Welcome to The Children of Una series. Here’s a handy index of the published chapters.
The last chapter was a breif transition into Act Two, wherin the tides of war and destitution loom on the horizon, while our characters struggle with conflicts of their own making. Into this brewing tempest, new characters will step alongside Danen, among others, to face the storm.
Prince Ruvellius Coblaine stood in the dark outside the ornately-carved double doors of the King’s Wing. A brazier burned in the passage behind him, casting his shadow across the knights and ladies carved into the wooden doors. Their hollow eyes jeered at him, the great disappointment of his line.
The prince straightened his shoulders. “I was in the right.”
He nodded to himself. If he stood firm on that fact, presenting his side of the story with calm confidence in his judicial deportment, his father would merely chide him for the inconvenience. His conscience was clear. It had been the right thing to do.
He gingerly brushed his jawline, the twinge of pain reminding him just where the nobleman’s henchman had landed a solid blow. He’d assumed Maltbie Rawls had been satisfied with the exchange. Yet, here he was, answering a summons. Ruvellius frowned at the door latch. There was a slight chance his father wanted to see him about some other matter.
Ruvellius shoved the latch down and swung the door aside, rolling into the authoritative gait he’d learned from watching Commander Orion. His back was straight when he bowed to the old man in the chair. His father’s eyes flit from a small curled fragment of paper to his son, and back again.
“My King,” Ruvellius greeted him.
King Mervin kept his son waiting a long moment.
Ah, Ruvellius thought bitterly. He’s heard about the incident, after all.
The King stroked his white beard with chestnut-knuckled fingers heavy with rings. His history as a warrior was plain in his sturdy, unbent frame. Despite the muscle-loss his age imposed, he’d retained the ready energy of a man of action. Unlike most of his forbears, King Mervin was an austere, self-controlled partaker of royal luxuries. He did not wear too fine of clothing or eat too much rich food. His movement was lithe when he stood and crossed to the prince. Looking down his nose from his impressive height, he shoved the scrap of paper against Ruvellius’ chest.
“Read it,” King Mervin commanded. “Aloud.”
Ruvellius took the shred of parchment and dropped it, then retrieved it with a reddening face. He felt his jaw tensing as he unrolled the missive enough to see at a glance who’d sent it — Lord Rawls.
“Majesty,” Ruvellius began, voice taut. “The prince has bloodied my blood. I demand recompense in kind. Respectfully, Lord Rawls.”
“Why’d it have to be Rawls? And at a time like this? Your cousin’s marriage is imminent, meanwhile, quite a few Lords find my brother’s choice of successor to be less than ideal,” King Mervin glared across at his son. “Not that I blame them, finding myself in a similar situation.”
Ruvellius’ belly flopped over. He swallowed a bit of bile, forcing himself to eat the remonstrance that wanted to boil up from his gut. He didn’t know why his father was always cutting into him like this.
“I see your nose was bloodied. Who did that to you? Why do you suppose that wasn’t enough recompense for Rawls? What great sin against my honor have you committed this time?”
Ruvellius watched his father cross the room to open a small cabinet. He took out a shallow silver bowl.
The prince cringed. “Really, father, is that necessary?”
“Indeed, is it?”
Ruvellius strode to King Mervin’s side. “It was a retainer of Lord Rawls’ son who gave me this. I did strike his master first, but I only gave him his due! Maltbie was tormenting an Elf-healer, Horatius Bonar. Haven’t any of the Elven Council mentioned it before? Maltbie makes a regular habit of —”
King Mervin raised on eyebrow, setting the bowl atop a tall table in the center of the room. That expression always made the words fall right out of Ruvellius’ mind. He tried to remember why it had been so important that he show Maltbie he wouldn’t back down from defending Horatius. Not even when Maltbie used magic on the Elf, who was a non-battle mage, as was strictly forbidden.
“I was right to tell him he’d gone too far. But stirring up trouble with an Elf wasn’t enough for Matlbie Rawls. He shot a rock at my face.” Ruvellius continued.
The King rang a small bell made of translucent ruby to summon his attendant. The bell made no more than a dull clunk but the attendant would know he was summoned without having to hear anything at all.
While they waited, King Mervin recounted for his son all the proofs of Ruvellius’ incapability.
“As I suspected — this was all a juvenile spat. One you should’ve known to walk away from at the start. But no, you’re a constant strain upon my heavily-taxed diplomatic capabilities, Ruvellius. I don’t doubt my last words on my deathbed will be some kind of reproof, since it seems you’re set on causing all of our interviews to end this way. How can you be so dense, when it comes to politics?”
