This is Chapter 15 of The Falcon’s Children, a fantasy novel being published serially on this Substack. For an explanation of the project, click here. For the table of contents, click here. For an archive of world building, click here.
The ruined fortress lay in the northward folds of the Silver Hills, where the rocky uplands began to sink into the rolling farmland of the southern Heart. The road it had once protected ran alongside a lazy tributary of the River Tarcia and then crossed the larger stream just south of the hills. The walls had been twelve feet of stark granite but now the trees had mostly swallowed them, and only a traveler who knew exactly where to look would pick out the main tower, a finger of stone rising from a fist of alders.
That tower had been raised by the royal house of Argosa two centuries ago, after the Mandoran retreat from the north, as a rallying point against brigands and a first line of defense against raiders from the north. The walls and outer turrets had come later, under a wise Argosan queen, Coressa, who had recognized that sooner or later her kingdom would come to war with the empire rising to its north. But when the decisive war came, in the years of Coressa’s great-grandson, the fortress was undermanned and fell quickly, with legion siege towers opening great gaps in the stonework that the forest soon exploited, advancing year by year until the woods within were like the woods without.
Several of the fortresses along the vanished border had been kept up or rebuilt by the legions after the conquest, but this was a smaller fastness, and after the Argosan kings and queens became dukes and duchesses no soldiers came there anymore. Others did, sometimes — local children climbing the ruins, bandits bivouacking there by night, lovers on an assignation, hermits wrestling with their sins. There were scrawls on the walls and the marks of campfires in what had been the courtyard and bones in a roofless stable where some visitor to the ruin had either been murdered or fallen accidentally to his death. But mostly there was the rustling and the stillness of an ancient forest, the keen of the wind in broken stone, and the drip of water somewhere, in a hidden cellar known only to the ghosts.
Benfred Montair, sweating a bit because he had chosen to wear mail under his tunic for this meeting, wondered if somewhere in the Rose Palace in Argosa there was still a map showing this place, or whether someone close to Cresseda had encountered it by happenstance and remembered it as a likely place to meet in secret.
Either way it was certainly well-chosen if you favored isolation. The lands to the north were the emptiest acres in the Heart, the hills just to the south were the part of the Silver Hills with the least silver and the fewest people; and eastward, probably almost visible from the crumbling tower’s roof, lay the trackless reaches of the Darkfens.
Riding south from Meringholt, garbed as a merchant’s factor with two of his trusted men-at-arms playing hired swords, Benfred had seen only farmers on the roads the last three days, and supped in quiet taverns where the only nobleman the common room might recognize would be the local lord. They paid for their meals in coin that had Benfred’s cousin stamped in silver on the face, but no barman in this quiet corner of the empire would have thought anything of the resemblance between the profile on the coin and the bearded face of his paying customer.
Yet such a perfectly isolated place was not what he would have chosen for a secret meeting. Emptiness wasn’t always a protection, because it offered no excuse. If someone happened upon them who did know him, there was no obvious reason for the Duke of Meringholt to be riding incognito in an untraveled part of his cousin’s realm. If someone came looking for his trail afterward, everyone along the road would remember the stranger and his retainers.
Hide a leaf in a forest, hide a plot in a city: That was Benfred’s thinking. Better to meet in a place where you had every right to be, either in your own keep or palace or some crowded tavern or brothel in your city — because in such places conversation was natural, everyone might be a plotter or might not, and even a famous face or a famous pairing blended easily into the crowd.
But he had let the other party choose this place. Magnanimity, or weakness? He feared the latter. But then again he was here, and just to be here was a break with the way he had chosen to live for many years, a act of boldness alien to the emperor’s clever, unloved cousin, at least since the painful drama of his youth.
There was ivy woven into the wall where he had chosen to take up his position, a quilt climbing the reddish stone. Atop the wall heavy tree branches bent as if to rest themselves, like farmers leaning on a fence after a long day in the fields.
