We sat at the Sequoia table, the two of us, the marketplace running in the background and the afternoon heat sitting over the settlement without any particular concern for royal audiences.
I put water in front of him. He drank half of it immediately.
"How are you alive." I said.
He looked at me.
"The demon lord killed the Winterly court the night the capital fell." I said. "The bloodline was removed. That's the standard operating procedure. You should be dead."
He reached into the inner pocket of what remained of his coat and set something on the table.
A small artifact. Crude construction by any technical standard, the rune work rough, the mana signature old and inconsistent. But functional. Barely.
I scanned it.
A barrier function. Passive, the same principle as the necklaces I had made for Eryndor's residents but far less sophisticated. It had activated when the demon lord's killing intent had found him and produced just enough interference to make the demon lord's perception register him as already dead.
Not because it was strong. Because it was imprecise in exactly the right way, the rough rune work creating an irregular mana pattern that read as a dying signature rather than a living one.
Bad craftsmanship saving his life.
I looked at the artifact on the table.
"Where did you get this." I said.
"My father." He said. "He had it made when I was a child. After the first assassination attempt on his reign. He said it was useless and gave it to me as a lesson about not trusting low-tier mages." He paused. "He was right that it was useless. It was also the reason I'm sitting here."
I picked it up and looked at the rune work.
Then I set it back down.
"What do you want." I said.
"I told you." He said. "Help to take back Winterly."
"Why would I do that." I said.
He looked at me.
"Because Winterly is a kingdom under demon occupation." He said. "Because the people there-"
"Are under demon occupation." I said. "Along with Singrael. And sections of Medalline that the emperor's own people no longer control. This is the current state of Philantria. I'm not in the business of reversing it kingdom by kingdom."
"Then what are you in the business of." He said.
I looked at the marketplace behind him. At the dwarves at the new produce stall. At the beastfolk children who had arrived with the second wave of families running alongside Eryndor's children near the lake.
"This." I said.
He followed my gaze.
"A settlement." He said.
"A territory." I said. "With sixty human residents, two dragons, an elven couple, forty dwarves, and approximately ninety beastfolk who arrived last week. With a functioning economy, a council that represents multiple races, and a barrier that has not been breached since I built it."
He looked at all of it.
"You built this." He said.
"Yes." I said.
"While Philantria was falling." He said.
"Yes." I said.
"Why." He said.
"Because these people needed somewhere to be." I said. "And I needed somewhere to farm tomatoes."
He looked at me with the expression of a man who has traveled for weeks in demon-occupied territory and arrived at a destination and is trying to determine whether the person in front of him is serious.
I was serious.
"I heard about Eryndor from a merchant." He said. "Mixed races. Stable. Protected. I thought if anyone had the means to help, it would be whoever was running this place." He looked at his hands. At the wounds that had been there an hour ago and weren't anymore. "I wasn't wrong about the means."
"No." I said.
"But you won't help." He said.
"I'll tell you what I'll do." I said. "The demon lord will fall eventually. Not because I've decided to be a hero about it. Because he's pointed things at Eryndor twice and made it personal both times and I have a long memory." I looked at him. "When he falls, the occupation of Winterly ends. Your kingdom comes back on its own timeline."
"Eventually." He said. "How long is eventually."
"I don't know." I said.
He absorbed that.
"And until then." He said.
"Until then, Winterly is occupied." I said. "And you're alive, which is more than the rest of your bloodline managed. I'd consider that a reasonable starting position."
He looked at the table.
"The demon lord is consolidating." He said. "Every month he holds Singrael and Winterly is another month the occupation becomes structural. The longer it runs the harder it is to reverse. You know this."
"Yes." I said.
"And it doesn't move you." He said.
"It informs me." I said. "It doesn't change what I'm doing."
He was quiet.
"What would change it." He said.
I looked at him.
"The demon lord coming for Eryndor." I said. "Directly. Without the proxy armies and the bone dragons and the assassination attempts on passing kingdoms." I paused. "When he decides Eryndor is the problem rather than a variable, I'll deal with him. Until then I'm farming."
The king looked at the settlement around him.
At sixty-something human residents going about their afternoon. At the dwarves in the brewery. At the beastfolk children by the lake. At the Sequoia tree that had been standing in the middle of all of it for a thousand years.
"You could end this." He said. Quietly. "Couldn't you."
I said nothing.
Which was its own answer.
He looked at his hands again.
"Is there anything Winterly can offer you." He said. "Anything that would-"
"No." I said.
He stopped.
"Stay in Eryndor if you need somewhere to be." I said. "The outer residential zone has available housing. Standard lease terms. You work the same as anyone else."
He stared at me.
"You're offering the King of Winterly a lease." He said.
"I'm offering a man who arrived in my marketplace with festering wounds a roof and a fair rate." I said. "What he was before he got here is his business."
He sat with that for a long moment.
Elder Elka appeared at the table with two bowls of whatever Azylan had made for the afternoon and set them down with the warmth she brought to every new arrival, which didn't vary based on where the arrival had come from or what title they had carried before they came through the gate.
She looked at Aldren of Winterly.
"Eat first." She said. "Everything else can wait."
He looked at the bowl.
Then at Elder Elka.
Then he picked up the spoon.