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A fantasy/historical AU set in an alternate Europe (think high medieval Venice). Essentially, Tony-Pepper-Rhodey set in an alterate medieval city state, wherein they scheme and take turns saving each other. It wouldn't leave until I did something with it -_-;
Title: Champion
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Characters/Pairings: James Rhodes, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, mention of Obie, Jarvis (as Jarveth), Happy and Steve Rogers. Tony/Pepper, Tony & Rhodey, Rhodey & Pepper
Summary: The Lord and Lady Stark of the city state of Lengelos want the ex-mercenary knight Sir James of Rhodios to serve as their champion at the Ten Kingdoms Tournament. James ... may take some persuading
Wordcount: 5392
Warnings/Notes: this is a test piece because the idea would not leave until I did something with it. This one is NOT guaranteed (or even particularly likely) to go anywhere. *shrugs sheepishly* Also, some warnings for pseudo-medieval views on race and gender, but only vaguely
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Champion
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Characters/Pairings: James Rhodes, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, mention of Obie, Jarvis (as Jarveth), Happy and Steve Rogers. Tony/Pepper, Tony & Rhodey, Rhodey & Pepper
Summary: The Lord and Lady Stark of the city state of Lengelos want the ex-mercenary knight Sir James of Rhodios to serve as their champion at the Ten Kingdoms Tournament. James ... may take some persuading
Wordcount: 5392
Warnings/Notes: this is a test piece because the idea would not leave until I did something with it. This one is NOT guaranteed (or even particularly likely) to go anywhere. *shrugs sheepishly* Also, some warnings for pseudo-medieval views on race and gender, but only vaguely
Disclaimer: Not mine
Champion
The southern colonnade of the Stark palazzo, overlooking the cliffs and down to Lengelos itself, was warm and sunlit, taking a cool breeze off the Medien Sea. Between the breeze and the view of the city, it was one of the most pleasant vantages in the palace.
Which was probably why, James reflected wryly, the Lord Prince Stark didn't allow anyone except his chosen few to use it. The surest sign of civic favour in the city was whether you got to use the colonnade for your visit, or had to take the interior hall. And since at present maybe ten people in the entire city, along with their associates, got to use the colonnade, and most of those as a favour to the Lady Stark rather than Tony's personal favour, James had been gleefully informed that he should count himself in rarified company.
He did. Oh, he did. It was one of the main reasons, propriety aside, why he found it so difficult not to want to knock the Prince on his ass one of these days.
The guards on the entrance to the Stark private apartments straightened up as he approached, greeting him with that weird mix of respect, disgruntled jealousy, and a healthy dose of paranoid caution at the sight of the sword still on his hip, and the gleam of mail under his tabard. They let him pass, of course. He had that privilege. But they didn't have to like it.
He'd told Tony. All he had to do was leave his weapon at the door, same as everyone else. He didn't have to put them through this every time, not when things were only barely settling down as it was. Not when they were only eight months back, and barely calmed.
Tony had looked at him, eyes bright and lazy and vicious with challenge, and simply said: "You had me for ten weeks on a ship where you have done anything you wanted, and no-one would even have known. I really don't think you carrying arms into my room in a city where everyone knows our names is anything to be concerned about. And!" He'd cut off James' burgeoning protest. "And I want everyone to know that. I want ... I want everyone to know that there are at least three people in this world I trust, and you are one of them."
And it had been quietly and earnestly said, and under the savage challenge there had been something else, something tired and pleading, and James ... had let it rest. Had let it be.
In truth, what other choice had he, in the face of that?
The inner door opened before him, the multiple spy-holes and echo-chambers around the entrance hall having let Tony know he was coming long before he reached the antechamber itself. Tony, the Lord Prince Anthony Stark, swung the heavy oak door open in his shirtsleeves, and waved James in with a grin.
"Rhodes!" he exclaimed, with that manic cheer that never boded well. "What kept you? Come in, come in!"
Oh, this was going to be painful. James could tell already.
"You know, most princes don't invite people into their chambers while they're partially dressed," he noted calmly, unbuckling his belt and leaving his sword on the cabinet by the door before following Tony into the room. He would go so far and no further, after all.
Tony grinned at him, turning in place on the silk rug to better display his bare feet and loose shirt. He had trousers on, at least. There was that mercy. "You've seen me in worse," he dismissed, cheerfully. "Unless you plan to take up a career as a rumour-monger, I shouldn't have to worry, should I?"
James shook his head, biting back a small grin despite himself. "And if I preferred you with clothes on?" he asked. In large part simply to hear the response.
"Then you have poor taste, and need to be re-educated," the Prince shot back, with never a break in stride, and moved over to the small table of refreshments. "Wine? Juice? We had a shipment from the orange groves in the southern hills last week, so there's fresh."
"Juice will do," James agreed, moving over to his usual seat and stripping off his gloves with relief. Leather was not kind, in this climate. "Though an explanation would do better. What was so urgent, my Lord, that you had to pull me up from the shipyard on an hour's notice?"
From overseeing the refit on his galley, he didn't say. They were due to sail within four months. James was ... not looking forward to it, perhaps, but in many ways glad of it. At sea, so many things were simpler than here, in this city with its politics and its poisons. At sea, at least, the enemies were usually clearer.
Tony hesitated, a little, hands faltering over the carafe and the cups. For only a second, though. A second of consternation was all you could reasonably expect, with this man, barring that you threatened something unforgivable. That, James knew first hand.
"Oh, just a small matter," Tony answered breezily, coming over with both cups, resting James' casually beside him before retreating to the opposite seat with his own. Once upon a time, James had objected to being served by a Prince. It had been the Lady Stark who gently explained to him that Tony did not take anything, and particularly not foodstuffs, from another's hand. Either Tony served, or he did not drink. After that thought, and all things considered, James had been willing to bear it.
"... A small matter," James repeated, carefully. Squinting narrowly at the man across the rim of his cup. "By that, do you mean what I would consider a small matter, or what you would consider a small matter?"
It was not an imprudent question. Tony considered such things as the loss of half a cargo of gold to be a trifling matter, and an assassination attempt by four men not much better. Someone in the city selling adulterated metals, though, had almost roused him to actual violence, and a passing slur directed at his wife had resulted in the unfortunate nobleman being summarily expelled from the city.
Not that James necessarily disagreed, on that last one. But it would not be difficult to argue that Tony's priorities, and his sense of scale, were sometimes a little ... skewed.