The wind moved through their leaves, cooling Benfred’s bare scalp a little. A mail shirt and a bare head; a brave face and a cautious belly was what the serjeant had said all those years before, in his brief experience of legion life. One of his men, Uffish, was up above somewhere in the ruins with a crossbow; the other, Garien, had the horses ready for escape. Not that it would matter if there were really some trap here; they did not know the terrain well enough, any would-be ambusher could come in strength. And there would not be an ambush — what would it serve? Who would gain? Still, cautious habit kept the mail shirt on, the men posted, the sword at his belt.
The breeze stirred again; he waited.
Now he heard them — rustling, jingling, voices pitched low but not low enough for secrecy. There was movement near the gate at the far end of what had been a courtyard, shapes of men visible through the greenery. He stepped forward, away from the wall, conscious of the ache in his legs, the creep of age. But she was old as well, a year older in fact. Perhaps they shared age’s cunning. Or perhaps this was a last folly for them both.
She came through the gate alone, sweeping aside branches with gloves greener than the leaves, letting her hood fall back as she came into the clear space around a mossy well. She had a face that even a rustic might recognize: The jaw too heavy for beauty, the keen blue-green eyes, the lead-colored hair pulled back tightly, the lines on her forehead and the yet-smooth cheeks. She saw him, and she smiled.
“Benfred,” the iron duchess said. “So good of you to come.”
Then they walked together. There were a few paths through and around the ruins, old tracks that were used often enough that they could pass comfortably together. His men and her larger party kept their distance. The only noises around them were the breeze and the birdsongs and the pliant sound of the greenery bending beneath their feet.
It was her place, it turned out. “I found it when I was a young bride, when I needed it most,” she said, “and it has always been the same when I’ve come back to it.”
The tone did not invite further questions, so he asked about her grandnephew, her family, the health of her uncle who was the duke of Neruda, her own family’s seat, a place of arbors and orchards that had been Argosa’s second city in the days of the kings and queens.
“He is dying,” Cresseda said. “Not a tragedy — we should all live so long. But his son my cousin is a fool, so that’s a pity. A man who imagines himself a power, my rival or perhaps even my replacement as regent should I come to some unhappy end.”
“You think he means to remove you?”
“Only in fancies, and my spies know his fancies better than does. But he might think of removing my grandnephew once I’m gone. Which would go badly for him, if the young duke turns out as I mean him to turn out. Also he dabbles in the White Roses. Not enough to matter, but it’s a sign of great foolishness.”
The White Rose had been the banner of an Argosan rebellion some years before — small, reckless, easily snuffed out when only one Argosan house joined in. Now it was a secret society for young men with delusions, deemed harmless because a third of its members were in the pay of either Cresseda’s spymaster or the Lord of the Secretariat in Rendale.
“You are never tempted that way yourself?” Benfred said — lightly, probing.
“Independence? I am not such a fool,” the duchess said. “I can read a map, and a history book. Our kingdom was a pleasant accident of history, and it lasted about as long as it had a right to last. We are the hinge, a buckle, the gateway between your north and the river kingdoms. With the wisest and most brilliant of queens” — the tone made it clear that she herself would have been one such — “we might have kept our kingdom by playing off the north against the south, Narsil against Trans-Mersana and its neighbors. But our kings did not understand that game, and so they lost, and so we must play a different one, and fulfill a different destiny.”
“And that destiny has brought you … here? To converse with your emperor’s unloved cousin?”
She smiled. “I think you mean our emperor’s respected and, if I may, his sober cousin.”
“I would never acknowledge that my cousin Edmund has any difficulties with drink.”
“Nor should you. Nor would I, were we not entirely alone here, and were I not slightly overcome by the vision that I wish to share with you.”
A bird trilled not so far from his ear; a vine-bound arch loomed ahead. “I am not much of a mystic, but tell me of this vision. What does your grace foresee?”
“Benfred, you must call me Cresseda if we are to be partners.”
Now he smiled a little. “But I do not know if we are to be partners, your grace. Perhaps I will know after you tell me what you see.”
They had reached the arch, and beneath its ivy the iron duchess turned to face him. A single line of sun split her face below the eyes; the rest was shadow.
