Theodosius Valkorion's Arc

Chapter 2 of 22

The morning after the throne room, Theodosius walked the outer wall of the palace and listened to the city. White stone rose behind him in tiers of pale spires and blue glass. Below, the streets were quieter than they should have been. A baker cursed the price of flour. Two women argued over a stall. Neither said his name. When a boy passed a broken fountain, he traced a black hawk in the ash with his shoe. Theodosius watched from above and understood. He had a throne and a sword. He had nothing the people could point to and call their own. He found Heinrich von Stahlberg in the drill yard, the old commander who had vouched for him with nothing but his word and a scar-laced hand. Heinrich was checking a horse's hoof. He did not look up. "They still whisper the usurpers' names," Theodosius said. "I heard a boy draw the hawk in the dust." "Boys draw what they see on flags," Heinrich said. He set the hoof down. "Give them something else to see." "A banner." "A banner. A crown. Something they can carry through a market without a lecture." Heinrich wiped his hands on a rag. "I can march men. I can't teach a city what to love." Theodosius went to the old workrooms under the palace. Dust covered the tables. He found his mother's seal in a drawer, the white lotus of their house, and a scrap of pale blue silk in a cabinet. He sent for a tailor, a smith, and a woman who had painted standards for the Empress. He gave them one design and would not let them leave until it was done. A four-pointed star in pale blue. The white lotus at its heart. White cloth behind it. He wanted the star of his blood and the flower of his house on the same field, so no one could separate the man from the line. By the third day the smith brought him a crown. Silver and white, ringed with pale blue stone, the lotus rising at its front. Theodosius set it on the table and did not put it on. On the fourth morning he rode into the lower city with twenty riders and the new banner at the front. He did not speak. He stopped at the broken fountain. He dismounted, took the crown from a cloth in his saddlebag, and set it on his own head in the street. Then he stood the banner in the fountain's dry basin and left it there. By dusk, three market stalls had hung a strip of pale blue at their posts. A tavern painted a rough lotus on its door. The hawk in the ash was gone, scuffed out by feet. Heinrich met him at the palace gate. "They have a symbol now," he said. "So do your mother's killers. They'll know what to burn first."