The Court of Ghosts

The Court of Ghosts Chapter 14

·         Stephen Wormwood here. Thank you for clicking. Feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome at stephenwormwood@mail.com. As always hope you enjoy reading this and please consider donating to Nifty if you can (https://donate.nifty.org/), it's more than merited.

·        You can find a map of the fictionalized setting of this novel here: https://imgur.com/JtpD8WU (this is my first time using Inkarnate so it might be a little rough!)

·        If you end up enjoying this, please read some of my other stories on Nifty: The Dying Cinders (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), Wulf's Blut (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Dancer of Hafiz (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Cornishman (gay, historical), A Small Soul Lost (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), and Torc and Seax (transgender, magic/sci-fi).

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Chapter Fourteen: The March of the Wretched, Part 3

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An Eye for a City – Wolner Returns – Confession – Edith's Entreaty – James the Whore – Greyford's Entreaty – The Pig's Head – Upon the Crossroads of History

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Walmouth Village, The Midburghs, Kingdom of Morland

42nd of Autumn, 801

The train of Edith's Army came upon a village some hours afore noontide that day, a village called Walmouth. They found it shuttered. They found its grain stores emptied, its doors and windows boarded, its stables and paddocks bereft. Whatever tools of use its citizens could not retreat with were fired, husks of wagon wreckage and broken ploughs lay smoked and smouldering along the roadside like little ebbing bonfires.

It was a cold reception. A reception more fit for an invading army than the impending liberator of Morland, yet it was but one of many of a similar ilk along the way.

The further south they went the more hostile the welcome. Upon occasion some burghal lords scurried out of their gilt rat holes to buy them off. They came as suppliants, dressing down to their most moth-eaten homespun and promising half (sometimes even two-thirds) of their burghal coffers if it would `dissuade' Edith's Army from the burnings, rape and rapine it visited upon the northern townships – which, of course, was hogwash. But no tongue wagged harder than a frightened one and in Morland nothing travelled faster than rumour.

Raids and ransacks were customary to other armies, but not to Edith's, as was her wont. Her determination was clear – the commonfolk should not and would not suffer for the sins of the highborn. The very accusation that Edith would command (or allow) her men to behave that way was itself an insult. But the Red Princess was always magnanimous with the burghal lords that crossed her path – if they were true. If they swore her oath. And if they would not? Well then, and only then, would their marks and goods and lives become forfeit.

No burghal lord nor village headsman came to visit them this time. This time it was different. And it was different because the village of Walmouth lay at the outskirts of a much larger presence – the City of Greyford.

Edward Bardshaw, saddle-sore from hours of hard riding, watched the city's spires and slated rooftops rise into the sky at the fringes of the horizon. They were less than a mile off from the city now with no forthcoming opposition to greet them. No one had opposed them since the destruction of the ducal army at Brookweald.

That morning the scouts rode ahead to the city fringes and reported back no garrisons, no fortifications, no mustered men. There were some gun-pits dug and cannons mounted in them, but without cannoneers to operate or munitions to fire them. All the surrounding villages lay abandoned with their denizens withdrawn into the safety of the city walls.

"Edward."

The swordsman cut his silvery eyes to the right, where Owayne mac Garrach lay stretched out and bandaged in the back of a horse-drawn cart, stripped of his armour and clad in simple cotton breeches. He'd taken wounds throughout the course of the battle, arrowshot in his right abdomen and shoulder, and was stricken with fever the night prior. The barber-surgeons saw him through the worst of it, but he was not yet well enough to ride, which struck Ed as a cruelty.

It was Owayne's battle tactics, planning, and engineering that made victory at Brookweald possible. Without him the Earl of Huxton would be galloping back to Dragonspur with Edith's head in a bag – instead the good earl was their prisoner, shuffling barefoot through the dust, naked as the day he was born, slathered in soot and pig shit as his guards oinked at him with indolent japes about `cooking his bacon'.

Four years ago Owayne's father, the rebel lord Aemmon mac Garrach of Castlegarron, found common cause with the rustics furious over Sage Odo's execution by the Emperor and overburdened by the Duke's Guard Tax. He rose with them in rebellion and besieged the Greyford Manse until Ser Thomas Wolner rode north with 500 demi-lancers to quell the unrest. And now here was his progeny – fully set to re-walk his father's path, save for those burdensome wounds.

Edith the Exile was destined for the pages of history... but none played a greater role in her rise than Owayne mac Garrach.

"Owayne." Ed called back to him. "Feeling better?"

The Maul muzzled a cough with his fist. "...Never better."

"We owe you our lives. We should be lying dead in a raven-infested battlefield if not for you."

Owayne smiled, his body jerking at the wagon's every bump and stumble as it wheeled down the rough highway bearing south-west for the city of Greyford. "None of us would've taken this path if not for Edith."

"Aye."

"My father died for his beliefs," said Owayne. "As a boy, I... I never understood it. I only saw what it cost me. My land, my home, my titles; all stripped of me by act of attainder. When I left these shores for the continent... I never thought to return. Not until Edith wrote me..."

Edward watched Owayne smile to himself.

"Do you know what she said to me? She said – `It would be a shame for a man of your skills to die upon foreign soil without ever having realized your good father's cause. Come home and help me see it through'. And so here I am. Even in that simple letter I saw something in her. A devotion. A genuineness of spirit. A strength of love for the realm and its people. You see it now too, do you not?"

Ed nodded. It was undeniable.

"Do you think Gead would have fallen if she were queen?"

"Edith wishes not for queendom," said Ed. "And Morland does not need another absolute ruler."

"No," said Owayne. "But it does need a protector."

Up ahead a cloaked rider galloped along the breadth of the train until he stopped his horse alongside Edward's. "Cap'n Bardshaw? Edith requests ya, says to come at once."

He directed a nod to the messenger then turned to Owayne. "Rest now. I shall return later to check upon you."

The Commander of the White Ravens chuckled, seeing him off with a nudge of the head.

`See to her,' it said. `Whatever she needs.'

Edward kicked his spurs and his chestnut-haired rouncey broke ahead. He raced past the marchers thundering down the highway with their collective footfalls and kept on until he came to the van where orders began to sound amongst the ranks for a halt. The orders came directly from Edith, who sat ahorse and ahead of the van at the site of a small hillock beyond Walmouth Village. Alongside her rode her page and attendant, Larkyn, alongside her standard-bearer and a guard of ten mounted swordsmen, as well as Kenrick Thopswood and four Shepherd-Aspirants bearing the tasselled litter of Shepherd Godwyn. Edward galloped up to the ridge to join them.

It was from there that the sweeping panorama of the city of Greyford could at last be seen; its 15-foot-high limestone walls, its black spired temples and gilded shrines, its white-painted bell towers and red brick tenements.

From there the bloated waters of the River Tun rushed west and flowed into the estuary, and there beyond its muddied banks stood the ancient homestead of House Drakewell, the very seat of Greyford's dukedom, the manorial hall where Prince Osmund first passed over Emma of Wuffolk for Katheresa Vox, the One-Year Queen; where Edith the Exile's story ultimately began and Aemmon mac Garrach's ultimately ended.

The Greyford Manse.

But it was neither the city nor the manse that held Edith's attention in that moment. It was the three men who left the city limits to entreat with her, kneeling over with their noses towards the dirt, fifty paces ahead. No guards were with them. No horses. No sign of traps. In fact what scant defences the city officials could muster lay as abandoned as the surrounding villages; half-finished wooden palisades, empty watchtowers, unmanned gun-pits and inert cannons, but no men to occupy or operate them. Just like the scouts said.

Edward brought his horse to a stop at Edith's side, eying the three men as he bunched up his reins. "Who are they?"

"More suppliants," said she. "How is Owayne?"

It was Edith who sent Edward to watch over him until they arrived at Greyford. The swordsman sighed. "Recovering. The physicians say he might be back on his feet soon."

"Good. Walk with me."

Edith, who forsook her old plate armour for a simple steel harness of breastplate and backplate atop a rattling mail shirt, dismounted her horse. Edward did likewise. As did Thopswood. Together they approached the three prostrate burghers. The foremost of them did not fetch his nose from the dirt but clasped his hands together and mumbled, "Lady Edith? We... we come to you now as-"

"Get off your fucking knees and stand up," she barked.

With dirty hands and dirty faces all three rose to their feet. The leftmost man sported a tonsure and the rope-belted cassock of a shepherd. The centremost man, youngest of the three, stood shrouded in an ermine-furred long-coat and at his doubleted chest sparkled the silverwork links of a livery collar. The rightmost man was a crown-balding greybeard in a simple pea-green tunic who made a point of wearing an empty scabbard to the informal parley.

The centremost man composed himself. "Lady Edith. I-"

"I am not a lady. It's just Edith. No more nor less."

"...Edith," he resumed. "Apologies. I had not meant to offend. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Reginald Gervase, Lord Mayor of the city. To my right is Shepherd Stanemore, our city's seniormost cleric and to my left is-"

"Ser John Lolland," spat the scabbarded man. "Constable of Greyford and first cousin of his grace our Duke and Regent."

`A loyalist,' thought Edward. He saw at once how reluctant a participant Ser John was at these proceedings, standing white-knuckled with rage and indignation.

"We come to you now as fellow citizens of this realm," said the Lord Mayor. "Citizens who do not wish to see our poor townsfolk harmed. We know our position. We shall not oppose your entry into this city. All we ask is for fair and safe conduct."

Edith eyed the manse across the river. "...Who has seniority of station here in Greyford?"

Ser John's eyes sharpened. "The Lord Mayor."

A chuckle. Edith smirked. A stiletto swung from her right hip. She drew it. Then gasps abounded as she snatched the Lord Mayor by his livery collar and rammed the pommel into his right eye, pulping it like a grape.

"AAAAAAAAAGH!" Ser Reginald's marrow-curdling scream tore across the open fields. "My eye! MY EYE!"

Thopswood flinched.

The Constable of Greyford, taken aback, growled with pink-faced fury. "Why did you do that!?"

"Anymore lies and he walks away blind," said Edith. "Who has seniority of rank here in Greyford?"

The Lord Mayor collapsed in her grasp, weeping tears from one socket and blood from the other. Ser John looked away, forcing himself not to speak. So Edith raised her dagger to strike out the Lord Mayor's other eye.

"For the love of the saints, please stop!" Cried the shepherd. Stanemore caught his breath. "I-it's the Queen Dowager! The Queen Dowager Emma! She has seniority of rank!"

Thopswood blinked, shocked. "Emma of Wuffolk is here?"

