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This plan reeks to the gods and should never have seen the light of day. Whose bright idea was this?
He hadn't said that out loud, of course.
At least, he hadn't intended to verbalize anything. And he hadn't thought he had actually said a single word - and especially not that phrase in particular.
Not until a voice said, from the head of the slightly-rickety table, "That would be me. And you are?"
Not until what felt like the entirety of the tent and possibly half the population of the kingdom turned their eyes onto him and a silence fell that was so thick that Elsbeth, his littlest sister, could have dropped one of her sewing needles onto the desert scrub underneath their sabatons and everyone would have heard the noise it would have hypothetically made.
Everyone was staring at him. Duke Naxen and Lord Haryse, ever-present at His Majesty's side. Every other knight and lord seated close to the table - in stark contrast to where Myles was standing near the back, so close to the walls of the tent he could feel the oiled canvas shifting and bulging in the breeze. Every last squire near Myles was cautiously edging away from him with all the wariness of his father's hounds when Mother caught them eating scraps. His knightmaster, one Tullus of Tameran, looked like he was on the verge of contemplating strangling Myles himself to redeem the family's honor and spare himself the humiliation of acting as knightmaster to a squire who had just denigrated His Majesty.
Even worse, denigrated His Majesty's courage and valor and tactical aptitude in front of an audience.
His Majesty, King Jasson III of Conté. The prince who had wrested back the Drell River valley from the Tusainites, who had been crowned in the Great Hall of the palace barely a year later, and was now halfway through conquering Barzun and all of its riches. Well, there weren't many riches as Tortallans defined the terms (the resident Bazhir certainly considered, for example, the desert's oases as priceless treasures), to be found in the Great Southern Desert itself, but that was beside the point at this moment.
"Squire Myles of Fenrigh, Your Majesty," Myles tried very hard not to squeak, but of course this would be the moment the gods chose to punish him for his hubris - because his voice went up and down and possibly even sideways through three separate octaves right at the moment he was speaking to the king. Was bowing the correct etiquette for this occasion, or was he supposed to kneel? His instructors in decorum and etiquette had never covered how to behave on an occasion such as this.
His sole purpose was to stand near the back, keep his mouth shut, and run whatever errands his Sir Tullus might demand of him. His Majesty was never even supposed to notice that Myles existed.
Myles, the youngest grandson of a younger brother to the Lord of Fenrigh - beyond extraneous to the succession. So shortly after his seventh birthday, he had been sent to the City of the Gods. There he was to remain, either to take religious vows or pursue the path of a scholar. Families like his collected sons and sons-in-law in high places, and there was power and influence to be earned regardless of which path he walked.
A knighthood hadn't been in the cards for him. Not until consumption had taken Lord Martnin to meet the Black God and the pox had taken three more. Not until two of his older cousins had died taking back the eastern bank of the Drell River.
He was still nowhere close to inheriting the estate (and he blessed Mithros for that nearly every day), but barely six months after his eleventh birthday, he had been fetched from the City of the God to serve as page for his uncle. And now he was here. On the edge of the Great Southern Desert.
His Majesty had married Her Majesty well over a decade before the conquest of Barzun had begun, but it was Myles's own learned opinion that the signs had been visible even as early as then - not that he had any way of remembering for himself firsthand, having been an infant at the time. The queen hadn't officially been of the Barzuni royal house, hadn't been named Halliche, but her grandfather had still been the king. Her mother his eldest daughter.
Barzuni inheritance customs were...intriguing.
Inheritance - in most Barzuni houses, anyway - primarily operated under male-preference patrilineal primogeniture, in line with Tortallan customs. Where their respective traditions diverged was that the selection - and ensuing negotiations - of a prospective wife was exclusively the domain of women. Supported by her mother and aunts and sisters and daughters, it was the mother of a man who assessed the strength and character and dowry of a young woman. Only when a decision has been made would a women inform her husband of their son's to-be bride. Even a Barzuni man with no kin left in the entire world would send a trusted female stranger in his stead, always turning to the advice of a women, before approaching himself - if there existed any mothers who would deign to discuss their daughter's hand with one such as him.
Inheritance and Customs of the Southern Barzuni been quite a fascinating book, truly - even if he had had to consult a dictionary whenever he came across and unfamiliar word.
