Isobel Arceneaux, dressed all in white, was waiting for hi
m at the bottom of the stairs. Tribunal clerics had been arriving at the province for days now, collecting at the edges of the manor and sanctorium like ants clamoring after a drop of honey. There were Greythorne civilians among the crowd too: men and women who appreciated and applauded the Tribunal’s viciousness, or those too scared to speak up against it lest it turn on them. They all watched and waited, growing in numbers, but never crossed the property line; Arceneaux was being careful to obey the laws to the strictest letter. Adherence to the rules was little more than a pretense, of course, but it was a pretense that gave her near-unlimited power.
Arceneaux could execute the law with the exactness of a surgeon’s blade, killing with the same cut she proclaimed was a cure for pain. And where was the lie? All pain ends with death.
She lifted her gloved hand to quiet the teeming mass at her heels as one of her acolytes removed the hawthorn-hilted family sword from the scabbard around Fredrick’s waist. “Lord Regent,” she said, “for three weeks, I have requested an audience with our king. For three weeks, I have been denied. Why are you keeping him from seeing his subjects?”
“I do only as my king wills,” Fredrick replied, hands behind his back.
“And is it his will to sit alone in his gilded halls, without recognizing the people to whom he owes his service? His very position?” Her eyes narrowed at Fredrick. “Or is that you, imposing your will upon him?”
“I do only as my king wills,” Fredrick repeated.
“Lord Fredrick,” Arceneaux said, “I know that you and your lovely wife have not yet been blessed with children, even after all these long years of marriage. Perhaps you’ve come to feel a fatherly fondness for our young king. Perhaps,” she said pointedly, “that misplaced affection has led you to believe that you can also exercise fatherly control over him.”
Fredrick squared his shoulders. “I do only as my king wills.”
She held him in her icy gaze for one moment, and then two, before turning to the acolytes at her side. “Seize him,” she said. Then, “Lord Fredrick Greythorne, you have unlawfully restricted public access to our sovereign monarch and have exerted undue authority in his place. You are hereby stripped of your title as regent to the king and placed under arrest to face trial by fair tribunal.”
She raised her voice. “Let it be known: The law states that in such grievous cases of wrongdoing as this, the accused must forfeit all claims to title and property. It is, by right, passed on to his rightful heir. As I mentioned before: Lord Greythorne has no children. And his wife, without having any blood claim to the land, is also unable to hold it. It would, then, have been passed to his brother, Kellan Greythorne, but he, too, has turned traitor to the crown and cannot inherit. Which means,” she lifted her chin triumphantly, “that Greythorne and all of its surrounding property must be considered forfeit and must return to the crown, a transaction that will be managed and overseen by its Empyrea-guided judicial arm.” She took one step up the stairs, then another and another. The top step was the last one, the demarcation of where public crown land ended and private Greythorne property began.
She stepped over it and turned, arms raised. “I hereby reclaim this house for His Majesty, King Conrad! Long live the king!”
A cheer went up below, and the crowd surged forward, hungry for more outrage, more scandal, more brutal justice.
Arceneaux waved her highest-ranking acolytes inside. “Arrest everyone inside,” she told them, “but don’t kill anyone. When you find the king, bring him to me straightaway.”
She waved and smiled while torches bobbed.
Fredrick waited and prayed.
A few minutes later, Arceneaux’s acolytes returned. “There’s no one here, Magistrate. The entire manor is completely empty.”
Her composure slipped ever so slightly with the curl of her lip when she turned to Fredrick and spat, “Where is the king? What have you done?”
Fredrick smiled and said, “I do only as my king wills.”
As he was led away, he repeated once again the Greythorne family phrase.
Do your duty, and you’ll never have to go to sleep with regrets.
23
I spent the first several hours on Castillion’s boat locked in the captain’s quarters.
Under other circumstances, being alone in such a place would have been a welcome respite: I bathed in water warmed by the furnaces in the belly of the boat; ate tiny, flaky pastries decorated with icing that looked like the most delicate of laces. Castillion had confiscated my satchel—bloodcloth still inside it—and the luneocite knife from my boot, but provided me with material to read and paper upon which I could write or draw, were I so inclined. Everything was plush and pristine, crafted by artisans of great skill and even greater vision.
I hated every second of it.
I spent my time practicing the litany of abuses I’d unleash upon him when he finally deigned to see me, but the moment he did arrive at the door of my extravagant cell, I forgot them all and instead said, “Onal. How is she? Please tell me she’s all right.”
He closed the door behind him and sat down in the red velvet chair behind his desk. “Well,” he said, “I have to be honest and tell you that she was in a very bad way when you brought her to us. It is proving to be too much for our ship’s healer—but of course, anything more than a paper cut would be too much for him—”
I blanched. “She’s not—?”
“She’s not dead yet,” Castillion said in a too-bright way that made me think he was trying to come off as encouraging and hopeful. “And we’re headed toward Ingram’s port. There’s an order of Empyrean nuns that runs a sanctorium on the harbor. If anyone can help her, it will be them—”
“Nuns?” I asked incredulously. “You want to hand her over to nuns?”