“I see a chance to correct a mistake, to retrace steps that shouldn’t have been taken. I see a place like the spots in my garden in the Rose Palace where the forking paths come close together and you can lift your skirts and simply leap over the flowers from one path to another.”
“And what will we find when we leap …?”
“The empire that my late husband’s father and your uncle the emperor wanted to build. A world where our families are united, where Argosa is the winter capital and Rendale the summer court, and where the path of empire runs southward, down the great river, as it always should have done, instead of losing itself in the mists of Brethony. That world is just a leap away.”
He remembered that world. His father Elred had been Duke of Meringholt in those days, and there had been so many Montairs, all so young — his half-brother Alaben and two half-sisters, and Edmund and his sister Alsbet, and his other uncle Caldrec’s daughter and two sons. Four girls and five boys, enough to shore up the dynasty for generations, or so it had been thought — and they had all often been playmates, though Benfred had been older, a little aloof from the games of his siblings and cousins, perhaps already resentful of the power that his cousin Ed would wield and he would not.
And now so many of them were dead and gone. Alaben was still alive, playing the viceroy in Brethony, with his two cloddish sons. But all of Caldrec’s line was gone — their cousin Jonthen drowned sailing in the Mersana when he was twelve, his brother Wilfred dead in a skirmish on the northern frontier, the girl Elfreya taken by a wasting fever. And his own little sisters, Cedra and Alanna, were both long dead as well, Cedra of the pox when she was just thirteen, and Alanna in childbirth, in Erona where she had been ever-so-briefly the wife to that city’s duke. And of course his cousin Alsbet, who had come south for the Stag Tourney every year and many other times besides, she had died in the city where Cresseda now ruled …
“That world died,” he said, too harshly. “And I helped kill it.”
“You did help,” the duchess said, her voice a little harsh as well. “Twenty-five years and I still remember the way my father-in-law cursed you.”
“My own father cursed me as well. And disinherited me, you know — until she died, and my sisters, and he realized Alaben’s limitations, and he took me back.”
“I envied you so much, do you know that? Those were the hardest days of my marriage, learning about Avarian and his inclinations” — she brushed at the air absently, as if waving off a wasp — “and all could think watching you was that men get to elope, but women cannot run away. But yours was still the smaller part of the story. If the elder Alsbet had only lived the play would have gone on, the alliance would have held.”
She was right, and yet was she? A part of him had always felt that everything that had soured afterward — not just Alsbet dying in Argosa, but all the death in all their families, Montair and Verna both, even down to Cresseda’s own miscarriages and stillbirths (how many had there been? what griefs lay beneath the iron?) — had begun with his recklessness and folly. If he had only married Colura bar Verna, married the plump, kind girl and fathered children on her, tied another knot between Argosa and his house — who could know what would have happened then? The angels might have been merciful to all of them, if he had kept faith.
And yet he knew that if he had to do it over he would do the same. If he had to do it over a thousand times, he would do the same — so that he could have those three years with Inis, a thousand times again.
“Don’t lose yourself in reveries, your grace.”
“Not a reverie,” he said sharply. “Just remembering. Which is the only way to bring back the past. You can’t leap the path, because history is not your garden.” He gestured around them. “History is this, and you would only land in the thicket, on the thorns.”
She rolled her eyes at this and groaned audibly, which almost brought out another smile. There were few ladies like her in the Heart!
“The past can’t come back, Benfred Montair, but the future can be changed. You would not have written me those guarded letters if you did not think that as well. So very well — how should be it changed? I think you know. I know you were against the Brethon wars from the beginning. If the empire should not turn west, where should it turn? Where it should have turned earlier — to the south, to the fat kingdoms down the river. The river should be the spine of the empire, the imperial highway. From Rendale to Argosa, and from Argosa …
“You sound like Aengiss mac Cullolen, your grace.”
Now she laughed. “I like old Aengiss. But he just wants to conquer everywhere; show the man a kingdom and he’ll have a battle plan prepared by nightfall. I want to build to last, not march blinadly into any battle that presents itself.”
