LYELL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alther dropped to a knee, beseeching. “You mustn’t!”

At last Lyell had been stirred to real emotion, if only from his son’s pathetic groveling. “You dare command me? Your father? Your king?” The words exploded out of him and reverberated throughout the room. The guards dragging Stephon paused to hear whether their king required more urgent action. Lyell let the words echo as Alther lowered his eyes in obedience.

Stephon looked a mess as the guards held him, his foil still in hand. He had been transformed from a pompous brat to a blinking, sweating, stunned idiot—the type Lyell was accustomed to dealing with. My father would have drowned this one long ago, thought Lyell.

Lyell peered at the dumbstruck Stephon. “Your beheading will be a mercy. Have you ever seen a man killed by impalement? Or by a mage’s fire? I would not have blamed Derudin if he’d turned you into a pile of smoldering ash where you stood.”

Though Stephon seemed to be staring at something behind the king, Lyell’s eyes never moved from his mark. “Raise the levies you say? Your father has already done as much—twice now, I believe. He drives all the business he can away from his ports and to the East.” Cassen may be a cockless fruit of a man, but he might make a better heir. How have I failed my son so thoroughly in his rearing?

“Worse yet, the levies are but a pittance of our kingdom’s income. The wolf’s share is made through the spice trade that we alone control, and your father has managed to allow his merchants to repeatedly increase the cost of shipment to his ports, which, if I am not mistaken, are the same distance by sea from the Spicelands as have they always been.

“It is perhaps my greatest regret…” Lyell looked for a moment at his son before returning his glare to Stephon, repressing the urge to make an internal quip about his true greatest regret. “…That Adella managed to throw herself from atop her tower before I could capture her. She would have made a fine prop to unite our two peoples, the river and the delta. Not to mention a fine addition to the comforts of my bedchambers.”

Stephon looked like he might piss himself at any moment, but Lyell believed his words were being heard. “We had agreed before the war, Queen Adella and I, that your father and Crella would be married. There would be peace between our kingdoms eternal, without need of the silly wall. But when Adella got a look at your father, she changed her mind; said her little niece was far too fair for a ‘Northerner’ such as him. That cunt. Too fair for the likes of my son? Crella? That slut of a girl with her bastard daughter and the audacity still to call herself a princess?” The recollection of the insult burned at him, and Lyell raised his voice and turned to Alther. “I took this kingdom to preserve our family’s honor, to preserve your honor.”

Alther remained where he was, refusing to meet his father’s stare. It is his mind that is weak, Lyell lamented. The secondborn always lacks a certain fortitude. Lyell neglected to mention that Crella had first been promised to Alther’s older brother, but that was a fact that only served to further roil him. Edwin was easily the more comely of the two, taller and with the boyish features that girls of Crella’s age seemed to prefer, and that he was the realm’s best horseman only added to his charms. Upon learning that his father intended to marry him to the foreign princess, however, Edwin renounced his claim as heir, thus eliminating the possibility that Adella would allow the marriage to take place. It was a scandal that Lyell was happy to forget, and he focused instead on her later rejection of Alther. Nonetheless, Lyell was furious at Edwin for the embarrassment, and it was some time before the two reconciled and Edwin received his lordship of Strahl.

“Perhaps I was wrong to have given Crella to you after the war,” Lyell continued, “in the hope that it would help you regain respect and allow you to garner the support of the Adeltians that you now so poorly rule. Young though she was, she would have made a fine addition to my bedchambers as well.” Lyell allowed himself to drift in thought for a moment. “Perhaps it is not too late for that, should you continue to disappoint me.”

Lyell gave Alther time to ruminate and was amused to see Stephon had the wherewithal to gape at what he’d said.

“Release the boy.” Lyell’s guards complied with haste. Stephon stood there dumbfounded until he finally dropped his foil to the ground as if he were afraid the action of sheathing it might earn him a second sentencing.

“You think I fear a boy with a stick?” Lyell gestured with his wrist mocking the fencing maneuvers. “Let this be a lesson on how quickly your life can come to an end out of ignorance. You may have slain a baker’s boy, but faced with a hundred such boys, you would be overrun with your eyes clawed out. Which is surely what would happen in time, were the city placed under such oblivious governance.”

The insult seemed to sober the prideful boy. He made no move to pick up his foil, but he frowned, smoothed his tunic, and walked cautiously back to his father’s side.

“As your king, I command you, Alther, to take your insolent child and Adeltian bitch with you to live in Westport where you belong. Should you fail to fix the state of the city, I will make good on my promise to take from you your responsibilities. All your responsibilities.”

Stephon looked as though he was about to speak, but anticipating his reaction, Alther swung with force, connecting the back of his hand with his son’s jaw. As Stephon fell to the ground clutching his face in pain with a feebleness not befitting a boy his age, so did Alther drop again to one knee before his king. “As you command, Father.”

Lyell was unmoved. I fear it is not enough…and not in time.