The king was on the floor.
Not dramatically — not the theatrical collapse of performance. He had subsided, with the specific, quiet quality of a body losing its argument with something, from his chair to the floor in the way that things happened when they happened too fast for anyone present to catch.
The room had the quality of a room in which something terrible had just become possible.
"Your Majesty—" someone was saying.
"Get the physician—"
"Move back, give him room—"
Gerffron was through the door and across the room in the time it took the crowd to form the circle that crowds always formed in these situations — the specific, concerned ring of people who wanted to help and didn't know how and were therefore being present as a substitute for useful action.
He pushed through.
Not rudely — with the specific, firm directness of someone who had a destination and needed to reach it.
He reached the king.
He crouched.
The king was conscious — eyes open, the specific, laboured quality of someone whose body was working harder than it wanted to and who was aware of this.
"Your Majesty," Gerffron said.
"I'm—" the king started, and then coughed, and the cough had a quality to it that was not a cold and not a caught breath but something else, something deeper and more ominous.
"Don't speak," Gerffron said.
He put his arm behind the king's shoulders.
"Someone help me get him up," he said, to the room in general.
Three people moved.
Between them they got the king upright — the specific, careful uprightness of a person being moved by people who understood that moving him was necessary and that doing it poorly would be worse than useful.
"His chamber," the prime minister said, from behind Gerffron. Deldric's voice had the specific quality it had when he had assessed a situation and had arrived at the immediate next step and was communicating it. "Now. Quietly."
They moved through the room.
The crowd parted.
The specific, slightly awful quality of a formal occasion that has produced an emergency — the room held itself in the balance between responding and continuing, not knowing which was appropriate, performing neither convincingly.
They got the king out of the ballroom.
— — —
The king's private chamber was three corridors from the ballroom.
By the time they reached it, the immediate carrying party had reduced to Gerffron, the prime minister, and two of the king's personal guard.
They got him to the bed.
He was conscious still — the specific, determined consciousness of a man who was fighting something and was not going to lose the fight in front of people.
"Out," he said, to the room.
His voice was not what it had been in the ballroom forty minutes ago.
"Your Majesty—" the guards started.
"Out," he said again. "Everyone." He looked at Deldric after the guards shuffled out of the room, closing the door behind them. "Harren. I need a physician. Specifically — not the palace physician. Call—" he coughed, wheezed; "—call the Veldrathi delegation's physician. His name is Tobren. He came with the delegation. I want Tobren."
Deldric looked at him.
Something passed between them — brief, the specific communication of two men who had been in the same court for twenty years and had developed, through that proximity, a private language that operated below the official register.
"Of course," Deldric said.
"And," the king said, and the and had the quality of an instruction that was not for the official record, "when you go to call the physician, you might also happen to pass by wherever the princess is currently standing."
Deldric looked at him.
"And if she happened to accompany you back," the king said, "that would be — satisfactory."
"Understood," Deldric said.
He went out.
The guards went out.
The room was quiet.
Gerffron was still beside the bed.
The king looked at him.
"You're still here," he said.
"Yes," Gerffron said.
"I didn't tell you to go."
"No," Gerffron said.
"Observant of you." The king settled back against the pillow with the specific, tired quality of a man who has been performing strength for an extended period and has just put it down. "Sit down, Consort Wadee."
Gerffron sat in the chair beside the bed.
He looked at the king.
The king looked at the ceiling.
He said: "You don't seem particularly alarmed."
"I am concerned," Gerffron said. "Alarmed requires not knowing what's happening. I have a reasonable hypothesis."
The king turned his head.
He looked at Gerffron with the gray eyes that were the eyes Gerffron had been looking at across a table for the past eight weeks in a different face.
"Tell me your hypothesis," he said.
"The wine," Gerffron said. "You drank approximately a third of the first glass and the full second, and the collapse came approximately forty minutes after the first drink. The serving attendant near your wine station moved through the room twice in the past hour without serving anyone. I noticed it and filed it and didn't act on it because I couldn't confirm it and the context didn't—" he stopped. "I should have acted on it."
The king looked at him.
He said: "The serving attendant."
"I didn't see the specific action. I only saw the behaviour pattern. I apologise for my negligence. I had only stepped out for a bit when this happened."
"It's enough," the king said. He coughed again — the same quality, the same depth. "It's enough to know the direction." He was quiet for a moment. "I suspected something of this kind was possible. I had not confirmed the mechanism." He looked at his hands. "I should have moved faster."
"Your Majesty—"
"When your own people wants you dead how can I blame someone else for their negligence." He wheezed again. "There is something," the king said, and his voice had the quality of someone who has decided to say a thing that has been waiting to be said, "that I want to tell you. Before the physician arrives and the room fills up again."
Gerffron waited.
"Styrmir Voss," the king said.
Gerffron was still.
"I know that you know," the king said. He looked at Gerffron with the specific, direct honesty of a man who had been managing secrets for too long and had arrived at the stage where the management was no longer available to him. "You may have found the portrait in the corridor. I know the two of you have — I have been watching this delegation more closely than anyone realised. In fact, several of the nobles are also able to connect the dots. they proved faster in this matter rather than the national affairs." A pause. "Styrmir Voss, he is my son, the first prince."
"Yes," Gerffron said.
"You knew."
"I found out about a week before the delegation arrived," Gerffron said. "As per your assumption, the portrait in the corridor confirmed it."
The king looked at him.
"You are not surprised," he said.
"I had time to be surprised in private," Gerffron said. "There is something to be said for that."
The corner of the king's mouth moved.
"There is," he said.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he said: "I owe you a debt, Consort Wadee. I have owed it for a long time. You saved his life. You were — you were a very young man and you were in an impossible position and you understood what was happening and you chose to do something about it at a cost I am still—" he stopped. "At a cost that was not small."
"I made the only available choice," Gerffron said.
"That is not true," the king said. "The available choices included several that did not involve you. You chose the one that did." He looked at him steadily. "I am grateful. Belatedly and inadequately — I am grateful."
Gerffron looked at the king.
He thought about a boy in a dungeon with bones that showed through his skin.
He thought about two pebbles.
He said: "He's worth it."
The king looked at him.
Something moved through his expression — the specific, layered movement of a father receiving information about his son from someone who knows his son and has decided, through knowing him, that the son is worth what knowing him has cost.
"Yes," he said. "He is."
He coughed again.
"Stay beside him," the king said, when the cough subsided. "Whatever happens. Whatever the court does and doesn't do in the next weeks. Stay beside him."
"That," Gerffron said, "is something I can promise."
The door opened.
Deldric came back.
Behind him: Caelith, moving with the specific, controlled urgency of a woman who had been briefed in the corridor and was managing what she had been told.
Behind her: Styrmir.
And behind Styrmir: a man of fifty, compact and precise, with the focused quality of someone whose profession was the body's internal workings and who had arrived at this room with his physician's bag and the specific, no-nonsense expression of someone who had been called for a reason.
"Physician Tobren," Caelith said, to the king. "He came with the delegation. He is the best person in this room for what you need."
Tobren was already moving toward the bed.
"Describe the sequence," he said to Gerffron, with the brisk directness of a professional addressing the person most likely to have the relevant information. "Everything you observed. Start with the first drink."
Gerffron told him.
He told him with the focused, chronological precision of someone who had been paying attention and knew how to describe what he had seen.
Tobren listened.
He examined the king.
He worked.