The old throne room of Deva Castle was shrouded in shadows despite the sun just rising outside, with not even a candle burning in the holders. The heavy curtains covering the windows hadn’t been opened in a long time. The whole room smelled slightly of dust. Duke Desmarais, like his father before him, had never used the place—there was no real reason to. It was smaller than the Great Hall or the Grande Gallerie, and the throne itself was not particularly comfortable. Also surrounded by a strange marble bannister which was open up front, allowing one person at a time to approach the chair on its marble steps.
There was a portrait of the Roi Solei sitting in the seat, so dusty it was hard to recognize.
George Louis ran a hand over the bronze back of the chair. The throne wasn’t even particularly good looking. At least not by modern standards. Perhaps it had been more impressive back when it had been carved in the middle ages: a large block of marble formed the seat, smoothly polished, but with no other decorations. Just a big, squat block of marble, with a metal back topped with arm- and backrests made of incongruous delicately worked bronze, showing a beautiful tree motif. The red velvet pillow that was the only nod to comfort was faded and threadbare, with the line of the portraits’s frame probably forever embedded.
George Louis found himself looking furtively over his shoulder, as if there were anyone around at the crack of dawn, before taking down the portrait. Just holding the wooden frame made his breath catch with effort, and his hands shook. He put it down quickly and slipped onto the crusty pillow.
It was every bit as hard and crumbly as he had expected. The backrest wasn’t restful at all, and the armrests were too high and awkwardly sloped, so he couldn’t really put his arms there, either.
Maybe it was time to get rid of the whole thing.
In a minute. Once he had caught his breath again.
George Louis rubbed the spot underneath his ribs where the healer had said his liver sat. Not that he could feel it. In fact, that was the one part of his body that didn’t still hurt, despite the healer’s efforts.
And the she-wolf’s help.
The she-wolf who had saved first Lady deLande, and now him—and so many others.
George Louis sighed and pushed himself out of the dreadful excuse of a chair. David would be so smug about the bloody Morgulon. Or maybe he’d just roll his eyes and not even say anything. That would be worse, actually, that quiet—not even disappointment. Resignation maybe?
The belligerence was familiar and even quite fun at times. But the way David would just fall silent sometimes, or change the topic, as if he didn’t even consider it worth the effort of an argument—those were the moments when George Louis felt the rift between them most painfully.
As long as David made it back alive.
George Louis grabbed the back of the chair with both hands, to steady himself. To feel so weak, so shortly before the end—when he could literally put his hands on the throne!
But if he had to choose, right now, between the crown and David, alive and hale by his side, he was no longer sure which he would pick. It was a distraction he really didn’t need.
No, that was a lie. He knew which he would choose: the dream of a Loegrian crown had been too long in the making to give it up now. A dream that too many people had dreamt, not just him. Whatever David might think, this wasn’t just about him. And he’d have to choose the good of the many over his own feelings. The same way David would choose the werewolves’ lives over him, if it came to it.
If only there hadn’t been that hope, that thought that maybe, just maybe, he could have it all.
A collector, as David had said.
George Louis sighed and patted the bronze one last time. He’d have to get a new throne commissioned. Maybe he’d have an artist put a wolf on it. That would fit with the tree motif, right? Keep a nod to the old, and add the new reality. Even if the new reality was werewolves.
And one day, his skin would stop crawling and his heart wouldn’t race when he saw the giant wolves pad around the palace. But that day wasn’t today.
Today, he jumped when she slunk inside, the one who had saved his life. The one with the scars marring her face. She was staring at him with huge golden eyes over jaws that could snap his leg like a twig. David kept saying that they were just like humans, but that had to be a lie. If a human had been burned and hunted and shot and then given the power to turn invisible and walk through fire, they wouldn’t have come back to save first one, and then another one of their tormentors.
And yet, here she was. The Morgulon.
She tilted her head at him quizzically, then turned her back on him, waving her tail slowly, glancing at him over her shoulder.
George Louis pointed at himself. “You—want me to come with you?”
She nodded, the motion comically exaggerated. Maybe that was just because her head was the size of a horse’s.
Right.
“Follow where?” he asked, before he remembered that she couldn’t tell him.
She just tilted her head at him again, then walked a step, checking to see if he was coming.
She’d saved his life, had saved him when there was absolutely nothing he could have done to defend himself—when just doing nothing would have killed him, and at great personal exertion, too. Killing him, even hurting him now would make no sense whatsoever.
