I have a doctor’s appointment today which will allow him to wrap up the thyroid saga.

Still, why no post. As we all know I often write these the evening before.

Well, the problem is this: I’m actually working again. As in at normal rate.

I might or might not have told you that I got grabbed by the scruff of the neck and dragged to the computer room, two months ago to revise the monster novel.

To explain, I’m not over-revising or guilding (which as we all know is a combination of gilding and deguelo?) gilding the lilly. It’s just that this novel has been in my head so long that there’s a ton of stuff I know so well I think it’s in the text and is not. Stuff like “did I tell them in my weird world adoption and real birth are blurred?”. Put it another way, there is a lot of this book in my head, which is why the inner writer grabbed me and took me to the desk to do a full go-over.

And it should have been done at least a month ago. At least a month ago.

But then the once and future upper respiratory infection came back. I’m now at the other end of it at last. I swear this was worse than the first instance of it, and as bad as the one in October. (Why it keeps recurring? Well, asthma. Chronic and untreated. Mostly because I dislike inhalers of the daily kind. But younger DIL has talked me into talking to doctor about a daily pill. (NOT Montelucast. I got the suicidal depression side effect from that. But now apparently there are alternatives.) but also my thyroid is screwed up and that does weird things to your immune system.)

Anyway I’m now at the other end of it, and with thyroid and two hard and fast upper respiratory infections, I am three months late on the book, and I’m impatient, so I’m trying to get on with it.

Two days ago I did two chapters. Yesterday I did my normal — seven — but the problem is that by night time I was unsure of my name and iffy about any other words. So I can work normal amounts, I just can’t bounce back from it like normal. Yet — YET!

Now, on making my assistant happy. She says since I’m moving on on the edits it’s time to publicize (you guys please keep the prayer wheels spinning that I don’t get sick again. Until this is done I can’t seem to finish Rhodes or Witch’s Daughter. And you know you’re waiting. Even if you guys hate this or it sells ten copies and it’s to the alpha readers! (The assistant AND Dan are going to kill me for saying this.) Anyway, she says I have to put up the new cover and the first and second chapters.

You’ve seen the first chapter, which would give you the impression this is a mil SF. (I hate that. I hate chapters that lead you…. weirdly. But it is what it is.) It is not. Remember this book was created by my reaction — AT FOURTEEN — to the left hand of Darkness.

So, in the second chapter the weird starts. If you remember the first well enough, that’s fine. Head on to the second. Or not. I’m just doing this so the assistant is happy. I have, after all to work with her. (And she’s busy with her other job today so it’s going to take her till tonight to read this. Mwahahahahah.)

Oh, yeah, and wish me luck at the endo!

So first the two prospective covers. There’s argument over which is best.

Or

UPDATE: I still like the movement of the cape, and also FOR ME (you don’t have to agree!) capes say space opera. But the face issue is taken. So, hear me out:

And now the text!

AHEM: Coming soon!

No Man’s Land

Sarah A. Hoyt

© 2025 by Sarah A. Hoyt

Hero

Skip:

Everything was going fine, until my father stopped giving orders.

Okay. No. So everything was not fine. For one we had been ambushed.

Which was the problem.

There are no ambushes in space battles. My father had dinned the theory and practice of space battles into my skull before I entered the Academy at twelve.  Which is as good a place as any to say I was a child prodigy.

Or maybe I wasn’t. There isn’t really any way to tell. Late born son of a brilliant father and a demanding mother — My father named me Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, for crying out loud! —  it was clear enough what I was supposed to do. What I was supposed to be. I wasn’t genetically improved – or not so that anyone would ever admit to – so it was just…  Look, I had to be what I had to be.  And that meant I was a young boy admitted to a private but prestigious military academy five years earlier than everyone else there.  Which meant I had to graduate as fast as I could.

This is how I ended up as my father’s second in command at the battle of Karan. At seventeen.

And we were ambushed.  But there are no ambushes in space. Just like there are no ambushes on the high seas.

You see the enemy approach for days on end. The best you can do is conceal your strategy or your capabilities from them. But you can’t hide. There’s nothing to hide in or behind. Certainly not with a Schrodinger-drive ship. You can’t port near enough to a planet that would hide you. And you certainly can’t port close to the enemy. Or rather you can, but then the risk of porting to the same space as the enemy and achieving the most pyrrhic victory of all time is high.

