“See? Best suited to the job!” Benji said cheerfully, and hooked an arm under Lars’s elbow. He led Lars away from the edge, Calarian was glad to see, because as a general rule he tried to limit Benji to one public catastrophe a week. Fewer, even, if that were possible, but he knew his cousin well enough not to expect miracles. Still, Benji was improving. He hadn’t set anything on fire in months.
Lars was staring between them, still open-mouthed. “I’m the new duke?”
“You’re the new duke,” Calarian said firmly. If there was one thing he’d learned from House and Humans, it was that if you’re going to make things up, you had to do it with authority. Or maybe he’d learned it from Loth. Regardless, it didn’t matter—in this case, it worked.
“I’m the new duke,” Lars said wonderingly, a smile spreading like a sunrise across his face, and Calarian had to wonder for a moment if Lars had a touch of elf somewhere in his bloodlines, because right at that moment, he really was unfairly attractive.
Benji elbowed Calarian in the side to get his attention, with more force than was strictly warranted. “You were saying people are waiting in the great hall?” he asked Lars.
“Oh! Yes, it’s the weekly public audience, where people petition the duke,” Lars said, and his brow furrowed. “Except, that’s me now, and I have no idea how this works. I only came to ask for help finding Maisy.”
“Your wife?” Calarian asked, inexplicably disappointed.
“My cow,” Lars corrected. “I’m a cowherd. Maisy’s my best milker and she went missing weeks ago.”
“You can get a new cow,” Benji said. “Ten new cows. You’re the duke now, after all.”
Lars frowned. “I don’t want ten new cows.”
“That’s probably for the best. You won’t have time to look after them, since you’ll be so busy ruling,” Calarian cut in. “So, you’re telling us people are waiting downstairs?”
“Most of the town,” Lars said. At Calarian’s surprised expression he shrugged and said, “There’s not much to do around here, and it’s a day out.”
“Perfect!” Benji exclaimed, a gleam in his eye. “What better time to present the new duke? Duke Lars of Tournel!” He made a wide, sweeping motion with his hand, and it was only because Calarian twisted sideways that he didn’t get caught and go sailing off the edge of the tower.
Calarian glared at Benji. “Perhaps your first order of business should be some safety rails, Your Grace.”
“Who? Oh! That’s me now, I suppose!” Lars squared his shoulders (and there was a lot of shoulder to square) and said “You’re right. Let’s go down and deliver the sad news of my father’s passing, and tell the people I’m the successor.” He sounded noble and confident, right up until the moment he whispered out of the side of his mouth, “Was that all right?”
“Perfect,” Calarian assured him. “And you have the envoys of the kings to back you up, remember.”
Lars’s brow creased for a moment, and he said, “I don’t even know your names. If I'm the duke, I probably need to know that, right?”
Perhaps Lars was smarter than he first appeared. “I’m Calarian, and this is my cousin Benji,” Calarian said.
“Cousins?” Lars looked from one to the other. “But you two were…” He blushed, and stammered out, “Well, um, never mind, we have a branch of the family like that. They live in the hills, and it doesn’t seem to have done them any harm. They tell me the extra toes come in handy sometimes.”
“Oh, we’re not biological cousins, we’re collectivist cousins,” Calarian clarified, because humans really were funny about that sort of thing. “Benji’s parents and mine were part of the same collective, that’s all. We don’t even have the same last name.”
“My last name is Willowtree,” Benji said, “and his is–”
“Anyway, Your Grace, what do you say we go and meet your adoring public?” Calarian said, cutting Benji off mid-sentence and glaring at him. His last name was perfectly respectable, thank you. Benji just liked to be a dick about it.
Lars brightened at that. “Do you really think they’ll be adoring?”
“Of course! What’s not to love? Listen, with most rulers it's either Prince Charming, or the Handsome Prince, but you? You’re handsome and charming, and that’s a rare thing.”
“Unless you’re an elf,” Benji added, flicking his hair over his shoulder. “We’re both handsome and charming. And sexy as well.”
“I can see that,” Lars said, nodding. A faint blush coloured his cheeks. “Fine specimens, both of you. Very, um, sexy.”
Benji puffed out his chest and preened, and Calarian sighed. Now wasn’t the time, even if it was extremely interesting that Lars had agreed with Benji’s declaration of sexiness so readily, and that he didn’t have a wife, just a cow named Maisy. And that Lars looked like he was just made to try the horizontal oarsman...
Calarian gave himself a mental shake. Focus, he scolded, in a voice that sounded awfully like Quinn’s. You’re here on a quest.
Apparently, as well as investigating the mountain troll attacks, the quest now involved placing a cowherd on the ducal seat of Tournel.
Calarian sighed. Somehow, there always seemed to be a side quest.
He placed an arm on Lars’s forearm. His extremely tanned, muscled, attractive, forearm. Focus, he reminded himself. Quest. “Come on, Your Grace, let's go.”
Lars cleared his throat. “Yes. Come, my royal advisors. Let us go to the people.” It was extremely convincing, and if Calarian didn’t know any better, he’d have sworn that Lars had been born into nobility and been raised with the expectation that he’d one day take charge. He was the very picture of a duke.
This, Calarian reflected, might actually work.
Chapter Two
For all that Benji had a six-hundred-page manifesto on how to burn society to the ground, he’d never actually been involved in accidentally assassinating a duke of the realm and installing a random one on his throne before. (He did genuinely feel slightly bad about that, if only because some poor oppressed soul was going to have to hose the paving stones down later.) Did dukes even have thrones? He wasn’t sure. There was probably something about it in the Human Heraldry and Peerage Handbook, if Calarian ever saved up enough to buy it. Until then, Benji supposed, it would be a mystery. Their duke certainly didn’t seem to have a throne. He had a wooden chair that looked exactly the same as any other moderately fancy dining room chair—although Benji admitted that his judgement might have become skewed recently, what with hanging around with actual kings in an actual castle—that sat next to the fireplace in the great hall.
There had been a little bit of consternation when Calarian had announced that Lars was the new Duke of Tournel, but that had been almost an hour ago. Now, after a hastily conducted investiture ceremony, everyone seemed to be coming to terms with their new leadership.
There had been one older member of the court—committee? council? Whatever the table of old men who ruled a duchy was called, anyway—who’d looked at them askance, but Calarian had puffed out his chest, flicked his hair back, and proclaimed that as Royal Advisors, their word was not to be doubted, and just look at Lars, didn’t the very sight of him scream nobility?