The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,96
nobles began stopping in with their marriageable daughters conveniently in tow as they dropped off insipid messages that could have waited until our assembly meetings. “You remember my daughter, don’t you?” they would say, and then they’d offer an introduction and a not-so-subtle résumé of her virtues. Gandry, the chief minister and my father’s closest adviser, saw me roll my eyes after a baron left with his daughter and told me I needed to give marriage serious consideration, and quickly. “It would help quell doubts and add stability to your reign.”
“There are still doubts?”
“You were gone for months without word.”
Strangely, my guilt over my absence was gone. Regret, yes, that I hadn’t been here when my parents died, and the extra worry it must have brought them, but I had done what no Dalbreck king or general before me had—set foot on Vendan soil and lived with its people for several weeks. It gave me a unique understanding of Vendan minds, needs, and machinations. Maybe that was why I felt the support of the troops, if not of the upper echelons of the court. I had led a mission of five soldiers who were able to outmaneuver thousands. It somehow felt necessary instead of reckless, but translating that feeling into something measurable for the cabinet and assembly to appreciate was another matter.
I closed the ledger on my desk and rubbed my eyes. The funds in the treasury were at an all-time low. I was to tour with the secretary of commerce tomorrow and meet with key merchants and farmers in an effort to increase trade—and coffers. I stared at the worn leather cover of the ledger. Something else still turned inside me. Or maybe it was many things, each so faint I couldn’t articulate any one of them, and they pulled in different directions.
The office closed in on me, and I pushed back my chair and walked out onto the veranda. I still thought of it as my father’s office, and his presence was evident in every corner, mementos of a long life and reign. These had been his meeting chambers since I was a child. I remembered when he called me in to tell me I’d be going to go live with Sven in just a handful of weeks. I was only seven, and I hardly understood what he was saying—I only knew I didn’t want to go. I was afraid. Sven was invited in to meet me, stern and imposing and nothing like my father. Meeting him didn’t help calm my fears, and I struggled to hold back my tears. Now, after all these years, I wondered if my father had done the same, each of us trying to be strong for the other. How many hard decisions had he had to make that I never knew about?
It was a rare moment for me to be alone. Every night, meetings ran into the dinner hour. I felt less like a king and more like a harried farmer trying to herd a field of loose greased pigs into a pen. I leaned against the thick stone rail, feeling the cool breeze ruffling through my hair. The night was brisk, the lit pillars of Minnaub glowing in the distance, the capital asleep, the thousand stars of the sky blinking over the dark silhouette of the city. The same view my father had looked upon countless times when he wrestled with the demands of his court, but his worries had been different from mine.
Is she there yet?
Is she safe?
And then, unexpectedly, was she right?
Was that what continued to nag at me? Even back at the Marabella outpost, Colonel Bodeen and the captains had doubted her claim. In truth, I’d seen no evidence of a massive army, not in my tours of the city with Calantha and Ulrix or heard of it in the loose chatter in Sanctum Hall.
But I had seen the brigade of five hundred who escorted Lia into the city. That alone had been startling and unexpected, but it could have been the whole of their so-called army.
Except there were the tithes. I’d heard the governors grumbling, and yet they still came through with them. Was it just out of fear—or expectation of reward? There was no doubt that, like the Komizar, they wanted more. I’d seen it in their eyes when they looked upon the booty of the slain Dalbretch soldiers.
And then there was the flask, a strange, powerful liquid that had been able to damage an immense