And we had intelligence – we had intelligence! – from the Nivirim side.  They had no technology we didn’t have, and their ships had a tendency to fall apart because, well, forced labor doesn’t build good ships.  And there was no way to hide a ship in space.

There was no way.

So my father, commanding five battle cruisers, the entire war fleet of her royal majesty Queen Madeline of Britannia On High, empress of the Star Empire had ported to a nowhere convergence called Karan.  Oh, there was some reason for it, including the fact that Karan gave access to other port points, which gave access to other port points which would put our colony worlds of Eire and Hy-Brasil and Prester within reach.  Which meant if we let the Nivirim fleet port there and hold it, with no contest, those colonies would be vulnerable, or call it actually enslaved, given the Nivirim system of government.

That’s the high-level version of the situation, which is all I knew at the time.

The trip to orbit, in order to port to Karan took a day, and then we were there.  There was the middle of nowhere in space.  In full view of Nivirim vessels. Ten of them, but Father said not to worry. “Battles in space aren’t a matter of ship count, Skip,” he said.  “They’re a matter of capabilities, of maneuvering, and of training. And we’re better at all of those.”  He said it after dinner, leaning back in his chair.  His blue eyes crinkled at the corners, the way they did when something amused him.  “Always remember, Skip, free men fight better than slaves.”

I believed him. I still believe him. My father, you see–  My father never gave me any reason to doubt him. Not even then.

Before I tell the story, something must be rightly understood: I look like my mother, Lady Harcaster.  Her ancestors, who had financed the colonization of and ruled over Aeris, all looked like me: colorless, narrow nosed, thin faced, tall and spare, the kind of people who grow older by getting thinner and dryer and harder, like aged wood.  There are ‘grams of them going back to the time of colonization and they probably look more lifelike than the originals.

Growing up with Mother I always knew exactly what she expected of me.  And what she expected of me was always impossible. So, of course, I did it.

Father, on the other hand was my anchor. From my earliest memories, I knew Father loved me. So I did what he wanted me to do, not because I feared him, but because I didn’t want to disappoint him.

I suspect that’s why I accepted the appointment as his second in command aboard the HMS Victoria, commanding Britannia on High’s space fleet. Because I got to spend time with father and away from Mother.

Was it stupid? Oh yes. My stupidity or his? Who knows?

“Look, Skip, your rank is largely ornamental,” he said. “And temporary and probationary.  The only reason for you to be Vice-Commodore, fresh off the Academy, is that you stick close to me and you learn. You learn, Skip. That’s all. That’s all you’re doing here. You’re learning.”

I learned. Oh, the blue uniform with the half cape was pretty nice, too. But mostly I learned. Because sure, I’d be the Earl of Harcaster when mother died, and have full rule over Aeris, which I loathed because it was not Capital City. But that was a function of being born to mother, who’d brought the title into the marriage. Being called Lord Harcaster wouldn’t mean anything. Being called Viscount Webson, the junior title of mom’s family, made me feel stupid. It wasn’t something I’d earned. And I wanted to earn something.

When I was at the Academy people kept quoting Father and talking about the victories he’d achieved. I wanted to learn that. I wanted to earn that.

Three days, while Father maneuvered, and the enemy maneuvered, and he planned for every eventuality, was like being back at the Academy. There was a hollo table, and the ships on it, floating in air.  Father moved them. And firing capabilities, and where the weapons were in each ship were discussed, as well as the shielding capabilities though these consisted mostly of turning the proper points to where we knew the enemy weapons were.

It was on the third night, with father and the eight captains and vice captains of the other ships, all assembled, that I asked the stupid question.

They’d just gone over the plan, and something that was constantly mentioned at Academy hadn’t been mentioned at all. I cleared my throat and before I could stop myself, heard my voice say, “Sir, what about boarding? What about preparations for boarding or to prevent boarding?” My voice sounded young, wishful, naïve. In fact, much like the voice of a student. Or a child. I was momentarily glad I hadn’t called him “Father” or – as in childhood – “daddy.”

Look, that was the reason that ships carried each a complement of some five hundred men each at enormous cost.  Because ships got boarded. At the Academy we’d studied five battles where defending your ship from boarding  had turned the tide of the battle. One of those was the first battle my father had fought as commodore, the battle of Ryrr.

But all nine men stared at me as though I’d lost my mind.

