Theodosius Valkorion's Arc

Chapter 12 of 22

The rider caught them at the last bend before the mountain road. His horse was foamed to the chest. He handed Heinrich a sealed dispatch and stayed bent in the saddle, breathing hard. Heinrich broke the seal, read, and passed it across without a word. Theodosius read it twice. The capital was turning. In the market squares, a story was moving from stall to stall: the king had murdered the two lords for their lands, forged the letters, painted them traitors after the fact. Grain prices were up. A shrine to the dead lords had appeared at the fountain where he had crowned himself. Three of the Clandestine Guard's watchers had been beaten in one night. "Whose mouth?" Theodosius asked. "Priests, mostly. Some of the guild men." "Days until it burns?" "Four. Maybe three." The pass was four days out. If he rode back, Thraxes met the columns without him. If he rode on, the capital rioted at his back and the pass held nothing worth defending. He swung the horse around. "You take the column," he said. "March them to Thraxes. Tell him the cannon speaks when the first standard shows in the pass." Heinrich did not argue. "How many do you take?" "Fifty of the Palatine. The rest go with you." "Fifty is a parade." "A parade is what I need." He rode through the night and the next day and reached the capital at dusk. He did not enter by the main gate. He entered by the north road so the city would see him coming down the long avenue toward the palace on the hill. The white stone of it caught the last sun. The pale blue glass of the high windows lit before anything else on the skyline. Behind him rode fifty men of the Royal Palatine Guard in white and light-blue plate, four-pointed stars on every breast. He did not hurry them. He wanted the city to count them. He went first to the fountain. The shrine was small: candles, two folded cloaks, a bowl of coins. A crowd had gathered by the time he dismounted. He did not clear them. He set a table beside the shrine and had a clerk read out, in full, the forged military orders each of the seven lords had received, and which two had sent their specific lies to the enemy. He held up the burned page with the half-seal. He named the villages where enemy scouts had been found waiting. Then he spoke once, plainly. Any man who could show the seals were false could take his crown at the pass gate. Any priest who had preached the story was to come to the palace steps by morning and repeat it there, under the star. None came. By dawn the shrine was gone. The Prime Consul stood on the palace steps in white and light blue and blessed the king's justice before the assembled quarter. Theodosius rode for the pass within the hour. The capital was quiet. He had spent a day he did not have.