King Mervin’s eyes narrowed. “Do you even realize how this upends my plans for this winter’s recruitment efforts? So many lords gathering to witness your cousin’s wedding presents a perfect opportunity. But no, you’ve no interest in cooperating, in helping me bolster political alliances. At every turn, you thwart me.”
“I’m sorry, father,” Ruvellius stammered. “Truly, it’s not been my intention. But, I don’t quite understand when I —”
“Do you not? Take Lord Havingham, as an example! It’s been impossible to cajole him to return to cour after you turned down his daughter’s offer of marriage —”
Ruvellius shuddered. “She was thirty, father!”
“What should that matter to you, eh? He has the largest holding in the kingdom, and you’ve sent him back to his northern stronghold where he’ll be snowed in for the winter, wedding or no wedding! I’ll have to wait for the spring thaws to resume talks with him now.”
The King began to pace. “And what about that matter with the port master? What were you thinking when you inspected those shipments yourself? Of course the port master was offended at your taking the liberty. It’s his port! His responsibility, not yours!”
The prince’s mouth lifted in a snarl as he recalled the seven half-dead waifs he’d discovered inside a crate, waiting to be shipped off on a smuggler’s vessel.“If the well-being of the people is not my responsibility, then whose is it?”
“Mine!” King Mervin roared at him. “It’s mine, you dolt! I am the King, not you. Not yet, and maybe not ever.”
Not ever, the words dropped heavy as stones in Ruvellius’ boots.
“At least, you’re giving me every excuse to disown you these days. You’re twenty-three and can’t be bothered to marry! You’re too old to be needing a scolding, at any rate.”
The man who did King Mervin’s spell-casting for him entered. His small, glittering eyes betrayed no surprise at finding the prince under the lash of his father’s tongue yet again. He strode to the center of the room and made his obeisance next to the silver bowl. “Your Majesty wishes a sighting?”
King Mervin crossed to stand at the dish, eyeing his son with distaste. “Show me.”
With great reluctance, Ruvellius joined them as the mage poured a measure of a viscous liquid from a flask he kept on his person. The silver-grey sludge glopped thickly into the bowl and settled there like a gross pudding.
The mage motioned to the prince, drawing a long needle out of a wooden case that had also been strapped to his mage’s belt. Ruvellius pricked his finger on it, then extended his hand over the bowl, watching the bead of blood gather. It trembled, preparing to drop. The prince wondered, not for the first time, whether this spell really required a willing subject.
The drop fell. The prince lowered his fist to his side, applying his thumb to the sticky, pricked end of his pointer finger. In the bowl, his blood mingled with the sludge while the mage whispered an incantation. There was a strong smell of iron that made the Prince want to gag. But he kept his eyes riveted to the moving grey mass. He’d make sure what the spell showed was the truth. Though, to be honest, it had never misrepresented matters before.
Inside the bowl, a miniature of himself and several others formed out of the silver glob. Ruvellius again watched Maltbie pelt the Elf-healer with insults. The sludge made no noise, but he heard the echo of their voices inside his own mind. Ruvellius cringed when Maltbie booted the Elf’s shins, taunting him to shoot fireballs in revenge. The Elf was a healer, as Maltbie well knew. Unable to defend himself with some impressive show of spell-casting, he opted to cling to diplomacy and quoted the Concordance Treaty at the lordling and the gathering housecarls. But his fervid quoting was met with laughter, then more of Maltbie’s boot. The King smirked, raising his eyebrows critically at his son.
When Ruvellius’ miniature shoved his way through the circle of onlookers to help the Elf up off the ground, Maltbie began pelting them both with stones — using magic. Ruvellius swallowed hard and glanced from the scene being played out by the sight-spell to his father’s face. King Mervin looked disgusted with the exchange. Even the mage attending them did not stir in the slightest at Matlbie’s illicit use of a spell-attack.
“He broke Concord,” Ruvellius said, interrupting the tableau. “The taboo . . .”
He watched his mirror image launch himself at the young lord. In consternation, his valiant charge was transformed before his eyes into what it must have appeared to all who’d been watching — a hot-head losing control, a bull’s mindless charge, a prince resorting to fisticuffs. At least he’d managed to land more than one solid blow on the haughty lordling’s nose before his henchman had laid Ruvellius out.
The King remained unimpressed.
“He wasn’t badly injured,” Ruvellius protested, watching the sludge return to its usual state after the fight was broken up by Rawls’ guardsmen. “No worse than what his henchman gave me!”
