Chapter 22

22

Molly pulled in a breath to settle her stomach before walking into Town Hall. She was armed with a letter from Lady Aislinn herself, and a page had run ahead to let Mayor Doherty know she intended to come, but still, the weight of walking into the space settled on her shoulders.

It’s time, was the first thought she awoke to that morning. Time to fix this.

Her cousins’ situation at the tavern had become untenable. Molly liked to think she’d managed things well enough while in her uncle’s house, but those days were done. No matter how Brom needled or Nora guilted her, Molly wasn’t going back.

But that didn’t mean she’d leave the girls behind.

Town Hall was an ancient building, even for a place as storied as Dundúran. It’d once been a longhouse, built for the first chieftain family of the demesne. A long time ago—that Allarion apparently remembered, though Molly tried not to think much about that—Eirea had been the name of the land, not a kingdom. Dozens of tribes and clans had lived throughout the continent, and it was only after threats by the orcs to the southwest and Pyrrossi to the southeast that they banded into a unified kingdom under a single ruler. Most of the chieftains retained some form of control over their ancestral lands, however, and here was where the first Darrows had lived.

Centuries ago, as the foundations of Dundúran Castle were laid, the Darrows had gifted the building to their people. It’d served as the mayoral residence and seat of city politics ever since. The majority of the first floor was made up of a basilica, a wide central nave laid with gray flagstones and lit by great iron braziers. Square wood columns lined either side in colonnades, carved in exquisitely intricate designs that, as they spiraled upward, told mythical stories of the demesne and city. Through the colonnades were narrower aisles on either side with doors into smaller rooms, most of which had become administrative offices over the years.

The second floor held more offices, including the mayor’s and other leading city officials, and each of the guild-masters kept an office as well. The city public archive also resided on the second floor, containing many of Dundúran’s founding and most important documents. The third floor was the mayoral residence, where Mayor Thom Doherty and his large family had lived since he was first elected some twenty years ago.

Molly spotted the man himself on the far side, near the apse of the building. Squaring her shoulders, she walked with purpose down the nave, passing beneath heavy iron chandeliers dripping wax and around groups of harried city workers, off on this project or that task.

Light filtered in from the second-story windows above, illuminating those walking around the railed gallery and pooling in narrow rectangles on the stone floor. Through one of these beams of light, Molly caught the mayor’s eye.

After a word to the two people he’d been speaking with, Mayor Doherty stepped forward to greet Molly. His hand was dry and warm when she took it to shake, and the way he patted hers and offered a friendly smile settled some of her nerves.

“Well, good day, Miss Molly. It’s a pleasure to see you in Dundúran again.”

“Thank you, mayor. It’s been good to visit.”

Waving her along to follow him, Molly walked beside the mayor at his slow pace. Nearing seventy, Mayor Doherty was beloved throughout the city. Many of his ten children had grown up in the mayoral residence, and it was a widespread joke over the veritable army of grandchildren he had. A few political upstarts had run against him in the past two elections, but faith in Thom Doherty was unshakable.

“I received the message that you intended to come see me. I hope it’s nothing to do with that fae man of yours.” His bushy white brows rose as he peered at her over his shoulder.

“No, not at all,” she assured him.

“He treats you well?”

“Very well, yes. I’m happy at Scarborough.”

“Ah yes,” he chuckled as he led her into a small office off the corner of the apse. “I should be addressing you as Lady Scarborough now.”

Molly blushed as she took the seat he motioned her toward. He shuffled behind a desk, much too big for the cramped room.

“You absolutely don’t need to,” she insisted, then hurried to help retrieve papers he knocked over with his rounded middle as he scooted around the edge of the desk.

“Forgive the cramped quarters,” said the mayor as Molly did her best to restack the papers and parchments. “These knees weren’t what they used to be, and Margaret wanted me to stop climbing the stairs so much.”

“They didn’t have a bigger office for you?”