King Amanar had only one son survive past childhood. Prince Marus of Helliche had died young when a pig had startled his horse, causing him to be thrown. Word was that his neck had been immediately broken upon impact. He had only sired one legitimate child at the time of his death - a sickly infant who, if rumors and more reputable gossip was to be believed, was never more than a handful of uneven breaths away from being whisked away by the Black God. Everyone had known that Barzun was due for a succession struggle fought over King Amanar's barely-cold deathbed, long before illness had struck him down. The legitimate but frail grandson, who needed assistance to mount a horse and never ventured far from the palace. His more robust but illegitimate elder brother. Their second cousin once removed, the eldest son of the king's younger brother. Nearly half a dozen first cousins born to Marus' sisters.
And then there was His Majesty, who had been betrothed to Daneline of Jesslaw nearly a decade and a half before King Amanar had died. The Queen Mother had negotiated the match with Princess Damia herself - back when His Majesty had still been Prince Jasson, the second son of King Baird. Before a hunting accident had taken Prince Newlin and too many rich gravies had finally brought down King Baird within a year of each other. When the first reports of King Amanar's death had finally reached Corus, His Majesty had summoned his vassals for war in Her Majesty's name and rights.
In an attempt for something - anything - to fill the awful silence and the terrifying horror of having spoken out of turn in such a spectacular manner, Myles started expounding on the train of thought that had made him even think that such a phrase in the first place. "With all due respect, Your Majesty, this plan has already been tried before, and it doesn't work. The Journal of Juristic Papyrology says that in the year 526 A.E.-"
Myles spoke, because he had to. He knew his history backward and forward and inside and out, had spent more afternoons with his nose buried in dusty tomes and ancient maps, half of which weren't even written in Common, and he knew he was right. His Majesty and Lord Haryse and Duke Naxen might have had more fighting experience than Myles could imagine, but they weren't the ones who had been curious why salt flats (Myles couldn't even remember why he had cared that much about salt flats to begin with, to be perfectly honest) only existed in some parts of the Great Southern Desert and not others and therefore spent the better part of three months learning everything the City of the Gods had to offer on Barzuni geography and obscure lore.
"-the rain shadow of the Southern Wall," he finally finished.
Good Mithros, he was rambling. He immediately shut up so swiftly that it was possible that his teeth clicked together in his haste.
There was something that might have been the faintest of twitches indicating wry amusement - dare he even hope for the possibility of a smile - on His Majesty's face. There didn't (yet) appear to be much anger in the His Majesty's sharp blue eyes as he said, "Very well. You believe this is a bad plan. Tell me a better one."
Myles took a deep breath, remembering all the hours of meditation the Mithran masters had all potential novices in, trying to calm his frantically racing heart - which was currently beating faster than a rabbit caught in a snare and about to be skinned alive.
All eyes were intent on him. Some in anger. Others in exasperation and annoyance. Yet others with quiet interest.
He inhaled. Exhaled. "Your Majesty, we should fight with the nature of the land shaped by the Goddess, not against it. The quartermasters..."
Before Myles knew it, nearly a decade had passed.
Myles researched the history of the Bazhir and advised His Majesty that appointing a non-Bazhir as the governor of Persepolis was not the specific hill he should kill the entire treaty to defend. He organized His Majesty's correspondence and orders and helped review paperwork from the quartermasters and served as scribe when necessary, because letters danced when His Majesty looked at the page and an evening spent squinting at paperwork was a surefire way to induce a foul mood. He took notes for His Majesty as war was declared on Scanra, dug through dusty old tomes and blueprints and squinted at shoddy translations until he found secret passages into Castle Aptot.
More leisurely afternoons were spent at the Conté summer estate in Olau, where His Majesty had casually indulged Myles' research interests and granted him permission to catalogue the ruins - genuine preserved ruins dating back to the Old Ones. He was dispatched to Maren as part of the party charged with marriage negotiations for Princess Jessa. In time of slightly-more peace, he roamed the Eastern Lands, setting up connections through which information filtered back to him - information that would be useful to the Crown: who was having affairs with whom, crop yields throughout the Eastern Lands, complaints of local merchants and the guilds, fishery catches and how techy nobles were about their overlords' moods.
No matter how far afield he wandered, however, he always found his way back to Corus in the end.
He lost count of the occasions where he said, "This is a godawful proposal, Your Majesty, and whoever wrote this scheme up should be sent back to the City of the Gods to learn how to write." Emry of Haryse was a military man himself, and his advice was often even more blunt that Myles and peppered with far more profanities - so they got along excellently. Though Haryse rarely inquired after Myles' latest research project - often delayed for more pressing campaign concerns or other - the way His Majesty often did.
