Liv used only a delicate touch of her Authority to push against Guild Master Obadiah Harrow, once she allowed the bubble she had trapped him in to dissolve. The magic broke apart, looking like a cloud of blue fireflies that flew up toward the high, vaulted ceiling of the great hall.

  The result was that Harrow was able to push himself up onto his knees, and even lift his head enough to see Liv and her companions at the high table, but that she had not fear he was going to attempt to flee. The man was, Liv decided, thoroughly unimpressive-looking. He had a thin black beard streaked with gray, a face that was just a little too sharp-featured, if not actually gaunt; and graying hair that hung lank and greasy about his shoulders. It didn’t help that he gaped like a fish that had just been thrown up out of the Aspen to wiggle on shore.

  “Impossible,” Harrow gasped. “I killed you.”

  “I suppose he’s making it easy for us by providing a confession,” Matthew grumbled, from a few spots down on Liv’s left.

  In the meantime, Liv couldn’t help but shiver a little at the feeling of Keri’s authority sliding through hers, her husband’s magic mixing with her own so that he could tell at a glance whether the guild master might be lying, or telling the truth. It was a trick that very few mages could pull off, threading their Authority through each other in this way – usually only Eld who had been kwenim and daiverim for many years, and had come to trust each other intimately. At Liv’s side, Keri’s eyes sparked blue.

  “Your assessment of what is and is not possible would appear to be rather lacking, Harrow,” Liv said. She had the impression that he was a man who nursed his grievances, a man who would be unable to resist talking if she simply prodded him a little. “Honestly, I’m a bit surprised you thought something like that could kill me. Have you people really forgotten everything I did twenty years ago? Or are you one of the idiots who thinks it was all made up, somehow?”

  Harrow’s eyes skittered left and right, taking in the entire assembly at the high table. It was, Liv knew, an intimidating array of many of the most powerful and influential people in the Alliance – most of them veterans of the war against Lucania, the battle with Ractia at Nightfall Peak, or both.

  Her husband sat at her right hand, of course, and Keri had brought out his N?v’bel for this, cradling the Elden spear in the crook of his right arm, so that it angled back over his shoulder. Liv had found ample opportunity to study the weapon in the years that the two of them had lived together, and found that it bore many of the same enchantments she might have placed into a wand or staff, so that it could focus the magic of the user, preventing the waste of mana. It also used the wielder’s magic to strengthen the steel and sharpen the edge of the blade, which explained how easily Keri cut down his enemies.

  Past Keri sat Liv’s father Valtteri, and then her grandmother, followed by Aira t?r Keria and Raija k?n Kaulris, the latter of whom wore a black veil to conceal her face. Miina had given up her usual seat to make room, taking a place behind Liv with her other ladies-in-waiting and Ghveris, who loomed directly behind Liv’s chair like a menacing, living gargoyle. Finally, Soaring Eagle slouched in the seat at the end, next to Wren, having insisted that he be present after one of his Red Shields was wounded during the chaos.

  To her left came Triss, rather than her husband, directly at Liv’s side. Henriette had been given a seat between her parents, and after Matthew sat Sidonie, Lia Every, Bryn Grenfell and her son, and then the Crosbie clan, crowded in so tightly that they curved around that end of the table.

  All in all, it was a gathering containing three barons, a duke and duchess, four Vakansa elders, a guild mistress, and two of the three archmages in the world. Liv much preferred sitting at the center of it, and she could only imagine how it felt for Harrow to find himself confronted by such an assemblage.

  Harrow chewed on Liv’s question for only a moment. It looked like a part of him knew that the better portion of wisdom would be to say nothing at all, but finally the words burst out of him as if it was physically painful to remain silent. “The stories about you are ridiculous,” the kneeling guild master spat. “Clear exaggerations and political propaganda. No doubt you are an archmage – I can’t imagine Caspian Loredan allowing an imposter to claim the title – but even archmages can be killed. As you well know.”

  Liv sighed. “Yes, yes, I killed Genevieve Arundell. I suppose she was a friend of yours.”

  “I was there when she was appointed guild mistress,” Harrow admitted. “She was a good woman. A loyal woman – loyal to her rightful king.”

