Part Eighty-Seven — The King’s Chamber

Pieced together later, same as everything else about how the wider kingdom actually came to decide our fate before we'd even been properly consulted about it.

　Selwyn presented her findings to the throne room of Ashford personally, a formality she'd have preferred to avoid given how much remained genuinely uncertain, but a formality the growing public pressure had made unavoidable regardless.

　The chamber itself was grander than the Church's own austere halls — high vaulted ceilings, banners bearing Ashford's crest hanging in long, solemn rows, the specific kind of architecture designed to remind anyone standing in it exactly how small they were in comparison to the kingdom itself.

　King Alaric Thorne sat at the chamber's head, a man in his sixties whose reputation, from what little Selwyn's own reports had gathered, suggested careful pragmatism over dramatic gesture — not a king given to rash decisions, though not one who could afford to be seen ignoring his court's mounting anxiety either.

"High Priestess," the king said, once she'd been announced properly. "You have information regarding this matter that has apparently consumed half my court's conversation for the better part of two months."

"I do, Your Majesty," Selwyn said, bowing with the precise, measured respect of someone who understood exactly how much weight her next words would carry. "Though I would caution that much of what circulates through your court bears only passing resemblance to what my own knights actually observed."

　She laid out the account carefully, methodically — the lost units, the confirmed barrier, the scholar's assessment, and the four knights' genuinely dangerous contact with whoever actually controlled the territory: a near-execution over an ill-chosen word, halted only by a second figure — one Selwyn's own knights had recognized on sight, and reacted to with something closer to awe than professional composure.

　She did not exaggerate.

　She did not, to her credit, minimize either.

"The anomaly is confirmed real," Selwyn continued, "and considerably more organized than initial reports suggested. The territory formerly known as the Horizontal Line has been renamed Horizoncrest, and governs itself under a group calling themselves the Kobayashi family — the anomaly himself, known as Kai, stands as its head."

　A murmur passed through the assembled nobility at the unfamiliar word.

"Kobayashi," King Alaric repeated, testing the syllables with evident unfamiliarity. "That is not a name of Ashford, nor of any neighboring kingdom I'm aware of. Nor elven, nor dwarven, so far as my own scholars have ever catalogued."

"No, Your Majesty," Selwyn admitted. "Its origin remains unknown to us entirely. Whatever it means, and to whomever it originally belonged, it is not a name this Church has any record of."

Another piece of the puzzle that simply doesn't fit any existing shape. Everything about this anomaly seems determined to defy easy categorization.

"So," Lord Reventh Cassmoor said, from among the assembled nobility, his tone carrying the practiced concern of a man who'd spent weeks cultivating exactly this moment. "An anomaly capable of killing Church knights without leaving survivors, hiding behind a barrier sophisticated enough to defeat our finest scholars for months, and your official recommendation, High Priestess, is patience?"

He's not actually worried about the threat. He's worried about being seen as the man who identified it first and did nothing.

"My recommendation," Selwyn said, evenly, "is caution proportional to genuine risk, rather than action proportional to rumor. The four knights who made contact returned alive. What nearly happened to one of them was halted by restraint from within the territory itself, not by our own knights' strength — which tells me whoever governs that place chooses to prevent unnecessary death, even when provoked."

"Restraint from something capable of erasing two full units without trace," Cassmoor pressed, "is not the same as safety, High Priestess. It may simply mean it hasn't yet decided we're worth the effort."

　King Alaric raised a hand, and the chamber settled into the specific quiet that came only from genuine royal authority rather than mere procedure.

"Lord Cassmoor's concern, however self-serving its timing," the king said, with the dry precision of a man who understood exactly what game his own nobility played, "is not without merit. A power capable of what you've described cannot simply be left unaddressed indefinitely, regardless of how carefully it's behaved so far."

"I agree entirely, Your Majesty," Selwyn said. "I would simply ask that whatever action this crown takes, it takes with full understanding of what we're actually facing, rather than in response to fear that's grown considerably larger than the facts support."

"A fair distinction," the king said. "What would full understanding actually require?"

"Direct diplomatic contact," Selwyn said, without hesitation, clearly having prepared this exact answer in advance. "Not an invasion. Not even a show of force, necessarily — simply an official delegation, properly announced, seeking to understand who or what governs that territory, and what its actual intentions are toward the wider kingdom."

"Diplomacy," Cassmoor repeated, something almost mocking in the word. "With something that erased two Church units."

"Something that also, by your own institution's honest account, showed no hostility whatsoever toward four knights who approached it directly," Selwyn countered, patient but unyielding. "I would rather risk the appearance of caution than repeat the mistake that cost us those two units in the first place — acting on assumption rather than actual information."

　The king considered this a long while, the chamber holding its collective breath in the particular way courts do when a decision genuinely hangs in the balance.

"I will grant a period," King Alaric said finally, "for exactly the kind of contact you describe, High Priestess. Sixty days. If, within that time, genuine diplomatic understanding is reached — an accord, an alliance, even simple mutual acknowledgment that this territory poses no threat to my kingdom — I will consider the matter resolved without further action."

"And if sixty days produces nothing?" Cassmoor asked, clearly already anticipating this exact outcome and preparing his own response to it.

"Then," the king said, something harder entering his voice, "I will have no choice but to treat an unknown, unaccountable power within my own borders as precisely the threat my court already believes it to be, regardless of whether that belief is fully justified. A kingdom cannot govern what it doesn't understand, and cannot forever tolerate what refuses to be understood."

Sixty days. That's not nothing. That's actually more patience than I expected, given the pressure this decision was clearly made under.

　Selwyn bowed again, accepting the terms with the same measured composure she'd carried throughout.

"I will see that contact is attempted properly, Your Majesty. Respectfully, and without provocation."

"See that you do," the king said. "I would genuinely prefer this resolved through understanding rather than through the alternative, High Priestess. War is expensive, in ways that extend considerably beyond simple coin, and I have no appetite for spending my kingdom's strength on a threat that might, with proper handling, never need to become one at all."

　The meeting dispersed shortly after, nobles filing out in clusters of quiet, calculating conversation, Cassmoor among them, already visibly working toward whatever his own next move would be regardless of the sixty days he'd just been handed.

　Selwyn remained a moment longer, alone with the king's final words settling into something she'd carry forward as both genuine hope and genuine burden in equal measure.

Sixty days to prove peace is possible.

Sixty days before the alternative becomes considerably harder to prevent.

I intend to use every single one of them properly.