All Possibility

Renard returns to his house.

The confidence that marched him into the throne room and sounded words from chest had, in the moment, been stable. But now that he must wait and wonder, he nervously turns in his bed.

Could statecraft be hard? Surely not enough that Renard never could learn it, he’d thought. Which was not to measure Renard against a King, but to say he expected no lands but ones too humble and too unimportant to need more than a few active fields to sustain. Much like his own village was.

In essence, that it would run itself. But what if it doesn’t?

What if he is handed a place on a frontier, and must build up a new settlement from scratch?

What if he is handed a place with a difficult history, that would force him heavily into politics?

What if, even before that, the Queen distrusts him too much to give him anything in the end, even though she has conceded him achieved enough to deserve something? It’s this thought, more than the others, that leaves him clenching his blankets in veined, shaking fists, and truly fills him with fear.

Maybe you can make a home for yourself. A prospect considered, just to be ripped away.

Night closes on these thoughts. A day, a night, a day, a night — with the morning comes a knock on the door.

Brimming with energy, Renard swings the thing open. A courier gives the awaited message: the Queen would like his attendance.

Renard rushes to the castle and beelines to the throne room.

Or, he attempts. Joined on a carriage lent by the courier, when he passes through the gates, he spies a chaotic procession of fancy wagons, horses, and porters with luggage barking about the grounds, hunting after parking space for their truly enormous party.

Visitors. Renard shrugs them off as his carriage passes them by.

At the base of the castle steps, Renard leaves the courier to navigate himself out of the tangle. He proceeds inside and tells a servant of his invitation to see the Queen.

The servant advises that the Queen is in audience and Renard may need to wait.

Ridiculous, Renard spits, but does patiently wait in the foyer outside the throne room, arms crossed for two, three minutes...

His brow scrunches. Through the heavy stone doors echo two voices, muffled by its weight but plain in their heat, intense as warring jackals circling around the same kill, but neither so unwary as to expose a chink in their composure and let their subdued anger explode into the proper, messy yelling that most would indulge in, were they so furious.

The Queen’s wrestling hard with somebody. To both check she’s alright and force attention to his appointment, Renard shoulders past the guards and marches through the door.

The groan of the stone door dragging against the stone floor silences the arguing couple, whose attention snaps to Renard.

The first is the Queen — standing rather than sitting atop the dais with her throne, eyes rattled wide in alarm at Renard’s abrupt presence.

And the second figure, addressing her from the centre of the room, is—

“Hello, darling," she coos, face softening into a smile.

—Colette Cayns du Fayette, the fiancee Renard ditched several weeks ago.

Thrown off-kilter by her presence, Renard stumbles into the room and follows her welcoming hand into vague procession beside her. He confusedly looks from her, to the Queen, and back, but her genuinely happy smile answers none of this situation for Renard.

“Now, your most honourable Grace," Colette snaps, voice freezing cold and sharp as a spear when her attention falls back on the Queen. “Would you repeat the terms of that contract, for me?"

The Queen purses her lips, blinks back a sigh, and half-heartedly welcomes Renard.

As Renard discerns over the following dialogue: Colette arrived in Sebilles this morning, took lodging in the palace as normal for noble foreigners, discovered that Renard owned no funds or property despite his reputation and rank, and hijacked what the Queen thought would be a quick friendly audience of hellos between Lacren and Fayette to instead threaten sanctions if she did not give Renard that barony posthaste.

“For his good work across this whole region, an estate is more than fair," Colette presses. “This he would find without falter in Fayette — but here, in his own cradle, you’d pause? Is he not one of your men, too? The politics of this land are so bitter I taste them on my tongue."

“As I have many times said, we do not slight our friends in Fayette. Sir Renard," the Queen switches. “You are truly betrothed to Miss Colette?"

After all his hardships, why does two quarrelling women staring at him feel like the world’s most unnegotiable battle? Unsure of the politics, and not hugely caring what either thinks, he awkwardly concedes, “…borne ‘round my fingers is no ring, but tongues spake surely of the arrangement."

While Colette juts a vindicated nod, the Queen closes her eyes for full seconds.

“Congratulations," she finally says, sagged on her throne like a weepy intestine. “I wish for you two a fantastic relationship. The land is assured, then, alongside the title. However, it defies none of Fayette’s interests that a knight of this nation regardless be posted to work."

“You women speak swift plans without me. What ‘work’?" Renard interjects.

Colette crosses her arms, squeezing her flesh with her delicate hands. Her lowered gaze flicks to Renard, then the Queen.

