King of Mist (Steel and Fire Book 2) (3 page)

Bolden caught his eye and winked, as if they shared some sort of joke, but Siv didn’t smile back.

“We need to discuss the coming winter,” Siv said, diving into the first item in his notes, underneath the part about the rousing opening speech. “I understand from my advisors that we will have a particularly harsh winter this year, and we need to make sure the people have enough food. Lord Morrven, how fares the plum harvest?”

“The plums are as good as ever, Your Majesty,” Lord Morrven said. He had a gravelly voice that was at odds with his plump-cheeked appearance. He glared across the table at Bolden’s father. “But the Rollendars have been clogging up our access roads and delaying the workers.”

“Nonsense,” Von Rollendar said immediately. Like his son, he had sandy hair, graying at the temples, and his nose was pointed and cruel. “Our men keep to roads owned by my estate. You must be mistaken.”

“I know which roads belong to the crown and which are private,” Lord Morrven snapped. “The plums will rot if we can’t get them over to the drying grounds in time.”

“Your accusations are baseless,” Lord Von said. He straightened the sleeve of his red coat, which was embroidered with his family’s sigil in black thread. “My house has the right to do what we wish with our holdings.”

“The road isn’t yours.”

“We acquired a portion of the Silltine Estate some time ago.” Lord Von waved to his son, and Bolden pulled out a map showing the roads along the southeastern ridge of King’s Peak, near where Orchard Gorge opened into the Fissure. Their landholdings were clearly marked with red ink. “You’ll find that we own orchards on both sides of the road. Therefore, it is ours.”

Lord Morrven barely glanced at the map. “How are we supposed to get our plums up to market if we can’t use the road?”

“Surely that’s not my problem.” Lord Rollendar smiled and turned to Lord Samanar across the table, a distinguished gentleman with coarse gray hair and luminous eyes like a morrinvole. “Wouldn’t you agree that I should decide who travels on my own land?”

“Of course, Von.” Lord Samanar glowered at Lord Morrven. “Besides, Morrven plums are barely fit for the mountain goats.”

Morrven’s face darkened. “Why you—”

“I think,” Siv said before the argument could get any worse, “that the law makes it quite clear the road itself belongs to the crown. You can’t prevent Lord Morrven from transporting his produce along it, Lord Rollendar.”

“I pay for the road’s maintenance,” Von said. He met Siv’s eyes steadily, and Siv remembered a particularly vicious lecture the man had given him when he and Bolden had been caught throwing rotten fruit at passersby on that very road as boys. “If the crown wishes to care for it, perhaps the crown can compensate me for the work I’ve done on the cobblestones over the years.”

Siv opened his mouth to respond, but others started chiming in, not allowing him to get a word in edgewise.

“If the crown is going to pay for your cobblestones,” Lord Farrow said, “it can burning well fix up Orchard Bridge down by our holdings. It gets too much traffic as is.”

“Now just a minute,” said Lord Tellen Roven. “We’ve been in line for bridge maintenance for months now. You can’t leap ahead to—”

“Enough,” Siv said, raising a hand for quiet. It took longer than he would have liked for the nobles to fall silent. “If you have complaints about the bridges, compile a list I can examine in depth. We’ll find the firestones for it if the maintenance is essential before winter. In the meantime, Lord Rollendar, you must allow Lord Morrven’s workers access to his orchards. We need to get the harvest in before First Snow.”

“Are you going to dictate what we can do with our own lands?” Bolden said suddenly. He met Siv’s eyes for five full heartbeats before adding, “Your Majesty.”

The council fell silent. The noblemen looked at Siv expectantly. Well, they were all expectant except for Bolden, who met his eyes across the wide table, smirking like a povvercat. Siv resisted the urge to glare back at him. Mostly.

“I will do what is best for the people of Vertigon,” Siv said. “As landholders, it’s your responsibility to ensure that our mountain’s industries run smoothly. For now, that means making sure all of our produce can be preserved before First Snow.” He looked around at the noblemen, intending to fix them each with a kingly stare, but they were already losing interest in what he was saying. How had his father gotten them all to pay attention so well? Siv cleared his throat loudly. “As for the rest,” he met Bolden’s eyes, “I’ll put the younger Lord Rollendar here in charge of surveying every bridge in Vertigon and reporting any repair work needed before First Snow. Bring your requests to him. It’s a sizeable, tedious job, but I’m sure Lord Bolden can handle it.”

