CHAPTER 20
Three weeks after Atyas completed Alaria’s gate exercise, the assembly’s grain office predicted a supply failure before the spring roads opened. Feenix had carried more of the refugee settlements than any agreement required. Renvar’s final contracted deliveries had ended with the coup. Arcanis reopened selected Valanorian stores only after every recipient settlement submitted new registers to his officials, and even those deliveries diminished as his governors reduced local reserves. Other kingdoms offered land, employment or temporary stores according to rules that changed at every border. The assembly possessed people, offices and promises. It possessed almost no wealth of its own.
Atyas spent nine nights studying contribution systems from kingdoms that still controlled their territory. He compared harvest levies, port duties, military obligations and emergency taxes. He asked Solara why one province paid in grain while another paid in coin. He asked Oren how settlements without mills valued flour. He asked Preya how Asehria had collected revenue from citizens who lived beyond its borders.
It had not.
That should have stopped him. Instead, he wrote the Common Asehrian Contribution. Every registered Asehrian earning wages or producing food beyond the minimum household allowance would contribute one measure in twenty to the assembly’s relief stores. The rate was equal. The records would be public. No governor could redirect it towards a private army.
Halren supported the proposal.
Atyas mistook that for proof he had finally written something the governor could not control.
Mira opposed it.
“A worker in Feenix earns twice what the same labour receives beyond the northern border,” she said. “One measure in twenty is not equal when the first family pays from its savings and the second pays from tomorrow’s meal.”
“The household allowance protects tomorrow’s meal.”
“According to which kingdom’s prices?”
“The assembly can publish regional amounts.”
“With whose authority do we collect them?”
“The settlements elected us.”
“The settlements did not elect their employers.”
Atyas had answers.
Too many of them.
He defended the contribution for two hours. The assembly passed it by twenty-three marks. For six days, Atyas believed he had solved something. On the seventh, eleven thousand labourers in Valanor discovered that their employers had deducted the contribution from wages already reduced by a foreign worker’s levy. The settlement office collected the missing amount again because the employers had not transferred it. In Feenix, registered millers paid while unregistered merchants selling through temporary stalls did not. Some mill workers also paid at settlement windows that refused to accept their employers’ deduction slips. Two northern settlements counted the same communal stores as household allowances and production, taxing grain that had never belonged to an individual family.
By the tenth day, twenty-six thousand Asehrians had stopped work. Three food convoys remained unloaded while officials argued over who had paid twice. The people outside the Hall of Measures did not carry weapons.
They carried wage slips.
Atyas met them upon the public platform. Alaria stood behind him. Mira kept the rejected amendments beneath her arm; Halren had brought the signed order.
“The contribution is suspended,” Atyas said.
The announcement did not calm them.
A woman in a leather worker’s coat held up two stamped pages.
“Which payment comes back?”
Atyas looked towards the assembly clerks.
None possessed an answer.
“Both are recorded,” he said.
“One says paid. The other says I owe it. I showed them both.”
Atyas reached for the pages. She held them away.
“They kept the originals last time. These stay with me.”
He lowered his hand. Behind her, someone asked how long the bread line would remain open. He looked again at the two stamps. He could explain how the proposal was meant to work. The woman was still waiting to hear which office would give her money back.
“I do not know which payment can be returned,” he said. “The assembly did not control the employers who took the first or the settlement offices that took the second. I wrote one rate because I thought equal numbers would create an equal burden. I was wrong.”
Someone shouted that wrong did not buy bread.
“No,” Atyas replied. “It does not.”
He held up the suspended order.
“No further collection is lawful beneath this rule. Every settlement office will publish what it received. The assembly will ask each host kingdom to compel employers to publish what they deducted. Until those records are compared, no official may declare a household in arrears.”
“Ask?” another voice called. “You are the Prince of Asehria.”
“I am not the king of Valanor or Feenix.”
The woman lowered her receipts. No one on the platform offered to take her to an office that could pay.
The following morning, Atyas found her outside the records office. She had folded the two pages into a square small enough to hide beneath her sleeve.
“They said to come here.”
