Glace sat in a cramped, dim cave with Stasia, Larc, Kiner, and Casser. It was a small King's Council—Nay, Queen's Council, for Stasia was sure to be Queen. Glace was among those who believed that if the other princesses had survived, they would have been found by now. He could not say so to Stasia, though. She still spoke of her sisters as if they were alive.
In spite of her inexperience and her previous lack of interest in politics, Glace thought that she was doing well as Regent. She had organized the Guilds, put a system of raids and rations in place, and maximized the small space in the burial chamber. She had appointed her own advisors, Casser and Larc. Kiner had survived the war as the highest ranking Icer other than Casser, and she had promoted him as such to General. Since Stasia was the highest ranking Royal, and the Gendarme outranked all other positions in the Warrior Guild, Glace ranked now as the highest Warrior, High Captain of the Gendarme.
Glace hated being High Captain, mainly because it kept him from Stasia’s side. Other than these brief councils, he was constantly training and organizing recruits, planning raids, counting warriors. Sometimes he thought he had been promoted simply to keep him occupied. Of the rest of her Guard, only two men had survived, Glint and Fedor. Glace had pulled seven more from the most promising of the recruits and filled out her Guard with them, but it still irked him not to be by her side more often.
At least this council session had granted him a bit of relief by restricting her to the Burial chamber. Stasia, of course, was livid. She sat on her stone stool, hands gripping the edge of the table so tight that her knuckles were white, venting her anger in a loud and animated tone. She looked beautiful even in anger, with her hair done up high in elaborate silver plaits. Her yellow-green eyes could have shot sparks into Casser, who sat opposite her. The elder Icer's eyes were not calm either, though his anger was more subdued. He sat silent, letting his niece rage on about the council. Kiner, sitting beside him, was nodding fervently at Stasia’s expletives. Larc sat opposite Glace, next to Stasia. The too-pretty Icer appeared calm and collected, although Glace detected a hint of anxiety behind her demeanor.
“How dare they? I have a mind to get with child from one of the guildless refugees just to spite them. Thinking they can breed me out, like a molebear fem in heat. Curse Wyfus! I should have him conscripted, see how well he can manipulate the council after he dies in a raid. Fish slime!”
Duty and deference, Glace reminded himself. She had a duty, as much as he did, and hers was to provide heirs to the throne. Her duty had been less urgent when she was thirteenth in line, but now it would be imperative. His mind said that, but hot jealousy crept down his ribs to his gut. When he had heard Cygnet’s proposal during council, he let his anger out through his axe, hardly noticing what he was doing until the fisher he was training squeaked, “Yield, yield!” Then he realized that he had backed the man against a wall and was hacking at his shield with the axe. Duty, he reminded himself now, taking a deep breath. Duty and deference.
Stasia’s curses continued, and at last Casser interrupted in a commanding voice. “We cannot sit here and rage all chime, Stasia. It is good to let off steam, but we must speak before the council reconvenes. Do you need to hit something?”
Stasia's rage dissolved into a disgruntled expression. “I—hit something?”
“Your father would often take a practice sword and spend the chime between sessions in the Warrior's yard. It helped him stay focused during the next session.”
A look of incredulity crept over the princess's face. Had she never known this about her father? From time to time Glace had been called to mock-battle with his own King. It was good training for a warrior; Krevas would suppress his T'Jas, to make the fight fair, but he was a worthy opponent even so. Glace felt a glimmer of loss; he would never again see Krevas march angrily into the training square, pick up a dull-tipped blade, and make the challenge stance. He pushed the feeling down, and focused on Stasia. She was trying to regain her fury, but wasn't succeeding.
“I do not think I will need that, Casser, thank you.”
Casser drew himself up; he was tall for an Icer, and though Glace was much taller still, the older man dominated the table. Stasia looked slightly sulky, as if she knew a lecture was coming.
“Your ruling today was highly unorthodox, niece. It may have seemed clever at the time, and perhaps it was, but you will pay for it. You have not made one single friend on the Council, and those who might have been swayed to support you now fear your power. What you did in there was no compromise; it was completely undiplomatic. You showed the Council that you will rule as you please, no matter their wishes.”
“But Casser, don't you see how absurd it is for them to restrict whether I can leave this cavern? What if we are attacked here? Do I have to wait for a ruling before I can flee? If I am taken prisoner, am I to say to the Flames, 'you will have to wait for our next council meeting, I am not allowed to leave?' The very proposal was insulting. The Council was telling me they have no faith in my judgement.”
“It was a test, and you failed, Stas.” Larc shifted her feet as she said it, but her voice was strong.