It was the only thing that made him follow her. He couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew it, too.
“Where” turned out to be into the arms of Lady deLande. Or at least into the same hallway as she was walking down.
“Duke Stuard,” she said, bobbing up and down in a courtesy. Stiffly formal like David had suddenly become. George Louis couldn’t help but wonder which one of them was copying who.
“Thank you, Morgulon,” deLande added. “You phyisician was most worried when you weren’t at the infirmary, Your Highness.”
She folded her hands behind her back, standing ramrod straight. He’d thought she did that around him because she didn’t like him—which was fair enough, he supposed. Now he recognized it as just her way of carrying herself when she felt there were eyes on her.
“You were looking for me?” George Louis asked. “It’s quite early.”
“The clerks you lent me have finished analysing Pettau’s and deVries’s correspondence, Your Highness. I would not have bothered you with the results at this early hours, except the Royal Healer informed me that you had left the infirmary.”
George Louis had a sinking feeling when he saw her face. He’d left that investigation in her hands, given the phenomanal job she had done so far. Moreover, it hadn’t really felt important any longer, with the three traitors locked up.
“I take it they found something,” he sighed.
“I believe we might better discuss that behind closed doors, Your Highness. Unless you're ready to return to the infirmary?”
When he shook his head, she led the way, kindly stopping at the base of the stairs to give him time to catch his breath before the climb without commenting on it. And then again when they had reached the top. He managed the rest of the way to David’s office—deLande’s office now, he supposed—without another rest. He was out of breath enough though for her to pull him the closest chair as soon as they walked in.
Damn mushrooms. Damn Picot and the rest of the traitors. His head felt foggy, too, and he needed a minute to take in the room.
It hadn’t changed much: walls lined with bookshelves, two desks—one much grander than the other—the chairs that went with them. There was also the guest chair he was sitting in, and in a corner, there was the nest, where Morgulon’s little ones slept. Two baby girls, and three wolf cubs. The mother trotted over to check on them, then turned around and slipped underneath the main desk, even though she was far too big to actually fit fully underneath. Her front half and paws portruded into the room. Was there actually enough room left for anyone to really sit at the desk now? Maybe for Lane, George Louis thought.
It made him think of his own dogs, back home at Mannin. Except that his dogs didn’t turn invisible or speak. Or turn other people into dogs.
Lady deLande was clearly used to the she-wolf’s behaviour. “Please, Your Highness, have a seat,” she said, before taking place at the high-backed chair behind the desk. She didn’t even have to order her long skirts as she did.
Was she putting her feet onto the werewolf’s back? Like a stool?
George Louis shook himself. He blamed the damn mushrooms for the way he couldn’t seem to focus on the matter at hand right now. The Royal Healer had promised he would work on that, soon as the final patients were pulled back from death’s door.
“What did you have to show me?” he asked, sitting up a little straighter.
The lady ruffled some of the papers in front of her. “A lot of it is really inconclusive,” she said. “Between the three of them, deVries, Pettau and Picot were in contact with just about every noble house in Loegrion. It’s hard to tell how many of the lower nobility were just feeling flattered at being contacted by a Lord Warden, and how many of them were genuinely backing Picot. How many Carters there were.”
What a nice way to say “idiot.”
She handed him a bunch of pages. Levier had certainly been sympathetic to Picot’s propositions—whatever they had been. Did that make him a traitor?
“Here’s Lady Moyalle,” Lane said, handing him a second letter as soon as he put the first one down, “giving Lord Pettau “card blanche” for any plans he might have. Did she know that would include wide-spread murder? We don’t have his letters, so it’s hard to tell. She certainly wasn’t the only one writing similar endorsements.”
The final page she offered him was a list, drafted by some clerk, listing nobles in three columns. The shortest was the first column: “committed” it said, and it had depressingly few names. The deVales, Lord Mire, Commander Bacrot, Lady deLande, the Felekes—listed not individually, but as a group. His erstwhile allies from the north, like Marques Malemaines and the Rover family.
The middle column listed people as “wavering”—a much longer list. Equally long was the final column, headed: “opposed.”
“These people aren’t necessarily involved in the poisoning,” deLande said. “But they have voiced strong negative opinions about the werewolves, my role here, your rewarding of the Wayfarers and the way you have handed out land.”
George Louis sniffed. “If we had won at Port Neaf, I bet that list would be half as long.”
“Quite likely,” deLande confirmed.