“It never happens,” Father said. “Not these last thirty years, Skip. It doesn’t happen. We board. They don’t. Their ships aren’t that agile. They have outmoded maneuvering.”

“But,” I said, feeling that if I’d already made a fool of myself, I might as well go on.  “Why do we have infantry on alert aboard, then? And why do we wear side arms into battle?”

Father patted my shoulder.  He actually patted my shoulder. “It’s the Force, Skip. Things change very slowly. It’s just tradition.”

All the captains had smiled, indulgently, and I wasn’t even mad that Father had called me Skip and not Vice Commodore Hayden. Because I knew it was from an excess of feeling and not a desire to humiliate me.

It was the last time he called me Skip.

Because in the night, while we all slept, we were ambushed.

You probably read about in the history books, but here goes: our intelligence was faulty or suborned. Which one, it doesn’t matter, and it wasn’t ever established although investigations and interrogations ran for years.

Until Karan boarding between spaceships had been done with boarding sleeves.  So a lot of maneuvering went on, until you could be in the right place where you knew the ship shielding was weak enough that the piercing machinery at the end of the sleeve could attach and make an entry.

Our propulsion and navigation systems were better than theirs. Which is why it hadn’t happened in thirty years.

But you know what those extra five ships apparently contained? Lots and lots of small vessels, each of which could carry twenty-five infantry troops. Ships equipped with an explosive prow.

I woke up to the sound of alarms. Our ship had been penetrated. Every officer and serving man was fighting with our utterly inadequate sidearms.

I put my uniform on in the dark, only because I was so fresh from the academy that waking with an alarm and dressing in the dark, without thinking, was second nature.

But the hallways were choked with people fighting and dying, and only the enemy was in uniform. Our people were in pajamas, in their underwear, or very against regulation, mother-naked and rocking holsters, or in one case that sticks in my mind, dripping wet and with a towel wrapped around himself, Roman style, with a blaster in each hand and one between his teeth. He was making good work, too.

I remember that. I remember snapshots of the battle in the corridor. I remember blood. I remember dismembered bodies, mostly ours. I remember people, their bodies torn, pouring out blood onto the glassteel of the floor. Many still fighting even as their life ran out in red rivulets and pooled in dark patches on the floor.

I remember sweat, shortness of breath. I remember the stink of blood and death. I remember running out of charges on my weapons, and picking them up from corpses without stopping.

All through it, I knew one thing: I should be in the command room with Father. Father would know what to do.

And then my mind becomes clear as I entered the command room. It was filled with dead. Dead in piles.

In the middle of it, Father. He was also in his uniform. He was getting up.  There was a gaping wound in his chest, and he was lurching up, trying to reach the com.

“Son,” he said. “Son.” It was a bare rasp.  “They knew. They had—They came here first.”

He didn’t need to say it. I could see the path from the outside, through a protected wall, through two adjacent storage rooms. It was plugged with the Nivirim ship, or we’d be leaking air into space.

“Father,” I said. “Commodore, please don’t talk.”

“I must give orders. I must warn—”

But even as he spoke his voice got fainter, and his knees folded under him, his body toppling.  And I – with my academy training, got on the com, and called, ship by ship, for status.

Our ship was the only one fully breached, though one of the small ships had attacked the Belcaria. Sentinels had seen it in time, blasted the disembarking attackers as soon as I called out.

I got on the coms. I screamed into them, my voice by turns hoarse and shrill.

Did the captains understand this was Vice-Commodore Hayden? Did I even tell them? Was it even true? Technically Father was hors de combat. I was in command. I was the Commodore.

I roused the ships. I gave them instructions. Textbook instructions. It’s all I knew But the hollo of a man in uniform bellowing instructions to the just awakened can be effective.  The ships spun. And fired on the small would-be intruders before they got near.  The few that penetrated were met with a full complement of wakened-in-time, in uniform, in their right minds infantry.

Me? I stayed at the coms. I stayed with it, calming, cajoling, ordering.

Do you know I don’t remember firing my side arm even once, while I was at the coms  But I must have, because Father was unconscious, and there was no one else there with us but the dead. So unless the dead got up to fight – I don’t know. It’s as plausible as anything else – while I talked I fired and fired and fired, and accounted for about thirty-five of the enemy, which effectively choked the door, so they couldn’t come in any more from inside our own ship, to stop the commands going out to the fleet.