King Mervin waited until the mage had departed. He went to his chair and sat with his back straight, his hands on the armrests. It was the posture of a sovereign passing judgment. Ruvellius dragged himself forward to kneel at the King’s feet. He was unable to hide his misery or to meet his father’s eye.
“You will make amends to the house of Rawls. Until you do, you will not leave this Keep.”
“How must I make amends, my lord?” Ruvellius forced out.
He heard the King’s snort of disdain.
“Yes, your majesty.”
Without an upward glance, Ruvellius dismissed himself from the presence of Celandra’s supreme justice.
************************
Long after the bells had rung gate’s closing, Ruvellius paced the thick rug in his personal reception room. There was no guard posted on his door. He knew, in all likelihood, his father had pronounced judgment and then forgotten the matter entirely in the press of other concerns. It was true, what King Mervin had told his son — ever since the High Mage sent word about his choice of successor, the palace had been a beehive of activity. Preparations for the wedding and its accompanying ceremonies were merely one part of much grander schemes.
To his relief, Ruvellius was left to his own keeping and to the reprimand of his own shame. But it wasn’t shame over the exchange of blows that kept him from sleep. As he paced the length of his bedroom, his mind ran over again the things he’d said to his father, and what the King had replied. It troubled him. The injustice of it all, certainly. But more than that, he’d heard a new tone of revulsion in his father’s voice when the King spoke of Ruvellius as his heir, and Ruvellius had merely accepted it. Not a shred of confidence had compelled him to speak to the old man as he should have — as one born to the throne.
Running his hands over his jacket front, the prince straightened the fitted garment. He paused to flick off a speck of feather, standing for a moment in a shaft of moonlight. He spun on his finely-booted heel and strode toward the full-length mirror on the opposite wall. Frowning severely at his reflection, he looked long into the cold glass. There was not a hair out of place on his blonde head, but he felt out of sorts with himself.
He stepped nearer, standing nose-to-nose with his reflection.
“You’re doing it again, Vell. What did you expect? Did you really think it’d go different this time?”
Ruvellius took a step backward, his hand on the decorative sword strapped to his hip. His lip curled at the sight of his foppish reflection. He’d always looked the part. It was when he opened his mouth that his father began to be disappointed with him.
“You thought he’d be fair. Maybe listen, for once. Agree with you, even! What a colossal bumbo, Vell! You’ve been over this a hundred times. Fa— his Majesty, the King — is not interested in your values. He doesn’t care whether a thing is wrong or right. There’s only the throne, and what the throne wants! A throne you’ll never have, unless you learn to play his game.”
Ruvellius tisked. His glare softened as he gazed into his own blue eyes. Those were his mother’s eyes, he’d been told a thousand times, but never by his father. “How could you forget who he is?”
Straightening his jacket didn’t help. He still felt like he couldn’t take a breath deep enough. It was this place. These people. He was being slowly strangled. Condemned to ignominy if he didn’t change his skin; damned to live with who he became if he did.
Ruvellius strode into the next room, threw open a wardrobe and yanked a looser tunic off the hook. His fingers fumbled over the countless buttons cascading down his trim torso. There were too many of them. His fingers fumbled as his rage mounted.
He was only one man, what could he do? This was the way things were in Celandra. Who was Ruvellius to try and upset the balance of power by introducing something as flimsy as integrity? Those with much took more, and there was little anyone else could do to stop it. If it wasn’t a man’s money they wanted, they took his pride.
Gritting his teeth, Ruvellius gave up on the buttons. He grabbed his open collar with both hands and ripped. He slipped the loose green tunic over his head and rammed the extra fabric into his belted trousers. His sword and scabbard he unbuckled and tossed across the wide, canopied bed. He’d need a better one. Something he could actually use in a fight. Ruvellius was done being the butt of jokes told by men of lesser character. It was time he proved the power of his own ideals.
“Damn the consequences if father doesn’t approve,” he told himself. “I’m not going to sit here till he figures out what to do with his inconvenient heir.”
Dear Reader,
I promise, not all fathers will be villains in this series! But I do think it is interesting that Kalaran and King Mervin have a good bit in common — power, respectability, impossibly high standards for others — and both manage to be disappointed with the most important people in their lives. Human psychology in respect to the failures and triumphs of people in relation to one another is one of my favorite terrains to explore. I hope you’re along for a tumultuous ride, as far as the clashing of characters is concerned!
Cheers,
~LL