Princess Cinna had never seen her father so haggard before.

  She sat to the king’s right at the head of a large, intricately carved council table. Across from Cinna sat an empty seat reserved for her absent brother. Further down the table gathered numerous ministers and advisors, themselves attended by aides hovering behind their shoulders. This was the first full meeting of the king’s council since what many were calling the Day of Revelation. The chaos of that day’s aftermath had kept Cinna, her father, and the council scrambling to contain it for nearly a week.

  Everyone present looked tired, but King Artemesias appeared to be in particularly bad shape. His face seemed devoid of blood, so pale was it, and he had grown so gaunt that one might have been forgiven for mistaking him for a starving peasant. Such a ghastly visage stood out on its own, but it was all the more apparent when comparing him to the portrait behind his throne depicting him and the late queen shortly after their wedding. There he possessed the strength of youth; his beard was full and well-kempt, his hair was a solid brown instead of its current gray, and in his eyes lurked the confidence and cunning of a king.

  Just days ago King Artemesias had still retained much of that youthful vigor. Stress had since eaten away at him, leaving behind a shadow of the man he once was. His broad shoulders were slumped in a manner he never would have allowed in public and his gaze was directed at the table, not the people around him. He could not even muster the energy to call the meeting to a start.

  “Ahem. If I may?” asked Count Lukas Stromberg, an ancient man currently holding the title of chief counselor. Following a nod from the king so slight it might have been imagined, Count Stromberg cleared his throat again before immediately passing the buck to someone else. “Princess Cinna, I believe you were personally handling the recent riots. Would you be so kind as to inform the council as to your progress?”

  Cinna nearly rolled her eyes at the transparent attempt at redirecting the king’s potential ire onto her, but her limited diplomatic training kept the urge in check. Over the last few days her father had lost his composure a handful of times as the situation worsened, but he was clearly in no condition to do so now. Even when the topic of the riots inevitably transitioned into the bad news inextricably linked to them.

  “Very well. For those too busy with other matters to keep abreast of the situation, multiple oracles across Selkarc found themselves so distraught on the Day of Revelation that they neglected to consider the impact of their words upon the populace. Predictably, our citizens were badly shaken by the news that we have been abandoned by the gods. Word spread rapidly and riots broke out in every major city,” Cinna explained.

  “But you have already dealt with them, I presume?” asked Stromberg.

  “…the rioting has been quelled, yes. I had already called for garrisons across Selkarc to muster for another matter when I received word of the riots. Though greatly outnumbered by the mobs, our soldiers were able to disperse them with minimal bloodshed,” Cinna continued carefully.

  “Minimal, you say,” challenged the young Baron Lundgren. “My father and sister are dead.”

  “For that I am sorry,” Cinna replied contritely. She meant it. Lundgren’s family specialized in necromancy and, as a result, had been among her top priorities. But the late baron and his oldest daughter had been seized while attempting to calm their territory’s citizens and burned to death in front of the gates of their estate before the local garrison could even organize.

  “Peace, please,” requested Count Stromberg. “Allow her highness to finish.”

  “As I said, the people were…shaken. At that point it took only a single voice in the wrong place to push the mobs into action. People were desperate for salvation and, as I expected, latched onto the idea that sacrificing every necromancer they could find to the gods might appease them and somehow convince them to return,” Cinna added.

  “I bear some of the responsibility here,” volunteered Archpriest Martensson. Like the king, Martensson had seemingly aged by years in a matter of days. Without his faith he was a shell of a man and it reflected in his lightless eyes and toneless speech. “It did not occur to me until far too late that anyone would go so far. Had I reported the news sooner…”

  “You were stunned. We all were,” Cinna assured the man. “I acted to mobilize the garrisons as soon as I was informed, but by then it was too late. The lynching had already begun. While we were able to disperse the rioters, we have not been able to locate any living necromancers in the time since.”

