Chapter 11: The Chain

It took Ren until dark to get through the feast.

He shook two hundred hands, accepted three toasts, and told the envoys of the North that their king was resting.

Nobody asked where the three kings had gone.

He knew the answer anyway.

He climbed the stairs to his old wing alone, carrying the crown in one hand.

He pushed open the door of the chamber.

Candles burned on every surface.

The three of them were sitting on the big bed, dressed in plain white shirts, waiting for him.

Each of them wore a thin silver chain on his right wrist.

It was not the old cuff.

This one was a slim, bright, hand-made thing, no thicker than a pencil.

Each had a small lock at the clasp and a long loose end.

Ren stopped in the doorway.

"You left," he said.

"We left," Ryu agreed. His voice was even, and it was steady. "You said we were free to go. We wanted to be sure that we were."

"And?"

"And the whole palace watched us walk out the front doors." Su Ming's smile was quick and shaky. "Nobody stopped us. Nobody marched. You were right."

"So we came back," said Ken. "That's the point. We came back on our own legs."

Ren's throat was too tight to speak.

Ryu stood.

He crossed the room, took the loose end of his own chain in his hand, and held it out, silver across his open palm.

"I am Ryu, King of the North," he said. "I have no master. I am yours by my own choice. If you will have me."

"Ryu..."

"Take it."

Ren's fingers closed around the end of the chain.

It was warm from Ryu's skin.

Su Ming came next, graceful, and set his chain in Ren's other hand.

"I'm yours, my lord. This time because I want to be. I looked for the shelf, and you're on it."

Ken was last.

He stuck out his wrist and shoved the end of the chain at Ren's chest.

"There. Don't make a speech."

"I'm not going to make a speech."

"You've got a speech face."

"I'm going to make a very short speech," Ren said, and his voice broke.

He stood in the candlelight with three silver chains looped over his fingers.

He had a hundred things he could say, and none of them were right.

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