  “She was a twisted, bitter woman who’d let resentment eat away at her until there was nothing left,” Liv corrected him. “Which, I suppose, is about what you’ve allowed yourself to become as well, from the sound of things. Is this really still about Benedict? The man died years ago.”

  “He told me a bit while he had us tied up,” Henriette said. The young woman was doing her best to hide how exhausted she was, but Liv had known her niece since she was an infant, and could see the signs clearly. “It sounded like he’s been carrying a chip on his shoulder about the nobility for a long time.”

  “Is that really it?” Bryn Grenfell asked, leaning forward across the high table. “You tried to kill not only a queen, but everyone else who was going to be in that council tomorrow as well, because you don’t think the merchants have been treated fairly?”

  “We finally had a chance with Benedict!” Harrow shouted. “He owed us for financing his war! We could have had everything we were waiting for, but because of this… this witch-queen, we lost everything! Can you even imagine what it’s like, to see freedom within your grasp, only to have it wrenched away for another hundred years, another two hundred? To watch the stupid, vain, myopic sons and daughters of the aristocracy blunder through life, succeeding on the weight of nothing more than their immense privilege?”

  Liv waved her hand, indicating the table stretching out to either side of her. “Take a look at who’s up here, Harrow. Plenty of nobles, yes, but also Vakansa, who don’t even have barons like Lucania does. Red Shields, mages – blood and shadows, I grew up scrubbing dishes in the kitchen of Castle Whitehill. We’re not up here trying to oppress anyone. I even offered the assembly of mayors a compromise, just the other day. And you might even have had the votes to get what you wanted – you had more than I expected.”

  “Not enough,” Elder Aira broke in. “Not all of your mayors were holding firm, my dear. Cartwright and Buckler hardly waited for me to have my bags unloaded before they were asking for a meeting, to see whether I’d be willing to support what you offered, instead of their original proposal.”

  “And I can verify that at least some of the guild masters weren’t aware of this black powder plan,” Lia Every said. “I suppose he knew that most of us would never allow it.”

  “No,” Harrow confirmed. “No, I knew that most of you didn’t have the stones to do what really needed to be done. We had almost enough votes to close the gap, but we couldn’t quite budge the last of what we needed. I could see it slipping away all over again…”

  “So you decided to kill my wife,” Keri said. Liv was used to it being her voice described as having ice in it, but the man speaking next to her wasn’t the husband who urged her to sleep when she was exhausted, or the father of her child who swung their daughter up in the air while Rianne giggled. This was the scourge of the north, the part of him that had learned how to be brutally merciless before they’d ever met.

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  “It would have been better for everyone,” Harrow nearly pleaded. “A single strike to cut the head off the serpent. And then twenty, thirty years of a regency. With the right people in place, we could have entirely remade the Alliance before the girl ever became queen. Made certain that the power rested with the people, rather than the aristocrats.”

  “And all it would have cost would be murdering everyone in your way,” Triss said, with a sneer. Liv caught a glimpse of the blue sparks in her eyes, and knew that her sister-in-law was weighing Harrow’s words, just like Keri was.

  “You can save us a lot of time, and the innocent a lot of trouble, by telling us now who else was involved in moving the barrels,” Liv said. “Who knew about the plan to kill the council?”

  This time, Harrow stubbornly grit his teeth and ground his jaw, rather than answer.

  “I could make him speak for you, Lady of Winter,” Elder Raija offered. Her words stirred her veil, and Liv remembered just what it felt like to experience the word of fear.

  “There it is,” Harrow shouted, almost gleefully satisfied. “You’ll use your magic to force me to speak, just like the priests, just like all tyrants do. In the end, the only thing you care about is power. With enough of it, you can force all the rest of us to kneel before you, to do whatever you wish. This is why the world would be better off without any of you, without magic at all!”

  “I can tell you who to focus on,” Wren spoke, from down the end of the table where she sat next to Soaring Eagle. “Mayor Madeline Saltner tried to get out of the city by carriage. We got her, of course,” the huntress said, with the easy confidence she’d displayed for as long as Liv had known her. “There’s a few guild members who tried to get out by boat on the river, as well, so I imagine they’re guilty of something.”

