Dragging the new prisoners back to the Tower caused a frustrating amount of delay, which put him in an unpleasant mood by the time he reached his office in the palace. Matt tried not to dwell on the problem as he made his way past the bowing servants and occasional nobleman, heading for the place where he knew he'd at least be able to sit down and rest a while.

It wasn't exactly encouraging to see someone waiting for him outside the place. Tanya took one look at his face and raised an eyebrow. "What's got you so worked up?"

Matt gave her an impatient look. "I ran into a few problems on the way back from the city."

She frowned. "Problems. You mean assassins?"

He sighed. "Look, I'm tired, I'm a bit sore from practice, and I'm sure I have a mountain of paperwork waiting for me. Can whatever you have wait for another time?"

For half a wonderful moment, Tanya hesitated. Then she crushed his hopes and shook her head. "No. I don't think it can."

The half-somber tone in her voice doused his temper immediately. He studied her for a moment. Then he nodded. "All right, then. Come on in."

He led the way through the office door and walked over to his desk. Matt leaned the mace against the back of it while he flopped down into the chair, already massaging his head. The lifeguards followed him in, along with Tanya; four of them stayed in the room while the others took up a position outside and closed the door.

Tanya waited for the door to shut and then looked back at him. "So, how did you nearly get yourself killed this time?"

Matt eyed her, a flicker of his temper returning. "They didn't even get close. Just like none of the other four since summer ended."

"Oh, that's comforting." Tanya grimaced. She glanced at the lifeguards and then walked over to settle on her favorite couch. The thing was a bit of an eyesore, but Matt had ignored it up until now because Tanya kept her things there. Better to have her in a spot where he could easily ignore her than allow her to spread everything out across the room.

Unlike how she normally acted, however, she didn't lounge on the furniture. Instead, she sat up straight and leaned forward to look him in the eye. "Listen, cowboy, I think it's about time that we have a talk."

Matt tried not to glare at her. He wasn't sure that he succeeded. "I'm not giving you any more money for the museum."

She gave him a frustrated look. "This isn't about that at all, and you know it." Tanya glanced at the lifeguards and then continued in a slightly more even tone. "If you keep going at this rate, you're going to get yourself killed. Stop being stupid and back off a little."

He stared at her for a moment, feeling a curious mixture of confusion and unease. "What are you talking about?"

Tanya put a hand over her eyes and muttered something he couldn't quite hear. When she lowered her hand again, her eyes were fixed on him. "You're running yourself ragged. How much sleep did you get last night?"

Matt paused. He didn't quite glance at the lifeguards, but he could almost feel them watching to see if he'd lie. "Enough."

"Sure, you did." Tanya's glare sharpened. "You've been fighting down at the Arsenal like you're some kind of gladiator in training. When you're not there, you're wandering around the city, or arguing with the Council, or plotting with your soldiers. In the times when you aren't doing that, you've been building your new Source or catching up on paperwork. Do you even eat anymore, or do super special kings not need food?"

He felt a flicker of anger. "If I'm busy, it's because I have to be. I owe it to—"

Tanya bolted to her feet, and the air in the room stirred slightly. Her expression became a snarl. "You don't owe shit, you stupid bastard!" Matt blinked, and she continued in a voice that could have blistered paint. "None of us asked for this, and even if you had, only a complete moron would work themselves to death for a job that you only took because you had to."

Matt glared up at her, gesturing for the lifeguard to keep their places. "I still took the job, Tanya. That makes all of this my responsibility."

"Oh really? Then what about what you owe me, you colossal idiot? Or what about the rest of the people who got dragged here? Are you thinking about what you owe them?" She took a step forward, her eyes still locked on him. "What are we supposed to do after you drop dead? It's not like those Wizards are going to get us home now, not after everything that's happened with Lucy."

He tapped the desk with one finger, returning her glare. "I will get you all home. I gave my word."

She rolled her eyes. "You can't keep your damn word if you're dead, cowboy!" Tanya shook her head. "Which is exactly what's going to happen if you don't give yourself time to breathe. When's the last time you even went to visit Gorfeld?"