Tony pursed his lips thoughtfully, fingers idly dabbling in his juice without drinking. James felt his hand tighten a little around his own cup. Yes. He'd been right the first time. This did not bode well.
"You know that next summer is the Ten Kingdoms Tournament?" he asked, finally, dark eyes cutting up to meet James'. Chin lifting instinctively, as if he had some idea of the danger he courted. As if he had ... some idea, of how much that question might wound.
James, very carefully, set his cup aside, placed it exquisitely gently on the table beside his gloves. Tony, just faintly, winced.
"You know I do," James said, very softly. "My Lord Stark. This had best not ..."
"Lengelos hasn't forwarded a champion in over a decade," Tony interrupted, speaking quickly and sharply, as though to override James' protests before he could even reach them. "We abstained from the last two, for ... well, you don't need to know the reasons, lets just say there were a few assassination attempts to keep us busy at the time, and the last time we sent a man, fifteen years ago, was the first year the Asgarot sent a delegation. So you can imagine, that one didn't go well."
"My Lord ..." James tried, but cutting across Tony Stark in mid-spate was a fool's manoeuver at the best of times. He doubted the man even registered the attempt.
"After all the upheaval of the past year or so, Pepper and I ... I mean, the Lady Stark, we thought sending a delegation to the Tournament would be a good political move. Reaffirming our place in the Ten Kingdoms Alliance would strengthen the city state, and at home, having acted to strengthen foreign ties, particularly in light of my ... my taking ... would reassure much of the Council. So we thought ..."
James paused. Held up a hand, blinking measuredly for a second. Tony visibly cut himself off, reining in whatever he'd been about to say. Settling, instead, for watching James warily.
James, for his part, needed the minute to sift through the sudden sideways jolt of feeling. To strangle nascent anger and disappointment in their beds, and let the strange lurch of hope subside in the same breath. He took that minute, while Tony waited him out. And then.
"This is a political manoeuver?" he asked, carefully. Meeting Tony's eyes head-on, watching the movement of luminous things in the darkness there. The Prince was an accomplished liar, but James had seen him at his very darkest, James had seen him stripped to nothing, and there was very little Tony could hide from him now. Very little, and nothing open, nothing that he could deny to James' face.
Tony's eyes flickered down, a veiling sweep of lashes as he looked to his cup for a second, and when he looked back, it was that familiar mix of tired pleading and dark challenge. "Yes," he said, quietly. "At least in public, yes."
James blinked, twitched, and felt the surge of anger tangled with the knot of hope. "In public," he repeated, and couldn't quite help the weight of the unasked question.
There was anger, then, in Tony's eyes. A flash of it, rich and searing, strangled down before it more than barely brushed the surface. Hidden, so quickly, behind the bright and vicious flash of a casual grin.
"You've been an idiot, you know," Tony told him blithely, savagely. "What kind of fool has the gratitude of a Prince of the Ten Kingdoms in his hand, and doesn't use it to ask for his dream? A very simple dream, that barely costs anything?" He shook his head, his smile bright as the flash of a gold coin in the market. "What kind of fool pulls a Prince from hell, and doesn't even ask that much in return?"
The anger won, for the moment, flooded across the lump of hope like the wave as a seawall broke, and tangled under it was that strange grief, that thorned feeling that emerged whenever Tony served him wine, or casually disregarded the sword at his hip. That strangling, aching feeling, for a man who could not even accept a drink without fear of artifice.
"Perhaps," James said, clipped and heavy as his fists knotted on his thighs, "perhaps the kind of fool who did not want to ask for payment for something any law-abiding man would have done. Perhaps the kind of fool who accepted a commission from a Lady to find her kidnapped husband, and saw no particular reason to ask a further ransom just for having pulling him from the sea and not mistreated him on the way home!"
He jerked to his feet, ignoring the rigid clamp of Tony's jaw as he stalked across the silk rugs out to the marble of the balcony, gripping the balustrade hurriedly between his hands before he did anything unwise. Before the anger finished surging, and the pale grief could reach up to swamp him behind it.
There was silence for a long, long second, black and crackling like the spark off an anvil, until Tony, never looking up from his rigid examination of his cup, spoke quietly to James' back. "I did not say a ransom," he noted, with almost delicate precision. "I said a reward."
James grit his teeth, rolling his head back to stare up into the blue-bronze sky in desperate askance. Knowing, knowing, that the man didn't understand. And wishing, not completely idly, that he knew who to kill for causing that.
"I don't need one of those, either," he said instead, more tiredly than angrily now. "The Lady Stark paid for my crew and my time before we set out. More than a year longer than we spent searching, just in case. I don't need a reward, Tony. I don't need anything."
"... Perhaps not," a soft, cool voice interrupted, startling both of them. "Perhaps you need nothing, James. But ... what about what you want? What about a gift, that a friend is happy to give you?"
He turned without thought, startled into action, and saw from the corner of his eye as Tony straightened in his chair to stare after him. They both watched, vaguely chagrinned, as the Lady Virginia Stark came through the painted screen door between apartments, and closed it carefully behind her.
She glanced between them, shaking her head slightly, and reached up to begin unpinning the pearl cap from her hair without even pausing in her stride across the room. It was easy to see, as her long red hair tumbled loose, a gift from a northern mother, why even those who hated her (and there were many) considered her the Pearl of Lengelos in appearance. The most beautiful daughter of a merchant-class guildsman the city had ever produced.
Tony, being Tony, called her Pepper instead. As in, vigorous, intemperate, and weight for weight worth more than gold in trade.
"I told you you shouldn't be the one to ask him," she said, leaning down to press her lips to Tony's forehead as he stared up at her, dropping the beaded cap carelessly on the table beside him. "You have many talents, my Lord. Diplomacy is not usually one of them."
James watched Tony's mouth quirk, vaguely, helplessly, even as his brows drew down mulishly, his hands reaching up trail across hers as she drew back a little. "You shouldn't require diplomacy to offer a man something he's always wanted," he grumped, and underneath the temper, James could still see the genuine tinge of confusion. "Am I rumoured to be a terrible lender, that people should fear a gift from my hands so much?"
James winced, at that. Took a step back towards the shade of the room, his face creasing in concern. Pepper forestalled him.
"You are rumoured to be a man who has survived many assassination attempts," she said, crisp and clear. "A man rumoured to have repaid them much more efficiently in kind. There are many who would no more take a grape from your hand than you would from theirs, and you know it." She smiled ruefully, shook her head. "But that is not why James wants to decline, Tony. And I believe you know that, too. Pretending otherwise in order to make him agree out of guilt is a low trick, and quite beneath you."