Inside, Preya had cleared one table for duplicate claims. The clerks needed the household register, the employer’s deduction and the settlement receipt. The woman’s employer had sent no ledger.
“Can we pay her from the relief money?” Atyas asked.
Preya took him to the store sheet. The money had bought grain. Most of it was already on barges beyond Feenix.
“Then from the next collection.”
“You suspended it.”
He stood beside the table while another clerk called the next household. The woman had not sat down.
“I lost yesterday’s wages coming to hear you,” she said. “I cannot spend today here too.”
Atyas looked towards the little mark beside her claim. Awaiting employer. There were seven pages with the same mark.
He asked Preya to send a clerk to the settlement after work, so the claimants could bring their receipts without losing another shift. She could spare one that evening. He wanted to promise the woman more. Instead, he wrote the meeting place on the back of a clean page and gave it to her. She tucked the new page behind her receipts, leaving their stamped edges visible.
The revised contribution took four months to negotiate. Each participating settlement entered a compact permitted beneath the laws of its host kingdom. Households below the local food threshold paid nothing. Merchants using shared Asehrian storehouses paid according to goods moved through them. Surviving provincial estates contributed from assets they could still reach. Military commands reported captured or recovered stores separately from civilian relief. The system collected less than Atyas’s proposal had promised, but enough for the first repayments to begin. The public ledgers recorded the duplicate payments as debts owed to the affected households. Some were returned that summer. Others remained numbers beside families who could no longer be found.
Atyas kept a copy of the woman’s two receipts beneath the cover of his contribution notes. When the first repayments reached Feenix, he went with the clerk carrying them. The woman from the platform counted hers twice.
“This is the settlement payment.”
“Yes.”
“And the other?”
“The employer disputes it. Preya has filed the claim with the Phoenix court.”
She put the coins into separate folds of her sleeve. Atyas watched a small one go by itself into the torn inner cuff.
“Do you want me to keep the claim open?” he asked.
“It’s still my money.”
He wrote that she had received the first payment. He left the second entry open.
By fourteen, Atyas had become accustomed to people telling stories about decisions they had never witnessed. The western reports had changed as well. During the year since the coup, Arcanis had used Valanorian soldiers against Valanorians. The Keh’Dia were still reducing Asehrian cities and defending captured roads. Neither army could yet spare the force needed to take Feenix. By the second winter, the western reports changed. Arcanis’s officers held the eastern granaries. Formations that had refused him vanished from the rolls. Valanorian surveyors appeared with Keh’Dia escorts on roads leading towards the kingdoms sheltering Asehria’s survivors. Solara kept the survey routes marked upon her map. No army approached that winter, but she increased the stores beside the western locks.
In the settlement stories, the grain vote became the opening of the western locks. The failed contribution became the day Atyas forced Valanorian employers to return stolen wages, although many had returned nothing. The search office had reunited more than a million people with relatives or surviving district records. The stories credited Atyas with finding children whose names he had never read. He learned not to correct gratitude before learning what it was attached to. He also learned that some stories travelled ahead of disasters. The first report from the Marren Bridge claimed Caldris had closed its southern crossing to Asehrians because Prince Caelen feared Atyas’s growing influence. The second claimed Caldrin soldiers had stolen an Asehrian convoy.
The third included the names of the villages the convoy had passed before Caldris closed the bridge.
That report was longer.
It was also true.
The Marren Bridge crossed a gorge along the shortest northern route between Feenix’s settlement belt and the Asehrian communities sheltered inside Caldris. During the final retreat, Caldris had opened it to wounded soldiers and civilians without requiring payment or surrender of arms. The road remained open through the first winter. Then three Asehrian companies moving without a verified supply command took grain, livestock and winter fuel from four Caldrin villages. Their officers called it an emergency requisition and left notes promising repayment by King Eridan’s government. Eridan had been a prisoner for more than a year. No government remained capable of honouring the notes.
Prince Caelen closed the bridge.
He was sixteen.
