Novels by Lord of pen

They did not crown him that morning. Kael had half expected it. He had lain awake in a borrowed bed in the east wing of the palace, listening to the city wake up, and in the grey hour before dawn he had rehearsed refusals in his head. Polite ones. Firm ones. One in which he explained, at length, that he had spent most of his life minding sheep. But when he came down to the Great Hall at the second bell, the long tables had been pushed back and a single round table set in the middle of the marble floor, plain oak, scarred and old, with four chairs. Nobody sat in the throne. Someone had swept the rubble from the steps and laid a plain grey cloth over the seat. The great black chair stood at the head of the hall with its name uncovered, and the morning light fell across the words. HELD IN TRUST FOR THE FOUR. "It's a table," said Sorrel, at his shoulder. "Mother's idea. She says the Four have never sat at one before." "Where do I sit?" "That's the question." The Fox grinned. "Nobody'

The clans came to Solhaven at dusk, and the city came out to watch them.Aurelia stood in the shadow of the great gate with Tavian beside her and a borrowed hood pulled low. She had not slept. She had walked the length of the old quarter at midday with Sorrel to find the Fox delegation's outriders, and again at three, and again at five, and each time the crowds in the streets had been a little thicker. Nobody spoke. Nobody cheered. They simply stood along the Avenue of Suns in their heavy winter coats, row on row, with their children on their shoulders and the marigold petals of the anniversary long since trampled to brown mud, and waited."They've never seen anything like it," Tavian murmured."No.""Neither have I."It came up the road in the last red light, a slow, silent river of people.First walked the Foxes, in grey and green, with lanterns on long poles. At their head went a small woman in a plain gown, with a velvet cushion in her arms. Ysolde did not look at the crowd. She l

The news about Renn came at dawn, from a fishwife, for the price of a cup of tea.Sorrel brought it back to the loft above the tannery where they were hiding, grinning in a way that made Aurelia want to hit him. "Alive," he said. "I swear it. A captain of the imperial guard, in a Princess's coat, taken alive at the burning chapel and carried to the palace cells on a hurdle. Three lancers with her. The whole street's talking about it. They say the soldiers on the cordon wouldn't hit her."Aurelia sat down on a sack of hides and put her face in her hands.Kael did not say anything. He crouched beside her and waited. After a while she wiped her eyes, nodded once, and stood up."Right," she said. "The gatekeeper."The east wall of the palace ran along a quiet, steep lane where nobody lived. High stone, no windows, a drainage ditch full of black water. The postern sat at the bottom of it, a low iron-bound door with a lamp over it, and next to the postern, rising out of the wall like a cut

Lord Cressin did not attack.That was what Aurelia could not stop thinking about, afterward. He stood in the lane in the thin lamplight with his notebook open and two hundred men spread behind him in the dark, and he spoke to the chapel door as though he were paying a call. He had brought a camp stool. A servant unfolded it for him. He sat down on it, crossed his legs, and waited for someone to answer.Aurelia stood just inside the door with her ear against the wood. Kael had come down from the bell tower in a single leap and now stood beside her, his hand on the Wolf's sword. Tavian was at the other side of the frame. Nobody breathed."Highness," called Cressin. "I am so sorry to disturb you at this hour."She did not answer."I shall be brief. I have two hundred of the Regency's finest soldiers around this building. I have eleven hounds. I have every alley and every roof for a quarter mile, and I have been told by a very reliable source that the chapel has a single cellar door, whic

Kael had been hunted by hounds, shot by crossbows, and punched ten times by a Bear, and he had never been so miserable as he was in the bottom of a salt barrel.It was dark and cramped and smelled like the sea. The lid pressed against his hair. His knees were jammed against his chest, a thin layer of coarse grey salt stung every scratch he owned, and somewhere above him the barge rocked gently on the slow brown water of the Solhaven river. He could hear everything. The creak of rope. The slap of a pole. The tiny, constant scrape of grains settling against the wood.And voices. A great many voices, getting closer."Fox barge," called a man on the wharf. "Name and cargo.""Sorrel of the Vane house, factor, with thirty barrels of Saltmere white for the Solhaven market." Sorrel's voice was bright and unhurried, a perfect imitation of a man who had never in his life been afraid of a customs officer. "Is that Wharfmaster Dunn? Gods, it is. I haven't seen you since the autumn fair. You've lo

On the fourth day the notices began.Aurelia saw the first one at a crossroads inn at dawn, nailed to a post beside a rain-washed milestone. Kael saw it a moment later and went very still. It was the same rough paper as the Wolf poster at the ford, but the face on it was not his.It was hers.The artist had done her a kindness. The portrait was a little too pretty, with her hair in a neat coil and her eyes wide and gentle. Above it, in bold black letters, ran six lines of print.BY ORDER OF THE REGENCY COUNCIL OF THE LION EMPIRE. HER HIGHNESS PRINCESS AURELIA HAS BEEN ABDUCTED BY WOLF SORCERY AND IS BEING HELD AGAINST HER WILL. ANY CITIZEN WHO SIGHTS HER IS TO REPORT TO THE NEAREST GARRISON. REWARD FOR HER SAFE RETURN: TEN THOUSAND GOLD LIONS. HER CAPTORS ARE TO BE TAKEN ALIVE OR DEAD.Below it, in smaller print, a single line. The Emperor is indisposed."Abducted," said Sorrel. He had read it aloud twice, with growing admiration. "That's very neat. He doesn't have to accuse you of tr