Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima

Author:Cinda Williams Chima [Chima, Cinda Williams]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy and Magic, General, Fantasy, Royalty, Fiction
ISBN: 9780007321988
Google: umlVPgAACAAJ
Amazon: 0007321988
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2010-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Amon Byrne was not the kind of person who dwelled on things. He usually made a decision and moved on. But this time was different. He’d done more second-guessing over the past two days than he’d done in his lifetime before then.

They’d not been released from Speaker Jemson’s study until the morning after Raisa’s abduction.

By then the trail was cold. Amon had sent his Gray Wolves racing into Ragmarket to search for any trace of Cuffs or Raisa, while he went straight to his father to confess what he’d done.

He found his father at breakfast, dining alone, as was his habit. Once the first few words were out of Amon’s mouth, Captain Byrne stopped eating, sat back, and listened stone-faced, firing a question here and there.

When Amon finished, his father threw his napkin on the table and sent his orderly to fetch his duty officers to the garrison room.

Amon extended his sword to his father, hilt first. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said stiffly. “I hereby resign my comm—”

“Keep that,” his father growled. “You’ll likely need it.”

“Sir?” Amon stammered, confused. “But…when the queen hears…”

“They are headstrong, the Gray Wolf queens,” his father said. “No one knows that better than me. The most difficult task a guardsman faces is to say no to his sovereign when he knows it may result in his own dismissal, imprisonment, or death.” He fixed Amon with his hawklike gaze. “But sometimes you have to say it. You should have said it to the princess heir.”

“But how can we do that, sir?” Amon restored his sword to its scabbard. “I mean, we serve the queen, and so—”

“We serve the line of queens,” his father said. “We serve the throne. Sometimes an individual makes a bad choice.”

Amon stared at his father. “But isn’t that…isn’t that…”

“Treason?” Captain Byrne smiled thinly. “Some would say so. Who are we, after all?” He rose, walked to the hearth, and prodded the fire with a poker. The careful arrangement of logs collapsed in a fountain of sparks.

“We Byrnes are here by a covenant made with Hanalea, the first of this stubborn line,” his father said, staring into the fire. “It is a tricky business, for sure, but we’ll be all right as long as we keep our eyes on the good of the line and the good of the realm.”

“But…not everyone in the Guard is there for the good of the realm,” Amon said, thinking of Mac Gillen.

His father nodded. “Time was, the captain chose every man and woman who went into the Guard. That’s no longer true. Politics have come into play. I did not choose Mac Gillen, and I’ve been unable to dismiss him, much as I’ve tried.”

Who chose Mac Gillen? Amon wanted to ask. But didn’t. “What…what are we going to do, sir?” he asked.

His father continued to gaze into the flames, his face hard and unreadable. “We’re going to risk everything to protect the line.”

“What do you mean?”

“The princess heir has her name day this summer, after which she’ll be eligible for an alliance by marriage.

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