The king himself had knighted Myles, and Myles had never felt so proud as he had in that moment. Someone could have told him that his heart, ventricles and all, had actually burst out of his chest and Myles would have believed him.
Until one afternoon, while Myles was carefully organizing this week's correspondence into neatly sorted piles. This job could have been Prince Roald's, now a squire (and hopefully soon to be knighted in another year or two) and serving his father as was the custom, or at the very least Prince Roald should have been present to observe and learn, but the young man never seemed to have the desire to consider the minutiae of war, so the task fell to Myles.
As Myles did so, His Majesty inquired after the process of Myles latest research paper on the Olau ruins and whether he had made any progress in ascertaining the material and origin and purpose of the mysterious coating omnipresent on everything in the ruins - which Myles currently had no fewer than three and a half theories on.
Then, out of nowhere, as Myles was taking a breath and figuring out what his next train of thought and area of excavation should be, said, "You know, I explored those ruins myself when I was a lad. I have more than one fond memory of fishing in the creek, climbing the apple trees, practicing my swordplay on those lands."
Myles blinked, uncertain as to where the king is going with this. He did know that, but wasn't certain what that had to do with grid squares and excavation plans.
His Majesty continued. "I'm granting the lands to you. It's yours, if you wish it. With careful management, the silver mines should provide a steady income once more. The apple orchards are excellent, as you well know, and the land is fertile enough."
Fertile enough.
Myles couldn't help but gawp in astonishment. He hadn't anticipated this - well, he hadn't not anticipated lands of his own one day, since with each new conquest came lands and estates to doll out as rewards to faithful retainers - but Olau. Olau, which was within a day's ride of Corus, not like Mindelan or Greendale or any number of other new border baronies. Just money from selling the wheat and barley to the city, to say nothing of the apples, would have likely been more than enough to comfortably support Myles. It had been a summer estate for the Contés for years, ever since the old Lord had died in some accident or other with no close heirs some seventy years ago. And the mines - many of them were tapped out, had been since the mid-third century H.E., but there had been new developments in mining spells and equipment since then. It would take work, and he wouldn't ever match the ducal houses in sheer wealth, but it would be-
More than enough. More than the youngest grandson of a younger brother had ever thought to dream of.
And the ruins. His Majesty was giving Myles one of the best preserved ruins of the Old Ones left in Tortall. The ruins he had fallen in love with for the first time at the age of fifteen, which held a treasure trove of artifacts and research potential that would last him a lifetime.
"Well, Sir Myles," His Majesty said, a grin tugging up the corners of his face. It was entirely possible that his amusement was the result of the expression - whatever it was, because Myles lacked access to a mirror at that precise moment - on Myles' face. "How do you feel about becoming the Baron of Olau?"
Three days later, the king ordered him to kneel.
Myles obeyed.
His Majesty drew his sword. The angle of the sun made his sandy-brown hair shine almost the same shade of gold as his crown. "Sir Myles of Fenrigh, I create thee Baron of Olau, with ownership of all its lands and grants," he declared, his voice almost ringing. "These lands and grants, together with the title, go to you and your heirs in evidence of the gratitude held by the house of Conté for your leal service and stalwart advice."
"In the name of Mithros and the Great Mother Goddess," Myles began, reciting the oath which every Tortallan noble had engraved on their hearts, "whose holiness are foremost: to His Majesty, Jasson of Conté, King of Tortall, I swear to be loyal and true. To love all that he loves, to shun all that he shuns according to the laws of the gods and the customs of this land, and neither willingly nor intentionally to carry out either a word or deed which to him is loathful. I wish to live up to the regard with which he may hold me, everything agreed between us I will carry out when I submit to him, and his will I have chosen, on condition that he keep me as I am willing to deserve and fulfill all that our agreement was when I submitted to him and chose his will. So mote it be."
In the last lights of the setting sun, he swore his fealty to his liege. His king.
The weight of a sword rested on first one shoulder, then the other. Finally-
"Rise, Lord Myles of Olau."
So Myles of Olau, advisor to the throne, rose.
For the rest of his life, Myles would always wonder if there was anything he could have done to prevent the king's death.
If there was anything he could have said. Any advice he could have given. Whether standing by His Majesty's side could have made a difference. He knew there was nothing he could have done other than die by the king's side had he been there. The Duke of Naxen had been killed in that last desperate counter-attack by the Tusainites as well, his son and heir only alive - albeit at the cost of a finger - due to the quick thinking of a nearby man of arms.
