Path of the Spirit Runner

Historians and Poets

Historians and Poets~

Nigel Willoughby

Jorendon, Innis

Lord Nigel Willoughby, Minister of Diplomacy in Queen Anne’s court, was bored far beyond the usual boredom that came with awaiting an audience with Her Majesty.

Nigel flipped pages. He may as well have been watching tiny black ants march in neat lines across the paper. He gave up trying to care and stuffed the book into his pocket.

It was a new work by playwright Catharina Griffith, an actress from Da’Rhynn who’d taken up writing for the Falkender Theater. Her bawdy plays had become the talk of Jorendon. Nigel and Lucinda both enjoyed the witty dialog and double entendres she wrote for the stage, but poor Catharina was out of her element in attempting a historical biography.

Dry as a day-old biscuit.

The parlor was comfortable enough. Plump chairs and settees offered abundant seating. Tall mullioned windows stretched from floor to ceiling and let in ample light. Those with similarly overdue appointments with the queen lounged about the room, reading, and chatting.

And, of course, waiting.

When King Walter handed over Innis to his sister a decade ago, choosing exile in Bresca over civil war, Anne swept in to claim the palace and its throne. She rarely used the old throne room with its hall of heraldry and relics of monarchs past, though it had served as the council chamber for both Connor kings and for the Falkender dynasty before them.

Instead, Anne renovated a newer wing of the palace to suit her. She said it symbolized a break from the darkness of the past. Purifying Innis would require embracing the new and discarding the old. Accordingly, she had discarded all of King Walter’s advisors and ministers.

Only Nigel had kept his post and solely because Beacon Griffith vouched for his loyalty. Well, perhaps his bedrock of influence and irreplaceable web of contacts stretching throughout the known world had helped some, too. Anne had seen the advantage of retaining his services.

Nigel pulled out his pocket watch. Her Majesty and her prince were running more than their customary hour behind schedule.

Anne and Franz had also discarded the tradition of small council meetings, opting instead for private sessions with each minister. Though doing so meant excruciating waits for everyone else involved, it ensured only the two of them heard the entirety of any discussions concerning the realm. Political players were left in constant doubt as to who shared their confidences and who was held in higher favor.

Yes, Anne had proven cleverer than Nigel expected. Or is it Franz?

Nigel stretched his legs and propped his heels on the rose-colored marble floor. In the ceiling mural, Anne touched her satin slipper to Jorendon’s non-existent golden shore. In the absurdly flattering portrait, she reached her benevolent hand to comfort throngs of bedraggled urchins crying for redemption. An equally absurd warrior-Franz, armored and gallant, posed at her side.

Victors write their own version of history.

The mural conveniently blurred the armada of foreign ships backing the usurper. It omitted the grey coats of the traitorous coup that betrayed their king and handed her a b****y throne. If Walter hadn’t commanded his Rhynns to stand down, the rivers of Innis would still run crimson.

Jules Brunet, his secretary for the past twelve years, waited on the settee beside him. The man bent over a pocket-sized journal, scribbling intently on the open page.

“What are you doing?” Nigel didn’t particularly care, but conversation broke the monotony.

“Writing poetry.” Jules didn’t bother looking up.

Jules had been a young man when he’d first taken his post with Nigel. His troubled past and secret allegiances should have made it a short tenure. Yet through the years, the reserved Aurel with an irreverent wit and uncanny farsight had become a loyal companion.

Jules had matured from a cautious young man trying to fit into a world he didn’t understand into Nigel’s most capable agent. His dark hair fell a naturally groomed sweep, whether he was racing back from a midnight mission or crawling out of a sweaty bed when duty called.

“If you married, you wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep your mistresses in t****l,” said Nigel.

Lady Helena Prescott was several years older than Jules, a wealthy widow and upper-rung socialite. Rare for the breed, she also had a conscience, as demonstrated during her brief stint as the Pelican. Jules was her favored escort to any event that mattered. His lack of pedigree meant he posed no threat to the multitude of relatives salivating over her inheritance. His rapport with Jorendon’s elite reaped a steady harvest of savory information.

“Poetry is cathartic,” said Jules. “You should try it. I daresay a wife requires more effort than a mistress.”

Nigel huffed. Lucinda. After all the years their duties had kept them apart, waking up to her every morning at Silveroak Hall had taken some adjusting to. Considering someone else in his day-to-day obligations had not come easily.

“What could anyone possibly talk about for so long?” Nigel said impatiently. “Any movement to the door yet?”

Jules closed his eyes for a moment.

“Thin and waning, my lord’s patience fares. Alas, their arses remain in their chairs.”

Nigel rolled his eyes. “Your talent is wasted in the diplomatic corps.”

“That was sarcasm. Spontaneous, even. Given enough time, I could teach you to rhyme.”

“Get us in there before I succumb to the temptation to wrap my hands around his throat,” Nigel beseeched the ceiling.

“Your prayers are answered.” Jules snapped shut his journal. “His Arrogance is leaving.”

The Minister of Arms emerged from the queen’s audience room. Nigel loathed General Renault Litchfield. It took every ounce of restraint he had not to disembowel the man whenever they crossed paths. Litchfield had betrayed the Old Bull at Horseshoe Bend and killed thousands of Rhynns in a cowardly ambush. Surdisi Innis had dubbed him Anne’s Avenger. To the clans of the North, he was the Butcher of b****y Bend.

I never forget a wrong. Your debt is yet unpaid.

Litchfield swaggered across the parlor like a gander claiming his barnyard. His gosling colonels trailed after him. Stout and balding, the general’s face was ruddy by nature, not drink, and one of his bulging eyes wandered permanently askew.

