Chapter 1970: The Old Dragon - Part 6
"When has there been more of a time of need than this?" Oliver said. "We can afford no weakness anywhere. Their feud has passed its date of sensibleness. There must be unity. In the time of the First King, the people depended upon House Black greatly. We depend upon it greatly once more."
"A convenient tool, thrown around for the sake of your politics," King Pendragon said. "How does Lord Blackthorn feel to have you tread upon their family dynamics, simply for the convenience of your newly acquired – and rather unsubstantiated rule?"
"He likes it not," Oliver said.
"Interesting," the Pendragon King said mildly. "Your two greatest allies, in Blackthorn and Blackwell, and you intend to insult them both. One as a dead man."
"Indeed – the two greatest contributors to the victory of this war," Oliver said, feeling his rage stirring. "Two men that were driven further by their rivalry. Strong and proud descendents of House Black, men that have helped push this war of ours towards its eventual victory. And there must be a show of respect for the fallen Blackwell – I will see to it that Blackthorn gives it properly. To undertake the title of Lord Black, he must see in himself, as the embodiment of that rivalry, a union carried out that he is satisfied with."
"Respect for a fallen man that can not make his wishes known. You seem rather adept as inferring wishes from the dead that cannot speak for themselves. Perhaps there is a trick to it?" The Pendragon King said. Not once, Oliver noted, did the man refer to him as ’Your Majesty’ and Oliver found himself far more comfortable for it. With his blood stirring, he found himself quickly becoming carried away by the argument.
"What better can we do?" He said. "Blackwell has fallen – we know not what he thinks any longer, only what he fought for, and we strive to make all that he fought for known. In the same way do we protect the future of the Blackwell House as honourably as we can. We attempt to make amends."
"Meddlesome to the highest degree. A false sort of morality, one might say..."
"Why do you not stop dancing around the issue, Lord Pendragon, and say what it is you actually think?" Oliver said, losing his patience. "Your petty jabs reek of cowardice. Very well, we’re in your hall, surrounded by your soldiers. If you feel a certain way, Lord Pendragon, then make it known. For it is your crown that I wear."
"It is my crown that you wear," the Lord Pendragon said evenly. "My deceased daughter’s crown that you wear, swaggering into my hall, as if you have any right to it."
"And you still called me King Patrick," Oliver said. "Was it fear that made you do that, or etiquette?"
The man pulled a smile that wasn’t quite a smile. It was the narrowed eyes of the most exquisite hatred. "I did not dislike my daughter, Patrick," he said. "You work a perilous line when you act as you do. I wished to see her go far – and I was robbed of that."
"We all were," Oliver said.
"Were you robbed, when you have gained so much from her death?"
Oliver’s cup thundered down onto the table. The tea that he’d been sipping ran across the wood. His eyes were filled with golden flecks now, and his blood practically felt as if it was on fire. All that uneasiness that he’d felt over the last days and weeks, all that grief, all those cracks in his heart. They served to make molten every emotion that he had. The fiercest stream of it, enough to make the air around him swell with heat.
"You damn fool," Oliver said. "You bastard fool. You Kings, you high Lords – are you blind to the ways of the world? You think a single ring of fancy metal means something? Is this the highest of your aims?" He said, tearing it from his head, and throwing the crown down the table, skidding almost towards the Pendragon King, before it stopped and went racing along the floor. A servant hurried to pick it up, setting it back in front of his master. "Do you think we have gained anything from this?" Oliver said. "Anything at all? When we have lost a woman that would have been a better Queen than we have seen in centuries? When we have lost Lord Blackwell, who would have seen us towards stability, when this war had come to an end. When we lost Karstly, and his ambition. When we lost Skullic, and the love that man bore for his soldiers and his family. Do you think any of us are richer for it? Do you think that crown that you so covet bears even close to enough worth to make up for all that you have lost? You arrogant fool. Enjoy it – that history of your House, and your ancient crown. It’s as worthless as piss, when it’s the only equivalent exchange that we have for all we have lost."
An outburst more suited to a peasant, than to a King. A young man half raised up out of his seat, quivering with anger, glaring down at the Pendragon King like a wild animal. That rage that belonged not in the civilized world. The rage of a beast on its very last legs, fighting with every drop of energy that it had left to spare, so that it might at least die exhausted, knowing that it had fought to the end.
The Pendragon King glanced at the crown in front of him coolly, but he did not touch it. "You picked up this crown that you now decide to call worthless. You named yourself King from it. You have entreated with the Emersons on the basis of this unjust kingship that you have nominated of yourself. You use the very Pendragon lineage that you have just spat upon. A strange thing, that, I do think. A contradiction. It is either one or the other."
Oliver did not have the patience to pick apart the King’s words. His politicking was nearing its end. He drew in a breath, knowing that his anger to have already gone too far, and for him to have embarrassed himself. He dared not look at the expressions on the faces of his advisors, knowing already that he had let them down. It was always the same, he realized. The fire always found its way into blood, and he could not control it. It was even worse now that it was before. The control of himself, increasingly, was lacking.