The Duke's Decision

Avery sipped from the goblet of wine nervously, waiting in the passage behind the ducal throne. Then he shook his head and handed the goblet back to Marcus, still half full. I will need a clear head for this, Avery thought to his seneschal through the mental link that connected them. This is going to be tricky enough to manage.

Marcus took the goblet with a frown. “If you didn't want a zoo, you should have just invited the one you've decided to marry and not every conceivable suitor,” the seneschal muttered under his breath. At Avery's sharp glance, his cousin closed his lips in case anyone was watching or listening from afar. You have decided, right?

I’ve decided how to decide, Avery replied, putting his head up to the peephole. Through the frayed threads of the tapestry, he could see that the grand hall was filling rapidly. I'm having second thoughts about my decision, but you and Aunt Maude were right when you said I need to get married.

Are you announcing a contest of some kind? Marcus was curious. If you'd told me more, I could have narrowed the guest list considerably to restrict it to the most capable contenders.

They're getting restless out there, Avery replied evasively, tightening the shield over his innermost thoughts in case any started leaking through his connection to his cousin. I need you out there. Go.

With a nod, Marcus turned on his heel and strode into the room. The heavy curtain twitched as it fell into place between him and those outside. Alone again inside the passage, Avery let himself relax slightly. He waited until his heart settled down before slipping quietly forward to peer one last time into the great hall. People crowded together in tight clumps, chattering excitedly about whatever gossip they'd heard while waiting to be admitted inside.

It was amusing gossip. His cousin James, who had been master of hounds for the old duke, had his agents seed the suitors with wild rumors, stirring up all the old stories about the old duke. Before the old duke had declared Avery his heir and vanished, the enigmatic silver-skinned man with his unusual golden eyes had been a fixture of York for two whole centuries. Many legends had grown about the old duke over the years.

The old duke's ancestry was unknown; he claimed a gnomish mother, but everyone knew that gnomes were not six and a half feet tall with silver skin with pointed nails, teeth, and ears. Halflings with a gnomish parent were inevitably short, regardless of the height of the other parent.

Near the beginning of the old duke’s rule over the duchy, his personal household had included both a human woman and a halfling whose gender and role in their shared household were equally unclear and therefore the focus of considerable scandal. Adding to the scandal, his descendants varied wildly in appearance, but none had looked quite like him until Avery.

Avery was a throwback, a great-great-grandson of the old duke on his father's side and a great-great-great-grandson of the old duke on his mother's side – silver, tall, and taloned, with the same slit-pupiled golden eyes as his ancestor. The people of York had great hopes for him.

It was easy to pick out his prospective brides, even the ones he’d never laid eyes on before. Many of the women wore dresses that looked familiar to Avery from Isolde’s ball, including two girls whose red dresses looked nearly identical. In almost every case, there were one or two suitors at the center of each clump of well-dressed guests, brightly colored glittering jewels cut and polished by their determined families.

There were only two exceptions to that pattern – a trio of giggling women clustered together and a pair of wizards from out of town, the latter wearing robes marking them as a journeyman and an archmage. The women looked alike enough to all be sisters, explaining their closeness. After a moment, he recognized the younger wizard as female and of eligible age rather than being an adolescent boy; in drab journeyman’s robes with her gently-pointed ears and bright red hair tucked under a man’s cap, she looked quite different than she had in a ball gown the previous night.

Casting his eyes from one jewel to the next, Avery felt a surge of guilt. His eyes rested on a nervous young woman with light brown hair in an emerald green gown as his thoughts turned inward. Soon, many of these women will be outraged, disappointed, or terrified, through no fault of their own, he thought to himself, careful not to transmit this sentiment to Marcus. He’d only told his plan to Maude. As long as nobody else knew his plans, he could change them without seeming capricious, though time was running out swiftly.

The course of these women’s lives depended on the decisions made by their titled kin – usually fathers, grandfathers, or uncles. When he'd written out his political calculations in his diary, his solution to his personal dilemma had seemed elegant and clever; looking at the anxious women surrounded by their ambitious relatives, it seemed cruel and selfish.

War changes things, he reminded himself firmly. This is the best way for me to prepare for the end of the empire. He waited while Marcus worked his way through the crowd, resolving disputes over social precedence and position. Higher-ranking aristocrats and their proxies filtered to the front of the crowd, many visibly affronted that the invitations had not been more selective; mere gentry were herded towards the back of the room, where they exchanged pessimistic mutters behind the backs of their titled betters.

Avery slipped through the curtain and stepped out from behind his great-great-grandfather's chair. He froze, feeling a hundred eyes turn towards him at once. Silence fell. He took another step forward, and then a second, standing in front of the uncomfortable seat. He looked slowly and deliberately around the room, taking stock of his choices one last time. Surely simply picking one would not be so bad.

The front rows in particular were full of advantageous matches, women who had been his peers before his sudden ascension to the ducal throne. The calm blonde woman in the red dress on the left side of the front row was Sabine, the grandniece of the Duke of Lancaster, directly west of his own duchy; she had probably considered herself Avery’s social superior as little as three months ago.

