Free The Master of Heathcrest Hall by Galen Beckett Page A

regard.”
    Rafferdy raised his glass. “To Lord Davarry,” he said, and drank.
    Coulten drank in turn. “I still don’t know why Davarry is so keen on that dreadful act,” he said, setting down his empty cup. “When Rothard was king, all the Magisters did was work against him. But now that the king is deceased, they’re all for shoring up royal authority.” He scratched his head, causing the mass of his hair to rise higher yet. “It hardly makes sense. Why are they for the Crown all of a sudden? After all, it’s not as if they’ll let the princess put it on her head.”
    Coulten’s nature was so naturally cheerful and guileless that Rafferdy sometimes forgot that he could often be clever. His companion had raised a valid question. Previously, the only party in the House of Magnates that had supported the ultimate authority of the Crown was the Stouts. In contrast, the Magisters had always argued for the primacy of Assembly’s power.
    Then two things had happened.
    The first item was the dissolution of the Stouts. The violent murder of their leader, Lord Bastellon, followed shortly by the death of King Rothard, had dealt a similarly fatal blow to the Stouts. While it might have been expected they would rally together in their support of Princess Layle, this had not been thecase. King Rothard’s writ of succession had never been ratified, casting the entire matter of royal authority under a cloud of uncertainty.
    A strong leader might have been able to galvanize the Stouts, but there was no one with Bastellon’s weight (at least not figuratively) to take his place. With neither a leader to guide them nor a crowned monarch to rally around, the party quickly unraveled. Some of its members left to join other parties, while a number retired from Assembly altogether, for the Stouts had always contained a disproportionate number of elderly lords.
    With the Stouts out of the way, it appeared there would be nothing to stop the Hall of Magnates, led by the Magisters, from asserting the authority of Assembly over that of the Crown. That was, until another event occurred—namely the death of Lord Mertrand.
    Whether Rafferdy and Coulten had perhaps had something to do with this, Rafferdy was still not entirely certain. Following Lord Eubrey’s death, Rafferdy and Coulten had quietly and anonymously spread rumors among the young men in the Hall of Magnates regarding Lord Mertrand and the occult order to which he belonged, the High Order of the Golden Door.
    They did not reveal the horrible details they had learned: how Mertrand had recruited young men descended from the seven Old Houses and delivered them to the magician Mr. Gambrel (known to most as Lord Crayford), and how by means of awful magicks Gambrel turned them into gray men—lifeless shells that no longer housed a man’s soul but rather daemonic entities. All they did was say they had heard whispers that Mertrand had used some young men for ill purposes, and that he was to be avoided at all costs.
    Rafferdy did not know if these rumors had helped to bring suspicion upon Lord Mertrand. Regardless, it was soon reported in the broadsheets that he had been linked to the death of Lord Bastellon, and though he professed his innocence, he was to be tried by the Gray Conclave. Then, before the trial could commence, Mertrand was found dead in his house in the New Quarter.Or rather, some parts of him had been found, for his demise had reportedly been of a ghastly nature. The stories in the broadsheets claimed that he had been killed by an accident involving some magickal experiment.
    Rafferdy guessed the broadsheets were right on one account: it was certainly magick that had caused Mertrand’s death. That it was an accident was something Rafferdy considered far less likely. Mertrand could not have been the only lord involved in delivering young men to Mr. Gambrel for his awful purposes. Gambrel had promised Mertrand knowledge and power in exchange for having suitable