"The very authoress of my mother's downfall," Edith spoke the sentence softly, as if parsing the events in her own mind's eye, even as she dropped the Lord Mayor into a whimpering heap. A dark little chuckle left her lips as she sheathed her dagger. "She must've assumed we'd pass this place by for Dragonspur. What a grave miscalculus. Ed?"

He looked up. "Edith?"

"Gather up a guard," said she. "I believe we shall pay our fair Queen Dowager a visit."

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Manse de Foy, Dragonspur, Kingdom of Morland

42nd of Autumn, 801

For all the tumult of the rebel uprising, and Basil Smeadon's vicious assault upon the property, Manse de Foy had only one corpse to show for their labours, and until such time as it could be repatriated for burial in Wallenheim, there was only one place the Delegation could keep it – the undercroft. It was cold enough. Dark enough. Perrin had the right of it, it being his suggestion. That was why he led the way that morning, him and his blazing torch floating though the ebon darkness. Behind him followed Francis Gray, Inga the Cook, Edrick, and all the household chambermaids, cloaked in black with brass chambersticks in hand to light their path down the musty steps.

At the centre of its vaulted archways lay in repose the cold corpse of Gustavius von Roschewald. The chambermaids had draped his muscular frame in a simple white bedsheet (as they had no option of the traditional shroud of felted wool) and garlanded it with laurels of lavender, daphne, and orange blossom – as much to honour him as to ward off the coming stench of putrefaction. With what little they had to hand under protective confinement, they had done great work.

The dank room grew brighter as Perrin walked its fringes, lighting each wall-hung torch in its sconce as Fran and the others formed around the body to deliver the traditional morning prayer and vigil. They stood in silence. Hung their heads. Shut their eyes. Prayed to St. Wynnry for the deliverance of their master's soul.

All except Fran.

He stood with them, of course, as was obligatory. It might cause suspicion if he did not express the same shock and melancholy as the others. But his mind was as it always had been, his own private strongbox, his repository for thoughts unbidden or unhelpful, a reliquary of his belaboured plans laid to rest at the birth-death of their praxis, the sole respite of his truest self. Fran would not sully the sanctuary of his mind with false prayers for the likes of Gustave.

But he would play his part.

Inga, the oldest and longest serving of Gustave's staff, led their spoken chant. "To St. Wynnry we offer our sorrows for the passing of your beloved child. May you clasp his soul to your ennobled bosom and keep him well, for what the earth has lost the heavens shall gain."

MAY THE FUCKER ROT IN THE COLD PIT OF OBLIVION EVERLASTING growled The Fiend.

Fran wordlessly concurred.

They all opened their eyes. Edrick had tears in his. His free hand wiped them away. "If only I were there to protect him! I should've posted guards to his chamber doors! This is my fault, Wolfrick would never have allowed this to happen!"

"Stop that at once," chided Inga. "You needed every man at our walls. The blame lies not with you, Edrick! It lies only with the foul Morishman that killed him."

Willowy little snickers of glee echoed in Fran's ears like wind whistling through bone chimes. HE, HE, HE, HE, HE...

A slow series of slippered footsteps scuffed their way down the dusty stairwell behind. Everyone fell silent. The flame of a single chamberstick drew out of the shadows in the hand of Georg Ludolf, gaunt and pale-faced after these many days of unrest. Like the others he wore a hooded sable cloak to the vigil, but beneath it only a worn lockram shirt and woad-dyed breeches. The only clothes to hand that befit his station were many sizes too large for him, and with his own wardrobe either pilfered by rebels or burnt to ash in the ruins of Cromwood House, the Imperial Ambassador was forced to settle for a workman's attire. He did not complain.

Inga though, she sneered at him. "Come to gloat?"

"No," He took no offense to the jibe as he joined them alongside Gustave's shrouded corpse. "To... pay my respects. I am alive because of your master... and I am sorry that this has happened to him. Truly I am."

Ludolf eyed Fran. "Thomas Wolner is here."

"Ah."

For their ears Fran heaved a false sigh of exasperation, but it was a visit he'd expected ever since the good Constable of Dragonspur drove off Basil Smeadon's men.

"I should see to our guest then." Fran made the sign of the saints and departed, his chamberstick's flame flickering with him as he climbed the dusty steps back up into the manse.

Throughout the household repairs were being made. Broken glass boarded with planks pulled from the stables, fractured doors re-attached to their hinges, stray missiles of brick and arrow gathered up and dumped into a midden of waste in the rear gardens. All was done at Fran's orders. He devoted half the halberdiers to these tasks (whilst the other half kept watch around the manse grounds) forsaking their polearms for hammers and nails. All in all the delegation took well to his assumption of command. Perrin the Steward did not object, though as a Morishman he had little grounds to do so, and he was on good terms with both Edrick and Inga. With the halberdiers captained by the former and the latter acting as a sort of mother hen to the chambermaids, cooks, and washerwomen, Fran's grip on the immediate household was secure.

Ser Thomas Wolner waited for him in the gravel tract outside the manse doors. His mounted men held position beyond the barricaded gate of the outer walls. Gone was his steel harness and falchion and back was he to his russet leather greatcoat and buckled riding leathers. Beneath the shadow of his wide brimmed hat beamed that skeletal smile of his, framed by loose strings of his oily black hair.

Fran approached the constable and inclined his head. That palpable sense of relief he felt at Wolner's arrival two days ago was gone. Now all Fran saw was Edward's torturer, Theopold Stillingford's persecutor, the Duke's untethered molossus.

"Master Gray," said Ser Thomas, flashing his tombstone teeth as he spoke. "Apologies for not having come to you sooner."

"Your apologies are wholly unnecessary, ser. You have an entire city to oversee. I can only wish you the best of luck in uprooting these treasonous rebels."

Wolner folded his arms behind his cloaked back. "Yes, it is quite the task. But we've captured Basil Smeadon and most of the key instigators. A portion of the Standing Guard has returned from the Lowburghs and is restoring order in the lower half of the city..."

This Fran already knew of course. The night prior he sent Lothar out into the city on reconnaissance. He returned with reports of armed horsemen patrolling the streets, guarding marketplaces and sites of worship, shuttering all taverns, rounding up suspects. The prior curfew was back in full effect and all public gatherings indefinitely suspended until all traces of rebel activity were squelched. Carpenters were already building gibbets in the city centre. And then there were reports bleeding in from other parts of the country, whether by pigeon, rider or hearsay; cardinal of all being the defeat of the ducal army at Brookweald by Edith's forces. If those reports were accurate then it was only a matter of time before the Bloody Maid marched on Dragonspur...

`Will you come riding at her back, Ed? Hot to hang me from the nearest tree with the rest of the nobles?'

Wolner's gravelled baritone broke Fran's reverie. "Although there is still great work to do his grace feels it safe enough to lift the protective confinement order upon Manse de Foy. And suitable lodgings for Ambassador Ludolf will soon be secured. You have my word."

Fran wondered if Wolner knew of his arrangement with the Duke – serving as his espial in the bosom of the Wallenheim Delegation. Was he privy? Had his facsimiles found their way into the constable's possession? If he was, if they had... Ser Thomas gave Fran no signal of it. Nevertheless he nodded in acknowledgement. "Thank you, constable."

Wolner inclined his hat to the boy before fishing from his pocket a small letter stamped with the royal seal. He gave it to Fran. "As you are now acting head of the Wallenheim Delegation I commend to you this invitation. You are to meet with his grace the Duke of Greyford, tomorrow, at his offices in Staunton Castle. He is eager to speak with you. Now. If you will excuse me, I must take my leave."

Thomas Wolner turned about his heels in a swirl of brown leathers, his spurs clinking away with him as he made for the gate.

`What does the duke want now?' Thought Fran. `Has my reward at last come due?'

The Viscountcy of Thormont.

Gustavius von Roschewald may well be dead, but it was all for nothing if Fran's rightful nobility was not restored. The clerk cracked the seal to read the summons. It was genuine. Written in the Duke's own hand. Fran pocketed it. With the confinement order lifted there were preparations to make, letters to write, duties to fulfil.

The boy turned for the manse to begin his work, when one of the halberdiers posted at the front gate suddenly rushed up to him. By then Thomas Wolner had already mounted and ridden off with his personal escort.

"Whatever's the matter, man?" Asked Fran.

The armed Wallishman caught his breath. "Many apologies, Master. There's another rider for you at the gate. Says he requests an audience with you."

"Who?"

"A Morish fellow," he replied. "Calls himself Harry Hotfoot."

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Greyford Manse, The Midburghs, Kingdom of Morland

42nd of Autumn, 801

Edith's entry was as crude and gormless as her rumoured manner. The tread of her grass-stained boots echoed across the black and white chequered floor of the reception hall, as did those of her guardsman, Edward Bardshaw, striding in at her back with his gloved palm fixed upon his sword's pommel. Victorious jeers rippled through that hall as Edith's retinue marched in behind them with orders to strip the manse clean of its wealth.

"The servants are not to be harmed," ordered Edith. "Let them leave with everything they can carry."

A hundred whooping rebels hustled through the gaping corridors of the Greyford Manse: tearing down its tasselled tapestries, gilt portraiture, and marble busts. Some flooded into its parlours and bundled off its gilt candlesticks and plate, its brass ewers and porcelain dishes, its silverwork cups and cutlery. Some broke into the libraries and carried off its scrolls, folios, ledgers, grimoires and tomes. Some descended into the larders and packed away its salted meats, stoppered sauces, seasoned spices and took barrels upon barrels of its potatoes, grain, wheat, and rye. Some stole into the wine cellar and ferried out all its victuals, cask after cask of Wallish white and Imperial red as well as beer, cider, malmsey, and jenever. Some kicked down the bedroom doors and struck open the wardrobes and chests to seize all the wanton fineries within – furs of fox, mink, ermine, and sable. Pearl-studded gowns and black-gold brocade. Silken coifs and perfumed gloves. Peacock-feathered caps and slashed jerkins. Coats and petticoats. Hose and trunkhose. Slippers and shawls. Codpieces. Boots. Shoes. Socks. Even the fucking needle and thread.

Others banded together and broke open the strongrooms that secured the Duke's greatest treasure – his ready wealth. Inside dozens of locked chests (jimmied open with knifes or broken open with hammers) shimmered gold in both coin and bullion. Marks by the thousands. Jewels of diamond, pearl, onyx, ruby, emerald and opal. Bonds to the tune of 250,000 King's Marks. Title deeds to the rarest horse breeds. Dozens of land grants equalling to thousands of acres of the most fertile territory in the realm.

Only then did the rebels realize how inordinately wealthy the Duke of Greyford was. And all was filched from their pockets.

Edith the Exile did not assist her men in their giddy seizure of the war spoils, their collective boot to the Duke's bollocks, she had no time for it. Wealth was not her quarry that day.