Myles knew that it did no good to ruminate over the past - but what was the purpose of a scholar if not to do exactly that?
While Myles had been laid up in a tent with the flux and shitting out his entrails, the king had died. The Battle of Joyous Forest - an inauspicious name if there ever was one, given all that had been lost - was the hollowest of victories.
When he had come to and dragged himself to War Council Quarters, just barely keeping the soup and bread the healers had fed him in his digestive tract where it belonged, he found Roald squaring off against Lord Haryse, who was in a quiet, but towering fury.
"Pull all our forces from the border," Roald was demanding. "No, not that new border my father hared off to claim - the old one. If Tusaine or Galla want that land, then they can have it. I want it done now. I want all our troops back by nightfall tonight."
Myles was aghast at the magnitude of that decision. At the problems it would cause. And, more than anything else, on the complete and other short notice. One couldn't just up and move thousands of foot soldiers and their baggage train and hundreds of knights and their baggage on any timescale that resembled normal human schedule.
And here Roald was, ordinary a full withdrawal - one hundred percent - of all Tortallan forces from the contested Joyeous forest and the surrounding lands. Full withdrawal, when both Galla and Tusaine also wanted to carve this land up like a piece of juicy roast meat.
It wasn't hard to see why Emry of Haryse's face was rapidly approaching a (very respectful) blotchy shade of red and confusion.
Myles tried to intervene. "This is one of the worse ideas I've ever heard, and I'm heard some absolutely horrendous ones in my lifetime."
"Well, I'm telling you to make this happen." There was steel in Roald's voice, more steel than Myles had witnessed from him in the last decade. Steel that the king - the old king, now - had despaired on more than one occasion that his eldest son lacked. Steel that he had tried endlessly to make appear in his heir.
"Your father-" Myles starts, which turns out to been one of the more fatal mistakes one could make with Roald.
"My father is dead," Roald snapped. "I will make peace instead of waging senseless wars. Do I make myself clear, Sir Myles?"
Even Lord Haryse, famously implacable to the point of having been awarded the moniker of Granite, shifted uncomfortably at the barely concealed slight. Roald had no right to seize Myles' lands and title - the very lands and title that had been bestowed by his father as a reward for his advice and candor. Everyone in the room was aware of that fact.
There were, however, any number of ways that Roald could make Myles' life extremely uncomfortable short of seizing his lands without cause, if he so chose.
The old king always said that if he needed to say, "That's an order," to someone, then he had well and truly botched the job somewhere along the line. Had used to say. Maybe he had even picked it up from old Emry.
As Myles wandered out from the council chambers, he spotted a tumbler of whiskey half-filled on what constituted a nightstand in these quarters. Myles down it in one gulp, letting the burn sting its way down his throat. He had never been much of one for drinking - oh, he could appreciate a good vintage perfectly well and Olau apples made for some very delicious ciders, but he preferred to keep his thinking clear. To see all the details and possible pathways, that bright clear line from one point to another.
Except. Except the world had been turned upside down, he had every right to mourn, and nothing would be the same ever again.
King Jasson the Fierce was dead. Long live King Roald the Peacemaker.
"Have you lost your mind?" Myles demanded, tactfully ignoring the slammed door that swung shut just out of his line of sight from this latest round of...philosophical disagreements between Roald and Roger.
Half the palace knew of the constant arguments between the Contés brothers. Young Roger, who had returned from Carthak too late to attend his father's funeral and thrown himself into knight training with a vengeance, petitioned his brother nearly on a weekly basis for Mithran masters to be brought from the City of the Gods to instruct all Gifted pages in magic. Warcraft, of course, but also whatever even the most marginal of talents, those pages who would never summon lightning or earth-shakes could learn - small healing cantrips, spells for light and fire on a dark night, workings to mend armor and tack.
At every turn, Roald refused - claiming that magic wasn't needed, that if Roger wished to be a knight one day then he was to be a knight and not waste time frittering away at magecraft.
At thirteen, Roger was on the older end to be starting as a page, but the Old King had ensured that his younger son's retinue included a tutor to instruct him in swordplay from very beginning of his magical education - first in the City of the Gods, and then to be further fostered at the university in Carthak. The Old King had spared no expense when it came to the education of his sons. There was every chance of him ascending to squire in the next two years, no matter that most of his peers began serving as pages before the age of ten.