The question froze the breath in Matt's lungs for a moment. It wasn't like he'd been avoiding his fallen steward, but he just hadn't seemed to find the time to get down to the chamber where the Imp was resting lately. His mind raced as he tried to remember the last time he'd gone. Had it really been before Heartlight? That couldn't be true…

He realized that the silence had stretched just a little too long, and shook his head. "That doesn't matter. Why do you care anyway?"

Tanya hissed like a scalded cat. "Because you should. Because you have to, and if you don't start doing it again soon, I'm going to march down to that Arsenal where you're playing with sticks and knock you around hard enough to make you rest."

Matt's eyes narrowed. He let the pulsing power of his magic fill him; the mace began to glow with internal light, sending a thin ribbon of smoke towards the ceiling. "You really think you can do that, Tanya?"

"I think I'd be right to try." Tanya set herself, and to his surprise, the stone seemed to shift a little under her feet. He blinked, even as her palm glowed and the air stirred again. "You can't do this alone, cowboy king, and you need to stop trying to."

He glared at her, his jaw clenched tight. A part of him wanted to respond, to show her exactly what he was still capable of. All he'd really need was to boost one of his lifeguards' spells and…

Matt blinked. He glanced to the side, where the lifeguards were still standing at their posts. Mulwan, Tiridine, Surgall, and Namenfird all remained where they had stood at the start of the conversation. None of them had moved when Tanya had threatened him; if anything, they were avoiding his gaze, as if they wanted to give a mute agreement to Tanya's words.

When he looked back at Tanya, she hadn't given any ground or let her spells lapse. She was still glaring at him, still ready to do something she'd probably regret.

Then he sighed and let his spell go. A wave of fatigue washed over him, one that seemed to lessen the ache in his head just a moment. "You got a new Source?"

The question seemed to throw her off for a moment. Her eyes darted to the lifeguards and then back to him. Some of the tension bled out of her stance, and her magic faded. "Yeah. Earth, Summer, and Mind." Tanya gestured, and a spike that reminded him of Namenfird's spell rose from the floor at her side. "I managed to corner one of those Gnomes down at the Arsenal. What was his name, Corlesh, Caapless…"

"Curalesh?" Matt thought of the grumpy Gnomish captain, and sighed as she nodded. He made a mental note to apologize to the man when he had the chance. "Looks like you've been hard at work."

She smirked. Her chin rose slightly. "As if I'm ever not. The others have even been making progress too. Miguel grabbed his third the other day, though he seems focused more on Body rather than Mind…" Tanya shook her head, a small smile on her lips. "Honestly, sometimes he's just as stubborn as you."

"I knew I liked him for some reason." Matt forced a smile as the last of the tension filtered out of the room. He felt another wave of weariness in its wake. "I suppose I'll have to hurry up my own progress… within reason."

Her eyes had flashed with frustration for a moment. Tanya grunted and muttered something under her breath. She looked away. "Maybe. You can't always rely on that ridiculous Oath after all." Then she looked back at him, her expression cautious. "How has your… head been doing?"

Matt's eyes widened slightly. He raised a hand to his temple for a moment. "It's… something is wrong, but I don't know what." Worry filled her expression, but he spoke quickly in an attempt to soothe it. "It's not as bad as before. You don't need to worry about it."

She snorted. "Says the one person holding it all together. Just a little magical migraine." Before he could respond, Tanya brushed at her skirts, as if cleaning the front of her dress. "Anyway, I'll be back if I hear you aren't taking care of yourself, cowboy king. Don't think you can hide from me behind Lucy, either. The woman made me promise to look after you here in Redspire, as if I needed to be told."

"I'll keep that in mind." The dry tone in his voice earned another sharp look, but Tanya just shook her head and started towards the door. He watched her go and waited for the door to close.

Then he turned towards the small mountain of paperwork on his desk with a fresh sigh. The smell of charred wood made him glance down at the burn marks on his desk and floor with a faint curse. Matt shifted his mace to a new position, and then began his next task, hoping that there wouldn't be anything major to review.

He tried to ignore the way his head throbbed as he worked, but it was hard.

"How bad was it that Tanya, of all people, ended up needing to talk to me about it?"

