John Carr - Kalvan Kingmaker

First, Lady Eutare had foiled a plot to betray an important castle to the Harphaxi and spirited away a considerable sum in gold and silver. Second she had caught Prince Phrames' eye so that he now considered himself all but betrothed to her. That made things easier between him and Rylla; they had been feuding ever since her decision to invade Phaxos. Lady Eutare was someone they both cared about.

It was high time that Phrames started begetting a family of his own. Demia would need playmates of a suitable rank before long. In time, she would need a husband from a stock worthy of her, and what better stock than Phrames?

"Yes, Eutare?"

"The King has returned!"

Rylla sat down again, because her legs would no longer support her. Her stomach felt uneasy and her mind was unsettled. Please, Allfather Dralm, make this homecoming a joy, not like the battlefields I left in Phaxos. Kalvan had never been truly mad at her before, but the absence of letters from him since her return from Phaxos did not bode well.

After a moment, she saw something in Eutare's eyes that made her uneasy. "Is he wounded or sick?"

"No. No. But-Your Majesty, he rode in with barely the escort of a messenger, on horses that looked ready to drop in their tracks. Those who saw him dismount say he wore a visage fit to frighten Styphon's demons."

Rylla frowned. "He is probably half-witted with fatigue. Well, he can sleep soundly tonight. We can celebrate his victory tomorrow."

"But, Your Majesty-"

"Would I be welcome when you sat down with Prince Phrames?"

Lady Eutare flushed. "As you wish, Your Majesty." She appeared to want to say more, or at least delay her departure, but Rylla's tone brooked no argument.

As Rylla turned back to the letter, footsteps sounded on the stairs and a familiar voice made her heart leap in her chest. "Is the Queen at home?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Then the footsteps coming up the stairs faster, grew louder as Rylla sprang up and ran to the door-

– to stop as though she'd run into a quickset hedge, as Kalvan stalked into the room. He was muddy and saddle worn, wet and stinking, but none of these would have mattered under other circumstances.

With that look on his face, Rylla could no more embrace her husband than she could have an Archpriest of Styphon.

"Kalvan, what's wrong?" He slammed the door closed behind him.

"What the Styphon did you think you were doing, with that butchery in Phaxos?"

"BUTCHERY!" She hadn't intended to shout, but his tone pricked her like spurs into a horse's flanks. "I call it burning out a nest of enemies and guarding your back!"

"Dralm damnit! Stabbing me in the back, is more what you've done! You've just given every prince in Hos-Agrys and Hos-Harphax good reason to distrust us. Do you know what the League of Dralm-"

"I don't know anything about the League of Dralm, and I don't care either. If Allfather Dralm really favors them, let Him give them the sense to see that we're on his side. If Dralm won't do that, who the Styphon cares about the League?"

Kalvan threw his gloves down on the table. "We'd better care about what they think, whether Dralm does or not! Do you want the Harphaxi Electors withdrawing their opposition to Prince Lysandros for Great King of Hos-Harphax?"

For the first time Rylla felt a twinge of fear for something else than her husband's ravings. "They wouldn't-"

"They would. One rumor I just heard along the road says they're meeting right now. There were always plenty of Harphaxi princes and priests who said the League shouldn't intervene in the affairs of a Great Kingdom, even if it was about to elect a Styphon-worshipper."

"I suppose they wouldn't want to set a-precedent," she said using a word from Kalvan's native tongue. She would have uttered a Sastragathi snake-spell if it would have changed the look on her husband's face!

"No. It would be a gift to the Styphoni. Now you've gone and handed the Council of Dralm an even better reason for staying out of the Harphaxi election. Half of them will now be thinking: We need a strong Great King on the Iron Throne, to balance Kalvan's empire-building."

"Empire-building? I only defended what any respectable Prince or Great King would call his honor-"

Kalvan went off like a barrel of fireseed with a short fuse. "Defended? Is that what you call it? If my 'honor' needs defending, in the future, let me do it! What you've really done is tarnished my good name. Your invasion of Phaxos, behind my back-"

"How could I do anything behind your back! You were not here to answer Araxes' latest insult."

"Did I tell you specifically, not to leave Hos-Hostigos?"

Rylla shrugged her shoulders. Maybe she had acted against her husbands' words, but she was no horse to be led around in circles and given commands-not even by her beloved.

"Yet, you insisted upon invading Phaxos, which very likely undid everything I did in the west. I've half a mind to call Harmakros straight back and-"

"Isn't he with you?"

"I left him to command our army in the west with our allies to finish wasting the land around Tarr-Ceros. With luck, that should keep the Knights out of the field this year and next in spite of what you've done. When Harmakros returns, though, he's going to help me select the next Prince of Phaxos-"

"Who says so?" Rylla replied indignantly.

"The Great King of Hos-Hostigos says so. Or-" Kalvan's eyes wandered to the table and the paper letter setting upon it. Before Rylla could do more than pray for her patience, he'd crossed the distance to the table, snatched up the letter and read it.

Rylla had thought his visage was frightful before. Now she would have run from the room if that would not have been regarded as cowardice. For the first time in their marriage, she stepped back from her husband, to give herself room and time to draw her dagger if all else failed.

Kalvan said nothing and took only a single step, and that was to lean backward. But he picked up the letter in both hands, and tore it down the middle, then tore each piece in two. The four fragments of paper fluttered to the rug.

"Harmakros will rule Phaxos, until I find a Phaxosi nobleman we can trust to make Prince. There's little for him to do in the Sastragath and he will be returning soon."

"And how will they do under Harmakros in the meantime?" Rylla snapped off the question like a pistol shot. "Do you remember the Captain-General's wasting of Nostor and the massacre at the Sevenhills temple-farm? Do you think he will be gentle in wasting the Knights' lands? What does he have that will make his rule better than ours?"

She nearly flung an unforgivable accusation at her husband, concerning him and Harmakros. She stopped short of that folly, first because she knew it was nonsense and second because she feared driving him to say something equally unforgivable.

Having rejected vile insults, she still found no gentler words. She was standing, shaking like a tree in a high wind and hissing like an angry cat, when footsteps sounded once more on the stairs.

Prince Ptosphes entered, with an air of noticing nothing so carefully wrought that it defeated his own purpose. "I heard that Kalvan had returned. The Proclamation of Union has been drafted. I have here the-"

"There won't be any Union," Rylla stated.

"Oh?" The Prince looked like a man who was trying to navigate his horse through caltrops that were strewn before him.

Rylla wanted to scream at her father not to play the witling when she wanted an ally. Instead she managed to say without stammering, "The Great King thinks that Duke Harmakros would serve well as ruler of Phaxos, until We find a suitable candidate for Prince."

"The Great King thinks that Harmakros can be trusted to wipe his backside without being told how!" Kalvan bellowed.