Page 110 of The Flame and the Forsaken

“Laws you created! Laws that benefit only you and your cronies. Is it not your duty to protect all citizens, not just the ones who share a table with you?” Erran snapped. His blood was on the rise, and he should have stopped, before he went too far. But everything had already gone too far. “This greed and ignorance will get Sessaly killed, and I...” He ran a hand over his mouth and glanced down the hall, toward the entrance. “I will not let it happen. Forgive me or don’t. My eyes are already too far open to ever close again.”

They’d gonerounds for weeks about the Mariel-and-Destin dilemma.

Though Obsidian Sky was ostensibly defunct, Remy, as second in command, had called an emergency meeting the night Augustine had returned with the news the Ashdowns had been made prisoners at the Spires.

Remy hadn’t wanted his sister returning to her duties at all. There was far too much risk anymore. The steward might not know their names, but his son did, and unlike Mariel, Remy had no trust for the princeling. The man would fold when the right threat was dangled before him. If not him, then he had two other friends who knew just as much, and who had even less incentive to protect their secret.

But Augustine couldn’t have been swayed. Mariel needed an ally inside, and there was nothing else he could say. Any influence he’d had over his sister had inevitably faded, and if it had been him with a coveted job at the Spires, he would have continued going back as well.

None of the group could agree on a way forward. Magnur wanted to assemble a line of trebuchets and fling a slew of boulders at the walls until they released her. Alessia suggested hiring assassins to sneak in under the cover of night, which was more feasible in the short term, but murder would raise the bounty on their heads to amounts no man could resist—and Remy wasn’t sure he wanted that on his conscience. Augustine’s plan was simply to listen and wait for the right piece of information or opportunity. With patience, it would reveal itself, she insisted.

Remy, the Tactician, had no better suggestion. So wait they did.

For two long months, they waited.

Until the princeling himself showed up at his door.

Magnur answered, greeting the craven bastard with a sword to the neck. Alessia flung the door wider, brandishing her own steel with a flick of her wrist. Remy could have stopped them, but he wanted to see how it played out first.

Erran hoisted both of his hands in cool submission. He didn’t look the slightest bit afraid. Remy wondered if that might change, if he learned just how much the two wanted him dead—and that Remy himself was probably the only thing standing between Erran and his final meeting with the Guardians.

“Please hear me out. I’m here on Mariel’s behalf,” the man said. He craned his neck back for relief, but Magnur’s sword tip followed him. The princeling flinched when blood ran down his neck and into the opening of his shirt, but he didn’t try again to withdraw.

“Or your daddy’s,” Alessia retorted. “Donnae ken I’d like to take the chance of being right. How about you, Mag?”

“Nay, best to be safe.”

“Mhm,Marieltaught us that.”

“Aye, we’d be a fool to forsake her wisdom now.”

“’Specially not for this squint who got her and her brother locked up.”

“Listen.Please.” Erran’s arms flagged. His elbows lowered to his sides. “Remy. Could you call them off?”

“Me?” Remy chortled. In truth, he hadn’t decided what to do about the princeling’s sudden arrival. He hadn’t calculated it into the possibilities, because the man was a true wild card. Mariel loved him—trusted him—but the rest of them had no reason to. For all they knew, the Rutland guards could be lying in wait in the alleyways for an ambush.

But in his years as an apprentice to one of the greatest tacticians in Oldcastle, he’d absorbed the importance of not overlooking a variable for risk alone. The safest way forward seldom led to the most desirable outcomes. “Mag, check the street. Alessia, watch the door.”

“Not taking my eye off this one for a moment,” Alessia grumbled. Her eyes narrowed to slits, like a feral cat’s. “He’s wily. Kens he’s too smart for his own good.”

“Whatever I am, I’m also a man who loves his wife and respects...” Erran scrunched his face as he brazenly reached upward to shove the sword aside. He grunted and massaged his neck, daring to look maddened by the whole thing. “The work you were all forced to do because of men like my father.”

“And you, squint.” Alessia spat on his boot. “Ye benefit just as much as the others.”

“Aye.” Erran didn’t break her wild gaze. “I have. I do. And it needs to change.”

“Is he armed?” Remy asked.

Alessia slapped her hands all over Erran’s body. Remy could almost respect how the man was taking the small assaults in stride. “Nay. Which makes him a fool as well.”

“Go on, both of you,” Remy said, shooing them with his hand. “I’ll hear what he has to say.”

Magnur and Alessia circled Erran on their way out. Alessia charged at him, but all he did was regard her behavior with indifference.

The man is exhausted,Remy realized. Augustine had been at the Spires when the fire had broken out, and she had come home just long enough to tell the others what had happened. She’d returned to the keep, not for the Rutlands but for the women she’d come to see as her friends, other workers still dealing with the shock of the night’s horrors.

“Sit,” Remy ordered. “I’d offer you a drink, but I’m rationing.”

---