Gorfeld didn't answer, but Matt hadn't really expected him to. Tanya's words had plagued him enough that he'd finally set aside some of the 'urgent' messages from the Council to visit the person who'd dragged him into this mess in the first place.

The healers had been a little more optimistic about the steward's progress. His breathing was still even, and they had said that they could see his eyes occasionally moving beneath the eyelids, which they believed meant his mind was still active. Aside from that, however, he looked no different than he had when Matt had come to see him in Mornal Castle, back when he'd first been wounded.

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He seemed too fragile, lying there in the bed. His figure had always been small, but seeing Gorfeld so still and quiet somehow made it all worse. Matt grimaced and looked back at the door, which had been closed for him. The lifeguards had obeyed the orders to stay outside reluctantly, with four of them clustered in the narrow hallway that led to the room. Another two had been permanently stationed a bit further down the hall, where they were constantly watching over the fallen steward.

Matt shook his head as another throb of pain ran through it. "The worst part is, she was right. I was avoiding you, and the other Humans." He smiled at the steward, his mood briefly shifting to one of reassurance. "It wasn't that I didn't care, you know. I owe you a lot, it's just…"

He let the words trail off and looked away again. The view outside of Gorfeld's window revealed yet another autumn sky, a deep blue backdrop broken only by the scattered wisps of puffy white clouds. Matt could see some of the city below as well, where the people of Redspire walked around the streets and the faint sounds of construction continued to echo upwards.

Parufeth had sent him a report about the progress of the work crews; Matt had read a small hint of worry in the foreman's words that the money, once plentiful, was once more going to run out before the job was complete, but at least the work was proceeding at an impressive pace. Perhaps the newly coined Great Library of Redspire would be done before the season was out.

He caught himself wandering and frowned. Maybe the fatigue really was getting to him. When he looked back at Gorfeld, he could almost picture the steward's sardonic expression at having a King wander off in thought mid-sentence.

Then he sighed. "I never wanted it to be like this. When you brought me here, I knew it would be hard, and I knew I'd have to fight. The changes I wanted to make, the freedoms I wanted to bring, were always going to face trouble. At the same time…"

Matt looked away again, his hands clenching into fists. "I killed serfs, Gorfeld. My armies, at my command, butchered an army of slaves too desperate to tolerate their chains any longer. I know the fake Counselors stirred them up, and the nobles provoked them. I know that I gave them every opportunity to stand down and surrender rather than fight. My hands were never going to be completely clean; there would always be blood."

He glanced at Gorfeld again, picturing a frown on the Imp's still face. "I just… never wanted it to be their blood. Not the ones who were already suffering. I don't mind holding the rich and the powerful to account, but the slaves, the serfs… I was ashamed. Ashamed of it. That's why I didn't come see you."

His fists tightened as he made the admission; the back of his throat burned for a moment. Matt shook his head and laughed, a bitter, fragile sound. "How ridiculous is that? I couldn't stop it, and I did the best I could. I've already killed plenty of people, probably a lot more than died at Heartlight. Yet they're the ones who make me wonder if I've finally gone too far. If I've finally become the monster everyone sees me as. The ones they write the history books about."

A pulse of pain ran through his head, and Matt unclenched one of his hands long enough to brush it against his forehead. "Of course, that's not helping, either. These headaches are obviously warning me about something, but I haven't been able to find out what. There aren't any armies invading our territory, and the Heartlight rebellion is almost over. Is there something else that is threatening the Kingdom now? What is it that I can't see?"

Matt looked back at Gorfeld's still form. He forced another smile. "This was all a lot easier when you talked back, you know. You were always a little more clever when it came to magic than I was, and you had a way of making me think a little deeper. Now… now I'm just tired."

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling for a moment. A wry smile took the place of his false one. "This is a lot of work, Gorfeld. Especially considering that we're only a few weeks out from the anniversary of when I came here." He looked back at the steward. "What do you think? Do I still get to go home at the end of a year?"

Even as he asked the question, Matt chuckled to himself. He shook his head and leaned forward again. "No, I think we both know that was never going to happen. Not when I still have the Divine Right." Matt grimaced. "All it takes is one assassin doing just the right thing, and then all of it falls apart. Then all of the lives we've lost, all the people who've fought and died, will mean nothing. Which means that no matter what happens with the others, even if I can find a way to send them home… I have to stay. Until I die, and the Right isn't a threat anymore."

