Jory Lanfear's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Three days later, Jory came to the Council hall and said the words he had rehearsed. He asked for Princess Eleanor's hand in open court. The lords went quiet. Then Eleanor stepped forward and surprised him. She did not merely allow the suit. She smiled at him. She took his arm. Before the whole court she named him a worthy match. The plan had been a lever. Now she was playing a part, and playing it well. The king watched from his high seat. Eddard Penrose, sixty and gray, leaned on his carved staff. He did not shout. He studied Jory the way a man studies a horse before buying it. "A new name," the king said. "Three days old. Convenient." He corrected himself before Jory could answer. "Not an accusation. An observation." Then he turned to his daughter and said nothing, and his silence was worse than any question. Eleanor used the days that followed. She and Jory walked the terraced city below the pale citadel together, because the match required it. He expected to manage her. Instead she asked him true things. She asked about the book his father stole and the girl in it who died at eight. He had never told anyone. He told her. She listened the way no one at court listened, without waiting for her turn to speak. "You chased a dead girl through dry pages," Eleanor said. "Because no one else cared how her story ended." She stopped on the stone steps. "I thought you wanted my blood. You want the ending to a story." Jory had no clever answer. That frightened him more than the king had. The queen found him alone on the citadel wall the next morning. Mairona Penrose, fifty, blond going gray, wore red and spoke plain. She was Eleanor's mother, and she had already chosen a side. "My daughter laughed yesterday," she said. "She has not laughed since the betrothal." She looked at the sea below. "I will help you. Not for your eyes. For that." She left before Jory could thank her. He had gained a queen as an ally. He had also lost control of the thing he started. On the final evening, Eleanor met him by the fountain in the high garden. Her face had changed. The performance was gone. "The arrangement worked," she said. "My father is listening now." She paused. "But I meant what I said by the water. I offered you a use." She touched his sleeve, then drew back. "That is no longer true. That is the problem." Jory understood. She had set out to use him and had stopped pretending. He had set out to use her and could not. The false courtship had turned real on both sides. The king was watching. The queen was waiting. And the old lord Eleanor was still promised to had not released her yet. The lever had worked. Now Jory could not let go of it.