The word went into the room and changed it entirely.
Alaric stood very still for perhaps three seconds. When he spoke again his voice had a different weight in it, and it was not the voice of a father.
"You will go out of this room and reverse every readiness order you have signed in the last nine days. You will surrender any authority you have taken beyond your station. Tonight."
"No."
"I am ordering you as your king."
"I know."
Alaric went to the door and pulled it open and called for the guard, in the parade-ground voice of a man who had commanded armies before Baldwin was born.
The corridor stayed silent.
He called again.
Baldwin looked at the floor for one beat, because the sound of that unanswered order was worse than anything his father had said to him — it was the exact noise of a thing becoming irreversible, and he had built it himself, on paper, over nine days, with everyone's approval.
When he looked up his father was staring at him.
---
