Chapter 84: A Prince’s Regard
Prince August sat in a white room.
It was not, technically, a room. It was a space within the palace that had been used as a conservatory once, before August had asked for the plants to be removed and the windows to be replaced with white stone panels. He liked the absence of view. It reduced distraction. And distraction, in August’s experience, was something the world was enormously generous with when you had things to think about.
He had a great many things to think about.
His butler stood at the room’s edge with the particular posture of someone who had learned to take up as little space as possible. He had been a vigorous man once, with opinions and a family and a name August no longer remembered. Now he was a convenient fixture. That was what loyalty looked like at its most refined — a person so thoroughly committed to function that the self had been vacated.
August found this both useful and slightly boring. He preferred loyalty with more friction. Friction told you things.
"The scouts’ report," he said.
The butler placed the stone slab on the low table beside August’s chair. August did not pick it up immediately. He already knew what it contained — his Clairvoyance had given him the broad strokes before the scouts ever filed their report. He liked to read the official version anyway. It told him what his people chose to emphasise, which told him how they thought, which told him whether they were becoming problems.
He read.
Blackthorn. Construction. A substantial military presence — Cunningdal’s banner identified with certainty. Cunningdal himself, on-site. And the vampire duke. Moving freely, apparently in excellent health, demonstrably alive.
August set the slab down.
The annoyance was a familiar sensation, which helped with managing it. He had experienced it first when Nightshade — Wilson, he reminded himself, the name the vampire had apparently adopted — refused the university position. Then when the poisoned knights failed to return. Then when Beldroth had sent his diplomatic nothing-message.
Each time, the annoyance had been accompanied by a small, uncomfortable adjustment to his model of events. He did not enjoy adjusting his models. They were carefully constructed and he was proud of them.
But he was also, above all things, pragmatic.
The vampire was alive, allied with Cunningdal, and building something in the north. The construction at Blackthorn was too extensive for simple territorial maintenance — the reports mentioned walkway networks, sewage infrastructure, a working guild. That was settlement-building. Long-term thinking.
Which meant the vampire was planning to stay.
Which meant the north was no longer simply Cunningdal’s territory with a new name attached.
August stood and walked to the nearest wall panel. The white stone was cool under his hand. He pressed his palm against it and let his Necromancy pulse outward — a habit he’d developed since childhood, the way other people drummed their fingers. The stone didn’t respond, of course. Stone wasn’t interesting. But the sensation of sending mana outward and having it return with information about the texture of things — density, age, stress points — was calming.
The vampire had made two alliances that August knew of: Cunningdal and the Mage Tower. The Mage Tower was the constraint — August could not move against a Master Mage directly without consequences he was not yet ready to manage. Cunningdal was a military problem. Cunningdal with the vampire behind him was a different kind of problem.
"There is a difference," August said, to no one in particular, "between an enemy who is strong and an enemy who is building something." He paused. "An enemy who is building something cannot be attacked yet. But they can be pressured."
The butler waited.
"The Veranthos border tensions," August continued. "Cunnigdal’s territory sits on that border. If Veranthos were to... accelerate their activities in that region, Cunningdal would be forced to return to defend it. He could not maintain a position in the north and a defensive line in the east simultaneously." He turned from the wall. "Do we have contacts in Staedbergh?"
"We had one, my lord. Reports indicate he went silent approximately ten days ago."
A pause.
"Permanently silent?"
"We believe so."
August looked at the wall again. The scout had been in Blackthorn. And then he had gone permanently silent. The conclusion was not comfortable.
"Send different scouts," he said. "Not soldiers. Not mages. Merchants. People with legitimate reason to be on the northern road." He paused. "And begin conversations with our Veranthos contacts. Quietly. I want activity on Cunningdal’s eastern border before spring."
"As you wish, my lord."
August sat back down. He picked up the stone slab and read the scout’s report again, more carefully this time.
A vampire who was alive, allied, and building. Who had — apparently — removed at least one experienced intelligence operative without leaving a trace.
He tapped the slab once against the arm of his chair.
’Interesting,’ he thought. And because August was August, interesting was not a comfortable word. Interesting meant the model needed revising. Interesting meant the enemy was more than they had appeared.
He began composing the Veranthos message in his head.
****
The bird arrived at dawn on a Thursday.
Jack knew it was Thursday because Leon’s administration had recently implemented a calendar system — one of the first projects Roselyn had managed before the dungeon became her primary occupation — and the calendar specified Thursday with the confidence of a document that had been filed in triplicate.
The bird was enormous. This was the word that kept presenting itself and Jack kept setting it aside in favour of something more precise, but eventually he gave up and accepted that enormous was accurate. It stood in the Tarlington Fortress courtyard like a small, feathered house, its black plumage catching the early light in iridescent ripples of green and purple. Its eyes were amber — not unlike the Aurel’s helmets, now that Jack considered it, which was probably not a coincidence — and it regarded him with the expression of a creature that had been doing important work for a long time and had opinions about who qualified to interrupt it.
Kieran’s courier, a slight young woman named Petra who wore Ravenhall grey and moved as though she’d been constructed for efficiency, handed Jack a sealed message and then stepped back to the bird’s side with the air of someone who had completed a professional obligation and was now available for further instructions.
Jack broke the seal.
