“To which I reply… this!” He turned toward the closed door Mother Northwind had assumed led to the Prince’s quarters. It swung open…
… and Prince Karl, in full Royal finery, limping a little but otherwise apparently unharmed, stepped into the room.
The Councillors surged to their feet. Mother Northwind did not. She felt as though she’d been slapped. She glared at Falk, and saw him looking straight at her. The bastard, she thought. Making a point that he knows a few things I don’t. Putting me in my place.
She couldn’t stay seated while the Prince made his way to his chair at the far end of the table. Protocol and prudence alike dictated that she climb to her feet. And so she did, while the Councillors applauded-actually applauded!-Prince Karl as he limped to his place.
Verdsmitt gave you a few pointers on stage-managing this, didn’t he, Falk? she thought.
Once the Prince sat down, Falk gestured for the others to do likewise, but he wasn’t done yet. “My Lords and Ladies, Prince Karl was rescued from the Common Cause thugs holding him prisoner near Quillhill early this morning. We have captured the woman who ran what proved to be a quite substantial hideout and staging area for the Cause, and are questioning her.
“But that is not the only good news I have to share with you this evening. For obvious reasons I have not made it widely known, though some of you may have heard rumors, but my young ward, Brenna, whom many of you have met on her annual visits to the Palace, was also kidnapped… kidnapped from my manor and taken cross- country to the Great Lake, where she was temporarily held by savages. They sold her to the Common Cause, who perhaps hoped to blackmail me in some fashion. Fortunately, a Mounted Ranger spotted them, and she, too, has been rescued.
“She will not be joining us this evening, as she recovers from her ordeal, but it is also her return to my love and care that I wish to celebrate tonight.” He paused and looked around the table, smiling a smile Mother Northwind dearly wished she could personally rip from his face. “There is one more exciting development to report, but for that, I will wait until tomorrow morning’s formal meeting. For now, let us eat and drink and enjoy ourselves in celebration of the safe return of both the Prince and my dear ward Brenna. Lords and Ladies, Mother Northwind, I give you a toast: Prince Karl!”
“Prince Karl!” the Councillors said, and then began talking in much more animated voices than before while the servants brought the onion soup.
It smelled wonderful, and Mother Northwind had eaten little all day, but after what she had just heard, she wanted nothing to do with it. Lord Falk continued to watch her, however, and so she forced herself to eat it, every spoonful, though each one tasted like sawdust, and slid down her throat and rested in her stomach like lead.
Karl ate mechanically, mouthed pleasantries to the Councillors, smiled, and felt dead and confused inside. Was it all over, then? Had everything that had begun with the assassination attempt by the lake boiled down to those few moments of bloody terror at Goodwife Beth’s farm? The Common Cause, or at least their mysterious Patron, had at first wanted him dead. Then, fortunately, they had decided he might have some value alive after he obligingly handed himself over to them.
But now, just like that, he was back in the Palace. Goodwife Beth was in prison. Most of those who had held him were dead. And it sounded like Davydd Verdsmitt himself had pulled in his claws and was rubbing up against Falk like a house cat, purring and mewling for scraps from the MageLord’s table.
His own vehemence surprised him. The Cause was his enemy, and now it had been removed. He had been returned to his former life of indolence and indulgence, awaiting the sad demise of his father some unguessable number of years in the future. He should be pleased; hell, he should be ecstatic.
And yet… the people he’d met in the Cause had seemed more real, more alive, more important, in fact, than the lords and ladies at table with him.
Except… her. He gazed down the length of the table at the strange old woman seated at Falk’s left hand, across from Lord Athol (who had hurried down to offer his unctuous welcome as soon as the toast was finished). “Mother Northwind,” Falk had called her, some backcountry Healer from near his manor. He had offered no explanation as to why she was invited, when the First Healer himself had not been. But the dark eyes that peered back at him on either side of the prominent, blade-sharp nose did not seem to match the bent and wizened exterior. They did not look like the eyes of an old woman, they looked like the eyes of a hawk that had seen its prey, and Karl found himself profoundly uncomfortable under that gaze.
The other person notable by his absence was the First Mage, Tagaza. Karl wondered about that, and when Falk got up from his place at Karl’s right side to have a word with the head server, Karl leaned over to Lord Athol, seated at his left, and said in a low voice, “Lord Athol, where is Tagaza? Surely the First Mage should be here.”
Athol’s eyes widened. “Did you not hear, Your Highness?” he said, and perhaps he had had one too many glasses of wine, for his voice was loud enough that heads turned to look at him-including Falk. “The First Mage is dead. When the Common Cause sabotaged the MageFurnace, the spell he was attempting went fatally awry.”
Karl stared at him, shocked. Tagaza, dead? But-“What kind of spell?” he said. “What sabotage?” He felt anger rising in him, and turned his head toward Falk, now striding back in his direction. “Lord Falk, why was I not informed of these developments?”
“Your Highness,” said Falk, “you have barely been returned to us after a traumatic experience. I did not wish to trouble-”
“But I wish to be troubled, Falk,” Karl said, his voice rising. “I wish to be troubled with the affairs of the Kingdom I will one day rule!” He slammed his fist down onto the table. “You will not treat me like a child, my lord. You will treat me like the Prince and Heir I am, or when I am King, I assure you, you will no longer be Minister of Public Safety!”
All the Councillors were staring at him, almost comically frozen in place by his outburst. Mother Northwind’s expression remained unreadable. Nor was she watching him: she was watching Falk, and a moment later, every head turned in his direction as the Councillors awaited his response. They’re all terrified of him, Karl thought. He probably knows things about all of them that would prove embarrassing or worse if he released them. They will never support his ouster, if it really comes to that.
But at that moment, Karl didn’t care-didn’t care that all the careful political instruction Tagaza had given him over the years told him he was being a fool. He had been attacked, kidnapped, imprisoned, and almost killed by one of his own guards. Either he was the Prince, or he wasn’t: and if he was, then it was about damn time he acted like it.
Falk’s face was doing a very credible imitation of a thunderstorm. “Your Highness, this is neither the time nor the-”
“Then we will discuss it immediately following this dinner, Lord Falk,” Karl said with all the hauteur he could manage. “We will discuss it in detail. I want to know everything that has happened since I was kidnapped. I have heard some of what you have done in the Commons, and I have many questions about that, as well: such as how you expect me to rule a kingdom you seem determined to plunge into civil war, Mageborn against Commoners.” He gave Falk his coldest stare, though his heart was racing in his chest and he knew if he took his hands off the table they would be trembling. “I hope you have answers.” And then he turned his head away from Falk to Lord Athol, and said, “And how has the ice-fishing been this winter, my lord?”
It had to be his imagination, but he could almost swear he felt Falk’s gaze burning into him like a pair of hot pokers.
CHAPTER 22
Anton knew Mother Northwind had done something terrible to him the first time they met, and he knew Brenna thought Lord Falk wanted Mother Northwind to do something more terrible yet, but though he was getting better at accepting the impossible things he saw everywhere around him in this strange country, the notion that someone could reach inside his brain and change everything he believed was so far outside his experience that he couldn’t take the threat as seriously as Brenna obviously wanted him to.
Like her, he had been shocked when High Raven handed them over to the Commoners who had come north