Pretending to ... Tony grinned, faintly, a bare touch of guilt and a guileless shrug, while James firmly reminded himself that killing Princes where they sat was not a healthy career choice. "And there aren't a lot of things beneath me," the Lord Stark agreed. "My apologies, Sir James."
"My Lady ..." James grit out, with what he thought admirable restraint. She smiled at him, her eyes soft and rueful as she nodded.
"I'll take him to task for you later," she offered, her thumb smoothing gently over the back of Tony's hand as she said it. Then her eyes sharpened, the look so well known to the Ruling Council of Lengelos as the expression of their Merchant Princess exercising her rule. "In the meantime, though?"
James, before that look, did little better than her council members. Unlike most of them, however, he had principles at least equal to it. "My Lady," he began, hesitant. He may as well have saved his breath. She allowed him no more leeway than her husband had.
"We are not attempting to buy your loyalty, nor your decency," said the Lady Stark, with gentle determination. "James. This serves us all. I don't know how well Tony would have explained that to you. It takes nothing from us. Without the marque of one of the Ten Kingdoms, no-one may compete in this tournament. We would give you ours. Not to buy you off, not to pay some debt you do not recognise. But because you are our friend, and because it is the least we would do for you." She paused, meeting his eyes carefully. "Do you at least understand that, before you answer?"
James opened his mouth, any number of answers buzzing across his thoughts. And then ... then he looked at them. At her, cool and regal in her blue-grey finery, the penman's callouses on her fingertips the only sign that she had worked her way to power on the back of more than marriage. And him, dark and hopeful beside her, all his scars hidden beneath his shirt and only his bare feet to show how fragile he might be. James looked at them, for a long moment.
And then, shaking his head, he closed his mouth, and spread his hands towards them in silent permission.
He thought there might be no surer sign of the hidden equality of their marriage than the twin expressions of delighted relief in both their faces.
"Good," Tony said, softly. With a strange quiver in his voice. "That's ... that's good." He shook his head, tried a small grin. "You know I wouldn't ever try to buy you, don't you? Not in truth. That's for people who need to be bribed for their loyalty. Not for you."
James ... James shook his head, the sliver of grief stealing back under his breast, glancing involuntarily across at his sword by the door. "I wonder sometimes if you know the difference," he admitted, as he crossed back into the room. "Those few you trust tend to end up with your power as a matter of course. I wondered if you could tell the difference between that, and the price of someone's loyalty."
Beside Tony, Pepper looked away, fine lines of pain feathering into relief around her eyes. Tony, for his part, only shrugged.
"Do I know the difference between trusting someone with my life and my city, and paying someone not to kill me?" he asked, with a faint little sliver of a grin. "Yes. But given the rumours you've no doubt been treated to over the past few months, I'll forgive you for doubting it."
James shook his head, reaching up to press his palm to his face part in chagrin and part to hide the not-completely-voluntary grin of relief. He dropped heavily back into his chair, and spoke mostly from between his fingers.
"This will not be a popular move, you realise." He looked tiredly up at them, a faint crease of humour. "Bad enough that you favour a mercenary Moor over Council members in granting access to you, bad enough that you let one bear arms even into the royal apartments. If you declare a Moor to be your champion, to represent the state among your peers ..."
Tony smirked, a black, savage expression. "No rule of the Tournament says that the champion must be native to the state in question," he said, clipped and unimpressed. "And given the construction of King Steven's court, the rumours of his spymaster, I highly doubt that such will matter to them. It might even stand us in better stead. So you'll forgive me if I fail to care out the Council's faint-hearted nerves, yes?"
Pepper smirked faintly herself, gripping his hand. "Much as you failed to care for their nerves when raising a merchant daughter to head of the Council as your wife?" she asked, lightly and dangerously. Tony simply grinned up at her. "But he's right, James. Leave the Council to us. Or rather, to me. After the rumours of ... Hmm. After the rumours of Stane's fate, they are stepping lightly for the moment."
James winced, a little, and Tony along with him. Ah. Yes. The rumours of what the Lady Stark had ordered done to the traitor who had tried to kill her husband were ... detailed. And not for those with weak stomach. However little truth there may be in them, the fact remained that the Lady had found Stane guilty of murdering her husband, and he had been found dead in a 'hunting accident' at his country villa not two weeks later.
Nothing more than a shadow play, perhaps, but illustrative nonetheless. It had genuinely never occurred to James to try and milk Tony's rescue for more than it was worth, the thought abhorrent when it was suggested to him, but in hindsight, he could well believe that simple decency had perhaps honestly saved his life.
"Besides," Pepper said, brightly and deliberately, bringing them back from that thought. "That won't be your problem. And it will do Tony good to get out of the city, so I wouldn't concern yourself."
Tony winced, apparently without planning to, and James straightened rapidly. That took a moment to penetrate, but once it had ...
"What do you mean?" he asked, a little dangerously himself. "Getting Tony out of the city?"
Pepper blinked, looking from his suddenly dark expression, and down to Tony's guilty one. She blinked in confusion, and then ... then she smiled, suddenly and vividly, looking laughingly down at her husband as he tried to look as innocent as humanly possible.
"Ah," she said, biting her lip. "I take it Tony didn't mention that part yet?"
"No," James agreed, and he wasn't laughing. Oh no. "No, he hadn't mentioned that yet."
Tony dipped his head, the Prince of Lengelos suddenly looking very much like an only-barely penitent child. "We would have gotten to that part of the negotiations," he temporised, glancing between them with a look that was drifting far too close to a smile. "I would have mentioned it eventually. Once he had calmed somewhat, you understand how it is ..."
"Hmm," Pepper murmured, tugging his hand to her chest as she smiled at him. "Yes, I do understand. Don't I?"
Tony swallowed faintly, a glimmer of nervousness, but James didn't much care, at this point. "I don't," he said, leaning forward again in temper, bracing his arms across his thighs. "Enlighten me, my Lord Stark. Exactly when did you propose to get to this part?"
"Ah," Tony managed, waving his free hand as a subtle distraction while he temporised. "Well ..."
"When he stopped panicking long enough to remember it," Pepper interrupted, stepping forward slightly to stand between them, still smiling faintly. "And when he deemed you less likely to strike him for it, I suspect. But since the issue has already been raised, perhaps you would like me to explain it now, Sir James?"