Bolden’s smile froze, and you could have chilled a bottle of wine in the space between him and Siv.

After what felt like an hour, he said, “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Good,” Siv said. “Now, how about those goat farms?”

When the council meeting ended, Siv felt like he’d been circling his dueling hall at a dead run for the past two hours. Why did politics have to be so complicated? Worse, it was damn boring. Every single nobleman had a request for funds or special treatment from the crown. As often as not, at least one nobleman was mortally opposed to whatever another required. Siv spent the whole time settling disputes and parsing out what each party really wanted. And that was when he wasn’t being forced to call the council to attention again as they squabbled and chatted amongst themselves. So much for his plans to captivate the nobles through sheer force of personality.

The council members milled around the chambers after the meeting, speaking to each other in tight groups. None of them approached him. They seemed all too willing to carry on the business of the kingdom without much input from the king. That didn’t bode well for Siv’s future as ruler. He had hoped they would appreciate a little youthful energy on the council. In truth, they didn’t take his suggestions all that seriously, especially with Bolden thwarting him at every turn. He was going to have to do something about that man—and soon.

He wished he had an uncle or other relative on the council, someone to be a guide and an ally. His father had been an only child, and his mother’s family all lived down in Trure. He felt exposed and vulnerable without his father, even without the grief that still snuck up on him when he least expected it. House Amintelle held the throne, but its landholdings were relatively small. They had won the crown by virtue of his great-grandfather’s strength as a Firewielder, but the days when magic workers held political power in Vertigon were long gone. The other nobles owned the entire kingdom’s orchards, goat and pony farms, and many of the Fireshops, and demonstrating his family’s power was difficult.

As the nobles shuffled out of the council chambers, Lady Tull Denmore lingered at the door, speaking to her advisor in a quiet voice. She was a beautiful woman, young and delicate and sad. She was also the fabulously wealthy head of a major noble house, one that had blended with her own House Ferrington when she married Lord Denmore. The Ferringtons controlled one of the major access roads to the Fissure, and the Denmores owned most of the goat paddocks on Village Peak. Since the tragic death of her young husband, Tull had become very powerful indeed. Siv had intended to propose to her just before his father’s death—or else find a powerful bride in his mother’s home country of Trure—but that scheme had fallen by the wayside. Something—or rather someone—kept holding him back.

Siv wasn’t in the mood to talk to Lady Tull after his underwhelming performance at the council meeting, but he spotted Bolden waiting for her outside the doors, perhaps to escort her home. Siv couldn’t allow a Rollendar-Denmore alliance to take hold right now. He straightened his coat and strode over to her.

“My lady.”

“Your Highness.” Tull offered him her smooth, white hand, and he bent over it, deep enough to be both kingly and gallant.

“Thank you for attending the council meeting,” Siv said. “I hope it wasn’t too boring for you.”

“Not at all, Your Highness.”

Bolden edged sideways in the entryway so that he was fully in Siv’s view, looking about as happy as a furlingbird with a cold as he tried to listen in.

“Would you like to dine with me tomorrow night?” Siv asked the young widow, not bothering to keep his voice down. “Your company and your presence in the castle would honor me.”
There.
That sounded suitably regal.

“Thank you, Your Highness. I’d love to.”

“Good. Until tomorrow, my lady.”

Tull curtsied, looking up at him through delicate eyelashes. She really was lovely, and it was high time for him to renew his courtship before Bolden secured any promises himself. Before his father’s death, Siv had thought there was a chance he could insist on a certain non-noble marriage, but now that he wore the crown himself, he was starting to see how important marriage alliances could be. The nobles would dismiss him as long as they saw him as weak, and an Amintelle-Denmore-Ferrington alliance could be truly formidable.

But as Lady Tull left the council chamber, accompanied by her retainers, Siv already had a different woman on his mind. He hoped to get back to his chambers in time to catch Dara before she headed off on her investigation. Unfortunately, his sister Soraline intercepted him before he’d gone more than five steps.

