“Urn, aren’t you forgetting something? I’m the Norrington. You can’t kill me.”
“This is my realm, there is nothing I cannot do.”
“I can think of one. You can’t give your people hope.” Will drew hair down to cover his red ear. “Without hope, without a belief in the prophecy that will I save them, your nation will die. Like it or not, I am that hope.”
“Little boy, I have given my people more than hope. I have kept them safe.”
“By betraying Oriosa. Everyone knows it, but is afraid to act because you balance Chytrine off against everyone else. Once that slips, you are dead.”
“Was that a threat?” The king snorted. “How dare you threaten me?”
“Hey, who started the hitting here? Who’s talking about having me torn I apart? I’m giving as good as I get, so, yes, I’m a threat to you.” Will folded his arms over his chest to keep his pounding heart inside his ribs. “And if you don’t think I’m a credible threat, just be thinking on the last time a Norrington paid a visit to this room. I’m not my grandfather, but I’m just as dedicated to my duty as he was.”
The thief stepped toward the king, then stooped and picked up the coronet. He turned it over in his hands, then rolled it back to Scrainwood. “I will do my duty to Oriosa, to my friends, and to the world. So leave me alone to do it.”
Without looking back, Will stalked from the room, slamming a fist against his hip so it hurt. It had been stupid to let anger get the better of him. Scrainwood had viewed him as a pawn to be manipulated, and now saw him as an enemy. Not like I need another one.
He shrugged. Let him get in line. If Chytrine leaves anything of me behind, he’s welcome to it.
14
Alexia had a commander’s dislike for surprises. She guarded against them as much as possible, but the political maelstrom that was Meredo gave her a difficult battlefield. King Augustus had arrived from Alcida and was ensconced in Scrainwood’s palace. Queen Carus had taken up residence in the home of a noble, and Alexia had spoken with representatives of both leaders. Since they were going to serve on the tribunal along with Prince Linchmere, it would have been untoward for her to speak with them directly, but she was able to let their people know how vital Crow was to the war against Chytrine.
Wave after wave of blizzards had delayed the start of the trial, since snow-clogged streets made movement through Meredo almost impossible. Alexia had appreciated Kerrigan’s apparent delight with the snow—and Will’s hatred of it, since it made tracking a thief easy and the rooftops a treacherous route. The snow made the city pretty by hiding garbage middens and making things more quiet, which Alexia enjoyed. Still she resented the storms since they meant Perrine could not fly.
So, the princess and her earthbound sister contented themselves playing chess in her chamber. They both agreed to play by Gyrkyme rules, which stated that the Gyrkyme piece—which could leap other pieces because it was airborne—could only be brought down by archers that shot along the board’s diagonals. That variation normally outraged players, but both of them had grown up using it, so it would have seemed unnatural to play any other way.
A heavy pounding on the door interrupted their game. Even before Alexia could bid the caller to enter, the latch tripped and the door opened. Alexia had already moved from her chair and slid her sword from its scabbard, leveling it at the door.
The slender, hatchet-faced woman standing there raised an eyebrow. “Prepared to spill your own blood, Alexia?”
The princess did not lower the blade immediately. “Aunt Tatyana, I had no idea you were in Meredo. How did you get here?”
The white-haired woman shrugged and flicked her cloak off. Before the dark woolen garment could hit the floor, one of the two huge men behind her caught it. Both of them wore the same black uniforms with white piping on the sleeves and trouser legs. Alexia did not recognize them, but knew their uniforms. The Crown Circle Guards were revered among the Okrans exiles and known for their devotion to the royal family in general and Grand Duchess Tatyana in particular. Had she ordered them to get her to the moon, they would have found a way and been quick about it.
“My carriage until the snow, then a sleigh. We knew much snow in Okrannel, Alexia. It was no hardship.”
“I suppose it was not.” The princess resheathed her sword in the scabbard hanging on the back of her chair, then pointed with her left hand to Perrine. “You remember my companion, Perrine.”
The old woman looked the Gyrkyme up and down, as if viewing a dullard servant who had just broken a valuable dish. “Yes, of course. You are well?”
“Yes, Grand Duchess.”
“Splendid. You will leave us now.”
Alexia snarled. “She is not a servant. She is my sister.”
That comment brought an answering snarl to Tatyana’s thin upper lip, which was only calmed with apparent effort. “Your sister, indeed, child. Well, I need to speak with you, and I would save you the embarrassment of doing so before your… sister?
Peri just blinked her big amber eyes innocently and Alexia wanted to laugh. Anyone else would have withered under Tatyana’s frigid blue gaze, but Perrine paid her no attention. She would only leave if she desired to be absent, or if Alexia asked her to go. That her presence would irritate the Grand Duchess was ample inducement for her to want to stay.
The princess shook her head. “Anything you say to me she will be told. I have no secrets from her.”
Tatyana’s eyes widened for a moment. “None?”
Alyx hesitated. She’d not told Peri about the Communion of Dragons, primarily because she could not. That inability to share did eat at Alyx a little, but if Peri noticed anything was wrong, she said nothing.
Tatyana’s question was not directed at the Communion, however, but something the old woman found far more important. The Crown Circle, based on a vision Tatyana had had, decreed that every Okrans noble in exile should, at the age of fifteen, undertake a “dream raid,” in which they entered Okrannel and spent a night on their native soil. The dreams they had that night were viewed as having the clairvoyant power of the Norrington Prophecy. Raiders, when they returned to Yslin and the Crown Circle, were bid to share their dreams only with the circle of elders. For Alexia to have told Perrine about her dreams would have been a treason more serious than Crow’s in the eyes of her great-grandaunt.
Alexia nodded slowly. “I share with her my heart, my mind, my hopes, and many of my dreams, but not all.”
Tatyana appeared to be momentarily mollified. She raised a hand and one of the Guards entered the room, secured the chair Alyx had been using, then offered it to the Grand Duchess. She sat demurely, then looked up at her great-grandniece. “I came as soon as I heard the absurd claim that you have married this Crow. Who is he?”
Alyx folded her arms across her belly and leaned back against the wall. “You met him in Yslin, Aunt Tatyana. The night of the reception for General Adrogans. The man who fetched me wine.”
“Your servant? Alexia, how could you do that? He is not a noble; he is nothing. And then he turns out to be the Traitor Hawkins? He murdered your father, you know.”
“He did nothing of the kind.”
The old woman’s eyes became bitter. “You were barely alive then.”
“And you weren’t at Fortress Draconis.”
“No, but I was present when the world’s rulers learned what happened there. Only your father stood against a sullanciri. Hawkins could have saved him, but he ran. After your father died, he returned with the sword that slew the sullanciri, but it was too late. And he delayed, deliberately, because he hated your father for being all the things he could not be.”