He had commanded Caldris’s southern border since his father’s illness removed King Aldren from the winter campaigns. The reports described him as disciplined, popular with the border companies and unwilling to permit another armed Asehrian formation across the gorge. They also described King Aldren as an old ally of Eridan. Half the assembly believed the friendship should open the road. The other half believed mentioning it would insult the son who had been forced to close it. Atyas sent a verified request for civilian passage.
Caelen returned it with four village inventories, the names of the Asehrian officers involved and a single sentence.
Friendship does not restore what your soldiers removed.
Seraphina verified two of the companies.
The third had divided after crossing Feenix’s border. One part had joined a relief force. The other guarded an Asehrian settlement less than two days from the Marren Bridge. Their commander, Captain Edrin Tal, admitted taking the supplies.
“My soldiers had not eaten in two days,” he told the assembly. “Nine hundred civilians travelled inside our column. Caldris had stores. We had none.”
“Did the villages agree?” Mira asked.
“No.”
“Then you stole them.”
“I kept people alive.”
Atyas requested passage to Caldris.
Solara refused.
The assembly voted to send him.
Solara refused again.
“The assembly does not command Feenix’s protection,” she said inside the old map chamber.
“I am not asking Feenix to command Caldris.”
“You are asking to place Eridan’s heir beyond my border because six hundred people raised their hands.”
“Five hundred and nineteen.”
“That correction has not improved the proposal.”
Alaria stood near the shuttered window. At twelve, Atyas had watched the two of them decide where he slept and which corridors he could enter. At fourteen, they still possessed the ability to stop him. They no longer pretended the decision would cost only him.
“What would make the route acceptable?” Atyas asked.
Solara looked towards Alaria.
“Nothing makes it safe.”
“I did not ask for safe.”
Alaria turned from the window.
“No public schedule,” she said. “Two routes prepared. Caldris confirms every member of the receiving party through King Aldren’s own household code, not the border command’s. The assembly sends civilian and military witnesses. Atyas travels as its representative, not at the head of an armed company.”
“How many guards?” Solara asked.
“Enough that anyone counting them understands we expect trouble. Not enough to resemble an invasion.”
“Give me the Phoenix count.”
“Twenty-four Phoenix Guards. Twenty-four Lunar Watch. Caldris provides the inner escort after the border.”
“And you?”
Alaria looked at Solara.
The Queen exhaled.
“Forty-nine.”
“Forty-eight,” Alaria said. “I am not part of the formation.”
Solara remained silent for a long time.
“If Caldris changes the receiving party?”
“We turn back,” Alaria said.
“If the bridge closes behind you?”
“We take the western ridge.”
“If King Aldren’s code has been compromised?”
“We never reach the bridge.”
Solara looked at Atyas.
“And if Prince Caelen insults you?”
“I survive.”
“That may be the least believable assurance offered in this room.”
She approved the journey.
The Marren Bridge was not closed when Atyas reached it.
It had been divided.
Caldrin stone barriers blocked the northern half. A gap wide enough for one cart remained upon the south, controlled by gates at both ends. Civilians crossed in groups after inspection. Medical wagons passed beneath armed escort. No Asehrian soldier carried a weapon across the gorge. Prince Caelen waited upon the centre span. He wore a dark green border coat over mail and carried no crown, circlet or ceremonial sword. His sandy-blond hair had been cut close enough that the pale scar above his right ear remained visible. The coat sat more heavily across his shoulders than the festival clothes Atyas remembered, and his jaw had lost its childhood softness. Four Caldrin officers stood behind him.
No musicians announced Atyas.
No one bowed. Caelen looked first at Alaria, then at the mixed escort and finally at Atyas. Atyas had last seen him four years earlier beneath a ballroom crowded with banners. Caelen had been twelve and already argued that friendship did not make a treaty fair. Time had sharpened the boy’s face and placed a scar above his ear, but it had not changed the severity with which he watched everything surrounding Atyas.
“You brought fewer soldiers than the last Asehrian prince in our songs.”
“How many did he bring?” Atyas asked.
“An army.”
“Then the song probably ended badly.”
One Caldrin officer almost smiled.
Caelen did not.
“My father remembers King Eridan as a friend,” he said.
“My father spoke well of King Aldren.”
“Neither of them stood in the villages your soldiers emptied.”
