At the moment, however, Meghren hardly cared about his surroundings. He had acquired a bout of fever after his latest escapade; a night spent frolicking in the gardens with barely two stitches of clothing on during one of his parties. Severan had warned him that it was too cold this time of year to be running about so, but had the King listened? He had told Meghren his fever was proving resistant to magical cure. Perhaps a few days spent miserable and sneezing in bed would remind him that Severan was a voice to be heeded.
At the moment, Meghren was surrounded by bedsheets that looked as if they had suffered through a windstorm. They covered the mattress in great disarray, no doubt the product of some fever-induced rage, while the King lay sweating in his nightgown and looking very much like an overgrown and forlorn child.
Two footmen stood by the wall, alert and ready for their king’s slightest command. Mother Bronach, meanwhile, sat on a stool by the King’s bedside, the red robes of her office neatly spread about her. She closed a book as Severan entered, placing it on her lap and looking as if she had swallowed something distinctly unpleasant. He noticed that the book was a transcription of one of the longer verses of the Chant of Light. It seemed he wasn’t the only one interested in torturing the King today.
“Tell me you have news!” Meghren shouted in exasperation, wiping the sweat from his brow with an embroidered towel. He lay back on his pillows with a great sigh.
Severan removed a rolled-up piece of parchment from his robe. “I do indeed, Your Majesty. This arrived not an hour ago.” He offered it to Meghren, but the man waved it aside weakly and continued to nurse his forehead.
“Oh, just tell me what it says! I am dying! The terrible diseases that swirl about in this land, it cannot be borne!”
Mother Bronach pursed her lips. “Perhaps His Majesty might consider the possibility that his illness is a lesson sent to him by the Maker.”
Meghren groaned loudly and looked to Severan for support. “This is what I put up with now. This from a traitor who actually spoke to that rebel dog!”
She frowned deeply. “I did not arrange the matter, Your Majesty. Perhaps it is the mages you should be eyeing more closely.” She stared suspiciously at Severan, a look he pointedly ignored.
“You spoke to him!” Meghren suddenly shouted, sitting up in bed and looking rather wild-eyed. “Exchanged words! And here you sit and lecture
“I bring the word of Andraste and the Maker, Your Majesty. Nothing else.”
“Bah!” He collapsed back onto his pillows, defeated.
Severan unrolled the parchment and glanced at it, though he didn’t really need to see what it said. “Our agent says that the plan is a success. They intend to attack West Hill, and have gathered up all the other Fereldans still willing to defy you. They have even agreed to use her as an integral part of the attack.”
Meghren chuckled, taking a rumpled napkin from a small pile of equally rumpled and soiled napkins and blowing his nose into it. “So she does well, then?”
“Oh, yes. Our rebel prince is quite enamored of our agent, it appears.”
“For this we sacrificed so many chevaliers?” Meghren snorted. “We should have crushed them in Gwaren when we had the chance. Burned it down, all of it. Shoved it into the sea.”
“Now we can get all of them,” Severan assured him calmly. “We can eliminate the rebellion for good. Prince Maric will be delivered to you before the month is out; that I guarantee.”
King Meghren thought on this for a moment, playing idly with the soiled napkin in his hand. He wiped his nose with it again and then chanced a look over at Mother Bronach. The woman glared at him unrelentingly, and he sighed. “No,” he finally said, “I have changed my mind. I want him killed.”
Severan frowned. “But you said—”
“And now I say this!”
Mother Bronach nodded approvingly. “The King has given his order, mage.”
“I hear him,” Severan snapped at her. He rolled up the parchment irritably. “I do not understand, Your Majesty. Had you wanted Prince Maric dead, we could easily have—”
“I have changed my mind!” Meghren shouted, and then collapsed into a fit of coughing. When he was done, he looked miserably up at Severan. “There will be no trial, no gift to the Emperor. I . . . wish him to vanish! To disappear!” He waved a hand about dismissively. “He dies in the battle; the rest will go as you planned.”
“Is this your desire, Your Majesty? Or the preference of the Chantry?”
Mother Bronach stiffened her back in her chair, her lips thinning into a single line. “It benefits no one to have the last son of Calenhad paraded in front of his people,” she snapped. “I have reminded His Majesty of his duty in this matter. It will be better this way. Final.”
Meghren did not look thrilled by the notion, but waved his assent absently at the Mother’s words. He snatched up a large pewter goblet from his nightstand and gulped down the water greedily before belching.
