Chapter Seventeen

 

 

Aren found Url hiding in the library. As the man was literally peering around a shelf, she suspected he was actually hiding. The library seemed an odd place for him to be, considering he was almost always everywhere else.

“What are you doing?” she asked, causing him to leap into the air and spin to glare at her. She smiled in response. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were peeping on bathing women. There are not women bathing in my library, are there?”

“What?” Url asked, red colouring his face. “No, no one is bathing. There’s a healer over there. Av’s speaking with her. She’s… something’s wrong with her.”

She opened her senses to the world around her. It was difficult, but she was able to see the healer and feel the woman’s annoyance and brittle anger. Underneath it all was a strong core, which suggested the possibility of so much more than whatever the woman appeared to be.

Closing off her senses, Aren looked at Url, who was staring at her with an open mouth and raised eyebrows.

“Is something the matter?” she asked him.

“You just—but you’re. But you just…”

“Oh, right, have to unwind to open to the world.” She scratched the back of her head and watched as Url babbled to himself. “Av only went a funny sort of colour. I wanted to talk to you about something and I can’t have you stuttering on like some love-struck fool.”

“I’m not in love with the idea of that, I’m afraid of it,” the warrior managed to get out.

“Why would you be afraid of me?” she asked.

“Not of you, of that,” Url said, motioning to the air around Aren. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like you’ve got an entire lifetime of magic caught up in that net of yours, and that can’t be healthy.”

“I’m perfectly healthy. The healers said as much, and they check often enough,” she muttered. “I think you just feel displaced from what you saw of me before, and what you’re seeing now, because the two images are entirely different things and that you just need to accept that this is who I really am.”

“Have you been talking to—”

“No, I learned that over the winter,” she said quickly. “I came to see you for a reason, Lord Url.”

“What sort of reason?” Url asked, shifting so that his side was towards her, giving her a smaller target.

“I suppose I should start with asking if I should call you high lord?” Aren said. “No one has told me the proper way of it.”

“No, lord is fine, but in my case it’s usually best to let me know that this is that sort of discussion because I am heir to the North as well as high lord.”

“Is that really legal?” she asked.

“Goodness, no!” Url said. “But when my grandfather died two years ago, Lady Em was distracted or didn’t actually look at the command she sent, which you have to do for each heir, saying that I would succeed my grandfather because Heaven forbid a woman take the title. And that’s what she said. In a letter to my mother. I was a little surprised my mother didn’t come down and do the deed herself.”

“The position of high lord...What does that mean to me, specifically?”

“I am your ambassador—wait, you may not know that word.” Url thought for a moment. “You are aware that the high lords are an open invitation for the lands to return to palace lands? That each was founded by those who ruled in the throne’s stead in those areas, yes?”

“I was made aware of that, yes.”

Url motioned, meaning to lead Aren on a walk. She turned and followed his lead, leaving the library to wander the hallways of the palace. Wena, waiting by the library door after returning a book, joined them silently.

“A high lord is in your best interest, also in our own. When a land rejoins, I become the ruler, which is why my being both high lord and possible baron is technically illegal, but no one has protested yet. As you know, my position is quite unstable as it is.”

“You are, of course, referring to your grandfather’s bastard,” she said.

“Yes, were the lad to discover his heritage, we would—both you and I—be in a great deal of trouble. The North would likely rejoin, I might even come away from it alive, but there would likely be demands. It is difficult to tell when this sort of thing comes up, just what the reaction will be.”

“Is it the best interest of the other lords as well?” she asked.

“Of the West and South it is. I’ve written letters to both, and they seem loyal enough,” Url said. “The East, however, has mated his children to that of the baron's on and off for generations. Every four or so, I believe, and there’s another possible mating between the two shortly. I’ve even heard word that Gamen’s eldest son, no more than fifteen, is said to be bound in a first-year mating with the high lord’s second eldest.”

“But that would mean the high lord’s second eldest is a queen, unless Gamen’s eldest is not to inherit?”

“They breed true, those coastal ranks,” Url said. “Though the boy’s younger brother’s children would inherit.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Aren asked.

“The… the high lord’s second eldest is a boy of sixteen.”

Aren felt her face heat up. She lowered her eyes and tried not to think of what that meant.

“There, at least, is a warrior who knows what to do with the male of your rank,” Url grumbled. “They’re just… confusing to me. All prickle and no softness.”

“I suppose I should also ask about trade,” she said, deciding to change the subject.

“Trade is good, it's good,” Url said with a nod. “Marilton wool, which is how my bloodline makes a majority of the coin that pays for our income, is doing quite well, trading with the South even, for it is remarkably soft but is warm and yet cool when necessary. The South spins it into thin fibres and it takes dye well, though I suppose all wool takes dye about the same. I learned what a baron would need and just enough to understand when I was being taken advantage of when it came to wool.”

