The Company recovered from injuries sustained in the tournament. They noted a strange woman who treated Tiber's wounds. They couldn't get a good look at her face and said something that convinced Tiber to leave with her.
Per tradition the Glass Knight opened the Feast of the Stars by distributing accolades to those who had best served the realm. For retrieving the Crown and restoring his faculties, the Glass Knight promoted Tiber and Auckland to his council. He thanked Ada for taking care of him for many years but couldn't promote her because she was already his right hand. He also thanked the deceased Pearl Knight Lauder for saving his wife from the Underworld and his daughter Gert for taking over the holding at Cuganscove.
Ada, Gert and the Knights were seated based on the earned accolades, beating Paste, Alexander and Boar to sit by the King and Queen. Also per tradition, those seated by the king had to speak about their adventures. Valenta told a story about her journey to the land of the dead. She described emerging from the side of the mountain and being rescued by the Salt Knight, the fight with the shadows, the Pearl Knight coming to her aid and his heroic death closing the gate to the Underworld. Gert broke a glass in her clenched fist. Her chamberlain swept forward without speaking and grabbed her mangled hand, preventing her from squeezing the shards into her joints. The old sailor with a curled mustache like a pair of snails dropped his bag on the table, splattering gravy from Gert's lambchops everywhere and producing a pair of tweezers.
Where was the Salt Knight, the King asked? The Squire Shoat whispered something in his ear.
McBride
Auckland told the story of the fight at the tavern and the clockwork horse, which delighted Boar. Valenta noted that the War Knight Alexander was staring at the King's crown. He wasn't bothered by the Company usurping his seat at the big table for the feast, he was bothered by the crown.
The King asked what happened to Reme. Did he go off with the Salt Knight? The Company reminded him that he had died saving Valenta from Veryl's Vanguard. The King immediately raised a glass to the dead Squire. Brave men were not always Knights. The Knights drank to his memory and Autolykos drank with them, seated at the low table.
Since Ada had been given a place of honor she was obliged to speak. She grinned.
You are muffled in folds of heavy fabric. You close your eyes against the rough cloth and though you struggle to free yourself you can barely move. With much thrashing and writhing, you manage to throw off another layer, but find that not only is there another one beyond it, but that the weight bearing you down has scarcely decreased. With dauntless spirit you continue to struggle. By infinitesimal degrees, the load becomes lighter and your confinement less. At last, you push away a piece of coarse, heavy cloth and, relieved, feel that it was the last one. As it falls away, you realize you have been fighting through years. You open your eyes.
Valenta tried to interpret the meaning of this epigram. Auckland spoke of the martial skill of Autolykos, who toppled two great lords at the tournament with only a hunting spear. The Glass Knight asked why he felt it necessary to bring that up at his dinner table. The Horn Knight reminded him that brave men were not always Knights and the King laughed. It was a good thing these guys were on his side! Valenta apologized to Gert for leading her husband to his death at the gates of the underworld. Gert said she hoped she never had to choose between saving her own life or her children. At the other end of the table, Glorietta poured Boar more wine. He had brought his wife's servant but not his wife.
The Glass Knight bid his councilors adjourn before they got too drunk. They had business to discuss before the feast was over. Alexander, Boar, Valenta, Auckland and the Captain of the Guard Paste joined the Glass Knight around the onyx table, leaving their servants behind. Ada was supposed to accompany him but was nowhere to be found. The King broke the news.
The realm was doomed. The Seers had foreseen a great calamity that would destroy it. A flood and a winter that would never end. There was no stopping it and the only way for the people to survive was to move somewhere else. They were going to invade the realm to the north and take it over. He had known about this for a long time but hadn't had the moral strength to go through with it. But with the Crown on his head he realized that his responsibility was to the realm and its people, not to the foreign kingdom he would conquer.
Paste pulled a map out of a locked cabinet. It was a wooden board with little sculpted hexes depicting the terrain. A land of olive groves and mountains and rainshadow deserts. Alexander immediately told the King that this was a stupid idea. He owed the Glass Knight loyalty, not obedience, and it was his job to tell him that invading another realm because of a myth was going to be a disaster. The Glass Knight patiently explained to his former squire that it would be a herculean undertaking but it was his duty and he didn't like it any more than his vassals. Alexander really took issue with the King carrying on about duty after spending years doing nothing while his Knights carried the realm on their backs.
Auckland headed off an argument by asking about his role in the plan. The King needed him and Tiber to serve as bailiffs and heralds, organizing the evacuation of the realm and heading off any threats to the plan. The Horn Knight suggested tracking down and hiring the Flying Swords. They could be a major pain or they could be a major asset. The Glass Knight gave his blessing to buy their allegiance.
Boar was a career soldier. He understood that a war of conquest would be long and unpleasant. He liked fucking his wife and living off taxes from the bridge. But one last chance to do the only thing he was ever really good at was too good to pass up. He argued with Paste over the map, excited to have something to do.
That left Valenta's role in the plan. She wanted to quest with Auckland and Tiber but the Glass Knight wouldn't allow it. If she went questing she'd be out there for a year, and they had to make their escape before winter entombed them and the passes over the mountains closed up. He needed her by his side to sell the plan to the people of the realm. She had just come back from the dead and they weren't sick of her yet.
Valenta convinced the King that she needed to confer with a Seer before she threw herself behind his plan. He bade her take his squire Shoat to be Knighted by the Drunken Seer to the northeast. Boar asked to speak with his son before the journey which was allowed. They'd talk more in the morning.