To the right of her was Elizabeth, daughter of the earl of Northumbria. Elizabeth was wearing a yellow dress decorated with orange ribbons, looking like a small lost child wedged between her father and one of her massive brothers. The nervous girl in the green gown Avery had noticed at the ball the previous night was in the second row of suitors, making most likely the daughter or granddaughter of a baron, likely the elderly man next to her.

In the back row, the blonde woman hunched over and staring at her feet as she sat beside Sir Malkin Guy looked too tall and too broad in the shoulder to be anyone else’s daughter. Even in that rearmost row, populated by mere landed gentry, none of the nervously glittering jewels in the room were unsuitable wives in any way that the investigations of James and Maude could discern.

Silence continued to awkwardly fill the hall as his gaze flitted from woman to woman and family to family. Many of those noble ladies were frightened, or at least a little nervous, looking down or away rather than meeting his eyes. He took that as a good sign, and as a sign his plan remained secret; he’d been afraid of finding trapped glares of hostility aimed back at him.

Marriage was traditionally a matter of property, propriety, and politics. Avery’s plan was to outrage propriety on behalf of politics. He would not choose a bride, and by not choosing, he would show himself to be fair; neither would he refuse to marry, for it was the duke’s duty. No, the decision would belong to the ladies and gentlemen seated in the audience.

He glanced at the far end of the hall, catching sight of the wizard Alric, talking quietly with the seneschal. Both men wore grim expressions. Alric and his fellows at the new collegium rarely approved of Avery's plans. He wasn't sure what the master wizard wanted, but he assumed that Alric had snuck into the hall as a guest of one of the families that had been invited.

Avery’s first thought was that the wizards of the collegium had somehow magically divined his plans and that Alric was there to sabotage the event. On the other hand, it could be about the textile manufactory, Avery thought to himself, remembering the wizard’s incessant lobbying on the subject. Unfortunately, I can’t handle him the way the old duke would have.

With disintegrations in mind, he glanced over at the crystal sword on the velvet-covered altar in front of the dais. Then he looked more deliberately at the guards standing between him and the crowd and cleared his throat.

“Today, I have brought you here to make an important announcement,” he said, forcing his nervous eyes up to his audience in what he hoped looked like confidence. “I will hold a wedding two weeks hence.”

For a long moment, nothing happened. Silence deepened until it became unbearable.

“No!” The word was blurted out with a combination of disbelief and disappointment.

Avery focused on the speaker. She was an attractive dark-haired woman near the back of the hall, glaring furiously, her cheeks flushed pink. Next to her, a woman with light brown hair and blue eyes tugged at her hand nervously. The dark-haired woman’s face paled as Avery met her eyes, and she swallowed hard, trying not to look afraid and failing. Avery searched through his memory and held up a hand, looking at Marcus.

Of the gentry, milord. Her name is Anna. Her father is a country knight with a small estate, and she was hoping to secure an introduction to you next week. The woman sitting next to her trying to calm her down is named Rose. She’s also landed gentry, though of a different family. Shall I have Anna and her party removed? Marcus took a step forward, his knight’s spurs jingling.

Avery gave a quick shake of his head to answer his seneschal’s silent question. The outburst was understandable. “Anna, is it?”

The woman nodded, tight-lipped.

“It remains to be seen whom I marry in two weeks, Anna.” Avery fixed his gaze on Anna silently for a moment, silently and secretly hoping that ‘nobody’ was not the answer to that question. He had to seem confident. No, he had to be confident.

“Great and terrible things are afoot in York. And England. And the Empire of Britain. His Imperial Majesty has designated no heir and increasingly leaves the helm of the state to turn itself. The bureaucracy encroaches on the power of the nobility. Rebels have cut the railway in Nottingham. The nobility drinks the blood of peasants and calls it high fashion. Just this past month, elven ships have landed raiding parties in both Cornwall and Wales. As your sworn duke, it is my duty to secure this duchy against its foreign and domestic enemies. I have already paid a price in blood thanks to those of my cousins who thought they had a better claim to my inheritance. Today, I am offering another price in blood to secure the future of York. I will give my heart for York.”

He paused, taking a very deep breath. He held up a hand and looked around the room. No one spoke or moved out of fear of being singled out either by the young duke or his peers. The only sound in the great hall was the nervous shifting of feet among the assembled guests. Avery took another slow, steadying breath. What he was about to propose would sound at worst unsettling and at best old-fashioned in the modern imperial era.

“York needs allies whose loyalty is first and foremost to me. Whether they are country knights like your father, Anna, or earls who govern a whole county on behalf of the Emperor. I have decided that I will marry any – and all – of you who can swear your families’ loyalty directly to me.”

Surprised murmurs rippled across the room. Avery held up a hand to still them and finish his planned speech. “For those of you who are willing to step forward to swear to me above all others: I am ready to take those oaths of fealty here and now, in front of witnesses and upon the sword of my predecessor. However, if you need time to confer with your family, you have it – but do not take too long. The wedding is in two weeks.”