Through Wolf's Eyes (81 page)

Here Derian paused for a moment, for the title for
male and female Great House heirs was pronounced the same, though
spelled differently. Then he shrugged and stormed
on, "And earles all arguing for positions that—no matter how they are worded—are meant merely to advance their personal causes."

Sapphire didn't look offended, neither did Shad.
Derian reflected that what he had said was no news at all to scions of
Great Houses. How had he ever been so naive as to believe that those
noble born were any different from the lowliest farmer or cobbler?

Derian continued: "And matters become worse the
longer we remain here. Queen Gustin's entourage has been fattened by
representatives of all her Great Houses. King Tedric already had
members of most of his here, but those who felt they were not
represented by someone of high enough rank have sent along someone
else. The only ones who benefit from this proliferation are the
merchants in the twin towns. Hazel Healer said that profits are up so
high that even rumors that changes are in the wind bother no one."

"Changes," mused Shad Oyster. "My father has told us
to expect such. I fear that no matter how these negotiations are
resolved, I will never again stand on the deck of a Bright Bay ship.
Father has made the queen his enemy."

Given that such rumors had been current for several days now, not even Firekeeper looked greatly surprised.

"This feels," the wolf-woman said somberly, showing a
greater understanding of the situation than Derian would have given her
credit for, "like the prickle that fills the air before a thunderstorm.
We shall either see battle again to make the battle before as nothing
or . . ."

"What?" Shad asked, as transfixed as if she spoke prophecy.

"I don't know," Firekeeper said, wincing as she leaned back against her pillows. "I am only a wolf."

D
UKE ALLISTER SEAGLEAM
feared that despite his best efforts Bright Bay would soon be at war again. The question was with whom?

The ministers from Stonehold had arrived several days
before with the promised compensation payment. However, doubtless
informed by their spies of the tension between Hawk Haven and Bright
Bay, they were being remarkably coy about handing the money over and
clearing out their army.

The ministers' excuses were ever so polite and ever
so practical. Stonehold's wounded could not yet be moved. The army was
short of horses to pull their wagons. They needed to purchase supplies
for the march home since Queen Gustin would not permit them to bring
over supplies from Stone-hold.

Neither Duke Allister nor Queen Gustin was fooled by
these excuses. What Stonehold's ministers were really waiting to see
was how much longer Hawk Haven would continue to support Bright Bay
and, indeed, how much longer could Queen Gustin keep a hold on her
increasingly unhappy populace.

The degree of that unhappiness had been a surprise to
the young queen—although perhaps it should not have been. Crown
Princess Valora had ascended the throne of Bright Bay eight years
before, on the death of her long-lived father,
Gustin III. Hers had not been an easy ascension, complicated by events from many years before her birth.

Duke Allister, seventeen years her senior and the
result of much intrigue himself, clearly recalled those events and the
history that had seemed to make them inevitable.

The net of intrigues, likes, and dislikes within the
noble families of Bright Bay was no less complicated than that within
Hawk Haven. At the time he established his new kingdom, Gustin I had
created five Great Houses. From the start, these had relinquished their
original family names and assumed new ones: Oyster, Dolphin, Pelican,
Seal, and Lobster. The members of the newly created Great Houses had
been encouraged to think well of themselves, to design elegant coats of
arms, to build fine estates.

This had almost certainly been because Gustin Sailor—
unlike Zorana Shield—craved pomp and circumstance. Indeed, at the same
time that Gustin I was giving names and titles to his Great Houses, he
had renamed his own family, shedding the pedestrian trade name Sailor
in favor of the lofty and poetic Seagleam.

But beneath his flourishes, Gustin I was practical
when it came to securing his ambitions for his young family. Before the
end of the Civil War, his wife Gayl Minter—later Queen Gayl—had borne
him two children. The eldest, a son named Gustin for his father, was
designated crown prince. The second became Princess Merry. A year or so
after the war had ended, Princess Lyra was born, the first child to be
born into the Seagleam name.

