What would Casamir have done? What would any good man have done? Leo looked the three lords in the eye again, one after another, and drained his glass. “Well,” he said, “you all know I’ve never backed down from a fight.”
Now they huddled in close. United by a common enemy, and a shared purpose, and a righteous cause. Just talk, of course, fuelled by Leo’s frustration, and jealousy, and the pain in his leg. Just talk, perhaps, but dangerous, still. Exciting, still. Just talk, wasn’t it? But with each word said it became more thrillingly real.
“It might be a fight against friends,” murmured Barezin, glancing towards the window. “Against neighbours. Against colleagues.”
“Certainly against your father-in-law,” said Isher. “The king dances to his tune. If we on the Open Council have one enemy, it’s the Arch Lector.”
“He may be my father-in-law,” said Leo, “but I’m no friendlier with Old Sticks than you are. Less, if anything.”
“We would need a leader,” said Isher. “A military man.”
“A latterday Stolicus!” frothed Barezin, filling Leo’s glass again.
“A man whose name inspires respect on the battlefield.”
Leo’s heart beat faster at the thought of strapping on his armour. He belonged at the head of ranks of cheering soldiers, not harassed and henpecked behind some dusty old desk. He smiled as he thought of the marching boots, the wind taking the flags, the ring of drawn steel, the drumming hooves of the charge…
“How many men could we count on?” he asked, sipping steadily. It really was a hell of a brandy.
“We three are committed,” said Isher, “and many other members of the Open Council are with us.”
“Most,” said Heugen. “Almost all!”
“You’re sure?” Leo got the vague sense they had been thinking about this for a while.
“They have been frustrated for years,” said Isher. “Chafing at the taxes, the infringements, the insults. Wetterlant’s treatment, and yours—a genuine hero of the Union, mark you, in our own Lords’ Round—was the final straw.”
“You’re damn right there,” grunted Leo, clenching his fists. He couldn’t tell if all this was just talk or not, but he was starting to hope it wasn’t.
“Could you count on the forces of Angland?” asked Barezin eagerly.
Leo thought of Jurand and his friends’ loyalty. Mustred and Clensher’s fury. The soldiers cheering for the Young Lion. He drew himself up. “They’d follow me into hell.”
“Good to hear.” Isher tapped at his glass with one well-shaped fingernail. “But we do not want it to come to that. Even with the Open Council and the army of Angland united, we could not be sure of victory.”
“We must take them by surprise,” said Heugen. “Field a force no one would dare to resist!”
“We need outside help,” said Barezin.
Leo frowned into his half-empty glass. “The Dogman has hundreds of hardened warriors.”
“And he owes you,” said Heugen. “For your help against Ironhand.”
“He’s an honourable man. A true straight edge. He might join us… if it was put to him the right way.”
“Who understands the Northmen better than you?” asked Isher. “Who has been their neighbour, fought beside them, lived among them?”
Leo gave an artless shrug. “I’ve got some friends in the North.”
“Without doubt…” Isher glanced at Heugen, then at Barezin, and then back to Leo, “not least the King of the Northmen himself, Stour Nightfall.”
Leo froze, glass halfway to his mouth. “Not sure I’d call him a friend.”
“He owes you his life.”
“But there’s a reason they call him the Great Wolf.” He thought of Stour’s hungry smile. His wild, wet eyes. The legions of merciless Northmen they’d faced at Red Hill. “He’s savage. Bloodthirsty. Treacherous.”
“But you could keep him on the leash!” Barezin clapped Leo on the shoulder. “And how many warriors could he call upon?”
“Thousands.” Leo tossed down the rest of his drink and pushed the glass back for a refill. “Many thousands.”
She was there in a vast living room when he opened the door, arranged on a chaise in a great flood of cream skirts with the usual care, as if a sculptor had positioned her just so as his model.
“Your Grace,” she said.
“Your Grace,” returned Leo, sounding grumpy and drunk. “You’ve been waiting.”
“Traditionally, brides do wait for their husbands on a wedding night.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “I was held up.” He glanced towards a chandelier of Visserine crystal which must have carried a hundred candles. “These are… our rooms?”
“You have a dressing room through there, and a bedroom beyond.” She pointed out a distant doorway through which he caught a glimpse of manly panelling. “My rooms are that way.” Pale paint and tapestry in the other direction, a dressing room big enough for ten, but then it probably took ten to dress her.
“We’re not sharing a bed?” he grumbled.
She spread her arms across the back of the chaise. “I suppose that depends on your mood.”
He frowned up at a vast canvas. A masterful-looking military man in a neat black uniform frowned back. “Who’s this?”
“Your grandfather.”
“Lord Marshal Kroy?” He’d commanded the Union army at the Battle of Osrung, and died when Leo was small. He only remembered the man from stories, really. But there was undoubtedly a hint of Leo’s mother about his withering frown. “Couldn’t find one of my other grandfather?”
“They’re in short supply. He was a famous traitor.”
Leo flinched at that. Maybe treason ran in the family. He wandered across what felt like an acre of Gurkish carpet, between carefully arranged groups of furniture, past a stuffed songbird in a glass case. This one room was the size of the Dogman’s hall in Uffrith. He wondered if it had been built from scratch in the week since he proposed. Or she proposed. Or their mothers proposed. It wouldn’t have surprised him. There didn’t seem to be anything Savine couldn’t organise. Or wouldn’t organise, given the chance.
“I thought decorating might bore you,” she said. “If there’s something you’d prefer, I can change it.”
“It’s fine,” he grunted, frowning at two antique swords crossed over the mighty fireplace. It was about the finest room Leo ever saw, in fact, a perfect balance of money and taste, clearly done with his feelings in mind. He should’ve thanked her. But he was drunk, and his leg was sore, and he was in no mood to thank anyone. Particularly not her.
“Did you speak to the king?”
Leo ground his teeth. “He didn’t bother to turn up. Had to get to the whorehouse, I hear.”
“There’s kings for you. Another day.”
“Fuck him,” snapped Leo, more harshly than he’d meant to. “I’ve been with Isher. And Heugen and Barezin.”