“Spying. Most of the Andovan ships at port-including the envoy from the Court-left at the next tide, holds packed with passengers. The next day, King Stephan had any remaining Andovan ships at the docks boarded, the crews arrested, and everything in their holds confiscated.” Dharel hesitated, then added, “All the captains of the ships were hung, their ships taken into the middle of the inlet and burned.”
A few of the Alvritshai nodded in respect. Colin remembered Eraeth’s demand that they kill the men he’d caught in the street and the obvious Alvritshai disdain for the human concept of a judge. He didn’t know what all of the factors at play here were, but he shuddered at the image of the gallows that appeared in his head, complete with the gut-wrenching stench of piss and shit.
“What did the Andovans say to the King?” Aeren asked. “What set off all of this… rage?”
Dharel grimaced. “They want the Provinces back. They want to reclaim the land they lost while they were fighting their Feud for the last sixty years. The representatives on the ships were here to demand that the King hand those lands back to the Court. Immediately.”
Aeren didn’t move. His expression remained flat and unreadable.
Eraeth frowned. “What does this mean?”
Aeren paced slowly away from them, then turned back, a troubled look flickering through his eyes, there and then gone. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it means for what I intend, and I don’t know what it means for the Alvritshai. I have never been able to predict the human Kings, even after nearly sixty years of careful study.”
He turned to Colin. “What do you think it means? What do you think the King will do?”
Colin almost snorted, then thought about Portstown and Lean-to, about the tensions that existed even then between Andover and the group of conscripts, criminals, and guildsmen that would become the Provinces. “He’ll fight them to keep the coast. And the Legion will back him up. I think the entire coast will back him.”
Eraeth swore in Alvritshai under his breath. “It seems this coast is made for war,” he said to Aeren.
“The plains as well,” the lord answered.
Colin shifted. “What are you here for? Why did you come to Corsair?”
Eraeth stiffened, glaring at him, but Aeren moved back toward the group. “For the last sixty years, there has been nothing but conflict on the plains between the Alvritshai, the dwarren, and the Provinces. That conflict escalated until the confrontation at the Escarpment. It should have ended there. A pact had been made to end it. But a… mistake was made, a flawed decision, one that led to a misunderstanding, and the pact was broken. The conflict remained. It has simmered for the past thirty years. Thirty years of stifled trade, of petty bickering and skirmishes across all borders. Thousands have died because of it, including my family-my father, followed by my elder brother. I am the last of my House. Aureon, my brother, died at the battle at the Escarpment. I held his body in my arms. His blood stained my skin for days afterward.” Eraeth’s jaw clenched as his lord spoke, his hand tightening on the pommel of his sword, and the surrounding guards stirred.
Aeren looked up into Colin’s eyes, and he saw the Alvritshai’s pain there.“I want this conflict to end. I want to finally be able to wash my brother’s blood clean from my hands.”
Silence stretched, until the tension in Aeren’s shoulders finally eased. “It has to stop. The plains have drunk too much blood. It needs to end.”
Colin almost asked how it could end, after going on for so long, but Aeren turned toward Dharel. “Take us to the palace.”
The door to the audience chamber in the palace at Corsair opened, and an officious man with a blunt nose entered. He stepped past the two Alvritshai guards, pointedly ignoring them, scanned the room as if looking for missing items, then finally let his gaze sweep across Eraeth, Dharel, and Colin. He gave a small frown when he saw Colin, but he turned to Aeren and said, “The King is willing to see you now.”
“Very well.”
The man spun and led them out of the room, down one of the Needle’s wide marble-floored corridors lined with huge urns and potted plants and tapestries. Servants and guardsmen passed them in the hall, and they left a wake of half-whispered comments and backward glances behind them. Colin tried to keep his attention fixed forward, but he caught glimpses through open doors into side rooms. Like the audience chamber they’d just left, they were spacious, the walls covered in polished wood, the ceilings vaulted, with niches for statues or artwork on nearly every wall. The audience chamber had held tables and chairs arranged beneath bookcases lined with books and assorted glass objects and small figurines. But as they moved, Colin saw other rooms with long dining tables or walls covered in artwork and huge chandeliers. The sheer size of the rooms overwhelmed him.