Gustin I would have rested content had not Crown
Prince Gustin died of pneumonia shortly after his sixteenth birthday.
Driven nearly mad with grief, Gustin I confirmed Princess Merry as his
heir, but decreed that upon ascending the throne she would be known as
Gustin in memory of her brother— and, the cynical said, of himself.

King Gustin died five years after his son, an
embittered man of sixty-five whose many successes could not console him
for his one great loss. Crown Princess Merry, aware that the first
succession in a monarchy is always the most uncertain, followed her
father's commands and changed her name
to Gustin,
although she had been heard to protest about being forced to bear what
before had always been an exclusively male name.

Although the new monarch was only nineteen, she was a
strong-willed woman. Queen Gustin II used her unmarried state to
explore the internal politics of her Great Houses and six years after
she had taken the throne she married wisely and well to Lord Amery
Pelican, a second son of that house. Their first child, a son, was born
less than two years later. Contrary to expectations, the queen named
the boy Basil, saying that two Gustins was too many. In this way she
unintentionally established the custom that the name Gustin was only to
be used by the monarch.

Queen Gustin II bore two other children, Princess
Seastar and Prince Tavis. Then she concentrated her efforts on ruling
her kingdom, efforts which included the idealistic but doomed marriage
arranged between her son Prince Tavis and King Chalmer of Hawk Haven's
daughter Princess Caryl Eagle.

When he was twenty-six, Crown Prince Basil married
Lady Brina Dolphin, a union that was to have serious consequences for
Bright Bay and for Basil's own unborn heir.

The marriage was unblessed with children. When this
became evident some suggested that Crown Prince Basil adopt an heir.
Several Great Houses thrust forth candidates—one of whom was young
Allister Seagleam. With an egotism suggestive of his grandfather,
Gustin I, Crown Prince Basil refused to settle for anything but an heir
of his body. His mother frowned upon a divorce—not wishing to anger the
Dolphin family, which had already been offended by her marrying of
Tavis to Princess Caryl—as it had suggested to them that the children
of their Brina might not succeed their father to the throne.

But the Dolphins' Brina bore no children and when at
the age of thirty-six Crown Prince Basil became Gustin III, he set
about finding a new wife. He did not do this quickly. Indeed, some said
he enjoyed sampling the eligible noblewomen quite freely. Others said
that his reasons for delaying were more practical—he needed to gather
support from the
rising nobles of his generation before declaring his divorce.

Whatever the reason for the delay, seven years after
ascending the throng Gustin III took the formal step of divorcing Queen
Brina—who reassumed her family name and title. Before the next year
ended, King Gustin III had married Lady Viona Seal, a woman of only
twenty—twenty-four years his junior.

Rumor said that the new queen was pregnant with the
king's child when marriage oaths were exchanged. Rumor further reported
that Queen Viona miscarried shortly thereafter. Whatever the truth,
Queen Viona did not succeed in bearing a living child until seven full
years after her marriage to the king.

The birth of Crown Princess Valora was publicly
celebrated with dances, feasts, and songs. Privately, it was the source
of much wrath. The newly made Grand Duchess Seastar—for as the king now
had an heir she was displaced as Crown Princess—was wrathful. Although
of late Grand Duchess Seastar had ceased to believe she would succeed
her brother, she had come to believe that King Gustin III
must
adopt one of her sons as his heir.

Nor was she the only one of King Gustin III's nobles
to feel that the baby girl was too little too late. Some muttered that
Crown Princess Valora was not legitimate—that Gustin III's seed, not
Lady Brina's womb, had been at fault for their childless marriage and
that young Viona had in desperation found another man to father her
child.

Others, unwilling to publicly question Viona's
honesty, had questioned the validity of Gustin III's divorce. Still
others had urged the claim of Duke Allister Seagleam, saying that he
had been born to assume the throne and that the long delay in the
king's producing an heir had been an omen in his favor.

