Dame Stalt's expression softened at the edges. “Ah, Jahna. Lady Uhlfrida is Lady Velus now, wife of an Ilinfan swordmaster. She no longer abides here in Timsiora though she remains a chronicler.”
Serovek had found Jahna intelligent, engaging, and lit with an inner glow that bespoke a love of knowledge. The news of her marriage gladdened him. Among the many unable to look beyond the birthmark staining her cheek and neck like a splash of red wine, an Ilinfan swordmaster had seen a beauty of both flesh and spirit and claimed her as his wife. “My congratulations to her. I wish her well. I received a copy of her chronicles based on our meeting. Very good work. She was detailed, and most important, accurate without unnecessary embellishment.”
The dame nodded. “She's one of our best chroniclers. However, as she's not here, you'll have to make do with me.”
He was perfectly happy with the substitution, and this was a dame with a certain power even the nobles didn't possess and of which all kings were made wary: the ability to frame history in their records according to their own biases. “As you've recorded the events of thegallawar, are you interested in any of the aftermath?”
“Of course,” she said with a shrug.
“I can recount the journey I and others took to the Jeden Order to deliver the body of the Wraith king and Nazim monk Megiddo Cermak. It might seem a journey like any other but the warlord Chamtivos died during this excursion, and it's why I'm here now.”
A shrewd look replaced her curious one. “You wish to record your innocence.”
“I wish to record facts.” No doubt Bryzant was trying to spread rumor far and wide of Serovek's supposed misdeeds. Serovek wanted what really occurred recorded where it counted most.
“You understand King Rodan may request to see any and all notes and that I'm bound to turn them over to him?”
“Yes.” She might consider it her duty to turn over all written items to Rodan for review if asked, but he had no doubt there were things written and recorded and hidden away for later generations that current sovereigns would prefer no one knew. If he didn't survive Rodan's paranoia, his own accounts of the truth and his innocence just might.
Dame Stalt regarded him for several moments, her gaze direct, piercing. “I'm an old woman, Lord Pangion,” she finally said. “And the cold here is hard on my bones. My chroniclers are also very busy with assignments already given. However, I can provide you with ink and quill and as much parchment as you need to write down an account of your trip. I'll request that a small brazier be delivered to you as well, so the ink doesn't thicken too much and your hands stay warm enough to keep your writing legible. I will send someone to the Zela twice a day to take what you've completed. Will this suffice?”
He hadn't expected that level of generosity and offered her a low bow. “Very much so. I thank you, Dame.”
She returned the bow with a brief nod. “It's well-known the Beladine hinterlands thrive under the guardianship of High Salure. May it continue, margrave.” Supportive words carefully framed to given appearance of neutrality.
“May the gods favor it so, Madam.”
When she left, he restlessly paced the room. Until someone returned from the Archives, there wasn't much to do but worry, recall, or wonder, and he did all three—not about himself but about Anhuset and Erostis. Had they made it to Saggara without delays or problems? Was Magas being taken care of? Those questions and concerns birthed others—the fate of High Salure and those soldiers who considered themselves loyal to him more than to the crown. If they had any fear for their own skins, they would declare loyalty to Rodan, even if they had to lie through their teeth.
At least he didn't have Megiddo to worry about any longer, his body anyway. Safely ensconced in the monastery under the protection of his fellow monks, he was no longer at risk from the perils of the road. Safe unless Rodan decided the monks were no longer useful Beladine citizens but heretics to be purged from Beladine society. He paced even faster. Madness, he thought, wasn't born out of fear; it was born out of boredom.
The dame was as good as her word. A clerk arrived at the same time a guard brought food to break his fast—more of the same gruel he'd eaten the night before, only cold. Serovek didn't care and passively submitted to a temporary shackling at the opposite wall while the clerk set up parchment, ink bottles and wells and a generous supply of quills for him to use. Someone else brought a tabletop brazier, and it was the warden himself who looked it over, pronouncing it acceptable. Once only a single guard remained in the cell, he released his prisoner from the shackles.
Serovek wasted no time lighting the brazier to warm his hands. His face felt frozen, and he'd spent an uneasy night shivering in the bed under the woefully thin blankets. If the warden expected him to complain of a lack of pampering, he would be sorely disappointed. The small brazier was a luxury in itself.