Her quarry lurked above.

The Queen Dowager.

Stiff-lipped and haughty in her rich fineries even as the ravaging men beneath her feet laid waste to it, dogged obstinance defying slow broiling fear.

And Emma was right to fear.

Edward watched Edith ascend the carpeted red steps with five other sword-armed guardsman at her back: cobbler Rodrick, fisherman Percy, saddler Michaelas, stonebreaker John, and huntsman Harold, along with a shepherd and a scribe.

Up and up they climbed until then they arrived.

A small hallway lay ahead of them, still possessed of its vases and busts, its carpets and curtains. Here at the last only two guards stood in defiance, two Bannerets of the Bloom afore the master bedroom door – glaives at the ready, feathered caps tossed for combat.

Edward clutched his sword's hilt.

Earlier, with the nearest bridge over the Tun blockaded by heaped furniture and abandoned wagons, his men escorted Edith to the riverbank where they commandeered wherries from the local rivermen and set out by oar across the rushing waters. It was from there they eyed the manse, defended at its low walls by a muster of fifty burghal levies. But they scattered at Edith's approach, dropping their spears and axes as they retreated into the shadowed forests beyond the manse grounds.

There were no guards left save for these two.

`Small wonder Huxton raised so large an army so swiftly, he left this city starved for men,' thought Edward. "Lay down your arms!"

Neither man budged an inch.

"These are Bannerets of the Bloom, Ed. They would sooner die than geld themselves of their honour with an act of desertion." Over her mailed shoulder Edith cut a glance to her other harnessed guardsmen. "...Kill them."

Rodrick, Percy, Michaelas, John and Harold, all drew their steel and rushed past her to set upon the Bannerets, hacking through their polearms and kicking them down to the ground and chopping at their necks and skulls until their screams came to a bloody end. The guardsmen caught their breaths, sheathing their dripping swords and parting the double doors for their leader's entry.

Edith the Exile, nonplussed, strode past the dead Bannerets and crossed the threshold.

Edward, with the shepherd and scribe behind him, followed her.

And there inside that richly decorated audience room with its garden view latticework and its adjoining anterooms... there they found the Queen Dowager of Morland, Emma of Wuffolk, seated upon her highbacked throne of lacquered mahogany; gilt and cushioned.

Edward saw her once before at Lord Gainscroft's feast in Old Hall, back during the late king's progress to the north. And she was much the same. Haughty. Stone-faced. Her wrinkled mien powdered white and rouged with blush, every strand of her hair hidden away behind the embroidered lappets of her gable hood, its golden aglets glittering in the morning light. The laced train of her dark black mourning dress inched down the dais to a small flock of attendants, her ladies-in-waiting, all four of them huddled around her slippered feet and whimpering. No doubt they heard the guards hacked to pieces beyond the doors. No doubt they expected to suffer the same fate. But the true anger of the Red Princess was reserved for only one woman in that room.

The Queen Dowager lifted her chin, dismissively. "Which ruffian stalks my halls? By whom am I approached?"

"A trueborn Morishwoman," growled Edith. Edward turned to her, watched her bare her teeth like an angered wolf, her calloused hand gripped to her stiletto's hilt. "The loving daughter you had banished from its fair soils half her life..."

"Ah. The Exile." Emma's pointed brow inclined to comfort her sobbing flock. "There's enough, my lamblings. Fret not. For this is a family home and neither the Bloody Maid nor her band of lowborn cutthroats are welcome."

Edith's frozen half-smirk wandered to the plum-coloured carpets and lacquered floorboards. "...My mother the queen was once warded to this home. Kat you called her, as a sister would."

"Your mother was no queen. Nor you a princess. You are the bastard child of a Gray and a Vox, and I say again you are not welcome. Take your men and leave. I will not dignify your impudence with my fear."

A frown hardened. "Rodrick, Harold."

The two swordsmen clambered to Edith's side with rattling scabbards. She directed them to Emma's frightened ladies. "...Escort these women to the wherries. And see they are recompensed for their troubles."

"Aye, Edith..." Rodrick pushed forth. "Come along now."

Edward's gaze flicked back to Emma of Wuffolk, frowning indignantly at the armoured upstart coaxing her women to their feet without her leave. But there was no countermand offered. One by one her ladies-in-waiting gathered their raven-black trains and left, tearing tearful expression of guilt and sorrow from their mistress to the door. Rodrick and Harold followed them out.

Horrified cries rang out as they passed the mutilated corpses of the dead bannerets until Michaelas shut the door.

The Queen Dowager was alone.

Edith the Exile turned her smouldering frown upside down, suddenly enrapt with a moment she must have waited her whole life to have. "No attendants' skirts to hide behind now, eh? Why did you not run? You would have heard of our approach a day ago at least."

"Run?" Emma's own frown broadened as if the very idea of abstaining her ground was anathema to her. "Why should I trouble myself to run? By what rights and authorities are your rustic rebels permitted to sack my home and drive me from its warmth? Who are you to command me? Who are you to question-"

"Watch your tone," snapped Edward. "...Your Majesty."

The Queen Dowager eyed him, dumbstruck, as if he slapped her about the face. Edith smirked again, gripping her sword belt with both fists. "Forgive young Ed his boorishness, madam. He's a protective sort of soul."

Emma's liver-spotted hands gripped her throne's scrolled armrests so tight their veins bulged blue against the flesh, barely able to contain her outrage. A commoner of no name or repute daring to speak to her noble person with such disrespect...

"May the saints see you strung for this," she whispered. "Go on. Do what you will. I'll not whimper at your feet."

"What I will do... is have you confess."

A flippant blink. "...Confess?"

"To your crimes," said Edith. "Perjury before a court of law. Conspiracy against your rightful queen. All the connivances and misdeeds that raised you to this lofty height. Now's the time. Unburden yourself, madam. Afore saint and star lay your sins to rest."

"I am guilty... of NO crimes!" In all her outrage Lady Emma of Wuffolk did not notice Edith's scribe sitting to the floor and scratching an inked quill at parchment. "And there is no court abroad this realm that would find against me!"

Edward watched Edith smile.

"You cannot be bridled with all the blame, I suppose. You were reared for queendom all your life, Prince Osmund promised to you in all but the letter of the law. You never thought to worry about simple little Kat, did you?"

Emma's temple pulsed. "...Shut your mouth..."

"Simple little Kat. Let the servants dress her down, keep her plain, unforgettable. Who would notice the little mouse of a girl? Who except my father?"

"Shut your mouth!"

"And it burned you, did it not? To be rejected by my father for a northern girl, for simple little Katheresa Vox. How cheated must you have felt during her coronation, when the Lord Shepherd brought the balm to my mother's brow and anointed her Queen of Morland! How betrayed you must have felt! How humbled! How humiliated!"

"SHUT YOUR MOUTH!" Screamed Emma, launching out of her throne. "SHE WAS MY FRIEND! My dearest friend! And she stole my crown from underneath me! What sort of `friend' does that? Have you ever suffered the indignation of having to stand idly by with a painted smile upon your face, as everything you ever hoped for, everything you ever dreamed of, is laurelled upon your turn-cloak? Whatever lies I told, whatever plots I hatched, they were nothing compared to her betrayal of me! And in the end look what it spawned – your wretched, wicked person! Saints damn her and damn you too!"

Edward was wordless. The shepherd, Woolston, stricken. The Queen Dowager raced for breath as she fell silent, eyes glaring, nostrils flaring, the veil of composure utterly shorn from her. And then she paused. She noticed that distinctive scritch-scratch of quill to parchment. Then she saw Edith's scribe.

"What is that?" Said she suddenly. "What is he writing?"

"Oh, that?" Edith pointed to him, blithely. "Why that would be your confession, madam. Made afore witnesses and an ordained shepherd of the Commonfaith. Noticed you not?"

A frantic glance shot from Edith to her scribe then back again. Emma of Wuffolk caught herself, clutching at the breast of her pearled bodice, blinking viciously as if to recall which convicting vagaries blundered out of her mouth. She levelled Edith with a cold and nervous glare. "...No legitimate court would take as evidence some cobbled testimony seized under duress..."

"There will be no court," said Edith. "No trial. No judge. No jurors. For posterity's sake take we this `cobbled testimony'. And when the histories of this era are written you will be remembered for the treacherous liar you always were."

Emma trembled. Her trembles were so strong she seated herself so as not to fall. No barbs flew back. No protestations or indignities expressed. Cracks formed in the armour of the Queen Dowager's dignity, each one after the other. Edward saw it plain. But that was not enough for Edith.

"John, Michaelas...?"

At her command the two men stepped forward.

"Strip her."

Emma's eyes flashed. Edward paused, momentarily shocked, as if he heard her wrong. But Edith the Exile did not flinch. When John and Michaelas did not move, she said it again, slowly and sternly, stressing both syllables as if enunciating herself to an alien.

Strip. Her.

Emma's jaw fell. But John and Michaelas owed her nothing. And what had she dubbed them when first they entered? Lowborn cutthroats? The Greyfords enriched themselves off the backs of the commons. What dignity were they owed?

"Y-you would not dare...!" But the noblewoman's statement left her lips in a ragged whisper. A disbelieving whisper. All her prior hubris was gone. `Now she understands,' Edward thought, `how utterly helpless she is.' Her guards were all dead or absconded, her Lord Brother the Duke of Greyford hundreds of miles away. It was all Emma could do to look on, horrified, as Edith's men seized her by the hands and dragged her from her throne.

Impotent shrieks of outrage carried across the chamber and anterooms as the rebel pair hurled the aging queen onto her carpeted floor and tore the clothes from her wrinkled body, piece by piece. They snatched the gable hood and coif from her greying locks and ripped open her bodice until its pearled buttons exploded into the air. They despoiled her of her velveteen slippers and silken socks, her brocade partlet and embroidered under-linens. Article by copious article they dissected her person until naught but the cold graced her royal flesh.

A stolid Edith eyed what was left.

Fraying grey hair. Spotted skin. Withered bosom. Her back crooked, her knees knobbed. A portrait of warts, wrinkles, moles and crow's feet. Emma huddled into herself, offended by her own nakedness, sobbing into her palm and scooping up her oblong breasts with her free arm.

Edith knelt down and eyed the weeping woman where she was. "Cold, are we? It is nothing compared to the cold my mother and I felt when your lies drove us to the frozen shores of Wallenheim. She died alone. Did you know that? She died cold and alone in a foreigner's bed with no one to comfort her..." She thumped her harness. "Not even me!"

Emma made no reply, only sobs.

"Let them all see you now," Edith rose up. "Let them all see you for who you truly are. Not a queen, not a lady, just another bitter old hag bridled by the same sad vices and vanities as the rest of us."