  “Treason,” Henriette spoke up, from between the chairs of her two parents. “For those who lived here, at any rate. Assault, kidnapping –”

  “Attempted regicide, for those who are Lucanian,” Triss said, lifting a hand and placing it on her daughter’s shoulder. “And attempted murder.”

  “I don’t think this requires much in the way of debate,” Bryn Grenfell said, sitting back in her chair.

  “Both the immediate lord of the Aspen Valley and the monarch herself are present,” Lia Every stated, with the same clear, logical tone that Liv remembered from her classes in guild law and history, so long ago at Coral Bay. “Jurisdiction is clear. We have witnesses, in the form of Lady Henriette and her friends; physical evidence, in the recovered barrels of black powder; and the words the accused has spoken here this evening, in front of no less than eight mages using the word of perception. I presume, since none of them have spoken up, that there have been no lies?”

  “None,” Keri said, and he was immediately echoed by Matthew, Triss, Henriette, and the knot of Crosbies at the end of the table. Though the Baron of Valegard had once neglected that particular aspect of his ancestral word of power, Liv had called on the Crosbies to use it repeatedly in the service of the Alliance since learning of its full capabilities from Vivek Sharma.

  “I would say all of this is fairly straightforward, then,” Guild Mistress Every said. “Without the charges of attempted regicide, the judgement would fall to Duke Matthew. In this case, however, precedent would suggest that this falls under the authority of the monarch, herself.”

  “Traditional punishment?” Liv asked, though she was certain that she already knew the answer.

  “In Lucania? He would be publicly drawn and quartered,” Every declared. “A limb sent in every cardinal direction, and his head mounted on a pike at the entrance to the city, so that everyone can see what happens to someone stupid enough to try and kill a queen. The same for his co-conspirators.”

  Liv looked down at the kneeling guild master, whose face had gone so pale she worried that he might lose consciousness at any moment. Perhaps, up until this very moment, he’d imagined himself the hero, set against his image of a tyrant queen – but now, it must have become clear even to Obadiah Harrow that he was not the lead of a play at some Freeport theater. There was no one coming to save him, and there would be no last-minute rescue to spirit him away to safety, so that he might take his revenge at a later time.

  “I detest that punishment,” Liv said, after a moment. “I believe it is within my power to commute the sentence to beheading.”

  “He isn’t a noble,” Lia Every said. “In his case it would be hanging.”

  “Let that be it, then,” Liv said. She nodded to her guards. “Take him away and see it done at dawn tomorrow.”

  They ended up having to drag Harrow out; his legs couldn’t bear his weight when he went to stand. He left a streak of urine behind him on the floor of the hall.

  ?

  It was a week before the council could convene.

  In that time, every inch, every nook and cranny of the Queen’s Court was searched, to be absolutely certain that not a single barrel of black powder remained. Every captured guildsman was questioned, with the members of the Crosbie family taking turns verifying the truth of their words. When it came to be Mayor Saltner's turn, Matthew did it himself, at Bryn Grenfell’s request. She was present for the entire time, along with her son and heir, Isaac.

  Madeline Saltner had, it finally came out, been in on the conspiracy, along with the heads of the Smiths and Joiners guilds. There had even been some talk of her serving as regent for the to-be-orphaned young princess, on the strength of her experience as an administrator in Newport.

  Saltner’s head was placed on a spike next to all of the others, even though Bryn had made a personal request to Liv for permission to burn the woman. By the time everything was done, there were nearly two dozen heads, each of them tarred, on display to anyone who entered the city through the south gate. Liv couldn’t stand to look at it.

  The rest of the voting block which had been assembled to back the guilds’ political play was, to Liv’s immense relief, entirely ignorant of Harrow’s secondary plan. Not a few of her remaining mayors fell to their knees, heads pressed to the floor, and wept while they begged her for mercy once they learned what they had inadvertently become involved in.

  Those who acted out of ignorance, she forgave.

  It would take some time to elect a new Mayor of Newport, so Bryn Grenfell wielded that vote on behalf of her people when the great council was finally called to session. The first proposal was Liv’s: to create nine additional seats on the council, to be filled by general election, with anyone who lived in Alliance lands able to stand as a candidate.

