A buzz of collected mutters and whispers swept through the crowd like ripples on a pond. People no longer pretended to look elsewhere. Everyone faced my guard. “However, my companions and I have been asked by Archbishop Vyne to aid him in verifying the rightful heir, and it is a task we have accepted.”
I watched the crowd with their innumerable reflections to see if any of them might betray themselves. I’d assumed it to be a scant hope. If any of them were scheming for the throne, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to let their objection to Bolt’s announcement show, but waves of displeasure washed over the crowd like clouds drifting in front of the sun. Mutters of disapproval built into an angry buzz that reflected from the walls with almost as much clarity as their likenesses and a few of the closest went so far as to show their backs to us.
I leaned toward my guard so that no one else could hear me. “I don’t understand.”
He shook his head. “By having me decline the regency while verifying the ascension, Vyne just removed the last fiction that the church and the throne were separate.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. In Bunard the priests always test for the gift of kings when the throne comes to another. I should know. I killed a man who’d stolen enough of the gifts to pass the test and take the throne.”
Bolt nodded. “The Errants performed the same function here. The difference is that I just placed myself under Vyne’s authority in that process.” Disapproval had created an open circle of space around us, but he checked to make sure no one was within hearing anyway. “The Errants were much like the Vigil, birthed from the church, but autonomous. The crowd would have preferred me to say that I would use my power to ensure the selection is correct.”
I nodded. “That way, you would have been seen as an outsider, there to make sure the church didn’t place a pretender on the throne. Now, they think you’re part of a plot.” I thought about that for a moment. “Is Vyne so mistrusted, then?”
The last Errant shrugged. “Who in power isn’t?”
“Lai—” I stopped. Laidir had been the best king I could imagine, but even so, nearly half his nobles had objected to his authority.
“Exactly,” Bolt said.
“Why say it that way, then?” I asked as I waved my arm at the crowd. “They despise you now.”
“Because if I hadn’t, they’d keep pestering me to take the regency. This will make our job easier.”
“Oh yes, the job is always easier when people hate you and are trying to kill you.”
“Humph. You really should do something about that sarcastic streak.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Gael emerged from a knot of nobles and their wavering reflections to step across the isolation and join us. “You certainly know how to charm a crowd.”
Bolt’s eyes narrowed. “‘Better the wounds of a friend than the kisses of an enemy,’” he quoted. “They’ll thank me later, when the rightful heir sits the throne.”
Nice as that sounded, I’d seen enough of human nature to know it wasn’t true. “No, they won’t.”
He nodded. “You’re right, they won’t, but it sounds good.” He pivoted on one heel and made for the west end of the hall, where Queen Chora had held court. On a raised dais stood a throne of dark polished wood gilded with silver and gold. The jeweled headpiece, a gull perched on an oak branch, symbolized the sea and the land from which Aille drew its vast wealth. The throne sat empty, but the chairs flanking it weren’t.
Two men more different would be hard to describe. One, perhaps a score and five, sat alone in the left-hand chair with the fixed scowl of a man wishing for an offense. Muscled, he could have passed for a soldier but for the silver and gold thread that adorned his tunic and hose of rich green.
Bolt sighed. “Prince Maenelic,” he said. “Delve him if you can do it without being obvious,” he muttered.
I couldn’t see anything particularly menacing about the prince, other than the fact that he was a noble who outranked me and appeared to be in foul humor—a circumstance with which I had more than passing familiarity. “Why?” I asked.
“Because by now the entire nobility of Cynestol knows the gift of kings must have passed to someone else,” Bolt said. “His presence here is a needless exercise in humiliation. It would be interesting to know what motivates him to endure it.”
“Alright.” I nodded to the other chair, where a Merum bishop sat surveying the crowd with scarcely concealed amusement. Four uniformed cosp stood watch, guarding him. The dichotomy between the bishop and the prince was stark, to say the least. “What about him?”
“Bishop Gehata,” Bolt said. “He’s the Merum advisor to the throne. The death of Queen Chora means he’s Archbishop Vyne’s fulcrum. That makes him the second most powerful man in Aille, just after the Archbishop.”
Younger than I expected, the bishop surveyed the crowd, his lips curled in condescension. My elevation to the nobility in Collum had given me the opportunity to meet any number of men who’d been born into wealth. Most of them had learned very quickly how to carry themselves as if they deserved it. Gehata could have been the man who gave them lessons. “He makes Duke Orlan look almost humble.”
“Lineage is far more complicated in Aille,” Bolt said. “Their habit of getting divorced and remarried turns all the family trees into one giant hedge, but his sits very close to the top.”
I trailed Bolt and copied his bow to Prince Maenelic, making sure to go a bit deeper on mine
