foe began to try to take his feet.
He did not make it before his body dropped to the ground.
Without its head.
That fell to the ground wh
ere the fair one tossed it unceremoniously.
The priest gulped down bile.
By the gods.
That man had torn a head from a body with his bare hands.
What was happening?
“Not that one either,” the female voice came again.
The priest started scooting away as the fair one approached their new recruit, who was scampering clumsily, making mewing noises of terror.
The fair man seemed unhurried, but he moved eerily swiftly.
The new recruit had his back to the priest when that…not a man, it had to be a creature, caught hold of him, again at the head.
Lifting him up by said head.
But he did not tear it from his body.
He twisted it so that his brother’s back was still to the priest, but a ghastly crunch sounded, and the recruit’s head was facing the priest at his back, eyes still filled with fear.
But now lifeless.
“Not him, or him,” the female voice said.
She was indicating the last two, and the priest sought to escape, when suddenly he froze again for the woman’s face was an inch from his.
“I don’t think so,” she whispered.
He daren’t move.
Vaguely, he saw she was attractive (he supposed). Voluptuous, but petite. Very thick chestnut hair. Brown eyes.
He heard a scream, a grunt and his eyes jerked in that direction.
One of his brothers had his throat torn out, the bloody gaping maw where it had been a vision of gore the sight of which made his innards shrink.
The other was lying on his side, but his vacant gaze sat above his chin that was resting on the back of his shoulder.
The creature did this in but seconds.
Barely a blink.
“There, there, dear,” the woman cooed, moving to the sniveling, scuttling offering who began cowering against the stone wall when she had the woman’s attention. “You’re safe. Come!” she called, and the girl they would have sacrificed that night jumped. “See to our new sister.”
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