Chapter Two

ALARIK’S FIST HIT the table with a meaty thud. A plate jumped from the wood, landed a little too far over, teetered, and fell.

The shattering of ceramic on the stone floor was met with uneasy silence.

“Leave us.”

Nothing.

“Leave us!”

The advisors jumped, before scrambling to gather their reports. The king was not unlike his late father—amiable when in the mood but quick to turn. And judging by the clenched, shaking fist on the table, the king had indeed turned. Janez, more than used to such moods, simply waited.

Only when the door closed behind the last stuttered, “Your Majesty,” did Alarik unclench his fist.

“This,” he said gravely, “is what happens when interest and bootlicking is permitted over merit. What business did Reiswitz have commanding a ship in the first place? The man was incapable of finding his backside with both hands if given instructions!”

Prince Janez shrugged. He was one of perhaps four people in the kingdom utterly unshaken by the king’s temper.

“A ship sunk, another captured, three hundred men lost to me. The guns won’t be replaced quickly or easily, and the men even less so. We’re pressing them as it is!”

Still, Janez said nothing.

“We’re running out of money, out of food, and out of men. There are rumours of mutiny as it is. I can only thank God that—so far—we’re evenly matched. But one alliance, Janez, one alliance—!”

Silence fell. The king breathed heavily, his palm flat on the wood.

The prince, very slowly, lifted his boots to rest on the seat of another chair and sat back.

The king’s eyes flicked up.

For a split second, rage thundered in that icy blue gaze—and then it died. It drifted away like a storm before a warm southerly breeze. Brushed away, and dissipated. Janez watched it fade as plain as any real storm out over the waves.

“Father would have known what to do,” Alarik said quietly and sank into his chair.

“Father isn’t here.”

Janez’s low assertion seemed to echo in the room, and both king and prince fell silent. Years had passed, and the wound still bled.

“Mother sends her love,” Janez continued. “She begs us both to be safe and sends music for Ingrid’s lessons. I gave her letters to Sofia on my arrival. They’ll be waiting for you when you retire.”

“I cannot. I have to—”

“The admiral will be dealing with the loss of the Held. The enemy were badly grazed, as well, and winter is coming. Likely this was the last action before the ice sets in. If it’s a savage one, they’ll be blocked in—and even if it isn’t, they’ll concentrate on feeding their own and not freezing to death in stranded ships on the sea. They always have. This is a demoralising blow. An action to startle, not to truly wound. A show of force.”

“A show that worked!”

“For now. They suffer winter worse than we do. While they shiver, we can strategise In the meantime, focus on rebuilding—both ships and safe harbours. Our answer lies in alliances—and you cannot forge an alliance tonight.”

“I can—”

“Tonight, you can do nothing. Rest. Kiss your children goodnight, and go to your wife. Make more children.”

A faint smile flickered on the king’s face.

“Tomorrow, wage war again. But a war cannot be won by a shattered king.”

Alarik finally leaned back from the great maps on the table, a dark mark in fresh ink picking out the spot where the Held had gone down. She’d been no great ship, little more than a sloop, and built in foreign harbours some forty years ago, but she’d been a stout sloop, a great weatherer of ice and enemy action. Janez had sailed in her, once or twice. He remembered her faults and fancies well.

Until Captain Reiswitz had set his incompetent boots on her boards, and she’d been set alight and sunk, with all hands aboard.

“I only thank God you were not with them,” Alarik said.

Janez said nothing.

Alarik fell quiet for a long moment, staring almost blindly at that inky stain—and then started as if woken from a dream.

“This is maudlin. And useless. A drink, brother?”

“Too kind.”

“Cut the formalities, Janez. We’re alone.”

“So I am speaking to my brother and not my king?” Janez asked, voice full of amusement as Alarik filled two cups with dark, sweet wine.

“Always, when we’re amongst none but family.”

“Then go to your family.”

“After a drink with one of them.”

Quite suddenly, Janez pulled a face, and then both men were laughing. The weight of a kingdom lay at the harbour below. The weight of a war snuffled at the closed door. But for a brief time, in the sputtering candlelight, they were merely brothers, children again, with little more worries than a common distaste for their music tutor.

“I’ve missed you,” Alarik said with undisguised fondness and slid a brimming cup across the table as he sank back into his chair.

“And I you,” Janez said, raising the cup. “To family.”

“To family,” Alarik said and lifted his own a little higher. “To brothers.”

“You are maudlin.”

“And you could have been on that ship—you were supposed to be.”

“I was?”

“Yes. When you returned from the Winter Palace, I had instructed the admiral to have you posted as first lieutenant, to attempt to curtail some of Reiswitz’s stupidity.”

“Well, then we ought to be grateful that Reiswitz’s stupidity is faster than two hundred miles by horse.”

“You rode?”

“Of course.”

“Alone?”

“I’m going to say no,” Janez said, “as I’m enjoying a drink with my brother and don’t wish my king to make one of his enraged appearances.”

