Two Kingdoms 35: Aubade

[DoctorM]

TWO KINGDOMS 35:  AUBADE

This is the thirty-third part of an AU construction about a Gwynedd where the duel at Kelson Haldane's coronation went very differently indeed. We are now almost three years into the Gwynedd Wars-- Charissa's new kingdom at Valoret against the Haldanes in the south and the kingdom of Torenth in the east. This episode follows immediately after "Messages". As always, comments and suggestions are very much appreciated.

Dawn comes early in these northern hills, but it's still dark out to the west and north. Christian is there in the shadow of the little outbuilding, his hand on his kinzhal hilt. There's a tree line out to the southwest, with shreds of mist fingering out from the thick wood.

Too many trees, too close. Too many trees, and no horses for his people.  Not my world, he thinks. Too crowded, too green, too wet. His world has been steppe and high desert since he was a boy. He's watching the tree line— too close, and probably too many eyes out there.

One of his archers motions and nods. There's a figure coming out of the trees. Down the line of the low wall around the outbuilding arrows are being readied. Christian rises and lets himself be seen just above the wall.

The man is wrapped in a dull brown-green Connaiti cloak. Connaiti by dress, Rathark in his voice. He's ordinary enough, maybe a middling farmer, maybe someone's servant. Three words, the man says. He holds up fingers in the fading dark. "Three words. The Red Lady sends you three words: Lanneret, Dax, May."

Christian nods. The man has half a dozen steppe bows trained on him. If he gets a word wrong, if he even stammers, he'll be dead in a heartbeat.

Christian knows the words. Lanneret, the Shadow Queen's favourite hunting bird. Dax, the town in Autun where Thorne Hagen gave him a house as a wedding gift when he married the Shadow Queen. May, the Shadow Queen's birth month.

"Three words for the Red Lady," Christian replies. He doesn't speak Connaiti, and he hopes the man has a clear grasp of the Gwynedd tongue. "Leopard, stiletto, Clarissa." The three agreed-upon responses. Now let's see what happens.

The man turns back to the trees and says something in Rathark dialect. Christian's archers shift their aim.

There's a second figure coming out from the wood. This one is in a hooded grey cloakThe figure moves out into the open. The hood comes back and Christian can see long red hair pulled back tight behind her head. He signals to his men to stand down. "Lady Roiste," he says. "Kyri."

She has her own hand up. She motions and her people come out of the wood to stand around her. They're a bare handful of peasants armed with axes and daggers. It's not much, but she's made it from the bloodshed at Caltreige to Dalreige to her lands here, and she's not going to die here without a fight. She looks hard at Christian. "I didn't think you'd be the one she'd send."

Christian comes out through the outbuilding gate. "She wanted to come herself. She wants you to know that. I told her she couldn't."

He can see Kyri make a face. "You're her husband. You can tell her to do things or not. Is that it?"

"We both know better than that. I told her I'd come get you. You may not like me much, but I'm here, and I know what you mean to her." He shrugs in leather and chain mail. "Let's get you rescued. Where's your house? Are they tracking you?"

Kyri de Roiste shakes her head. "I don't think so. What I used to get to Dalreige, that Portal would've closed up behind me for good. Nobody was waiting at Dalreige, and nobody followed me there. But here, I don't know. This is one of my houses, so maybe they know I have it."

Christian's people are outside the wall now, half of them still with bows. "Where's the house?"

Kyri motions off to the north. "That way," she says. "A mile, maybe. A mile and a half at most."

Christian looks at his men. Falcon Horse, all of them Deryni, three or four of them picked trackers. Donal Gordon's there, too. One of them nods at him. Christian sighs. A mile, a mile and a half, on foot in this kind of terrain. He hates it, hates not having horses at hand in case they need to run. If Rhydon already has bravos here, he's  a long, long way from anywhere in the Queen's territories.

He motions Kyri up. "Bring your people. Let's get to your house. I don't want to be outside when things turn light."

Kyri is next to him while they walk. "The house isn't much, but it has what I need there. I'm not going to Valoret or Tolan-by-Sea or wherever with just the clothes on my back. I'm not a beggar."

Kyri's people are falling into line with Falcon Horse troopers in front and back. Christian looks them over. Their liege lady must've dragged them out of bed and told them to bring anything that might be a weapon. At least they were game enough to come. Loyalty matters, he thinks. More than anything.  "You're not a beggar. When we get you to the Queen, anything you need, it's yours."

"I can't do that. I can't just come begging. When they came, when Rhydon's people came, I didn't want to just come to Rissa and beg."