John had a spool of rope hanging from his sword belt. Edith bid him truss her with it. "Take her away. And give the men a good gape before we gaol her."

"Aye, Edith." Said he.

Emma shrieked when Michaelas took her by the arm and dragged her to her feet. When her shrieks did not abate he balled up her socks and stuffed them into her mouth like an apple-fed hog, John binding her hands up all the while. Then they dragged her away.

When they were gone all those left to the room were simply Edward, Woolston, Percy, the scribe and the Exile herself. The lattermost of the five cast a dirty frown about the room, at all its pomp and lavishness. Emma of Wuffolk's shorn clothing sat in a puddle around her boots. She kicked them away. And then she eyed the throne, that highbacked seat of gilt trimmings and varnished scroll.

The Red Princess took it for her own.

Ed, with his gloved hand perched upon his scabbard's locket, watched Edith recline into the Queen Dowager's cushioned throne. "How's it feel?"

She frowned.

"...Empty."

**********

Manse de Foy, Dragonspur, Kingdom of Morland

42nd of Autumn, 801

Francis Gray had a small cup of Wallish white to hand. He tipped it towards his lips for a sup, then poured himself another helping from the brass ewer that the chambermaids paired it with. Wine was normally something he had to call for or fetch for others. Now as leader of the Wallenheim Delegation it was being left out for him – along with treats of his fancy. Finger cakes. Lemon tarts. Candied almonds. Pork rolls. The old luxuries were rolling in now that Thomas Wolner had seen fit to re-open the markets. Not that Fran had much of an appetite that noontide.

Harry Grover on the other hand?

Fran sat and watched (admittedly with a little smile) as his childhood friend gorged himself on Inga's freshly baked delights. He was hungry. Fran overheard the protestations of Harry's empty belly when they embraced in greeting earlier that day.

`When last have you eaten?' He asked.

`Half a day's ride ago'. Harry replied.

No wonder he was famished. Fran exercised his newfound power. He summoned a footman to prepare a room for their guest, then sent orders to the kitchens for something richer at supper – perhaps pheasant or duck. As Harry's cloak and riding leathers were so dirty from the road, Fran even offered him a change of clothes (the two of them being roughly similar in size), but the Hotfoot politely refused stating that, `I am not long to stay,' for which Fran was quietly pleased.

It did his soul some good – sitting by the hearth as his old friend gorged himself with a crumb-speckled grin – but that did not surmount the risk Fran took by hosting him. Harry Hotfoot was a rebel, after all.

"...How did you get into the city?" Fran asked. He was genuinely curious.

According to Lothar's reconnaissance the Standing Guard had checkpointed all four of Dragonspur's gates, and for days now the raised boons had suspended all river traffic within its limits.

Harry belched. "Passed myself off as a tradesman with some phony paperwork. Our lawyer Thopswood drew it up. He's a city man, he knows his stuff."

"That was a dangerous move," said Fran. "For yourself and for me."

"No one in the south knows who I am, Fran. I wouldn't have come here if I thought otherwise."

Silence.

Fran let it linger. He let Harry eat whilst he poured himself some more wine. And then a name tugged at his heart. Fran parted his lips to enquire of him, but no words escaped them.

"You're thinking of Ed, aren't you?"

Embers snapped in the hearth-fire.

`I think about him every moment of the fucking day,' Fran thought. He wondered what, if anything, Edward said to the rebels about his flight from court – about his falling out with Fran. About Gustave. How much did Harry know?

"Is he...?" A pause. Fran gulped down another cup of wine to settle his nerves. It was noontide, but his daily itinerary was clear. "Is he well?"

"I've been on the road for seven days; I cannot speak to it, but when I left him he was well. And he misses you. He will not say it, but he does."

Fran eyed the rim of his cup. "...Did he tell you about the two of us?"

"He didn't have to," said Harry. "I see it plain on both your faces."

"And what do you see?"

"...That you're besotted with each other."

Fran blushed. He looked away. It was over a tenday since his fight with Edward at Old Hall and so much had occurred since. The convocation. The riots. Edith's uprising. Gustave's deserved death. And yet Fran's feelings were still raw from the argument. That look of disgust and disappointment Edward cut him with... the yelling, the sheer obstinacy of him. The unwillingness to listen! Even now it made Fran so furious, so hurt! None of this was what either of them wanted it to be so why could Edward not simply...

`If only he gave me a chance to explain...' Fran's free hand gripped the armrest. "Did he tell you why he left?"

"You had an argument is all I know," said Harry. "And that you refused to side with us against the nobles."

`I REFUSED to throw away everything I've spent the last ten years working toward on a whim,' thought Fran, bitterly.

Was that how Edward saw it? Francis the Noble set against Edward the Commoner? Could he only see their relationship through the lens of Theopold Stillingford's simple politics? The `noble' had loved the `commoner' all his fucking life. Had that no worth? The `noble' would pass up a thousand noble hearts if the `commoner' would offer him his again. Had that no worth?

Fran dug his nails into the wooden armrest. Oh, how he wished Edward were here. How he'd chide him. How he'd deride him. How he'd castigate him for choosing Edith the Exile and her bloody rebellion over their love! He'd yell twice as loudly as Ed yelled at him; he'd make the fucking walls shake with his rage!

And then he would weep and make the good swordsman kiss him.

Fran shut his eyes and shivered. He hadn't realized how angry he still was. Ridding himself of Gustave consumed so much of his mental energy that he hadn't given himself time to think about Edward this way.

`...What if he's dead?' He thought. `What if my Edward is lying dead in a field somewhere with no one to tend to him? What if I never get to see him again? What if he lives and he detests me? What if he-'

"Fran?" Harry eyed him. "You alright?"

`These thoughts will kill me,' thought the clerk. This was not the moment for them. Harry's time was short... as was his own. "...Tell me what's going on out there."

Harry pulled a small, soft, sceptical sort of smile.

"What?" Said Fran. "You do not trust me?"

"Do you trust me?"

Silence.

Embers snapped. Fran looked away and poured himself yet another cup of Wallish white. Harry raised a half-eaten pork roll to his mouth and froze up. It was he who gave in, in the end. "Word on the road is that Edith destroyed the ducal army at Brookweald. The city of Greyford will be ours soon if it ain't already. Everywhere you go, the commonfolk are rising up. Overthrowing their burghal lords. Seizing back the common land. Expelling corrupt judges. Raising banners to Sage Odo. There is no going back."

"And that is all?" Said Fran. "...Just a noble band of rustics and townsmen taking up their hammers and hoes to correct the realm's injustices? No burnings? No looting? No rapes? No massacres?"

Harry frowned. "...Well ain't you quick to judge what you don't understand?"

"Edward and I have that in common, I suppose. He-" Fran stopped himself the moment he heard how petulant he sounded. He threw his face into his palm. He sighed. "...I am sorry, Harry. I just... I cannot foresee a happy ending to all this."

Harry skirted the rudeness. "What's happening on your end?"

The clerk granted himself a moment to query what should and should not be said. Every breath of this conversation was dangerous. The wrong ear in the right place could undo everything. "...The city rebels rose up the instant Greyford was proclaimed regent. The lower half of Dragonspur was sacked and razed, even the Imperial Chancery was burnt to the ground. Manse de Foy was attacked a few days ago, as you can see..." A heavy breath. "...Gustave was killed."

"...I see. I am sorry."

"Spare your sorrows. I cannot think of a death more owed," Fran glared at the flames. "Anyway. A portion of the Standing Guard was recalled from the Lowburghs and with Wolner's help they retook the city."

"Ah. I see..." There was a note of panic in Harry Hotfoot's voice. "But if Roschewald is dead, then..."

"Who leads the Wallenheim Delegation? I do. Temporarily at least."

Panic turned to joy.

Harry Hotfoot grinned from ear to ear as he dove into his satchel, fetched out a sealed letter, and shoved it into Fran's hands. It was unmarked but he recognized the sigil pounded into the wax. It was Edith's sigil.

DON'T OPEN THAT FUCKING LETTER growled The Fiend.

Fran set aside his wine cup and cracked its seal. Parted its folds. Opened it up. It was written in cipher...

4.5.1.18 / 7.21.19.20.1.22.21.19,

23.5 / 11.14.15.23 / 15.6 / 25.15.21.18 / 16.15.23.5.18, 20.8.18.5.5-20.8.15.21.19.1.14.4 / 19.20.18.15.14.7. / 12.5.14.4 / 20.8.5.13 / 20.15 / 21.19 / 1.14.4 / 20.8.5 / 16.15.18.20.19 / 15.6 / 13.15.18.12.1.14.4 / 23.9.12.12 / 15.16.5.14 / 20.15 / 23.1.12.12.5.14.8.5.9.13 / 1.14.5.23.

5.4.9.20.8

...but not a difficult one to decode. 1 was A. 2 was B. 3 was C. 4 was D and so on. Any amateur could crack so simple an algorithm if given enough time. But time, he supposed, was the point. An espial had time. A common halberdier guarding his gate did not.

Fran read its contents.

`Edward hasn't kept all our secrets, then,' he thought, glancing over the parchment at its deliverer and his glinting grin. Hotfoot knew what it asked. This was why he came.

"Is this the only copy?"

When Harry nodded the affirmative, Fran balled it up and threw it into the fire. "Wolner would have hanged you if he caught you with that."

"Well, why'd you think I gave him such a wide berth?" A wry chuckle. "So? What say you, Ambassador Gray?"

Fran turned to the hearth and watched Edith's request burn until it crumpled to ash.. "...You have no idea what you ask of me..."

"Of course I do, it's-"

"Treason!"

The word lingered in the naked air. Cold winds howled at the boarded windows. The hearth-fire crackled. Silence.

Harry sighed. "Fran. Listen to me. I know you're wary of Edith. You're worried you'll lose everything you've gained since those Imperial ships took it all away. I understand, truly I do. But some things are bigger than ourselves. We need those men to win this war and put this country to rights. If we lose, what then? Nothing will change! Greyford will ravage the coffers and bleed us dry until he sparks another rebellion! And another and another and another! Is perpetual warfare so much better for this realm than Edith?!"

Silence again.

And this time it was Harry Hotfoot's words that lingered in the air. And in his eyes, those bright Geadish eyes, his utter resolve was undeniable. To look at him now Fran could scarcely place him as the japing trickster of their youth. As a boy Harry's only interests were horses and fun. Whilst Ed studied the sword and Fran the arts, Harry contented himself with his larks and his bets and his games. His good mother Lady Gray always thought he'd become a mummer or a jester. But now look at him.

A revolutionary.

"You have changed, Harry..."

He shrugged. "Everyone does. Time can't wait for us. There's a better world on the other side of this war, Fran. All we need is courage enough to seize it."