“I didn’t want to displace anyone here. You’d be surprised what a bureaucratic nightmare it’d be to shuffle spaces about.”

Molly joined the mayor in a laugh, but soon it was time to get to business. Trying not to chew her lip, she pulled Lady Aislinn’s letter from her pocket and laid it on the table.

“Well well, this does look serious,” said Doherty as he picked up the letter. “What’s going on, my dear?”

“It’s my cousins—the Dunne girls.”

The mayor looked up from tearing open the seal, his eyes suddenly sharper. The steel glinting there was why Thom Doherty was so beloved—jolly and benevolent as he usually was, the picture of grandfatherly good nature, all of it was over a spine of steel. In his tenure, Doherty had improved sanitation in the poorest communities, campaigned for the rebuilding of tenement houses, established fire brigades, and got the guilds to pay into a fund to cleanse the Shanago River.

While Molly didn’t like having to air out Dunne family laundry, she understood that she couldn’t do this on her own. She needed an ally like Lady Aislinn herself, and hoped she could trust the mayor to see it through. Given that the girls were all of an age to Doherty’s own grandchildren, she suspected her trust would be well placed.

“I’ve come to give evidence against my uncle. With Lady Aislinn’s approval and your own, I want the girls taken out of Brom’s care.”

The words fell from her lips like stones into the river, splashing her before sinking down down down. She held her breath, fingers threaded together into one big clenched fist, as the mayor stared back at her. Although wizened, his hair a poof of white fluff, Doherty’s eyes were still as sharply blue as ever, and they seemed to take her measure.

Finally, a grin cracked his face.

“Thank fates,” he said. “I’ve been waiting a long while for you to say that to me, Miss Molly. Tell me what you need.”

With Molly out on her mission, Allarion took it upon himself to stroll the grounds of the castle. It was an excellent meditative exercise, helping him order his thoughts, and if he just so happened to run into Princess Isolde, well then, all the better.

Strolling past Lady Aislinn’s prize rose garden, he discovered the princess and her guards taking a turn about the larger castle gardens, near where the kitchen gardens grew food for the inhabitants. If the princess paled when she saw him coming, he pretended not to notice.

“Good day, Your Grace.” Allarion bowed at the waist before folding his hands behind his back.

He thought the casual stance would put her guards at ease, but if anything, they twitched and stiffened to have his hands out of sight.

“Good day,” the princess replied by rote. It wasn’t just the sunshine in her eyes that made her face pinch, he suspected.

“I have thought on our conversation yesterday and come bearing my answer.”

The girl nodded gravely, as if he meant to pass sentence on her.

“First, though, I would hear your honest opinion.”

Princess Isolde’s eyes went wide, but she quickly snapped them shut with the midday sun above them. Offering his arm, Allarion led them to a nice, shady alcove below a leafy maple tree. It had yet to shed all of its autumnal colors and offered a cool place to stand and talk politics, no doubt the alcove’s precise purpose when it was designed.

Though out of the sun, the princess’s color was still high as she peered up at him.

“You want to know my opinion? Why?”

Allarion shrugged artfully. “I haven’t met your father—nor your mother. You are my only representative of your family, and you have proven yourself wise beyond your years. It is also you who will lead this kingdom one day. If anyone’s opinion should matter, it should be yours.”

Her eyes rounded with his speech. “That’s not a sentiment shared by everyone even in my mother’s court.”

“Then it’s fortuitous that you are here and not there. I understand that your father has brought some…new traditions with him, as well as several Pyrrossi cousins. However, the kingdom is not just Gleanná. There is much love for you and your mother within the Darrowlands.”

A reluctant smile curled the princess’s mouth. “I’ve noticed that. It’s been wonderful visiting more of the land that will one day be mine, and the Darrows are gracious for hosting me all winter.”

If Gleanná was anything like the fae capital of Fallorian, Allarion didn’t doubt that a season away from it would do the princess immense good. Subterfuge and intrigue had a way of making its own little world, one that warped perspective and diluted priorities.