“But the North is poor,” she said. “My... Lady Para, she mentioned something to me once about how the North was poor, with very little in the way of coin.”

“That is true, but only because we rarely deal with coin,” he said gravely. “The rest of the world assumes we are poor because we cannot buy your trinkets, but we have trinkets of our own and they cost us no more than an egg or another trinket. We barter, rather than purchase. It is a system that has worked for generations and is difficult to counterfeit.”

“Is there anything else I should know?” she asked, pulling to a stop in front of the queen's rooms.

“A hundred things,” Url said, then caught himself. “When it comes to the high lords, while they tend to be honourable, they are just the same as any other lord. They can be petty and hateful. Some might have complaint against myself and my position, but, once it is writ, a high lord takes his position for life. Just as the one who takes the throne is for life. In order to make them content for a moment you would have to take my life.”

“And you have no complaints about them?”

Url shrugged. “The high lord of the South has said he will slap me if ever we were to meet. From my understanding of his reputation, he will. He decided that repercussions must be felt for Lady Em's mistake of writing the command that made me high lord. It is my understanding that he is a warrior also, but I feel I can hold my own.

“While I question the high lord of the East's loyalty, there is no doubting his honour. He is a commoner raised among the ranks of the coast. He's lived the hard life on the fishing boats and, from what he spoke to me in letters, has visited other lands. That makes him a well-travelled man, but I do not know how learned he is. He could be quite clever. I do know Gamen trusts the man with his life.

“As to the high lord of the West, well, the man is not loyal to Van, so I doubt he would be to the palace either. He serves only himself and rarely speaks with the rest of us. His focus and concern is not aligning the West with palace lands, but keeping himself stable enough to get through to finding a mate and conceiving a child.

“The other high lords have been about as successful at bringing the lands back to the throne as one might be in drawing blood from a stone. Which is to say not at all. In the West he has actually managed to drive the wedge deeper, or at least his bloodline has. To the East, well, their loyalty lies in the baron. Why align what they already enjoy? The South was hesitant to leave in the first place. Replacing the high lord almost a decade ago drove them further from the throne.

“Of all the lands, the South is the biggest threat. You are soon to be mated and their lord has yet to arrive. Their baron is not here either. There’s been no word from him, when I know for a fact that my father begged him to arrive with the others, to stand as one with them. He sent an open invitation to a commoner to stand with warriors and the man simply refused to answer. That, Lady Aren, is an insult bordering on declaration of war. It is a slight that, if you do not see to, will mean war because I'll be damned if I let some commoner act as if he is better than the ranks who have carried him on their backs his entire life.”

“I believe that last bit was going a bit too far,” Aren said. “If the South declares war on the North, it is none of our concern. You are a land apart, after all.”

“And if the North were to submit to you?” Url asked, shuddering slightly.

“If the mere suggestion of submitting makes you shudder, how can you expect to actually surrender?” she asked.

“That was not a bad shudder,” he said, pressing a hand into his stomach. “But the question remains unanswered, Lady Aren. If the North were to submit to you and the South then declared war? Or, alternatively, if the South were to declare war and then the North surrendered?”

“I suppose I should say that if you end up in a war and then submit, it's your own problem,” she said with a smile. “After all, what would be the purpose of joining us sooner unless you were in trouble?

“But in reality, I do believe I would only have to look at the roads to find my answer, wouldn't I? Lord Merkat uses the road outside of Bilgern Vineyard to come to the palace. That road goes by various names, but it leads straight to the North, doesn't it?”

“It does, yes.”

“Now, I am no warrior, but does an army not march through the most direct route?”

“That would be the best way about it, as there would be fewer days march, which takes less resources, which is less costly.”

“But how would the South march through palace lands without permission?” she asked. “Surely something stops your lands from overrunning us. That means he would either have to barter with me, or attempt to make me submit.”

Url bared his teeth and growled.

“It gladdens me that you dislike that idea,” she said with a smile. “But in the end, Lord Url, we are left with the real, but slightly different question. If the South marches to war on palace lands, whatever shall the North do to stop it? One of your blood will sit beside me. Would that be the deciding factor? Or would it be Mirmae? For the lady is a decade passed now and yet her name echoes on the lips of ranks still.”

“If the South takes palace lands, they will not stop there. The North would stand.”

“Can you guarantee it?”

“With my life, Lady Aren,” Url said. “As much as the other lands snivel and whine about palace lands being a bully, were you to actually invite us to participate in your war, there are a great many of us who would answer your call. If only for the chance to bleed for a queen. We are warriors, after all, and this past generation has seen very little in the way of fighting. None alive recall the last skirmishes.”

“Except for Telm—she recalls a few.”

“But... she's Ervam's age.”

“Lord Url, I do believe you need to have a talk with your mother.”