He dragged the table and chair to the least drafty part of the chamber and moved the mat under the bed so as not to start a fire from a stray spark. It didn't take long to warm his hands and face, and while the rest of him creaked from the cold, he could write and make the words legible. And thank the gods, he was no longer bored.
Unlike the previous evening, time flew as he wrote, and he had several pages completed and ready for the Archives clerk who arrived to take them. “Dame Stalt will see to it these are copied and the originals sent to King Rodan if requested, margrave,” the clerk assured him before she left. Serovek wondered how much of what he wrote would remain the same in the original Rodan saw. He suspected that even if the king demanded exclusions or significant edits to suit his whims or purpose, the dame would leave the copy as it was and stash it away for safekeeping.
He continued working through the afternoon as the stack of blank parchment and supply of ink steadily diminished with the scratching of his quill. He didn't look up from the current page at the sound of a pair of footsteps pausing outside his cell, expecting the clerk's final return of the day.
“I see they're treating you well, margrave.”
Serovek froze in the middle of a word, quill tip leaving a spreading ink spot where it pressed against the parchment. Bryzant. One of only two people who could make him forget the cold because they made the blood run hot in his veins, and unlike Anhuset who made him run hot with desire, his steward ignited him with fury. He casually laid down the quill, brushed his hands together to wipe off any sand and slowly rose from his chair.
The reason for his current predicament stood on the other side of the cell bars, watching Serovek with a satisfied half smile that tipped toward gloating the closer the margrave came to the barrier between them. Serovek wondered what had incited him to travel to the capital. A hostile environment at High Salure? Worry the king would change his mind if Bryzant wasn't there to spin more lies? Or maybe just satisfaction at witnessing his liege's downfall and execution. All three suppositions had merit.
He hoped his voice sounded much milder than he felt inside. “I wondered if you'd stay at High Salure or come here to fill the king's ear with more poison. Couldn't resist paying me a visit to see what your plan wrought, Bryzant?” He allowed a sneer to creep into his tone and curled his top lip upward to emphasize it. “Or is this some kind of memorial to crushed hopes over the fact that Chamtivos is the one dead instead of me?” The steward's gloating expression melted away, revealing the true emotions he'd managed to hide for so long: Envy, jealousy, ambition. Three things that drove some men, like Chamtivos, to commit heinous acts of familicide, abduction, and torture and others like Bryzant to ally themselves with monsters in order to climb the ladder of power.
The steward glanced briefly at the guard nearby, listening to their conversation. A sly malice veiled his features, at odds with the injured tone he affected. “You were my liege until you turned traitor, Lord Pangion. While I'm crushed by such revelations, it seems only courteous to inquire after your health. Can we not at least converse civilly?”
“I don't have chats with treacherous lickspittles like you,” Serovek scoffed, scoring a hard hit with his contempt as Bryzant's nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed. “All those years of faithful service and you were merely biding your time, making your plans, for what? Becoming margrave yourself?” Serovek snorted. “What do you know of governance or even battle?” He didn't give Bryzant a chance to answer. “Maybe, like Ogran, you were motivated by monetary gain. You're the youngest son of a lesser nobleman. Without holdings or inheritance. A generous reward from the king would buy the first and take care of the second. Blood money always helps a belly crawler stand.”
“So high and mighty, even locked in here,” Bryzant snarled, abandoning his woeful demeanor and forgetting the watchful guard. “The Beladine people might have hailed you and that pathetic monk as heroes, but you'll not die a hero's death or be remembered as such.”
Serovek had held onto his fraying temper, taking pleasure at the small cuts he delivered against his erstwhile steward. That grip slipped the moment Bryzant insulted Megiddo, a man whose boots Bryzant wasn't fit to lick. Too intent on their conversation to notice how Serovek gradually moved closer and closer to him, Bryzant gasped when Serovek suddenly shoved his hands through the gaps between the bars, grabbed the other man's tunic and yanked him forward to slam his face against unforgiving metal.
The spaces were too narrow for Serovek to get his hands through past his wrists, otherwise he would have snapped Bryzant's neck. A part of him not submerged in white-hot fury recognized that restriction was likely a good thing. He didn't need murder added to his charges. It didn't stop him from smashing Bryzant's face ever harder against the bars where he mewled and struggled in his captor's grip.