  A few moments of silence passed in the wake of Cinna’s report, more out of fear of the king’s reaction than of any emotional reaction to the news. Most of those present didn’t seem to grasp the significance of the complete annihilation of the kingdom’s necromancers. Far from just a loss of life, it represented a loss of institutional knowledge on the subject of necromancy.

  “None? I find that hard to believe,” objected Duke Korhonen. “I’m sure we’ve all heard the reports of the recently dead rising from their graves and attacking anyone nearby. It seems obvious this is the work of rogue necromancers. Are you suggesting yourself to be so utterly incompetent that-”

  Crack.

  Princess Cinna leapt to her feet and pounded one fist against the table with such force she cracked the wood. Calmly, she reflected that the Cinna of a few years ago might have done the same for entirely different reasons. Here and now, however, she did so because she needed to make a point and needed to make it now.

  “I will not argue the facts, but if one more word of slander emerges from that fetid cavern you call a mouth, Duke Korhonen, then we shall be settling the matter on the dueling grounds,” Cinna ground out.

  That single sentence, outwardly nothing but threats and insults, was a highly calculated statement on Cinna’s part. By insulting Cinna, Duke Korhonen was challenging the authority of the crown at a time the country could ill-afford. Already there were rumblings below the surface that King Artemisias was no longer fit to rule. If Cinna allowed even a mild insult to pass, she might be seen as weak. Timid. Unsure of the solidity of her family’s position.

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  Cinna’s reputation for loyalty and hatred of politics ensured no nobles would ever even attempt to involve her in such a plot, but her connections to the military and by extension Selkarc’s intelligence services kept her well-informed. She knew Korhonen was one of several nobles that wished to depose the king and place Crown Prince Dalton on the throne immediately.

  Dalton was a widower whose wife passed in the same accident that claimed the late queen and he had yet to remarry. Some nobles had gotten it into their heads that they could marry their weakest-willed daughters—or in the case of Duchess Hagen, herself—to the future king in order to secure more power for themselves. Selkarc had a time-honored custom of its monarchs being co-equal. A direct connection to an easily-influenced monarch was as good as ruling the kingdom.

  That would still leave Dalton in a position to counter the influence of his in-laws, but only so long as he lived. Being co-equal meant that his spouse would take the throne independently in the event of his death much as King Artemisias had when the queen died. Having married into the family wasn’t a factor; the surviving spouse would rule until they died or passed the throne to their children. Artemisias already had heirs, so he was a poor target for such a plot. But Dalton was another story. With him abroad it was up to Cinna to prevent such an outcome.

  With all that in mind, Cinna escalated the situation with more direct insults and an invitation to a duel. The first served to establish her position as being above that of Duke Korhonen. If he allowed it to pass, he accepted Cinna’s authority over him and her right to say what she wished.

  But if he challenged her, Korhonen would be drawn into a duel with a highly-trained knight. Barbarous though the custom might be, it remained legal due to its ties to Selkarc’s origins as a nation of warriors. In a time before the nobility trained their heirs as mages, noble warriors had settled their differences in combat. There existed no allowance for selecting a proxy. Karhonen may have been an accomplished mage in his own right, but mages needed time to prepare their spells. There was no doubting Cinna’s ability to cut him down before he could finish his incantation.

  That wouldn’t stop someone else from hiring a hand-picked warrior to challenge Cinna to a duel in the aftermath, of course, but disregarding that served as a means of showing her confidence in and of itself. Even so, this was a tactic she could only ever employ once. Making a habit of it would only alienate more of the nobility. The last thing Cinna needed was to be seen as an irrational and unstable tyrant.

  “…my apologies, your highness. I…misspoke,” Duke Karhonen said after examining Cinna’s face for any signs of weakness or doubt. “I have the utmost confidence in your abilities and am certain you will find the culprits soon.”

  Satisfied, Cinna waited for an attendant to right her seat and then sat back down. She motioned for Count Stromberg to proceed with the meeting.

