Chương 105: 42-1: King

I had honestly thought the reading would end there. It didn't. The Imperial Herald pressed the scroll flat, his expression as placid as someone announcing the afternoon weather forecast.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "you have ten minutes to prepare." Ten minutes. How breathtakingly generous. I nearly choked on the kindness. He paused—apparently deciding the blade hadn't gone in quite cleanly enough—and added one final flourish.

"Should there be anything particular you wish His Majesty to review, please bring it along as well." His phrasing was perfectly courteous. His tone, however, suggested that if we wanted to present Olivia's father's head on a silver platter, he'd cheerfully catalog it as a royal blessing, provided the king showed the slightest interest. Then he began reading names. Each one landed in my chest like a stone dropped into still water. Cedric Rosa. Olivia von Eisenberg. Alvira. Jessi. Lucas.

Several others from our group followed, each delivered in that same flat, bureaucratic cadence—like a lottery drawing, or an undertaker reading tags for coffins. Everyone named had won the grand prize. Unfortunately, it was a prize nobody wanted. My sister's name, naturally, was absent from the list. Which made perfect sense. People like her don't get summoned for impromptu royal interrogations. She's the type who stays behind to clean up after the living and select appropriate coffin dimensions for the dead.

The ten minutes passed with what felt like deliberate malice. Fast enough that no one had time to properly chew through their mounting dread before Vincent had already materialized with cloaks, gloves, outer coats, and everything else we could conceivably bring or forget, all pressed into our hands with immaculate efficiency. We were herded toward the door in a manner that was clean, swift, and indistinguishable from a prisoner escort—minus the rope around our wrists. The carriage was waiting outside.

Just before I climbed in, my sister finally spoke.

"Cedric." I turned back.

"Yes?" She looked at me with that unnervingly calm expression of hers—so perfectly controlled it made my skin crawl. Then she said:"Come back alive. And if you genuinely cannot manage that—at least don't die looking embarrassing. I'd rather people not assume I raised you that poorly." I stood there and nearly rolled my eyes hard enough to strain something. That was somehow infinitely more depressing than a simple take care.

More depressing, and unmistakably her—the kind of send-off that functioned simultaneously as a farewell and advance consultation on posthumous portrait angles. I opened my mouth, struggled briefly, and finally managed:"… Could you not say something that sounds remotely human for once?"

"I could," she replied mildly.

"But I lack the leisure for it at present." Perfect. Very her. I resigned myself to fate, climbed into the carriage, and observed a moment of private silence on my own behalf. The door closed. The interior went quiet immediately. Not the ordinary quiet of people heading out somewhere together. More like the silence of a wagon full of people who had just been called by name for the gallows, and none of whom felt like being the first to speak.

Olivia sat diagonally across from me, spine perfectly straight, expression so composed it bordered on inhuman—as though the last ten minutes hadn't been a royal summons but merely a change of meeting venue. Alvira leaned against the carriage wall, arms crossed, the furrow between her brows locked in place from the moment she'd stepped in.

Jessi, in a development I would have bet against, was completely silent—her usual endless supply of commentary apparently swallowed whole, leaving behind only a face that clearly read: Speaking right now is not in my best interests. Lucas sat the most steadily of all. So steady he looked less like a man going to see the king and more like someone making a routine delivery. I held out for as long as I could. Then broke.

"Why is everyone so quiet?" Jessi looked up at me, her expression painfully sincere.

"Because I'm afraid that if I open my mouth, the first thing out will be asking whether you want to dictate your will." I nodded slowly.

"So you weren't staying quiet. You were just waiting to say something worse." She shrugged.

"Reading the room."

"There is no room to read here."

"Isn't there?" Jessi leaned back.

"The king summons us by name. An Imperial Herald delivers it personally. Ten minutes' notice. Does that sound like an awards ceremony?"

"Could be," I said.

"Maybe His Majesty heard I've been having a rough time and wants to grant me a stipend. Perhaps arrange a nice marriage while he's at it." Alvira finally spoke, ice-cold: "If that's what this is, I suggest you jump out now." I glanced at her.

"Because marriage is more terrifying than a royal audience?"

"Because you've already started spouting idiocy," she said, "and at this rate you'll be dead within minutes of entering the palace." Fair enough. At least she still had the energy to insult me. That meant she wasn't paralyzed by fear. I was about to fire something back when Olivia spoke first.

"It isn't a reward." Her voice wasn't loud, but it pressed the brittle dark humor in the carriage back down to reality.

"If it were a reward, they wouldn't send a Herald, and they wouldn't give us ten minutes," she said calmly.

"Ten minutes isn't preparation time. It's no time to prepare. That's the point." I leaned back and exhaled slowly.