“Siv! How did it go?”

“Hey, Sora.”

“Tell me everything.” She grabbed his arm eagerly. She had dark hair, round features, and light eyes like their Truren mother’s. “Did you discuss the Ringston Pact? Did Lord Farrow mention the—”

“It was fine. Nothing too exciting happened.”

“But—”

“I have to get back to my chambers,” Siv said. Dara might have come and gone by now. He wasn’t sure what time her shift ended.

“But you have to tell me what happened,” Sora pleaded. At seventeen, she loved politics more than just about anything. Siv tried to squeeze past her and her hulking red-haired bodyguard, Denn Hurling, but he stopped at the look of desperation on his sister’s round face.

“Okay, okay. I’ll fill you in.”

“Yes! You know, you could let me actually attend the council meetings. I might be able to help.”

“You’re a seventeen-year-old girl,” Siv said. “I don’t think having you whispering in my ear will help my credibility with the nobles. They already think they can walk all over me.”
Even the young ones.
He hoped Bolden contracted a very nasty case of gut rot in the near future.

“I know more about the kingdom than you do anyway,” Sora mumbled.

“If you don’t want me to tell you what happened, I can—”

“Never mind!” Sora said. “Sorry, Siv. Start at the beginning.”

He filled his sister in on the discussion as they walked. To his immense surprise, talking it over actually made it easier to process everything that had happened, and Sora even had some good insights.

“Why do you think Lord Rollendar wants to control that road so badly?” Siv asked. That had been bothering him since the beginning of the meeting. “He doesn’t grow plums, and Lord Morrven isn’t his direct competitor. He shouldn’t care.”

“Hmmm . . .” Sora considered for so long that Siv thought she must be lost down a morrinvole hole in her head. Finally, she said, “What did Lord Samanar say? He’s Morrven’s biggest rival.”

“He supported Rollendar,” Siv said. “But like you said, Samanar and Morrven are competitors, so that’s expected.”

“But Lord Samanar has never been particularly friendly with the Rollendars,” Sora said. “In fact, they’re barely supposed to be on speaking terms.”

“You think it’s a new alliance?”

“Sure sounds like it.”

“Great. That’s the last thing I need.” The Rollendars were making new friends left and right. Siv had to rein them in quickly. And he couldn’t have people ignoring or interrupting him in meetings. He had to do something to establish his hold on the council soon. And he had to figure out what was so important about that road.

3.

The Firesmith

WHEN Dara’s shift ended, she jogged up the winding stone stairwell of the castle’s central tower to retrieve the Fire Blade Siv wanted her to investigate. It was still strange that he lived in the king’s chambers now, far away from the beautiful dueling hall he had constructed outside his original rooms in the western end of the castle. Dara had never actually been inside those rooms, but she had spent hours in the dueling hall over the summer. She still went there sometimes to practice with the training dummies. She hoped Siv’s duties would eventually let up enough to allow him to train with her again. She missed how uncomplicated their friendship had been within the dueling hall.

Dara slowed at the landing at the top of the stairwell. The young Castle Guard stationed outside the king’s chamber was a new recruit, one of the first men hired in place of the treacherous guards who had tried to kidnap Siv and his two sisters.

“I need to get something from inside,” Dara said as she approached. “King’s orders.”

“Of course.” The guardsman stepped aside, heels clicking. “You’re Nightfall, aren’t you?”

“Huh? Oh, yes. Or at least I was.”

“I’ve seen you duel. You’re brilliant.”

“Thanks.” Dara said. “Do you compete?” The young man had the look of a soldier rather than a sport duelist, all strong arms and sharp edges. His dark-brown hair was cut in a clean military style.

“When I was a kid,” he said. “Had to quit when I joined the army. I still follow the sport, though.”

“Me too,” Dara said.

The young guardsman stuck out his hand. “I’m Telvin, by the way. Telvin Jale.”

“Dara.”

“Are you going to keep dueling now that you’re on the Guard?” he asked.

Dara hesitated, glancing down at the sigil on her uniform. She felt so far removed from who she had been just a month ago, when she had adopted the Nightfall persona to help her obtain a dueling patron.

“I can still go to competitions when I have Turndays off, but my duties don’t allow me as much time to train.”