They must have been working on breaking through the barrier of corpses when our people, commanded by me at a distance, and mostly from the Belcaria, took the Victoria, cleaning up as they went.

When it became clear the people trying to enter were our people, I got off the coms. I had the vague idea that if I could only keep Father alive till the medics got there, the regen would make everything all right.

He was on the floor where he’d lain down.  His eyes were closed and his hands were cold, and I thought he was dead.

I have no memory of all the orders I gave in combat, but I remember what I cried, then, “Father! Daddy!”

His eyes opened.  I lifted his head. I babbled about medics, about regen.

Father stared at me and smiled.  He said, “Good man, Scipio. Well done, son.”  And then he died.

My father had the most amazing eyes.  Blue, sure, but a very dark blue, so that from across the room they looked black.  But up close, you saw them blue and deep like the night sky in summer, blue and deep like the whole universe.

One moment they were looking at me, shining, deep blue. The next they were black.

I looked into my father’s eyes and I lost myself.

I forgot what I’d been meant to be, what I was.

They came in. They pronounced Father dead. I was wounded, they said. Nothing vital hit. Or nothing vital that couldn’t be regened.

I didn’t want to leave Father. If I didn’t leave him, perhaps he would come back? They had to tranq me to drag me away to the infirmary.

When I woke two weeks later, they told me that father was dead, but I already knew.

I wore the blue uniform with the half-cape once more, on a freezing winter day, in blowing snow, as I stood in the family cemetery next to the Earl’s palace of Aeris, and watched father’s coffin lowered into the grave, while space force captains and countless infantry stood at attention, wedged awkwardly between statues of angels and spacemen, of kings and imperious women holding aloft wreaths of victory.

There, in a deep hole, they buried what remained of the most important person in my life to that day.

When it was done, they let loose a 12 cannon salute, Earth cannons, the kind not used in battle since Old Earth, then a military band played the sweet, haunting “Home of the Spacer” consigning father’s memory to the stars.

I stood at attention there, and then I stood beside Mother and received the condolences of a grateful Empire.  The Queen herself, with frost-blued fingers, pinned the Wreath of Valor upon my chest, the big one, in gold, with the replica of the first colonizing ship in the middle.

I removed it after the funeral.  And then I removed my uniform. I sent my resignation to her majesty.

And then I lost myself in the fleshpots of New London, the Empire’s capital city.

The King Is Dead

Eerlen:

As he’d feared, the cries and screams echoed, even up in the guarded family wing, at the top of the ancient palace.

Eerlen Troz had rushed up five flights of stairs, the screams and baying of grief accompanying him every step of the way, as he climbed up and up and up. 

Sometimes a fresh note broke in, and he could almost follow the progression of the news through the various parts of the building.  “The king is dead,” was spoken, and the screaming started. 

Visiting city and league dignitaries in the guest quarters, traders and nomad clan ambassadors, also in the guest quarters, some muffled sounds that might be from the guard quarters, and he surely hoped the military commanders staying in the palace weren’t howling like peasants who’d lost a child, like nomads who’d lost a lover.

Up and up and up, rushing and breathless, nodding to the guard at the bottom of each flight of steps, ignoring their pointed looks of inquiry, Troz held up his long, ceremonial tunic so as not to trip on it and cursed that he’d not been prepared for this. 

He’d not been prepared for any of this. He’d expected nothing more than a dinner with Myrrir and the commanders, a discussion of forces and schedules of shield holders.  And then a quiet night with Myrrir in royal quarters. Perhaps a game of Etarresh before bed.

Maker’s womb, this was the last thing he’d expected.  But he must get to the child before someone else did.  And it wasn’t even because the child was young and the shock would be great. There were far worse outcomes in play, when the heir to the throne was only sixteen.

By the time he reached the top floor, where the royal family slept, he knew the child – his sireling – would be awake.  Eerlen was also out of breath, panting, cursing that he was too old for this.  Much too old for this. And that it had been far too long a time since he’d crossed Erradi with his bed roll, hunting for his keep. Much too long since even his last ceremonial partial route to check on the Troz clan of which he was titular head.

He opened the door to Brundar’s room, and rushed in, freeing his arm from the guard’s hand which had gone so far as to clutch at him.  The guard couldn’t think he was protecting the heir or that Eerlen meant the child harm.  It was curiosity.  Mere curiosity.