Fran leaned back. He thought about Harry. Thought about his Lord Mother and Father. He thought about Gead and his childhood at the Gray Manse. He thought about Lothar and Luther and of the life they deserved to have. And then he thought about Edward. His sweet Ed. What was the point of any of this without him?

If this war became a coin-toss, which side would see Fran safely returned to Edward's arms?

**********

The Buck's Head, City of Greyford, Kingdom of Morland

42nd of Autumn, 801

An infantryman came at him from ahead with sword outstretched, his toothless mouth gaping with rage, spittle flying from it. Ed's fists gripped tight about his bill's shaft and stepped forward, thrusting its spearpoint into his enemy's thigh, stopping him cold, wrenching it free of the suppurating wound belching out its bloods and bile before sweeping its axe-blade hard into his exposed neck, the pulpy resistance of bone and sinew tremoring through the pole up to his gloved grip. There was a moment, a heartbeat's breadth of a moment between instances of fury, from the charging man to the falling man, where time itself seemed to slow, seemed to stop. And Edward saw him then – this Morish stranger half-beheaded by his hand – his eyes bulging, his cheeks muddied, his lips bubbling and spitting forth his dying croaks as the hot sword fell from gloved grasp. Who was he? A miller? A tanner? A husbandman?

Who was he?

A trencher slapped the table and snapped Edward out of his trance. The swordsman blinked. One of his men stood over him with a frothing flagon and a bright grin. "Eat up, Cap'n Bardshaw! First good meal since Ravensborough!"

Ed saw him on his way with a counter smile and word of thanks. It was a whole hen afore him – roasted until golden brown and garnished with leeks and lemon slices. It smelled good. Certainly the others thought so. His newly formed company (the rump of Edith's guardsmen) filled the tavern to breeching with tankards upraised and platters of gnawed chicken bones littering their tables. The air was ripe with drippings and ale, smoke and sage. Songs were sung. Dice games had. Knuckles played. Cards folded. Serving girls groped. The men were uproarious that night. It was their first night beneath a solid roof since setting out for the south and they wasted no time in enjoying it.

Edward begrudged them not.

After the forced marches and the slaughter at Brookweald they deserved this night.

There was a mouthful of ale left in his tankard. Ed threw it back, then cut a slice of hen meat with his fork and carving knife, slipping it between his teeth. And it was good. Tender and flavourful. But he could only cut and eat a few more slices before he pushed the trencher away. He hadn't much of an appetite these last two days. What little he could keep down for strength's sake, his morning bread and eggs, sufficed him. Everything else felt like indulgence somehow. It was ale that Edward wanted more of.

He reached for the tankard (forgetting it was empty) then cut a glance through his unshorn forelocks at the serving counter across the tavern floor. Since drinks were on the house that night at The Buck's Head, the tavernmaster had his potboys working doubly hard to get Edith's victorious men served. Edward moved to flag one of the lads over to him when another man's shadow fell across his table. Ed waited for it to move. It didn't. So he looked up.

It was a stranger. Not one of Edith's men. A local. Middling in height. Brown of hair and eye. Softly smile. His own age, perhaps, maybe a few years older. And he ferried with him a brace of wooden ale mugs.

He set one of them down by Edward's hands. "May I join you?"

In truth Edward was in no mood for company. He'd chosen the tavern's rearmost table (half-shadowed by its roaring hearth's overmantel) for a reason – to leave his men to their revels and himself to be left alone. But it was rude to turn away the well-meaning... especially when they came with ale.

"As you will."

The stranger broadened his small smile and took the chair nearest Ed's. Silence settled between them. Not an awkward one, per se, simply a silence. Ed and the Stranger set their cups to their lips as they watched the others drink and sing and game. But then...

"My name is James."

Edward smothered a sigh. He did not ask, did not care, and in all earnestness knew not what to say in response. "...That is a good name."

"Is your name equally as good?" He asked.

This ale Ed supped now was his fifth of the night. If it were only his first he would have marked the hidden meaning – what is your name? After which would follow the more internal question – why on earth should you care?

"Edward is a name," He blurted, scratching at his beard. He was in desperate need of a barber's shears. "Good or no, who can say?"

"Edward," James repeated it as if it were something forged in mystery and wonder. "I think it is a fine name. A name for a liberator."

Edward the Liberator.

The Liberator chuckled at himself as well as the appellation.

`It does not suit,' he thought. `It does not suit at all'.

The real liberator was out there. Edith. She'd taken oaths of fealty all morning at the Shrine of St. Thunos whilst Thopswood worked with the secretaries of Ser Reginald Gervase, the half-blind Lord Mayor, in establishing for the Red Princess a city headquarters. Tomorrow began the harder work – she had thousands of soldiers to billet, ducal loyalists and dissidents abroad the city to uproot, and a final march on Dragonspur to plot. The true liberator had no time for flatteries.

He felt James draw closer to him. "This whole city thanks you for throwing off House Drakewell's yoke."

"No thanks is needed."

"And yet it is owed."

The whispered words curled into Edward's ear as a hand as soft as satin slipped underneath the wine-stained table and caressed his thigh's muscled girth. Stroking it. Gently.

Half-drunk blue eyes warbled towards James and found him smiling, kittenishly, biting at his lower lip. Another whisper followed. "...Is there no way I can reward you?"

A whore.

Edward heaved a sigh and polished off what remained of his flagon. His scabbarded sword rattled as he stood upright, James plucking his soft hand away. He put a king's mark on the table. "I require no reward. But thank you."

The guardsman stalked off before James the Whore could voice a protest, shrugging his cloak's hood back over his ears and leaving his men to their merriment.

He left The Buck's Head for the streets of Greyford, its city centre, where the cold winds and clouded black skies did nothing to sour the jubilant mood that had so overtaken the city.

Edith's men lined its cobbled streets, each with a victual of some sort, a beer mug or a wine jug, gnawing at roasted turkey legs as they stood japing with their compatriots in the corners and alleyways interlining the piazzas and market squares. Those too drunk to drag themselves back to the encampment outside the city left themselves snoring in the piss-soaked thresholds of shuttered shops. Candlelight lit up the latticework of every tavern and brothel. Hearth-smoke drifted the air from half-miles away alongside the notes of drunken ballads and cheering soldiers. Bands of billmen patrolled the streets to keep the peace. Odoist sermonizers nailed copies of the Tract of St. Hildes to every door and post they could find. Camp followers and bawds led men into the shadows by their yards before they flogged them of their `curdled milk' for a few stray half-marks.

Edward ignored them all.

He carried himself down the city's wide and winding roads, retracing his steps to the inn that one of the Lord Mayor's secretaries recommended him to – The Frogger's Barge. It was a riverfront property, high by five floors and tall enough to overlook the city walls. It was one of many inns and overnight houses purchased for Edith's captains and quartermasters by the remaining city officials as a `gesture of good will'.

Edward banged the door and gave his name at the slit. One of the innkeeper's apprentices allowed him in and offered to take his cloak. Ed refused and quietly saw himself to his rooms, scaling the croaking wooden steps one flight after another until he found his door. He allowed himself in and bolted it.

It was a small space furnished by nothing more than a bed, a goods chest, a side table and a chamber pot. On the table sat an ewer of water and a beaten tin cup alongside a wash basin half-filled with tepid water. The coverlets were quilted. The riverfront windows latticed. And it was quiet. And more than anything now Edward wanted quiet.

The blonde threw off his cloak then unstrapped his sword belt and harness, kicked off his boots and unbuttoned his doublet and peeled off his undershirt until down to his breeches. And then Edward threw himself onto the bed with eyes wide open.

He could not sleep.

Every time he closed his eyes he found himself back at the blood-sodden grassland of Brookweald, where the cannon fire pounded against the whistles of the arrows and the screams of the dying. In his woeful dreams that toothless swordsman came charging at him again, spittle flying from his cracked lips, bright eyed with rage only to die by Edward's bill.

What an ugly feeling, he thought, that meaty clap of resistance as his bill's point punched into his enemy's thigh and stopped his enemy's rage cold where it stood – or even uglier the crunch of bone as he swung the iron into his neck like a headman's axe.

Old soldiers likened it to jointing meat, this art of killing. But it was nothing of the sort. Mutton doesn't leave land to till. Venison doesn't leave daughters to protect. Pullets don't call for their mothers as they die.

Edward's skull pounded from within as the screaming swordsman came at him again.

And he killed him again.

And again. And again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again until the door knocked.

Ed's eyes shot open. He caught his breath.

A second knock.

And then a voice beyond the grain. Muffled. "Hello? Lord Edward?"

`Lord?' Thought he. Saints help him. The Phantoma could not come quick enough to rid the world of titles.

Edward wiped the sweat from his brow and crawled off the edge of the bed, padding around its width towards the door, which he unbolted, slowly. He opened it to James the Whore.

Blinks. "You? Did you follow me here? How did you get past the doorman?"

All prior pretences of lust and allure were gone. James drew his cotton shawl tight around his shoulders to stave off the river cold. He looked frightened. "May I please come in?"

"I told you... your services aren't-"

"Please!?" He begged. "...Please?"

Edward sighed, irritably, and stepped aside. James hustled himself inside. Ed shut the door and barred it again. The Whore eyed first the room... then its owner for the night. "Is it true what they say about Edith the Exile?"

"...Enlighten me."

"They call her The Butcheress. They say she gelds the men who will not march with her then pickles their balls to feed her dogs."

Ed chuckled a little (in spite of himself). "Edith doesn't have dogs. Rest your fears."

"They say she gouged out the Lord Mayor's eyes."

The chuckles ceased. It almost escaped him to say Edith only gouged out one of the Lord Mayor's eyes, but half a horror was no less a horror to the meek.

James resumed when no reply followed. "She paid for me. She picked me from my master's stock and sent me to The Buck's Head to bed with you. `Cheer him up' she said. If I go back to my master without having done my duty... what will happen to me? What will she do to me?"

`Not a gelding, certainly...' thought Ed. "James, is it?"

"Yes."

"Believe me when I say Edith Oswyke has deeper concerns than where I wet my cock. But if it allays you, you may tell your master you performed your duties with great diligence this night. No one need know elsewise."

James wriggled in his shawl, looking away, sceptically. "And you think I'll be believed if I return to him in the middle of the night without a hair out of place?"

Edward ruffled James' hair.

"There you are," he said. "Crisis conquered."

"I can't go back to him until morning," said the Whore. "You must know this."

Another sigh.

There was but one bed to the room. And yet, as tired as he was, Edward's tired mind wouldn't allow him to enjoy it, and it would bring that tired mind no solace to turn this poor man away to a beating from his whoremaster.

