Chapter 80

The capital city of Aerthos was a place of suffocating fear. My agent, the scribe Fenric, moved through its grey, rainy streets like a ghost, his heart a cold stone of terror in his chest. His work in Lord Vaelin's service had given him a vantage point into the very heart of the kingdom's decay, and what he saw there terrified him.

Lord Vaelin, humiliated by my counter-espionage and increasingly paranoid as the kingdom's power waned, had decided on a final, desperate gambit. The intelligence Fenric managed to smuggle out to my Rangers was so shocking, so utterly depraved, that it took me a full day to process its implications.

Vaelin planned to seize the throne. During the upcoming Feast of the Winter Sun, a major state occasion, his agents, disguised as kitchen servants, were to poison the wine of the entire royal family and the leading northern dukes who would be in attendance. In the chaos of a dozen assassinations, Vaelin's personal guard would secure the palace, and he would declare himself Lord Regent of a kingdom in crisis. It was a madman's plan, a throw of the dice that would either make him absolute ruler or see him torn to pieces.

The message presented me with a terrible, glorious choice. I could do nothing. I could let Vaelin's plot succeed. My father, my half-brothers, the entire arrogant nobility that had scorned me—all would be dead in a single night. My greatest enemies would eliminate each other. The kingdom would shatter, and I would be left to pick up the pieces.

But my knowledge of statecraft told me otherwise. The chaotic, bloody power vacuum left by Vaelin's coup would be a far greater threat than the decaying kingdom. It would spawn a dozen petty warlords, years of anarchic warfare that would inevitably spill across my borders. I needed the kingdom to fall, yes. But I needed it to fall in a way that I could control.

I made my decision. I would save my father's life, not out of love, but as a final, decisive move in our long game of chess.

Through Fenric, I passed a message. It was not sent to the King, or to Vaelin, or to any of the great lords. It was sent to the captain of the Dragon Throne Guard, a man named Ser Rolland, an aging but famously honorable knight known for his unwavering loyalty not to the King as a man, but to the Crown as an institution. The message was anonymous. It was simple. It detailed the entire assassination plot: the specific poison, the names of the agents disguised as servants, and the signal Vaelin would use to commence the act.

The night of the Feast of the Winter Sun arrived. The Great Hall of the palace was filled with a strained, false gaiety. King Theron sat at the high table, bloated and drunk. Lord Vaelin stood behind him, his thin smile a mask of predatory anticipation.

As the servants brought out the ceremonial wine, Vaelin subtly touched the ring on his finger—the signal. But as the "servants" approached the royal table, they found their path blocked by a silent wall of a dozen of Ser Rolland's personal guards.

The game was up. The agents, realizing they were caught, drew hidden daggers. The Great Hall erupted into chaos. The nobles screamed and overturned tables. In the confusion, one of Vaelin's assassins made a desperate lunge for the King.

King Theron, in a drunken stupor, saw the flash of the blade. The shock of the betrayal, the sudden, violent reality crashing through his alcoholic haze, was too much for his weakened heart. He clutched his chest, his face turning a ghastly purple, and collapsed onto the table, dead before the assassin's blade could even reach him.

Lord Vaelin, seeing his plot unravel, tried to flee, but Ser Rolland was waiting for him. The old knight, with a cry of "For the Crown!", ran the Master of Whispers through with his sword. The architect of the kingdom's shadow war died ignominiously on the wine-splattered floor of the Great Hall.

The aftermath was a scene of utter chaos. The King was dead. His designated heir had been slain in the fighting. The most powerful man at court was exposed as a traitor. The Kingdom of Aerthos was, in a single, bloody night, left without a head.

The news spread through the land like a shockwave. The kingdom was officially headless. The northern lords immediately declared their independence. The other duchies fell into infighting. The great, mighty Kingdom of Aerthos had shattered.

And as the dust settled, the eyes of every lord, every general, every merchant in the fractured realm turned, with a mixture of terror and awe, to the west. They turned to the Wastes Confederacy, the only power with a stable government, a thriving economy, and a proven, undefeated army. They turned to the one man with a legitimate, if bastardized, claim to the Dragon Throne. They turned to me. I had not set out to conquer my father's kingdom. But in the end, by saving it from itself, I was poised to inherit it all.