The Book of the Broken

Kingsboro

“Do you find it fair?” Anthony asked her.

Isobel Tryvanwy looked up at the towers of the Kingsboro rising over the city, and she said, “It is most fair.”

On the other side of her, to her left, Teryn thought, how can you do anything but love her? After spending time in the presence of Queen Morgellyn, where one could practically smell the intrigue wafting from her, Queen Hermudis of Sussail was pure dignity, but there was something more about her daughter, the Princess Isobel. Black haired and dusky skinned as Teryn, having the blood of the Royan and Remulans, there was always kindness in her dark eyes and, more than anything, honesty.

The night in Raymond House when the engagement had been secured, Anthony had come to Teryn’s bed.

“I came to you because I did not think you would come to me,” Anthony said.

“I did not believe I had that right,” Teryn said simply.

“You always have that right,” Anthony said. “This is not like what you did before. You are not a simple servant.”

And he was right, this was like nothing Teryn had done before. Already Anthony had set him to learning the intricate rules of house management, and at the same time he was teaching him how to be a proper squire with the intent of making him a knight. Anthony undressed him so tenderly, Teryn turned away, embarrassed, but Anthony held his face in his hands and kissed him. That night he lay down for Teryn and brought the boy inside of him, and when Teryn stopped himself, Anthony whispered, “No, no. don’t stop.”

Surrendering to the pleasure as Anthony turned around for him, Teryn reached for the larger man’s hips and pressed himself deeper into him, surprised by Anthony’s tightness and his warmth. He answered Anthony’s cries with deeper thrusting, his own body shaking until, at last, unable to stop his strangled cry, he shouted with orgasm, shook and, at last, collapsed against Anthony’s back, embracing him from behind.

When they were done, they lay side by side in the dark and Anthony said, “This new princess, we must take every chance we can to impress upon her the power of King Cedd, to make sure her mother and Sussail know his power. When the time comes we want to be equal to them. We do not want to be importunate beggars, but allies who meet them on equal footing.”

Teryn was about to pretend he understood, but what he said was, “Anthony, I do not follow.”

“Hermudis is cousin to King Rufus of Daumany.”

“As is King Edmund?”

“Yes,” Anthony said. “She fairly grew up with the new king, and that means when he replaces Edmund, as seems likely, Sussail will be quite powerful.”

“It means we will be caught between the Three Kingdoms of the North and Sussail in the South.”

“This is only one way to look at it.”

“I see no others.”

“The other ways will only be created if we make friends of ourselves with Sussail and not enemies. Sussail would stand to gain from a change in regime no matter what. But from now on Cedd will share in Sussail’s success. It could make all the diference between a fruitful alliance with the Three Kingdoms—”

“And a war where they attempt to dissolve us.”

“Yes.”

But when Anthony attempted to impress the Princess with the might of Kingsboro, and she only replied with enthusiasm to how fair the city was, she seemed impervious to intrigues. What was more, Teryn did not wish to intrigue against her. He wasn’t particularly good at it, but in the last days when Isobel had come to him, genuinely asking about his country or even his opinion on a gown, there was something so open and honest about her, he felt unclean and almost ashamed. And it wasn’t because of his past on the streets, or at least it was not the actual sex that had made him ashamed, but the coyness and the lies accompanying it, the deception and the pretense. All of his life, Teryn thought, had been deception and pretense, reliance on good looks he did not think very much of at the moment.

Queen Hermudis had ridden south with her son, Prince Bohemond and his intended, the Princess Linalla. She promised to join her daughter soon enough in Kingsboro for her wedding to King Cedd. Now the gates of the city opened, and Anthony, who had set out alone and returned at the head of retinue including Teryn, seven maids and three knights and Princess Isobel, came into the city with great fanfare, bearing the banners of Sussail and Armor, the homeland of Queen Hermudis.

Cedd had ridden down from the Kingsboro, and he was on a black horse, but all in white, white doublet well fitted, white sheathed sword, snug white riding trews. He vaulted from his horse, his white cape shining behind him, and a golden circlet on his head. His teeth sparkled, and Anthony thought. “Gods, he is fair.”

Cedd genuflected in the dust before Isobel though, Anthony noted, not so low as to dirty his trousers.

“My lady,” he kissed her hand. “Welcome to my home.”

Anthony ached for him. But even as he ached for the King of Westrial, he thought of Teryn whom he had lain with all these nights, and this princess who would soon learn how much of her king she would have. Or, perhaps, would she sway him? Did such a lovely girl have that power? For the first time, Anthony Pembroke, who was never uncertain, was very uncertain of the future.

Ambridge

He always remembered her voice, sweet in his ears, and sweet in its sincerity, so different from the voice of every woman he had known. When Odo had gone into the White Order and the monastery doors had closed on him, he had not missed the court intrigues, and now that his brother was king and he often stood at his side, Odo was glad to be away from this on this journey across the channel to the lands of Rufus’s kinsman, Edmund.

