Chapter 670: The Sad Ambassador
Yorko requested an audience the following morning.
Given that the two kingdoms had recently formalized their alliance, the request was approved quickly, and two knights in full ceremonial armor escorted him to the palace hall. Over the past two or three months, he had made numerous attempts to see King Appen Moya, each one deflected with varying degrees of pleasantness. He wished now that the king had continued deflecting.
The court meeting was nearly finished when he arrived. Appen reclined against his throne with the loose energy of a young man who had recently said something clever, talking with the ministers around him. He straightened when Yorko bent his knee.
“Rise. I’m told you’ve brought a letter from Roland Wimbledon?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Yorko’s voice performed its function without involving the rest of him. “His Majesty of Graycastle congratulates Your Majesty on your coronation and expresses his earnest desire for a long-term relationship of cooperation and friendship between our kingdoms.”
Appen smiled. “Something new. Did he send presents?”
“The fleet carrying the gifts is currently en route. The letter was dispatched by post horse.” The words assembled themselves with admirable speed. Yorko had no idea whether Roland had sent presents, and the omission from the letter was conspicuous, but an ambassador had legitimate grounds to be uninformed of details managed at the royal level.
“When my father was crowned, King Wimbledon III sent a delegation of two hundred to celebrate. Eleven wagons—goldware, fine wines, silk, ladies.” Appen looked pleased with the anecdote. “I’m curious what Roland considers an appropriate return gift.”
Laughter from the ministers.
Yorko swallowed. He had nothing useful to shoot back. Roland should have known the gift-giving protocols—any king should—and the absence of any mention in the letter suggested that Roland had simply not considered it relevant. Which told its own story, if one knew how to read it.
“Anything else?” Appen asked.
For one second, the thought of excusing himself crossed Yorko’s mind. He weighed it. Infuriating Appen Moya would cost him his welcome among the nobles of Glow—he would become a figure of fun, the Graycastle ambassador who’d come to court to be ignored. But disappointing Roland would cost him the post entirely. And between those two outcomes, only one of them was reversible.
He ground his teeth.
“His Majesty also requests… that Your Majesty cease the persecution of witches, and treat them as free peoples. In the event that this request is not met, the Kingdom of Graycastle would feel compelled to employ force to resolve the matter—as it did with the church.”
The hall went silent.
Completely, comprehensively silent.
Yorko felt sweat prick at his hairline.
Appen Moya’s expression moved through several stages. He held out one hand. A knight crossed to Yorko immediately and took the parchment.
Yorko did not look at the king while the letter was read. He studied the floor. He had memorized its pattern.
The letter hit the floor.
“So this is the attitude of the Kingdom of Graycastle toward its ally?” Appen was on his feet, his face a dark and unhealthy shade of red. “Witches are innocent, therefore we must set them free? Rubbish!” He moved without sitting back down, pacing. “Do you know what witches did to House Moya? They entered the palace. They killed the guards. They held my father hostage to force me to yield to the church. If they had not poisoned him—” he broke off, jaw tight. “He should be here. Alive. I should not be here yet.”
But he’s dead, and it’s his death that made you king. Yorko kept the thought entirely internal.
“Your Majesty, I believe there is a distinction between witches trained by the church and ordinary innocents—as there are good and bad among common people—”
“Shut up.” Appen’s voice went very flat. “You have no idea what it is to be in the presence of someone who can do what they can do and against whom God’s stones offer no protection. How can any community unbounded by law submit to governance? The Kingdom of Dawn is safer without witches. I am obliged to protect my people.”
The argument would go nowhere. Yorko could see that clearly enough. The death of Appen’s father had made a wound that wasn’t going to close through dialogue, and perhaps not through anything short of years. Appen was Roland’s age—they might have been contemporaries in other circumstances, two young rulers finding their footing—but where Roland had settled into something approaching authority in the months since taking power, Appen still had the quality of a boy who had been handed a sword he wasn’t yet sure how to carry.
“I will write to Roland Wimbledon,” Appen said, still moving, “and advise him to be more vigilant about the Fallen. Threatening the Kingdom of Dawn over demons’ minions is an absurdity. Graycastle is powerful—I acknowledge that—but that power was given to him by the nobles who support him. If he invades a sovereign ally over this, he will demonstrate to every nobleman in both kingdoms that no one is safe from his overreach. His own subjects will turn. My people will turn. He’ll find that the strength he relied on to defeat the church will not follow him into an unjust war.”
Yorko said nothing. He was thinking, privately, that Roland had appeared to arrive in the king’s city with neither noble support nor popular sympathy, and had nonetheless taken it in under circumstances that still weren’t entirely clear to him. That during the subsequent trial, every great noble in Graycastle had been removed from the board. That the post Yorko currently held was itself a product of that clearing—he was here because Roland had, through processes Yorko could only partially reconstruct, run out of conventional candidates.
He was ordered from the palace hall in the same flat tone Appen had used to shut him down. Hill’s prediction, precisely realized.
To his surprise, none of the ministers spoke. They stood and watched him leave, expressions carefully neutral. They were processing what had just happened—the letter was still on the floor—and for the moment, the social reflex to laugh had simply not engaged. That was better than Yorko had feared.
He was not going to make the mistake of celebrating it.
He had barely returned to his rooms when Otto Luoxi arrived.
“King Roland truly intends this?” Otto sat across from him, turning the contents of Yorko’s account over in his mind.
“Do I look like I’m fabricating this experience?” Yorko had found the recliner and collapsed into it.
“No.” Otto paused. “I think Appen’s approach is mistaken. He genuinely wants peace for the people of the Kingdom of Dawn—that’s real, whatever else one says about him. But the hunting measures cause exactly the terror he says he wants to prevent. People aren’t afraid of witches abstractly; they’re afraid of the way witches are being chased through their streets.”
“Tell him that.”
“He doesn’t hear it. The moment witches come up, he becomes—” Otto stopped and bit his lip. “The late king’s death marked him. Appen shouldn’t have ascended the throne for another five or six years. I’ve heard King Wimbledon III was also killed by a church witch. If Appen could achieve even a part of what Roland has in the same span of time—” He shook his head.
Yorko looked at him. Something about the phrasing was striking—the comparative ease with which Otto measured Appen against Roland, the implicit preference that came through it. The eldest son of one of the Kingdom of Dawn’s three great families, talking about the king of a foreign realm as if that king were the reasonable standard.
Had Roland become so formidable that he could pull nobles of neighboring kingdoms toward his perspective without even speaking to them?
“I’ll try again with Appen,” Otto said. “The Earl Quinn has also been unable to move him on this. But I’ll try.”
He rose to take his leave.
No. 76 appeared in the doorway and stopped them both.
“Sir.” She was slightly out of breath. “The witch you bought—she’s come back.”