A Carthaki match had been on the table for Roger, before the Old King's death. Still was, for all Myles knew - though Roald hardly could have seemed less interested in what advantages could be secured for the kingdom with his brother's match, given the way he was completely and utterly squandering his own marital prospects. Though Roger would have to be a problem for another day, it seemed.
"Lianne of Naxen," Myles repeated himself, trying not to raise his voice in incredulity. Roger had demanded yet another audience with the king while Myles had been in the middle of stunned bafflement over Roald's astonishing level of pertinacity in making the worse decisions possible. Myles, of course, had graciously stepped to the side and stared at the intricately carved crown moldings in this wing of the palace quarters and pretended to be nothing so much as another piece of furniture for several endless minutes.
Time had not performed the miracles it regularly accomplished with liquor in this case. Nearly a quarter-hour later, Roald's choice of queen was still one of the more inexpedient choices possible.
This was a horrible - okay, not horrible, but certainly foolish and disadvantageous - match. The Naxens were a loyal house, a ducal house. Matters could be worse on that front. But marrying Lianne gained the crown nothing. Princess Alys, sister to King Roald the Quiet, the Old King's grandfather, had married Duke Geoffery of Naxen only a few generations before. The two of them were third cousins, relations were already close, and while there was certainly a time and place to unite excess claims and tie up loose ends, a surplus of heirs was the opposite of the Conté problem at the moment.
The only thing the kingdom gained from the match was allowing Roald to marry his best friend's sister, who he was in love with. Except he was the king now, and he bore the responsibility to not marry for anything as humble as love. Roald's bride should bring in a substantial dowry (which, in all fairness, the Naxens could afford), bind enemies as possible allies, shore up support and relationships in potentially contentious regions of the kingdom, bring trade benefits and better relationship with their allies, give Tortall claims to new territories. This wasn't a time of domestic turmoil in which Roald needed to secure support among his core vassals, this wasn't even a time of general peace where he could choose to marry closer to home at will to periodically refresh ties. Tortall's borders, many of them barely a few decades old, badly needed shoring up.
Queen Daneline - now the Queen Mother - had long since left the room for her own new quarters, having pressed her lips tightly and said to her son. "Love comes after, if you're lucky. I was lucky. Do not be a fool, ayati."
And in that moment, Roald wasn't acting like a king, but a weak-willed, lovelorn boy who thought nothing of nothing other than his own desires. He snapped, "Mind your tongue, Myles. If you don't shut up, I'll see to it that you're sent from court."
Myles had nothing against Lianne personally. Her skepticism of the match had little to do with doubts as to her temperament or personal suitability to the responsibilities of queenship. Except their enemies were circling the borders like a pack of hyenas around a wounded lion. The new southern lands had been under the crown's control for barely a decade. There was a blatant vacuum left wide open at their northeastern corner. In the north, Scanran raiders would start plaguing the fiefs - old and new - of the Grimhold mountains the minute the warlords sorted out who would be the ones leading it.
And in the midst of it all, Roald refused to leave the palace. He wouldn't go on Progress to travel throughout the kingdom to visit his vassals, hear their concerns, act as mediator between feuding neighbors who didn't want to take affairs all the way to the palace in Corus. He wouldn't delegate someone to make the rounds in his place. He made no demands of his most prominent vassals to bring their children to court. Myles wasn't demanding the second coming of King Gareth the Strong here, who had unofficially held families of quarrelsome nobility hostage during the contentious civil war in the aftermath of his father's abolition of slavery. Even he'd readily admit that would be slightly overcompensating in this situation.
But Tortall was a large kingdom, difficult to bind together at the best of times. Without work, the kind of quiet work that even the Old King had recognized was necessary, for all that he had personally disliked it himself, the kingdom would unravel. And it would start at the edges, as enemies nibbled away like rats encroaching on a particularly tasty hunk of cheese. Fealty ran both ways. Vassals fought for their lieges as a result of personal relationships. You swore fealty to a man, promised to server faithfully, because he and his ancestors had kept faith with you in the past.
And here Roald was, letting them be.
Mithros, but did Myles want a drink. He didn't shut up, of course. He was possibly constitutionally incapable of "shutting up," as it were. Less than six months after the Old King's death, and Myles already yearned for the days when the Old King had always taken his blunt candor with an amused smile.
"Strengthen the crown's ties with one of the hill fiefs, Your Majesty," Myles tried pleading again. It would shore up their eastern border at a time when Tusaine or even Tyra was bound to be probing for any sign of weakness. "Or one of the northern families, if you wish." Stone Mountain, Trebond, Aili - a Minchi, even. That had been the Old King's plans, and tentative negotiations had been in the works for over a year.