The Queen straightens herself on her throne. Prior to Colette interfering, she had, on the tail of a week of strenuous deliberation, concluded what to do with Renard. She planned to offer him the barony, but that he would first secure funding for it by working on the Queen’s behalf for five years in Nix. She would accordingly increase his stipend, over that time, that he would be more than financially secure enough to start farmsteading a community when he returned, without being in debt.

“Considerate plans and great estimations you have of my darling, to thank work with more work," Colette spits. “Were he only a trapper of buffalo, perhaps you’d concede him a roof without going to that dark place."

“Colette is from high money. No loans, debts, or stipends are needed, in this case," Renard mutters to himself as he considers.

The idea of the Queen dangling the barony before him as a reward for service in Nix, truly, infuriates him. Though he can surmise she wants his skills and experience applied there, the insinuation that he would only do it once she had leverage to force him to stings. Is Nix not an important battleground? Is it not one that matters to Renard? Of course it is, on both counts. But is his service really so needed there?

“Surely, in this time, you have found specialists equally able of blade," says Renard. “And Pleione has shared the enchantment that gave me success. To your forces, my sword cannot be unique." He snorts. “Never before did you hunger to beg for me at my feet."

The Queen tilts up her head. Renard is correct there are capable soldiers equipped with witchbane artefacts currently working in Nix, however, that does not mean they are cleaving through obstacles there as cleanly as Renard does his hunts. Particularly, Pleione has been reluctant to say how dead souls could be used to make witchbane, and rather emphasised the importance of stars, fearful of the West wrongly thinking that using the dead as Renard did is in any way reliable or safe, and murdering people by that misguided notion.

Which means, the enchantments the delvers have are all weak. They are still effective, of course, but moreso as a means for protection than as a means of offence. Kingslayer is still humanity’s most valuable asset in attacking Nix’s influence, and with the blockades the delvers have recently faced, which have so far proved immovable, she wants Kingslayer down there.

Not to mention Renard, who is, in himself, the most experienced ghoul-slayer she can name and a peerless swordsman even before that.

Pleasant flattery, or just fact. Renard’s shoulders slump either way.

Two conflicting images pass through his mind.

One is Marion, pleading then dead, and the cold resolution Renard felt as he left that cave in the forest. A sense of inevitability still shrouds that thought. If Renard is to question what worth his life could have, then regardless of the Queen’s or anyone else’s intrigues, it would be in ensuring the world had no more Iron Kings or Marions, screaming for a place in the light as the dark dragged them down, and down further.

The other is Colette. Though appreciative of her support in this moment, Renard still feels no attraction towards her, and the more he thinks about it, the more frightening the reality of her nobility is. Whatever she wants from a husband, he will never satisfy her. He is far too bawd, too base… and too sickened at the thought of uprooting his lowborn history with mimicked gestures of erudition to ever want to remodel himself that way.

But weighing these options against each other, one is a resigned deathwish, and one still carries hope.

“You’ve the tools as much as I," Renard says to the Queen, stepping into line with Colette. “What principle founds me? As I’ve told you, yet nothing. You will give me two castles, a parade, dancing goats, and a harem, I still will not go where you lead."

“Ever I wonder," the Queen says, kneading her brow. “How I can hope so much of what I know you could do, and every time be betrayed."

“Perhaps it’s your ambitions that betray you, far before any man," says Colette.

“They were Sir Renard’s ambitions, to start. No, Miss Fayette, I’m quite sure my most minor expectations of this man have never once been met, least not as I ever imagined it, and what holds in my chest is rather queer disappointment. I know he is swift, and he is strong, yet when I reach to him he bucks to trample me. I call it only faith that I give him even a sliver of leniency, much less troughs of it, that he would not one day raise a blade against me, and instead continue doing only the well that he wishes."

“Your Grace, I don’t mean to disappoint you," Renard pleads. “I’ve tried, and done well, in my follies."

“I know. You have." Her face falls. “My brother often spoke the same way."

Renard’s throat locks at this precarious, but perhaps accurate, comparison. Is she insinuating—what? That he’s like a ghoul? That he’s frightening or wicked? After everything, it wasn’t the jibes, the murders, or the mistakes by which she concluded this, but a sincere wish for mercy?

The Queen sighs, massaging her brow again. “Like him, you’ll be inconsolable. I don’t know what has made you like this, but my will to wrangle it is already fading."

“I’m not a ghoul," says Renard miserably.

“Your Grace, look on this man. Don’t be cruel," says Colette.

“…Fairly so," the Queen murmurs, tone softening. “The land, the title, and no summons to Nix — you’ll have it all, then, as you want, Miss Fayette. And you, Sir Renard, you can have her."