The child was awake and sitting in the middle of the bed that was still too big for him, even now that he was adult height. He sat, his eyes wide open, staring at the door, giving every impression he expected an attack.  Which meant his instincts were good at least.

He was tall, but not yet filled out, a sketch of an adult without the shading, his eyes too large in a too thin and pale face.  His green eyes turned towards Eerlen.  Surrounded by the child’s disheveled red locks, that face had something not quite real, or at least not quite tame.  It was a face one expected to see peeking from the shadows of trees in the deep forest, a face that disappeared as soon as seen.  The mouth worked.  “The screams…. The…” Brundar said, his voice too thin, as though he were much younger.  “Was there a breakthrough? Is—”

Oh. That.  The historical Draksall breakthrough that killed everyone in the palace four hundred years ago, and gave the throne to the infant saved by his nursemaid.

Well. When there were tapestries and paintings of that catastrophe all over, how could the child not think of that?

Eerlen shook his head, more hoping than sure that it was reassuring.  His breath had almost steadied.  He took a big swallow of frigid air.  These walls didn’t keep the heat in, no matter how big the fire in the ornate fireplace. 

The palace might be a confection of something they no longer had a name for, in shapes stone could not copy. But whoever the ancients were, they had been more resistant to cold than Erradians or had something other than fire to keep them warm.  He was grateful for the air’s coolness at any rate.  And for the need to do something, to keep the horrible after-effects of the death of a ruler from swallowing all, before he could stop and think he’d lost his lover, he’d lost his sworn lover, he’d lost his best-friend and helpmeet and support. Because if he stopped and thought of that, he’d break down and cry like a nomad at a funeral.

But I am a nomad. At least at heart. And this is a funeral. Or a wake, he thought, but didn’t say.  Instead he stepped towards the bed and knelt so as not to tower over the child.  Stretching his hands, he took hold of Brundar’s hands, and held them in his.  “Brundar,” he said and hesitated for a moment.  “Your parent came home….  Was brought home. He was wounded. He has … he has died.  You are the ruler of Elly.”

He meant to swear his fealty then and there, but he should have known better.

It is not like he doesn’t come by his wildness naturally.

When that thought came, it was already too late, and the child had leapt from the bed, running on bare feet, wearing only a knee-length nightshirt.

Eerlen got up and followed.  He didn’t waste his breath in calling.

Brundar was running like a scared colt.  And he’d been running towards what scared him since he’d learned to run. Perhaps not the best survival strategy, but he came by that naturally too.

Brundar knew where to go, of course. It wasn’t the first time that Myrrir had been carried in wounded.  Warrior king. Eerlen could have spit. He had tried to argue for moderation. In vain. Given the age of the one heir, given the multitude of others who could have claimed the throne sideways, by right of siring, and given that some of those had troops in their following, Myrrir should have had more care for his life. For the sake of the child, Eerlen had begged.  He’d been told, He’s my child. He’ll survive.

Yeah, well, he thought, as Brundar, far faster, vanished around the last turn of the last flight of stairs, and into the ground floor receiving room that had too often served as an infirmary.  The guards on the last three flights of stairs had been crying.  The news spread.

The bottom floor was a bedlam of people crying, and wiping noses to sleeves and hems of tunics.  Eerlen ran past them without even really looking, registering only that there were groups and couples, and people standing alone, pale and crying.  Crazy, brave, heedless, and often far too willful.  But loved. Myrrir was loved.

Tears prickled behind his eyes, and he shook his head, as he hurried.  No time. Not now. He could always howl later.

He noted without pausing that the yelling in the death chamber – the heated argument that had seen drawn swords – stopped dead as Brundar ran in, and lifted a short prayer to the Maker that the child not be run through by those swords, thereby clearing the way to the more ambitious of the arguing people.

By then he was mere steps behind and erupted into the room in time to see the five adults in the room standing, frozen in the poses they’d obviously held when Brundar ran in.