James grit his teeth into a smile that would have done the Medien Sea sharks proud. "Why not?" he asked, never taking his eyes from Tony's. "Please feel free, my Lady."
"Mmm," Pepper murmured, pursing her lips at him. But she shrugged, and continued. "Due to certain movements in the Council, and the results of certain rumours since Tony's return, we had decided that it might be prudent, after a certain period of reassuring the Council and reestablishing himself as alive and as independently motivated as ever, for Tony to spend some time at his country villa, and allow the Council some time to breathe in his wake."
James paused, straightening a little as he considered that. "You want him out of the way for something?" he asked. Indiscreet of him, yes, but he'd found these two favoured bluntness in political conversations, at least behind closed doors. "You think there might be another threat to his life?"
Pepper's expression chilled, a stiff, deathly calm falling over her features. "No," she said. "If there were, I would not be sending him away. I would have arranged for a demonstration of his power, instead. An illustration of why such things are not advisable." She shook her head. "No. This is a political motion. Certain people came to light during his absence, made certain overtures. Or began to. I want the opportunity to lure them back to the light, so I can better determine how to deal with them."
James lifted his eyebrows, blinking rapidly at her for a second, before turning to look at Tony. At the calm, predatory expression on the Prince's face, and the strength of his grip about her hand.
"There were rumours," James said, slowly. Watching them. "I've heard them in the market. That the Lady Stark was the one to arrange for your kidnapping and attempted murder. In an effort not to have to ..." He stopped, and stepped away from that. "In order to remove the necessity of pandering to her husband while she took leadership of the Council."
He hadn't know it at the time he set out, hadn't know it before he'd been sent to find Tony. At the time, he hadn't even known who Tony was. The Lady Stark had been very cautious in finding a man who wouldn't know to take advantage, in making Tony sound like any lesser nobleman who'd been taken by slavers. He hadn't known, or he might have been leery of bringing the battered man back to place into her hands.
But once he'd seen her greet Tony at the dock. Once he'd seen her hand dart to her mouth as he helped her barefoot husband down the plank, scarred and salt-tanned and only mostly recovered. Once he'd seen Tony move to her, careful and hesitant until he reached her, until he stood before her for an aching, fearful moment, and then was pulled to her as though she had completely forgotten all propriety. Once James had heard, the only one close enough, Tony's desperate, whispered thanks, buried in her hair. For sending someone. For being one of the people in the world who cared enough to send someone to find him.
No matter what rumours he'd heard after that, James had never for a moment believed that the Lady Virginia Stark had anything to do with her husband's ordeal. Save that she had expended every possible effort to redress it.
Tony grinned, and James had only seen that expression a few times before. The first time, it had been as he pulled a burned, scarred man half-dead from the sea, and that man had stared up at the ring of strange faces surrounding him, and smiled a smile that dared their worst. It was not, then or now, a pleasant expression.
"Everyone knows that I was only a pretty face to give her the right surname to get her low class talons into power," the Prince said, softly. "What was the expression? The clay Stark? For the Potter to shape to her will." He shook his head, grinning darkly. "Not that they're completely wrong, of course. I can't deal with the Council to save my life. Quite possibly literally. It was no great hardship to hand the political and financial considerations to her, and get back to manufacturing where I belonged."
"Tony," Pepper warned, cold and dangerous. Then she paused, smiling faintly. "You say that as if you didn't marry me in part to grant me my dream." She shook her head, as he twitched a little, and looked back to James. "But that is besides the point. Those motions, in his absence. They appeared to be in support of me. Hints that I was well to be rid of him, and certain parties might support me in his absence. And, later, that certain parties might support me in ... finishing the job you helped Tony thwart."
James blinked, carefully. "They want to help you oust him? Permanently, this time?"
Pepper's smile was thin. "That was the suggestion, yes. And you'll understand, of course, that it was more suggestion than I can allow? But they were cautious, and I do not yet have the identities of the leaders. So, we thought that while you and Tony are busy with the Tournament, that might leave enough of a window for said parties to attempt to approach me more directly. Or at least come close enough to step into Jarveth's grasp."
And it wouldn't take much of a wrong step, to fall into the spymaster's grasp, James thought. Jarveth, the third person Tony trusted absolutely (well, perhaps fourth, if you counted Happy, the Lady Pepper's bodyguard), was as fierce in their defense as the Lady Stark, and considerably more subtle about it.
"... So," he said, glancing between them. "You want me to travel to King Steven's court for the Ten Kingdoms Tournament, along with the Lord Prince Anthony Stark of Lengelos, in order to both fulfill my longstanding ambition, and incidentally allow you the opportunity to lure several would-be assassins into the light to teach them the error of their ways. Does that cover things?"
They looked at each other, and James was struck again by how very similar they looked, the same predatory smile in their eyes, the same light, genuine humour around their mouths. For all that Tony looked more like a ships blacksmith than a Prince, and Pepper looked more like a regal Princess than the potter's daughter she had once been.
"Aside from some little details?" Tony said, turning back to James, holding up his free hand with the fingers spaced to show just how tiny. "Absolutely. That is exactly right."
James brought his hand back up to his face, rubbing tired circles into his temples. Despite himself, he felt his mouth begin to twitch regardless. "Tiny details," he repeated. "Of course."
"Truly tiny," Pepper agreed, not bothering to hide her grin. "Just some small things about, oh, Tony not being the Prince as he travels with you, we were thinking 'Tony the armourer', possibly 'Tony the squire'. About making arrangements with the Council first. And the amazing new armour Tony's been dying to show you for the Tournament. You understand. Just the little details."
James shook his head, the twitch of his mouth spreading inexorably into a full grin. "Yes," he murmured, hiding his eyes behind his hand so as not to look at them. "I understand. Oh yes."
Tony grinned, leaning forward. "Then lets get to the good part," he said, upright and vibrant and intent, the formal phrase almost tripping from his tongue. "James of Rhodios. Will you accept the marque of the city state of Lengelos, and serve as our champion to the Ten Kingdoms Tournament in the court of King Steven of Amrendis?"
James looked at them. At the man he had pulled from the sea by a mysteriously burning shipwreck, the Prince he had saved all unknowing. And the woman beside him, who had sent him to save the husband so many thought she wanted dead, and been willing to offer him any price he named to manage it. James looked at the two of them, who had somehow become not his masters but his friends, casually raising him in worth above all the noblemen in the city.
He looked at them, and thought about the Tournament. About the dream he had nursed for years, to somehow prove his worth, to serve a kingdom like that as more than a mercenary sea-rat, a foreign Moor. He thought about the gratitude of Princes, and the prices of loyalty, and the genuine pleasure in the eyes of two friends.