“Build to last … with a Verna somehow on the throne?”
“As a consort, yes. I am selfish, Benfred, of course I am selfish. I told you, Argosa will never be a great kingdom on its own, but it can be the link between north and south, the silvered center of an empire that runs from the gold roads of the Guardian all the way down the Mersana — all the way to Mersanica itself, in a day we will not live to see. And that is something we can offer to your family, that is the case for uniting our lines — Montair can rule the south through Verna, and Verna can be great by joining itself to Montair irrevocably, in the person of a future emperor.”
He had crossed his arms. “A consort? I don’t understand.”
“You don’t? It seems obvious to me.”
“My wits have slowed with age, I’m sure.”
“You’ll need to hone them, then, if you are to rule.”
They had slowed. Was she saying – offering – a consort …
“You mean … for us …”
Now she reached out and touch her face. “Oh, Benfred, I have confused you. If you wish to make me an offer of marriage I would be very flattered. But no, that isn’t the idea at all. The consort is to be Ambarian. The empress is to be the young princess Alsbet. The real ruler, for as long as you wish to rule, will be yourself — of course, with my advice”
That was clearer; it was also folly. “The north will not have a woman on the throne, Cresseda.”
“The north will not be ruled by a woman, I agree. Or not without first growing accustomed to the idea, not until she has a husband ready to support her. But you are not a woman. You are a man without heirs, a man who can be trusted to act in the empire’s interests, a man who is not widely liked, as you say, but who is respected, and who would be able to play off Cathelstan against Gerdwell against the rest of your barbarous northerners.” She said barbarous with a smile.
“Under what title would I rule?”
“Whatever title you like. You could even have yourself crowned, I suppose, and leave Alsbet a princess until your death. But better to be a regent, as I am in my city, her loyal and able chancellor who rules in truth but not in name, a ‘lord protector’ of the kind they have in Janaea … the title doesn’t matter. The power does.”
“And the slight problem that I am presently third in the line of succession to an emperor who is very much alive?”
“Do you think your nephew Padrec wants to be emperor of Narsil, Benfred?”
That gave him pause. “I think that any prince wants to inherit his father’s throne.”
“Oh, Padrec wants a throne, no doubt. But the throne he wants is over the mountains, with a Brethon girl as his consort and Bryghala his next conquest. Or so I am reliably informed.”
“Nonsense. He doesn’t need to choose between the Falcon Throne and the Stone Seat; they are both coming to him.”
“Are they? He is young, impatient, in lust. He is bored here, intoxicated in Brethony. His father has just made a foolish treaty with the kingdom that he and his western friends would like to add to his Brethon realm. Edmund could live another ten or twenty years, with Padrec chafing all the while. Or …”
“Or …?”
“Or he could exchange being a crown prince for being a king now. He could be the king of Hy Brethony, with armies to command …”
“Which armies? He’d be giving up the legions, giving up the empire …”
“Men have given up a great deal for what their boyish fancies tell them, or what the mind between their legs wants for them. And the choice would be made, of course, under a certain kind of pressure.”
Now he said the thing that he had expected to say earlier, that he had often rehearsed at prayers — whether to reassure the angels or himself, he wasn’t sure. “I will not see my family harmed in any way, Cresseda.”
She raised her eyebrows and then turned away from him, stepping under the arch and out the other side, into the dappled light beyond. There she spun around, almost girlishly, and spread her green-gloved hands.
“Benfred!” she said. “Benfred, what did you imagine that we would be doing here? You come to me all stiff and serious; you ask me to tell you a plan; you scoff at the plan without even hearing it through; you lecture me on your own piety. Very well, then — tell me, what precisely are you offering me?”
The truth was that he didn’t have a clear answer, so he let himself burn hot a little in his turn. “What am I offering you? Why, I have put myself in your power here, Cresseda, I have entertained high treason between the lines of the letters we exchanged, I have considered betraying my own blood for the sake of a plan that, as you describe it to me, sounds cracked …”
“Oh — but haven’t I put myself in your power, since you could condemn me, and tell your cousin that you entertained our conversation in his service, to see how deep into treason I would go?”
