Jonathan Strahan - Eclipse Three

"You run off like a little boy whenever you're… "

"Like it or not, Mother, I am Duke of Westford now, and if you… "

"… faced with the reality of God's presence. Well it… "

"… feel that you've become a prophet of God… "

"… might have been charming when you were a child, but… "

"… you can tell Him that I have no use for… "

Rosmund made a slurping sound. They both wheeled on him, chests working like bellows. He looked up at them, wide-eyed.

"Sorry," he said.

"Dafyd," the Duchess said, her voice quieter now, but sharp. "Every man in that field was looking to you, and you disappointed them. And me. And your father. Never do it again."

She wheeled before he could answer and swept from the room, slamming the door behind her. Dafyd said something obscene. Rosmund shrugged, refusing even in her absence, to cross the woman.

"Hypocrite," Dafyd said, accusing the closed door she'd passed through. "Says I'm acting like a child the same breath that I'm to do exactly what my mother tells me? She will never listen."

"Well. When you're king, maybe," Rosmund said.

Dafyd threw a cup at his head.

The journey to Cyninghalm could have been no more than a dozen days, but the weight of ceremony and allegiance slowed them to a crawl. The wide road, centuries old and still as solid as the day the stones were set, filled around their carts and carriages. Knights on huge warhorses waited at every crossroads, ready to join their banners to Westford's own. High lords and low fell in behind them wearing enameled armor so light and gaudy Dafyd couldn't help but think of beetles. As they passed, the trees themselves seemed to bow to them.

To him.

And with every league he traveled, his own robes and the black-and-silver of his court armor seemed more ridiculous. With every night's camp spent presiding over the grand pavilion, with every beery, weeping man laced into his best tournament silk, Dafyd felt more a pretender.

"He was a great man, your da," the Earl of Anmuth said. "A great man."

"Thank you," Dafyd said.

The old man bent back his head, gold beard shot with gray pointing toward the moon. Tears ran from his rheumy eyes, and his voice was thick with phlegm and sorrow.

"I was there the day he bested Easin's three top fighters. You wouldn't have been born then, but God, it was a day. Your da, he was brilliant. And after, when he took us all aside and swore that we… that we… "

He sobbed. The others-there must have been a dozen men in the pavilion, even that late-watched as if Dafyd were the entertainment. He set his jaw and prayed the old idiot would pass out. Anmuth wiped his eyes with the back of one wide, meaty hand, then leaned close. His breath smelled like the wind from a brewery.

"Lord Bessin came to me," he said softly. "Ass-licker offered to make me Warden of Rivers if I threw in with Palliot. Told him I'd rather muck stables. And I would, too. I would."

Dafyd nodded solemnly. The old man's bleary gaze locked on his, waiting for Dafyd to speak. He didn't know what he was expected to say. Thank you or I will be avenged.

"My father would appreciate that," he said. "He always counted you among his most trusted friends."

It might have been true, for all Dafyd could say. It sounded kind enough. New tears welled up in Anmuth's eyes and spilled down his cheeks. His beard squeezed together, completely obscuring his lips. He nodded once, clapped Dafyd on the shoulder, and walked unsteadily away.

Dafyd waited, troubled by something he couldn't quite express. The moon made its slow arc across the dark sky. Musicians played on flute and tambour. A minstrel declaimed the story of King Almad and the Dragon, which Dafyd had sat through unmoved a thousand times before. But when King Almad ascended to Heaven this time, he felt his throat thickening and his eyes tearing up. His brothers would have laughed.

And through it all, something Anmuth said bothered him like a stone in his boot. It wasn't until he lay down to sleep that he knew what it was.

Rosmund's tent wasn't quite as overbuilt as his own, but it still had its own framed door and walls too thick for sound to pass through easily. Dafyd shook the priest's door servant-a thin-framed boy in a cheap, greasy cassock-awake, and waited no more than a minute before Rosmund opened the door and waved him in. Rosmund wore a thick cotton night dress unlaced down the front, and his hair stood at a hundred different angles.

"Long time since we kept a midnight meeting," he said, and yawned. "We would have been twelve, I think."

"Are we alone?"

His bleary eyes sharpened.

"No," he said, "but she's well asleep, and I'd rather not wake her."

"Be sure," Dafyd said.

Rosmund went through the thick leather flap of the tent's interior wall and door. The Duke sat on a tapestried cushion until the priest came back.

"Snoring deeply," Rosmund said. "What's the matter?"

"Why is Lord Bessin trying to get men to side with Palliot?" Dafyd asked. "Trial by arms isn't about who's cheering or where they sit."

Rosmund shrugged and waited for Dafyd to tell him. They had known one another too long.

"Allies don't help in single combat," Dafyd said. "They're very useful in a war. I don't think my lord the Duke is going to accept a loss."

Rosmund's eyebrows rose toward his hairline. He whistled low, soft and appreciative.

"Insurrection. That would be a very, very stupid thing to do."

"You think I'm wrong then?"

"No," he said. "I think grief drives people mad, and anything, no matter how ill-advised, becomes possible."

"Grief?"

"Look around. The kingdom's caught a fever, and it's touched everyone. Not just you."

A soft wind shook the thick leather walls. The candle flickered and the woman in the next room murmured something inchoate.

"I'm not at issue here. We're talking about civil war," Dafyd said, his voice cool.

"We're talking about mastering a world that's just shown everyone that it will take everything from them anytime it wishes," Rosmund said, his voice growing deep and passionate in a way it rarely did when speaking at the pulpit.

"I don't… " Dafyd began, but Rosmund talked over him.

"Your mother's turned to piety and prayer. Bessin and Palliot have turned to intrigue. I've turned to sex. Back to sex. These are different dressings on the same wound. The plague reminded us that we're powerless, and now we're trying to forget."

"This isn't about the plague," Dafyd said.

"Of course it is."

"It's not!"

Rosmund looked down, lips pressed tight.

"I didn't come here to talk about the plague or God or the wounds of the kingdom," Dafyd said, venom in his voice. "I came because I thought of all the men I know, I could tell my suspicions to you. That you would listen."

They were silent for a moment.

"And didn't I?" Rosmund asked.

A woman's voice came, slushy and warm and dazed.

"Love? Did something happen?"

"Nothing, sweet thing," Rosmund said. "It's nothing. A bad dream."

Dafyd gathered himself to leave, but Rosmund put a hand on his arm. His touch was gentle and familiar, and Dafyd had to force himself not to push it away.

"You weren't like this before the plague," Rosmund said.

"Like what?"

"Angry. Afraid," he said. And then, "You didn't whine as much."

Sleep didn't come easily. In the privacy of his imagination, Dafyd told Rosmund exactly why the priest was an idiot. He dressed down his mother and her overbearing piety. He confronted Lord Bessin and Duke Palliot. His words unanswerable and his logic profound, his opponents abased themselves before him. The rage that kept the Duke from rest didn't cool.

He lay in the darkness of his bed until the quiet murmurs of the guards changed and the first, tentative songs that the birds sang before first light began. He would have said sleep had never come had a rough voice not wakened him.