Ed relented. "Fine. Take the bed, I'll take the floor and when the sun rises you can make your way home."

James blinked, confused. "...You mean to say that you... you do not wish to lie with me?"

An unwanted face flashed through Edward's mind. "Mistake me not, you are a... most handsome fellow, I'm just... a little heartsore over another. It will pass. In time. But until such time, I..."

"I understand," said James. He smiled. A real smile not the painted one any potbellied merchant with a fat purse and a willing cock could procure. James slipped off his shoes and inched over to the bed where he set himself down for the night. He settled in nicely. "You are a gentleman, ser."

"...I'm neither of those things."

James, smiling, refused to take his compliment back. But Ed was moved only to ignore him. And then, suddenly, the unwanted face of F— became the screaming swordsman, charging through Ed's mind again until his pennoned bill re-gored him, re-beheaded him, re-felled him, and left him where he dropped for the crows to feast upon.

Ed clutched his skull as James began to snooze. Smoke was filtering in through the open window. And so Edward, head pounding, moved to close its upper pane. And then his tired eyes took him across the rushing black currents of the River Tun to the once sumptuous spires and slats of the Greyford Manse – a silhouette of itself as it burned to mounds of molten rubble.

**********

Staunton Castle, Dragonspur, Kingdom of Morland

43rd of Autumn, 801

King Edwulf I's old commission, Staunton, was many things. It was a castle, ancient and crenulated from its bannered battlements to its towering, white-stoned keep. It was a palace boasting comfortable apartments, sprawling galleries and rose gardens. It was a prison that gaoled malcontents, seditionists, traitors and heretics in its legendary oubliette – the infamous torturing grounds of the realm's worst reprobates. It was a garrison that could billet as many as a thousand troops at any given time with secret stores of sword, shot, harness, gunpowder, and arquebus to outfit them. Staunton was also a citadel sheltering a prodigious staff of armourers and accountants; butchers, brewers, bakers, and blacksmiths; cooks, clerks, and chambermaids; draymen and dressmakers; laundresses and lantern keepers; herbalists, masons, tanners, skinners, shepherds... and each one an expert in their trades.

Staunton Castle was all those things. And that day, found Francis Gray, it was all those things at once.

As per the Duke of Greyford's demands, Fran and his private guard of four horsed halberdiers arrived at Foxford Bridge before daybreak. They made no scenic route of it, simply rode hard down the length of the New King's Way from west to east toward the middlemost of the Three Beasts, Foxford, entering by way of the northern bridgehead.

Both bridgeheads were garrisoned by sixty pistol-armed swordsmen with iron-collared dogs, men of the Standing Guard, split in half and posted on either side of the river to fend off swelling crowds of petitioners screaming with requests for the Lord Regent. Many were river-folk; wherrymen and fishery owners griping about their lack of trade since the raising of the boons. Others begged restitution for their razed homes, pilfered livestock, and requisitioned mules.

Fran and his men dismounted at the northern bridgehead, his halberdiers forming a ring around him and shoving their way through the braying townsmen to the sergeant of the post, to whom Fran presented his writ of invitation and papers.

"Very well," said the Sergeant. "Two of my men will escort you to the Lord Regent's chamber. But your men will remain here, my lord."

Lord.

LORD echoed The Fiend. LORD!

Fran acquiesced, bid his guards withdraw to protect the horses until his return, then followed the sergeant's two-man escort to the gatehouse at the centre of Foxford Bridge where they broached the lowered drawbridge into the beating heart of the 2nd Greyford Regency.

*

The sergeant's escort brought him to the reception chamber door where a Banneret of the Bloom set aside his halberd to allow Fran in at the Duke's behest. The young man thanked the Standing Guardsmen for their troubles and walked the threshold, saying nothing further as they sealed the door behind him.

Fran was already a visitor of the chamber – the Lord Regent having met himself and Gustave there prior – but it felt most unfamiliar to him now. Its cushioned throne and backless stools were gone, as were its wall hung Gasqueri tapestries and gilt portraitures. Now rosewood bookcases and banded document chests took their place. Rolls of scrolled parchment sat in lacquered oak pigeonholes freshly affixed by their framework to the walls. A desk was set in place before the rear window and there were armchairs arrayed around the hearth. This was no longer a reception chamber as such, but a chancery in miniature, a base of affairs and affairs of state, where one could read their daily reports in comfort.

And that was how Fran found Greyford that morning, sat at the business side of his desk, small spectacles propped upon the bridge of his nose, with dozens of missives and field reports scattered about the varnished surface alongside his quills, ink jars, paperweights and water ewers. Gone were the lavish mantle robes and regalia of his newly renewed office. He sat in a simple double-breasted coat collared and sleeved in fox fur.

Fran inclined himself. "Your grace."

His grace's eyes ticked upward from his missives. "Ah. You arrived before time. Good. Draw a chair and sit."

Fran did as he was ordered and seated himself. An offer of wine was made. The younger man politely refused. The older man shrugged and lowered his eyes to the paperwork sprawled out before him. A silence followed.

Fran wondered what sort of tone he should strike. He was no stranger to this, sitting to meetings with noblemen and dignitaries of lofty repute, but as a clerk he was only ever in the room – taking the minutes or drafting reports or reviewing his tabulations. Never a guest, always an attaché. But now...

...but now he was the interim Ambassador of Wallenheim. And as the Ambassador of Wallenheim Fran decided to be blunt. "Was there aught you wished to discuss, your grace?"

The Duke sighed. By the exasperation in his tone, you would've thought him the answerer of a summons instead of the summoner himself. "...That business at Manse de Foy. It was poorly handled. Wolner has received my reprimand."

My apologies was his meaning, but apologies were unfit for men of his station. Hollow words make for weighty silences where a noble is concerned. "Thank you, your grace. After the coroner makes his visit, we will return Gustave's body to Wallenstadt."

Greyford's greying brows peaked – briefly. "...When you write to Chairman Neidhart, tell him we did all we could to protect his brother. I permit you the occasional embellishment. Out of a hundred rebels make a thousand if needs be. But sell my remorse as well as you possibly can."

Men had swatted flies with more remorse. In fact, for a man whose young nephew had died so soon and so tragically, for a man whose sister was all but assured to fall into the hands of the enemy, Greyford was remarkably placid.

"Consider it done. How soon will the ports be reopened?"

"Until such time as the realm is secured," said the Duke. "But with my assent a ship is prepared, The Mariemaia. It will depart within the next tenday. Make all necessary arrangements for Roschewald's dispatchment."

"It will be done."

A grunt.

"And..." Fran was very careful to mind his words. "...how fares the realm?"

In many respects it was an impertinent question. What little Fran knew of Edith's Rebellion was relayed to him by Harry, and what little Harry knew did not speak well of the counter-offensive. It was not his business to ask. And yet... how could he not?

But for all his ill-tempers the Duke did not take unkindly to the question. He sighed, as was his wont, but replied in good faith with what was no doubt an abbreviated version of events.

The Ducal Army, he explained, was destroyed by Edith's own at Brookweald. The Earl of Huxton, his son Ser Humphrey, and dozens of their captains (many of whom being first sons of their respective noble houses) were taken prisoner.

At time of last dispatch scouts had sighted Edith's Army a half-day's march from the City of Greyford, where Her Majesty the Queen Dowager yet abided. Further west Lord Albert Bacon had defected to the Bloody Maid and prisoners of war were currently in train to his holdfast, Fort Silvermere. In the Highburghs the Earl of Harcaster maintained his neutrality – which was favourable; but in the Lowburghs the Earl of Wrothsby and his portion of the Standing Guard had yet to liberate Greatminster – which was unfavourable.

In Dragonspur all rebel uprisings had been crushed, with the Standing Guard securing the streets and Thomas Wolner taking Basil Smeadon and his closest followers into custody, but there were reports of similar (albeit small-scale) uprisings across the country from Peaswyke to Castlegarron. There was a general muster underway for a second Ducal Army in the southern Midburghs, but it would be dozens of days before it was ready to march... and once Edith took Greyford she would have all the resources necessary to march on Dragonspur. In short? The Kingdom of Morland stood at a tipping point...

...and Fran now stood square at its centre. A little bug of anxiousness wriggled irritably inside his stomach. The Interim Ambassador ignored it. He steeled himself.

"And now you see what happens when you let the commons climb above themselves?" Spoke the Lord Regent. "Do you recall that council meeting with the king? How I warned him of these dangers? But alack, you youths find so little currency in the counsel of your elders."

`Oswald had you beaten,' thought Fran.

If the late king had lived, and the Earl of Harcaster had been initiated to the Masters of the Realm, then his grace would've been effectively side-lined. All the Duke's current fortunes hinged upon a horse's stumbling hoof... if it was merely a stumble. But then, in some twisted way, so too did Fran's.

The Duke continued his remarks when Fran did not take the bait. "Despite this. Do you know why I summoned you?"

Fran could guess. He need not even run the numbers to guess. Greyford sent for him for the same reason Edith sent for Gustave – for the boon that might tip the scales in their favour: those 3,000 troops at Bunt.

His grace was sly in his approach of it. "...I spent years bickering with diplomats and lawmen to fine-tune every last scrap of detail in the Treaty of Grace. Years. And do you know one of its central tenets? If either nation is at threat of war or is in the midst of war it shall receive aid of men, munitions and marks from the other. I have oft sent aid of munitions and marks to the Emperor, to help him quell the constant Odoist uprisings of his demesne. Yet what did Ambassador Ludolf offer me in this time of crisis for Morland?"

His Imperial Excellency had already let slip that astounding figure. "You'll... have to enlighten me, your grace."

"Nothing," The Duke frowned, dropping the reports from his hands and tearing the spectacles off his nose. "Absolutely nothing. No men. No munitions. Not a fucking half-mark."

Fran kept his silence.

"I could always communicate with the Emperor directly, I suppose. But even if he acquiesced at the first letter, it would take half a season to muster the help I require. Edith could march on Dragonspur in days."

"Your grace?"

He frowned. "Your coy expression does not fool me. You know my desire. Those 3,000 troops stationed at Bunt. As the interim head of the Wallenheim Delegation... at this critical moment... they answer to your call. Summon them. Bring them to my aid and I will have you augmented to the Viscountcy of Thormont by the turn of the next tenday. So? What will it be?"

**********

The Bourse, City of Greyford, Kingdom of Morland

44th of Autumn, 801

Occupying Greyford, even in the short term, would be a massive task. It was never going to be easy, but Ed did not comprehend the difficulty until Thopswood drew up a table and spread out a map. "Got this from the Lord Mayor's secretaries," said the lawyer. It was a map of the city of Greyford as richly detailed as any cartographer was capable of, drawn to scale with all its most prominent buildings and laneways labelled and illuminated in gold.