"This will not end well," he warned, holding out a hand, pointing to Tony in particular. "I warn you now. This will not end well. But ..." He almost grinned, at the leap of eagerness in their faces, the honest hope. "But if you want to waste your marque on a champion like me, who am I to argue?" He shook his head, smiling as Tony snapped his fist to his chest in triumph. "I, James of Rhodios, do accept your marque, as the Lords of the city state of Lengelos."
"And may the winds look in favour on our commission," Pepper finished for him, but she was smiling as she said it. She was smiling, bright and real.
Looking between the two of them, James thought that seemed about right. The ritual plea and the smile both.
Since for the first time in his life, the Tournament was within his grasp, he thought that seemed perfect.
The southern colonnade of the Stark palazzo, overlooking the cliffs and down to Lengelos itself, was warm and sunlit, taking a cool breeze off the Medien Sea. Between the breeze and the view of the city, it was one of the most pleasant vantages in the palace.
Which was probably why, James reflected wryly, the Lord Prince Stark didn't allow anyone except his chosen few to use it. The surest sign of civic favour in the city was whether you got to use the colonnade for your visit, or had to take the interior hall. And since at present maybe ten people in the entire city, along with their associates, got to use the colonnade, and most of those as a favour to the Lady Stark rather than Tony's personal favour, James had been gleefully informed that he should count himself in rarified company.
He did. Oh, he did. It was one of the main reasons, propriety aside, why he found it so difficult not to want to knock the Prince on his ass one of these days.
The guards on the entrance to the Stark private apartments straightened up as he approached, greeting him with that weird mix of respect, disgruntled jealousy, and a healthy dose of paranoid caution at the sight of the sword still on his hip, and the gleam of mail under his tabard. They let him pass, of course. He had that privilege. But they didn't have to like it.
He'd told Tony. All he had to do was leave his weapon at the door, same as everyone else. He didn't have to put them through this every time, not when things were only barely settling down as it was. Not when they were only eight months back, and barely calmed.
Tony had looked at him, eyes bright and lazy and vicious with challenge, and simply said: "You had me for ten weeks on a ship where you have done anything you wanted, and no-one would even have known. I really don't think you carrying arms into my room in a city where everyone knows our names is anything to be concerned about. And!" He'd cut off James' burgeoning protest. "And I want everyone to know that. I want ... I want everyone to know that there are at least three people in this world I trust, and you are one of them."
And it had been quietly and earnestly said, and under the savage challenge there had been something else, something tired and pleading, and James ... had let it rest. Had let it be.
In truth, what other choice had he, in the face of that?
The inner door opened before him, the multiple spy-holes and echo-chambers around the entrance hall having let Tony know he was coming long before he reached the antechamber itself. Tony, the Lord Prince Anthony Stark, swung the heavy oak door open in his shirtsleeves, and waved James in with a grin.
"Rhodes!" he exclaimed, with that manic cheer that never boded well. "What kept you? Come in, come in!"
Oh, this was going to be painful. James could tell already.
"You know, most princes don't invite people into their chambers while they're partially dressed," he noted calmly, unbuckling his belt and leaving his sword on the cabinet by the door before following Tony into the room. He would go so far and no further, after all.
Tony grinned at him, turning in place on the silk rug to better display his bare feet and loose shirt. He had trousers on, at least. There was that mercy. "You've seen me in worse," he dismissed, cheerfully. "Unless you plan to take up a career as a rumour-monger, I shouldn't have to worry, should I?"
James shook his head, biting back a small grin despite himself. "And if I preferred you with clothes on?" he asked. In large part simply to hear the response.
"Then you have poor taste, and need to be re-educated," the Prince shot back, with never a break in stride, and moved over to the small table of refreshments. "Wine? Juice? We had a shipment from the orange groves in the southern hills last week, so there's fresh."
"Juice will do," James agreed, moving over to his usual seat and stripping off his gloves with relief. Leather was not kind, in this climate. "Though an explanation would do better. What was so urgent, my Lord, that you had to pull me up from the shipyard on an hour's notice?"
From overseeing the refit on his galley, he didn't say. They were due to sail within four months. James was ... not looking forward to it, perhaps, but in many ways glad of it. At sea, so many things were simpler than here, in this city with its politics and its poisons. At sea, at least, the enemies were usually clearer.
Tony hesitated, a little, hands faltering over the carafe and the cups. For only a second, though. A second of consternation was all you could reasonably expect, with this man, barring that you threatened something unforgivable. That, James knew first hand.
"Oh, just a small matter," Tony answered breezily, coming over with both cups, resting James' casually beside him before retreating to the opposite seat with his own. Once upon a time, James had objected to being served by a Prince. It had been the Lady Stark who gently explained to him that Tony did not take anything, and particularly not foodstuffs, from another's hand. Either Tony served, or he did not drink. After that thought, and all things considered, James had been willing to bear it.
"... A small matter," James repeated, carefully. Squinting narrowly at the man across the rim of his cup. "By that, do you mean what I would consider a small matter, or what you would consider a small matter?"
It was not an imprudent question. Tony considered such things as the loss of half a cargo of gold to be a trifling matter, and an assassination attempt by four men not much better. Someone in the city selling adulterated metals, though, had almost roused him to actual violence, and a passing slur directed at his wife had resulted in the unfortunate nobleman being summarily expelled from the city.
Not that James necessarily disagreed, on that last one. But it would not be difficult to argue that Tony's priorities, and his sense of scale, were sometimes a little ... skewed.
Tony pursed his lips thoughtfully, fingers idly dabbling in his juice without drinking. James felt his hand tighten a little around his own cup. Yes. He'd been right the first time. This did not bode well.
"You know that next summer is the Ten Kingdoms Tournament?" he asked, finally, dark eyes cutting up to meet James'. Chin lifting instinctively, as if he had some idea of the danger he courted. As if he had ... some idea, of how much that question might wound.
James, very carefully, set his cup aside, placed it exquisitely gently on the table beside his gloves. Tony, just faintly, winced.
"You know I do," James said, very softly. "My Lord Stark. This had best not ..."
"Lengelos hasn't forwarded a champion in over a decade," Tony interrupted, speaking quickly and sharply, as though to override James' protests before he could even reach them. "We abstained from the last two, for ... well, you don't need to know the reasons, lets just say there were a few assassination attempts to keep us busy at the time, and the last time we sent a man, fifteen years ago, was the first year the Asgarot sent a delegation. So you can imagine, that one didn't go well."