  It was the exact compromise that she had offered to the Assembly of Mayors, and which they had refused. When the votes were tallied, every one of them was for the proposal.

  None of it made Liv feel anything but hollow.

  “They would have killed both of us,” she whispered to Keri, while they watched Rianne sleep in the evening after the council met. Their daughter’s mussed hair, pale as cornsilk and just as fine, was spread all across her pillow, and her cheeks were pink, still chubby with the fat of childhood. The flickering light of an oil lamp cast the entire room in a warm glow, from the dolls strewn about the bed to the cat clutched under the covers in the princess’s arms, an enchanted mana-stone charm set into her collar to protect the animal from the rift.

  Her husband stood behind her, his arms wrapped around Liv, and she clasped his hands in her own against her belly. “You stopped them,” he murmured, his face buried in her loose hair, which she’d let down by removing a dozen pins. She could feel his breath against the back of her head.

  “All I ever did was try to treat them fairly,” she said. “And fight back against the people trying to kill my family.” If I’d actually been a tyrant, I would have killed them all right then and there, as soon as we found them.

  Keri took a breath to speak, but Liv never found out what he was going to say next, for there came the lightest rap at the door to the princess’s bed chamber, and then Miina cracked the door open and slipped into the room. None of the other ladies-in-waiting would have dared, but Miina was family.

  “What is it?” Liv whispered.

  “Word from Coral Bay,” Miina said, handing over a letter with the seal already broken. “From Blackwood.”

  Liv accepted it, but didn’t look down; she wasn’t ready to leave Keri’s arms, just yet.

  “It’s Caspian Loredan,” her cousin told her. “I’m sorry, Liv. I know he was your teacher. It doesn’t sound like he has very long left. They thought you might want to make the trip and see him one last time.”

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  Dao of Healing - the second volume releases on Amazon today!

  Dramatis Personae

  Livara t?r Valtteri Kaen Syv? - Archmage, former scullery maid at Castle Whitehill, the bastard daughter of Maggie Brodbeck and Valtteri Ka Auris. Queen of the Alliance and Lady of Winter. In the end, as merciful as she could be. [38 Rings of Mana, not counting mana stored in items.]

  Aira t?r Keria - Daughter of Keria, grandmother of Airis, great-grandmother of Vari. Wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. [30 Rings of Mana]

  Beatrice 'Triss' Summerset (Formerly Crosbie) - Daughter of Baron Arnold of Valegard, Wife of Matthew, mother of Henriiette, sister-in-law of Liv, sister of more brothers than anyone could ever want. Heads on pikes = satisfied Triss. [17 Rings of Mana]

  Bryn Grenfell - Cousin to Isaac Grenfell, Niece of Kazimir Grenfell. Journeyman at Coral Bay, before the war began. Totally executes people with fire in her barony. [15 Rings of Mana]

  Henriette Summerset aka Ettie- Daughter of Matthew and Triss, niece of Liv and Keri, cousin of Rei and Princess Rianne. Heir to the Duchy of Whitehill. Apprentice of the Mages Guild. Until this nonsense, had led a fairly sheltered life. There goes that. [12 Rings of Mana]

  Inkeris "Keri" ka Ilmari k?n B?lris - Originally of the Unconquered House of B?lris, now Prince Consort of the Alliance. Husband of Liv, father to Rei and the princess. "You didn't try to kill the queen; you tried to kill my wife." [22 Rings of Mana.]

  Lia Every - Guildmistress and Chancellor of the College at Bald Peak. Legal advisor, among all her other positions. [20 Rings of Mana]

  Matthew Summerset, Duke of Whitehill - Henry and Julianne's son, husband to Beatrice. Got out of judging this one. [14 Rings of Mana]

  Miina t?r Eilis, of House D?ivi - Daughter of Eilis, niece of Eila, cousin of Liv, Lady in Waiting. Bearer of bad news. [23 Rings of Mana]

  Obadiah Harrow - Guild Master of the Merchants Guild. Has discovered that he is not the MC.

  Wren Wind Dancer - Daughter of Nighthawk, cousin of Calm Waters. Has a list of names. Convenient.