"It looks lavish," said Ed. "But are we certain it's accurate?"

A nod. "I sent out some riders yestereve to fetch a feel for the layout. They vouch for its accuracy. Anyway. Let me explain why I called for you. Look here..." Thopswood pointed out a series of markings along the eastern and southern highways. "These are... or were... grain stores."

"Were?"

"They've been ransacked," said Thopswood. "So too have the armouries, treasuries, and mint. When news broke of Huxton's defeat at Brookweald, his reserve forces plundered all the city stores and made off south for Dragonspur."

`How will we feed our men?' Edward clasped his jaw. "What does Edith say?"

From here in the anteroom the Red Princess' voice carried through the thin walls. After her morning prayers with Shepherd Godwyn, she was sitting to petitions in the exchange hall.

"I've made her aware of it," said Thopswood. "She's sent some men upriver to destroy the boons blocking the traffic out of the estuary, which should free our supply ships in Ravensborough to set sail. My greater fear is that some of those stolen munitions may have found their way to resident dissidents."

As loathed as the Duke was across the country, this city was his backyard, his home ground. He was certain to have supporters here as well as defectors. Moreover, the city's sheer size worked to their disadvantage. Greyford was the second largest city in Morland and sheltered some 70,000 souls at last census. Since Brookweald, new recruits had swelled Edith's Army to a sizeable 17,000 men, almost double what they marched with into the Midburghs. That was more than enough to see off any loyalist plots or schemes in the interim, but as soon as the army marched south for Dragonspur the city would be vulnerable. Until the capital fell it was essential that Greyford be held to maintain their supply lines.

"I see your concern," said Edward. "How can I help?"

Thopswood passed a missive across the table. "That is a list of known ducal loyalists drawn up by some local aldermen I've put on retainer. I need you to gather up a team of your most reliable men and pull the rats out of hiding. No stone must go unturned before we march on the capital."

A nod. "Understood."

Ed was tired but he dared not show it.

A day ago, after what the scant sleep his floorboarded room offered, he saw James the Whore on his way home before accompanying Edith here to the Bourse of Morland to establish it as her base of operations – largely due to its centrality within the city. Today, Edith's guard captain had helped to oversee the billeting of the soldiers.

The chosen spot was a leafy suburb called Guildsborough, a liberty assigned by the Duke of Greyford to thousands of well-connected Imperial exiles, alien merchants and financiers. Due to their lucrative continental connections they were afforded special charters and tax exemptions from the crown, and much like in Dragonspur their presence was always a bone of contention. The local merchants begrudged the undercutting of their profits by cheaply sourced foreign goods, and the disgruntled city officials begrudged the aliens their exemptions from their customs duties. The Imperials were an easy target.

Ed took a force of 500 men into Guildsborough that morn, sending his men from door to door to give their foreign denizens until noontide to collect as much of their possessions as they could carry and vacate their properties.

`I'll have no bloodshed,' Edith had instructed. `No beatings, no looting, no rapes. But I want those aliens gone before nightfall.'

But something... something galled Edward in the doing of it. Brittle-backed men fetched their whole lives into hempen sacks as their wives (some of them Morish) clutched babes to their breast and led their apple-cheeked older children by the hand into the cobbled streets. So much crying, so much wailing. So many tears.

Those who would not go willingly they had to force out. Edward held to Edith's directives and abstained from bloodshed – but her deadline required some bruises and broken bones at the very least. By dusk Guildsborough was virtually empty, and an armed escort led a weeping horde of Imperial aliens out of the city and upriver towards the ports. It was dirty work. And Ed knew it.

Now this.

He thumbed open the parchment. The list of names (and their associated addresses) was fifty strong – prominent townsmen and women of legal and financial background with a known penchant for agitation. Edward certainly had enough men to carry out the arrests, but they would need to move swiftly and simultaneously to prevent some traitors from warning others.

`Edith won't have any compunctions about bloodshed where they're concerned,' Ed tucked the list away. "Leave it with me."

A muffled but raucous din of boos and hisses boomed from the exchange hall. A commotion. Edward and Thopswood turned to the low wooden door when one of Edith's captains emerged. "Ed. Kenrick. You both might want to come see this..."

The pair of them abandoned the table, Edward snatching up his sword and Kenrick slipping on his leathered satchel to follow him out of the anteroom. The jeers grew louder as they rushed along the 100-yard-long corridor and emerged through its open archway into the exchange hall of The Bourse of Morland, founded but three years hitherto by the Duke of Greyford.

The exchange hall was designed in the Imperial fashion with colonnaded walls and an echoing marble floor chequered in white and black. Atop its entablature sat carved friezes depicting heroic tableaus of ancient kings and their rustic hunting parties, whilst nymphic white-painted caryatids stood sentry at the arched entranceway. Dust motes danced around the threads of dull morning light filtering through its latticed glass roof – in summer such a feature would've granted a `saintliness' to the proceedings – distinguished magnates and their brokers haggling across the hall over their bonds and commodities.

It served no such purpose now.

Now, the Bourse's chequered floors were dirty with mud prints and fallen autumn leaves blown in with the wind. The commons gathered by the dozens across the hall and along the gilded galleries. At the centre its new mistress sat upon a stool in her simple red dress. Edith the Exile. With the swaddled babe of a local fisherwoman in her lap, enclosed by a guard of six burly billman dressed proudly in her liveries. Her attendant Larkyn, the red-headed mute, stood closely by. And before her stood over a hundred petitioners and well-wishers all booing and sneering as two tired travellers walked warily along the hall towards the Red Princess.

Edward and Kenrick went to Edith's side and beheld the pair. They came dressed in feathered caps and taut doublets of gold-blue brocade patterned in floral heraldry. Sable half-cloaks shouldered their sword arms, though their scabbards were empty, their longswords confiscated at the entrance. Both cloaks were stitched with the sigils of House Drakewell.

`Ducal envoys,' thought Ed.

A moulded cabbage caught one of them in the ear and exploded in his face.

Edith chuckled.

The two envoys stopped twenty yards from her person. And they were familiar enough with her to know not to kneel.

"Well met," said she. "Introduce yourselves then."

The first of them, a greybeard, was indignant but restrained, sputtering out his flatteries through clenched teeth.

"Greetings to you, Edith. My name is Seymour Ysgrave. I served as Royal Messenger for our late King Oswald and now Ducal Messenger for his grace the Lord Regent," then he directed to his cabbage-marred compatriot. "At my side is Henry Ysgrave, my son and aide."

Henry curled an angry lip at their host but said nothing, dusting the mouldy leaves off his shoulders as the crowds snickered at him.

"Bringing him up in the family business?" Edith turned to Edward, pointing at them. "You think the Hotfoot would care for such attire?"

He smiled to himself. `You'll not have me prancing around like some petticoated peacock,' Harry might've said. "I can't say he would, Edith."

A chuckle. "Nor I. Unwarranted pomp will not pass when the day dawns on my regency."

Cries of "Here, here!" lifted out of the crowds.

Seymour grabbed his belt and ignored them all. He had a missive on his person sealed in green wax with the stamp of the royal seal. "...Madam. I-"

"What of the Queen Dowager?" Interjected Ysgrave the younger. "We would inquire of her."

The older of the pair stilled, eyes bulging with disapproval at his son's bluntness, even in company so unfavourable to him. But Edith did not rise to the rudeness... largely because she hadn't noticed any.

"The Witch of Wuffolk lives," she said. "A little shaken up, maybe... but she abides. How fares my Uncle Gerard?"

`You have your hostages and I have mine' was her meaning.

It did not escape Master Seymour's notice. He gnashed at an underbite barely hidden beneath the woolly grey pelt of his beard. "His Lordship is kept in every comfort. Dispatches are maintained between himself and his Lord Father, the Earl of Harcaster, if that will suffice?" A pause, hastened. "We come bearing terms."

An eyebrow peaked. "Terms of surrender?"

"Terms for a suspension of hostilities," said the older envoy. "I beg you to read and answer them with speed. The Lord Regent seeks no further bloodshed and wishes to find an accord with you."

Sighing, Edith directed Kenrick Thopswood to collect the missive with a hand flick. Nodding, the lawyer moved to take it from Seymour's hand, crack its seal, and spread his lips to read it aloud–

"The abbreviated version, Kenrick..." Said Edith.

A nod. The shave-pate re-opened the page and skimmed the document before speaking aloud (with but the slightest of smirks). "The Lord Regent... requests that we go home."

Laughter.

Everyone except Edith, Edward and the scowling Envoys Ysgrave burst into kinetic, frantic laughter. Thopswood waited for it to pass before he continued. "He requests that we release any captured prisoners, abandon the city, march our army back north to Ravensborough and relinquish any and all claims to the throne or the regency. In exchange... upon the formal cessation of hostilities... the act of attainder passed against Queen Katheresa Vox will be repealed and all lands and titles that were rightfully hers shall be passed unto Edith. Formal pardons will be granted upon the army's disbandment, and the Earl of Harcaster will be re-invited to court in an unspecified capacity."

Edith paused.

And then she chuckled.

Darkly.

"Do I look like a dog, Master Ysgrave?"

The seniormost envoy shook his head. "W-why of course not, madam."

"Then why does your master toss me scraps?" The Red Princess kissed the head of the babe in her arms and passed him to his mother, one of the petitioners. "...Kenrick? If you please?"

Like any good lawyer Kenrick Thopswood was a man of his paperwork. He fetched into his satchel and retrieved a sheaf of parchment bound in twine and ribbon. He presented it to the younger of the two Ysgraves.

The older one spoke in his place. "What is this?"

"Our Remonstrance of the Wretched," said Edith. "Our great testament to the plunder, atrocities, and malpractice of the Greyford Regency. Read well of it as you scuttle back to your master with my terms..."

Edith palmed her knees and pressed up, rising from her stool.

"I am to be formally declared Regent of Morland. The Guard Tax must be immediately repealed. The Duke of Greyford must abdicate and submit himself for arrest. The Earl of Wrothsby must abdicate and submit himself for arrest. A formal burghal council comprising one shepherd and one common per burgh must be established. There must be a permanent cessation of the persecution of Odoists. A general convocation of the Morish Shepherdry must convene to canonize Sage Odo. My mother must receive her posthumous exoneration of all falsely attributed crimes. All Imperials must be expelled forthwith and forever from the realm... and all its bondsmen and women must be granted manumission."

The Ysgraves, father and son both, gaped at the Red Princess with dumbfounded astonishment.

"Those are my terms, masters. And if the Duke does not accept them... I shall tear Dragonspur down, stone by stone, like stars falling from the firmament."