Roald's response had been a sharp order for him to, "Get out."
On Myles' way back to his quarters, he ordered a page that happened to scurry past him to fetch him a bottle of rum.
After all, what was the harm in it?
One by one, the Old King's advisors were pushed out.
Emry of Haryse offered a retirement "to spend more time with his family." Myles himself relegated to teaching the pages, whom Roald had gathered all at court for their education and training rather than curriculum decisions to individual lords. Tusaine grew bolder by the day. Pirates whittled away at coastal villages. Scanran war-drums sounded from the north. Poor Gareth, now Duke of Naxen and brother-in-law to the king, over a decade earlier than anyone had anticipated practically pulling himself into pieces to fulfill jobs each great enough for any one man to struggle filling - let alone three. King's Champion, Prime Minister, and Training Master for Roald's new page program set up at the palace. Myles hadn't the first clue when the younger man found the time to sleep, let alone anything as pedestrian as eating, drinking, and bathing.
Myles, in stark contrast, became known as the court drunk. Oh, he still offered his advice as freely as ever - but Roald largely only listened when he felt like it, and it wasn't the same. To compare it to the days that he had stood at the king's right hand, served as a trusted confidante and aide and spoke in the Old King's stead - it was nothing but a hollow mockery. Roald wanted people to like him too much. Too affable, too reluctant to stand up to anyone the instant they exerted even moderate pressure - and usually not even physical pressure either. One by one, Tortall's enemies circled closer and closer and closer.
It was easier to not care, to float in the pleasant haze of liquor because seeing too much was painful. Prince Jonathan was growing up by the day, a clever young man with every indication of promise, but was staunchly loyal to his father and Myles was largely too tired (and too drunk) to try to push his advice on a third generation of Contés where it might not be welcome. It was easier to be drunk and stay drunk, and to teach children history that he had once had a hand in shaping and debate the finer details and philosophical quandaries of chivalry.
The liquor burned, but it went down smoothly enough on the end. More smoothly than the state of the kingdom, as far as Myles was concerned. It was easier to not care about anything past the next bottle, like this.
Until one little red-haired lad had shown up to court
"What have we got to lose?" Myles said, attempting for grim humor even in the midst of all the death that illness had wrought unto Corus. Unto Tortall.
"Jonathan," this scrap of a lad whispered to him, wide purple eyes brimming with tears at even the possibility of his friend's - his prince's - death.
Myles was drunk, because it was easier to be drunk than sober these days, but not too drunk to not feel for the boy. And he still bore a sense of responsibility to the kingdom, still served the Conté line. He had sworn fealty to the Old King, had sworn it again to Roald years later, shortly before the coronation.
So he ordered the man-at-arms to announce him as he swept into the sickroom holding the prince. Hearing the proclamation of, "Sir Myles of Olau," striding in flanked by men on either side of him - it brought back memories. He had lost count of the number of meetings he had stepped into like this - meetings he had conducted with the full trust of the Old King.
It was clear that Father Storian, having served as head priest for going on two decades, remembered those days as well. The look in his eyes as Myles demanded, "Have you left your senses?" was one of wary respect. It was a look that Myles hadn't seen in...too many years.
And then miracles had happened, one after another like gaming tiles set perfectly in a pattern and gently toppled, falling on top of each other one by one. Roald and Lianne had come, and entrusted the life of their son - their only son and heir - on his word that Alan of Trebond was worth taking a chance on.
It was in the aftermath of this unexpected miracle, found in the unlikeliest of places, that Myles tested his luck - and overreached and found himself sharply reprimanded for his impudence.
Roald was grateful for the life of his son, he trusted Myles and knew that his advice, however often unwelcome, was only ever offered with good intentions. But he wouldn't countenance a single work of the possibility of the Sweating Sickness having been anything other than an ordinary run of illness - let alone an artificial one that might have been deliberately sent. And Myles' delicate inquires as to Duke Roger's whereabouts at the time were not well received, to say the least.
Myles himself was uncertain whether this entire situation was the work of Roger or not. He didn't think it was. But at the very least, it bore investigation - nothing more, nothing less.