Taking a deep breath, the princess looked away to consider her next words.

Her voice dropped to a tentative softness when she finally said, “If I were you…I would refuse my father.”

“Indeed?”

She nodded at the garden. “My father has many qualities, but unfortunately, he’s a jealous man. His cousin is the Pyrrossi emperor. His wife is the Eirean queen. Nowhere is he ruler in his own right.” Looking up at him, Princess Isolde said, “I’ve heard him speak of retaking Caledon, how it would bring glory to our name to reunite all of Eirea under one rule.”

“And does the queen support such conquest?”

“No, of course not. Her health, though, is…” The princess bit her lips together, her eyes going glassy. “Her health isn’t strong, and if she cannot keep a close eye, my father does whatever he wishes.”

“I see. And he hopes, one day, to lead a conquering army into Caledon? One with otherly soldiers?”

She nodded gravely. “That’s what I suspect, yes.”

Grave, indeed.

Allarion sighed. This wasn’t totally unexpected or unprecedented. Humans had always had a tenuous relationship with the other races. Smaller and unable to wield magic, humans only had their numbers as an advantage in ancient battles against the dragons and orcs and manticores. It was their numbers that attracted otherly folk in times of peace, too, and there were far more halflings in the world than either orc or human or dragon cared to admit.

Not that humans were always the aggressors or villains in these stories, of course. There had been one Fae Queen, many ages past, who’d thought to subjugate the human realms in order to serve the fae. It took a united front of orcs and humans to repel the attacks, and many fae warriors and dread-mounts had been lost. The fae rarely ventured past their borders since.

Allarion supposed, in some small way, the king’s demand made a sort of sense. Human memories were far shorter, yet they retained a sense of foreboding when it came to otherly folk. The rivers of their lands had flowed red many a time as everyone jockeyed for space and power, and humans were often slaughtered in the process.

If there were to be otherly folk in Eirea, best to make them loyal subjects, ones who would fight for you.

Yet, here again, the human memory was short. Humans had tried this not a century past, pitting harpy flocks against orcish mercenaries. The ensuing battles were so bloody, so horrific, that it wasn’t just harpies and orcs who abandoned the human realms. Sirens left their coves for more peaceful waters; the dragons disappeared to their island strongholds; and the manticores disappeared into the deepest reaches of the grasslands.

“I recommend King Marius read his own histories,” Allarion told the princess.

Her brows rose nearly to her hairline. “That’s what you want me to tell him?”

“Yes.” He thought he said that clearly enough. “And I hope he heeds my advice. Lives are not weapons to wield blithely, and I am not the only otherly who won’t bleed for his conquest.”

Princess Isolde regarded him gravely, her countenance far more serious than it should be for one her age. “I understand, Lord Allarion.”

Taking her hand, Allarion bowed over it, touching his forehead to the back. “I’m glad to hear it, Your Grace. I won’t fight your father’s war, and my loyalty is to my own queen, my beloved azai, but I can offer my friendship to the crown of Eirea, Queen Ygraine, and her true heir.”

A blush bloomed across the princess’s cheeks, and her lips parted in shock.

“B-but you said…”

“Your father is not the king he thinks he is, Your Grace. Ygraine is queen, as you will be one day. I hope to be a friend to you both.”

The princess swallowed hard, but he enjoyed witnessing the look of determination that hardened her soft face. These were far more responsibilities and worries than a child should have to bear, but Allarion admired how ably she carried them nevertheless.

“Thank you, master fae,” she said, breathless. “I hope to earn that friendship.”

“I’m sure you will.” Straightening, Allarion added, “And please also tell your father that threats to myself, my mate, my home, or the Darrows won’t be tolerated.”

Princess Isolde actually smiled when she said, “He won’t like that very much.”

“I suspect not, no.” Offering her a smile and his arm, Allarion led them back out into the garden proper. “Now, would you care to take a turn about the gardens with me? I’m rather bored without my Molly and would appreciate your company.”