Chapter 37: Times
Three years turned the boy’s lanky limbs into the beginnings of a young man’s frame. Ronan could now last a full session in the yard without gasping. He could recite the major trade treaties of the last century, and his questions about granary design had evolved into a solid, if unspectacular, understanding of logistics.
He also still flinched.
It wasn’t every time. Not with the straw dummies, nor with Ser Davos, whose attacks were telegraphed and pedagogical. It was the squires, the ones his own age or slightly older, whose eyes held a competitive spark. When a blow came a little too fast, a little too close to his face, his body betrayed him. A slight, instinctive recoil. A tightening of the shoulders. A half-second of lost ground.
It was enough.
The rumor, once a whispered thing in library alcoves, had grown legs and now walked openly through the castle corridors. It found fertile ground in the discontented—older lords who remembered Lucian’s fierce promise, younger ones who saw uncertainty as weakness.
Eleanor heard it in the courtyard, pretending to admire the late summer roses.
“—passed his fourteenth name-day, and still jumps at shadows,” Lord Caddel’s son was saying to a companion, their backs to her. “My father says the northern lords are restless. They need a firm hand, not a… a scholar.”
“A scholar who misses a beat is just a slow target,” the companion grunted.
She said nothing. She pruned a dead bloom with a sharp snap of her fingers and moved on.
She heard it in the echoing hall outside the council chambers, waiting for Alistair.
“The issue isn’t his mind, it’s his spine,” a voice hissed from a half-open door. Master of Coin Theron, she thought. “Tax projections are fine, but can he hold a border? The Valesmen test us with every season. They remember the king’s… methods. They won’t fear a prince who blinks.”
Alistair’s response was too low to hear, but the silence that followed was colder than any shout.
The question had shifted. It was no longer ‘Is he like Lucian?’ It was becoming ‘Is he fit at all?’
Ronan felt the changed weight of the gaze upon him. The courtiers’ smiles were a fraction too wide, their bows a shade too deep, as if compensating for something they believed was missing. Ser Davos had stopped saying “Adequate.” Now he said “Better,” but his jaw was always tight.
The breaking point came not in the yard, but in the strategy room.
Alistair had begun including Ronan in low-level briefings. Today, it was a report from the Eastern Marches: banditry, likely spurred by a poor harvest across the border in Kierland.
“Standard response,” grunted General Gorven, a man built like a barrel, with a beard stained by years of wine. “Double the patrols. Execute a few bandits publicly. Burn a suspect village on their side as a reminder. Harshness now saves bloodshed later.”
Ronan, standing by the large map table, felt his stomach clench. He studied the map. The villages were marked. One, “Hollow’s Cross,” was literally on the dotted line of the border.
“The report says the Kierland harvest failed,” Ronan said, his voice quieter than he intended.
All eyes turned to him. Gorven’s brow furrowed. “And?”
“And… executing bandits from a starving population doesn’t stop banditry. It just makes more desperate men. And burning a village removes a food source we might later need to control.” He pointed to Hollow’s Cross. “If we stationed a contingent there instead, sharing our surplus grain, we create a loyal outpost. The bandits lose support. We gain intelligence.”
The room froze. It wasn’t a bad idea. It was, in fact, a clever, long-term solution. But it was not an Eldorian solution. It was an Ashworth solution—pragmatic, humane, focused on resource and morale. It was Eleanor’s influence, blooming in him like a foreign flower in stony soil.
General Gorven’s face purpled. “Share our grain? With border scum? We are not a damned charity, boy. We are a kingdom. Your brother would have known to burn the problem at the root.”
The word ‘boy’ hung in the air, a deliberate slap. But it was the invocation of Lucian that struck home.
Alistair, who had been silent, watching Ronan with those unnerving blue eyes, finally spoke. “General. Withdraw.”
It was a dismissal, not a rebuttal. Gorven, shocked, bowed stiffly and left. The other advisors followed, leaving father and son alone in the tense silence.
“You are not your brother,” Alistair said, walking around the table to stand opposite Ronan. “That is established. The question the court asks, the question Gorven just asked, is whether that is a fatal flaw.”
Ronan met his gaze, his heart pounding. “And your question, Your Majesty?”
A flicker of something—not approval, but perhaps assessment—crossed Alistair’s face. “My question is whether you can make a hard decision, not just a clever one. Compassion is a luxury. Control is a necessity. Sometimes they are the same. Often they are not.” He placed a hand on the map, over Hollow’s Cross. “Your idea has merit. It is also a risk. It shows a hand that can be perceived as soft. Perception is reality for many.Now. Tell me the order you would give. Not the ideal one. The one you would actually give, knowing you must sleep after it.”
Ronan looked at the map. He saw the hungry people, the desperate men. He saw Gorven’s contempt, the whispering courtiers. He saw his mother’s face, and his brother’s ghost. His mouth was dry.
“I… would increase patrols. But I would order them to carry surplus grain sacks. To distribute them at the patrol’s discretion, to villages showing no hostility. A show of strength… and mercy. Together.”
Alistair stared at him for a long moment. Then he gave a single, slow nod. “A compromise. It tries to serve two masters. That is the duty of a king.” He turned away. “But know this: the day will come when you cannot compromise. When the choice is burn the village or lose the border. On that day, your clever mind will scream one thing, and every instinct of rule will demand another. You will flinch. And that flinch will cost more than you can imagine.”
He left Ronan standing there, the weight of the map, the kingdom, the impossible choice, pressing down on him. He hadn’t praised him. He hadn’t condemned him. He had simply shown him the cliff’s edge.
Later, in her solar, Eleanor listened as Ronan, his voice thick with confusion, relayed the exchange.
“He didn’t say I was wrong,” Ronan finished, slumped in a chair. “But he didn’t say I was right. He just said… one day, I’ll have to choose to be hard.”
Eleanor looked out the window, at the spires of the Grand Cathedral piercing the twilight. The whispers of the court were a dull roar in her memory. Lacks a suitable heir.
“He is preparing you,” she said softly, “for a world that wants a version of him. But he is also, in his way, telling you that he sees a different path. He just doesn’t know if it can walk.”
“And you?” Ronan asked, the boy still visible in the young man’s eyes. “What do you see?”
She turned, her green eyes meeting his. She saw the ghost of Lucian, yes. But she also saw the careful thinker, the observer of ceilings and granaries. She saw her own homeland in his solutions. She saw the flinch, not as cowardice, but as a conscious hesitation the world mistook for weakness.
“I see my son,” she said, the words simple and absolute. “And that is enough for me.”
But as she said it, a cold knowledge settled in her chest. It would not be enough for Eldoria. Alistair’s lessons were a race against time, against the growing murmur of discontent. The cliff’s edge was approaching, and they were all running toward it.