"My Lord ..." James tried, but cutting across Tony Stark in mid-spate was a fool's manoeuver at the best of times. He doubted the man even registered the attempt.
"After all the upheaval of the past year or so, Pepper and I ... I mean, the Lady Stark, we thought sending a delegation to the Tournament would be a good political move. Reaffirming our place in the Ten Kingdoms Alliance would strengthen the city state, and at home, having acted to strengthen foreign ties, particularly in light of my ... my taking ... would reassure much of the Council. So we thought ..."
James paused. Held up a hand, blinking measuredly for a second. Tony visibly cut himself off, reining in whatever he'd been about to say. Settling, instead, for watching James warily.
James, for his part, needed the minute to sift through the sudden sideways jolt of feeling. To strangle nascent anger and disappointment in their beds, and let the strange lurch of hope subside in the same breath. He took that minute, while Tony waited him out. And then.
"This is a political manoeuver?" he asked, carefully. Meeting Tony's eyes head-on, watching the movement of luminous things in the darkness there. The Prince was an accomplished liar, but James had seen him at his very darkest, James had seen him stripped to nothing, and there was very little Tony could hide from him now. Very little, and nothing open, nothing that he could deny to James' face.
Tony's eyes flickered down, a veiling sweep of lashes as he looked to his cup for a second, and when he looked back, it was that familiar mix of tired pleading and dark challenge. "Yes," he said, quietly. "At least in public, yes."
James blinked, twitched, and felt the surge of anger tangled with the knot of hope. "In public," he repeated, and couldn't quite help the weight of the unasked question.
There was anger, then, in Tony's eyes. A flash of it, rich and searing, strangled down before it more than barely brushed the surface. Hidden, so quickly, behind the bright and vicious flash of a casual grin.
"You've been an idiot, you know," Tony told him blithely, savagely. "What kind of fool has the gratitude of a Prince of the Ten Kingdoms in his hand, and doesn't use it to ask for his dream? A very simple dream, that barely costs anything?" He shook his head, his smile bright as the flash of a gold coin in the market. "What kind of fool pulls a Prince from hell, and doesn't even ask that much in return?"
The anger won, for the moment, flooded across the lump of hope like the wave as a seawall broke, and tangled under it was that strange grief, that thorned feeling that emerged whenever Tony served him wine, or casually disregarded the sword at his hip. That strangling, aching feeling, for a man who could not even accept a drink without fear of artifice.
"Perhaps," James said, clipped and heavy as his fists knotted on his thighs, "perhaps the kind of fool who did not want to ask for payment for something any law-abiding man would have done. Perhaps the kind of fool who accepted a commission from a Lady to find her kidnapped husband, and saw no particular reason to ask a further ransom just for having pulling him from the sea and not mistreated him on the way home!"
He jerked to his feet, ignoring the rigid clamp of Tony's jaw as he stalked across the silk rugs out to the marble of the balcony, gripping the balustrade hurriedly between his hands before he did anything unwise. Before the anger finished surging, and the pale grief could reach up to swamp him behind it.
There was silence for a long, long second, black and crackling like the spark off an anvil, until Tony, never looking up from his rigid examination of his cup, spoke quietly to James' back. "I did not say a ransom," he noted, with almost delicate precision. "I said a reward."
James grit his teeth, rolling his head back to stare up into the blue-bronze sky in desperate askance. Knowing, knowing, that the man didn't understand. And wishing, not completely idly, that he knew who to kill for causing that.
"I don't need one of those, either," he said instead, more tiredly than angrily now. "The Lady Stark paid for my crew and my time before we set out. More than a year longer than we spent searching, just in case. I don't need a reward, Tony. I don't need anything."
"... Perhaps not," a soft, cool voice interrupted, startling both of them. "Perhaps you need nothing, James. But ... what about what you want? What about a gift, that a friend is happy to give you?"
He turned without thought, startled into action, and saw from the corner of his eye as Tony straightened in his chair to stare after him. They both watched, vaguely chagrinned, as the Lady Virginia Stark came through the painted screen door between apartments, and closed it carefully behind her.
She glanced between them, shaking her head slightly, and reached up to begin unpinning the pearl cap from her hair without even pausing in her stride across the room. It was easy to see, as her long red hair tumbled loose, a gift from a northern mother, why even those who hated her (and there were many) considered her the Pearl of Lengelos in appearance. The most beautiful daughter of a merchant-class guildsman the city had ever produced.
Tony, being Tony, called her Pepper instead. As in, vigorous, intemperate, and weight for weight worth more than gold in trade.
"I told you you shouldn't be the one to ask him," she said, leaning down to press her lips to Tony's forehead as he stared up at her, dropping the beaded cap carelessly on the table beside him. "You have many talents, my Lord. Diplomacy is not usually one of them."
James watched Tony's mouth quirk, vaguely, helplessly, even as his brows drew down mulishly, his hands reaching up trail across hers as she drew back a little. "You shouldn't require diplomacy to offer a man something he's always wanted," he grumped, and underneath the temper, James could still see the genuine tinge of confusion. "Am I rumoured to be a terrible lender, that people should fear a gift from my hands so much?"
James winced, at that. Took a step back towards the shade of the room, his face creasing in concern. Pepper forestalled him.
"You are rumoured to be a man who has survived many assassination attempts," she said, crisp and clear. "A man rumoured to have repaid them much more efficiently in kind. There are many who would no more take a grape from your hand than you would from theirs, and you know it." She smiled ruefully, shook her head. "But that is not why James wants to decline, Tony. And I believe you know that, too. Pretending otherwise in order to make him agree out of guilt is a low trick, and quite beneath you."
Pretending to ... Tony grinned, faintly, a bare touch of guilt and a guileless shrug, while James firmly reminded himself that killing Princes where they sat was not a healthy career choice. "And there aren't a lot of things beneath me," the Lord Stark agreed. "My apologies, Sir James."
"My Lady ..." James grit out, with what he thought admirable restraint. She smiled at him, her eyes soft and rueful as she nodded.
"I'll take him to task for you later," she offered, her thumb smoothing gently over the back of Tony's hand as she said it. Then her eyes sharpened, the look so well known to the Ruling Council of Lengelos as the expression of their Merchant Princess exercising her rule. "In the meantime, though?"