Khare Sarda of Karrash, his sword still drawn, his blue eyes flashing and Parnel Haethlem of Erradi, wearing his blood-stained tunic, his face almost as pale as his pale hair, standing beside him, while facing them were Guinar Ter of Lirridar and Kalal Ad Leed of Brinar.  Ad Leed appeared to have put his sword, flat over the others’ swords as though trying to bring them down. Lords of the four subdomains of Elly, and two of them Brundar’s cross-siblings and used to ruling. All of them either with drawn swords or about to draw them.  But worse in that respect was the person by the bed, who had not drawn his sword.  He was muscular and somber, the biggest person in the room overtopping the others by a head, his dark battle leathers stained with blood – how much of it Myrrir’s Eerlen couldn’t guess. He’d carried Myrrir in – his lips clamped firmly together, his face an unreadable mask. That would be Lendir Almar, commander of the royal guard and over-commander of all the armies of Elly, at least the second commander after Myrrir.  The child of the last commander. And Myrrir’s sireling, who had always seemed to loathe Eerlen and therefore Brundar, for reasons not quite clear.

The only good thing in this was that Nikre Lyto, Eerlen’s adopted child, Myrrir’s adopted sireling and heir to the role of archmagician was holding shield at the battle front. Without that, he’d have been killed by now. Nikre neither wanted the throne nor had defenses against the court’s intrigues.

You couldn’t have arranged things more disastrously if you’d meant to, lover, Eerlen thought, looking to the hasty pile of cushions and furs on which Myrirr had been lain, and which had become his death bed.

Myrrir had never been beautiful. Too many Erradians, too much Draksall in his ancestry.  A jaw too square, a mouth too strong, and the uncompromisingly direct glance that had flashed from beneath those too-straight eyebrows.  Of course, if he talked and moved everyone forgot his plainness.  But he’d talk and move no more.  Someone had closed his eyes. His hair was still bound for battle, braided and tied and securely pinned to his head.  He still wore his battle-leathers, slashed and soaked in blood.  They said the dead looked like they were sleeping.  Myrrir didn’t. He looked dead.

It was nothing too horrible, though his lips had contorted and remained in a final twist of pain, refusing to cry out. And he was pale. Deathly pale.  But most of all, it wasn’t Myrrir.  The shape might be the same, but something had left. Something was not the same.  What was on the bed might be the same form, but it wasn’t Eerlen’s lover. Not his sworn. Perhaps because Myrrir had never been able to stay completely still, even when asleep.

There was blood – a pool of it – under the body on the furs. Some of it dripped from the edge of the furs onto the floor, but sluggishly, starting to congeal. The child should not have seen that. The child—

Brundar stood very still.  A statue in the shape of an adolescent on the edge of maturity. Arrested where he’d stopped in his flight, two steps from the corpse, one hand forward, as though to touch Myrrir and wake him – if anything could! – one foot advanced, bare against the age-darkened oak, his nightshirt looking flimsy and far too short, even his hair seeming to have frozen in place, a mass of curls thrown back by his flight.  He was so still he might not have been breathing.

And the other five watched him, their eyes intent.  Eerlen would feel better if he could swear the look was not that of a wolf staring at a rabbit.

He didn’t dare touch Brundar.  Almost afraid to break the moment, which would break, inevitably, the minute the child started to wail, Eerlen reached under the hem of his tunic for his ankle knives, one worn on each ankle, and that against etiquette and risking Myrrir’s laughter – Are you afraid a dire wolf will jump you in the palace, or a Draksall, sweetling? – and fuck the settled habit of not carrying swords except in battle.  He was a fool to have complied even minimally and outwardly.  Now he wished for his sword, his lance and his bow. And all too little. 

His considerable magical power for defense or attack, couldn’t be used in the palace.  The shields would not allow it. It was old interdiction, designed to stop Draksall breakthroughs, but it put the throne at risk now.

Eerlen had a feeling the minute Brundar wailed, the tableau would break and minutes later the child would be dead, leaving the throne of Elly to be fought over by the three half-siblings remaining in that room.  Eerlen bet on Lendir who outmassed both Sarda and Ter. And was more battle hardened than mere governors. But that wouldn’t matter to Eerlen, because he’d be dead before they cut down his sireling, his daggers broken against those swords.

Brundar took a deep shaky breath. It sounded too loud in the absolute silence of the room.  He wheeled around, standing, square shouldered and crossing his arms on his chest, looking much like Lendir Almar probably without knowing it.

The voice that came out was controlled and even, with an edge of offense.  “Why wasn’t I informed before it came to this? Why wasn’t I called before the news went out?” The two questions flew like slaps at Lendir whose eyes opened wide, startled, and then Brundar turned to the four across the death bed.  “And what is this? Why are swords out in a death chamber? Is this the behavior of the Lords of the Land of Elly?”