Atyas felt every prepared sentence become useless. He had intended to begin with the alliance between their fathers. Caelen had removed it in three lines.
“Then show me the villages,” Atyas said.
Caelen studied him.
“You received the inventories.”
“I read them. Show me what the numbers mean.”
Caelen glanced back at the officers. He selected two to accompany them and sent another ahead to the villages. They crossed into Caldris without discussing the bridge.
The first village had replaced its storehouse door. The building behind it remained empty. Atyas walked between shelves marked with the amounts each family had contributed before winter. Some names had been crossed through after the families moved north. Others ended beside debts the village had taken to replace seed, tools and livestock. The Asehrian companies had not burned anything. They had left every house standing. That made the harm look smaller from the road. In the second village, the farmer’s daughter put bread and a covered pot upon the long table outside the storehouse. A passing road worker took a piece and left two split logs beneath the bench. Atyas reached for his purse.
“Keep it,” she said. “If you use the table, carry something for it.”
The wood stack stood beyond the yard. He brought an armful while the escort waited. When he returned, the girl was scraping the bottom of the pot.
“This used to be hot at every watch change,” she told him. “Now we put it out once.”
Her father came from the empty storehouse with the promise issued by Captain Edrin Tal.
It carried Eridan’s seal.
The impression was genuine.
“He said your king would repay us,” the farmer said.
Atyas held the page by its edges.
“My father did not authorise this.”
“Will he repay it?”
“He is a prisoner.”
“Then will you?”
Atyas looked at the empty animal pens.
“I cannot replace everything now.”
The farmer took the page back.
“Then you came to explain why the theft was difficult.”
Caelen watched from the doorway. Alaria stood outside where she could see the road and both ends of the building.
“No,” Atyas said. “I came to decide what we can return and what we must record as debt.”
“A debt from a kingdom with no land.”
“Yes.”
The farmer’s laugh contained no humour.
“That will feed the children.”
“No. The first return must do that.”
Atyas turned towards the assembly quartermaster travelling with them.
“How much grain did Captain Tal’s settlement receive from the last distribution?”
The quartermaster opened her ledger.
Caelen interrupted.
“You will not take food from refugees and call it repayment.”
“I was asking what they possess.”
“Why?”
“Because an agreement written without knowing that will fail before we reach the bridge.”
Caelen folded his arms.
“Then ask better questions.”
Atyas looked at the farmer.
“What do you need before planting?”
The answer required two hours.
Seed.
Three draft animals shared between nine farms.
Fuel for the communal mill.
Replacement leather for harnesses.
Food until the first early crops.
The list cost less than replacing everything stolen.
It also mattered sooner.
They repeated the questions in all four villages. At night, Atyas slept in a Caldrin border house with Alaria in the room beyond an unlocked connecting door. Phoenix Guards watched the outer hall. Caldrin soldiers watched them. No one pretended the arrangement was trust.
On the third morning, Captain Tal arrived from the Asehrian settlement south of the gorge. He brought twelve officers and no weapons. Caelen made him wait inside the empty storehouse.
“You have read the claims,” Atyas said.
“Yes.”
“Do you dispute them?”
“No.”
“Will your companies return the grain remaining from the last distribution?”
Tal’s face hardened.
“That grain feeds the civilians we kept alive.”
“How many soldiers can work?”
The question stopped him.
“Most.”
“How many carts?”
“Seventy-two in usable condition.”
“Engineers?”
“Two hundred and eleven.”
Atyas looked towards Caelen.
“What work does the bridge require?”
“The southern retaining wall failed during the winter thaw. We can keep one lane open. A second will not carry freight until the wall is rebuilt.”
“Materials?”
“Stone from the eastern quarry. Timber from the upper road.”
“Transport?”
Caelen understood before Tal did.
“The carts and animals your companies still possess,” he said.
Tal looked from one prince to the other.
“You want soldiers who have fought for two years to quarry stone.”
“I want the people who took supplies from this road to help open it,” Atyas replied.
“They followed my command.”
“Then work beside them.”
The captain stepped closer. Alaria moved once.
Not between them.