The words filled him with a sudden rush of grief, but he shook it off. It was something he'd already known, deep down. His reforms in the Kingdom were still too new, too fragile to risk transferring the Right to another person. Even giving it to someone on the Council, or one of the Margraves, risked things going back to business as usual the instant things got hard. If he hadn't been able to avoid slaughtering serfs, then what was someone without his ideals going to do?

In the end, the best thing he could do was see things through. Get Tanya and Lucy and all the others back home, and just keep holding things together until the changes all stuck. Then, at some future day when the reforms had grown steady enough, maybe he could try to retire. More likely, he'd have to take the Divine Right with him when he died of old age, and hope that the leaders of the High Clans wouldn't immediately launch the nation into a civil war. Whether or not he liked it, the crown was a life sentence now.

Unless some murderer got lucky first, of course.

Matt sighed. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything else, there was a knock at the door. Despite himself, he tensed; the last time someone had interrupted his time with Gorfeld, things hadn't exactly gone well. Then he stood and faced the door. "Come in."

The door opened, and a Low Imp servant stepped into the room. By her markings and coloration, she was a Goldplains Imp, like Gorfeld himself, but he didn't recognize her. She carried a platter with an assortment of what looked like treats arranged on it, along with a small pot of tea and a pair of cups.

He caught a glimpse of the lifeguards outside as they swung the door closed and sighed. "Did you need something?"

She made something like an attempt to curtsy. "I-I brought refreshments for you, my liege. As well as some food for the Imp."

Matt blinked. Something about the way she'd said it sounded off. His eyes fell to the platter. None of the food looked like it was ready to be fed to a man who was completely unconscious—and why would he need two cups?

When he looked back up, he noticed a hint of nervousness in the servant's eyes, but not nearly what he might have expected. She didn't seem intimidated as much as she looked worried about his potential reaction to her reason for being there. The servant glanced at Gorfeld and blinked, almost as if she hadn't expected him to be asleep.

Then things fell into place for him, and Matt sighed. He reached into his pocket, where he had kept a small pile of ash. "I think it might be best if you put the tray down, miss."

She blinked. More than a hint of nervousness leaked through. "My liege? What do you mean?"

"I mean that it might be a little inconvenient for the real servants to clean up if you just drop the thing." Matt kept his voice calm and watched her eyes. His Ash Pocket spell was already taking shape; a few more heartbeats would put his mace in his hand. "Maybe then we can talk about whatever got put into the tea, or the cookies, or whatever else you're carrying."

A flash of panic crossed her expression, only to be buried a moment later. "S-sire, I don't know what you mean."

He gave her a skeptical look. "I know you probably don't have a knife or anything on you, because the lifeguards would have known, but there are spells that can hide that kind of thing. Do we really need to play this game? Put the tray down."

She stared at him for another crucial moment. Then she snarled and threw the tray straight at him.

Matt reacted instantly, throwing the ash up and plunging his hand into the cloud. He dodged to the side as the tray went flying past; there was a flicker of fear as he remembered stories from Earth about radiation-laced drinks spilled on unsuspecting targets, but his next view reassured him. Just a short distance away, the fake servant had plunged both her hands into the stone floor. She pulled a pair of daggers, wet with some unidentifiable substance, from the ground. Clearly, this was supposed to be more of a stabbing than a splashing situation.

The assassin lunged towards him, but Matt had already trained against people who were much quicker and much stronger. As the Imp came up out of her crouch, he smashed her across the skull with his mace. Matt didn't even bother using the Little Tinderbox; she was unarmored, and he had a wide-open shot.

There was a crunching noise that he could barely hear over the clash of the falling platter. The Imp assassin went sideways, her eyes already glassy from the hit. Matt winced as he saw the new dent in her skull; her daggers went skidding across the floor, having fallen from already limp hands.

