A Crown for Assassins

In theory, Henry shouldn’t have flinched. He was nineteen, a man grown. He was tall and strong, a fine swordsman and a better shot. Yet there was always something in his father’s voice that made him just a small boy again.

“I’m sorry, Father, what did you say?” Henry asked.

“I said that something must be done,” his father repeated, with obvious bad grace.

“As you say, Father,” Henry said.

His father gave Henry an angry look. “Honestly, I have raised a vapid shell of a man in you. Not like your cousin.”

“Now, my love…” his mother began, but in the halfhearted way she usually did.

“Well, it’s true,” his father snapped, pacing before the fireplace like a guard before a castle gate. Not that a man as important as Sir Hubert would have appreciated the comparison. “The boy can’t stick with anything. How many tutors did he go through as a child? Then there was the commission with that military company I had to buy him out of, and the business with joining the Church of the Masked Goddess…”

Henry didn’t bother pointing out that all of that had been down to his parents. There had been so many tutors because his father had a habit of firing them whenever they taught anything he didn’t agree with, so that Henry had mostly educated himself in the house’s library. Equally, his father had been the one to decide that a commission in a free company was no place for his son, while the business with the church had even been the old man’s idea, until he learned that it would mean that Henry would never be able to give the family the heirs it required.

“You’re daydreaming again,” his father snapped. “Your cousin wouldn’t be. She made something of her life. She married a king!”

“And almost married a prince twice over,” Henry said, not able to stop himself.

He saw his father go white with anger. Henry knew that expression, and knew what it portended. So many times when he was growing up, he’d seen that expression and had to stand there, not flinching at the slaps or the switching that had come next. He steeled himself to do the same today.

Instead, as his father lashed out, Henry found his hand moving up almost automatically to catch the arm, squeezing hard enough to bruise as he held his father’s wrist in place, looking at him evenly. He stepped back, letting his father’s arm drop.

Sir Hubert rubbed his wrist. “I want you to leave my house! You are not welcome here anymore!”

“I think you’re right,” Henry said. “I should go. Please excuse me.”

He felt oddly calm as he left the room, heading upstairs to the room he’d had since he was a child. There, he started to collect things together, working out what he would need, and what he would have to do next.

Henry only had only known his cousin a little when she was alive. There were those who said that with his golden hair, deep blue eyes, and handsome features he actually looked a little like her, but Henry had never been able to see it. Perhaps it was just that Angelica had always been the standard against which he had been found wanting. She was more intelligent, or able to get on with people better, or more successful at court.

Henry wasn’t sure that any of those things were true. Typically, before his father had been rid of them, his tutors had been surprised by how quickly Henry learned, and he’d always had a knack for getting people to do what he needed. His lack of success at court had mostly come from a lack of interest.

“That will have to change,” Henry said to himself.

He had heard the rumors about his cousin, but he had also been clever enough to seek out his own information, paying men for what they knew and drinking with travelers at the local inn. From what he could understand, his cousin had been put aside not once, but twice, by Sebastian, the son who was rumored to have murdered his mother. Angelica had then sided with Rupert, probably to make sure that she got to the throne, only to find that Sophia Danse’s invasion turned anyone connected with the ruling family into a target.

“And it got her killed,” Henry muttered as he fetched clothes and money, pistols and his old dueling rapier.

He had no doubt that Angelica had engaged in plenty of nefarious practices to get where she’d ended up. A part of Henry wished that he didn’t understand how these things worked, but he did, and even someone like her didn’t rise to be queen by accident. She’d always been quick to cheat or lie in games as a child, whenever it seemed it would gain her an advantage.

Yet the things the rumors accused her of… those sounded more like someone’s revision of history to make themselves sound innocent. They were an excuse to have her killed, clearing the way for power.

If he were like his father, Henry would rage in impotent anger at that. If he were like his mother, he would break down at the horror of it while simultaneously spreading gossip. He wasn’t like either of them, though. He was a man who did what was needed, and he needed to do this.

“The family honor will allow no less,” Henry said, standing and hefting his bag.

He walked downstairs, pausing at the door to the drawing room.

“Mother, Father, I will be leaving now. I will not be returning. You should know that I will avenge my cousin’s death, whatever it takes. I am not doing that so that you will be proud of me, because frankly I don’t care what you think. I am doing it because it needs to be done. Farewell.”

As goodbyes went, it was singularly unemotional, but Henry found that he had nothing better for them as he stalked from the house, ignoring his mother’s wailing and his father’s angry stares.

He went around to the stable, selecting the fine chestnut mare he always rode, along with a brindled horse to carry his pack. He started to saddle them, knowing every step of it by heart. Already, his mind was past thoughts of his parents, concentrating on the things that he would need to do in the days to come, the alliances he would have to make, the fights that he would have to win with words and gold and steel.

Was their new queen truly one of the Danses? It was possible, given the rumors, but even if she were, that would not give her the right to take the throne. That had fallen to Rupert, and Angelica through him. Since the only remaining member of the Flambergs was almost certainly guilty of treason, that meant…

“Yes,” Henry said, with a rueful smile at how easily it had come to him, “that might work.”

It wasn’t that he wanted to do this. He didn’t need a throne any more than he’d wanted the priestly occupation his parents had tried to foist on him. It was simply a necessary component of what was to come. Charge into Ashton and attempt to kill the queen, and he would be no more than a traitor.

Yet he couldn’t allow the invaders from Ishjemme to go unpunished. At a stroke, they had undone all the careful work constructed following the civil wars. They had undone the old order and instituted a new one where the Assembly of Nobles was rearranged at the ruler’s whim, and where his cousin could be executed on no more than the word of the queen.

Henry would not stand for that. He could make things as they were again. He could make them right.

With that in mind, he set off riding. He would need support for this, and thankfully, Henry knew exactly where to find it.