Near enough that Tal saw where she had chosen to stand.
“Your Highness,” he said, “with respect, you have never commanded hungry soldiers.”
“No.”
“You do not know what that decision cost.”
“No.”
Tal waited for defence.
Atyas gave him none.
“But I know who paid it,” he said.
The captain looked towards the marked shelves. The agreement took six more days. The Assembly of Asehrian Continuity recognised the complete Caldrin claims as lawful debts without promising a date it could not meet. Its stores provided seed, harness leather and food for the four villages before the planting deadline. Captain Tal’s companies supplied carts, engineers and labour to repair the Marren Bridge. Caldris reopened the freight lane for civilian supplies and medical transport after the retaining wall passed inspection. Armed formations still required Caldrin permission. Caelen refused to surrender that point. Atyas stopped asking.
On the eighth evening, rain kept both delegations inside the bridge house. Atyas found Caelen sitting on the stair with a board across his knees and a cup of wooden counters.
“Is that a Caldrin game?”
Caelen moved his boots off the lower step.
“Take the dark ones.”
He explained the crossings twice. Atyas lost before he understood why the shorter road cost more moves.
“You didn’t tell me I could block that.”
Caelen pointed to the counter Atyas had moved away.
“I told you. You wanted to throw.”
They played again. Below the stair, a clerk laid damp pages along a bench to dry. Alaria passed carrying two cups, put one beside Atyas and continued into the next room without inspecting the board. Atyas won the third game. Caelen took back the counters at once.
“Again.”
“We should sleep.”
Caelen shook the cup.
Atyas stayed.
By the time the rain stopped, his leg had gone numb against the edge of the stair. Caelen was ahead by two games and would not accept a final round. He closed the board, tipping the loose counters into his hand.
“You keep looking at the cup,” he said. “You do it before you choose.”
“You could have told me earlier.”
“I was winning.”
In the morning, Caelen stood behind his officers again. He made the Asehrian clerk correct the same disputed measure they had left unfinished before supper.
On the ninth day, they signed the Marren Compact upon the centre span.
Mira witnessed it for the assembly.
Captain Tal witnessed the Asehrian debt.
Caelen witnessed the Caldrin passage.
“You expect praise for returning part of what your people stole,” Caelen said after the clerks withdrew.
“No.”
“You will receive it.”
“Probably.”
“The villages will be described as obstacles. My soldiers will become frightened border guards. You will become the prince who opened the road.”
Atyas looked down at the workers reinforcing the gorge wall.
“Then put your records on our platforms.”
“So your clerks decide which version is true?”
“Caldrin clerks can stand beside them.”
Caelen’s eyes narrowed.
“You answer everything by making another office.”
“Not everything.”
“What does not become a record?”
“That game last night,” Atyas said.
Caelen glanced towards him.
“You lost that too.”
“By two. You don’t need a clerk to preserve it.”
Caelen looked at him for a moment longer.
“Bring your own next time.”
He left before the first freight cart crossed. Alaria joined Atyas at the centre of the bridge.
“He dislikes me,” Atyas said.
“He dislikes what happens around you.”
“Is that different?”
“For now.”
The Marren Bridge closed twice during the following year. The first time, a forged assembly permit placed weapons beneath medical wagons. The joint record office discovered the false cargo before it crossed. The second, Caldrin soldiers killed three Asehrian civilians during a night inspection after one reached beneath his coat. He had been carrying stolen medicine, not a weapon.
Caelen arrested the soldiers.
His report reached Feenix after midnight. Atyas read it in the same room where Alaria had given him the embersteel sword. The weapon rested within reach beside the bed. He did not touch it. The dead had names. Ages. Occupations. One had crossed the bridge to find medicine for his sister and had hidden two stolen bottles beneath his coat. When a guard ordered him to show his hands, he had reached for them.
The first arrow struck him.
The next four struck the people beside him. Atyas closed the report.
“Wake Mira and Seraphina. I want the assembly called before the morning bell.”
“No,” Alaria said.
He looked up.
“Did you read this?”
“Every line.”
“Then wake them.”
“No.”
Atyas stood.
