Chapter 8 - The Spring of the Kingdom
By March, the snow in the high mountain passes had begun to turn to grey slush, and the first green shoots of mountain rye were poking through the mud in the lower meadows.
The siege from the western coast never came.
When the Duke of Westmere’s scouts returned from the border, they brought word that the coalition of trade-lords and southern cousins had dissolved in a bitter dispute over who would inherit the taxes of the Red-Water mines—taxes that Clara had already redirected to rebuild the irrigation dikes along the river valleys and the stone-walled granaries for the mountain villages.
In the Great Hall of Aethelgard, the air smelled of woodsmoke, roasted mutton, and the fresh, green scent of newly split pine.
Clara sat upon the Iron Throne, but the heavy furs and the dark green velvet had been replaced by a simple tunic of white wool, belted with a broad band of silver-stamped leather. Upon her chestnut hair, the Crown of Aurel rested with the quiet, natural dignity of a circlet of wild flowers.
Below her, the court was full of new faces—not the old, supercilious nobles who had spent forty years whispering behind their silk fans, but captains from the mountain garrisons, master masons from the lower river, and young women from the village schools who could read the royal ledgers as well as Master Almon.
“The delegation from the southern temples is at the gate, Majesty,” Hael announced, stepping up to the foot of the dais. He wore a clean leather jerkin, and his grey hair was tied back with a neat leather thong. “They brought the three hundred silver marks they ‘misappropriated’ from the border-levies, plus interest.”
Clara didn't look up from the parchment she was signing with her iron pen. “Did you take the silver?”
“Every coin,” Hael said, a rare, grim smile creasing the corner of his weathered mouth. “It’s already in the vaults, being melted down to shoe the cavalry horses for the spring patrol.”
“Good.” Clara laid down the pen and looked out across the hall.
Through the great octagonal lantern in the roof, the spring sunlight was pouring down in a broad, golden column that illuminated the red granite pillars and the dark amber walls. It was the same light that had fallen upon her the day the guard raised his lash—the day she was nothing more than a kitchen maid with lye on her fingers and soot in her hair.
She raised her right hand, resting her chin upon her palm.
May you like
Between her thumb and forefinger, the small, silver-white star gleamed faintly against her skin—a mark that could never be washed away by water, nor burned away by fire, nor bought with all the gold in the southern valleys.
“Let them in, Captain,” Clara said. “The kingdom has work to do.”