"That's genuinely very helpful. I feel so much better now."

"You're welcome." Delivered with her usual flawless composure, utterly devoid of comfort. That woman's stability could be genuinely infuriating. Lucas added quietly a moment later:"And the lady of the house wasn't named." I looked at him.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning His Majesty isn't examining House Blackwell's position this time," he said.

"He's examining us." The carriage fell silent again. Because that was the detail that actually mattered. If the king had summoned my sister, this would almost be simpler—that would be an adults' game, the kind she navigated with her eyes closed, all hidden blades and poison wrapped in pleasantries. But that wasn't what was happening. We were the ones who'd been named. Which meant that in this particular round, we weren't loose pieces on the edge of someone else's board. We were the pieces being placed.

Jessi clicked her tongue softly.

"I'm starting to miss Angel City."

"Yesterday you said even the air there deserved to be burned," Alvira said coolly.

"Right," Jessi agreed, perfectly reasonable.

"But at least the king wasn't asking to see me there."

"The fact that you've survived this long with that logic," I said, "is genuinely miraculous."

"Wrong. It's skill." She pointed at herself.

"Pickpocket instincts." The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. I managed half a smile, but the humor didn't quite land. Because everyone in this carriage knew—her joke had real fear threaded through it. The king wants to see us. Those words carried weight anywhere. They carried more when delivered by an Imperial Herald with ten minutes' notice and a carriage that felt less like transportation and more like the opening act of a funeral.

The wheels rolled steadily over the capital's cobblestones. Not loud. Just constant—the kind of sound that settles into your nerves and stays there. Outside, the streets fell away in sequence. First the familiar intersections, then wider, cleaner roads where loitering was clearly discouraged. The farther we went, the fewer people there were, the quieter everything became. Even the air felt carved with surgical precision, leaving behind only a sterile, unforgiving sense of order. I lifted the curtain slightly.

The silhouette of the royal palace had begun to emerge in the distance. High walls. Towers. Banners. And that particular quality of presence that straightened your spine from a hundred meters away—all of it standing exactly where it had always stood, reminding every approaching person: You are not going to see an ill-tempered old man. You are going to see the empire, dressed in sacred authority, seated at the center of itself. I let the curtain fall. My throat felt dry. Jessi had apparently looked outside as well.

The corner of her mouth twitched.

"I'm starting to think the lady's parting words were actually quite thoughtful." I looked at her blankly.

"Which part?"

"The bit about not dying embarrassingly."

"…"

"At least she considered the dignity of the body retrieval process," Jessi said with complete seriousness. Alvira closed her eyes, apparently deciding this wasn't worth engaging. Lucas coughed once, clearly of the same opinion. Only Olivia glanced at Jessi and said mildly:"If you're already selecting your preferred method of death, I'm going to question whether House Eisenberg made a poor investment in this venture." Jessi immediately shrank back.

"I was just talking."

"See that it stays that way." I let out a short laugh. Brief enough that I wasn't sure whether I was laughing at this group's ability to needle each other on the way to the chopping block, or at myself—for finding that my sister's funeral-oration farewell had somehow steadied me a fraction. Either way, we'd arrived. The carriage slowed, then stopped before a span of high walls and iron gates. The silence inside deepened. Not because there was nothing left to say.

Because at this point, everyone understood—anything else would just be wasting the last moments we got to spend as ordinary people. The carriage passed through into the inner city without delay. From here, the royal capital ceased to be merely a capital. The streets outside—those that still carried traces of human life, the taverns, the rumble of cart wheels, the calls of vendors—all of it fell away as though sealed behind an invisible barrier.

The moment our wheels crossed the inner gate, the ambient sound thinned dramatically. Even the paving stones seemed hand-selected, exuding a cleanliness that had nothing to do with warmth. Deeper in was where the imperial family actually lived. Every member of the royal blood—close branches, distant branches, those whose names carried enough ancestral weight to matter—all nested within these concentric walls, layering themselves like tiers of an elaborately frosted cake. At the very center sat Cliffward Keep.

And we were currently riding toward it in a carriage that resembled, in equal measure, a conveyance to a banquet and transport for the reading of a will. The magnificently self-important Imperial Herald escorted us as far as this perimeter, then apparently judged his portion of the ceremonial ritual complete. He deposited us with the energy of someone setting down luggage he'd carried too long. His parting contribution: "Someone will come to escort you into the palace shortly."

Then a dispatch rider galloped up, thrust fresh orders into his hands. The Herald—without so much as an eyebrow twitch—swung onto his horse, let his cape catch the wind, and rode off. The sequence was so fluid he looked less like a man who'd delivered royal summons and more like someone running late to his next social engagement. I watched the retreating figure and couldn't help myself.

