Jay read the scene. The King wanted to see him, now. The footbath and food were the polite greeting for an arrival, but he wouldn’t be given time to sit down and enjoy them.
“The King wishes you to attend her at once,” said Holding, while Jay stripped off his boots and quickly rinsed his feet in the basin as the boy set it down. “She sent me to see that you do not delay.”
Jay frowned. King Silver was young, greedy, unreasonable, and hadn’t learned not to whine in meetings yet, but she wasn’t easily panicked. He donned the pair of slippers that the boy produced from the pouch at his belt and wolfed down a biscuit that tasted like wood chips. Something must be going on. Something unexpected.
Jay followed Holding through the stone halls. The lamps in the great hall were lit. The audience was expected soon, then. The Seablades must have beaten him through the gates.
The corridors Holding led Jay through were stone-cold, despite the heat of the day outside. Coal fires in the hearths took off some of the chill but the clay statues and bas-reliefs set against the walls did nothing to soften appearances.
Holding the Keys marched Jay straight to the King’s private study. It was one of the few rooms on the second floor that sported a real door. Holding knocked.
“Whoever it is, you had better have Messenger with you!” shrilled the King from the other side.
“I have, My King.” Holding swung the door back and stood aside.
Jay marshaled his wits and walked across the threshold.
The study was a jumble of precious wooden furniture piled with vellum scrolls and clumsily bound books. It had been built around one of the eight “shadow pillars” that helped support the High House. Silver said her great-great-great-grandmother had ordered the House built over them, as a reminder that the Kings of Narroways were supported by the Nameless Powers.
Jay had actually considered saying a grace for Silver’s grandmother. The pillar and its weird, blobby shadows had sent the Unifiers looking for the underground chambers that had yielded their only real clues to the workings of the Home Ground.
King Silver stooped over her chart bowl, the Realm’s equivalent of a globe. It was literally a deep bowl with a map of the Realm painted on its inside.
“There is word,” she said, not giving Jay any chance to observe formalities, “that a contingent of soldiers from First City, maybe as many as one hundred, has vanished. Now, where, Messenger of the Skymen, do you suppose they have gone?”
Even by the standards of the Realm, Silver on the Clouds was a tiny woman, which might account for her perpetual belligerence. The scarlet ribbon tattoo that adorned a King outlined her jaw and brow. It stretched badly whenever she gathered her face up into a frown.
Jay mustered a calm tone. “I expect they have gone to take up a new position in case their delegation fails to make peace with Your Majesty.”
“I expect that is the truth. Further, I expect that I would not have to worry about them if you would loan me a few of your Skyman miracles so my generals could fend them off. Or perhaps your masters are not so anxious to see Narroways the sole and whole power of the Realm as you have said.”
So we’re back to that. “Majesty, I have asked for weapons. I have been refused …”
“Then you will ask again!” she shrieked, and Jay took a step back. “I will tell you this, Skyman, this war eats at my city. My commanders grow uneasy. A King with uneasy commanders is not long safe, Skyman, and I treasure my safety. Be assured, if I must hand my name back to the Nameless Powers, I will not be doing so alone.”
“You are winning.”
“Yes.” She rested her hands on the edge of the bowl. “But I am winning slowly. If this war we make is not finished soon, Skyman, I will cease to win at all. I will lose and the walls of Narroways will come crashing down over my funeral pyre.”
She pushed past him. “You will stand beside me and hear what the Seablades have to say for themselves.”
“As always, Your Majesty.” Jay did not shake his head at her back, but he wanted to. There were days he seriously regretted helping Silver depose her grandfather.
Holding the Keys, with his typical efficiency, had assembled King Silver’s honor guard outside her door. She had expected them to be there and breezed into the center of the ranks. They snapped to attention and marched forward, leaving Jay and Holding to fall into step behind.
The procession reached the threshold of the audience hall and a dozen Bonded touched tapers to the lamps hanging from its rough walls just as the King stepped in. Light flickered against gold and steel jewelry only to be absorbed again by the dull colors of the clothing of the assembled courtiers.