Alexander pulled Auckland aside in the hall after the meeting. The pieces on the little wooden map of the northern realm were freshly cut. The lacquer was barely dry. The King hadn't been planning this for years, he hadn't thought about it at all until that fucking Crown went on his head. Valenta came over and Alexander shut the hell up, but she agreed with him. The Crown had spoken to her just as it had to Auckland, begging to be worn. It was super evil and she was going to the Seer to straighten out the whole situation. Figure out if the destruction of the realm was really inevitable.
Valenta turned around and noticed Glorietta sitting outside the council chamber, working on her needlepoint. She interrogated the servant about her little art project, unconvinced that the regular pattern of dashes was a design. Boar came out and told the Queen that his wife's body servant was dyslexic. She couldn't take notes using normal letters so she used her own shorthand. She didn't use a quill and parchment because if people noticed her taking notes on meetings it would change what they said. Then he warned Valenta about the War Knight Alexander. He was a predator who stalked people as they traveled through his mountains. He gave people hospitality in his great hall at Castleview then when they left they never made it home. They were two of a kind, him and Boar, only one was more dangerous because he was a Knight.
Auckland asked the King where the Salt Knight had gone. According to Shoat, he was last seen leaving with the Drunken Seer.
That night Queen Valenta tried to take off the Glass Knight's crown during sex. It wouldn't come off his head. A noise woke her before sunup. She looked out the window and saw the castellan opening the gates of the Great Glass Mountain to allow the War Knight and his entourage to ride out into the dark.
Talhoffer
The Horn Knight, the Chain Knight, Autolykos and Shoat rode out in the morning. As the King's herald the Horn Knight was allowed to draw a handsome arming sword from the castle armory. They found a horse for the woodsman and helped Shoat into his full panoply. After what happened to Reme nobody was taking any chances letting their Squires run around unarmored. The little pony beneath him sagged so his sabatoned feet almost touched the earth. He wasn't happy about being handed off again, first by his father to the Glass Knight and now by the Glass Knife to his wife. But today might be the day he was knighted, so he kept his mouth shut. If they galloped they could reach the Drunken Seer's lair by nightfall, and gallop they did.
As they crossed the Funeral Plain a mourner hailed them from the necropolis. Valenta dismounted and approached on foot, and he showed her her own tomb. He pointed to the bones of the wyvern that adorned the mausoleum. The stinger was not the original spur of the beast, but a stone replica. The Queen could not determine the meaning of this and the mourner would not elaborate.
The search for the Seer's abode went nowhere until the sun set and the glow of her fire was visible amid the hills. The smoke had merged with the gray sky and the mist so it was invisible by day but in twilight and eventually by dark it lit the way to the glen. The horses stumbled. The men aboard the horses worried they had lamed the beasts in their hastes to reach the grove. They dismounted and stumbled as well. They hobbled the horses. They drew closer and drunker.
The servitors of the Drunken Seer danced and drank and lay around a bonfire clad in satyr costumes. The Seer sat atop a boulder. She drank something from a tiny flask and spat a mouthful onto an effigy of a crown, which burst into flame. Valenta asked if the Crown had clouded the Glass Knight's judgement or if the realm was really doomed to drown and then to freeze. The Seer proclaimed that the Twelve Wood Diadem granted the wearer true kingship. If the King decreed that they must leave the realm then it was so. The flood could swallow the realm or itself be swallowed. It didn't matter because the True King's word was law.
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William Blake Richmond
The Satyrs pawed at Valenta. The Maenads stripped Shoat of his panoply. Autolykos noticed the olive tree was carved with endless crowns. The Seer lost interest in the Queen and turned her attention to the Squire. She asked Shoat if he was ready to drink. He said that he was and she fell atop him. The Knights couldn't see if she kissed, bit or forced something into his mouth. The servitors stood and turned on the Company. They didn't look drunk anymore. They looked hungry. Excited. Autolykos reached for his discarded spear and when he touched it they rushed forward in a mob. The last thing Auckland saw was Tiber's face among them.
They dreamed of the white rose again. The white rose and laughing at something outrageous that would never happen, until someone stabbed them from behind and the white rose was stained with blood.
The Knights woke hungover but otherwise unharmed, soaked by the light drizzle accumulating in their bed of dying heather. Shoat lay in a suit of siege armor, mace clasped over his chest in two hands like a funeral effigy. His pony was nowhere to be found but the Dusty Steed licked his face. He rose as the newly minted Seal Knight as Autolykos finished pissing behind the olive tree. Tiber was still missing.
The Seal Knight helped Queen Valenta rise and brought her water. He was ready to escort her back to the capitol as soon as she was ready to leave. She petitioned him to take her questing with the other Knights. The cursed Crown was affecting the Glass Knight's judgement and going back to help him prepare for war was premature. It was possible the flood and the endless winter could be averted, the Seer said so even while affirming the soundness of the King's judgement. The Seal Knight could not agree. He swore an oath to honor the Seers and to his liege lord, ruler of the realm. He couldn't start breaking oaths on his first day of knighthood. Valenta demured and agreed to accompany him back to the capitol. She'd do damage control and trust the rest of the Company to handle the myths without her.
Before leaving with Valenta the Seal Knight pressed a smear of wax to Autolykos' buffcoat, then imprinted it with his signet ring. The little image of a spiny boar would protect the huntsman from a single blow. Then he departed with the Queen, leaving the hunter and the Horn Knight to look for the Salt Knight before continuing their quest for the Flying Swords.
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