Alarik shot him a foul look but subsided with a grumble, making his feelings well known on the matter.

“You’re a fool, Janez.”

“But a living one, and fully intending to eke out a few more years. In any case, it would have been a poor choice on your part.”

“Why?”

“You don’t remember the last time Captain Reiswitz and I were in the same room?”

Alarik’s face eased from its scowling countenance, and he laughed. “He thought you had propositioned his sister, and challenged you to a duel—”

“—so his sister dutifully took my pistol and shot him in the arm,” Janez finished with a crowing laugh, and rank and privilege were both forgotten as the men hooted like sailors in a tavern at the memory.

“And the look of horror on your face!”

“Any man who propositioned her most likely wound up dead– I wanted to ask if he thought me suicidal!”

“I’ve quite forgotten her name.”

“Catherine,” Janez supplied. “I saw her at the Winter Palace. Still as formidable as ever—and as forthright. Damned be the uniform and my standing, she hit me and then hugged me.”

“What did you do to deserve that?”

“Oh, breathed, I imagine. She did insist on drinking to the health of every man, woman, and child in the kingdom—and individually, too. After such a greeting, I couldn’t begrudge her a moment of it.”

“I do sympathise,” Alarik said, reaching over to top up Janez’s cup. “I find the urge to hit you quite strong, sometimes. Perhaps I ought to change the laws and have the lady knighted.”

“You never hug me.”

“Would you let me?”

Janez laughed. “That would depend, dear brother. Often, if you’re kind to me, you have some plan in mind.”

“Now, you know that isn’t true…”

“No, of course not—which reminds me, what price the wine?”

Alarik chuckled, called his younger brother suspicious, and sat back. His shoulders were easing, Janez noted with a smile. The king had slipped away, and the exasperated brother, so easy to aggravate, had returned full-force.

“Your silence?”

“I think not,” Janez said, raising his cup with a smirk.

“I take it that now you are back, I won’t be able to keep you from the ships any longer?”

Ah. Perhaps the king was indeed still in the room.

“People will talk if you try.”

“People will talk regardless.”

“I should go. You need a presence on those ships. The men can’t fight your war for you, without—”

“Without the knowledge that I, too, may lose something.”

“Yes.”

Alarik pursed his lips but didn’t argue the point.

“Fine,” he said eventually, “but no damned heroics, Janez. You’re right—an alliance is our best hope for a swift resolution. They would not wage war with a united coast.”

“You’ll never get—”

“Let me worry about who I can and cannot sway to our side. You forget,” Alarik said, levelling a look much like Father’s stern eye at Janez, “that you are still considered something of an eligible—”

Janez hesitated, biting back the curse. Alarik knew very well the reasons why Janez was considered an eligible bachelor. And he ought to know better than to wield them.

But he wished to speak with his brother, and not with maudlin kings, so Janez wrenched a smile into place and crudely said,

“One bastard child, and the world suddenly thinks you have the dimensions of a dockyard donkey.”

Alarik laughed.

“The truth need not be known until after such an alliance.”

“Very cruel. The poor lady, to be saddled with me.”

“The poor kingdom, to have you for a potential ruler.”

Janez objected, and Alarik insisted, and they cackled together like children a little longer, before Janez broke off to yawn heavily. Too heavily. He eyed the cup suspiciously, and set it down.

“Alarik.”

“You looked tired. I’m surprised Sofia didn’t try the same.”

“If I could damn you both without being taken for a traitor—”

“Please,” Alarik said evenly, leaning back with a fond smile. “You damn us both half a dozen times a day, and nobody’s thrown you in the dungeons yet.”

“There’s still time,” Janez grumbled, yawning widely again. “Last time I drink alone with you, brother.”

“You’re a wicked liar,” Alarik said, “and none too good at threats. Come. You’ll sleep in the royal chambers tonight.”

Janez staggered when he rose, and the slide of the king’s arm under his felt oddly reminiscent of their younger days when Father had permitted them to discover wine and women. Janez had never been much for the women, not since Greta, but the wine—ah, the wine…

“The next toast I shall utter—” he said determinedly as they passed from the room. A sentry caught at his other arm to lift him. By the man’s unperturbed amusement, he was plainly sly to the king’s plot.

“The next toast, Janez, can be whatever you wish,” Alarik said in that maddening, benevolent tone. “But for once, you can do as you’re told.”

“By whom?”

“Well, if you must know, it was Sofia’s idea.”

“Ah, well, for Sofia—”

“I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I were you.”

The royal chambers were not far, but Janez was a heavy man, a veritable pile of muscle and bone. They struggled with him to the cushioned seats under the great window of the sitting room. The sentry was dismissed, and Janez heard the familiar sounds of a father—albeit one with a crown about his temples—checking on his children.

Then a blanket settled over Janez’s exhausted form, and the low light of the candles was snuffed out.

Janez sighed and took his own advice, sagging into the dark, warm hold of sleep.

The ships, the sea, the war and world, would wait a while longer.