James, before that look, did little better than her council members. Unlike most of them, however, he had principles at least equal to it. "My Lady," he began, hesitant. He may as well have saved his breath. She allowed him no more leeway than her husband had.
"We are not attempting to buy your loyalty, nor your decency," said the Lady Stark, with gentle determination. "James. This serves us all. I don't know how well Tony would have explained that to you. It takes nothing from us. Without the marque of one of the Ten Kingdoms, no-one may compete in this tournament. We would give you ours. Not to buy you off, not to pay some debt you do not recognise. But because you are our friend, and because it is the least we would do for you." She paused, meeting his eyes carefully. "Do you at least understand that, before you answer?"
James opened his mouth, any number of answers buzzing across his thoughts. And then ... then he looked at them. At her, cool and regal in her blue-grey finery, the penman's callouses on her fingertips the only sign that she had worked her way to power on the back of more than marriage. And him, dark and hopeful beside her, all his scars hidden beneath his shirt and only his bare feet to show how fragile he might be. James looked at them, for a long moment.
And then, shaking his head, he closed his mouth, and spread his hands towards them in silent permission.
He thought there might be no surer sign of the hidden equality of their marriage than the twin expressions of delighted relief in both their faces.
"Good," Tony said, softly. With a strange quiver in his voice. "That's ... that's good." He shook his head, tried a small grin. "You know I wouldn't ever try to buy you, don't you? Not in truth. That's for people who need to be bribed for their loyalty. Not for you."
James ... James shook his head, the sliver of grief stealing back under his breast, glancing involuntarily across at his sword by the door. "I wonder sometimes if you know the difference," he admitted, as he crossed back into the room. "Those few you trust tend to end up with your power as a matter of course. I wondered if you could tell the difference between that, and the price of someone's loyalty."
Beside Tony, Pepper looked away, fine lines of pain feathering into relief around her eyes. Tony, for his part, only shrugged.
"Do I know the difference between trusting someone with my life and my city, and paying someone not to kill me?" he asked, with a faint little sliver of a grin. "Yes. But given the rumours you've no doubt been treated to over the past few months, I'll forgive you for doubting it."
James shook his head, reaching up to press his palm to his face part in chagrin and part to hide the not-completely-voluntary grin of relief. He dropped heavily back into his chair, and spoke mostly from between his fingers.
"This will not be a popular move, you realise." He looked tiredly up at them, a faint crease of humour. "Bad enough that you favour a mercenary Moor over Council members in granting access to you, bad enough that you let one bear arms even into the royal apartments. If you declare a Moor to be your champion, to represent the state among your peers ..."
Tony smirked, a black, savage expression. "No rule of the Tournament says that the champion must be native to the state in question," he said, clipped and unimpressed. "And given the construction of King Steven's court, the rumours of his spymaster, I highly doubt that such will matter to them. It might even stand us in better stead. So you'll forgive me if I fail to care out the Council's faint-hearted nerves, yes?"
Pepper smirked faintly herself, gripping his hand. "Much as you failed to care for their nerves when raising a merchant daughter to head of the Council as your wife?" she asked, lightly and dangerously. Tony simply grinned up at her. "But he's right, James. Leave the Council to us. Or rather, to me. After the rumours of ... Hmm. After the rumours of Stane's fate, they are stepping lightly for the moment."
James winced, a little, and Tony along with him. Ah. Yes. The rumours of what the Lady Stark had ordered done to the traitor who had tried to kill her husband were ... detailed. And not for those with weak stomach. However little truth there may be in them, the fact remained that the Lady had found Stane guilty of murdering her husband, and he had been found dead in a 'hunting accident' at his country villa not two weeks later.
Nothing more than a shadow play, perhaps, but illustrative nonetheless. It had genuinely never occurred to James to try and milk Tony's rescue for more than it was worth, the thought abhorrent when it was suggested to him, but in hindsight, he could well believe that simple decency had perhaps honestly saved his life.
"Besides," Pepper said, brightly and deliberately, bringing them back from that thought. "That won't be your problem. And it will do Tony good to get out of the city, so I wouldn't concern yourself."
Tony winced, apparently without planning to, and James straightened rapidly. That took a moment to penetrate, but once it had ...
"What do you mean?" he asked, a little dangerously himself. "Getting Tony out of the city?"
Pepper blinked, looking from his suddenly dark expression, and down to Tony's guilty one. She blinked in confusion, and then ... then she smiled, suddenly and vividly, looking laughingly down at her husband as he tried to look as innocent as humanly possible.
"Ah," she said, biting her lip. "I take it Tony didn't mention that part yet?"
"No," James agreed, and he wasn't laughing. Oh no. "No, he hadn't mentioned that yet."
Tony dipped his head, the Prince of Lengelos suddenly looking very much like an only-barely penitent child. "We would have gotten to that part of the negotiations," he temporised, glancing between them with a look that was drifting far too close to a smile. "I would have mentioned it eventually. Once he had calmed somewhat, you understand how it is ..."
"Hmm," Pepper murmured, tugging his hand to her chest as she smiled at him. "Yes, I do understand. Don't I?"
Tony swallowed faintly, a glimmer of nervousness, but James didn't much care, at this point. "I don't," he said, leaning forward again in temper, bracing his arms across his thighs. "Enlighten me, my Lord Stark. Exactly when did you propose to get to this part?"
"Ah," Tony managed, waving his free hand as a subtle distraction while he temporised. "Well ..."
"When he stopped panicking long enough to remember it," Pepper interrupted, stepping forward slightly to stand between them, still smiling faintly. "And when he deemed you less likely to strike him for it, I suspect. But since the issue has already been raised, perhaps you would like me to explain it now, Sir James?"
James grit his teeth into a smile that would have done the Medien Sea sharks proud. "Why not?" he asked, never taking his eyes from Tony's. "Please feel free, my Lady."
"Mmm," Pepper murmured, pursing her lips at him. But she shrugged, and continued. "Due to certain movements in the Council, and the results of certain rumours since Tony's return, we had decided that it might be prudent, after a certain period of reassuring the Council and reestablishing himself as alive and as independently motivated as ever, for Tony to spend some time at his country villa, and allow the Council some time to breathe in his wake."
James paused, straightening a little as he considered that. "You want him out of the way for something?" he asked. Indiscreet of him, yes, but he'd found these two favoured bluntness in political conversations, at least behind closed doors. "You think there might be another threat to his life?"