He laughed, a shallow bark. “Does my cousin strike you as a man prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to a possible plotter these days?”
“Your cousin,” the duchess of Argosa said coolly, “strikes me as a man who should not occupy the throne of our great empire. Which I know is also how he strikes you. Which is why we are here, together. Not to contemplate high treason, but to contemplate an advantageous means of rescuing the empire from a bad ruler, placing a man with greater wisdom in his place … and yes, into the bargain, allying our houses to ensure a stability for Narsil that Montair alone cannot supply.”
“By packing Padrec off to Brethony, and doing what, precisely, with my cousin?”
“What happens to rulers who are too ill to rule? There are temples and monasteries that can keep him, gentle spots of exile. But listen, Benfred, your piety is well and good, and I will pledge to do my best to make sure that Edmund and Padrec both will live … but you must understand that they can only live if they are given to understand the possibility of something worse befalling them. Edmund in a monastery is dangerous — unless he understands that his children are in some sense your hostages, their continued power his reward for abdication. Padrec packed off to Brethony is dangerous — unless he understands that he can rule the western kingdoms or rule nothing but the grave. The threats are what enable us to keep them living. The threats must be part of this. And there will be deaths before it’s done.”
He knew that, he was not a child. The sweat under his mail was not from the heat. He was above her on the path, which dipped past the arch — yet it felt like she was above him, like a statue come to life to offer him something, the kind of ambiguous offer that fairies made in children’s tales, and he would regret any answer, yes or no, when the tale was finally finished.
He brushed at his scalp. They had let their voices rise; how much could his men hear, or hers? If he rode away from this, would any of it follow him? She would not try to kill him here, but the silver of Argosa could buy an assassin easily enough.
But he did not want to ride away. He wanted something more than another ten or fifteen years settling disputes and supervising projects in Meringholt, trying to decide if he should try to choose an heir himself or leave the task to the throne, drinking too early on summer nights, visiting Inis’s grave more often than he should. He wanted another chapter in his life, and there was only this, only her.
“I agree,” he said, slowly and softly — “I agree that my cousin should not be the emperor. I understand the risk, the price that we must pay. But I had thought that our conversation here might be the beginning of an attempt to bring in allies, to make this a matter of consensus, not to risk all on a very dangerous throw.”
“A pox on consensus,” she said, shaking her head. “The other dukes? Bring in one, and he’ll want too much power; bring in three and one will run to Edmund behind our backs. Here is what you must understand, Benfred — I have the power, I alone, that we require to accomplish this. You asked if I was tempted to raise the White Rose and make myself a queen? I am not, but I am sometimes tempted to make myself an empress. I think I could do that — with the men and houses that House Verna has bought over long years, I could probably take your cousin’s throne. I just couldn’t hold it, for more than a few short years, and then my city would burn again as the punishment for my ambition. But the taking … that is what I am offering to you, here. The chance to let me take the throne and then to give it, or at least its power, to you to Benfred Montair, because Benfred Montair can hold what Cresseda a’bar Verna cannot.”
She believed it, plainly. But it still sounded like a fantasy.
“The silver in these hills is famous,” he said. “But so is the gold in the Guardians, the spies it buys, and the legions that it pays. I believe that you have bought enough men to capture a castle or a palace, even to make an emperor a prisoner — but the legions are stronger than any levy you can raise.”
“That is true, which is why I have been careful to cultivate a share of the legions as well.”
A little wind came up, and the ivy shook. The sweat was on his forehead now.
“You — have?”
“I have.” Cresseda smiled. “Oh yes, I have. And it is my legions, our legions, that will make our plan succeed.”
The wind rose a little more, and the dappling of shadows danced across her face and cloak and dress.
“Shall we walk on, Benfred?”
She turned to go further into the ruin, and after a moment he followed — like a man going to his wedding, or his doom.