"Pride gets people killed every day," he says. The two of them are at the head of the line. "You're calling her Rissa these days. I haven't heard that in a long time."

Kyri isn't looking at him. "I've called her Rissa since ever we met. What are you calling your wife these days?"

Christian is looking east at the sky over the Rathark crests. "Cara," he says. "It's what I've always called her."

"And what does Rissa call you?"

Christian shrugs. "These days she calls me that one a lot. Or Chrissy. Which is what all my friends do."

"Chrissy's a girl's name. Do you never think about that?"

"It isn't, and you know better."

"Am I supposed to be calling you Kheldour? Rissa still likes being called Tolan. God knows what you like."

He shakes his head. "I could tell you that's not true. You know exactly what Charissa and I both like. We could talk about that, you and I. But right now, tonight, let's not fight. There's no point to it. Kheldour's good. Call me anything."

They're keeping close to the tree line. Kyri shrugs inside the cloak. "I should've asked. Rissa sent you, but did she send to Thorne, too? We have to let Thorne know."

"Of course she did. She sent a couple of Aurelian's people and a team of her Moors. She's bringing Thorne in—- his young lady, too."

"I could hear them when they came," Kyri says. "Rhydon's bravos. They talked about Rhydon. If they'd come to kill me, then Rhydon would be trying to kill Thorne, too.  I know that. He and Wencit have to. They want everyone on the Council who might not vote to outlaw Rissa dead. I have to tell the Council. I have to call for a meeting. I have to get a message through. I can do that from my house."

Christian turns to look at her. "No. That's not happening. You're not going to the Council. You're not talking to them."

Kyri stops. She's staring at him with growing anger. Her right hand is inside her cloak, and he knows she must have a dagger there.  He holds up one hand.

"No going to the Council. It's not safe. Stefan Coram has his own little army now. He'll be trying to run the Council, if he isn't already. You and Thorne, he won't have any use for you."

"You've lost your mind. Coram would never, never work with Rhydon and Wencit."

Christian drops out of the Gwynedd tongue and into Bremagni. "I didn't say that. What I said is that Coram is trying to run the Council as his own. He's already tried to have me killed, and he's using Tiercel de Claron's money to do it. Coram's no friend of yours, and you know what Claron thinks about you these days. You know what he thinks about Cara, too."

Kyri shudders.  "If you're not lying, then...the Council's broken. Everything we are is broken. Everything it's supposed to do is broken."

Christian nods at that. "It's broken. It's maybe been broken for a while. You know what I went through with them just because they didn't like what I wrote. Charissa says we don't need the Council any more. I agree with her."

"You would," Kyri says. She walks past him down the tree line. "You're bad for her. You're worse for her than Tiercel ever was for me. You're why they call her the Witch Queen. You're why she's hated."

Christian is beside her. "Go ahead and tell me. Tell me how and why I'm worse than Tiercel de Claron. This should be good. I've never met Claron, but I saw the mark he left on your face once. Tell me how I'm worse than that."

Kyri turns back to him. "Because you want her to be the evil witch-queen. You like that, you like it when she's Night's Lady. You tell her to burn cities. You encourage her to be part of the Dark. You're worse than Claron and Coram both. You're smart and clever and polite and you're kind, but you want Rissa to be a character in the things you write. You write history and you want it to be a good story, you want things to be exciting when you write about them. You want things to happen. Gwynedd's coming apart, and for all I know, Torenth is, too. You'll end up writing about the Gwynedd wars and the worse they are, the better you'll like it when you write about them. You're like a doctor who keeps hoping for new kinds of plagues so you can figure out how to cure them. You keep encouraging her to be the worst things she can be. That's what you've always done."

Christian is looking off north and west. "What I do," he says, "is let her know that she can do things she knows she has to do.  She killed Brion Haldane, and I was proud of her for that. You're Connaiti, so don't even try to tell me you don't know why she did it and why she needed to do it. She's a Festil, and she can put together a new kingdom. It's her right to do that. I told her so, and I told her she'd be a good ruler. I'm standing by that, just like I'll always stand by her."

"You'll push her 'til she destroys herself."

"She won't. She'll have a kingdom, and she'll rule it well. That's one thing I've never doubted. I'll always tell her she can do what she knows she needs to do."

"What she needs to do? Needs? What you tell her to do is burn the world down."

"Or maybe re-build the world."

Kyri strides out ahead. "I wish I understood you. If you were her lover just because you were getting lands and titles, I'd understand that. Marrying for money, I understand. But you aren't doing any of that. I know you're in love with her; I know that. I know you'd die for her. But you're going to destroy her. I know that, too."

