Ransom raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“He admires you, Ransom. By the waters, we all do! They all attacked you as one, and you knocked them down as if they were a stack of spears! Did you know it was going to happen?”
“I just had a feeling,” Ransom said. “Like that night before the coronation. I could tell Benedict wasn’t wearing the royal tunic.”
“The lad is brave, no doubts there,” Devon agreed. “Another victory. I’ve never won so many times before. Sir James was a pleasant fellow, and a clever thinker, but none of that matters when it’s time to fight. You are unstoppable. It’s usually Bennett who’s difficult to beat. My brother’s envious as well as admiring.” He clapped Ransom on the back, and they started walking back to the castle while the pages picked up the fallen weapons and armor.
“What do you need to talk to the prince about?” Ransom asked him.
Devon smiled. “He knows I’m going to try and persuade Father to let me go to Pree. He wanted me to send a message to his betrothed in the Vexin.”
He flashed a conspiratorial smile, but Ransom knew in his heart the Younger King had just lied to him.
Ransom had been at the castle long enough that he’d witnessed more than one shouting match between the two kings of Ceredigion, but he still hated to see the ill blood fester between father and son. Worse yet was the pained look on Queen Emiloh’s face as she watched two men whom she loved deeply bicker with each other.
Most of the servants had already fled the hall at the onset of the argument, but Ransom, who stood as a mute witness, felt he had no choice but to stay. He hadn’t been dismissed, after all, and he was being used as part of the Younger King’s argument.
“And I do not see why I must send my knight to fetch my own wife! It’s humiliating, Father! Not to mention a cause for gossip.”
The Elder King was no longer on his throne, but he stood next to it, his arm propped on the back of it. The queen sat on hers, her fingers gripping the padded armrests so hard her knuckles were white.
“Of course you don’t see it,” snapped the angry father. “Because the roads have been safe since you were a child. They were made safe by my laws! By my force! I know King Lewis. I know what kind of man he is. I do not trust him.”
“Yet you married me to his daughter,” came the quick reply, an argument that had been made multiple times already. “I never once refused or demanded my own choice. You picked her, not I! All I am asking is for the chance to get her myself. And Ransom will come too! He has the might of a dozen men, at least, and we’ll bring other knights too. A hundred, five hundred, however many you insist we bring. Why are you so stubborn?”
“Stubborn? Do you even hear yourself?”
“I trust my safety to Sir Ransom Barton,” the Younger King insisted, stabbing his own chest with a finger. “You gave him to me, and I thank you for it. Let him do his duty and protect me as he would my bride and anyone else he is charged to protect. Let me go!”
“And what does the queen think?”
Ransom could see the frustration, the impassioned feelings of the first Argentine king. The look he gave his wife had not softened, but at least he was seeking her counsel.
“He is eighteen now,” said the queen patiently. She looked at her husband with pleading eyes. “He should be allowed to make his own decisions.”
“Even if they are foolish and flawed?”
“How is my reasoning flawed?” the younger Devon demanded hotly.
The king held up his hand to his son, his jaw clenched and his eyes sharp as daggers. He looked back at the queen.
“Even so,” she answered, “I don’t think Lewis will harm him. He wanted the match very much. He’s wanted it consummated for some time now.”
“Of course he does,” said the Elder King. “Can you not see it? Either of you? He wants to take Ceredigion and turn it into a duchy. His duchy. If we allow it, he’ll carve us up like a midwinter turkey. I do not feel it is prudent to send you there, my boy. Can you not trust my judgment? My experience?”
Devon folded his arms. “Does Sir Ransom believe there is danger awaiting us?”
The Elder furrowed his brow. “What are you saying?”
“He knows, Father. Somehow he knows of danger before it happens. Even today, in the training yard, he knew Bennett had switched tunics with—”
“Bennett switched tunics?” the Elder King roared.
The queen buried her face in her hands and sighed.