For a moment it hung in the balance.  Eerlen didn’t know but could suspect how fast the child had thought and judged the reactions of those in the room, and taken advantage of his moment of absolute quietness to plan. It probably wouldn’t work, but if he had one chance it was that: sound as much as possible like Myrrir, assume authority and carry it through on that.  Myrrir had been loved. For all his faults, for all his errors, he had been loved. And three of the adults in this room were his sirelings.  And vassals of the new king. If they’d own it.

Eerlen became aware of his heart thudding so fast his head spun.  And he hardly dared breathe.  The daggers felt cold as he gripped them, one in each hand.

Lendir broke first.  The look of surprise passed.  For a second something like laughter fled behind his eyes, and then left his features impassive again.

He fell to kneeling without grace, the sound of his knees hitting the floor resounding on the wood. “King of Elly,” he said, looking up at Brundar. “Defender of the lands, Lord of the people, receive my fealty.”

If Brundar was surprised, he didn’t show it.  He nodded and waved his fingers at Lendir, without lifting his hand.  “Stand, Almar. Commander of my guard.” The off hand acknowledgement and confirmation of post might have been done by Myrrir himself.  Absolutely sure. Certain of his own authority.

Brundar looked enquiringly at the four governors, tilting his head to the left.  He said nothing.

Eerlen, weak with relief they had Almar and his sword, and by extension the armies behind Brundar, swallowed hard, because he would not cry, not even with relief. He caught the edge of a glance from Almar, a minimal lift of the corner of the commander’s lips and wondered if he was being mocked or consoled, but it didn’t matter. He wiped his sleeve down his face, to hide his expression. Nothing mattered as much as Brundar’s survival.

Ter tried a protest. He would. He was the oldest of Myrrir’s sirelings, thirty eight, and he had thought himself the heir to the throne for half that time.  “Almar, you cannot be serious,” he said.  “Brundar Mahar is a child.  His sire who will reign behind the throne is an ice nomad, barely broken to civilization! Unless you mean to rule behind the throne yourself.”

Lendir knew better than to answer. Brundar wheeled around on his half-crossibling, snapped, “No one will reign behind the throne, Ter.” It was said in the tone of an adult correcting a child.  No real anger, though plain irritation.  And no defensiveness.

Kahre Sarda, Myrrir’s youngest, best beloved natural sireling put away his sword, in measured gestures, and Haethlem slid his into the sheath at his waist. Small, dark and lithe, Sarda fell to his knees first, with the gentle drop of a dancer upon a rehearsed movement, inclined his head and pledged his fealty and his domain of Karrash to Brundar.  Haethlem, tall, blond and square shouldered, dropped to his knees behind Sarda, before Sarda stood and pledged fealty and Erradi – for what that was worth with war raging and invaders at its core and Haethlem’s own household more often threatened than not – and then Ad Leed gave Lendir Almar a quick glance. Was there an imperceptible nod from Almar? Why? What would a Lord of the Land owe Almar?

Ad Leed pledged.  Leaving Ter standing, looking sullen.  To be fair, he always looked sullen. Or at least peevish. The force of Myrrir’s features had been softened in the Lirridarian, but he compensated for it by scowling.

“Ter,” Brundar said, once more the adult in the room. “We do not have the time or resources for a civil war, while the enemy has broken through into Erradi and occupies a good portion of it.” Just that. Not so much a threat as a statement. The implication being that but for the invasion foothold in Erradi, he and his forces would wipe any resistance Ter could mount off the map.”

Ter let out his breath in a sort of sigh of impatience, and shoved his sword, with force, into its sheath, so hard that the clang of guard hitting metal trim rang like a bell, raising echoes from the high ceilings.  He knelt measuredly, and said his oath like spitting.

Brundar looked at Eerlen then. “Archmagician?” he said, lilting.  And for the first time in the whole wretched evening, Eerlen remembered he was more than Eerlen Troz, out-of-practice-ice-nomad-and-fur-trader, and the sire of the … of the new king of Elly.  He felt the weight of the silver chain around his neck and the ancient jewel it held, the red jewel of the Archmagician, the chief of the Magicians of Elly.  The one who must remove its complement from Myrrir’s dead finger and slip it onto Brundar’s, before he was de facto as well as de jure king of Elly.

