Chapters (76)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- PROLOGUE
- PART I
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- PART II
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- PART III
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- INTERLUDE
- PART IV
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- INTERLUDE
- PART V
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- PART VI
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- INTERLUDE
- PART VII
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- PART VIII
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Newsletter Sign-up
She continued straight through to the top floor of the barracks and out to the battlements on the opposite side. Again the chill wind bit into her cheeks, but it kept her alert, it kept her body feeling. It was a late morning, and Lady Margery d’Oily would still be in the large bedroom of the upper keep.
“DOES IT EVER OVERWHELM you?” Arable asked. Roger de Lacy sat on the thick wooden table he used as a desk, cracked and flawed, both of them. He rocked back and forth, arms cupped around his knees. He looked like a child, despite the grey hair he could try to hide and the responsibilities he couldn’t.
“Of course not,” he mumbled, his eyes focused on something out the window, far off but moving, a bird crossing the sky. “Nobody has ever been overwhelmed by anything. It’s the sort of thing people say that doesn’t make any sense. Overwhelmed. What would it take to actually overwhelm a person? How many troubles can a man have before they ooze out of his ears? Would my chest rip open and all my difficulties pour out, onto the ground, for me to simply lace myself up again and go about my day? To be overwhelmed would imply there exists a point that man cannot possibly take any more, and, were he given even the tiniest of troubles further, he would cease to be, or explode perhaps. Astonishingly, this has never happened. That is our strength—mankind, that is. We can always take more. Even at the edge, when you feel the cliff crumbling beneath your feet, when you think you’re falling, you’re not. You’re floating. You’ve just never felt it before. We can always take more, Arable. There is no such thing as being overwhelmed.”
There were tears in her eyes, and she felt a strange sort of humility.
He turned and winked. “I am, however, absolutely and utterly whelmed.”
MARGERY WAS INDEED IN the high keep’s master solar, but she was not alone. Her husband, the squirrelly Earl Waleran de Beaumont, was pacing in circles about a tall-back chair whereupon sat their recently arrived son. The younger Waleran was a rugged and charismatic man who would have been attractive if not for his pervasive sense of entitlement. Arable guessed that his moniker, the Young Bear, was one of his own devising.
“Where are your manners?” Margery snapped, and only then did Arable realize she had barged into the room without having knocked. She had been enveloped in her thoughts, and flustered to find an apology. But Margery abandoned her with a flick of her wrist and continued in conversation. “I think it’s a terrible idea, positioning yourself in the very role with which you do not wish to be associated.”
“It will make him look like a hero,” the earl said to his fingers.