Firelight, from a single lantern set as the centerpiece, flickered in the dark.
Lyara and her two co-conspirators leaned their elbows on her father’s thick reading table, each seated on the edge of their upholstered chair cushions as they poured over the collection of texts. Most of her father’s books still occupied their proper places on the wall, filling the massive shelves that lined the entirety of the long and narrow room, but Seren had done his best to make a royal mess of it.
Really, she expected better from a supposed scholar. Or was it that, back home on his estate, he had someone to fetch and put away books for him?
“I don’t want the crown,” Dradge said. Not for the first time, but at this iteration he held each of their gazes—it wasn’t a statement any longer, it was probably as close as the man came to begging. “Seren, why aren’t you answering me? This is supposed to be your sort of thing. Don’t go thinking I’m that dense, I’m pretty sure I know why you agreed to follow me here.”
Seren glanced up from his book—he’d rifled through so many in succession Lyara wasn’t sure which one this was—suddenly interested in the last of what Dradge had to say. He gave a wry grin—Gods, aside from that smile he might be everything she hated about Edras rolled into one person. “You think I befriended you on a calculation?”
Dradge stared at him, with the barest hint of a shrug. “Didn’t you?”
Seren’s smile faded, and with the way the light flickered in his grey eyes Lyara could almost believe he was genuinely hurt. “Nearly every human heart carries the need for companionship, let me assure you I was most displeased to find that weakness in myself. The platonic sort is the easiest to locate and maintain, but it is not something anyone can calculate.”
Dradge’s gaze seemed to soften at that, but Seren just leaned back, shoving his book towards the center of the table.
“This is our key. Most any man who’s served with you, which is about all of Edras, will follow if you ask him, but I can’t say you hold the same sway over the Fidelis. They aren’t loyal to Hilderic, either, but I suspect they’d prefer the status quo over uncertainty without proper motivation, and they won’t be able to resist fighting for one of you.”
Dradge nodded, folding his arms, as though listening to a briefing. Such the soldier. Lyara frowned as she peered down at that book, and her eyes widened as they skirted across the page. That was a volume of her father’s religious texts—they were simply numbered, with no titles at all—that was the forebears prophecy. She knew it by heart.
A child of scythe and sword
This song the blackbird sings
Right by Ìsendorál restored
Victory the autumn brings
One flame from the shadows
Will light one thousand more
A gallant heart overflows
Taking back what was before.
“Fidelis don’t ‘take sides,’” she said, “they are holy—”
Seren chuckled. “Please. You worship at their altars but I’ve studied with them, lived among them, been privy to their councils. They are men and women of ambition, same as the rest of us. What sets them apart are not their ends, but their means of achieving those ends. What we need are those means, and the means to make their ends our ends.”
“…what are you saying?”
Seren tapped the page. “You’re Láefe. Tell me, what would your holy men give to see this fulfilled?”
Lyara pressed her arms against her chest; the room suddenly felt very, very cold. “We don’t fulfill prophecy, prophecy is fulfilled by—”
“Was Gallian god or man?” Seren peered over the lantern’s light, holding her gaze. She started to shake her head. “You need to answer this, Lyara, for your own sake. Was your fonfyr a god or a man?”
She shuddered, forcing herself to keep looking at him, but she couldn’t push that false strength to her voice. “Gallian was a man.”
“And so who should we expect to produce a fonfyr now, gods or men?”
Lyara let out a breath and had to look again at those flowing stanzas on the page before her. The Essence moves by its own intentions—the quip floated through her mind, but even echoing there, safe and fully hers, she knew it didn’t say enough. What did she expect to do, sit in chapels whispering prayers for another hundred years while men like that twisted what was sacred to serve their own appetites?
Dradge grasped her hand, glaring at Seren. “Leave her out of this.”
Seren raised his arms, about to start into an apology, but Lyara shook her head. “…no.” She squeezed Dradge’s hand. “Don’t leave me out.”
Seren grinned, a boyish excitement softening the edge in his smile. “I’m glad to hear it, because I doubt we’ll pull this off without you.”
Lyara frowned, but almost thought he meant that. “Why?”
He pointed at the third stanza. “We need an Ìsendorál.”