All in all, Valora's birth had awakened much spite,
but King Gustin III had turned a deaf ear to the murmurings,
distracting himself by watching his daughter grow and his people with
military ventures against Hawk Haven.

Crown Princess Valora proved to be a healthy child, astonishingly free of whatever flaws had slain her brothers and
sisters
while still in the womb. She grew strong, intelligent, willful, and
even beautiful. Her doting father was too wise to permit her to become
quite spoiled, but from the time she could talk, Valora knew she would
be queen. Unlike King Tedric, who could threaten to disown one of his
children, Gustin III had no such option—even should he desire it. Nor
did the crown princess ever believe her father
would
wish it. He had striven too hard for her birth.

As Crown Princess Valora grew, the ambitious still
dreamed that a way to power would be opened to them— that King Gustin
III would die while his daughter was still too young to rule without a
regent and they could assume that privileged post. Yet King Gustin III
defied them all, remaining sound of mind until a weak heart claimed him
at seventy-one. By then Crown Princess Valora had passed her twentieth
birthday and was safely beyond any challenge that she was disbarred by
age from taking up her crown.

At the time of her coronation, some raised the old
complaint that Valora was not a child of Gustin III's body, but this
was a weak argument by now. From Gildcrest, Bright Bay had inherited
the custom that an adopted child could inherit with the full rights of
a naturally born one. Even if Valora was not Gustin III's daughter, he
had clearly raised her as such and the will of a king served as
adoption enough.

So Crown Princess Valora ascended the throne. In the
pattern of her grandmother, Valora continued the tradition of taking
the male name Gustin. Like her grandmother, she waited to marry until
each of her Great Houses could present its claim—and its best
candidate. Two years after becoming queen, Gustin IV married Lord
Harwill Lobster, a handsome, but untried man slightly younger than
herself. Some said that Harwill's relative youth and lack of
achievement had been part of his attraction, for Queen Gustin IV would
accept no rivals. Others were kinder and said that there was real
affection between the two.

And yet how quickly our queen forgets
, Duke Allister thought,
how
her very birth was resented, how her own aunt saw her as a squatter on
a throne destined for other—better—people. Perhaps she doesn't want to
remember, but prefers
to believe that these eight years have erased ambitions that had over thirty to grow.

Whatever the reasons for her way of thinking, the
queen's lack of decisiveness in this recent action has not helped her
position. Indeed, I think that noble and commoner alike would support
me over Gustin the Fourth if their choice was me as king or more war to
keep a woman who many think should never have been born or ascended the
throne.

Indeed, once rumors had been spread that Allister had
requested the queen name him her heir, representatives of several of
the Great Houses—starting with Pearl's own brother, Reed, Duke
Oyster—had approached Allister, offering him their support if he wished
to force the queen to step down. King Tedric had also shown his support
for Allister—not publicly where the Stonehold ministers might claim it
invalidated agreements made with Queen Gustin IV, but in a private
meeting with Queen Gustin IV.

The queen had not been pleased, but no one was
certain what shape that displeasure would take. Would she force a war
that might lead to her kingdom's destruction or would she step down?

Duke Allister didn't know, but he suspected that the
closed meeting which had been called for this very morning at the Toll
House would resolve the question.

T
HE MEETING ROOM WAS CROWDED
,
for the Toll House had not been designed to accommodate such events.
However, the international nature of the invitation list demanded that
the conference be held on something resembling neutral ground.

Both Bright Bay and Hawk Haven were represented not
only by their monarchs but by a single representative for each of their
Great Houses. Duke Allister Seagleam, although technically not a
representative of any Great House, was also present. Whether his Bright
Bay title, his relationship to King Tedric, or his recent victory gave
him the right was moot— not even Queen Gustin IV at her most autocratic
would have dared exclude him.

In addition to these fourteen people, there were
bodyguards for the monarchs—a matter, most hoped, of etiquette rather
than of necessity. There were a handful of secretaries and clerks to
take notes or to supply documents as needed.