Silence. No more jeers or boos then. Only reverence. Every soul in that room, young or old, man or woman, looked to Edith in that moment saw nothing but the stillness of her ironclad resolve. Every word was a promise – not a threat.

`And thank the saints for it,' thought Edward.

Every moment of doubt he'd born since setting out on the road to Ravensborough was countermanded by that iron will of hers. She was the mainspring at the heart of this rebellion and all its whirling components. It was nothing without her. Without her... all was for naught. And Edward had spilled far too much blood for that to be the case.

`At all costs,' he thought to himself. `I will protect her.'

The Ysgraves, father and son both, inclined their heads. Then as they turned to leave in a swirl of flapping cloaks and scabbards, the Red Princess cried "WAIT!" so loudly it echoed up to the glass ceiling.

Seymour and Henry froze.

"Where are my manners?" Asked Edith. "Having come all this way, masters, I would be remiss if I did not send you home with a gift. Follow me."

With an impish smile upon her freckled face, Edith the Exile proceeded past the ducal envoys and made for the entranceway; her clutch of liveried billmen following the small trail of her red dress. Edward Bardshaw quickly followed, as did Kenrick Thopswood and (reluctantly) the Ysgraves. Soon afterwards all the petitioners and sympathetic townsfolk poured out of the exchange hall into the marbled continental-style piazza stretching out from the Bourse to the city's main square – St. Bosmund's Street.

An informal procession unfolded. Bakers and butchers looked on from their shop windows as Edith the Exile and her crowd of followers strode down the breadth of that paved stretch to the city square, the heart of the city of Greyford, where at its centremost stood Gedley's Cross, a white-painted limestone monument high by eleven feet and erected in reverence to Gedley Drakewell, 5th Duke of Greyford, father to the Lord Regent and Queen Dowager, who died fighting the Wallish during the Long Sea War. The city square was where the lively market days of St. Wynnry's season normally occurred.

But not that day.

That day its shops were shuttered, its stalls collapsed, and in their place upon those straw-swept flagstones... wooden gallows stood newly erected.

Edward watched the Ysgraves shudder within the crowds, whilst up ahead, Edith flagged one of her stationed riders to whisper a message into his ear. He galloped off. And while he did so, the Red Princess bade her followers wait with her until he returned with the Ysgraves' gift.

That `gift' arrived an hour later.

He trotted into the market square on staggering, flea-bitten feet whilst lashed by rope to the saddle of the rider's mare. A small host of swordsmen provided escort. He was naked from foot to crown, his flushed pink skin covered in plum-coloured bruises and bloody weals, his fraying woolly hair torn out in clumped patches, his small penis waggling along with the jowls and rolls of his fat. The gaolers had even stuck an apple in his mouth. And as he trotted into the square amongst the gathering crowds – crowds now numbering in the hundreds – they pelted him with sticks, pebbles, rotten fruit and stray horse dung, with any ignoble missile readily available. They jeered at him. Sneered at him. Called his son a dandy and his daughter a whore. Called him a traitor and a filcher and a brute. They called him pig and piggy and pork roast.

Thopswood woofed.

It was the Earl of Huxton.

Seymour and Henry watched in abject horror as the Lord Marshal of the Realm, the once proud leader of the ducal army, father to Ser Humphrey and Lady Cecily Ashwick, was dragged by horse trot to the foot of the gallows where a headsman and his block now awaited.

Hundreds of soldiers and townsfolk cried out the name "EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH! EDITH!" as she bunched up the train of her skirts and – almost playfully – followed her prisoner up the steps of the scaffold.

The apple fell from Huxton's teeth as his handlers lowered him to the timber block and its head-shaped groove. The headsman, a hooded local once on the Lord Mayor's payroll (now on Thopswood's) took up his axe with a single gloved hand. Edith addressed the throng stretched out across the market square to witness the spectacle. Edward kept his eyes to the crowds with unpleasant memories of the Bloody Parley.

"PEOPLE OF GREYFORD!" The crowds settled to regard her remarks. "THIS MAN, YOUR EARL OF HUXTON, TOOK UP ARMS AGAINST THE VERY PEOPLE HE WAS SWORN TO PROTECT! AT THE BEHEST OF A TYRANT WHO BEARS THIS FAIR CITY'S NAME, HE THREW THOUSANDS OF HIS HONOURABLE COUNTRYMEN TO THEIR DEATHS AT BROOKWEALD!"

There was a moment, a heartbeat's breadth of a moment between instances of fury, from the charging man to the falling man, where time itself seemed to slow, seemed to stop. And Edward saw him then – this Morish stranger half-beheaded by his hand – his eyes bulging, his cheeks muddied, his lips bubbling and spitting forth his dying croaks as the hot sword fell from gloved grasp. Who was he? A miller? A tanner? A husbandman?

Who was he?

Edward's skull throbbed.

"THE COWARD WHO KNEELS BEFORE ME HAS NO RIGHT TO CALL HIMSELF A MORISHMAN! NOR HAS HE ANY RIGHT TO A MORISHMAN'S GOOD JUSTICE! IN HIM I SEE WHAT YOU SEE! SWINE!"

Roars. Jeers. Hollers. Hoots. All eyes fixed themselves to the scaffold as Edith knelt to her haunches, clutched a scruff of Huxton's hair and asked him if he had any last words. His lips moved but the crowds were too raucous for anyone to hear his strained voice. Edith dropped his sweaty head back to the block and stepped away. "SEND HIM TO THE SAINTS!"

`...Master...'

Edward blinked. The headsman raised his axe.

`...Master Stillingford...'

A glint of whirling metal swept up into the pale light and swept down into flesh, gristle, and bone until a fattened head fell from its bloody shoulders into the woven basket below. Uproarious cheer followed. Men screaming their throats hoarse. Women shrieking and whooping. Children giggling with glee upon their parent's shoulders as if it were all a game.

`...Am I...?'

Edith grinned at the head of the crowds where young Henry and old Seymour Ysgrave went white with shock. She pointed to them, yelling to be heard over the baying din. "TAKE THE PIG'S HEAD BACK TO ITS SWINEHERD, MASTERS! AND TELL HIS GRACE THAT UNLESS HE SUBMITS TO MY TERMS... HIS SISTER'S HEAD WILL FOLLOW! NO! MORE! LORDS!"

A rope of blood trickled Edward's nose. `Master, please... am I...?'

The chant rippled back through the sweltering crowds like a booming echo above all. "NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS! NO MORE LORDS!"

`...Am I doing the right thing...?'

**********

Manse de Foy, Dragonspur, Kingdom of Morland

44th of Autumn, 801

That night, the night of the 44th of Autumn in the Eight-Hundred and First year since the unification of Morland, was the quietest night the capital had experienced in days.

Screams of terror and the crush of destruction did not carry on the river winds. The fires that ravaged the southern half of the city were nearly all extinguished by a lucky bout of heavy rain and the diligence of the Standing Guard to douse what they could with sand and rerouted river water. Those who had lost homes sought shelter in all the Commonfaith shrines and temples that would house them. Armed soldiers protected key sites around the city; the Three Beasts, the Sanctuary of Four Saints, the Black Quay, the waystations of the New King's Way, Speaker's Square, etc. Dragonspur's streets were protected and thus silent. It was a brutally enforced silence – by Lothar's reports the city gaols were full to the point of breeching – but it was silence, nonetheless.

This was good.

Francis Gray required silence. He had a decision to make, and either way he went, there would be consequences not merely for himself but for the kingdom, and by extension the entire continent. And there he was. Pondering. His quill twirled in one hand whilst his face was buried in the other. Wine lingered on his breath. Next door, Harry `Hotfoot' Grover slept peacefully in a mahogany armchair, swaddled up in blankets by the crackling hearth. Somewhere northwest, perhaps even in the City of Greyford, Edward Bardshaw schemed with the Bloody Maid to destroy Dragonspur and Fran along with it.

Or maybe he was dead.

The mind thought it possible. The heart SCREAMED it could not be. And for the mind to keep its peace, it had to listen to the heart.

Fran had to hurry. Not a day longer could the Hotfoot tarry, the north beckoned, and Harry needed a response before he left. Who could've imagined it a decade ago? That these three Geadish boys should find themselves at the fulcrum point of their nation's history? How many roads stretched out from this moment? How many potentialities? And what dwelt at road's end?

At the misty crossroads he saw himself at the head of an army 3,000 souls strong. Wallish pikemen, billmen, swordsmen, arquebusiers, demi-lancers and cannoneers backed by horses, sakers and ships.

Whither should they go?

Through the haunted woods north to the woman in red? Or `cross the storm-tossed seas south to the man in grey? He thought to consult the Fiend, but the Fiend would not follow Fran here.

It was for Fran to decide where he would march.

One foot he had already in the sea. And across its breaking waters shimmered his treasure so long sought. Did such treasures await him in the north? Throughout its woodlands gnashed the bloody jaws of danger and yet north was where his heart resided. North called to him. It beckoned him.

The path south brought long-precluded reward... but also fear, cold, and unrest. A shelter of gilded solitude.

The path north was uncertain, dangerous, and blood-ridden... and yet it kept his heart. A bittersweetness of fleeting rapture. A chance to love again. The validation of all his ten long years of suffering, not by dint of wealth or title, but by the love borne of his still beating heart.

Fran sighed. Scrubbed the tears from his eyes. Thought of his father and mother, the late Lord and Lady Gray, and everything they desired for him. He thought of the enemies yet to punish; Greyford, de la More, and Wolner. He thought of Lothar and Luther and the peace and security they were so long owed.

But then he thought of Edward Bardshaw.

"...My Ed..."

The sweetheart of his boyhood self. The nocturnal temptation of his adolescent self. And the uncontested love of his adult self. After everything they suffered, everything they endured, every obstacle they overcame to find each other again... perhaps it was for history to pay the price.

There was ought to do now except run the numbers.

And so? He paused. He mulled his thoughts. Prognosticated fate within the engines of his mind. And then he made his choice.

`Sorrows...'

It was all Fran could whisper as he put quill to parchment in the lowlight of flickering candleflame. His heart was racing. His cheeks were flushed. But he wrote. His will. His directives. The proposition. The meeting ground. And when the ink finally dried, he folded the missive into quarters and poured the wax, stamping it with his seal, the seal of the Wallenheim Delegation.

A single written missive that would forever alter the course of Morish History.

**********

·        Thanks again for reading everybody! Stay tuned for more. Feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome at stephenwormwood@mail.com .

·        Please read some of my other stories on Nifty: The Dying Cinders (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), Wulf's Blut (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Dancer of Hafiz (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Cornishman (gay, historical), A Small Soul Lost (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), and Torc and Seax (transgender, magic/sci-fi).