“So what do you intend to do with this information?” George Louis asked. “Are you going to challenge them each to a Test of Faith?”
DeLande drummed the green felt on the desk. “Perhaps Bishop Larssen knows a way to hold the trial on a grander scale,” she said after a moment. “But frankly, I was thinking you may not have to do too much about them—we just need to be aware of how big the problem is and keep an eye on them. After Picot’s failed attempt on your life, they won’t be in a hurry to move. Perhaps hand the list to Lord Mire, for good measure, and Commander Bacrot. That should ensure they are blocked off from any relevant office.”
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She pressed a finger to the stack of letters. “Moreover, most of them have lands in the heartlands, Your Highness. Pick out two or three families from the area, people who just need a little push to back you, and give them land along the Stour. Let the rest of them out to hang. Either they commit to the Roi Solei, or get raided when the army passes through. Or they back you publicly, and you can decide if you want to help them.”
“Did you have anyone specific in mind for that land reward?”
“Greg’s friend, Gustave deBires, literally had to run from his own family with his mother to return to our side. Likewise, my own friend Theresa deCauchy had to break with her parents to stand with Loegrion. The same could be said about Berenice Pettau, who has been begging me to take her on in the test of her faith.”
“So we’re spoiled for choices,” George Louis muttered to himself.
“May I ask what you are going to do next, Your Highness?” deLande asked.
George Louis shrugged. He had planned to have the coronation after throwing the Valoise back at Port Neaf. Now he could barely climb a single flight of stairs. And they hadn’t exactly won gloriously at Port Neaf, either.
Where did he go from here? He wasn’t ready to surrender, that much he knew. But without a clearer picture of where they stood, he could hardly make an informed decision.
“I believe I will decide that when we have heard from deVale,” he said. “Or David, preferably. There hasn’t been any word, has there?”
“Full moon is just over—there’s no way we’ll get any word until tonight. I sent a messenger myself this morning, but even if the trains make it all the way to Deadend, it’ll take a rider all day to get to Port Neaf. Or wherever Count deVale is right now.”
“So I'll wait.”
“I quite agree that we should wait to hear more, Your Highness.” DeLande based her elbows on the desktop. “But if you are willing to leave the prosecution of the traitors to me until then, Your Highness, you should return to the infirmary. I promise to inform you as soon as there is word from the front.”
She had let him walk into that one nicely.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he should be in bed, not wandering the palace in the middle of the night. But he was sick of lying on his back, too. There had to be something he could do until they got the news of how screwed they were?
He really hoped deVale or maybe deBurg had an idea. Not that he was sure he could even trust deBurg to stay committed to the cause. DeVale might be an idiot when it came to Lady deLande, but he would never back down.
He jumped when the werewolf’s head appeared right next to his arm. He hadn’t even noticed her getting up and extracting herself from underneath the table.
“Your Highness?” deLande asked, sounding unnecessarily worried.
He had spaced out again, hadn’t he?
What had she just asked him?
“I said you’re hardly going to instill confidence in your people in your current state,” she said.
Right. Good with the honesty, less so with the comfort.
“So you would rather I leave it all to you.”
“To me or anyone else on that first list,” she said calmly.
It was hard to concentrate on her words. The Morgulon was still sniffing around him, making the hairs in his neck stand up. A creature that large shouldn’t move that quietly. And what did she want with him, anyways?
She sneezed in his ear and walked away. Even Lady deLande raised an eyebrow when the giant wolf disappeared in the next room. The was a moment of—not quite a sound, followed by the rustle of fabric.
George Louis blinked when the werewolf returned, dressed in what looked like an undergarment.
“He. Still smells.”
“Excuse me?” George Louis grumbled. “I do not smell.”
In fact, he’d been washed rather thoroughly yesterday. The nurses hadn’t been exactly gentle about it, either.
The werewolf nodded gravely. “Like death,” she said.
“I’m better,” he grumbled. “The healer assured me I’m not going to die anytime soon.”
“Still sick,” she said simply.
George Louis glanced at the Lady, who was smiling faintly while her eyebrows were climbing up to her hairline. Was there some kind of joke he wasn’t getting?
He jumped when the weird, golden eyes suddenly appeared right in front of his face. The Morgulon was leaning over him, her face right in front of his. She wrinkled her nose, sniffed, and added: “Saving you. Lots of work. Go. To bed.”
And then she pulled away, adding: “David. Still south.”
George Louis jerked upright. “What? How do you know?”