  “My thanks for your report, your highness,” Stromberg said, choosing to let the confrontation pass without comment. “Let us move on to less urgent matters. I believe several of those here have information on some…changes that have occurred in the wake of the gods’ departure. Sir Feldt, if you would…?”

  “A-ah, yes, of course,” stuttered the man in question as he jerked upright. Feldt held the title of chief physician, but it had been a largely ceremonial role in a world where most illness could be cured by the laying on of hands. With clerics robbed of their power he found himself suddenly thrust into the limelight. A role he was ill-prepared for as a political appointee. “Um, well, you must understand that we are still putting things together. I barely had a staff before all of…this. Er, I believe I had something here…”

  “This, sir?” an aide offered, holding out a note card. Feldt touched the card and his eyes lit up with remembrance.

  “Right. Information is limited thus far, but what we do know is that there has already been an uptick in illness across the kingdom. Nothing major yet, but I’m told we may need to begin considering new public health guidelines to combat outbreaks,” Feldt explained with a bit more confidence. Cinna would at least grant that he was wise enough to take the advice of his staff into account. Perhaps he would make a competent official yet. “More alarming are the reports of strange burns.”

  “Burns?” echoed one of the nobles off to Cinna’s right. She didn’t quite manage to identify the voice.

  “Yes, burns. They’ve been appearing on the skin of those who spend a great deal of time in the sun. Covering up has proven to be sufficient to prevent them, but it may be wise to issue a public announcement advising citizens to avoid spending too much time outside,” Feldt finished.

  Cinna suppressed a frown and turned to Archpriest Martensson. “Could this be a curse left behind by Soltha?”

  “I’m afraid I have no idea,” Martensson admitted, sounding defeated. “The sun goddess has never been so spiteful in the past, but…before a week ago I never would have expected her to abandon Ennos either.”

  “That’s far from the only oddity, unfortunately,” volunteered Admiral Sorensson. He was a fair-haired commoner who had risen from a lowly sailor to the highest position in Selkarc’s navy through achievements alone. “The seas have grown restless in the absence of Havar. Any ship that strays from the coast gets capsized by waves the as high as their decks in short order. The Outer Fleet has been trapped at port in the Kiilvar Islands for days now.”

  “At least we won’t have to worry about any attacks from the sea. There’s no such consolation when it comes to our food—pests have suddenly started devouring crops in the fields and predators seem to have developed a taste for livestock all of a sudden,” supplied Baron Voll.

  “You think that’s bad? I’ve had to shut down my mines entirely because the miners were fainting for no discernable reason. We didn’t get to them all in time. It’s like they suddenly forgot to breathe,” said Count Berge. “If we don’t find a solution soon we’ll be entirely dependent on the Deepfolk for ore.”

  Report after report poured in painting a bleak picture of Selkarc’s current affairs. Disrupted trade, foul water, and a rise in monster attacks were just a few more of the problems facing the kingdom. With King Artemisias indisposed, it fell to Princess Cinna to issue commands to the council, but there were few solutions to be had at the moment. She could do little more than instruct those present to continue looking for remedies to their problems.

  Eventually the meeting wound to a close and the nobles and ministers filed out of the room one after another. Cinna soon found herself alone with her father.

  “I’m sorry,” the king whispered once the doors had closed. Cinna’s false smile faltered for a moment at that and she barely managed to restore it to her face before the king saw.

  “Come, father. Let’s get you to bed. You need to rest this time. Denying yourself sleep helps no one,” she said softly as she stood and helped her father to his feet. She decided that someone would need to keep an eye on the king and make sure he rested properly. Cinna herself had far too much on her plate to do so, but she might be able to enlist her younger sister Kamilla for the job. Her second brother, Rasmus, was far too obedient to their father for such a task.

  Silently, Cinna prayed that Dalton returned soon. She wasn’t built for the role of de-facto regent.