"Busy man. That pace will age him terribly." Normally someone would have taken that bait. This time, no one did. I turned, mildly puzzled. Right. Except for Olivia, everyone's faces had gone distinctly pale. Jessi had lost a shade of color. Alvira, already pale, now looked ready to curse someone to death. Even Lucas—whose expression normally didn't change whether the sky fell or a shipment ran late—had settled into something grim. I frowned.

"What's wrong with all of you?" Jessi said nothing. She simply raised one hand and pointed out the window. I looked where she was pointing. Then I understood. The row lining the wall outside wasn't flagpoles. It was people. An entire line of them, suspended from above—one after another, like badly cured meat left to dry, hanging there with patient finality. The closer ones still had faces. The ones further back had collapsed into warped silhouettes. Clothing rotted. Flesh rotted.

On several, ribs had pushed through the fabric from beneath, as though the bodies themselves had given up maintaining their owners' last shred of dignity. Some heads lolled at unnatural angles, necks clearly snapped clean. Some had wooden placards swinging from their ankles, tapping softly against shin bones in the breeze. Birds perched on several—black feathers ruffling with each small movement, entirely unbothered by our passing, comfortable as regulars at a familiar establishment.

Worse: through the carriage window, I could still catch it faintly. The smell. Not overwhelming. But present. The particular staleness of wet cloth and old flesh and sun-damage—something adhesive that clung to the air. I stared for two full breaths before bringing my gaze back inside.

"…Quite the scenic display. Very refined palace aesthetic." No one laughed. Fair enough. Even I wasn't finding it particularly funny anymore. At that moment, the carriage door opened from outside.

"Those are the Dissenters." A voice I recognized—and hadn't wanted to hear again. I looked up. Julian Eberhart stood outside the carriage. Still wearing that face that made you wonder which god had slipped while sculpting him. Today he was dressed more appropriately than yesterday—less suicidal, less decorative, more like an actual palace escort. Unfortunately, remembering his mouth from yesterday made respect essentially impossible. I went first.

"What's a Dissenter?" Lucas had also lifted his eyes. I was fairly certain he genuinely wanted to know—though his expression suggested he was approaching it less as curiosity and more as a scholar attempting to classify a rare pathology. Julian tilted his head toward the hanging figures, his tone carrying that specific bureaucratic calm that managed to be more offensive than open arrogance.

"People who forgot where they were supposed to stand, yet couldn't stop worrying about His Majesty's affairs on his behalf." He indicated the first few bodies—the ones still recognizable.

"The front three: Deputy Minister of Justice, a records official, and a certain lord's trusted aide. They spent considerable time denouncing the Treasury Replenishment Decree, apparently believing that shouting loudly enough would make the court listen. Now they serve as reminders for everyone who follows." He glanced toward the more decomposed figures further along.

"The rest are pirates. The particularly vicious variety." I looked at the row of sun-dried former persons, then at Julian's face, which had delivered this information with the affect of a tour guide pointing out notable architecture. This palace had developed a remarkably efficient educational method. Teach etiquette. Mount the lesson materials on the wall. Julian ignored my expression and continued:"Once we're inside, follow me closely. If anyone addresses you—do not respond." Jessi's eyebrow shot up.

"Anyone?"

"Anyone," Julian said.

"The ones who sound most like casual conversation are the ones to avoid most carefully. Several people in there aren't speaking to you. They're growing themselves extra ears." He turned to Jessi specifically and offered a smile that was impeccably polite and deeply punchable.

"Miss Jessi—I must ask for your particular restraint today. Should anything go missing, the search will extend far beyond sleeves." Jessi's face became a masterpiece of conflicting emotions. The expression of someone who desperately wanted to laugh, had calculated that laughing here might result in joining the wall display, and was therefore manually throttling her own sense of humor in real time. I nearly lost it.

Alvira made a cold sound—something between a scoff and a pressure valve releasing—apparently volunteering to help Jessi suppress the laugh before it could escape. Julian stepped aside.

"Please disembark." We climbed down one by one. The moment my boots touched the ground, the atmosphere that had been pressing against the carriage walls became immediate and unambiguous. High walls. Shadows at angles that didn't match the sun. Roads swept to inhuman cleanliness. And in the distance, those figures still hanging in the wind—thoroughly dead, yet required to keep making their point. This wasn't a residence. It was a mausoleum that had arranged order into an exhibit. Julian led us forward.