The Conté line suffered a surfeit of heirs. A concerning surfeit of heirs. Queen Lianne had tried desperately to give her husband more heirs, and had bled in the birthing bed time and time again until the healers had said to try even one more time would surely be the death of her. So Jonathan had been, and still remained, an only child. Lianne's health had never recovered from that gauntlet of attempts, and the thrice-damned sickness had only exacerbated long standing issues that not even the best palace healers could permanently cure. Roald would never set her aside, the Mithran clergy would never sanction a divorce and would doubly never approve an annulment for her to be set aside - not to mention the likelihood of any such annulment rendering Prince Jon illegitimate. Which quite defeated the whole point of any such a maneuver.
Roger was, even after all these years, unmarried, despite Myles' and Gareth's best attempts at coaxing Roger into considering matches, and Roald to be more firm with his brother to settle down already. The clearest line of succession was exactly two heirs deep.
After Roger came...well - that was exactly the issue.
There was Princess Jessa, well-settled in Maren with - last Myles had received a report - three healthy children. Except for the part where at least in Tortall, claims through the matrilineal line were always vulnerable to dispute. Except for the part where her family was all the way in Maren and inheritance in a case as irregular as this would almost certainly plunge them into civil war, with conflict from competing claims. The Old King had only one sister who had married - the other having sworn vows to the Goddess - Lord Lionel of Legann, except she had died in labor to what had turned out to be stillborn. Prince Newlin, his brother, had been married to Lady Rebakah of Princehold, but he had died before siring any children on her.
The inheritance lines only got more complicated from there.
Princess Alysy, elder sister of King Baird, had married the Duke of Dunlath. There was every chance of that line - third cousins to Jonathan - pressing their claim if everything went to Uusoae, handbasket optional. And then there were the Naxens, fourth cousins through Princess Theodora. And even more far-flung cousins as the generations had passed and family trees branched out like the most gnarled of root balls it was Myles' job to oversee the planting of.
There was a long and time-honored tradition of allowing diseases to devastate the enemy in order to soften them up as the vanguard of an invasion. Or even during an invasion. Those diseases largely tended to be coincidental, however - carried by rats, the unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on the perspective) placement of an army camp's latrines to flow downstream straight into the opposing side's drinking water, the occasional launching of decomposing corpses over castle walls during a siege.
The Sweating Sickness had been...something else entirely. Too well timed. Too precise. There were only so many sorcerers in the Eastern Lands who had the capability. And-
Myles didn't want to believe that Roger would have tried to kill his nephew - his own flesh and blood. Roger was many things - mercurial, tempestuous, full of conviction and charisma, a pleasantly challenging chess partner, prone to arguing with Roald - but even he had limits. Sometimes, on his more inebriated and maudlin days, Myles had clutched his glass like a lifeline and wondered how Tortall might be different had Roger be born the elder, and Roald the younger. He thought that perhaps both of them would have been happier that way - Roald free of the weight that pressed down on his shoulders, and Roger...well, Myles wasn't certain what he wanted anymore.
Roald had been born the heir apparent in this world, however, and that was that. It would have been one thing if an accident - a genuine accident, not whatever foul mess this was - had ended his life. Myles might even had, in a private, guilty chamber of his heart, felt relieved. Even Jon's, as bitterly as he would have been mourned, as fond Myles is of the lad. But something as virulent and devastating as the Sweating Sickness...
It reeked to the heavens too much of coincidence for Myles' liking.
It might not have been Roger. It probably wasn't Roger. Surely Roger wouldn't do such a thing. There should have been an investigation into every possibility, however - just for thoroughness' sake. No mattered how improbable, it should be investigated.
Evidence, in the else, always outweighed testimony.
But Roald wouldn't hear a word of it. He trusted Myles. Sometimes more. Sometime less. Admittedly variable depending on how far Myles had worked his way through a bottle that day. That didn't mean he liked Myles, or had any patience for Myles tiptoeing within even three leagues of suggesting that Roger of Conté had any chances of even the slightest of involvements in the epidemic, or any other untoward activity.
Roald trusted Roger with his life, and that of his family. There was never any universe in which Roald took Myles' advice over his brother's earnest (and possibly entirely genuine) professions of innocence. Any investigation, any inquiry, any hint that he was anything other than what he appeared to be - a kind and considerate relative who just happened to have the wandering itch that took him across the Eastern Lands - would bring down the wrath of Roald.
What little, if any, wrath the man possessed, anyway. He had made peace with his father's killers, stood there and shaken their head and ceeded land to them.
The gods, in contrast, could be plenty wrathful, in the wrong (or possibly right) circumstances.