As the ship with the banners of Daumany, the great Eternal Sun, sailed into the harbor and was roped to the quay, Odo acknowledged that Ambridge was a fair city, but he did not long to be here. He could not, in fact, wait to visit Saint Clew and finally rest in the only place a monk should be.

“I am not an ambassador,” Odo said to himself.

“My Lord?” his servant Jervais said, beside him.

“It is nothing,” Odo said. Then. “Would you fetch the bags?”

But they wanted him to say things like that and, truthfully, as a member of the royal family and the son of a high blooded duke, he had grown up expecting service. It was in the monastery that he had been trained to serve, and now he found himself losing that training, falling out of touch with that humility, becoming the worst person he could be, and not the best.

There was a litter waiting for, “My lord the Abbot of Saint Fundagast.” Odo climbed into it and experienced the odd sensation of being carried, swinging through the noisy Port Gate thronged with shouting vendors, into the city of Ambridge. Now and again, from behind the garish gold curtain, he would peek out and see the merchants and hawkers, those on business, bustling about like rats, the high tenements over shops, the distant town houses and, eventually, the walls and towers of the palace which rose at the head of the city, out of the very midst of it with little space between the royal lands and the rest of the city.

Odo was carried through the outer bailey to the inner, and then lowered as he was presented to King Edmund and the Queen.

The Queen was beautiful but so obviously wicked. She should have been wearing devil horns, and as Odo bowed after she had bowed, he bowed also to Edmund, who next came and embraced him. It was a strange sensation, for Odo marveled, “He did not seem this foul in Daumany.”

Or perhaps Odo’s senses were heightened here, where he was abroad in a land not his own.

“And here is my gracious father,” Queen Edith bowed, speaking the Dauman language with an accent, as she gestured to Ulfin, “and my brother, the Lord Allyn.”

“Everyone has heard of Allyn Baldwin,” Odo bowed courteously.

Allyn Baldwain was tall and well formed, wearing hose in the style of a young dandy that displayed his fine long thighs, and a bow was over his shoulder. Fair haired, pale skinned, fair faced he was, more like an Ayl than a Hale as he took Odo’s hand warmly and said, “Welcome, Lord Abbot. I trust you have heard of our abbey of Saint Clew and will be making a journey soon enough.”

Odo put his fingers together in a triangle and bowed, “I have every plan to pay homage to the Saint’s remains before returning home.”

“Ah!” Edmund cried, clapping Odo on the back,”but there will be no talk of returning home today. Only feasting, and talk of more union between Daumany and the North.”

“Talk of union between Daumany and the North!” Allyn raged.

“Keep your voice down,” his sister commanded from where she sat in her chambers.

“You know why he talks of union?” Allyn’s face was no longer pleasant, but red and slightly twisted by rage.

“There is nothing that has come to your mind that did not come to mine long ago,” Edith said.

“Give him a child!”

“Excuse me?” she sat up.

“Give him a child, a Baldwin heir.”

“Any child I give him would be a Wulfstan heir, for Wulfstan he is… though he no longer uses that name. And I am sure you know he has not slept in my bed in years.”

“Bring him back then.”

“I will not beg my husband to mount me. Especially when he is so eager to mount everyone else.”

“Then,” Allyn looked almost mad as his eyes darted about. “Get pregnant by someone else.”

Edith barked out a laugh.

“And be burnt at the stake for adultery?”

“He wouldn’t dare,” Allyn said. “And what is more, what would he say? Would he tell the people he has refused to lay with is own wife?”

“I will not chance that,.” Edith said. “For today, and until I say otherwise, Edmund is still very much alive.”

“And when he dies?”

Edith opened her mouth to reply, but then she tilted her head and said to Allyn, “What do you want?”

“I’ll tell you what I don’t want? I don’t want that monk’s brother to be the emperor ruling Daumany, Hale, North Hale and Inglad, which is what is about to happen.”

But Edith’s face was the same. She was not alarmed at all.

“I think,” she began, “what you want is for me to convince Edmund to make you his heir, and—” she said when Allyn opened his mouth, “I do not know how you would think that is possible. I am already working on one thing—”

“Killing Hilda!”

“Shut your mouth!” Edith snapped.

“I am working on one thing,” she said in measured tones, again, “and then I will work on another. It would be ridiculous to think that Edmund would ever appoint you king, and it is obvious Rufus thinks to sail across the sea and steal these three kingdoms. But if we can begin to move the councils to our side, and the abbeys, and if Father outlives Edmund and is still Earl, or if you are the new Earl of North Hale, there is no reason you should not be appointed king.”

“What of the Earl of Herreboro?”

“Oh,” Edith said, “leave him to me.”