Read Kings of the North for Free Online Page B

be asked what you know.”
    “Council meeting?”
    Marrakai leaned across the table toward them. “Of course—Verrakai’s seat has been vacant since your uncle’s treason, but as Duke, you’re entitled to a Council seat unless the king changes his mind. You will have to spend hours—I was going to claim a headache, but you and the Marshal-General made that impossible.”
    Duke Serrostin, next to Marrakai, laughed. “You’re incorrigible, Selis. You could let Duke Verrakai decide for herself if Council meetings are boring. Besides, complaints or no, you always show up early and are the last to leave.”
    “It’s my duty,” Marrakai said, hand over his heart. His eyes twinkled. Dorrin smiled a little uncertainly.
    Serrostin smiled at her. “You’ll find, Duke Verrakai, that we three are sometimes considered difficult. Once there were eight dukes in Tsaia, but after the Girdish wars only five intact dukedoms remained. The new king—the one the Girdish allowed—chose to break up the others into counties or redistribute the land to those who were left. The Code of Gird recommends dissolution whenever there’s a break in inheritance—and for various crimes as well. Tsaian law doesn’t require it, but the Fellowship has pushed for fewer large estates. At any rate, the Escral title died out about a hundred yearsafter the Girdish war—that was in the northwest, bordering Fintha. Dirga, perhaps a hundred years after that—they bordered Lyonya in the southeast, from the mountains north to your own domain.”
    “What Counts Konhalt and Clannaeth hold now?”
    “And others. There are some free towns. Brewersbridge is one, nominally in Clannaeth’s rule, but it has special status. Fiveway—well, actually that’s in Harbin’s, I think. Counts can propose barons to the Crown Council—so there are baronies within counties—or the Crown sometimes grants them independently, when it’s believed the baron will develop into someone who could manage a county.”
    “But very few dukes,” Dorrin said.
    “Yes. Well, that’s natural. King at the top of the mountain, dukes next. More counts than dukes, more barons than counts, more commoners than anyone else.”
    “But are there only we four?”
    “There’s Gerstad,” Marrakai said. “But he’s old and never leaves home. Had no children—well, he did, but they all died in a fever. Bitter as gall, and I can’t wonder at it, but he’s never at court and his domain’s in sad state. If it weren’t for Count Rundgren—and you, Serrostin—”
    Serrostin shrugged. “I do what I can,” he said. “It isn’t much; he won’t allow it.”
    “So it is mostly we four,” Mahieran said. “At this level, anyway. Which made it very difficult when your uncle was Duke, as we were not exactly close.”

     
    N ext morning, all the nobles appeared for the Council meeting: the king named his new officers of the court, confirmed the new Marshal-Judicar officially as a royal appointment and Juris Kostvan as the new Knight-Commander of the Bells—a popular choice, Dorrin gathered, from the reaction. Then he named his Council. The others stood and applauded, then filed out, while the Council gathered around the table.
    “I welcome you all,” the king said, “both those who were on my Regency Council and those who are new to this gathering. As events this year have proved, threats loom over Tsaia, but together and withGird’s aid we will prevail.” He looked around the table; Dorrin saw the others smile and nod. “Now,” the king said, “Duke Verrakai will report on the danger we face from Verrakaien magery.”
    Dorrin repeated what she had explained before about the transference of personality into unwilling victims. “And as I wrote the king, we found children—” she said.
    “Their own children?” asked Oktar, the new Marshal-Judicar.
    “I am not sure.” Dorrin explained what she suspected about the parentage of at least some of the children who had suffered