“The Marren Compact is suspended. No assembly cart crosses until Caldris surrenders the guards for an Asehrian trial.”
“You do not command the assembly.”
“I can ask it to vote.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Three of our people are dead tonight.”
“I read their names twice.”
Atyas struck the table with the heel of his hand. The lamp jumped. Ink crossed the edge of the report.
“They keep killing us,” he said. “And every answer begins with someone telling me to wait.”
He raised his hand again.
Alaria caught his wrist.
“Don’t.”
“Let go.”
“When you stop trying to break your hand because you cannot reach the people who did this.”
For one breath, Atyas pulled against her hold. Alaria did not tighten it. She did not release him either. The strength left his arm before the anger did.
She let go.
“Caelen will protect his soldiers,” Atyas said.
“Perhaps.”
“You know he will.”
“I know what you fear. That is not the same as knowing what he will do.”
Atyas looked at the names beneath the spreading ink.
“I want them dead.”
Alaria did not recoil from the words.
“So do I.”
“Is that all you are going to say?”
“No.” Alaria looked again at the three names beneath the ink. “Part of me wants them placed against the same wall before sunrise.”
“Then why are you stopping me?”
“Because I have wanted blood before I knew a name. Someone stopped me long enough to make me hate them for it.”
“Were they right?”
Alaria’s mouth tightened.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before you were born.”
She kept her hand between him and the table.
“Tomorrow we read the witnesses.”
“And if I still want them dead?”
“Then I will still be angry beside you. But we will know whose deaths you are asking for and why.”
Atyas sat upon the edge of the bed.
“I am supposed to know the difference.”
“You are fourteen.”
“That excuse does not work in the assembly.”
“We are not in the assembly.”
Alaria sat beside him.
“I do not know how to stop being both.”
“Neither do I,” she said.
Alaria sat with him until the ink had dried. The Asehrian settlements demanded the bridge remain closed until the Caldrin soldiers were executed. At the next meeting, Atyas asked the assembly to wait for the witnesses. The soldiers were convicted of unlawful killing and sent to labour upon the same road they had guarded. Some Asehrians called that mercy for murderers. Some Caldrins called it surrender to a foreign prince.
The bridge reopened.
Elsewhere, he failed more often.
Two kingdoms refused the assembly’s public record offices entirely. A third expelled six settlements after an Asehrian captain attempted to recruit an army without the crown’s permission. Atyas negotiated passage for the displaced families but could not restore their homes or property. An eastern resistance council accepted the assembly’s supplies and rejected its civilian representatives. Halren gained enough support to force a new debate over regency every three months. The first search office beyond Valanor burned with twelve thousand unresolved family records inside it. The Keh’Dia held Asehria. Eridan remained a prisoner. The assembly continued meeting.
Late that summer, Atyas met Jonan Es at the missing-family office. The physician had come between clinic shifts and carried a transport-camp entry with the age crossed out.
“They have copied it incorrectly,” Jonan told Preya. “My son is not this age.”
“It may be another person with the same name.”
“The district is right.”
Preya asked him to leave the copy while she requested the earlier roll. He made her read back the camp number before he gave it to her. Atyas waited until Jonan had gone before asking whether a letter could be sent there.
“We can request passage,” Preya said. “We have no reply from that camp.”
The following autumn, Nela stopped coming to the palace on the evenings Atyas kept free. For three weeks, he left the little model upon the table with its loose wheel beside it. Tarin came once, borrowed a tool and forgot to return it. Nela sent no message. When Atyas found her in the South Canal records room, she was washing ink from her wrists. Two clean sheets hung from a line above the sink.
“I thought you were ill.”
“Who said that?”
“No one. You haven’t come.”
She turned her hands beneath the water.
“They are teaching me to prepare the pages for printing. I stay after the lists are finished.”
“Every evening?”
“While they have someone to teach me.”
She wrung the ink-stained cloth over the basin.
“Preya offered me the paid copy desk. I asked for the press instead. Half the wages until I can set a page without wasting a sheet.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to make things people read when they aren’t looking for someone dead.”
Tarin appeared behind her with a parcel of worn leather.
“The cobbler says these have already been soled twice.”