Christian is keeping up with her. He's used to matching strides with Charissa. Kyri de Roiste is tall for a woman, but still nowhere near as tall as the Shadow Queen. He's looking down at the trail. "Not everyone's Claron," he says. "Not everyone destroys his lovers. I'm there to keep Cara safe. I've been with her since she and I were fourteen, and I was in love with her long before then. She's Queen of Tolan and the West, and I'll keep her on the throne and keep the knives away." He isn't looking at Kyri. "Not everyone's Claron. You need to find better men. Or just stop picking the most awful men you can find. You do that so they'll be so awful you can finally give up on men altogether. We all know that. Then you can make the choice about who you are and what you want that you've been afraid to make. You should think about that. We both know what you'd choose if you weren't afraid. It's what I always tell Cara about you, that there are things you're afraid of you don't have to be. That's one of them."

"That's so you, Kheldour. You want to write out my life as a story. You always want to be the one writing the story for everyone else."

"I'm not blind, Roiste. And I'm talking to you as a friend. As Cara's particular friend. Cara's going to change a lot of the world. When everything's over and done, she wants you to be part of her new world. She and I both like you, whatever you think about me. So I'm keeping you alive and getting you safe tonight. There's a lot of complicated backstory for the three of us. We'll all talk about that one day. Tonight, now-- we get you rescued."

He looks over at her. "I'm glad you're not dead, mind. Believe that. And what we're going to do to Rhydon and Wencit, I'll let Cara tell you about it."

Up ahead one the trackers is signaling. He's making hand signs: House. No lights. No horses. Nothing moving. Christian half-turns and signals Donal Gordon. Three more of his men move past, bows in their hands.

The sky is still dark to the east, He turns to Kyri again. "My people will secure the house. If you need your peasants to help you pack, that's fine. But just a few things. No more than a couple of sets of saddlebags full. We have to get out of here and back to Tolan-by-Sea. Thorne should be there soon enough. I'm sorry for what they tried to do to you in Calreige. But this is what I do. We're here to get you safe. The Council's broken, Rhydon's off the leash, and the world's burning. But you're safe this morning. That's something, even if I am the worst man in the world."

















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[Jerusha]

Fascinating chapter.  I loved the back and forth between the two non-friends.  I sometimes wonder, though, if Christian is too good to be true...

Chrissy, on the other hand...

[DoctorM]

Fascinating chapter.  I loved the back and forth between the two non-friends.  I sometimes wonder, though, if Christian is too good to be true...

Chrissy, on the other hand...

I wanted to show that not everyone accepts Christian's self-assessment-- especially someone like Kyri, who has her own close ties to Charissa. Christian has to walk a very fine line. He's the queen's husband, and he knows he's not from a rank high enough to marry royalty-- and the higher nobility all know that as well. He's the queen's personal advisor, and that makes him a target for envy and jealousy. He's willing to do almost anything to see Charissa win, and he's willing to see the world broken up and re-made-- but he's not bloodthirsty for its own sake. 

[DerynifanK]

Christian is a complex and fascinating character. He's a scholar and historian, a soldier and to some extent a politician, he has to be to protect Charissa and keep her on the throne. Their relationship is also complex, she loves him, she married him, and sometimes she even listens to him. This whole situation is very fluid, that can be a problem as it also gets confusing, so many players with some uncertainty as to who is  trying to eliminate whom and why. And as I have mentioned before, I expect the Haldanes and their supporters are obviously major players in all this turmoil but we hear little about them or what they are doing. Have they decided to just sit back and let the other combatants fight it out? Then they could move in and defeat the eventual winner of theses conflicts. Can hardly wait to see what happens next.

[DoctorM]

Christian is a complex and fascinating character. He's a scholar and historian, a soldier and to some extent a politician, he has to be to protect Charissa and keep her on the throne. Their relationship is also complex, she loves him, she married him, and sometimes she even listens to him. This whole situation is very fluid, that can be a problem as it also gets confusing, so many players with some uncertainty as to who is  trying to eliminate whom and why. And as I have mentioned before, I expect the Haldanes and their supporters are obviously major players in all this turmoil but we hear little about them or what they are doing. Have they decided to just sit back and let the other combatants fight it out? Then they could move in and defeat the eventual winner of theses conflicts. Can hardly wait to see what happens next.

The whole situation is very fluid, with players all across the Eleven Kingdoms realizing that they have opportunities to get things they (for better or worse) want. I think I'll take a look at what the Haldanes might know or learn...and see how they react.