The Throne That Did Not Want Me
They brought her to the font at the ebb of the morning tide. The ebb was the tide at which the old kings had been crowned, for reasons long since forgotten. Reyna did not much care for the symbol. She cared that the ebb, at this time of year, was a slow one, and would give the ritual its full hour without hurrying the words.
The Pilothouse was fuller than it had been for the oath. Every pilot of the guild was present, and every Warden of the four outer stations, and the masters of seven of the nine old houses. Venna stood at the front of the lower gallery in the grey she had worn since her sister died. The admiral Arden Kest stood at the foot of the charter stone, in full uniform. Corvas had sent his secretary Orel to observe and, in a single sentence read from a folded paper, to formally neither consent nor object. The Chancellor Vayn, Hest had informed her at dawn, was on the high road to the southern harbour with three carriages and a detachment of her own men, making for a ship. Riders had been sent. Hest did not believe they would reach her in time. Reyna had heard him out and then done what the ritual required: strip to the shift, wash her hands and her face in cold water, walk barefoot the length of the gallery to the font.
The font was very cold. She had forgotten that the water would be the harbour's temperature and not the room's. It woke her. She had been, perhaps,