The door to the room slammed open a heartbeat later as the lifeguards entered, their weapons already drawn. Matt gestured for them to stand back before glancing at the still form of Gorfeld. He breathed a sigh as he recognized that nothing the assassin had thrown had come anywhere near his friend. A part of him was disappointed that the noise hadn't snapped the steward out of his coma, but he supposed he couldn't ask for everything.

Matt looked back at the twitching form of the assassin and grimaced. It was fairly clear that she wasn't going to be long for the world, not with that kind of wound. He mentally chastised himself for going straight for the head; knowing who'd sent the assassin was almost as important as stopping her in the first place.

He crouched down to try to look her in the eyes. "You wouldn't happen to know if it was me or Gorfeld that you were after, would you?" There was no recognition in the assassin's stare. She went still a moment later. "Damn it."

With a sigh, he stood up and looked at a mildly chagrined Rethferd. "Send someone down to the kitchens and see where she came from. Make sure there isn't some servant girl tied up somewhere that she replaced." Matt paused and grimaced again. "Let me know if any of the cooks are involved, too. We wouldn't want to miss anyone."

Rethferd nodded, and Matt looked back at Gorfeld. The steward continued to lay still and peaceful, even as the lifeguards worked to clear the room. He was tempted to tell the Imp to stop slacking off, but the lifeguards might have taken it the wrong way.

Instead, he turned and headed out into the corridor. It had, against all odds, been a nice afternoon, but there was still work to be done. There would always be work to be done.

Later that night, Matt finally slumped over the last of the paperwork he'd needed to do. The Council had made quite a few requests for him to review; most of them he gave his approval to without much consideration, given the fact that he trusted their decisions more than his own on certain matters. That was part of the Council's purpose, after all; why should he get bogged down in which noble was appointed to be a Magistrate in the most distant part of the Copper Hills?

Still, the occasional troubles did seem to pop up now and again that he had to watch for. A request to fund a personal banner of guards for a 'valued' member of the nobility; another to override the new Voice of the Sortenmoors on a matter of property ownership. There were protests over how the Angru Declaration was being handled, and others requesting that he stop the flow of migrants from the Summerlands in the south. Each needed his attention, at least long enough to be sure of what he was rejecting. The local Voices did a fair job of blocking such things themselves, but he was the ultimate stopping point for a reason.

The Council wasn't the only source of trouble, to be fair. These days it seemed like he was receiving almost as many requests from the freeholders for his intervention in any number of problems. Most were issues he referred back to either the Council, the Assembly, or to the local Magistrates, but others helped form a somewhat grim picture of the state of the Kingdom. Far too many freeholders were speaking of lost relatives, low food supplies, and worries over the continual war. He responded as best he could with whatever hopeful words he could find. It would take a bit more than simple writing to make those things right, but he would do the best he could.

There were a few encouraging bits of news. The Blackleaf Goblins had finally chosen a new leader. Lady Senlethe had sent a polite letter of introduction, promising to visit him in the future as soon as she had completed the transfer of her responsibilities. Her somewhat distant tone might have concerned him, but her letter had come with endorsements by both the Matriarchs and Voice Sepluth, so she had to be at least a decent choice.

Alicia had written to him as well. The Maiden of Health had been short and to the point about her efforts to stave off a plague in the Sortenmoors; apparently her methods had already curbed the worst of the epidemic, and she was already tentatively predicting that she'd be returning home in the next handful of weeks. She'd also included a few observations about the state of the border between the Kingdom and the Summerlands; apparently things were growing far more stable, though more and more Knights kept arriving at the border, looking to escape the chaos in Lucy's own lands. He didn't know if he should be happy that he was effectively stealing people from her, but every new set of hands would be useful now that half the Red Moon farms were burned.

Shaking his head at how badly he was grasping for straws, Matt pushed himself up and away from the desk. His office didn't have anything remotely like a clock, and the sky still seemed too strange for him to tell the time, but it didn't take an astronomer to tell that he was already getting close to breaking his promise to Tanya. He needed rest, and as much as he hated to admit it, she'd had a point when she'd pointed out his lack of focus. The Kingdom needed a ruler, not a corpse. At least for now.

Still bemused by that thought, Matt pushed himself away from the desk and made his way to the bedchambers. There would be more to deal with in the morning, he was sure, but at least he'd be able to see it clearly.

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