She shrugged elaborately, pulling up the too-wide neckline of what was probably some of Lady deLande’s lingerie in the same movement.
Was she trying to be distract him, or was she really so unused to wearing clothes?
Not that it wouldn’t have worked, if she hadn’t mentioned David just a moment ago.
And yes, when she turned back to stare at him with those alien eyes that showed no white at all, he thought she was trying to distract him. Or at least gauge his reaction.
“You mentioned David?” he prompted.
She bared her teeth at him, which was less scary now than it would have been a couple of minutes ago. “Can’t be sure,” she said. “But. Rust and Ragna. Still there. Moving around.”
She took a deep breath. “Just not. North.”
“So where are they going?”
The werewolf shrugged again. “Calder. South. Rest of them. Don’t know.”
What a strange magic this was. Lady deLande appeared quite confident that this was more accurate than human divination. He still had to ask: “You’re sure? How can you tell?”
The Morgulon tilted her head at him, blinking slowly. Her throat worked. “Just can,” she finally said.
“You shouldn’t ask a magician how a trick is done,” Lady deLande commented.
“Fine then,” George Louis muttered. “Is that your real name, Morgulon?”
She bared her teeth again. “No,” she said.
“So what is your real name?”
She grinned even wider at him, than at deLande. “Forgot,” she claimed.
“Really. You forgot your own name.” George Louis glanced at the lady for confirmation, but she pulled up her shoulders, looking surprised, too. Did that mean she hadn’t known?
“Probably,” Morgulon amended.
She was still grinning. Was she just messing with him? She hadn’t really forgotten her own name, had she?
“Go to bed,” she said again.
George Louis thought about it. He really didn’t feel like going back to the infirmary. But she was right: he wasn’t fit enough to be up and about, let alone rule.
“I will retire to my apartment here,” he said finally. “See how my son is doing. Please, let the healer know.”
The Morgulon disappeared behind his back at once, and he heard the rustle of fabric. When he turned around, she just dropped the dress, or nightgown, or whatever it was, standing there fully in the nude. She even spread her arms and bowed to him, but instead of coming up again, she let her arms fall forwards, falling into her other body in the same motion.
George Louis blinked. He had seen a bunch of werewolves transform now, but never this smoothly—there was an elegance to it, even. Bones contorting and fur growing all over a body shouldn’t look elegant. But she was so fast about it, it was like a wave coming over her.
She trotted up to him then, clearly waiting for him to get up.
“You’re gonna walk me over, are you?” George Louis asked. She wagged her tail in answer.
“That’s a yes,” deLande helpfully translated.
Right. Werewolf escort. And not just any werewolf.
George Louis pushed himself out of his chair. Just rising felt like a chore, but once he stood, at least he wasn’t falling over. Lady deLande rose with him, not quite offering him a hand. She did open the door for him, then walking by his side, with the giant she-wolf trailing after them.
She had taken two bullets for Lord Mire, a man she hardly even knew. Saved deLande. Saved him. And she still made his skin crawl.
Maybe David was right. Maybe he was the unreasonable one.
He still had to fight not to glance over his shoulder every other second, to see what she was doing. And he jumped when he opened the door to his own rooms, and found not one, but three wolves stretched out on the carpet in front of the fireplace. They all looked right past him at the Morgulon, not quite rising to their feet.
That wasn’t the only addition to his reception room. The couches had been pushed aside to form room for two little desks, chairs facing each other. Lady Winter looked up from one of the tables. Right next to her, she had a blackboard set up with Valoisian declinations, and it looked like she might be getting ready for the next lesson. She froze when she saw him, then jumped to her feet, to drop into a deep curtsy.
“Your Highness, it’s good to see you up and about,” she said. “The prince is just rising.”
“Thank you, Lady Winter, it’s good to be up,” George Louis lied. He really wanted to take a seat. Not necessarily right next to the small pack, though.
On the other hand, the alternative was Georgie’s little desk, and that would just make his knees feel worse within a few minutes. Was that Annabelle?
He thought—hoped—it was her as he sat down again on the closest couch. “That would be all, Lady deLande,” he added.
He didn’t need more of an audience to greeting his son.
She took the dismissal with grace, curtsiying like the governess, and retreating. The Morgulon hung around another second, and then two of the three wolves on his carpet rose, shook themselves, and walked out with her. The one that he thought was Annabelle retreated into the adjacent dressing room.
