Jonathan Strahan - Eclipse Three

"I'll provide a hostage," Dafyd said. "Tell Palliot to come to the winter garden at moonset. He can bring as many men as he likes, but tell him to bring only the ones he trusts."

Dafyd walked away before Bessin could respond. His heart raced and his hands shook.

He found Rosmund in a fire circle, clapping and singing along as women in too little clothing danced through the flames. Dafyd put his hand on the priest's shoulder.

"I need a favor," he whispered. Rosmund lost the beat, then stopped clapping.

"What's the matter?"

"I need a favor," Dafyd said again.

Rosmund broke away from the circle and followed him into darkness without word or question, and Dafyd loved him for it.

The winter garden spread out at the southern edge of the palace, wide paths of stone and gravel winding through low hedge and dwarf trees all within webwork walls of glass and iron. Dafyd's father had said the king could grow iris and rose in it all year round, but there were no blooms now. The still air smelled of rotting plants and soil. The two sat on a low stone bench lit by a single candle as the crescent moon slipped below the distant, dark horizon. The pale flicker of lamp light came from a darkened arch, growing steadily brighter. Bessin and five men in the colors of his house approached.

The Duke stood.

"This is the hostage?" Bessin asked.

"Apparently so," Rosmund said.

"If you will join us, father," Bessin said.

Rosmund stood, took a long, deep breath, and met Dafyd's gaze with an expression both skeptical and determined.

"It'll be fine," Dafyd said.

"I'm reassured."

Bessin, Rosmund, and the men at arms walked away together, vanishing under the archway. Dafyd didn't sit. A moment later, Palliot appeared with three swordsmen behind him. The guards stopped short; Palliot came on, his steps slow and wary. He was a tall man, broad across the shoulder. His jaw ran toward jowls though he wasn't more than three years older than Dafyd. His fair hair was pulled back and his dark eyes shifted through the darkness.

"Duke Palliot."

"Westford," he replied with a small but formal bow. "You wanted words."

"Yes," Dafyd said, then took a deep breath. "The kingdom's in pain. It needs a king strong enough to hold it together while the wounds knit."

"It does," Palliot said, as if answering an accusation.

"You should do it."

Palliot crossed his arms, head cocked as if he'd heard an unfamiliar sound.

"You're forfeiting the trial?"

"Not that. I can't. There are too many people who back me for my father's sake," Dafyd said. "If we don't go through with it, there'll be talk that your rule isn't legitimate. I can't forfeit. But I can lose."

"Lose," Palliot repeated.

"A few good blows for each of us for the sake of form. I'll come too near the border mark, and you'll knock me over it. I'll swear my fealty to you, and no one need ever doubt it was a fair fight."

"And in return you want… what?"

Dafyd laughed, surprised by the bitterness in the sound.

"The last year undone," he said. "I want the dead alive. I want the graves undug. I want God to say it was a mistake and that He takes it back. But failing that, I want it to be your problem and not mine."

Somewhere in the speech, tears had stolen into his eyes, and he wiped them away with a sleeve. Palliot was quiet for a long moment.

"You'd give up your honor? This trial isn't to the death."

"Yes, it is," he said. "If not on the court, then in the field. Let's not pretend otherwise."

The larger man laughed. Dafyd thought there was relief in it.

"You're wiser than I expected," Palliot said, his eyes still narrow and his voice cautious.

"We understand one another, then?" Dafyd said.

Palliot was silent for longer than Dafyd liked, the dark eyes searching the empty air before the man grunted.

"Will you swear to it before God?" Palliot asked.

It was all Dafyd could do not to laugh.

"If you'd like," he said. "I swear before God."

"Then I do as well," Palliot said, and held out his hand. Dafyd took it. Palliot had an impressive grip.

They stood together for a moment, and then Dafyd watched Palliot walk back to his men, head held high. Silently, they vanished into the shadows, leaving him to sit on the bench. Someone approached, gravel complaining at each footstep. And then a wet sound, and Rosmund said something obscene.

"You're well?" Dafyd asked as his friend sat beside him. Rosmund's right leg was caked to the ankle with a greenish muck.

"Ruined my hose," he said ruefully. "And you?"

"I said what I came to say."

"Well, I'm pleased they didn't kill me over it."

The single candle flickered, then stood straight again. The air wasn't particularly cold, but Dafyd was shivering.

"Rosmund, can I ask you something?"

"As a friend or a priest?"

"Priest."

"Anything you like, my child," he said, only half-mocking. Dafyd took a long, slow breath.

"Does God have a plan for us?"

"I assume so. Everyone seems to think He does."

"I believe God is evil," Dafyd said. It was the first time he had said the words aloud, and he felt the air itself clear when he said them.

"Is that why you're conspiring to lose the trial?" Rosmund asked, his voice as comfortable as if they'd been discussing nothing more than food or which girls were prettiest. "To take the decision away from Him?"

"I suppose so."

"It won't work. It can't. Whatever happens tomorrow will have been God's will," Rosmund said. "You win? God did it. Palliot? God will have done that too. You both fall down when you step on the court and stub your toes too badly to walk? Still God."

"I'll know," Dafyd said. "That's enough."

"What if ceding to Palliot was God's plan all along? How would you know?"

Dafyd growled, a small noise in the back of his throat. Rosmund didn't seem to hear it.

"It doesn't matter whether God is good or God is evil," the priest went on. "It doesn't even matter if God is God. As long as He's a tale told after the fact, He's inevitable. You can't beat Him."

"Watch me," Dafyd said.

"Listen to me. As a priest, I'm telling you the dice are shaved. The cards are marked. Good or evil or a fairy story grown fat on too many tellings, it doesn't matter. Even if there is no God, He will win."

Dafyd Laician, Duke of Westford, spent the following day in one of two equally placed couches overlooking the melee field. Grass still clung to the margins, but days of battles and games had reduced the center to mud. There were four combats planned: a children's melee at dawn, a battle of ten against ten with maces and flails, a great battle of twenty to a side in the early afternoon, and the generally comic infirm melee at evening where the wounded and spent of the previous days' games took the field in splints and bandages.

His mother had arranged to have the sword God's Will hung behind his chair and draped with cloth-of-gold. If she hadn't sat beside him the whole day through, he would have taken the thing down. Across the field, Palliot sat in a seat that mirrored his. For all the battles and entertainments, more eyes were on the pair of them than the field. Only when Sir Emund Loak, having survived the blow that caved in his armor, died when his breastplate's straps were cut did the drama of the day turn from the succession. And then only briefly.

Night came with a great feast. Some master of entertainments with an overactive sense of humor placed the high table crosswise from its usual orientation, with Palliot on one end and Dafyd at the other, the court etiquette fashion of asking which is the king?

Dafyd retired to his rooms early, claiming the need to rest and prepare for the next day's trial. Palliot did the same. There would be time enough for wine and song when the succession was decided.