Myles remembered, with a shudder borne of every last hair on his skin standing upright from the sheer amount of divine power and magic being thrown around in Jonathan's sick room, what watching Prince Jonathan being called back from what he was fairly certain had been the Black God's grip by Alan of Trebond, the little spitfire. There were entire lists of things about that entire situation that Myles was determinedly not thinking intently about, and...Alan of Trebond and everything that had followed after the lad dumped vervain - of all the immensely dangerous and semi-divine substances in the world - into the hearth was near the top of his current list.
He needed a drink.
His liquor had kept him alive (and even illness-free) thus far, which was nearly a miracle in itself. If there ever was a time to drink it was this one.
Alan's - because until the boy himself told Myles otherwise, Alan he would remain - kidnapping absolutely reeked.
No ransom demand, no use of the prince's squire as a useful hostage or bargaining tactic, just nothing but dead silence from the other bank of the river. The river which Roald, in his ever-committed and equally as obtuse actions taken in the name of peace, categorically forbidden them to cross.
In all probability, he shouldn't be drinking on the lines what might very well be a battlefield, but everyone in the council chamber had known that Roger had had no intentions of his nephew seeing any fighting, tucked safely away at this outpost. Roald, in true form, had nodded approvingly at the placement, ignoring the astonishment from just about every other person present.
So why not drink? With any luck, it might keep Myles from having nightmares of what might be happening to a child he had come to care deeply about just on the other side of the Drell.
Except Myles couldn't bring himself to actually drink. All he could do was stare into his dark glass of brandy, occasionally casting a glance to Faithful, as if waiting for the cat to contribute something to this non-existent conversation other than a sense of barely-held back frenzy and worry and panic.
When Jonathan, back from an afternoon of eyeing the far shore of the river like a caged animal, approached him, Myles was still staring into his drink - having consumed exactly zero drops of it, even as his head pounded. By the Goddess, he wished he could drink even a sip of this brandy. It was good brandy, even - an excellent vintage.
Jonathan was nearly as frustrated over his squire's kidnapping as Myles and the cat were combined, and clearly itching to do something - anything. Myles quite remembered those days of being young, which felt like nearly a lifetime ago for him. It didn't take long before Jon came up with a wild and desperate plan, one that would either win everything back or end in flaming shambles - possibly both at the same time, if they were unlucky.
He was going to rescue Alan. Myles couldn't blame him. He would do the same thing himself, given half the chance, except for the consequences of treason. Roald would have only the smallest of qualms about, and be entirely justified in, taking Myles' head off for disobeying his edict regarding the Drell River valley.
His only son and only heir, however - that might very well be a different story.
"I would be obligated by my oath to your father to stop a rescue attempt, if I knew of any such thing," Myles said, wording his statement carefully and praying to the gods that Jonathan was as clever a lad as he had seemed to be shaping up to be in class.
"Of course, Myles," the prince responded, shaping his expression to conform with that expected of a perfectly dutiful and obedient son. "Oh, what will you be doing after the evening meal, perchance?"
Myles tugged his beard thoughtfully. "I think I'll ride down to the fort to confer with our commander," he said, trying not to quirk his lips up into a smile. "I shall probably be there very late." Roger was usually good for a few games of chess, or even a conversation about the historical economics and trade patterns of the Old Thak empire. "Perhaps I'll even return in the morning. Wouldn't do to be ambushed on the road late at night." And maybe, if Myles worded a few questions just right and acted his normal degree of drunkenness (which wouldn't be difficult, seeing as he had drunk a fair bit of the brandy), he might be able to covertly pry a few unfiltered statements out of an overconfident Roger.
"You should take a couple of men," Jonathan mused, the calculating look in his eye a dead ringer for the Old King deciding how best to raid enemy hamlets or plot an ambush. He didn't actually resemble his grandfather that closely - both of the Old King's sons had largely taken after their mother in coloring and bone structure - but his eyes could have been plucked straight from Myles' own memories. "We don't want you kidnapped, with our security so poor."
Watching him go, Myles couldn't help but chuckle and feel the faintest stirrings of hope. Hope that he hadn't felt in a long time. If Jonathan survived - and Myles was aware of exactly how large and risky a gamble he was making here, because there was the very real possibility this could all end in flame with the kingdom being thrown into the exact sort of chaos he had been praying desperately for years to avoid. "That young man gets more like the Old King every day."
It might have been his imagination, but he was fairly certain that Faithful - who was a constellation if he had ever read about one, which he had - stretched and said, in a tone of smug agreement as if he had spent countless afternoons curled up in the Old King's own lap, watching as he planned out battle after battle and maneuver after maneuver, "Yes."