“If there’s anything I can do, Your Highness…” Lady Winter started as Geoge Louis caught his breath.
“I’ll take a glass of water.”
She walked out in the other direction, to be replaced with Wilfred, who brought a full breakfast—probably prepared for Georgie. And there he finally was, the one George Louis had really wanted to see: His son came storming out of the dressing room, with one of his stockings sliding down and missing his jacket, showing his suspenders for all the world to see. Screeching like a wraith and throwing himself at him.
George Louis gasped as Georgie landed on top of him. Having him crash into him, arms wrapping around him tightly, really hurt, but he wouldn’t have let go for anything in the world. Georgie was crying against his shoulder.
“It’s okay,” George Louis whispered. “I’m better now. It’s okay.”
He let Georgie cry against his shoulders, despite the servants watching on. They had earned that moment together. Breakfast getting cold or not.
Eventually, Georgie shifted around a little, until he sat next to George Louis and he could breathe a little easier. As if she had been waiting for that moment, Annabelle, too, slipped into the room, fully dressed. It was disturbing how much she looked like the woman he had married ten years ago, except for the eyes: they were just as dark as they had used to be, a beautiful chocolate brown, but the shape had changed and there was no white visible at all anymore.
She looked at him wearily, as if she expected to be kicked out, as she sat down on the opposite couch. Neither Lady Winter nor Wilfred seemed surprised to see her, and they had both known her as the duchess of Mannin. They still treated her with that same subservience—as if she still were the duchess.
George Louis groaned. This was just going to create a new world of trouble. He couldn’t afford to lose her family’s support; Annabelle’s brother was the Lord Warden of King’s Haven, and her parents were both influential figures in Deva.
Damn Picot for dragging Georgie into this mess. And damn the Feleke for dragging Annabelle into the palace.
Though it was probably a good thing she had been there to protect their son. It was certainly too late to kick her out now, though he was slightly terrified at the thought of having to go back, to once again pretend at every moment he spent in public that he loved her, when really, she felt like a weight at his foot that his mother had shackled him with.
Not that his mother were still around.
And Annabelle was probably no more eager to be his wife again than he was to be her husband.
David had had the right idea of it. George Louis had always thought of deLande as just another boring Mithran with a weird vendetta, but seeing them together, seeing her hold everything together the past week—seeing her stick her hand into a flame to stop Picot—he finally understood why David liked her. Why he would consider marrying her.
Annabelle and he had never managed to align their goals the same way David and deLande were aligned. If they had, maybe none of this would ever have happened. Maybe they would have become king and queen of Loegrion without ever resorting to werewolves for help.
Or maybe the Rot would have swallowed them both, like it surely would have swallowed the Lackland Company and all the men working for it, if it hadn’t been for Gregory bloody Feleke.
He knew it was unfair to resent the boy for this, but since that half moon at the watering station outside Eoforwic, the whole world felt like quicksand. Everything he had believed in, trusted in, was suddenly uncertain. And sure, some of it—a lot of it—was good! David talking to him again, the Rot dying, Bishop Boyen ousted from Eoforwic, those were great accomplishments!
And yet.
It was one thing to know the Inquisition was full of shit. It was another to come face to face with the bogeyman from a thousand bedtime stories and having to be nice to it. To be forced to swallow that instinctive, primeval fear and smile at the woman who was sitting eight feet across from him, to pretend like he didn’t know what she might turn into at any moment. What she might turn him into, if the fancy took her.
Of course David had been the one to extend them an olive branch. Only someone as used to dealing with monsters as him could invite them into his home and not think anything of it.
Only David would be surprised at the rest of the world not pivoting as quickly as him.
George Louis sighed and reached for the tea Wilfred had served. He’d pretend. Pretend like he wasn’t terrified nearly out of his wits when she smiled at him. Who knew, maybe one day, he’d even believe it himself.
He hoped that day would come soon, because this was exhausting.
Made more exhausting by the fact that he was apparently the only one who was still—not worried. Worry involved thought. This was subconscious. When Annabelle moved, he jumped, pure reflex. No choice, no decision involved. Amd it was hard to fight against himself, especially when it was already hard to concentrate on what was going on around him. It was actually a relief when just after breakfast, the Royal Healer showed up, Master Maitrise, to usher him to lay down.
The rest was welcome, too. He’d been awake for less than four hours, but he really needed the nap. He passed out to the healer fussing over him, and that feeling of pressure somewhere between his stomach and his chest that told him the healer was working.