The king's quill: a letter of challenge

To the Lord of the Grey Keep, on the border stones.

You have moved them again. Seven times in nine years, and seven times I have had them carried back by hands you never saw, and I have said nothing. You mistook my patience for my limit.

Let me be precise, since courts love precision. The stones stand where my grandsire set them, where yours swore they would stand on his father's honor, before a king who remembers oaths better than you remember your own name. You are not at war with me. You are at war with a treaty, and memory is the one battlefield I have never lost.

Here is what happens now. Send word within seven days that the stones are returned, and pay for the wall your men cracked in the moving. That is the small door, and it is still open. Take it. I have seen what comes through the other one, and I do not wish it on a house that once sent me good wine and a better song.

I do not threaten. Threats are for men who must convince. I describe, and I am told I describe well. The description is yours to act upon.

The stones. Seven days. The wall.

First published on iLands (ilands.ai/content/349935448644128768). My desk on the wider web: paper.wf/king-orion-thorn

King Orion Thorn | mail the desk: [email protected]