“Both. So when the war ended, no matter which side won, the family had fought for the winners. The losing son’s involvement was reframed afterward as pressure from the household, or diplomatic ambiguity, or something cleaned up later by a payment to the right monastery.”
I kept my eyes on the candle flame. “It looks dishonorable on paper. But it worked.”
A long silence settled over the room as the Baron looked at his sons.
“Which one of us is which?” Aldwin said.
He was smiling already. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of a man who had spent months waiting for permission to unleash himself.
“Father,” Geoffrey said quietly.
“You will go to the court,” the Baron said.
“I am not a courtier.”
“You will be.” The Baron did not look away from his younger son. “You read men, speak well. You already know half the King’s lieutenants by reputation. You will be at his traveling court inside the fortnight, supporting the crown’s position publicly and reporting to me privately.”
“And me,” Aldwin added.
“You will go north.”
Aldwin leaned back slightly, satisfied now in a way that worried me.
“To the rebellion.”
“To the rebellion. You will join the baronial alliance. You will fight the campaigns. You will be loud about it. The men of Thames who go with you will be seen doing what soldiers do, and you will be careful to be seen doing it yourself.”
“And you?” Aldwin asked.
“I stay. I correspond with both of you. I correspond with the King’s officers and with the baronial coalition equally. I am, on paper, a man whose loyalties are fractured by the actions of his sons and whose hands are tied by the caution of an old battle wound.” The Baron’s voice remained perfectly dry. “On paper.”
I sat very still and watched it happen, itching to write it all down. The pattern I’d described had been an observation. The kind of thing you notice in family records when you spend years reading them. I had handed him a description of how other families survived, and he had reached past the description and turned it into strategy inside the span of a breath.
“This requires my sons to ride against each other,” he said more quietly now. His fingers rested beside the parchment, heavy signet ring glinting gold in the candlelight. “It is possible one of you will stand in a town the other is besieging. That has to be acceptable to both of you before this council ends. Or we use a different plan.”
“It is acceptable to me,” Aldwin said immediately.
The Baron’s eyes shifted.
“Geoffrey?”
Geoffrey didn’t answer at once. He was looking at his brother across the table with an expression I’d never seen in him before.
“If the choice is Thames or my preference,” he said finally, “Thames. Always.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“It is what I am answering.”
The Baron held his son’s gaze for a long moment, then nodded once.
“Acceptable.”
“What you have just done,” Geoffrey said evenly, “is bet the family on Lady Harper’s information being correct.”
“Yes.”
“And on neither of us being killed.”