“Then ask whether he can patch them.”
“He did. Last time.”
Nela took her boots from him and set them beneath the bench. Atyas began to offer—he had not decided whether money or a word with Preya—and stopped when she shook her head.
“I knew what it paid.”
Tarin went back to the kitchen without answering her.
Atyas looked at the sheets. One carried a broad stain across its lower edge.
“Couldn’t you do it in the morning?”
Nela shut the tap.
“I work in the morning.”
“I know. I meant—”
Someone called her from the next room. She wiped her hands upon her apron and turned towards the voice.
“Tarin has your tool. I’ll tell him you need it.”
“I came to see you.”
She stopped in the doorway. He wished he had said it before asking about her hours.
“We eat here after the last collection,” she said. “It is usually late.”
The next week, Atyas came with bread from the palace kitchens. His escort waited where the Phoenix clerk directed them. Nela was still working, so he sat beside Tarin upon an upturned box and held a page away from his sleeve while the ink dried. Tarin had brought the borrowed tool. Its handle was split.
“It was like that,” he said.
“It wasn’t.”
Tarin examined the crack again. Atyas put the tool in his pocket before Nela returned with three bowls. She made him shift along the box so she could sit, then pulled the drying page out of reach of his supper.
“What were you using it for?” Atyas asked Tarin.
“A drawer.”
“Opening it?”
“It wouldn’t shut.”
Nela looked up from her bowl.
“Because you keep putting things behind it.”
“Things I need.”
“Then you might try somewhere you can reach them.”
Tarin tore a piece from the bread and used it to gather the last of his supper. When Nela rose to put away the dry sheets, he leaned closer to Atyas.
“I can mend the handle. I just need it for another day.”
Atyas took the tool from his pocket. Tarin ran a thumb along the split before setting it carefully beside his empty bowl.
Nela returned with the stained sheet from above the sink. She laid it on the box between them and smoothed the upper corners.
“This was the first one I set myself.”
Atyas looked at the dark smear along its lower edge. She saw him notice it.
“I moved it too soon. Look at the lines.”
He bent closer. He had read pages prepared in this room without wondering how anyone made the letters sit so evenly.
“How did you keep them straight?”
Nela set a clean sheet beside the first and showed him how she lined up its edge. He reached to help. One corner buckled beneath his hand, and she caught it before it touched the ink.
“Not there.”
“I was trying to help.”
“I know. Hold the other side.”
He did. The sheet settled between them, straight enough for her to continue.
Nela turned the stained sheet towards him. By the time she had finished explaining, Tarin was wiping the bowls and Atyas’s supper had cooled. She made him eat it before she would show him anything else.
At fifteen, Atyas was taller than Isolde had been. He discovered it when Preya recovered a court measurement recorded during the final year before his birth. The knowledge struck him harder than the report deserved. Alaria found him standing beside the mark she had placed upon the training wall.
“You are leaning,” she said.
“I am not.”
She placed two fingers between his shoulder and the stone.
“Stand straight. You will still be taller.”
Atyas stepped away from the wall.
“I don’t remember her being that short.”
“You were shorter.”
He looked at the two marks. His voice had stopped changing without warning. The training coat Seraphina had given him at thirteen had been passed to another student. The fighting sword Alaria had given him now bore marks from training and the road. The silver seven-star clasp remained preserved for the moments when Asehria needed to see the house into which he had been born. Alaria could still put him on the ground.
She did so less often.
That morning, he lasted twenty-three exchanges before Alaria left her sword hand exposed. He began the turn that would take it. Beyond her shoulder, the courtyard gate stood open.
Atyas broke away.
She caught his coat and pulled him sideways. He struck the post with one shoulder, twisted out of her grip and crossed the threshold with the seam tearing beneath his arm. Alaria stood inside the yard holding a strip of cloth.
“That was your last sound training coat.”
Atyas leaned against the outer wall until he had breath to answer.
“You could have let go.”
She tossed the strip to him.
“You could have turned sooner.”
He tucked it into his belt. The open gate remained between them while he rubbed the shoulder that had struck the post. A messenger approached along the passage. He wore Caldrin green. The sealed case in his hands carried King Aldren’s mark.
