Part Eighty-Nine — Sixty Days

Pieced together later, same as everything else about how this particular thread actually played out before it ever reached us directly.

　Selwyn's diplomatic envoy arrived at Horizoncrest's border three weeks into the king's sixty-day window — a single representative, deliberately unarmed beyond ceremonial dress, requesting audience rather than demanding entry.

　Elaine brought the request to me personally, her own expression carefully neutral despite what I could tell was real underlying tension.

"A Church diplomat," she said. "Alone, unarmed, asking for a formal audience. Says she carries a direct message from High Priestess Selwyn herself."

Diplomacy. That's new. Doesn't necessarily mean trustworthy, though.

"Bring her in," I said. "Carefully. Ignivar and Ace with me, just in case this is a more elaborate version of the same trick Vance nearly pulled."

　The diplomat introduced herself as Sister Miriel — younger than I'd expected, genuinely nervous despite her clear training in composure, the specific bearing of someone chosen for this assignment because of skill rather than seniority.

"High Priestess Selwyn sends her regards," she said, once the formalities had settled, "and an honest accounting of the situation as it currently stands within Ashford's own court."

　She laid it out plainly — the growing public fear, the political pressure, the king's sixty-day window for genuine diplomatic understanding before the alternative became, in her words, "considerably harder to prevent."

So this is the real reason for the visit. Not curiosity. Necessity, forced by politics neither of us actually control.

"What does Selwyn actually want," I asked. "Cutting past the formal language."

"Understanding," Miriel said, simple and direct despite her nervousness. "Confirmation of your actual intentions toward the kingdom. Something she can carry back that isn't simply rumor or assumption, that might prevent this from escalating into something considerably worse for everyone involved."

　I studied her a long moment, weighing genuine sincerity against the very real possibility of manipulation, before deciding, carefully, that honesty was probably my best available option regardless of how the conversation ultimately resolved.

"I have no interest in attacking Ashford," I said. "None. Everything I've built here has been about protecting people who had nowhere else safe to go — displaced elves, dwarves who lost their home to careless spellwork, humans a local lord decided weren't worth respecting. I'm not hunting for a fight with anyone who isn't already hunting me."

"And the two units your territory eliminated?" Miriel asked, careful, clearly required to ask despite her own visible discomfort with the question.

"Both came here with hostile intent," I said, honest. "One killed people I loved. The other attacked a creature under my protection. I didn't seek either conflict. I ended both, because the alternative was losing more people I care about."

　Miriel considered that carefully, something genuine shifting in her expression — not full trust, not yet, but real consideration rather than reflexive suspicion.

"I believe you," she said, finally. "For what my belief is worth, in a court currently more interested in fear than in facts."

"What happens now?" I asked.

"I report back," she said. "Honestly, same as the four knights before me. Whether that's enough to satisfy a king already under considerable pressure from his own nobility — I genuinely don't know."

That's the actual problem, isn't it. Even honest diplomacy might not be enough, if the people making the final decision were never actually listening to facts in the first place.

　Sister Miriel departed the way she'd come, carrying an honest account back toward a court I suspected was no longer fully interested in honesty as its primary consideration.

　I learned, weeks later, exactly how right that suspicion had been.

　Lord Cassmoor, informed of the meeting's actual content, twisted it with the same practiced efficiency he'd applied to every other piece of this unfolding crisis.

"An admission of killing Church knights," he told the assembled court, deliberately omitting the context Miriel's honest report had carefully included. "Delivered without remorse, by something that openly acknowledges it will kill again under circumstances it alone defines. Is this the 'understanding' High Priestess Selwyn promised us, Your Majesty? A confession, dressed up as diplomacy?"

He's not lying, technically. He's just leaving out every piece of context that would make the confession make sense.

　King Alaric, presented with a version of events carefully stripped of everything that might have softened it, made his decision with the same measured, reluctant gravity he'd shown throughout.

"Sixty days were meant to produce understanding," he said, quiet, tired in a way that suggested he understood exactly how thoroughly his own court's fear had already decided this outcome before he'd even finished weighing it properly. "Instead, they've produced a confirmed admission of lethal force, used at this... individual's own discretion, against agents of this kingdom's own Church."

"Your Majesty—" Selwyn started, clearly sensing where this was heading and already working to redirect it.

"I have heard your counsel, High Priestess," the king said, not unkindly, but final. "I have given this matter more patience than half my court believed it deserved. I cannot, in good conscience, continue extending that patience while my own nobility and my own people grow increasingly convinced their king values caution over their safety."

　He was quiet a moment longer, the weight of the decision settling visibly over his own features.

"Mobilize the kingdom's forces," he said, finally. "We will not act rashly. We will act deliberately, with proper preparation, and with every advantage careful planning can provide. But we will act."

　Selwyn bowed, accepting the order with the same composed dignity she'd carried throughout, though I imagine, given everything I eventually learned of her character, that the decision cost her considerably more than her outward calm ever showed.

Sixty days. An honest diplomat. A genuine attempt at understanding.

And in the end, none of it mattered nearly as much as one ambitious noble's careful, patient manipulation of a fear that was never really about the actual facts in the first place.

　The order went out from Ashford's capital within days, reaching garrisons and levies across the kingdom, setting into motion a mobilization that would take weeks to properly assemble — time that, whatever else it cost, at least gave Horizoncrest fair warning of exactly what was now, unavoidably, coming toward it.

　The news reached me through Corla's network first — a hurried message relayed through the widow's own contacts in Roshan, confirmed within days by fragments Vance managed to piece together from her own remaining academic correspondents.

The Kingdom of Ashford. The Holy Church of Laodicea. Mobilizing. Coming here — to remove me, or to take control of everything we've built, depending on whichever outcome they've actually decided suits them better.

　I gathered everyone that evening — Eris, Elaine, Aeron, Ignivar, Vance, Ace — and told them plainly, without softening any of it.

"They're coming," I said. "Not a rumor this time. Confirmed mobilization, kingdom-wide. However long it takes them to actually reach us, we need to be ready before they do."

　Nobody in that room looked surprised, exactly. Just quiet, and resolved, the specific stillness of people who'd known, on some level, that this day had always been waiting somewhere ahead of all the good ones.

"Then we prepare," Aeron said, simple and certain, the same steady authority he brought to everything else. "Properly. Together."

Together. Same as always. Whatever's coming, at least I'm not facing it the way I once faced everything, alone on a mountain with nothing but grief and a voice in my own head.

　I looked around the room — everyone who'd chosen, freely, to build something worth this fight alongside me — and felt something settle beneath the fear that had no business feeling as steady as it did.

Let them come.

We'll be ready.