war. I have no more wars in me. De'Unnero be damned - and he shall, I am confident - but he and Aydrian are a problem for the folk of Honce-the- Bear."
"Not of Jilseponie?" Roger asked, and the woman stared at him hard. "You will abandon these people? You have served them all your life."
"And given all that I have to give."
"That loss is yours more than theirs," Roger replied.
Those words stung Jilseponie profoundly, but they did little to change her mind or her course at that moment. "I leave for Dundalis in the morning. I intend to ride hard all the way. I welcome your company, Roger, and yours, Dainsey, but I will go alone if not beside you."
With that, the woman rose and walked out of Chasewind Manor, the greatest mansion in all Palmaris, formerly the house of the ruling Bildeborough family. Jilseponie had lived here when she had ruled this city as baroness and then as bishop, and she had passed the house on to Roger and Dainsey as her stewards when she had gone south to marry King Danube.
She had barely exited the place, though, and had not even reached the gates across the courtyard, when she was assaulted by the sound of galloping horses and the shouts of a roused populace. She stood there on the front walk of Chasewind Manor, dumbfounded by the rising energy within the city - and it was a general tumult across the city, she could tell, even from where she stood on the elevated western edges.
She stood quiet and she listened, picking out the calls of the heralds.
A moment later, Roger and Dainsey were out beside her.
"Braumin has roused them," Roger observed. "He has decided to fight."
"And the folk're welcoming the choice," Dainsey added.
Jilseponie looked at them both and started to reply, but then the shouts rang out very near to Chasewind Manor's gate, as a rider galloped by, crying, "Long live Prince Midalis!" followed by the stinging, "Death to Aydrian!"
Jilseponie swung about, her face a mask of horror and anger, her breathing suddenly shallow.
"It won't come to that," Roger assured her, moving right beside her and wrapping one arm about her waist. "They are frightened, that is all. The bluster of criers is to rouse the people to a cause. They cannot - "
Jilseponie held her hand up to stop him. She understood quite well the need for such strong words when the folk would soon be asked to stand firm against an army.
But that didn't lessen the sting.
"So you have decided to fight," Jilseponie remarked when she caught up to Bishop Braumin and Master Viscenti a bit later on, in Braumin's office on the main floor of St. Precious.
"The choice was never ours to make," Braumin said to her. "I held audience on the square outside of St. Precious."
"Without sending word to me or to Roger in Chasewind Manor?"
"I had not planned it to be so definitive a speech," Braumin told her, and she knew the man to be sincere. "I planned to tell the gathering simply to measure their feelings on this."
"You understand what you ask of them?"
"I know what they demanded of me," Braumin replied.
"As soon as he told them the truth of our self-proclaimed king, and the truth of his companion, the folk needed no convincing," the recently arrived Master Viscenti put in. "They will not tolerate the return of Marcalo De'Unnero unless that return is with chains about him!"
"They are loyal to the line of Ursal, and the crown has been stolen,"
Braumin added.
Jilseponie stared at him hard, recognizing clearly the conflict that remained within the man. Yes, he was somewhat relieved that the people had grabbed on to his simple statements of fact and taken control of the momentum from that point forward, but there remained within Braumin a good deal of guilt and trepidation about all of this.
"You will lock the gates and not allow Aydrian entrance?"
The bishop of Palmaris squared his shoulders. "I will."
"And what will you do when Aydrian knocks those gates down?"
"Are we to surrender to him?" Braumin asked, suddenly animated, waving his arms and storming about. "Can the strongest simply take the throne with impunity? Are we not a land of tradition and law?"
Now it was Jilseponie's turn to stand quiet and hold fast to her stance.
"If you fight beside us, we have a chance," said Braumin.
Jilseponie was shaking her head before he ever finished the sentence. "I have business that will take me far from this place,