The letter was addressed to Atyas and the Assembly of Asehrian Continuity. King Aldren asked Queen Solara to open Feenix for a formal council and invited the Assembly of Asehrian Continuity to attend it there. Five rulers would attend the autumn council. Three had never recognised the assembly. Two sheltered millions of Asehrians while refusing any military relationship with them. None had committed forces to the restoration of Asehria.
Aldren offered Atyas no soldiers.
He promised no alliance.
He offered a place in the room.
Below the invitation, in the king’s hand, was a private sentence.
You accepted responsibility for what your people broke before asking my son to open the road. I am willing to hear what you ask next.
The countersign belonged to Prince Caelen.
His name had been written with enough pressure to score the paper.
“He still dislikes me,” Atyas said.
Alaria examined the mark.
“Yes.”
“Will he be there?”
“His father will not cross half the northern roads without him.”
“That was not an answer.”
“You are learning.”
Solara read the invitation twice.
“This is not an alliance,” she said.
“I know.”
“It is not recognition of your authority beyond the assembly.”
“I know.”
“Aldren may be using you to force the other rulers into a discussion they would rather avoid.”
“Probably.”
“You sound pleased.”
Atyas looked at the five royal seals listed beneath the invitation.
“For three years, they have discussed Asehria without anyone from Asehria inside the room.”
“And now?” Solara asked.
“Now they have to refuse while I can hear them.”
Solara glanced towards Alaria.
“He may be ready.”
“No,” Alaria said.
Atyas looked at her.
“You just agreed I should go.”
“I did.”
“Then what am I not ready for?”
“Most of it.”
She handed the invitation back.
“They arrive in twelve days.”
The succession book Solara had sent lay beneath the invitation. Atyas had marked the age of sixteen and the three years of captivity. Alaria opened it at the blue ribbon farther back.
“Dane’s certification procedure is here.”
He pushed the invitation over the page.
“After the council.”
Alaria left the ribbon where it was. When she took the supper tray away, he closed the book without moving it.
In Caldris, King Aldren received the assembly’s acceptance before sunset. Caelen stood beside the council window while his father read it. The king’s illness had left one hand unsteady and silvered most of his beard. It had not weakened his voice.
“The assembly will sit with twenty representatives,” Aldren said. “Civilian, military and provincial.”
“He comes with an audience,” Caelen replied.
“Those are not the same.”
“They become the same wherever he goes.”
Aldren placed the page upon his desk.
“You asked him to accept the village claims. He did.”
“After his soldiers emptied them.”
“He brought the soldiers back to repair the bridge.”
“And received credit for opening a road I kept open for a year before they gave me a reason to close it.”
The king studied his son.
“Is that what troubles you?”
“What troubles me is that rulers hear one story about the child beneath the silver comet and forget to ask what it cost everyone standing around him.”
“Atyas did ask.”
“The songs do not.”
Aldren’s expression softened.
Caelen disliked that more than anger.
“You held the southern border when I could not,” the king said. “Caldris knows it.”
“Caldris obeyed it.”
“And survived because of it.”
“No one invited five rulers to hear how.”
Aldren looked towards the travelling standards being prepared beyond the window. Caldrin green had been rolled inside weatherproof cloth beside the royal carriage. Feenix already possessed the silver seven-star standard beneath which the Asehrian assembly met.
“Then sit in the room,” he said. “Make them hear you too.”
Caelen watched the attendants prepare his father’s standard for the road to Feenix.
“They are not travelling to Feenix to hear me.”
Aldren reached for the travelling coat upon the back of his chair. His left hand caught in the lining. He tried again before Caelen crossed the room.
“Let go,” Caelen said.
“I have put on my own coat before.”
“Then you should be better at it.”
He freed the caught lining and held the sleeve while his father pushed his arm through. Aldren stood still for the fastening at his throat.
“Bring the village accounts,” the king said.
“They are packed.”
“Good.”
Caelen finished the fastening. The coat sat crookedly upon his father’s shoulders; he adjusted it before opening the door.
End of chapter