“Lord Nigel,” the cretin addressed him. “I will be adding a third fort to the Red Watch. Queen Anne agreed we need a stronger presence in the North. I proposed a site near the Camran border. You will see the rhiem cooperate.”

Nigel longed for the day Litchfield drew his last, ragged, excruciatingly painful breath. Until then, he was a tool of some use. The master player convinces the pawn the move is its own.

“Have the details sent to my office,” said Nigel. “I will initiate the appropriate contacts.”

“Ah, so you won’t be opposing me on the matter. Always a wise choice,” Litchfield smirked. “Colonel Gibbons, see to it.”

With his vanity inflated by the misconception the venerable Lord Nigel Willoughby had acquiesced to his demands, the Emperor of the Barnyard waddled away.

May you rot in a squalid black bog as newts slither through your empty eye sockets.

Nigel set aside his loathing. He hadn’t spent the better part of his morning sitting in Anne’s damned rose-colored parlor just to push mindless pawns around the game board. He entered the audience chamber with Jules, and they knelt before the queen and her prince consort.

“Rise,” said Anne.

Nigel drew out the effort as a man in his late sixties should. He stood before the royal pair and suppressed a grimace. Russet was not Her Majesty’s best color. It turned her hair brassy. Franz’s belt in matching russet and its large, jeweled buckle accentuated his girth.

They meant well. What the gods shorted them in beauty, they compensated for in temperament and intelligence. Nigel wouldn’t have believed it a decade ago, but with a minimum of connivance on his part, Anne and Franz were reigning at least as capably as Walter ever had.

Anne was not a good-looking woman. She had her father’s pallor and small features. But she had a deep-rooted strength that could surprise him at times.

Franz was her closest advisor. They were devoted to one another, though it seemed more companionable affection than passion. Their relationship left no small c***k for an opponent to wedge in between them.

Franz was older than Anne. Steely grey strands streaked his once-dark hair. The droop in his jowls attested to his age. He may have signed up for this role, but he was still a middle-rung Erusian prince not entirely at ease in his wife’s homeland. Innish was an uncomfortable second language for him.

But Franz was more useful than he appeared.

Anne was pious, beyond a doubt, and that made her vulnerable to the Prophet’s manipulations. Franz remained a secularist at heart, despite her attempts to convert him. He supplied the restraint that kept John Deighton’s genocidal crusades in check.

“General Litchfield proposed expanding the Red Watch to a third fort in Rhynn.” Franz cut to the point. “Will the rhiem tolerate it?”

Four hundred years since Joren Falkender of Surdis conquered the Isle of Rhynn, and the North still merited Jorendon’s delicate diplomacy, as if Rhynn were an independent realm.

As it should be. As it will be yet.

“The recruiting restrictions mean the Red Watch is made up of soldiers from the South, with a few disgruntled and ill-bred Rhynns from the lesser clans mixed in amongst them,” said Nigel. “The rhiem will not welcome more armed brigands onto their lands.”

“The Prophet says recruiting restrictions are necessary if we are to keep the Red Watch pure,” said Anne. “Only a devout man can lead his brother to the light.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” said Nigel, nodding agreement while every fiber of his being wanted to scream at her open her eyes to Deighton’s bigotry. “But in Rhynn, only a trusted clansman can lead his brother anywhere he doesn’t already want to go.”

“Is there advice in there somewhere?” said Franz.

“Open Red Watch recruiting to the prominent clans. Invite Rhynn nobles to become brothers-in-arms with their fellow Innishmen.”

Nigel paused as Franz reached for Anne’s hand. He’d learned the gesture meant he was getting through to one or both of them. He pushed the opportunity.

“Accept your cousin’s invitation to visit Connamara. Murdoch Connor can help build bridges with the other rhiem. It would serve Your Majesty well to renew your acquaintance with your kin.”

“My cousin is funding a colony in Tallu. It flies the banner of Aleron, not Innis,” said Anne. “We understand it names itself New Rhynn.”

Nigel weighed a response. New Rhynn was a seed that must be left to mature without intervention. Anne was part Connor, as much as Walter before her, and her heritage fueled a constant tug of war between Deighton’s persecution of Aurels and Nigel’s dogged determination to pique her curiosity about them.

“Murdoch Connor is an investor in a profitable trading company. Captain Tobias Buchanan is the one who’s flying the banner of Aleron. Your cousin may hold sway over his old friend if Your Majesty asks it of him.”

Anne peered at Franz, and he raised an answering eyebrow. The two considered each other in silence.

“Tell Murdoch we will visit,” said Anne. “Have our aides work out the details.”

“Jules will see to the scheduling personally,” said Nigel. “There is other news from Tallu, Your Majesty, Your Grace.”

“More incursions?” asked Franz.

“Constant incursions. Larad is harrying Este more aggressively than ever. Malatchee Mico is keeping them contained to Philippeon, so far. But Bresca’s raids are a distraction he cannot ignore. Este’s strength stretches thinner the farther north one goes.”

The door swung open, and a man in a white robe joined them unannounced. A rare man of conscience, he still reminded Nigel more of a farmer than a priest. Beacon Peder Griffith was the only person in Innis whose appointments with the queen never ran late. It was time for her midday prayers.

“Larad is the greater threat.” Franz remained focused on Nigel’s report. “Philip wants to expand Philippeon beyond the peninsula. He has set his aim on claiming all of Tallu.”

“And giving Larad control of the Atlassia,” said Nigel.

“The Orthodoxy is as determined to claim Tallu’s soul as Philip is to claim its sovereignty,” Peder added his counsel. “New Rhynn would be a strategic ally to gain.”

“His Holiness offers sage counsel, as always,” said Nigel. “Este considers Larad and Bresca enemies. Innish colonies still enjoy its tolerance. Why? Because of the regard they hold for Tobias Buchanan.”

Chapter 7