He bowed, slipped his knives back into their sheaths, noting Lendir’s amused look at that – he really was mocking Eerlen! – and, bowing, stepped past his sireling, now his king, to the royal corpse.  It helped to think of it as the royal corpse, and not Myrrir’s remains.

He had to remove the blood-darkened, worn leather gauntlet from Myrrir’s right hand to get at the ring, at the ruby of kingship.

Unbidden, in his mind, he remembered twenty years ago, being the newly minted Archmagician making his bow to Myrrir, king of Elly.  The chain was unaccustomed at his neck, the ruby of office shone on his chest. He was still in shock, feeling ill awakened as the ruby muddled his mind with a sense of immense power and a confusion of impressions of his predecessors.

He remembered thinking it would have been easier to swear fealty to Mahar in battle, where Myrrir Mahar would be dressed in leathers and look much like the other commanders.  But of course, he’d had to do it at the palace, in a formal reception. The ruby informed him that was how things were done.

He could see himself in his mind’s eye, just seventeen, wearing his nomad furs: tunic and pants of white fur, home sewn and crude, his magician’s blue cloak still new. He’d been initiated less than a year before that. He could feel the stares of the dignitaries and courtiers, and hear that one person – he’d never figured out who, either – laughing in the corner.

And Myrrir — in green silk with gold embroidery, a long, formal tunic and court slippers of gold- embroidered leather, that kept tapping rapidly beneath the hem, even as he sat on his ancestors’ gilded throne — looked impatient and bored.

Had Eerlen not noticed the king’s diadem lay askew on his hair, and that the hair was bound at the back, like a warrior’s, as though the king had rushed in from battle, gotten hastily dressed, and dropped the diadem on his own head as he ran down the stairs – which was exactly what had happened, with an added swear word at the need to formally meet the new Archmagician – Eerlen might never have found his voice.

But he’d smiled at the diadem and whispered his oath about laying his magicians: healers, illusion spinners, spell makers, portalers and shield holders and all at the king’s disposal.

And Myrrir had looked amused and also as though he were thinking the words that he had whispered into Eerlen’s ear much later after the celebratory banquet the intricate dancing and the obligatory music. “Never mind the magicians and healers. Can one lay the Archmagician?”

Remembering, Eerlen swallowed hard. Smooth, really smooth, my love, he thought as he pulled the ring from the stiffening finger.

He turned and knelt before slipping it onto Brundar’s finger.  Brundar instinctively curled his finger.  Later a goldsmith would have to be engaged to make an insert to conform it to the new king’s finger.  Stupid to cut it to size before Brundar stopped growing.

Eerlen bowed his head, “I, Eerlen head of the Troz line and the Troz clan, Archmagician of Elly, swear its brotherhood of Magicians and all its functions, its healers, shield holders, illusion weavers and judicial magicians and all creators of portals and spells to the command of Brundar Mahar, King of Elly.”

Not for the first time it occurred to him to think that Brundar was an odd name.  Who called his child Vengeance? The child would grow to ask the same question.

But Myrrir had done it, and Eerlen was honor bound to answer the question when it came. Not that Myrrir’s name – Blood Oath – was any better. The Mahars were strange people.  And kings for thirty unbroken generations.  One more. Let there be one more. No, two more. Barren of a line-child himself, the end of his long, storied line, Eerlen wanted to see his sireling’s children.

“You may leave,” Brundar said, waving his hand at the four governors.  “Almar, keep watch at the door please.”

Eerlen turned to leave. He could do with some kind of privacy. Tears were going to overwhelm him any moment, and he’d promised himself a good howling. Not that there was ever full privacy for the royal family. There would be an ear at the door, a valet’s intrusion. Just enough to allow him an unguarded moment.

But Brundar said, “Stay, Troz,” calling him by his line name for the first time in Brundar’s life.  And Eerlen stayed.  He heard the door close, by Lendir Almar’s hand, softly, as if he feared disturbing the dead.

Brundar turned a desolate face to Eerlen and opened his mouth as though to speak, but before Eerlen could so much as move, he closed his mouth turned away, took the remaining steps to the bed, fell to his knees, buried his face in Myrrir’s shoulder and shook.

Well, at least he isn’t howling. Nothing that can be heard outside.

At length he heard the word Brundar whispered, “Emee.”  It was the baby word for parent.  And there, in the silent death chamber where the fate of the whole world had just been decided by the child on his knees by the bed, it made Eerlen Troz’s hair rise at the back of his head.