Chapter 5: State Affairs
The war room always smelled of old violence and new.
The war room always smelled of old violence and new oak oil, the scent failing to mask the ghost of rust and fear. Maps of the Blight still hung, ragged at the edges, tawny stains blotting the northern reaches. Arl Eamon stood before the largest, a tactical rendering of Denerim’s defenses, but his eyes saw none of it. He stared at the spot where Kerr’s massive hammer had leaned against the table’s edge the night they planned the final push, the wood still indented.
The door opened without a knock. He didn’t need to turn. The air changed, cooled and sharpened, carrying the faint scent of embrium and crisp linen.
“You sought counsel, Arl Eamon?” Anora’s voice was a precise instrument, neither warm nor cold.
He turned. She stood just inside the threshold, a silhouette against the torchlight of the hall. She wore a deep blue gown, simple for a queen, her hair a severe, practical crown of braids. She looked like a statement.
“I did, Your Majesty.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “Regarding today’s… developments in the council.”
“Developments.” She repeated the word as if tasting it, finding it bland. She moved into the room, her footsteps silent on the thick rug. She went not to the head of the table, but to the side, trailing a finger along the back of Kerr’s chair. “I understand you had a conversation with my husband in the gardens.”
Eamon’s posture stiffened almost imperceptibly. “I did. I expressed concern over his… method of addressing dissent.”
“Method.” She stopped her pacing and looked at him. Her eyes were the color of a winter sky, clear and offering no shelter. “You mean the beating.”
“The public assault of a sworn lord, yes.”
Anora let the silence stretch. She picked up a discarded quill from the table, examining its split tip. “And you came to me thinking what? That I would be scandalized? That I would clutch my pearls and say, ‘oh dear, my barbarian husband has embarrassed us again’?” She dropped the quill. “You know I am not a coward, Eamon. So why are you playing the part of one?”
The question, delivered so calmly, hit like a slap. Eamon’s face remained placid, but a flush crept up his neck. “It is not cowardice to advocate for measured response. The rule of law is what separates us from the wilds.”
“Is it.” It wasn’t a question. She leaned forward, her palms flat on the oak. “Kerr and I spoke on the matter. And of your conversation with him. If you did not want your concerns to reach the queen’s ears, you should not have told the man with whom she shares a bed and a rule. He is a warrior, Eamon.A leader. Not a politician. He says what he means and his actions are his treatise. And you lecture him on how things are done?”
She straightened, her voice dropping into a low, lethal register. “Let’s review how things have been done, shall we?You were poisoned. You were an invalid. And, just throwing this in there, had your life as well as your village saved by him. By my husband. My husband, on the other hand, saw his family butchered.His mother. His father. His seven-year-old nephew, Oren, cut down while hiding behind a chair.” She spoke the names like dropping stones into a still pond. “And he watched the man who gave the order, Rendon Howe, be rewarded by the very system you defend.Given more land. More title. Rewarded by the man directly responsible for imprisoning me and murdering my first husband.”
The torchlight flickered, casting dancing shadows across her stony face. “This is the system you defend. And this is what you wish Kerr to adopt? A system where treason is met with a raised eyebrow and a slightly reduced allowance?”
Eamon found his voice, though it was thinner than he intended. “Bannswick’s words were foul, but they were just words. The punishment must fit the crime, not the wound it inflicts.”
“Words?” Anora’s laugh was short, sharp, a crack of ice. “His words challenged my right to rule.Directly. In open council. Do you know what the legal punishment for treason is, Eamon? Under the very laws you cherish? It’s the axe.Or the noose. It is not another day on this earth.” She took a step closer. “Kerr showed mercy. He gave Bannswick a broken nose and a lesson, not a trip to the headsman’s block. He showed more restraint than your beloved ‘system’ ever would have.”
She turned her back to him, looking at the map of Ferelden. “So, while my husband’s actions may have wet the pants of the pathetic geriatrics running this country into the ground, it did nothing to upset the plans I have for Ferelden. Plans Kerr shares. Plans for roads, for granaries, for securing the Borderlands so mothers don’t have to bury children taken by darkspawn or bandits.” She glanced over her shoulder. “He may be a brute. But he is a good man. A better husband than I had any right to hope for. And a fine king.”
Eamon stood speechless. The moral high ground he had occupied for decades felt suddenly like quicksand, pulling him down into the bloody, practical mire she described. He saw Isolde’s face, not as she was at the end, but young, fierce, telling him off for some long-forgotten point of political naivety. The memory was a gut-punch.
“You think I don’t know what they call him?” Anora said softly, facing the map again. “The Mad Dog of Highever.The Brute King. They whisper it in the halls, thinking I don’t hear.But I do. And I let them. Because a man they fear is a man they will not cross lightly. And that gives me the room to build what they would happily sabotage with their endless debates and petty bribes.” She finally turned to face him fully. “Your counsel is valued, Eamon. Your wisdom is needed. But do not counsel me to leash the one thing that keeps the wolves from our door. We tried that before. My father is dead because of it.”
The finality in her voice was absolute. It was the closing of a ledger. Eamon understood then that he had not come to counsel his queen, but to be assessed by her. And he had been found wanting in his understanding of the new world.
“I see,” he said, the words ash in his mouth. The plans he had come to discuss—tax codes, grain subsidies for the south—seemed trivial now, decorative lace on a suit of armor.
Anora’s expression softened, but only a fraction. It was the look of a commander acknowledging a veteran soldier who had momentarily forgotten the terrain.“Good. Then we understand one another. The next time a Bannswick speaks, you will not talk to my husband about channels and fines. You will look at me. And you will ask me what precedent we wish to set before I let Kerr decide how to enforce it.” She walked toward the door, then paused. “He likes you, you know. He respects you. He thinks you’re one of the few who isn’t secretly trying to slide a knife between his ribs. Don’t make him question that.”
She left, the door closing with a soft, definitive click. Eamon was alone with the maps and the ghosts. He looked at the stain on the map where Denerim was marked. He looked at the dent in the table where the hammer had rested.
For the first time in a long time, Arl Eamon of Redcliffe felt very, very old. And he wondered, with a crushing certainty, if Isolde would have sided with the queen.