Glace admired Larc's bravery. He had seen the same thing, in what little he had heard of the Council from the training square, but he would not have been able to tell Stasia that to her face. Larc went on, “They gave you a small matter for the first proposal, so that they could judge your response. Now that you have taken the hard line, they will resist you at every turn.”
Casser spoke before Stasia could explode again. The Regent was glaring daggers at her friend. “And that does not even speak to your bringing up surrender. That was a clear breach of the charter, which states that the monarch may not debate any proposal before it is laid before them. You did not merely debate it, you refuted it before it even became a proposal. Treason to speak of surrender? Will you have Glace arrest me now, because I have spoken that word twice?”
Glace hoped Casser did not underestimate his niece's brashness. He did not want to have to arrest the Prince; Casser might be the only one to whom Stasia might occasionally listen.
“Don't be absurd, Uncle. You know I will not. Surely you can see that I had to stop that kind of talk. How can we wage war if half the people are ready to simply give up? We must have a strong Iskalon. The charter is absurd. Why should I not be able to speak my piece, like any other citizen?”
“Because you are not a citizen, you are royalty.” Glace was startled to hear the words leave his own mouth. The other three swiveled to stare at him, and from the sharpness in Stasia's eyes, and the impatience in Casser's, he regretted speaking, but he could not stop now. He had studied the history of the Royal line of Iskalon in great depth, read every gold plate on the subject, and Stasia needed to know what he knew. “When the Great Cataya united the people of Iskalon under herself, a single monarch, she knew that without balance, her power could be as harmful to the people as she meant it to be good. It was your own ancestor who created the council system, asking the people to elect representatives from their craft groups, for this was before the Guilds. She pledged that although she had absolute authority to make decisions, she would hear the people's position on every matter before she ruled.”
When he stopped, there was silence. Stasia's features had softened somewhat, Casser looked a little more attentive. Larc wore a tiny smile. Glace looked his Queen in the eyes. He had often gazed on the sculpture of Queen Cataya that stood before the Council Hall—had stood; the Flames had likely rendered it to dust. Stasia bore more than a passing resemblance to the great monarch, although the wisdom and peace the artist had captured in Cataya's eyes were eagerness and impatience in Stasia's. He expected a reprimand, or a shift in the conversation back to the council meeting at hand, but instead Stasia said, “Go on,” in a cold but contemplative voice.
Glace needed no further prodding. He launched into as brief an account as he could manage of the evolution of the councils after Cataya’s mysterious disappearance. How to explain the increasing power of the representatives without describing the entire shift of the craft groups into Guilds? How to convey the importance of the silent monarch to the people, without detailing the ten great rebellions, and the shifts in royal family that made Stasia's ties to Cataya's line tenuous at best? As he spoke, he could not help wondering why they allowed him to eat up the precious time before Fifth with his histories. Didn't Stasia know these things already?
“The last great rebellion was more than three hundred years before Krevas's rein. We have few records from that time, because the people stopped mining, and no gold plate was made. We do know that the entire royal family was killed in their sleep, before anyone knew there was a problem. Supposedly a distant cousin survived, and carried the blood of Cataya on into the next monarch, but for many years Iskalon was without any ruler. It is believed that the King who precipitated that rebellion, King Lentel, did so by disbanding the Council and ordering the representatives beheaded.”
Larc shuddered. Casser said, “Thank you, Glace. I believe that is all we have time for, at the moment. Stasia may rely on you for your knowledge later. It is fortunate that some of what was lost in our royal library is carried on in your mind.
“Do you see now, Niece? Without you, Iskalon shall be a boat with no pole in the midst of the lake. But you must steer her where she wants to go, not where you alone will.”
From the look on her face, all of the Stasia’s rage had faded into regret. “I see that I am unfit, Casser. I have been foolish and selfish. I will be the most meek, quiet Regent there ever was, until my sisters are found.” She looked at her hands, and Glace felt her loss of heart keenly.
“You won't be alone, Stasia.” Larc reached for her friend's hand. “We will be here to advise you.”
Stasia let Larc clasp her fingers, but her eyes went to Casser. “Am I to be a figurehead, then?”
Again, Glace's mouth opened of its own accord. “You are to be a Queen.”
She looked at him in surprise, as if she had never really considered the notion. She raised her chin and drew herself up taller. In the distance, Fifth chime sounded, clear and sweet, echoing into their tiny alcove. Stasia stood first, smoothing her garments and straightening her Regent’s crown. Her shoulders were straight, and Glace could almost see the duty pressing on them. For the first time, Glace saw her not as a rebellious princess, defiant and childish, but as the Queen, regal and wise, an echo of Cataya.
“Let us go,” she said, and her voice was not resigned, it was almost eager, “And hear what the people of Iskalon want.”