Cliffward Keep's outer gate was unreasonably tall, flanked by Tideguards whose eyes carried the quality of something sharpened rather than grown. The passage beneath was cool as a well mouth. We'd barely stepped through when another unit intercepted us. Search. Weapons surrendered. Not a single unnecessary word in either direction. My short blade was confiscated first. The backup dagger tucked behind my hip didn't escape detection either.

When the guard found it, he gave me a look that roughly translated to: Did you really think you'd hidden that well? I had the perfect response ready—Try living under my sister's roof for a while and see how many backup weapons become a survival necessity. Unfortunately, this was not the venue for domestic comedy. Lucas cooperated with mechanical efficiency, surrendering everything questionable on his person as though he'd rehearsed the procedure for years.

Jessi, wearing the expression of someone watching their life's work being systematically dismantled, was relieved of an impressive collection of trinkets from her sleeves, boot soles, and belt. The sheer volume made even Julian pause for a beat.

"I told you so," he murmured. Jessi rolled her eyes.

"It's called professional integrity."

"It's called imperial contraband."

"Practically the same thing."

"Not even remotely the same thing." I watched this exchange and desperately wanted to laugh, but considering that laughing at the wrong decibel here might literally qualify for a spot on the outer wall's exhibition, I swallowed it back. Alvira's situation proved more volatile. The moment her short staff was requested, her brow locked into a furrow so sharp she looked half a second away from turning the guards into amphibians before discussing protocol. Fortunately, Olivia intervened first.

"Hand it over," she said, tone perfectly level.

"Before the king, the difference in sentencing between killing with magic and killing barehanded is largely academic." Alvira shot her a glacial look, then surrendered the staff. Quintessentially Olivia. Not comfort—just a precise outline of the worst-case scenario, delivered with enough clarity to make the slightly less catastrophic option self-evident. By the time the search concluded, we had been stripped down to our names and faces. Only then did Julian resume his role as guide.

From the outer gates inward, Cliffward Keep began to reveal its true anatomy. The corridors soared to absurd heights, vaulted ceilings hanging so far above they seemed architecturally designed to make human beings feel microscopic. The stone floors gleamed enough to reflect our shadows back at us. Portraits of past monarchs and founding generals lined both walls—every face frozen in an expression suggesting the world owed them a debt it could never repay.

Even the candelabras were taller and more skeletal than elsewhere, flames spaced in rigid intervals, illuminating the space not like a place where people lived, but like an elaborate mausoleum where the dead insisted on maintaining administrative duties. We were observed along the way. More than once. A gorgeously dressed noblewoman with a fan offered us an overly gentle smile at a corridor intersection.

An ancient minister whose beard nearly swept the floor drifted past a side gallery, eyes moving over us with the unhurried assessment reserved for livestock. Several figures in court scribe or chamberlain dress stood at respectful distances, yet their gazes clung like wet cobwebs. One young man, barely past his early twenties, even raised his hand in acknowledgment as we passed.

"Those gentlemen are—""Ignore them," Julian said without turning his head. So we did. It was a profoundly strange sensation. Seeing them clearly. Knowing they were addressing us. Yet continuing forward with expressions of perfect deafness. Like a procession of freshly preserved specimens—available for viewing, strictly prohibited from making sound. I considered glancing back to see the young man's reaction. Olivia, apparently possessing telepathic access to my worst impulses, spoke quietly:"Don't look back."

"I just wanted to—""Every additional thought you entertain typically produces an additional problem." I closed my mouth. Because, regrettably, she was usually right. Two more corridors brought us to a section of absolute quiet. Even the foot traffic had vanished here. Attendants moved without sound. The air itself felt filtered—scrubbed clean of anything resembling human warmth.

At the far end stood massive dark doors, so impossibly tall I genuinely wondered whether they led to an audience chamber or a dragon enclosure. Two columns of palace guards flanked the entrance. Not ordinary sentries. The kind where a single glance communicated that if someone coughed off-rhythm, they'd be on the floor before questions were asked. Julian stopped before the doors and finally turned to face us. For once, his irritating smile was absent. No unnecessary pleasantries either.

"From this point forward—do not look around unnecessarily, do not speak unnecessarily, and do not open your mouth before His Majesty does." His gaze swept over each of us, settling finally on me.

"Especially you, young master Rosa." I twisted the corner of my mouth.

"Shouldn't you have mentioned that earlier?"

"I was concerned you'd interpret it as begging."

"Don't worry. At this point I only interpret it as last-minute damage control before corpse collection." Something twitched at the corner of his eye. Good. At least I wasn't the only one profoundly uncomfortable in this place. Julian stepped aside, clearing the path to the colossal doors. Attendants moved forward in complete silence. No sound came from within. Which was precisely what made my throat go dry.