Pepper's expression chilled, a stiff, deathly calm falling over her features. "No," she said. "If there were, I would not be sending him away. I would have arranged for a demonstration of his power, instead. An illustration of why such things are not advisable." She shook her head. "No. This is a political motion. Certain people came to light during his absence, made certain overtures. Or began to. I want the opportunity to lure them back to the light, so I can better determine how to deal with them."
James lifted his eyebrows, blinking rapidly at her for a second, before turning to look at Tony. At the calm, predatory expression on the Prince's face, and the strength of his grip about her hand.
"There were rumours," James said, slowly. Watching them. "I've heard them in the market. That the Lady Stark was the one to arrange for your kidnapping and attempted murder. In an effort not to have to ..." He stopped, and stepped away from that. "In order to remove the necessity of pandering to her husband while she took leadership of the Council."
He hadn't know it at the time he set out, hadn't know it before he'd been sent to find Tony. At the time, he hadn't even known who Tony was. The Lady Stark had been very cautious in finding a man who wouldn't know to take advantage, in making Tony sound like any lesser nobleman who'd been taken by slavers. He hadn't known, or he might have been leery of bringing the battered man back to place into her hands.
But once he'd seen her greet Tony at the dock. Once he'd seen her hand dart to her mouth as he helped her barefoot husband down the plank, scarred and salt-tanned and only mostly recovered. Once he'd seen Tony move to her, careful and hesitant until he reached her, until he stood before her for an aching, fearful moment, and then was pulled to her as though she had completely forgotten all propriety. Once James had heard, the only one close enough, Tony's desperate, whispered thanks, buried in her hair. For sending someone. For being one of the people in the world who cared enough to send someone to find him.
No matter what rumours he'd heard after that, James had never for a moment believed that the Lady Virginia Stark had anything to do with her husband's ordeal. Save that she had expended every possible effort to redress it.
Tony grinned, and James had only seen that expression a few times before. The first time, it had been as he pulled a burned, scarred man half-dead from the sea, and that man had stared up at the ring of strange faces surrounding him, and smiled a smile that dared their worst. It was not, then or now, a pleasant expression.
"Everyone knows that I was only a pretty face to give her the right surname to get her low class talons into power," the Prince said, softly. "What was the expression? The clay Stark? For the Potter to shape to her will." He shook his head, grinning darkly. "Not that they're completely wrong, of course. I can't deal with the Council to save my life. Quite possibly literally. It was no great hardship to hand the political and financial considerations to her, and get back to manufacturing where I belonged."
"Tony," Pepper warned, cold and dangerous. Then she paused, smiling faintly. "You say that as if you didn't marry me in part to grant me my dream." She shook her head, as he twitched a little, and looked back to James. "But that is besides the point. Those motions, in his absence. They appeared to be in support of me. Hints that I was well to be rid of him, and certain parties might support me in his absence. And, later, that certain parties might support me in ... finishing the job you helped Tony thwart."
James blinked, carefully. "They want to help you oust him? Permanently, this time?"
Pepper's smile was thin. "That was the suggestion, yes. And you'll understand, of course, that it was more suggestion than I can allow? But they were cautious, and I do not yet have the identities of the leaders. So, we thought that while you and Tony are busy with the Tournament, that might leave enough of a window for said parties to attempt to approach me more directly. Or at least come close enough to step into Jarveth's grasp."
And it wouldn't take much of a wrong step, to fall into the spymaster's grasp, James thought. Jarveth, the third person Tony trusted absolutely (well, perhaps fourth, if you counted Happy, the Lady Pepper's bodyguard), was as fierce in their defense as the Lady Stark, and considerably more subtle about it.
"... So," he said, glancing between them. "You want me to travel to King Steven's court for the Ten Kingdoms Tournament, along with the Lord Prince Anthony Stark of Lengelos, in order to both fulfill my longstanding ambition, and incidentally allow you the opportunity to lure several would-be assassins into the light to teach them the error of their ways. Does that cover things?"
They looked at each other, and James was struck again by how very similar they looked, the same predatory smile in their eyes, the same light, genuine humour around their mouths. For all that Tony looked more like a ships blacksmith than a Prince, and Pepper looked more like a regal Princess than the potter's daughter she had once been.
"Aside from some little details?" Tony said, turning back to James, holding up his free hand with the fingers spaced to show just how tiny. "Absolutely. That is exactly right."
James brought his hand back up to his face, rubbing tired circles into his temples. Despite himself, he felt his mouth begin to twitch regardless. "Tiny details," he repeated. "Of course."
"Truly tiny," Pepper agreed, not bothering to hide her grin. "Just some small things about, oh, Tony not being the Prince as he travels with you, we were thinking 'Tony the armourer', possibly 'Tony the squire'. About making arrangements with the Council first. And the amazing new armour Tony's been dying to show you for the Tournament. You understand. Just the little details."
James shook his head, the twitch of his mouth spreading inexorably into a full grin. "Yes," he murmured, hiding his eyes behind his hand so as not to look at them. "I understand. Oh yes."
Tony grinned, leaning forward. "Then lets get to the good part," he said, upright and vibrant and intent, the formal phrase almost tripping from his tongue. "James of Rhodios. Will you accept the marque of the city state of Lengelos, and serve as our champion to the Ten Kingdoms Tournament in the court of King Steven of Amrendis?"
James looked at them. At the man he had pulled from the sea by a mysteriously burning shipwreck, the Prince he had saved all unknowing. And the woman beside him, who had sent him to save the husband so many thought she wanted dead, and been willing to offer him any price he named to manage it. James looked at the two of them, who had somehow become not his masters but his friends, casually raising him in worth above all the noblemen in the city.
He looked at them, and thought about the Tournament. About the dream he had nursed for years, to somehow prove his worth, to serve a kingdom like that as more than a mercenary sea-rat, a foreign Moor. He thought about the gratitude of Princes, and the prices of loyalty, and the genuine pleasure in the eyes of two friends.
"This will not end well," he warned, holding out a hand, pointing to Tony in particular. "I warn you now. This will not end well. But ..." He almost grinned, at the leap of eagerness in their faces, the honest hope. "But if you want to waste your marque on a champion like me, who am I to argue?" He shook his head, smiling as Tony snapped his fist to his chest in triumph. "I, James of Rhodios, do accept your marque, as the Lords of the city state of Lengelos."
"And may the winds look in favour on our commission," Pepper finished for him, but she was smiling as she said it. She was smiling, bright and real.
Looking between the two of them, James thought that seemed about right. The ritual plea and the smile both.
Since for the first time in his life, the Tournament was within his grasp, he thought that seemed perfect.
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