City of Kings, Eibithar

It all comes back to Thorald, Your Majesty,“ Wenda said, her eyes fixed on the king, who stood motionless before the fire. ”In that respect nothing has changed. As long as Tobbar continues to support you, and remains above the dispute between Curgh and Kentigern, you should be able to keep the houses from going to war.“

Dyre sat forward, his pale eyes flicking from Wenda to the king and then to Keziah. “But Tobbar isn’t well. If he dies before these matters are resolved, there’s no telling what Thorald will do.”

“Actually, it seems quite clear to me,” Paegar said. “Tobbar has two sons in Shanstead, both of whom have much to gain from Thorald’s return to supremacy. I expect that if Tobbar dies any time soon, they’ll immediately throw the weight of their house behind Aindreas.” He turned to Gershon. “Wouldn’t you agree, swordmaster?”

Keziah might as well have not been in the room. She might have been archminister to the king of Eibithar, but to Kearney’s other advisors, she was nothing. Wenda, Paegar, and Dyre had all served as ministers under Aylyn the Second, the late king. Natan jal Samara, Aylyn’s archminister, left Audun’s Castle when the old king died, having served him for nearly seventeen years. One might have expected the other ministers to do the same, but Kearney chose to keep them on, and at the time it seemed a wise decision. Kearney, the former duke of Glyndwr, ascended to the throne under the most extraordinary of circumstances, agreeing to lead the land after it became clear that this was the only way to avoid a war between

Javan of Curgh and Aindreas of Kentigern. Recognizing that some might question his claim to the throne, since under Eibithar’s Rules of Ascension he was not the rightful king, Kearney thought it best to continue the practices of his predecessor as much as possible.

But rather than raising Wenda to archmimster, making Paegar and Dyre his high ministers, and bringing in his own Qirsi as underministers, Kearney made Keziah his lead advisor, just as she had been in Glyndwr. No one could find fault with the king for doing this. He also made Gershon Trasker, his swordmaster in Glyndwr, the commander of the King’s Guard. Such was the prerogative of a new ruler.

While the other Qirsi accepted the new king’s choice, however, they did not accept her. When she spoke, they listened, and when Kearney agreed with her counsel, they yielded to his judgment. But they never asked her opinion, and they never deferred to her in discussions such as this one, though it would have been proper, given her position. They wouldn’t even look at her, unless it was to glare at her responses to the king’s questions. In recent days, over the past turn or so, Paegar had begun to show some signs of accepting her. But this was just a beginning, and a small one at that. Kearney had made her the most powerful Qirsi in the kingdom, and Keziah found herself afraid to so much as speak without leave from the king.

Gershon, who distrusted all Qirsi, hated her most of all, and did nothing to help her. Indeed, he seemed to relish her discomfort. While they still lived in Glyndwr, Kearney and Keziah had been lovers, sharing a dangerous and forbidden love for which the swordmaster blamed her and not his duke. Keziah had hoped that coming to the City of Kings might force them to put their differences aside and allow them to build on the progress they made during their ride to Kentigern, meager though it was. But if anything, the swordmaster had grown more protective of Kearney and thus more hostile toward her.

For his part, the king appeared to be oblivious of the politics of his court, or perhaps he just felt that it was up to Keziah and the others to make peace with each other without compromising their oaths to serve him. Their love affair ended with Kearney’s ascension-it was one thing for an Eandi duke in the remote highlands of Glyndwr to love a Qirsi woman, he explained at the time, but it was quite another for a king to do so. She still remembered their last night together, in the Glyndwr Highlands, shortly before Kearney’s army marched to Kentigern, with a vividness that made her skin tingle.

“I agree that Tobbar’s sons have less interest than he in recognizing Glyndwr’s claim to the throne,” Gershon said, glancing at Paegar before turning his gaze to the king. “But they have much to lose if this comes to civil war.”

Kearney looked up from the fire. “Explain.”

“When you ascended to the throne, we assumed that both Javan and Aindreas had abdicated in your favor. That’s what you and the others agreed to in Kentigern. And so it followed that your investiture was consistent with the Rules of Ascension. But since then, Aindreas has claimed that he never agreed to this, that the bargain struck that night involved only you and Javan. In effect, Kentigern claims that you and Curgh stole his crown, and he’s convinced the duke of Galdasten of this as well. In their eyes, with you as king, the Rules of Ascension are dead. This leaves them free to challenge your authority and even wage war against you without it being treason under the law.”

Dyre nodded. “It also allows the lords of Galdasten to lay claim to the throne again, without waiting any longer.”

Keziah had to agree that this made a good deal of sense, though she still found Aindreas’s deception infuriating. Not only did it allow Aindreas to justify his defiance of the new king, but it allowed the House of Galdasten to move beyond the tragedy of 872, when a madman brought the pestilence to Galdasten Castle, killing the duke and duchess as well as their children. Under the Rules of Ascension, the House of Galdasten would have had to wait four generations before being recognized once more in the Order of Ascension. Abandoning the rules ended their wait.

“All this may be true,” Wenda said. “But where does that leave Thorald.?”

“Under the Rules of Ascension,” Gershon answered, “Thorald has been Eibithar’s preeminent house. Tobbar’s sons, particularly the older one, won’t be inclined to give up that standing.”

Keziah cleared her throat awkwardly, drawing their gazes, including Kearney’s. Feeling their eyes upon her, she nearly held her tongue. I’m archminister, she told herself. I have a right to speak here, and a responsibility as well.

“With the deaths of the elder and younger Filib,” she said, “Thorald has no immediate claim to the throne either-that’s why Javan was in line to be king. Won’t Tobbar’s sons be as willing as the duke of Galdasten to turn away from the rules?”

“Maybe,” Gershon said. “It depends upon whether their own ambitions outweigh their loyalty to the house and their ambitions for their children. Their situation is different from that in Galdasten. Kell of Galdasten had no brother. His death nearly killed the entire family line. Filib the Elder had Tobbar, so the damage wasn’t as great. Tobbar’s sons can’t claim the throne, but they need only wait one generation more. Marston’s son can rule the land, and if he does, the younger boy’s son becomes duke of Thorald rather than merely thane of Shanstead.”

Keziah nodded, then rubbed a hand across her brow. Since Kearney became king, she had spent a good deal of time poring over the Rules of Ascension, trying to anticipate ways in which Glyndwr’s enemies might seek to subvert the house’s new power. Yet she still found the rules arcane beyond comprehension. They were inordinately detailed, providing for nearly every contingency, and therein lay their strength. The rules assured that the noble houses of Eibithar would always have a method by which to select a new king, even under the most trying of circumstances. At the same time, they allowed for some sharing of power among the kingdom’s major houses, so that one family would not be able to hold the throne for centuries at a time, as had the Solkarans in Aneira and the Enharfes in Caerisse. Recently though, Keziah had begun to wonder if all the time the nobles of Eibithar spent fighting over the rules did more to undermine the kingdom’s stability than the rules did to guard it.