When they reached the center of the building, the officious man stopped before two large, paneled, wooden doors. Legionnaires stood stiffly outside, carrying pikes and halberds, in full armor.
The man didn’t consult anyone, didn’t even turn to see if Aeren and the others were following. He shoved the heavy door open and stepped into the inner room.
Colin had seen the official meeting rooms of the Court in Trent. Wide and spacious, they were usually open to the elements, paved in slabs of white marble, with numerous thin columns supporting a lattice-worked roof that could be covered with canvas in the event of rain. Sunlight would glance off the occasional small fountain or other central piece of artwork symbolizing the Family and its power. But the focus of the meeting rooms in Trent were the raised daises, usually with three or four seats, the largest reserved for the Family’s Dom, the remaining seats for the visiting Dom or their representatives.
The meeting hall in the Needle was nothing like that.
It was long and narrow, the floor made of flagstone, the walls of intricately paneled wood and skilled carvings. Banners hung on most of the walls, framed by the carvings, and when Colin recognized the diagonally cut field of red and yellow, a shield in the center, he realized the banners represented the Provinces. He counted six altogether, three on each side, and at the far end of the hall Colin’s step faltered. The King waited at the far end of the hall, standing behind a large desk. Behind him, a much larger banner took up almost the entire wall, a single field of yellow, a sheaf of wheat in black in the center. Aides and guardsmen stood to either side of him, but a pace back. As they drew nearer, Colin saw the dark look on the King’s face. He was leaning slightly forward, his fingers steepled on the desk. Dressed in shirt and breeches, he still radiated a sense of power, as if he wore armor instead. Broad shouldered, eyes gray like the flagstone, he glared at them as they approached.
Aeren came to a halt before the desk, and the officious man stepped to one side. Colin’s gaze flicked over the aides, noted the papers that lay in neat stacks to either side of the space before the King, the ink bottle, the feathers of numerous quills, and the chunks of sealing wax. There were no decorative weapons, no personal mementos of any kind.
Then his gaze fell on the guards and halted on the man standing to the King’s right in full dress armor. Obviously part of the Legion, high ranking. The man eyed all of them with suspicion, his gaze traveling over the members of the Phalanx first, judging them, weighing their potential danger.
Then his gaze fell on Colin. Creases appeared in his forehead as he realized that Colin was not Alvritshai and yet wore Alvritshai clothing. Aeren had ordered Dharel to find something appropriate as they rode to the palace. It had been too late for an audience with the King the night before, but Dharel had arrived with Colin’s new clothes-in the Rhyssal House colors-that morning, before they were summoned to the audience chamber.
Now Colin’s hands tightened reflexively under the commander’s scrutiny, trying to grip the staff he almost always carried. He’d been forced to leave it back in Aeren’s appointed rooms.
Leaning forward, the commander murmured something to his King. His eyes never left Colin’s, and the King’s never left Aeren. The King’s jaw clenched as he finished and stepped back.
“I have already dealt with one group of foreign visitors this past week,” King Stephan said, the menace in his low, cold voice unmistakable. “I had not expected to deal with another. What is it that you want, Lord Aeren Goadri Rhyssal? What is it that the Alvritshai want?”
Aeren tensed… and then visibly forced himself to relax. “I come as an emissary. I come as a seeker of peace.”
Stephan barked laughter, pushing himself away from the desk so he could pace behind it. “As you came to my father so many years ago?” he spat. “Is that your idea of peace? To cozen us into a treaty, to dazzle us with your offers of trade and wealth and good fortune so that you can betray us on the battlefield, so that you can murder our King?” Stephan shouted the last, his voice ringing in the enclosed hall, loud enough that some of his aides winced and cringed, looking down at the floor.
Aeren didn’t react. When the echoes faded, he said, “No.”
Stephan snorted, still pacing back and forth, his arms crossed over his chest. He no longer looked at Aeren
