The king dropped the parchment. It swooped to the table and slid along the surface, coming to a rest near Lord Thius’ left hand. “So, my lords, unless you have an idea for a royal navy that can protect our ships from ice, I suggest we scratch this particular demand. I would be willing to add a few ships to the harbor guard here in Etares and expand their patrol range to cover most of the Furnier Sea, and add a few ships at Ardia, Ostgard, and Narne to patrol the rivers.”
“That would be . . . satisfactory,” Thius allowed, wringing his hands agitatedly. Garenes was scowling beside him. Clearly, the meeting had not gone as well as the great lord had hoped.
“Now, before we all return to our normal business, there was another matter I wanted to discuss,” the king said, his voice dropping ominously. Relam looked up in surprise, wondering what his father was up to. They had covered the demands with surprising success and were at the point of dismissing the lords. What else was there to do?
“How can you possibly accuse me of negligence?” the king demanded. “Last week was the first time I had seen any of these demands, and today they have all been addressed, one week later, and in a more than satisfactory manner.”
“Well,” Lord Thius blustered. “You see, these have been ongoing problems-”
“Then why have they not been brought to my attention before?” the king demanded, his voice rising. “If you want to accuse me of negligence, you better have a recurring pattern of me ignoring problems brought to my attention. Otherwise you, my lords, will end up on the losing side. As you have today.”
Lord Thius opened his mouth to say something else, but the king held up his hand. “Don’t,” he said fiercely. “You’ve already lost. Don’t make it worse.”
Thius closed his mouth and looked down at his sheet of demands. He swallowed hard, then stood and bowed gravely. “Thank you for your time, your majesty,” he said with all the politeness that could be mustered. “We thank you for your . . . cooperation.”
The Head of the Assembly pushed back his chair and swept towards the door, gesturing for the other lords to follow. After a moment’s hesitation, they did, Garenes standing so quickly he knocked his chair over. Without bothering to right it, he swept from the room.
When the last lord had left, Narin entered the council room, quietly closing the doors behind him. “What did you do to them, your majesty?” he asked, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “I’ve never seen a great lord look meek before, but I could swear I just saw such an expression on each of their faces!”
“Even Garenes?” Relam asked.
Narin shook his head. “Not really, he looked furious. I didn’t know a human face could turn that color honestly. I assume this is where he sat?” the guard commander added, straightening the fallen chair.
“Yes,” Relam said, glancing at his father. “How did you do that? You reduced them to absolutely nothing and then finished them off!”
“It takes practice,” his father replied. “But that is how to deal with the Assembly. Seize the initiative, keep them off balance, send them packing. Run the meeting on your own terms, your own scheduling.”
“They never seem to catch on somehow,” Clemon said thoughtfully, looking around the nearly empty council room. “They did seem a little disorganized today though.”
“Yes, and not at all confident,” the king added, frowning. “Usually it’s not that easy.”
“To be fair, many of their claims were spurious,” Clemon continued warming to his theme. “I’m really not sure what they expected. When you consider-”
“We can analyze it later,” the king said, silencing Clemon temporarily.
Relam breathed out a sigh of relief and stood, stretching. “That was certainly more interesting than I expected,” he admitted. “Do you think anything will come of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“The river, the west side of Etares, the navy-”
“The navy certainly,” his father replied. “That’s something I can take care of in an hour. The river and the poorer section of the city will take more time and a good deal of cooperation from the Assembly.”
“So, no chance?” Relam guessed.
“That’s not an entirely accurate assessment of the Assembly’s decision-making ability, your highness, but a fair one,” Clemon agreed despondently. “The Council is mostly talk, no action. That’s why I was so agitated the other day when I found out they actually followed through on delivering demands.”
“And look how well that turned out,” Relam said drily. “You’ve probably discouraged the Assembly from ever acting again, father.”
Chapter 20
A year passed. Summer turned to fall, and fall to winter. The streets of Etares became thick with dead and decaying leaves, and the distant Midwood appeared not as a verdant green tangle of growth but as a gray, twisted, and haunted land. The weather turned cold and hard, the skies alternately showering ice and snow on the capital city. A thin skin of ice formed on the Furnier River and along the edges of the harbor, and workers were hired to break the buildups with long poles so that ships could pass. Through the dreary season, the royal family suffered from a near-constant stream of illnesses and minor colds. Relam’s mother took the brunt of it, fragile as she was, staying in her room all day for most of the winter. When she was not in bed, she sat in front of a raging fire in the main room, wrapped in blankets but still shivering, a vacant look in her dulled eyes.
Finally,
