The thought of having the household staff responsible for this fiasco flogged gave Owain a measure of satisfaction, but only a small measure. The real source of his frustration wasn't the wheel or the road or the incompetent servants. It was the growing suspicion that something larger was working against him, some invisible current that had been pulling at the edges of his carefully constructed plans ever since he'd pressed the pillow over his father's face and set the wheels of his ascension in motion.
The barons and their insulting eulogies. The missing Hanrahans. Loman's continued absence. The knights who had turned themselves into useless, hungover wrecks at the Stag Feast. And now the city's own crumbling roads were conspiring to delay him at the worst possible moment, as if the stones themselves were trying to lash out at him
